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History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire Vol. 6...................................................................1

Preservation Of The Greek Empire. Numbers, Passage, And Event, Of The Second And Third Crusades.

St. Bernard. Reign Of Saladin In Egypt And Syria. His Conquest Of Jerusalem. Naval Crusades.

Richard The First Of England. Pope Innocent The Third; And The Fourth And Fifth Crusades. The

Emperor Frederic The Second. Louis The Ninth Of France; And The Two Last Crusades. Expulsion Of

In a style less grave than that of history, I should perhaps compare the emperor Alexius ^1 to the jackal, who

is said to follow the steps, and to devour the leavings, of the lion. Whatever had been his fears and toils in the

passage of the first crusade, they were amply recompensed by the subsequent benefits which he derived from

the exploits of the Franks. His dexterity and vigilance secured their first conquest of Nice; and from this

threatening station the Turks were compelled to evacuate the neighborhood of Constantinople. While the

crusaders, with blind valor, advanced into the midland countries of Asia, the crafty Greek improved the

favorable occasion when the emirs of the seacoast were recalled to the standard of the sultan. The Turks

were driven from the Isles of Rhodes and Chios: the cities of Ephesu and Smyrna, of Sardes, Philadelphia,

and Laodicea, were restored to the empire, which Alexius enlarged from the Hellespont to the banks of the

Maeander, and the rocky shores of Pamphylia. The churches resumed their splendor: the towns were rebuilt

and fortified; and the desert country was peopled with colonies of Christians, who were gently removed from

the more distant and dangerous frontier. In these paternal cares, we may forgive Alexius, if he forgot the

deliverance of the holy sepulchre; but, by the Latins, he was stigmatized with the foul reproach of treason and

desertion. They had sworn fidelity and obedience to his throne; but he had promised to assist their enterprise

in person, or, at least, with his troops and treasures: his base retreat dissolved their obligations; and the sword,

which had been the instrument of their victory, was the pledge and title of their just independence. It does not

appear that the emperor attempted to revive his obsolete claims over the kingdom of Jerusalem; ^2 but the

borders of Cilicia and Syria were more recent in his possession, and more accessible to his arms. The great

army of the crusaders was annihilated or dispersed; the principality of Antioch was left without a head, by the

surprise and captivity of Bohemond; his ransom had oppressed him with a heavy debt; and his Norman

followers were insufficient to repel the hostilities of the Greeks and Turks. In this distress, Bohemond

embraced a magnanimous resolution, of leaving the defence of Antioch to his kinsman, the faithful Tancred;

of arming the West against the Byzantine empire; and of executing the design which he inherited from the

lessons and example of his father Guiscard. His embarkation was clandestine: and, if we may credit a tale of

the princess Anne, he passed the hostile sea closely secreted in a coffin. ^3 But his reception in France was

dignified by the public applause, and his marriage with the king's daughter: his return was glorious, since the

bravest spirits of the age enlisted under his veteran command; and he repassed the Adriatic at the head of five

thousand horse and forty thousand foot, assembled from the most remote climates of Europe. ^4 The strength

of Durazzo, and prudence of Alexius, the progress of famine and approach of winter, eluded his ambitious

hopes; and the venal confederates were seduced from his standard. A treaty of peace ^5 suspended the fears

of the Greeks; and they were finally delivered by the death of an adversary, whom neither oaths could bind,

nor dangers could appal, nor prosperity could satiate. His children succeeded to the principality of Antioch;

but the boundaries were strictly defined, the homage was clearly stipulated, and the cities of Tarsus and

Malmistra were restored to the Byzantine emperors. Of the coast of Anatolia, they possessed the entire circuit

from Trebizond to the Syrian gates. The Seljukian dynasty of Roum ^6 was separated on all sides from the

sea and their Mussulman brethren; the power of the sultan was shaken by the victories and even the defeats of

the Franks; and after the loss of Nice, they removed their throne to Cogni or Iconium, an obscure and in land

town above three hundred miles from Constantinople. ^7 Instead of trembling for their capital, the

Comnenian princes waged an offensive war against the Turks, and the first crusade prevented the fall of the

[Footnote 1: Anna Comnena relates her father's conquests in Asia Minor Alexiad, l. xi. p. 321 325, l. xiv. p.

419; his Cilician war against Tancred and Bohemond, p. 328 324; the war of Epirus, with tedious prolixity,

[Footnote 2: The kings of Jerusalem submitted, however, to a nominal dependence, and in the dates of their

inscriptions, (one is still legible in the church of Bethlem,) they respectfully placed before their own the name

[Footnote 3: Anna Comnena adds, that, to complete the imitation, he was shut up with a dead cock; and

condescends to wonder how the Barbarian could endure the confinement and putrefaction. This absurd tale is

Note: The Greek writers, in general, Zonaras, p. 2, 303, and Glycas, p. 334 agree in this story with the

princess Anne, except in the absurd addition of the dead cock. Ducange has already quoted some instances

where a similar stratagem had been adopted by Norman princes. On this authority Wilker inclines to believe

[Footnote 4: In the Byzantine geography, must mean England; yet we are more credibly informed, that our

Henry I. would not suffer him to levy any troops in his kingdom, (Ducange, Not. ad Alexiad. p. 41.)]

[Footnote 5: The copy of the treaty (Alexiad. l. xiii. p. 406 416) is an original and curious piece, which

[Footnote 6: See, in the learned work of M. De Guignes, (tom. ii. part ii.,) the history of the Seljukians of

Iconium, Aleppo, and Damascus, as far as it may be collected from the Greeks, Latins, and Arabians. The last

[Footnote 7: Iconium is mentioned as a station by Xenophon, and by Strabo, with an ambiguous title,

(Cellarius, tom. ii. p. 121.) Yet St. Paul found in that place a multitude of Jews and Gentiles. under the

corrupt name of Kunijah, it is described as a great city, with a river and garden, three leagues from the

mountains, and decorated (I know not why) with Plato's tomb, (Abulfeda, tabul. xvii. p. 303 vers. Reiske; and

In the twelfth century, three great emigrations marched by land from the West for the relief of Palestine. The

soldiers and pilgrims of Lombardy, France, and Germany were excited by the example and success of the

first crusade. ^8 Fortyeight years after the deliverance of the holy sepulchre, the emperor, and the French

king, Conrad the Third and Louis the Seventh, undertook the second crusade to support the falling fortunes of

the Latins. ^9 A grand division of the third crusade was led by the emperor Frederic Barbarossa, ^10 who

sympathized with his brothers of France and England in the common loss of Jerusalem. These three

expeditions may be compared in their resemblance of the greatness of numbers, their passage through the

Greek empire, and the nature and event of their Turkish warfare, and a brief parallel may save the repetition

of a tedious narrative. However splendid it may seem, a regular story of the crusades would exhibit the

perpetual return of the same causes and effects; and the frequent attempts for the defence or recovery of the

[Footnote 8: For this supplement to the first crusade, see Anna Comnena, Alexias, l. xi. p. 331, and the viiith

[Footnote 9: For the second crusade, of Conrad III. and Louis VII., see William of Tyre, (l. xvi. c. 18 19,)

Otho of Frisingen, (l. i. c. 34 45 59, 60,) Matthew Paris, (Hist. Major. p. 68,) Struvius, (Corpus Hist

Germanicae, p. 372, 373,) Scriptores Rerum Francicarum a Duchesne tom. iv.: Nicetas, in Vit. Manuel, l. i. c.

[Footnote 10: For the third crusade, of Frederic Barbarossa, see Nicetas in Isaac Angel. l. ii. c. 3 8, p. 257

266. Struv. (Corpus. Hist. Germ. p. 414,) and two historians, who probably were spectators, Tagino, (in

Scriptor. Freher. tom. i. p. 406 416, edit Struv.,) and the Anonymus de Expeditione Asiatica Fred. I. (in

I. Of the swarms that so closely trod in the footsteps of the first pilgrims, the chiefs were equal in rank,

though unequal in fame and merit, to Godfrey of Bouillon and his fellowadventurers. At their head were

displayed the banners of the dukes of Burgundy, Bavaria, and Aquitain; the first a descendant of Hugh Capet,

the second, a father of the Brunswick line: the archbishop of Milan, a temporal prince, transported, for the

benefit of the Turks, the treasures and ornaments of his church and palace; and the veteran crusaders, Hugh

the Great and Stephen of Chartres, returned to consummate their unfinished vow. The huge and disorderly

bodies of their followers moved forward in two columns; and if the first consisted of two hundred and sixty

thousand persons, the second might possibly amount to sixty thousand horse and one hundred thousand foot.

^11 ^* The armies of the second crusade might have claimed the conquest of Asia; the nobles of France and

Germany were animated by the presence of their sovereigns; and both the rank and personal character of

Conrad and Louis gave a dignity to their cause, and a discipline to their force, which might be vainly

expected from the feudatory chiefs. The cavalry of the emperor, and that of the king, was each composed of

seventy thousand knights, and their immediate attendants in the field; ^12 and if the lightarmed troops, the

peasant infantry, the women and children, the priests and monks, be rigorously excluded, the full account will

scarcely be satisfied with four hundred thousand souls. The West, from Rome to Britain, was called into

action; the kings of Poland and Bohemia obeyed the summons of Conrad; and it is affirmed by the Greeks

and Latins, that, in the passage of a strait or river, the Byzantine agents, after a tale of nine hundred thousand,

desisted from the endless and formidable computation. ^13 In the third crusade, as the French and English

preferred the navigation of the Mediterranean, the host of Frederic Barbarossa was less numerous. Fifteen

thousand knights, and as many squires, were the flower of the German chivalry: sixty thousand horse, and

one hundred thousand foot, were mustered by the emperor in the plains of Hungary; and after such

repetitions, we shall no longer be startled at the six hundred thousand pilgrims, which credulity has ascribed

to this last emigration. ^14 Such extravagant reckonings prove only the astonishment of contemporaries; but

their astonishment most strongly bears testimony to the existence of an enormous, though indefinite,

multitude. The Greeks might applaud their superior knowledge of the arts and stratagems of war, but they

confessed the strength and courage of the French cavalry, and the infantry of the Germans; ^15 and the

strangers are described as an iron race, of gigantic stature, who darted fire from their eyes, and spilt blood

like water on the ground. Under the banners of Conrad, a troop of females rode in the attitude and armor of

men; and the chief of these Amazons, from her gilt spurs and buskins, obtained the epithet of the Golden

[Footnote 11: Anne, who states these later swarms at 40,000 horse and 100,000 foot, calls them Normans,

and places at their head two brothers of Flanders. The Greeks were strangely ignorant of the names, families,

[Footnote *: It was this army of pilgrims, the first body of which was headed by the archbishop of Milan and

Count Albert of Blandras, which set forth on the wild, yet, with a more disciplined army, not impolitic,

enterprise of striking at the heart of the Mahometan power, by attacking the sultan in Bagdad. For their

[Footnote 12: William of Tyre, and Matthew Paris, reckon 70,000 loricati in each of the armies.]

[Footnote 13: The imperfect enumeration is mentioned by Cinnamus, and confirmed by Odo de Diogilo apud

Ducange ad Cinnamum, with the more precise sum of 900,556. Why must therefore the version and comment

suppose the modest and insufficient reckoning of 90,000? Does not Godfrey of Viterbo (Pantheon, p. xix. in

[Footnote 14: This extravagant account is given by Albert of Stade, (apud Struvium, p. 414;) my calculation

is borrowed from Godfrey of Viterbo, Arnold of Lubeck, apud eundem, and Bernard Thesaur. (c. 169, p.

804.) The original writers are silent. The Mahometans gave him 200,000, or 260,000, men, (Bohadin, in Vit.

[Footnote 15: I must observe, that, in the second and third crusades, the subjects of Conrad and Frederic are

styled by the Greeks and Orientals Alamanni. The Lechi and Tzechi of Cinnamus are the Poles and

Bohemians; and it is for the French that he reserves the ancient appellation of Germans.

II. The number and character of the strangers was an object of terror to the effeminate Greeks, and the

sentiment of fear is nearly allied to that of hatred. This aversion was suspended or softened by the

apprehension of the Turkish power; and the invectives of the Latins will not bias our more candid belief, that

the emperor Alexius dissembled their insolence, eluded their hostilities, counselled their rashness, and opened

to their ardor the road of pilgrimage and conquest. But when the Turks had been driven from Nice and the

seacoast, when the Byzantine princes no longer dreaded the distant sultans of Cogni, they felt with purer

indignation the free and frequent passage of the western Barbarians, who violated the majesty, and

endangered the safety, of the empire. The second and third crusades were undertaken under the reign of

Manuel Comnenus and Isaac Angelus. Of the former, the passions were always impetuous, and often

malevolent; and the natural union of a cowardly and a mischievous temper was exemplified in the latter, who,

without merit or mercy, could punish a tyrant, and occupy his throne. It was secretly, and perhaps tacitly,

resolved by the prince and people to destroy, or at least to discourage, the pilgrims, by every species of injury

and oppression; and their want of prudence and discipline continually afforded the pretence or the

opportunity. The Western monarchs had stipulated a safe passage and fair market in the country of their

Christian brethren; the treaty had been ratified by oaths and hostages; and the poorest soldier of Frederic's

army was furnished with three marks of silver to defray his expenses on the road. But every engagement was

violated by treachery and injustice; and the complaints of the Latins are attested by the honest confession of a

Greek historian, who has dared to prefer truth to his country. ^16 Instead of a hospitable reception, the gates

of the cities, both in Europe and Asia, were closely barred against the crusaders; and the scanty pittance of

food was let down in baskets from the walls. Experience or foresight might excuse this timid jealousy; but the

common duties of humanity prohibited the mixture of chalk, or other poisonous ingredients, in the bread; and

should Manuel be acquitted of any foul connivance, he is guilty of coining base money for the purpose of

trading with the pilgrims. In every step of their march they were stopped or misled: the governors had private

orders to fortify the passes and break down the bridges against them: the stragglers were pillaged and

murdered: the soldiers and horses were pierced in the woods by arrows from an invisible hand; the sick were

burnt in their beds; and the dead bodies were hung on gibbets along the highways. These injuries exasperated

the champions of the cross, who were not endowed with evangelical patience; and the Byzantine princes, who

had provoked the unequal conflict, promoted the embarkation and march of these formidable guests. On the

verge of the Turkish frontier Barbarossa spared the guilty Philadelphia, ^17 rewarded the hospitable

Laodicea, and deplored the hard necessity that had stained his sword with any drops of Christian blood. In

their intercourse with the monarchs of Germany and France, the pride of the Greeks was exposed to an

anxious trial. They might boast that on the first interview the seat of Louis was a low stool, beside the throne

of Manuel; ^18 but no sooner had the French king transported his army beyond the Bosphorus, than he

refused the offer of a second conference, unless his brother would meet him on equal terms, either on the sea

or land. With Conrad and Frederic, the ceremonial was still nicer and more difficult: like the successors of

Constantine, they styled themselves emperors of the Romans; ^19 and firmly maintained the purity of their

title and dignity. The first of these representatives of Charlemagne would only converse with Manuel on

horseback in the open field; the second, by passing the Hellespont rather than the Bosphorus, declined the

view of Constantinople and its sovereign. An emperor, who had been crowned at Rome, was reduced in the

Greek epistles to the humble appellation of Rex, or prince, of the Alemanni; and the vain and feeble Angelus

affected to be ignorant of the name of one of the greatest men and monarchs of the age. While they viewed

with hatred and suspicion the Latin pilgrims the Greek emperors maintained a strict, though secret, alliance

with the Turks and Saracens. Isaac Angelus complained, that by his friendship for the great Saladin he had

incurred the enmity of the Franks; and a mosque was founded at Constantinople for the public exercise of the

[Footnote 16: Nicetas was a child at the second crusade, but in the third he commanded against the Franks the

important post of Philippopolis. Cinnamus is infected with national prejudice and pride.]

[Footnote 17: The conduct of the Philadelphians is blamed by Nicetas, while the anonymous German accuses

the rudeness of his countrymen, (culpa nostra.) History would be pleasant, if we were embarrassed only by

such contradictions. It is likewise from Nicetas, that we learn the pious and humane sorrow of Frederic.]

[Footnote 18: Cinnamus translates into Latin. Ducange works very hard to save his king and country from

such ignominy, (sur Joinville, dissertat. xxvii. p. 317 320.) Louis afterwards insisted on a meeting in mari

[Footnote 19: Ego Romanorum imperator sum, ille Romaniorum, (Anonym Canis. p. 512.)]

[Footnote 20: In the Epistles of Innocent III., (xiii. p. 184,) and the History of Bohadin, (p. 129, 130,) see the

III. The swarms that followed the first crusade were destroyed in Anatolia by famine, pestilence, and the

Turkish arrows; and the princes only escaped with some squadrons of horse to accomplish their lamentable

pilgrimage. A just opinion may be formed of their knowledge and humanity; of their knowledge, from the

design of subduing Persia and Chorasan in their way to Jerusalem; ^* of their humanity, from the massacre of

the Christian people, a friendly city, who came out to meet them with palms and crosses in their hands. The

arms of Conrad and Louis were less cruel and imprudent; but the event of the second crusade was still more

ruinous to Christendom; and the Greek Manuel is accused by his own subjects of giving seasonable

intelligence to the sultan, and treacherous guides to the Latin princes. Instead of crushing the common foe, by

a double attack at the same time but on different sides, the Germans were urged by emulation, and the French

were retarded by jealousy. Louis had scarcely passed the Bosphorus when he was met by the returning

emperor, who had lost the greater part of his army in glorious, but unsuccessful, actions on the banks of the

Maender. The contrast of the pomp of his rival hastened the retreat of Conrad: ^! the desertion of his

independent vassals reduced him to his hereditary troops; and he borrowed some Greek vessels to execute by

sea the pilgrimage of Palestine. Without studying the lessons of experience, or the nature of the war, the king

of France advanced through the same country to a similar fate. The vanguard, which bore the royal banner

and the oriflamme of St. Denys, ^21 had doubled their march with rash and inconsiderate speed; and the rear,

which the king commanded in person, no longer found their companions in the evening camp. In darkness

and disorder, they were encompassed, assaulted, and overwhelmed, by the innumerable host of Turks, who,

in the art of war, were superior to the Christians of the twelfth century. ^* Louis, who climbed a tree in the

general discomfiture, was saved by his own valor and the ignorance of his adversaries; and with the dawn of

day he escaped alive, but almost alone, to the camp of the vanguard. But instead of pursuing his expedition

by land, he was rejoiced to shelter the relics of his army in the friendly seaport of Satalia. From thence he

embarked for Antioch; but so penurious was the supply of Greek vessels, that they could only afford room for

his knights and nobles; and the plebeian crowd of infantry was left to perish at the foot of the Pamphylian

hills. The emperor and the king embraced and wept at Jerusalem; their martial trains, the remnant of mighty

armies, were joined to the Christian powers of Syria, and a fruitless siege of Damascus was the final effort of

the second crusade. Conrad and Louis embarked for Europe with the personal fame of piety and courage; but

the Orientals had braved these potent monarchs of the Franks, with whose names and military forces they had

been so often threatened. ^22 Perhaps they had still more to fear from the veteran genius of Frederic the First,

who in his youth had served in Asia under his uncle Conrad. Forty campaigns in Germany and Italy had

taught Barbarossa to command; and his soldiers, even the princes of the empire, were accustomed under his

reign to obey. As soon as he lost sight of Philadelphia and Laodicea, the last cities of the Greek frontier, he

plunged into the salt and barren desert, a land (says the historian) of horror and tribulation. ^23 During twenty

days, every step of his fainting and sickly march was besieged by the innumerable hordes of Turkmans, ^24

whose numbers and fury seemed after each defeat to multiply and inflame. The emperor continued to struggle

and to suffer; and such was the measure of his calamities, that when he reached the gates of Iconium, no more

than one thousand knights were able to serve on horseback. By a sudden and resolute assault he defeated the

guards, and stormed the capital of the sultan, ^25 who humbly sued for pardon and peace. The road was now

open, and Frederic advanced in a career of triumph, till he was unfortunately drowned in a petty torrent of

Cilicia. ^26 The remainder of his Germans was consumed by sickness and desertion: and the emperor's son

expired with the greatest part of his Swabian vassals at the siege of Acre. Among the Latin heroes, Godfrey

of Bouillon and Frederic Barbarossa could alone achieve the passage of the Lesser Asia; yet even their

success was a warning; and in the last and most experienced age of the crusades, every nation preferred the

[Footnote *: This was the design of the pilgrims under the archbishop of Milan. See note, p. 102. M.]

[Footnote !: Conrad had advanced with part of his army along a central road, between that on the coast and

that which led to Iconium. He had been betrayed by the Greeks, his army destroyed without a battle. Wilken,

vol. iii. p. 165. Michaud, vol. ii. p. 156. Conrad advanced again with Louis as far as Ephesus, and from

thence, at the invitation of Manuel, returned to Constantinople. It was Louis who, at the passage of the

Maeandes, was engaged in a "glorious action." Wilken, vol. iii. p. 179. Michaud vol. ii. p. 160. Gibbon

[Footnote 21: As counts of Vexin, the kings of France were the vassals and advocates of the monastery of St.

Denys. The saint's peculiar banner, which they received from the abbot, was of a square form, and a red or

flaming color. The oriflamme appeared at the head of the French armies from the xiith to the xvth century,

[Footnote *: They descended the heights to a beautiful valley which by beneath them. The Turks seized the

heights which separated the two divisions of the army. The modern historians represent differently the act to

which Louis owed his safety, which Gibbon has described by the undignified phrase, "he climbed a tree."

According to Michaud, vol. ii. p. 164, the king got upon a rock, with his back against a tree; according to

Wilken, vol. iii., he dragged himself up to the top of the rock by the roots of a tree, and continued to defend

[Footnote 22: The original French histories of the second crusade are the Gesta Ludovici VII. published in the

ivth volume of Duchesne's collection. The same volume contains many original letters of the king, of Suger

[Footnote 23: Terram horroris et salsuginis, terram siccam sterilem, inamoenam. Anonym. Canis. p. 517. The

[Footnote 24: Gens innumera, sylvestris, indomita, praedones sine ductore. The sultan of Cogni might

[Footnote 25: See, in the anonymous writer in the Collection of Canisius, Tagino and Bohadin, (Vit. Saladin.

p. 119, 120,) the ambiguous conduct of Kilidge Arslan, sultan of Cogni, who hated and feared both Saladin

[Footnote 26: The desire of comparing two great men has tempted many writers to drown Frederic in the

River Cydnus, in which Alexander so imprudently bathed, (Q. Curt. l. iii c. 4, 5.) But, from the march of the

emperor, I rather judge, that his Saleph is the Calycadnus, a stream of less fame, but of a longer course.

Note: It is now called the Girama: its course is described in M'Donald Kinneir's Travels. M.]

[Footnote 27: Marinus Sanutus, A.D. 1321, lays it down as a precept, Quod stolus ecclesiae per terram

nullatenus est ducenda. He resolves, by the divine aid, the objection, or rather exception, of the first crusade,

The enthusiasm of the first crusade is a natural and simple event, while hope was fresh, danger untried, and

enterprise congenial to the spirit of the times. But the obstinate perseverance of Europe may indeed excite our

pity and admiration; that no instruction should have been drawn from constant and adverse experience; that

the same confidence should have repeatedly grown from the same failures; that six succeeding generations

should have rushed headlong down the precipice that was open before them; and that men of every condition

should have staked their public and private fortunes on the desperate adventure of possessing or recovering a

tombstone two thousand miles from their country. In a period of two centuries after the council of Clermont,

each spring and summer produced a new emigration of pilgrim warriors for the defence of the Holy Land; but

the seven great armaments or crusades were excited by some impending or recent calamity: the nations were

moved by the authority of their pontiffs, and the example of their kings: their zeal was kindled, and their

reason was silenced, by the voice of their holy orators; and among these, Bernard, ^28 the monk, or the saint,

may claim the most honorable place. ^* About eight years before the first conquest of Jerusalem, he was born

of a noble family in Burgundy; at the age of three andtwenty he buried himself in the monastery of

Citeaux, then in the primitive fervor of the institution; at the end of two years he led forth her third colony, or

daughter, to the valley of Clairvaux ^29 in Champagne; and was content, till the hour of his death, with the

humble station of abbot of his own community. A philosophic age has abolished, with too liberal and

indiscriminate disdain, the honors of these spiritual heroes. The meanest among them are distinguished by

some energies of the mind; they were at least superior to their votaries and disciples; and, in the race of

superstition, they attained the prize for which such numbers contended. In speech, in writing, in action,

Bernard stood high above his rivals and contemporaries; his compositions are not devoid of wit and

eloquence; and he seems to have preserved as much reason and humanity as may be reconciled with the

character of a saint. In a secular life, he would have shared the seventh part of a private inheritance; by a vow

of poverty and penance, by closing his eyes against the visible world, ^30 by the refusal of all ecclesiastical

dignities, the abbot of Clairvaux became the oracle of Europe, and the founder of one hundred and sixty

convents. Princes and pontiffs trembled at the freedom of his apostolical censures: France, England, and

Milan, consulted and obeyed his judgment in a schism of the church: the debt was repaid by the gratitude of

Innocent the Second; and his successor, Eugenius the Third, was the friend and disciple of the holy Bernard.

It was in the proclamation of the second crusade that he shone as the missionary and prophet of God, who

called the nations to the defence of his holy sepulchre. ^31 At the parliament of Vezelay he spoke before the

king; and Louis the Seventh, with his nobles, received their crosses from his hand. The abbot of Clairvaux

then marched to the less easy conquest of the emperor Conrad: ^* a phlegmatic people, ignorant of his

language, was transported by the pathetic vehemence of his tone and gestures; and his progress, from

Constance to Cologne, was the triumph of eloquence and zeal. Bernard applauds his own success in the

depopulation of Europe; affirms that cities and castles were emptied of their inhabitants; and computes, that

only one man was left behind for the consolation of seven widows. ^32 The blind fanatics were desirous of

electing him for their general; but the example of the hermit Peter was before his eyes; and while he assured

the crusaders of the divine favor, he prudently declined a military command, in which failure and victory

would have been almost equally disgraceful to his character. ^33 Yet, after the calamitous event, the abbot of

Clairvaux was loudly accused as a false prophet, the author of the public and private mourning; his enemies

exulted, his friends blushed, and his apology was slow and unsatisfactory. He justifies his obedience to the

commands of the pope; expatiates on the mysterious ways of Providence; imputes the misfortunes of the

pilgrims to their own sins; and modestly insinuates, that his mission had been approved by signs and

wonders. ^34 Had the fact been certain, the argument would be decisive; and his faithful disciples, who

enumerate twenty or thirty miracles in a day, appeal to the public assemblies of France and Germany, in

which they were performed. ^35 At the present hour, such prodigies will not obtain credit beyond the

precincts of Clairvaux; but in the preternatural cures of the blind, the lame, and the sick, who were presented

to the man of God, it is impossible for us to ascertain the separate shares of accident, of fancy, of imposture,

[Footnote 28: The most authentic information of St. Bernard must be drawn from his own writings, published

in a correct edition by Pere Mabillon, and reprinted at Venice, 1750, in six volumes in folio. Whatever

friendship could recollect, or superstition could add, is contained in the two lives, by his disciples, in the vith

volume: whatever learning and criticism could ascertain, may be found in the prefaces of the Benedictine

[Footnote *: Gibbon, whose account of the crusades is perhaps the least accurate and satisfactory chapter in

his History, has here failed in that lucid arrangement, which in general gives perspicuity to his most

condensed and crowded narratives. He has unaccountably, and to the great perplexity of the reader, placed the

[Footnote 29: Clairvaux, surnamed the valley of Absynth, is situate among the woods near Bar sur Aube in

Champagne. St. Bernard would blush at the pomp of the church and monastery; he would ask for the library,

and I know not whether he would be much edified by a tun of 800 muids, (914 17 hogsheads,) which almost

rivals that of Heidelberg, (Melanges tires d'une Grande Bibliotheque, tom. xlvi. p. 15 20.)]

[Footnote 30: The disciples of the saint (Vit. ima, l. iii. c. 2, p. 1232. Vit. iida, c. 16, No. 45, p. 1383) record a

marvellous example of his pious apathy. Juxta lacum etiam Lausannensem totius diei itinere pergens, penitus

non attendit aut se videre non vidit. Cum enim vespere facto de eodem lacu socii colloquerentur, interrogabat

eos ubi lacus ille esset, et mirati sunt universi. To admire or despise St. Bernard as he ought, the reader, like

myself, should have before the windows of his library the beauties of that incomparable landscape.]

[Footnote 31: Otho Frising. l. i. c. 4. Bernard. Epist. 363, ad Francos Orientales Opp. tom. i. p. 328. Vit. ima,

[Footnote *: Bernard had a nobler object in his expedition into Germany to arrest the fierce and merciless

persecution of the Jews, which was preparing, under the monk Radulph, to renew the frightful scenes which

had preceded the first crusade, in the flourishing cities on the banks of the Rhine. The Jews acknowledge the

Christian intervention of St. Bernard. See the curious extract from the History of Joseph ben Meir. Wilken,

[Footnote 32: Mandastis et obedivi . . . . multiplicati sunt super numerum; vacuantur urbes et castella; et pene

jam non inveniunt quem apprehendant septem mulieres unum virum; adeo ubique viduae vivis remanent

viris. Bernard. Epist. p. 247. We must be careful not to construe pene as a substantive.]

[Footnote 33: Quis ego sum ut disponam acies, ut egrediar ante facies armatorum, aut quid tam remotum a

professione mea, si vires, si peritia, Epist. 256, tom. i. p. 259. He speaks with contempt of the hermit Peter,

[Footnote 34: Sic dicunt forsitan isti, unde scimus quod a Domino sermo egressus sit? Quae signa tu facis ut

credamus tibi? Non est quod ad ista ipse respondeam; parcendum verecundiae meae, responde tu pro me, et

pro te ipso, secundum quae vidisti et audisti, et secundum quod te inspiraverit Deus. Consolat. l. ii. c. 1. Opp.

[Footnote 35: See the testimonies in Vita ima, l. iv. c. 5, 6. Opp. tom. vi. p. 1258 1261, l. vi. c. 1 17, p.

Omnipotence itself cannot escape the murmurs of its discordant votaries; since the same dispensation which

was applauded as a deliverance in Europe, was deplored, and perhaps arraigned, as a calamity in Asia. After

the loss of Jerusalem, the Syrian fugitives diffused their consternation and sorrow; Bagdad mourned in the

dust; the cadhi Zeineddin of Damascus tore his beard in the caliph's presence; and the whole divan shed tears

at his melancholy tale. ^36 But the commanders of the faithful could only weep; they were themselves

captives in the hands of the Turks: some temporal power was restored to the last age of the Abbassides; but

their humble ambition was confined to Bagdad and the adjacent province. Their tyrants, the Seljukian sultans,

had followed the common law of the Asiatic dynasties, the unceasing round of valor, greatness, discord,

degeneracy, and decay; their spirit and power were unequal to the defence of religion; and, in his distant

realm of Persia, the Christians were strangers to the name and the arms of Sangiar, the last hero of his race.

^37 While the sultans were involved in the silken web of the harem, the pious task was undertaken by their

slaves, the Atabeks, ^38 a Turkish name, which, like the Byzantine patricians, may be translated by Father of

the Prince. Ascansar, a valiant Turk, had been the favorite of Malek Shaw, from whom he received the

privilege of standing on the right hand of the throne; but, in the civil wars that ensued on the monarch's death,

he lost his head and the government of Aleppo. His domestic emirs persevered in their attachment to his son

Zenghi, who proved his first arms against the Franks in the defeat of Antioch: thirty campaigns in the service

of the caliph and sultan established his military fame; and he was invested with the command of Mosul, as

the only champion that could avenge the cause of the prophet. The public hope was not disappointed: after a

siege of twentyfive days, he stormed the city of Edessa, and recovered from the Franks their conquests

beyond the Euphrates: ^39 the martial tribes of Curdistan were subdued by the independent sovereign of

Mosul and Aleppo: his soldiers were taught to behold the camp as their only country; they trusted to his

liberality for their rewards; and their absent families were protected by the vigilance of Zenghi. At the head of

these veterans, his son Noureddin gradually united the Mahometan powers; ^* added the kingdom of

Damascus to that of Aleppo, and waged a long and successful war against the Christians of Syria; he spread

his ample reign from the Tigris to the Nile, and the Abbassides rewarded their faithful servant with all the

titles and prerogatives of royalty. The Latins themselves were compelled to own the wisdom and courage,

and even the justice and piety, of this implacable adversary. ^40 In his life and government the holy warrior

revived the zeal and simplicity of the first caliphs. Gold and silk were banished from his palace; the use of

wine from his dominions; the public revenue was scrupulously applied to the public service; and the frugal

household of Noureddin was maintained from his legitimate share of the spoil which he vested in the

purchase of a private estate. His favorite sultana sighed for some female object of expense. "Alas," replied the

king, "I fear God, and am no more than the treasurer of the Moslems. Their property I cannot alienate; but I

still possess three shops in the city of Hems: these you may take; and these alone can I bestow." His chamber

of justice was the terror of the great and the refuge of the poor. Some years after the sultan's death, an

oppressed subject called aloud in the streets of Damascus, "O Noureddin, Noureddin, where art thou now?

Arise, arise, to pity and protect us!" A tumult was apprehended, and a living tyrant blushed or trembled at the

[Footnote 36: Abulmahasen apud de Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. ii. p. ii. p. 99.]

[Footnote 37: See his article in the Bibliotheque Orientale of D'Herbelot, and De Guignes, tom. ii. p. i. p. 230

261. Such was his valor, that he was styled the second Alexander; and such the extravagant love of his

subjects, that they prayed for the sultan a year after his decease. Yet Sangiar might have been made prisoner

by the Franks, as well as by the Uzes. He reigned near fifty years, (A.D. 1103 1152,) and was a munificent

[Footnote 38: See the Chronology of the Atabeks of Irak and Syria, in De Guignes, tom. i. p. 254; and the

reigns of Zenghi and Noureddin in the same writer, (tom. ii. p. ii. p. 147 221,) who uses the Arabic text of

Benelathir, Ben Schouna and Abulfeda; the Bibliotheque Orientale, under the articles Atabeks and

[Footnote 39: William of Tyre (l. xvi. c. 4, 5, 7) describes the loss of Edessa, and the death of Zenghi. The

corruption of his name into Sanguin, afforded the Latins a comfortable allusion to his sanguinary character

[Footnote *: On Noureddin's conquest of Damascus, see extracts from Arabian writers prefixed to the second

[Footnote 40: Noradinus (says William of Tyre, l. xx. 33) maximus nominis et fidei Christianae persecutor;

princeps tamen justus, vafer, providus' et secundum gentis suae traditiones religiosus. To this Catholic

witness we may add the primate of the Jacobites, (Abulpharag. p. 267,) quo non alter erat inter reges vitae

ratione magis laudabili, aut quae pluribus justitiae experimentis abundaret. The true praise of kings is after

By the arms of the Turks and Franks, the Fatimites had been deprived of Syria. In Egypt the decay of their

character and influence was still more essential. Yet they were still revered as the descendants and successors

of the prophet; they maintained their invisible state in the palace of Cairo; and their person was seldom

violated by the profane eyes of subjects or strangers. The Latin ambassadors ^41 have described their own

introduction, through a series of gloomy passages, and glittering porticos: the scene was enlivened by the

warbling of birds and the murmur of fountains: it was enriched by a display of rich furniture and rare animals;

of the Imperial treasures, something was shown, and much was supposed; and the long order of unfolding

doors was guarded by black soldiers and domestic eunuchs. The sanctuary of the presence chamber was

veiled with a curtain; and the vizier, who conducted the ambassadors, laid aside the cimeter, and prostrated

himself three times on the ground; the veil was then removed; and they beheld the commander of the faithful,

who signified his pleasure to the first slave of the throne. But this slave was his master: the viziers or sultans

had usurped the supreme administration of Egypt; the claims of the rival candidates were decided by arms;

and the name of the most worthy, of the strongest, was inserted in the royal patent of command. The factions

of Dargham and Shawer alternately expelled each other from the capital and country; and the weaker side

implored the dangerous protection of the sultan of Damascus, or the king of Jerusalem, the perpetual enemies

of the sect and monarchy of the Fatimites. By his arms and religion the Turk was most formidable; but the

Frank, in an easy, direct march, could advance from Gaza to the Nile; while the intermediate situation of his

realm compelled the troops of Noureddin to wheel round the skirts of Arabia, a long and painful circuit,

which exposed them to thirst, fatigue, and the burning winds of the desert. The secret zeal and ambition of the

Turkish prince aspired to reign in Egypt under the name of the Abbassides; but the restoration of the

suppliant Shawer was the ostensible motive of the first expedition; and the success was intrusted to the emir

Shiracouh, a valiant and veteran commander. Dargham was oppressed and slain; but the ingratitude, the

jealousy, the just apprehensions, of his more fortunate rival, soon provoked him to invite the king of

Jerusalem to deliver Egypt from his insolent benefactors. To this union the forces of Shiracouh were unequal:

he relinquished the premature conquest; and the evacuation of Belbeis or Pelusium was the condition of his

safe retreat. As the Turks defiled before the enemy, and their general closed the rear, with a vigilant eye, and

a battle axe in his hand, a Frank presumed to ask him if he were not afraid of an attack. "It is doubtless in

your power to begin the attack," replied the intrepid emir; "but rest assured, that not one of my soldiers will

go to paradise till he has sent an infidel to hell." His report of the riches of the land, the effeminacy of the

natives, and the disorders of the government, revived the hopes of Noureddin; the caliph of Bagdad

applauded the pious design; and Shiracouh descended into Egypt a second time with twelve thousand Turks

and eleven thousand Arabs. Yet his forces were still inferior to the confederate armies of the Franks and

Saracens; and I can discern an unusual degree of military art, in his passage of the Nile, his retreat into

Thebais, his masterly evolutions in the battle of Babain, the surprise of Alexandria, and his marches and

countermarches in the flats and valley of Egypt, from the tropic to the sea. His conduct was seconded by the

courage of his troops, and on the eve of action a Mamaluke ^42 exclaimed, "If we cannot wrest Egypt from

the Christian dogs, why do we not renounce the honors and rewards of the sultan, and retire to labor with the

peasants, or to spin with the females of the harem?" Yet, after all his efforts in the field, ^43 after the

obstinate defence of Alexandria ^44 by his nephew Saladin, an honorable capitulation and retreat ^*

concluded the second enterprise of Shiracouh; and Noureddin reserved his abilities for a third and more

propitious occasion. It was soon offered by the ambition and avarice of Amalric or Amaury, king of

Jerusalem, who had imbibed the pernicious maxim, that no faith should be kept with the enemies of God. ^!

A religious warrior, the great master of the hospital, encouraged him to proceed; the emperor of

Constantinople either gave, or promised, a fleet to act with the armies of Syria; and the perfidious Christian,

unsatisfied with spoil and subsidy, aspired to the conquest of Egypt. In this emergency, the Moslems turned

their eyes towards the sultan of Damascus; the vizier, whom danger encompassed on all sides, yielded to their

unanimous wishes, and Noureddin seemed to be tempted by the fair offer of one third of the revenue of the

kingdom. The Franks were already at the gates of Cairo; but the suburbs, the old city, were burnt on their

approach; they were deceived by an insidious negotiation, and their vessels were unable to surmount the

barriers of the Nile. They prudently declined a contest with the Turks in the midst of a hostile country; and

Amaury retired into Palestine with the shame and reproach that always adhere to unsuccessful injustice. After

this deliverance, Shiracouh was invested with a robe of honor, which he soon stained with the blood of the

unfortunate Shawer. For a while, the Turkish emirs condescended to hold the office of vizier; but this foreign

conquest precipitated the fall of the Fatimites themselves; and the bloodless change was accomplished by a

message and a word. The caliphs had been degraded by their own weakness and the tyranny of the viziers:

their subjects blushed, when the descendant and successor of the prophet presented his naked hand to the rude

gripe of a Latin ambassador; they wept when he sent the hair of his women, a sad emblem of their grief and

terror, to excite the pity of the sultan of Damascus. By the command of Noureddin, and the sentence of the

doctors, the holy names of Abubeker, Omar, and Othman, were solemnly restored: the caliph Mosthadi, of

Bagdad, was acknowledged in the public prayers as the true commander of the faithful; and the green livery

of the sons of Ali was exchanged for the black color of the Abbassides. The last of his race, the caliph Adhed,

who survived only ten days, expired in happy ignorance of his fate; his treasures secured the loyalty of the

soldiers, and silenced the murmurs of the sectaries; and in all subsequent revolutions, Egypt has never

[Footnote 41: From the ambassador, William of Tyre (l. xix. c. 17, 18,) describes the palace of Cairo. In the

caliph's treasure were found a pearl as large as a pigeon's egg, a ruby weighing seventeen Egyptian drams, an

emerald a palm and a half in length, and many vases of crystal and porcelain of China, (Renaudot, p. 536.)]

[Footnote 42: Mamluc, plur. Mamalic, is defined by Pocock, (Prolegom. ad Abulpharag. p. 7,) and

D'Herbelot, (p. 545,) servum emptitium, seu qui pretio numerato in domini possessionem cedit. They

frequently occur in the wars of Saladin, (Bohadin, p. 236, ) and it was only the Bahartie Mamalukes that were

[Footnote 43: Jacobus a Vitriaco (p. 1116) gives the king of Jerusalem no more than 374 knights. Both the

Franks and the Moslems report the superior numbers of the enemy; a difference which may be solved by

[Footnote 44: It was the Alexandria of the Arabs, a middle term in extent and riches between the period of the

Greeks and Romans, and that of the Turks, (Savary, Lettres sur l'Egypte, tom. i. p. 25, 26.)]

[Footnote *: The treaty stipulated that both the Christians and the Arabs should withdraw from Egypt.

[Footnote !: The Knights Templars, abhorring the perfidious breach of treaty partly, perhaps, out of jealousy

of the Hospitallers, refused to join in this enterprise. Will. Tyre c. xx. p. 5. Wilken, vol. iii. part ii. p. 117

[Footnote 45: For this great revolution of Egypt, see William of Tyre, (l. xix. 5, 6, 7, 12 31, xx. 5 12,)

Bohadin, (in Vit. Saladin, p. 30 39,) Abulfeda, (in Excerpt. Schultens, p. 1 12,) D'Herbelot, (Bibliot.

Orient. Adhed, Fathemah, but very incorrect,) Renaudot, (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 522 525, 532 537,)

Vertot, (Hist. des Chevaliers de Malthe, tom. i. p. 141 163, in 4to.,) and M. de Guignes, (tom. ii. p. 185

The hilly country beyond the Tigris is occupied by the pastoral tribes of the Curds; ^46 a people hardy,

strong, savage impatient of the yoke, addicted to rapine, and tenacious of the government of their national

chiefs. The resemblance of name, situation, and manners, seems to identify them with the Carduchians of the

Greeks; ^47 and they still defend against the Ottoman Porte the antique freedom which they asserted against

the successors of Cyrus. Poverty and ambition prompted them to embrace the profession of mercenary

soldiers: the service of his father and uncle prepared the reign of the great Saladin; ^48 and the son of Job or

Ayud, a simple Curd, magnanimously smiled at his pedigree, which flattery deduced from the Arabian

caliphs. ^49 So unconscious was Noureddin of the impending ruin of his house, that he constrained the

reluctant youth to follow his uncle Shiracouh into Egypt: his military character was established by the

defence of Alexandria; and, if we may believe the Latins, he solicited and obtained from the Christian general

the profane honors of knighthood. ^50 On the death of Shiracouh, the office of grand vizier was bestowed on

Saladin, as the youngest and least powerful of the emirs; but with the advice of his father, whom he invited to

Cairo, his genius obtained the ascendant over his equals, and attached the army to his person and interest.

While Noureddin lived, these ambitious Curds were the most humble of his slaves; and the indiscreet

murmurs of the divan were silenced by the prudent Ayub, who loudly protested that at the command of the

sultan he himself would lead his sons in chains to the foot of the throne. "Such language," he added in

private, "was prudent and proper in an assembly of your rivals; but we are now above fear and obedience; and

the threats of Noureddin shall not extort the tribute of a sugarcane." His seasonable death relieved them

from the odious and doubtful conflict: his son, a minor of eleven years of age, was left for a while to the

emirs of Damascus; and the new lord of Egypt was decorated by the caliph with every title ^51 that could

sanctify his usurpation in the eyes of the people. Nor was Saladin long content with the possession of Egypt;

he despoiled the Christians of Jerusalem, and the Atabeks of Damascus, Aleppo, and Diarbekir: Mecca and

Medina acknowledged him for their temporal protector: his brother subdued the distant regions of Yemen, or

the happy Arabia; and at the hour of his death, his empire was spread from the African Tripoli to the Tigris,

and from the Indian Ocean to the mountains of Armenia. In the judgment of his character, the reproaches of

treason and ingratitude strike forcibly on our minds, impressed, as they are, with the principle and experience

of law and loyalty. But his ambition may in some measure be excused by the revolutions of Asia, ^52 which

had erased every notion of legitimate succession; by the recent example of the Atabeks themselves; by his

reverence to the son of his benefactor; his humane and generous behavior to the collateral branches; by their

incapacity and his merit; by the approbation of the caliph, the sole source of all legitimate power; and, above

all, by the wishes and interest of the people, whose happiness is the first object of government. In his virtues,

and in those of his patron, they admired the singular union of the hero and the saint; for both Noureddin and

Saladin are ranked among the Mahometan saints; and the constant meditation of the holy war appears to have

shed a serious and sober color over their lives and actions. The youth of the latter ^53 was addicted to wine

and women: but his aspiring spirit soon renounced the temptations of pleasure for the graver follies of fame

and dominion: the garment of Saladin was of coarse woollen; water was his only drink; and, while he

emulated the temperance, he surpassed the chastity, of his Arabian prophet. Both in faith and practice he was

a rigid Mussulman: he ever deplored that the defence of religion had not allowed him to accomplish the

pilgrimage of Mecca; but at the stated hours, five times each day, the sultan devoutly prayed with his

brethren: the involuntary omission of fasting was scrupulously repaid; and his perusal of the Koran, on

horseback between the approaching armies, may be quoted as a proof, however ostentatious, of piety and

courage. ^54 The superstitious doctrine of the sect of Shafei was the only study that he deigned to encourage:

the poets were safe in his contempt; but all profane science was the object of his aversion; and a philosopher,

who had invented some speculative novelties, was seized and strangled by the command of the royal saint.

The justice of his divan was accessible to the meanest suppliant against himself and his ministers; and it was

only for a kingdom that Saladin would deviate from the rule of equity. While the descendants of Seljuk and

Zenghi held his stirrup and smoothed his garments, he was affable and patient with the meanest of his

servants. So boundless was his liberality, that he distributed twelve thousand horses at the siege of Acre; and,

at the time of his death, no more than fortyseven drams of silver and one piece of gold coin were found in

the treasury; yet, in a martial reign, the tributes were diminished, and the wealthy citizens enjoyed, without

fear or danger, the fruits of their industry. Egypt, Syria, and Arabia, were adorned by the royal foundations of

hospitals, colleges, and mosques; and Cairo was fortified with a wall and citadel; but his works were

consecrated to public use: ^55 nor did the sultan indulge himself in a garden or palace of private luxury. In a

fanatic age, himself a fanatic, the genuine virtues of Saladin commanded the esteem of the Christians; the

emperor of Germany gloried in his friendship; ^56 the Greek emperor solicited his alliance; ^57 and the

conquest of Jerusalem diffused, and perhaps magnified, his fame both in the East and West.

[Footnote 46: For the Curds, see De Guignes, tom. ii. p. 416, 417, the Index Geographicus of Schultens and

Tavernier, Voyages, p. i. p. 308, 309. The Ayoubites descended from the tribe of the Rawadiaei, one of the

noblest; but as they were infected with the heresy of the Metempsychosis, the orthodox sultans insinuated

that their descent was only on the mother's side, and that their ancestor was a stranger who settled among the

[Footnote 47: See the ivth book of the Anabasis of Xenophon. The ten thousand suffered more from the

arrows of the free Carduchians, than from the splendid weakness of the great king.]

[Footnote 48: We are indebted to the professor Schultens (Lugd. Bat, 1755, in folio) for the richest and most

authentic materials, a life of Saladin by his friend and minister the Cadhi Bohadin, and copious extracts from

the history of his kinsman the prince Abulfeda of Hamah. To these we may add, the article of Salaheddin in

the Bibliotheque Orientale, and all that may be gleaned from the Dynasties of Abulpharagius.]

[Footnote 49: Since Abulfeda was himself an Ayoubite, he may share the praise, for imitating, at least tacitly,

[Footnote 50: Hist. Hierosol. in the Gesta Dei per Francos, p. 1152. A similar example may be found in

Joinville, (p. 42, edition du Louvre;) but the pious St. Louis refused to dignify infidels with the order of

[Footnote 51: In these Arabic titles, religionis must always be understood; Noureddin, lumen r.; Ezzodin,

decus; Amadoddin, columen: our hero's proper name was Joseph, and he was styled Salahoddin, salus; Al

Malichus, Al Nasirus, rex defensor; Abu Modaffer, pater victoriae, Schultens, Praefat.]

[Footnote 52: Abulfeda, who descended from a brother of Saladin, observes, from many examples, that the

founders of dynasties took the guilt for themselves, and left the reward to their innocent collaterals, (Excerpt

[Footnote 54: His civil and religious virtues are celebrated in the first chapter of Bohadin, (p. 4 30,) himself

[Footnote 55: In many works, particularly Joseph's well in the castle of Cairo, the Sultan and the Patriarch

During his short existence, the kingdom of Jerusalem ^58 was supported by the discord of the Turks and

Saracens; and both the Fatimite caliphs and the sultans of Damascus were tempted to sacrifice the cause of

their religion to the meaner considerations of private and present advantage. But the powers of Egypt, Syria,

and Arabia, were now united by a hero, whom nature and fortune had armed against the Christians. All

without now bore the most threatening aspect; and all was feeble and hollow in the internal state of

Jerusalem. After the two first Baldwins, the brother and cousin of Godfrey of Bouillon, the sceptre devolved

by female succession to Melisenda, daughter of the second Baldwin, and her husband Fulk, count of Anjou,

the father, by a former marriage, of our English Plantagenets. Their two sons, Baldwin the Third, and

Amaury, waged a strenuous, and not unsuccessful, war against the infidels; but the son of Amaury, Baldwin

the Fourth, was deprived, by the leprosy, a gift of the crusades, of the faculties both of mind and body. His

sister Sybilla, the mother of Baldwin the Fifth, was his natural heiress: after the suspicious death of her child,

she crowned her second husband, Guy of Lusignan, a prince of a handsome person, but of such base renown,

that his own brother Jeffrey was heard to exclaim, "Since they have made him a king, surely they would have

made me a god!" The choice was generally blamed; and the most powerful vassal, Raymond count of Tripoli,

who had been excluded from the succession and regency, entertained an implacable hatred against the king,

and exposed his honor and conscience to the temptations of the sultan. Such were the guardians of the holy

city; a leper, a child, a woman, a coward, and a traitor: yet its fate was delayed twelve years by some supplies

from Europe, by the valor of the military orders, and by the distant or domestic avocations of their great

enemy. At length, on every side, the sinking state was encircled and pressed by a hostile line: and the truce

was violated by the Franks, whose existence it protected. A soldier of fortune, Reginald of Chatillon, had

seized a fortress on the edge of the desert, from whence he pillaged the caravans, insulted Mahomet, and

threatened the cities of Mecca and Medina. Saladin condescended to complain; rejoiced in the denial of

justice, and at the head of fourscore thousand horse and foot invaded the Holy Land. The choice of Tiberias

for his first siege was suggested by the count of Tripoli, to whom it belonged; and the king of Jerusalem was

persuaded to drain his garrison, and to arm his people, for the relief of that important place. ^59 By the advice

of the perfidious Raymond, the Christians were betrayed into a camp destitute of water: he fled on the first

onset, with the curses of both nations: ^60 Lusignan was overthrown, with the loss of thirty thousand men;

and the wood of the true cross (a dire misfortune!) was left in the power of the infidels. ^* The royal captive

was conducted to the tent of Saladin; and as he fainted with thirst and terror, the generous victor presented

him with a cup of sherbet, cooled in snow, without suffering his companion, Reginald of Chatillon, to partake

of this pledge of hospitality and pardon. "The person and dignity of a king," said the sultan, "are sacred, but

this impious robber must instantly acknowledge the prophet, whom he has blasphemed, or meet the death

which he has so often deserved." On the proud or conscientious refusal of the Christian warrior, Saladin

struck him on the head with his cimeter, and Reginald was despatched by the guards. ^61 The trembling

Lusignan was sent to Damascus, to an honorable prison and speedy ransom; but the victory was stained by

the execution of two hundred and thirty knights of the hospital, the intrepid champions and martyrs of their

faith. The kingdom was left without a head; and of the two grand masters of the military orders, the one was

slain and the other was a prisoner. From all the cities, both of the seacoast and the inland country, the

garrisons had been drawn away for this fatal field: Tyre and Tripoli alone could escape the rapid inroad of

Saladin; and three months after the battle of Tiberias, he appeared in arms before the gates of Jerusalem. ^62

[Footnote 58: For the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, see William of Tyre, from the ixth to the xxiid book.

Jacob a Vitriaco, Hist. Hierosolem l i., and Sanutus Secreta Fidelium Crucis, l. iii. p. vi. vii. viii. ix.]

[Footnote 59: Templarii ut apes bombabant et Hospitalarii ut venti stridebant, et barones se exitio offerebant,

et Turcopuli (the Christian light troops) semet ipsi in ignem injiciebant, (Ispahani de Expugnatione Kudsitica,

p. 18, apud Schultens;) a specimen of Arabian eloquence, somewhat different from the style of Xenophon!]

[Footnote 60: The Latins affirm, the Arabians insinuate, the treason of Raymond; but had he really embraced

their religion, he would have been a saint and a hero in the eyes of the latter.]

[Footnote *: Raymond's advice would have prevented the abandonment of a secure camp abounding with

water near Sepphoris. The rash and insolent valor of the master of the order of Knights Templars, which had

before exposed the Christians to a fatal defeat at the brook Kishon, forced the feeble king to annul the

determination of a council of war, and advance to a camp in an enclosed valley among the mountains, near

Hittin, without water. Raymond did not fly till the battle was irretrievably lost, and then the Saracens seem to

have opened their ranks to allow him free passage. The charge of suggesting the siege of Tiberias appears

ungrounded Raymond, no doubt, played a double part: he was a man of strong sagacity, who foresaw the

desperate nature of the contest with Saladin, endeavored by every means to maintain the treaty, and, though

he joined both his arms and his still more valuable counsels to the Christian army, yet kept up a kind of

amicable correspondence with the Mahometans. See Wilken, vol. iii. part ii. p. 276, et seq. Michaud, vol. ii.

p. 278, et seq. M. Michaud is still more friendly than Wilken to the memory of Count Raymond, who died

suddenly, shortly after the battle of Hittin. He quotes a letter written in the name of Saladin by the caliph

Alfdel, to show that Raymond was considered by the Mahometans their most dangerous and detested enemy.

"No person of distinction among the Christians escaped, except the count, (of Tripoli) whom God curse. God

made him die shortly afterwards, and sent him from the kingdom of death to hell." M.]

[Footnote 61: Benaud, Reginald, or Arnold de Chatillon, is celebrated by the Latins in his life and death; but

the circumstances of the latter are more distinctly related by Bohadin and Abulfeda; and Joinville (Hist. de St.

Louis, p. 70) alludes to the practice of Saladin, of never putting to death a prisoner who had tasted his bread

and salt. Some of the companions of Arnold had been slaughtered, and almost sacrificed, in a valley of

[Footnote 62: Vertot, who well describes the loss of the kingdom and city (Hist. des Chevaliers de Malthe,

He might expect that the siege of a city so venerable on earth and in heaven, so interesting to Europe and

Asia, would rekindle the last sparks of enthusiasm; and that, of sixty thousand Christians, every man would

be a soldier, and every soldier a candidate for martyrdom. But Queen Sybilla trembled for herself and her

captive husband; and the barons and knights, who had escaped from the sword and chains of the Turks,

displayed the same factious and selfish spirit in the public ruin. The most numerous portion of the inhabitants

was composed of the Greek and Oriental Christians, whom experience had taught to prefer the Mahometan

before the Latin yoke; ^63 and the holy sepulchre attracted a base and needy crowd, without arms or courage,

who subsisted only on the charity of the pilgrims. Some feeble and hasty efforts were made for the defence of

Jerusalem: but in the space of fourteen days, a victorious army drove back the sallies of the besieged, planted

their engines, opened the wall to the breadth of fifteen cubits, applied their scalingladders, and erected on

the breach twelve banners of the prophet and the sultan. It was in vain that a barefoot procession of the queen,

the women, and the monks, implored the Son of God to save his tomb and his inheritance from impious

violation. Their sole hope was in the mercy of the conqueror, and to their first suppliant deputation that mercy

was sternly denied. "He had sworn to avenge the patience and longsuffering of the Moslems; the hour of

forgiveness was elapsed, and the moment was now arrived to expiate, in blood, the innocent blood which had

been spilt by Godfrey and the first crusaders." But a desperate and successful struggle of the Franks

admonished the sultan that his triumph was not yet secure; he listened with reverence to a solemn adjuration

in the name of the common Father of mankind; and a sentiment of human sympathy mollified the rigor of

fanaticism and conquest. He consented to accept the city, and to spare the inhabitants. The Greek and

Oriental Christians were permitted to live under his dominion, but it was stipulated, that in forty days all the

Franks and Latins should evacuate Jerusalem, and be safely conducted to the seaports of Syria and Egypt;

that ten pieces of gold should be paid for each man, five for each woman, and one for every child; and that

those who were unable to purchase their freedom should be detained in perpetual slavery. Of some writers it

is a favorite and invidious theme to compare the humanity of Saladin with the massacre of the first crusade.

The difference would be merely personal; but we should not forget that the Christians had offered to

capitulate, and that the Mahometans of Jerusalem sustained the last extremities of an assault and storm.

Justice is indeed due to the fidelity with which the Turkish conqueror fulfilled the conditions of the treaty;

and he may be deservedly praised for the glance of pity which he cast on the misery of the vanquished.

Instead of a rigorous exaction of his debt, he accepted a sum of thirty thousand byzants, for the ransom of

seven thousand poor; two or three thousand more were dismissed by his gratuitous clemency; and the number

of slaves was reduced to eleven or fourteen thousand persons. In this interview with the queen, his words, and

even his tears suggested the kindest consolations; his liberal alms were distributed among those who had been

made orphans or widows by the fortune of war; and while the knights of the hospital were in arms against

him, he allowed their more pious brethren to continue, during the term of a year, the care and service of the

sick. In these acts of mercy the virtue of Saladin deserves our admiration and love: he was above the

necessity of dissimulation, and his stern fanaticism would have prompted him to dissemble, rather than to

affect, this profane compassion for the enemies of the Koran. After Jerusalem had been delivered from the

presence of the strangers, the sultan made his triumphal entry, his banners waving in the wind, and to the

harmony of martial music. The great mosque of Omar, which had been converted into a church, was again

consecrated to one God and his prophet Mahomet: the walls and pavement were purified with rosewater;

and a pulpit, the labor of Noureddin, was erected in the sanctuary. But when the golden cross that glittered on

the dome was cast down, and dragged through the streets, the Christians of every sect uttered a lamentable

groan, which was answered by the joyful shouts of the Moslems. In four ivory chests the patriarch had

collected the crosses, the images, the vases, and the relics of the holy place; they were seized by the

conqueror, who was desirous of presenting the caliph with the trophies of Christian idolatry. He was

persuaded, however, to intrust them to the patriarch and prince of Antioch; and the pious pledge was

redeemed by Richard of England, at the expense of fiftytwo thousand byzants of gold. ^64

[Footnote 64: For the conquest of Jerusalem, Bohadin (p. 67 75) and Abulfeda (p. 40 43) are our Moslem

witnesses. Of the Christian, Bernard Thesaurarius (c. 151 167) is the most copious and authentic; see

The nations might fear and hope the immediate and final expulsion of the Latins from Syria; which was yet

delayed above a century after the death of Saladin. ^65 In the career of victory, he was first checked by the

resistance of Tyre; the troops and garrisons, which had capitulated, were imprudently conducted to the same

port: their numbers were adequate to the defence of the place; and the arrival of Conrad of Montferrat

inspired the disorderly crowd with confidence and union. His father, a venerable pilgrim, had been made

prisoner in the battle of Tiberias; but that disaster was unknown in Italy and Greece, when the son was urged

by ambition and piety to visit the inheritance of his royal nephew, the infant Baldwin. The view of the

Turkish banners warned him from the hostile coast of Jaffa; and Conrad was unanimously hailed as the prince

and champion of Tyre, which was already besieged by the conqueror of Jerusalem. The firmness of his zeal,

and perhaps his knowledge of a generous foe, enabled him to brave the threats of the sultan, and to declare,

that should his aged parent be exposed before the walls, he himself would discharge the first arrow, and glory

in his descent from a Christian martyr. ^66 The Egyptian fleet was allowed to enter the harbor of Tyre; but

the chain was suddenly drawn, and five galleys were either sunk or taken: a thousand Turks were slain in a

sally; and Saladin, after burning his engines, concluded a glorious campaign by a disgraceful retreat to

Damascus. He was soon assailed by a more formidable tempest. The pathetic narratives, and even the

pictures, that represented in lively colors the servitude and profanation of Jerusalem, awakened the torpid

sensibility of Europe: the emperor Frederic Barbarossa, and the kings of France and England, assumed the

cross; and the tardy magnitude of their armaments was anticipated by the maritime states of the

Mediterranean and the Ocean. The skilful and provident Italians first embarked in the ships of Genoa, Pisa,

and Venice. They were speedily followed by the most eager pilgrims of France, Normandy, and the Western

Isles. The powerful succor of Flanders, Frise, and Denmark, filled near a hundred vessels: and the Northern

warriors were distinguished in the field by a lofty stature and a ponderous battle axe. ^67 Their increasing

multitudes could no longer be confined within the walls of Tyre, or remain obedient to the voice of Conrad.

They pitied the misfortunes, and revered the dignity, of Lusignan, who was released from prison, perhaps, to

divide the army of the Franks. He proposed the recovery of Ptolemais, or Acre, thirty miles to the south of

Tyre; and the place was first invested by two thousand horse and thirty thousand foot under his nominal

command. I shall not expatiate on the story of this memorable siege; which lasted near two years, and

consumed, in a narrow space, the forces of Europe and Asia. Never did the flame of enthusiasm burn with

fiercer and more destructive rage; nor could the true believers, a common appellation, who consecrated their

own martyrs, refuse some applause to the mistaken zeal and courage of their adversaries. At the sound of the

holy trumpet, the Moslems of Egypt, Syria, Arabia, and the Oriental provinces, assembled under the servant

of the prophet: ^68 his camp was pitched and removed within a few miles of Acre; and he labored, night and

day, for the relief of his brethren and the annoyance of the Franks. Nine battles, not unworthy of the name,

were fought in the neighborhood of Mount Carmel, with such vicissitude of fortune, that in one attack, the

sultan forced his way into the city; that in one sally, the Christians penetrated to the royal tent. By the means

of divers and pigeons, a regular correspondence was maintained with the besieged; and, as often as the sea

was left open, the exhausted garrison was withdrawn, and a fresh supply was poured into the place. The Latin

camp was thinned by famine, the sword and the climate; but the tents of the dead were replenished with new

pilgrims, who exaggerated the strength and speed of their approaching countrymen. The vulgar was

astonished by the report, that the pope himself, with an innumerable crusade, was advanced as far as

Constantinople. The march of the emperor filled the East with more serious alarms: the obstacles which he

encountered in Asia, and perhaps in Greece, were raised by the policy of Saladin: his joy on the death of

Barbarossa was measured by his esteem; and the Christians were rather dismayed than encouraged at the

sight of the duke of Swabia and his wayworn remnant of five thousand Germans. At length, in the spring of

the second year, the royal fleets of France and England cast anchor in the Bay of Acre, and the siege was

more vigorously prosecuted by the youthful emulation of the two kings, Philip Augustus and Richard

Plantagenet. After every resource had been tried, and every hope was exhausted, the defenders of Acre

submitted to their fate; a capitulation was granted, but their lives and liberties were taxed at the hard

conditions of a ransom of two hundred thousand pieces of gold, the deliverance of one hundred nobles, and

fifteen hundred inferior captives, and the restoration of the wood of the holy cross. Some doubts in the

agreement, and some delay in the execution, rekindled the fury of the Franks, and three thousand Moslems,

almost in the sultan's view, were beheaded by the command of the sanguinary Richard. ^69 By the conquest

of Acre, the Latin powers acquired a strong town and a convenient harbor; but the advantage was most dearly

purchased. The minister and historian of Saladin computes, from the report of the enemy, that their numbers,

at different periods, amounted to five or six hundred thousand; that more than one hundred thousand

Christians were slain; that a far greater number was lost by disease or shipwreck; and that a small portion of

[Footnote 65: The sieges of Tyre and Acre are most copiously described by Bernard Thesaurarius, (de

Acquisitione Terrae Sanctae, c. 167 179,) the author of the Historia Hierosolymitana, (p. 1150 1172, in

[Footnote 66: I have followed a moderate and probable representation of the fact; by Vertot, who adopts

without reluctance a romantic tale the old marquis is actually exposed to the darts of the besieged.]

[Footnote 67: Northmanni et Gothi, et caeteri populi insularum quae inter occidentem et septentrionem sitae

sunt, gentes bellicosae, corporis proceri mortis intrepidae, bipenbibus armatae, navibus rotundis, quae

[Footnote 68: The historian of Jerusalem (p. 1108) adds the nations of the East from the Tigris to India, and

the swarthy tribes of Moors and Getulians, so that Asia and Africa fought against Europe.]

[Footnote 69: Bohadin, p. 180; and this massacre is neither denied nor blamed by the Christian historians.

Alacriter jussa complentes, (the English soldiers,) says Galfridus a Vinesauf, (l. iv. c. 4, p. 346,) who fixes at

2700 the number of victims; who are multiplied to 5000 by Roger Hoveden, (p. 697, 698.) The humanity or

avarice of Philip Augustus was persuaded to ransom his prisoners, (Jacob a Vitriaco, l. i. c. 98, p. 1122.)]

[Footnote 70: Bohadin, p. 14. He quotes the judgment of Balianus, and the prince of Sidon, and adds, ex illo

mundo quasi hominum paucissimi redierunt. Among the Christians who died before St. John d'Acre, I find

the English names of De Ferrers earl of Derby, (Dugdale, Baronage, part i. p. 260,) Mowbray, (idem, p. 124,)

Philip Augustus, and Richard the First, are the only kings of France and England who have fought under the

same banners; but the holy service in which they were enlisted was incessantly disturbed by their national

jealousy; and the two factions, which they protected in Palestine, were more averse to each other than to the

common enemy. In the eyes of the Orientals; the French monarch was superior in dignity and power; and, in

the emperor's absence, the Latins revered him as their temporal chief. ^71 His exploits were not adequate to

his fame. Philip was brave, but the statesman predominated in his character; he was soon weary of sacrificing

his health and interest on a barren coast: the surrender of Acre became the signal of his departure; nor could

he justify this unpopular desertion, by leaving the duke of Burgundy with five hundred knights and ten

thousand foot, for the service of the Holy Land. The king of England, though inferior in dignity, surpassed his

rival in wealth and military renown; ^72 and if heroism be confined to brutal and ferocious valor, Richard

Plantagenet will stand high among the heroes of the age. The memory of Coeur de Lion, of the lionhearted

prince, was long dear and glorious to his English subjects; and, at the distance of sixty years, it was

celebrated in proverbial sayings by the grandsons of the Turks and Saracens, against whom he had fought: his

tremendous name was employed by the Syrian mothers to silence their infants; and if a horse suddenly started

from the way, his rider was wont to exclaim, "Dost thou think King Richard is in that bush?" ^73 His cruelty

to the Mahometans was the effect of temper and zeal; but I cannot believe that a soldier, so free and fearless

in the use of his lance, would have descended to whet a dagger against his valiant brother Conrad of

Montferrat, who was slain at Tyre by some secret assassins. ^74 After the surrender of Acre, and the

departure of Philip, the king of England led the crusaders to the recovery of the seacoast; and the cities of

Caesarea and Jaffa were added to the fragments of the kingdom of Lusignan. A march of one hundred miles

from Acre to Ascalon was a great and perpetual battle of eleven days. In the disorder of his troops, Saladin

remained on the field with seventeen guards, without lowering his standard, or suspending the sound of his

brazen kettledrum: he again rallied and renewed the charge; and his preachers or heralds called aloud on the

unitarians, manfully to stand up against the Christian idolaters. But the progress of these idolaters was

irresistible; and it was only by demolishing the walls and buildings of Ascalon, that the sultan could prevent

them from occupying an important fortress on the confines of Egypt. During a severe winter, the armies slept;

but in the spring, the Franks advanced within a day's march of Jerusalem, under the leading standard of the

English king; and his active spirit intercepted a convoy, or caravan, of seven thousand camels. Saladin ^75

had fixed his station in the holy city; but the city was struck with consternation and discord: he fasted; he

prayed; he preached; he offered to share the dangers of the siege; but his Mamalukes, who remembered the

fate of their companions at Acre, pressed the sultan with loyal or seditious clamors, to reserve his person and

their courage for the future defence of the religion and empire. ^76 The Moslems were delivered by the

sudden, or, as they deemed, the miraculous, retreat of the Christians; ^77 and the laurels of Richard were

blasted by the prudence, or envy, of his companions. The hero, ascending a hill, and veiling his face,

exclaimed with an indignant voice, "Those who are unwilling to rescue, are unworthy to view, the sepulchre

of Christ!" After his return to Acre, on the news that Jaffa was surprised by the sultan, he sailed with some

merchant vessels, and leaped foremost on the beach: the castle was relieved by his presence; and sixty

thousand Turks and Saracens fled before his arms. The discovery of his weakness, provoked them to return in

the morning; and they found him carelessly encamped before the gates with only seventeen knights and three

hundred archers. Without counting their numbers, he sustained their charge; and we learn from the evidence

of his enemies, that the king of England, grasping his lance, rode furiously along their front, from the right to

the left wing, without meeting an adversary who dared to encounter his career. ^78 Am I writing the history

of Orlando or Amadis? [Footnote 71: Magnus hic apud eos, interque reges eorum tum virtute tum majestate

eminens . . . . summus rerum arbiter, (Bohadin, p. 159.) He does not seem to have known the names either of

[Footnote 72: Rex Angliae, praestrenuus . . . . rege Gallorum minor apud eos censebatur ratione regni atque

dignitatis; sed tum divitiis florentior, tum bellica virtute multo erat celebrior, (Bohadin, p. 161.) A stranger

might admire those riches; the national historians will tell with what lawless and wasteful oppression they

[Footnote 74: Yet he was guilty in the opinion of the Moslems, who attest the confession of the assassins, that

they were sent by the king of England, (Bohadin, p. 225;) and his only defence is an absurd and palpable

forgery, (Hist. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xv. p. 155 163,) a pretended letter from the prince of

the assassins, the Sheich, or old man of the mountain, who justified Richard, by assuming to himself the guilt

Note: Von Hammer (Geschichte der Assassinen, p. 202) sums up against Richard, Wilken (vol. iv. p. 485) as

strongly for acquittal. Michaud (vol. ii. p. 420) delivers no decided opinion. This crime was also attributed to

Saladin, who is said, by an Oriental authority, (the continuator of Tabari,) to have employed the assassins to

murder both Conrad and Richard. It is a melancholy admission, but it must be acknowledged, that such an act

would be less inconsistent with the character of the Christian than of the Mahometan king. M.]

[Footnote 75: See the distress and pious firmness of Saladin, as they are described by Bohadin, (p. 7 9, 235

237,) who himself harangued the defenders of Jerusalem; their fears were not unknown to the enemy,

[Footnote 76: Yet unless the sultan, or an Ayoubite prince, remained in Jerusalem, nec Curdi Turcis, nec

Turci essent obtemperaturi Curdis, (Bohadin, p. 236.) He draws aside a corner of the political curtain.]

[Footnote 77: Bohadin, (p. 237,) and even Jeffrey de Vinisauf, (l. vi. c. 1 8, p. 403 409,) ascribe the

retreat to Richard himself; and Jacobus a Vitriaco observes, that in his impatience to depart, in alterum virum

muta tus est, (p. 1123.) Yet Joinville, a French knight, accuses the envy of Hugh duke of Burgundy, (p. 116,)

[Footnote 78: The expeditions to Ascalon, Jerusalem, and Jaffa, are related by Bohadin (p. 184 249) and

Abulfeda, (p. 51, 52.) The author of the Itinerary, or the monk of St. Alban's, cannot exaggerate the cadhi's

account of the prowess of Richard, (Vinisauf, l. vi. c. 14 24, p. 412 421. Hist. Major, p. 137 143;) and

on the whole of this war there is a marvellous agreement between the Christian and Mahometan writers, who

During these hostilities, a languid and tedious negotiation ^79 between the Franks and Moslems was started,

and continued, and broken, and again resumed, and again broken. Some acts of royal courtesy, the gift of

snow and fruit, the exchange of Norway hawks and Arabian horses, softened the asperity of religious war:

from the vicissitude of success, the monarchs might learn to suspect that Heaven was neutral in the quarrel;

nor, after the trial of each other, could either hope for a decisive victory. ^80 The health both of Richard and

Saladin appeared to be in a declining state; and they respectively suffered the evils of distant and domestic

warfare: Plantagenet was impatient to punish a perfidious rival who had invaded Normandy in his absence;

and the indefatigable sultan was subdued by the cries of the people, who was the victim, and of the soldiers,

who were the instruments, of his martial zeal. The first demands of the king of England were the restitution of

Jerusalem, Palestine, and the true cross; and he firmly declared, that himself and his brother pilgrims would

end their lives in the pious labor, rather than return to Europe with ignominy and remorse. But the conscience

of Saladin refused, without some weighty compensation, to restore the idols, or promote the idolatry, of the

Christians; he asserted, with equal firmness, his religious and civil claim to the sovereignty of Palestine;

descanted on the importance and sanctity of Jerusalem; and rejected all terms of the establishment, or

partition of the Latins. The marriage which Richard proposed, of his sister with the sultan's brother, was

defeated by the difference of faith; the princess abhorred the embraces of a Turk; and Adel, or Saphadin,

would not easily renounce a plurality of wives. A personal interview was declined by Saladin, who alleged

their mutual ignorance of each other's language; and the negotiation was managed with much art and delay by

their interpreters and envoys. The final agreement was equally disapproved by the zealots of both parties, by

the Roman pontiff and the caliph of Bagdad. It was stipulated that Jerusalem and the holy sepulchre should be

open, without tribute or vexation, to the pilgrimage of the Latin Christians; that, after the demolition of

Ascalon, they should inclusively possess the seacoast from Jaffa to Tyre; that the count of Tripoli and the

prince of Antioch should be comprised in the truce; and that, during three years and three months, all

hostilities should cease. The principal chiefs of the two armies swore to the observance of the treaty; but the

monarchs were satisfied with giving their word and their right hand; and the royal majesty was excused from

an oath, which always implies some suspicion of falsehood and dishonor. Richard embarked for Europe, to

seek a long captivity and a premature grave; and the space of a few months concluded the life and glories of

Saladin. The Orientals describe his edifying death, which happened at Damascus; but they seem ignorant of

the equal distribution of his alms among the three religions, ^81 or of the display of a shroud, instead of a

standard, to admonish the East of the instability of human greatness. The unity of empire was dissolved by

his death; his sons were oppressed by the stronger arm of their uncle Saphadin; the hostile interests of the

sultans of Egypt, Damascus, and Aleppo, ^82 were again revived; and the Franks or Latins stood and

[Footnote 79: See the progress of negotiation and hostility in Bohadin, (p. 207 260,) who was himself an

actor in the treaty. Richard declared his intention of returning with new armies to the conquest of the Holy

Land; and Saladin answered the menace with a civil compliment, (Vinisauf l. vi. c. 28, p. 423.)]

[Footnote 80: The most copious and original account of this holy war is Galfridi a Vinisauf, Itinerarium Regis

Anglorum Richardi et aliorum in Terram Hierosolymorum, in six books, published in the iid volume of Gale's

Scriptores Hist. Anglicanae, (p. 247 429.) Roger Hoveden and Matthew Paris afford likewise many

valuable materials; and the former describes, with accuracy, the discipline and navigation of the English

[Footnote 81: Even Vertot (tom. i. p. 251) adopts the foolish notion of the indifference of Saladin, who

[Footnote 82: See the succession of the Ayoubites, in Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 277, and the tables of M. De

The noblest monument of a conqueror's fame, and of the terror which he inspired, is the Saladine tenth, a

general tax which was imposed on the laity, and even the clergy, of the Latin church, for the service of the

holy war. The practice was too lucrative to expire with the occasion: and this tribute became the foundation

of all the tithes and tenths on ecclesiastical benefices, which have been granted by the Roman pontiffs to

Catholic sovereigns, or reserved for the immediate use of the apostolic see. ^83 This pecuniary emolument

must have tended to increase the interest of the popes in the recovery of Palestine: after the death of Saladin,

they preached the crusade, by their epistles, their legates, and their missionaries; and the accomplishment of

the pious work might have been expected from the zeal and talents of Innocent the Third. ^84 Under that

young and ambitious priest, the successors of St. Peter attained the full meridian of their greatness: and in a

reign of eighteen years, he exercised a despotic command over the emperors and kings, whom he raised and

deposed; over the nations, whom an interdict of months or years deprived, for the offence of their rulers, of

the exercise of Christian worship. In the council of the Lateran he acted as the ecclesiastical, almost as the

temporal, sovereign of the East and West. It was at the feet of his legate that John of England surrendered his

crown; and Innocent may boast of the two most signal triumphs over sense and humanity, the establishment

of transubstantiation, and the origin of the inquisition. At his voice, two crusades, the fourth and the fifth,

were undertaken; but, except a king of Hungary, the princes of the second order were at the head of the

pilgrims: the forces were inadequate to the design; nor did the effects correspond with the hopes and wishes

of the pope and the people. The fourth crusade was diverted from Syria to Constantinople; and the conquest

of the Greek or Roman empire by the Latins will form the proper and important subject of the next chapter. In

the fifth, ^85 two hundred thousand Franks were landed at the eastern mouth of the Nile. They reasonably

hoped that Palestine must be subdued in Egypt, the seat and storehouse of the sultan; and, after a siege of

sixteen months, the Moslems deplored the loss of Damietta. But the Christian army was ruined by the pride

and insolence of the legate Pelagius, who, in the pope's name, assumed the character of general: the sickly

Franks were encompassed by the waters of the Nile and the Oriental forces; and it was by the evacuation of

Damietta that they obtained a safe retreat, some concessions for the pilgrims, and the tardy restitution of the

doubtful relic of the true cross. The failure may in some measure be ascribed to the abuse and multiplication

of the crusades, which were preached at the same time against the Pagans of Livonia, the Moors of Spain, the

Albigeois of France, and the kings of Sicily of the Imperial family. ^86 In these meritorious services, the

volunteers might acquire at home the same spiritual indulgence, and a larger measure of temporal rewards;

and even the popes, in their zeal against a domestic enemy, were sometimes tempted to forget the distress of

their Syrian brethren. From the last age of the crusades they derived the occasional command of an army and

revenue; and some deep reasoners have suspected that the whole enterprise, from the first synod of Placentia,

was contrived and executed by the policy of Rome. The suspicion is not founded, either in nature or in fact.

The successors of St. Peter appear to have followed, rather than guided, the impulse of manners and

prejudice; without much foresight of the seasons, or cultivation of the soil, they gathered the ripe and

spontaneous fruits of the superstition of the times. They gathered these fruits without toil or personal danger:

in the council of the Lateran, Innocent the Third declared an ambiguous resolution of animating the crusaders

by his example; but the pilot of the sacred vessel could not abandon the helm; nor was Palestine ever blessed

with the presence of a Roman pontiff. ^87 [Footnote 83: Thomassin (Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. iii. p. 311

374) has copiously treated of the origin, abuses, and restrictions of these tenths. A theory was started, but not

pursued, that they were rightfully due to the pope, a tenth of the Levite's tenth to the high priest, (Selden on

[Footnote 84: See the Gesta Innocentii III. in Murat. Script. Rer. Ital., (tom. iii. p. 486 568.)]

[Footnote 85: See the vth crusade, and the siege of Damietta, in Jacobus a Vitriaco, (l. iii. p. 1125 1149, in

the Gesta Dei of Bongarsius,) an eye witness, Bernard Thesaurarius, (in Script. Muratori, tom. vii. p. 825

846, c. 190 207,) a contemporary, and Sanutus, (Secreta Fidel Crucis, l. iii. p. xi. c. 4 9,) a diligent

compiler; and of the Arabians Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 294,) and the Extracts at the end of Joinville, (p.

[Footnote 86: To those who took the cross against Mainfroy, the pope (A.D. 1255) granted plenissimam

peccatorum remissionem. Fideles mirabantur quod tantum eis promitteret pro sanguine Christianorum

effundendo quantum pro cruore infidelium aliquando, (Matthew Paris p. 785.) A high flight for the reason of

[Footnote 87: This simple idea is agreeable to the good sense of Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 332,) and

The persons, the families, and estates of the pilgrims, were under the immediate protection of the popes; and

these spiritual patrons soon claimed the prerogative of directing their operations, and enforcing, by

commands and censures, the accomplishment of their vow. Frederic the Second, ^88 the grandson of

Barbarossa, was successively the pupil, the enemy, and the victim of the church. At the age of twentyone

years, and in obedience to his guardian Innocent the Third, he assumed the cross; the same promise was

repeated at his royal and imperial coronations; and his marriage with the heiress of Jerusalem forever bound

him to defend the kingdom of his son Conrad. But as Frederic advanced in age and authority, he repented of

the rash engagements of his youth: his liberal sense and knowledge taught him to despise the phantoms of

superstition and the crowns of Asia: he no longer entertained the same reverence for the successors of

Innocent: and his ambition was occupied by the restoration of the Italian monarchy from Sicily to the Alps.

But the success of this project would have reduced the popes to their primitive simplicity; and, after the

delays and excuses of twelve years, they urged the emperor, with entreaties and threats, to fix the time and

place of his departure for Palestine. In the harbors of Sicily and Apulia, he prepared a fleet of one hundred

galleys, and of one hundred vessels, that were framed to transport and land two thousand five hundred

knights, with their horses and attendants; his vassals of Naples and Germany formed a powerful army; and

the number of English crusaders was magnified to sixty thousand by the report of fame. But the inevitable or

affected slowness of these mighty preparations consumed the strength and provisions of the more indigent

pilgrims: the multitude was thinned by sickness and desertion; and the sultry summer of Calabria anticipated

the mischiefs of a Syrian campaign. At length the emperor hoisted sail at Brundusium, with a fleet and army

of forty thousand men: but he kept the sea no more than three days; and his hasty retreat, which was ascribed

by his friends to a grievous indisposition, was accused by his enemies as a voluntary and obstinate

disobedience. For suspending his vow was Frederic excommunicated by Gregory the Ninth; for presuming,

the next year, to accomplish his vow, he was again excommunicated by the same pope. ^89 While he served

under the banner of the cross, a crusade was preached against him in Italy; and after his return he was

compelled to ask pardon for the injuries which he had suffered. The clergy and military orders of Palestine

were previously instructed to renounce his communion and dispute his commands; and in his own kingdom,

the emperor was forced to consent that the orders of the camp should be issued in the name of God and of the

Christian republic. Frederic entered Jerusalem in triumph; and with his own hands (for no priest would

perform the office) he took the crown from the altar of the holy sepulchre. But the patriarch cast an interdict

on the church which his presence had profaned; and the knights of the hospital and temple informed the

sultan how easily he might be surprised and slain in his unguarded visit to the River Jordan. In such a state of

fanaticism and faction, victory was hopeless, and defence was difficult; but the conclusion of an

advantageous peace may be imputed to the discord of the Mahometans, and their personal esteem for the

character of Frederic. The enemy of the church is accused of maintaining with the miscreants an intercourse

of hospitality and friendship unworthy of a Christian; of despising the barrenness of the land; and of

indulging a profane thought, that if Jehovah had seen the kingdom of Naples he never would have selected

Palestine for the inheritance of his chosen people. Yet Frederic obtained from the sultan the restitution of

Jerusalem, of Bethlem and Nazareth, of Tyre and Sidon; the Latins were allowed to inhabit and fortify the

city; an equal code of civil and religious freedom was ratified for the sectaries of Jesus and those of

Mahomet; and, while the former worshipped at the holy sepulchre, the latter might pray and preach in the

mosque of the temple, ^90 from whence the prophet undertook his nocturnal journey to heaven. The clergy

deplored this scandalous toleration; and the weaker Moslems were gradually expelled; but every rational

object of the crusades was accomplished without bloodshed; the churches were restored, the monasteries

were replenished; and, in the space of fifteen years, the Latins of Jerusalem exceeded the number of six

thousand. This peace and prosperity, for which they were ungrateful to their benefactor, was terminated by

the irruption of the strange and savage hordes of Carizmians. ^91 Flying from the arms of the Moguls, those

shepherds ^* of the Caspian rolled headlong on Syria; and the union of the Franks with the sultans of Aleppo,

Hems, and Damascus, was insufficient to stem the violence of the torrent. Whatever stood against them was

cut off by the sword, or dragged into captivity: the military orders were almost exterminated in a single battle;

and in the pillage of the city, in the profanation of the holy sepulchre, the Latins confess and regret the

modesty and discipline of the Turks and Saracens. [Footnote 88: The original materials for the crusade of

Frederic II. may be drawn from Richard de St. Germano (in Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital. tom. vii. p. 1002

1013) and Matthew Paris, (p. 286, 291, 300, 302, 304.) The most rational moderns are Fleury, (Hist. Eccles.

tom. xvi.,) Vertot, (Chevaliers de Malthe, tom. i. l. iii.,) Giannone, (Istoria Civile di Napoli, tom. ii. l. xvi.,)

[Footnote 89: Poor Muratori knows what to think, but knows not what to say: "Chino qui il capo,' p. 322]

[Footnote 90: The clergy artfully confounded the mosque or church of the temple with the holy sepulchre,

[Footnote 91: The irruption of the Carizmians, or Corasmins, is related by Matthew Paris, (p. 546, 547,) and

[Footnote *: They were in alliance with Eyub, sultan of Syria. Wilken vol. vi. p. 630. M.]

Of the seven crusades, the two last were undertaken by Louis the Ninth, king of France; who lost his liberty

in Egypt, and his life on the coast of Africa. Twentyeight years after his death, he was canonized at Rome;

and sixtyfive miracles were readily found, and solemnly attested, to justify the claim of the royal saint. ^92

The voice of history renders a more honorable testimony, that he united the virtues of a king, a hero, and a

man; that his martial spirit was tempered by the love of private and public justice; and that Louis was the

father of his people, the friend of his neighbors, and the terror of the infidels. Superstition alone, in all the

extent of her baleful influence, ^93 corrupted his understanding and his heart: his devotion stooped to admire

and imitate the begging friars of Francis and Dominic: he pursued with blind and cruel zeal the enemies of

the faith; and the best of kings twice descended from his throne to seek the adventures of a spiritual

knighterrant. A monkish historian would have been content to applaud the most despicable part of his

character; but the noble and gallant Joinville, ^94 who shared the friendship and captivity of Louis, has traced

with the pencil of nature the free portrait of his virtues as well as of his failings. From this intimate

knowledge we may learn to suspect the political views of depressing their great vassals, which are so often

imputed to the royal authors of the crusades. Above all the princes of the middle ages, Louis the Ninth

successfully labored to restore the prerogatives of the crown; but it was at home and not in the East, that he

acquired for himself and his posterity: his vow was the result of enthusiasm and sickness; and if he were the

promoter, he was likewise the victim, of his holy madness. For the invasion of Egypt, France was exhausted

of her troops and treasures; he covered the sea of Cyprus with eighteen hundred sails; the most modest

enumeration amounts to fifty thousand men; and, if we might trust his own confession, as it is reported by

Oriental vanity, he disembarked nine thousand five hundred horse, and one hundred and thirty thousand foot,

[Footnote 92: Read, if you can, the Life and Miracles of St. Louis, by the confessor of Queen Margaret, (p.

[Footnote 93: He believed all that mother church taught, (Joinville, p. 10,) but he cautioned Joinville against

disputing with infidels. "L'omme lay (said he in his old language) quand il ot medire de la loi Crestienne, ne

doit pas deffendre la loi Crestienne ne mais que de l'espee, dequoi il doit donner parmi le ventre dedens, tant

[Footnote 94: I have two editions of Joinville, the one (Paris, 1668) most valuable for the observations of

Ducange; the other (Paris, au Louvre, 1761) most precious for the pure and authentic text, a MS. of which has

been recently discovered. The last edition proves that the history of St. Louis was finished A.D. 1309,

without explaining, or even admiring, the age of the author, which must have exceeded ninety years, (Preface,

In complete armor, the oriflamme waving before him, Louis leaped foremost on the beach; and the strong city

of Damietta, which had cost his predecessors a siege of sixteen months, was abandoned on the first assault by

the trembling Moslems. But Damietta was the first and the last of his conquests; and in the fifth and sixth

crusades, the same causes, almost on the same ground, were productive of similar calamities. ^96 After a

ruinous delay, which introduced into the camp the seeds of an epidemic disease, the Franks advanced from

the seacoast towards the capital of Egypt, and strove to surmount the unseasonable inundation of the Nile,

which opposed their progress. Under the eye of their intrepid monarch, the barons and knights of France

displayed their invincible contempt of danger and discipline: his brother, the count of Artois, stormed with

inconsiderate valor the town of Massoura; and the carrier pigeons announced to the inhabitants of Cairo that

all was lost. But a soldier, who afterwards usurped the sceptre, rallied the flying troops: the main body of the

Christians was far behind the vanguard; and Artois was overpowered and slain. A shower of Greek fire was

incessantly poured on the invaders; the Nile was commanded by the Egyptian galleys, the open country by

the Arabs; all provisions were intercepted; each day aggravated the sickness and famine; and about the same

time a retreat was found to be necessary and impracticable. The Oriental writers confess, that Louis might

have escaped, if he would have deserted his subjects; he was made prisoner, with the greatest part of his

nobles; all who could not redeem their lives by service or ransom were inhumanly massacred; and the walls

of Cairo were decorated with a circle of Christian heads. ^97 The king of France was loaded with chains; but

the generous victor, a greatgrandson of the brother of Saladin, sent a robe of honor to his royal captive, and

his deliverance, with that of his soldiers, was obtained by the restitution of Damietta ^98 and the payment of

four hundred thousand pieces of gold. In a soft and luxurious climate, the degenerate children of the

companions of Noureddin and Saladin were incapable of resisting the flower of European chivalry: they

triumphed by the arms of their slaves or Mamalukes, the hardy natives of Tartary, who at a tender age had

been purchased of the Syrian merchants, and were educated in the camp and palace of the sultan. But Egypt

soon afforded a new example of the danger of praetorian bands; and the rage of these ferocious animals, who

had been let loose on the strangers, was provoked to devour their benefactor. In the pride of conquest, Touran

Shaw, the last of his race, was murdered by his Mamalukes; and the most daring of the assassins entered the

chamber of the captive king, with drawn cimeters, and their hands imbrued in the blood of their sultan. The

firmness of Louis commanded their respect; ^99 their avarice prevailed over cruelty and zeal; the treaty was

accomplished; and the king of France, with the relics of his army, was permitted to embark for Palestine. He

wasted four years within the walls of Acre, unable to visit Jerusalem, and unwilling to return without glory to

[Footnote 96: The last editors have enriched their Joinville with large and curious extracts from the Arabic

historians, Macrizi, Abulfeda, See likewise Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 322 325,) who calls him by the

corrupt name of Redefrans. Matthew Paris (p. 683, 684) has described the rival folly of the French and

[Footnote 97: Savary, in his agreeable Letters sur L'Egypte, has given a description of Damietta, (tom. i. lettre

xxiii. p. 274 290,) and a narrative of the exposition of St. Louis, (xxv. p. 306 350.)]

[Footnote 98: For the ransom of St. Louis, a million of byzants was asked and granted; but the sultan's

generosity reduced that sum to 800,000 byzants, which are valued by Joinville at 400,000 French livres of his

own time, and expressed by Matthew Paris by 100,000 marks of silver, (Ducange, Dissertation xx. sur

[Footnote 99: The idea of the emirs to choose Louis for their sultan is seriously attested by Joinville, (p. 77,

78,) and does not appear to me so absurd as to M. de Voltaire, (Hist. Generale, tom. ii. p. 386, 387.) The

Mamalukes themselves were strangers, rebels, and equals: they had felt his valor, they hoped his conversion;

and such a motion, which was not seconded, might be made, perhaps by a secret Christian in their tumultuous

Note: Wilken, vol. vii. p. 257, thinks the proposition could not have been made in earnest. M.]

The memory of his defeat excited Louis, after sixteen years of wisdom and repose, to undertake the seventh

and last of the crusades. His finances were restored, his kingdom was enlarged; a new generation of warriors

had arisen, and he advanced with fresh confidence at the head of six thousand horse and thirty thousand foot.

The loss of Antioch had provoked the enterprise; a wild hope of baptizing the king of Tunis tempted him to

steer for the African coast; and the report of an immense treasure reconciled his troops to the delay of their

voyage to the Holy Land. Instead of a proselyte, he found a siege: the French panted and died on the burning

sands: St. Louis expired in his tent; and no sooner had he closed his eyes, than his son and successor gave the

signal of the retreat. ^100 "It is thus," says a lively writer, "that a Christian king died near the ruins of

Carthage, waging war against the sectaries of Mahomet, in a land to which Dido had introduced the deities of

[Footnote 100: See the expedition in the annals of St. Louis, by William de Nangis, p. 270 287; and the

A more unjust and absurd constitution cannot be devised than that which condemns the natives of a country

to perpetual servitude, under the arbitrary dominion of strangers and slaves. Yet such has been the state of

Egypt above five hundred years. The most illustrious sultans of the Baharite and Borgite dynasties ^102 were

themselves promoted from the Tartar and Circassian bands; and the fourandtwenty beys, or military chiefs,

have ever been succeeded, not by their sons, but by their servants. They produce the great charter of their

liberties, the treaty of Selim the First with the republic: ^103 and the Othman emperor still accepts from

Egypt a slight acknowledgment of tribute and subjection. With some breathing intervals of peace and order,

the two dynasties are marked as a period of rapine and bloodshed: ^104 but their throne, however shaken,

reposed on the two pillars of discipline and valor: their sway extended over Egypt, Nubia, Arabia, and Syria:

their Mamalukes were multiplied from eight hundred to twentyfive thousand horse; and their numbers were

increased by a provincial militia of one hundred and seven thousand foot, and the occasional aid of sixtysix

thousand Arabs. ^105 Princes of such power and spirit could not long endure on their coast a hostile and

independent nation; and if the ruin of the Franks was postponed about forty years, they were indebted to the

cares of an unsettled reign, to the invasion of the Moguls, and to the occasional aid of some warlike pilgrims.

Among these, the English reader will observe the name of our first Edward, who assumed the cross in the

lifetime of his father Henry. At the head of a thousand soldiers the future conqueror of Wales and Scotland

delivered Acre from a siege; marched as far as Nazareth with an army of nine thousand men; emulated the

fame of his uncle Richard; extorted, by his valor, a ten years' truce; ^* and escaped, with a dangerous wound,

from the dagger of a fanatic assassin. ^106 ^! Antioch, ^107 whose situation had been less exposed to the

calamities of the holy war, was finally occupied and ruined by Bondocdar, or Bibars, sultan of Egypt and

Syria; the Latin principality was extinguished; and the first seat of the Christian name was dispeopled by the

slaughter of seventeen, and the captivity of one hundred, thousand of her inhabitants. The maritime towns of

Laodicea, Gabala, Tripoli, Berytus, Sidon, Tyre and Jaffa, and the stronger castles of the Hospitallers and

Templars, successively fell; and the whole existence of the Franks was confined to the city and colony of St.

John of Acre, which is sometimes described by the more classic title of Ptolemais. [Footnote 102: The

chronology of the two dynasties of Mamalukes, the Baharites, Turks or Tartars of Kipzak, and the Borgites,

Circassians, is given by Pocock (Prolegom. ad Abulpharag. p. 6 31) and De Guignes (tom. i. p. 264 270;)

their history from Abulfeda, Macrizi, to the beginning of the xvth century, by the same M. De Guignes, (tom.

[Footnote 103: Savary, Lettres sur l'Egypte, tom. ii. lettre xv. p. 189 208. I much question the authenticity

of this copy; yet it is true, that Sultan Selim concluded a treaty with the Circassians or Mamalukes of Egypt,

and left them in possession of arms, riches, and power. See a new Abrege de l'Histoire Ottomane, composed

in Egypt, and translated by M. Digeon, (tom. i. p. 55 58, Paris, 1781,) a curious, authentic, and national

[Footnote 104: Si totum quo regnum occuparunt tempus respicias, praesertim quod fini propius, reperies illud

bellis, pugnis, injuriis, ac rapinis refertum, (Al Jannabi, apud Pocock, p. 31.) The reign of Mohammed (A.D.

[Footnote 105: They are now reduced to 8500: but the expense of each Mamaluke may be rated at a hundred

louis: and Egypt groans under the avarice and insolence of these strangers, (Voyages de Volney, tom. i. p. 89

[Footnote *: Gibbon colors rather highly the success of Edward. Wilken is more accurate vol. vii. p. 593,

[Footnote 106: See Carte's History of England, vol. ii. p. 165 175, and his original authors, Thomas Wikes

and Walter Hemingford, (l. iii. c. 34, 35,) in Gale's Collection, tom. ii. p. 97, 589 592.) They are both

ignorant of the princess Eleanor's piety in sucking the poisoned wound, and saving her husband at the risk of

[Footnote !: The sultan Bibars was concerned in this attempt at assassination Wilken, vol. vii. p. 602.

Ptolemaeus Lucensis is the earliest authority for the devotion of Eleanora. Ibid. 605. M.]

[Footnote 107: Sanutus, Secret. Fidelium Crucis, 1. iii. p. xii. c. 9, and De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. iv.

After the loss of Jerusalem, Acre, ^108 which is distant about seventy miles, became the metropolis of the

Latin Christians, and was adorned with strong and stately buildings, with aqueducts, an artificial port, and a

double wall. The population was increased by the incessant streams of pilgrims and fugitives: in the pauses of

hostility the trade of the East and West was attracted to this convenient station; and the market could offer the

produce of every clime and the interpreters of every tongue. But in this conflux of nations, every vice was

propagated and practised: of all the disciples of Jesus and Mahomet, the male and female inhabitants of Acre

were esteemed the most corrupt; nor could the abuse of religion be corrected by the discipline of law. The

city had many sovereigns, and no government. The kings of Jerusalem and Cyprus, of the house of Lusignan,

the princes of Antioch, the counts of Tripoli and Sidon, the great masters of the hospital, the temple, and the

Teutonic order, the republics of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, the pope's legate, the kings of France and England,

assumed an independent command: seventeen tribunals exercised the power of life and death; every criminal

was protected in the adjacent quarter; and the perpetual jealousy of the nations often burst forth in acts of

violence and blood. Some adventurers, who disgraced the ensign of the cross, compensated their want of pay

by the plunder of the Mahometan villages: nineteen Syrian merchants, who traded under the public faith,

were despoiled and hanged by the Christians; and the denial of satisfaction justified the arms of the sultan

Khalil. He marched against Acre, at the head of sixty thousand horse and one hundred and forty thousand

foot: his train of artillery (if I may use the word) was numerous and weighty: the separate timbers of a single

engine were transported in one hundred wagons; and the royal historian Abulfeda, who served with the troops

of Hamah, was himself a spectator of the holy war. Whatever might be the vices of the Franks, their courage

was rekindled by enthusiasm and despair; but they were torn by the discord of seventeen chiefs, and

overwhelmed on all sides by the powers of the sultan. After a siege of thirty three days, the double wall was

forced by the Moslems; the principal tower yielded to their engines; the Mamalukes made a general assault;

the city was stormed; and death or slavery was the lot of sixty thousand Christians. The convent, or rather

fortress, of the Templars resisted three days longer; but the great master was pierced with an arrow; and, of

five hundred knights, only ten were left alive, less happy than the victims of the sword, if they lived to suffer

on a scaffold, in the unjust and cruel proscription of the whole order. The king of Jerusalem, the patriarch and

the great master of the hospital, effected their retreat to the shore; but the sea was rough, the vessels were

insufficient; and great numbers of the fugitives were drowned before they could reach the Isle of Cyprus,

which might comfort Lusignan for the loss of Palestine. By the command of the sultan, the churches and

fortifications of the Latin cities were demolished: a motive of avarice or fear still opened the holy sepulchre

to some devout and defenceless pilgrims; and a mournful and solitary silence prevailed along the coast which

had so long resounded with the world's debate. ^109 [Footnote 108: The state of Acre is represented in all the

chronicles of te times, and most accurately in John Villani, l. vii. c. 144, in Muratoru Scriptores Rerum

[Footnote 109: See the final expulsion of the Franks, in Sanutus, l. iii. p. xii. c. 11 22; Abulfeda, Macrizi, in

Note: After these chapters of Gibbon, the masterly prize composition, "Essai sur 'Influence des Croisades sur

l'Europe, par A H. L. Heeren: traduit de l'Allemand par Charles Villars, Paris, 1808,' or the original German,

Schism Of The Greeks And Latins. State Of Constantinople. Revolt Of The Bulgarians. Isaac Angelus

Dethroned By His Brother Alexius. Origin Of The Fourth Crusade. Alliance Of The French And

Venetians With The Son Of Isaac. Their Naval Expedition To Constantinople. The Two Sieges And Final

The restoration of the Western empire by Charlemagne was speedily followed by the separation of the Greek

and Latin churches. ^1 A religious and national animosity still divides the two largest communions of the

Christian world; and the schism of Constantinople, by alienating her most useful allies, and provoking her

most dangerous enemies, has precipitated the decline and fall of the Roman empire in the East.

[Footnote 1: In the successive centuries, from the ixth to the xviiith, Mosheim traces the schism of the Greeks

with learning, clearness, and impartiality; the filioque (Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 277,) Leo III. p. 303 Photius,

In the course of the present History, the aversion of the Greeks for the Latins has been often visible and

conspicuous. It was originally derived from the disdain of servitude, inflamed, after the time of Constantine,

by the pride of equality or dominion; and finally exasperated by the preference which their rebellious subjects

had given to the alliance of the Franks. In every age the Greeks were proud of their superiority in profane and

religious knowledge: they had first received the light of Christianity; they had pronounced the decrees of the

seven general councils; they alone possessed the language of Scripture and philosophy; nor should the

Barbarians, immersed in the darkness of the West, ^2 presume to argue on the high and mysterious questions

of theological science. Those Barbarians despised in then turn the restless and subtile levity of the Orientals,

the authors of every heresy; and blessed their own simplicity, which was content to hold the tradition of the

apostolic church. Yet in the seventh century, the synods of Spain, and afterwards of France, improved or

corrupted the Nicene creed, on the mysterious subject of the third person of the Trinity. ^3 In the long

controversies of the East, the nature and generation of the Christ had been scrupulously defined; and the

wellknown relation of father and son seemed to convey a faint image to the human mind. The idea of birth

was less analogous to the Holy Spirit, who, instead of a divine gift or attribute, was considered by the

Catholics as a substance, a person, a god; he was not begotten, but in the orthodox style he proceeded. Did he

proceed from the Father alone, perhaps by the Son? or from the Father and the Son? The first of these

opinions was asserted by the Greeks, the second by the Latins; and the addition to the Nicene creed of the

word filioque, kindled the flame of discord between the Oriental and the Gallic churches. In the origin of the

disputes the Roman pontiffs affected a character of neutrality and moderation: ^4 they condemned the

innovation, but they acquiesced in the sentiment, of their Transalpine brethren: they seemed desirous of

casting a veil of silence and charity over the superfluous research; and in the correspondence of Charlemagne

and Leo the Third, the pope assumes the liberality of a statesman, and the prince descends to the passions and

prejudices of a priest. ^5 But the orthodoxy of Rome spontaneously obeyed the impulse of the temporal

policy; and the filioque, which Leo wished to erase, was transcribed in the symbol and chanted in the liturgy

of the Vatican. The Nicene and Athanasian creeds are held as the Catholic faith, without which none can be

saved; and both Papists and Protestants must now sustain and return the anathemas of the Greeks, who deny

the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son, as well as from the Father. Such articles of faith are not

susceptible of treaty; but the rules of discipline will vary in remote and independent churches; and the reason,

even of divines, might allow, that the difference is inevitable and harmless. The craft or superstition of Rome

has imposed on her priests and deacons the rigid obligation of celibacy; among the Greeks it is confined to

the bishops; the loss is compensated by dignity or annihilated by age; and the parochial clergy, the papas,

enjoy the conjugal society of the wives whom they have married before their entrance into holy orders. A

question concerning the Azyms was fiercely debated in the eleventh century, and the essence of the Eucharist

was supposed in the East and West to depend on the use of leavened or unleavened bread. Shall I mention in

a serious history the furious reproaches that were urged against the Latins, who for a long while remained on

the defensive? They neglected to abstain, according to the apostolical decree, from things strangled, and from

blood: they fasted (a Jewish observance!) on the Saturday of each week: during the first week of Lent they

permitted the use of milk and cheese; ^6 their infirm monks were indulged in the taste of flesh; and animal

grease was substituted for the want of vegetable oil: the holy chrism or unction in baptism was reserved to the

episcopal order: the bishops, as the bridegrooms of their churches, were decorated with rings; their priests

shaved their faces, and baptized by a single immersion. Such were the crimes which provoked the zeal of the

patriarchs of Constantinople; and which were justified with equal zeal by the doctors of the Latin church. ^7

[Footnote 2: (Phot. Epist. p. 47, edit. Montacut.) The Oriental patriarch continues to apply the images of

[Footnote 3: The mysterious subject of the procession of the Holy Ghost is discussed in the historical,

theological, and controversial sense, or nonsense, by the Jesuit Petavius. (Dogmata Theologica, tom. ii. l. vii.

[Footnote 4: Before the shrine of St. Peter he placed two shields of the weight of 94 1/2 pounds of pure silver;

on which he inscribed the text of both creeds, (utroque symbolo,) pro amore et cautela orthodoxae fidei,

(Anastas. in Leon. III. in Muratori, tom. iii. pars. i. p. 208.) His language most clearly proves, that neither the

[Footnote 5: The Missi of Charlemagne pressed him to declare, that all who rejected the filioque, or at least

the doctrine, must be damned. All, replies the pope, are not capable of reaching the altiora mysteria qui

potuerit, et non voluerit, salvus esse non potest, (Collect. Concil. tom. ix. p. 277 286.) The potuerit would

[Footnote 6: In France, after some harsher laws, the ecclesiastical discipline is now relaxed: milk, cheese, and

butter, are become a perpetual, and eggs an annual, indulgence in Lent, (Vie privee des Francois, tom. ii. p.

[Footnote 7: The original monuments of the schism, of the charges of the Greeks against the Latins, are

deposited in the epistles of Photius, (Epist Encyclica, ii. p. 47 61,) and of Michael Cerularius, (Canisii

Antiq. Lectiones, tom. iii. p. i. p. 281 324, edit. Basnage, with the prolix answer of Cardinal Humbert.)]

Bigotry and national aversion are powerful magnifiers of every object of dispute; but the immediate cause of

the schism of the Greeks may be traced in the emulation of the leading prelates, who maintained the

supremacy of the old metropolis superior to all, and of the reigning capital, inferior to none, in the Christian

world. About the middle of the ninth century, Photius, ^8 an ambitious layman, the captain of the guards and

principal secretary, was promoted by merit and favor to the more desirable office of patriarch of

Constantinople. In science, even ecclesiastical science, he surpassed the clergy of the age; and the purity of

his morals has never been impeached: but his ordination was hasty, his rise was irregular; and Ignatius, his

abdicated predecessor, was yet supported by the public compassion and the obstinacy of his adherents. They

appealed to the tribunal of Nicholas the First, one of the proudest and most aspiring of the Roman pontiffs,

who embraced the welcome opportunity of judging and condemning his rival of the East. Their quarrel was

embittered by a conflict of jurisdiction over the king and nation of the Bulgarians; nor was their recent

conversion to Christianity of much avail to either prelate, unless he could number the proselytes among the

subjects of his power. With the aid of his court the Greek patriarch was victorious; but in the furious contest

he deposed in his turn the successor of St. Peter, and involved the Latin church in the reproach of heresy and

schism. Photius sacrificed the peace of the world to a short and precarious reign: he fell with his patron, the

Caesar Bardas; and Basil the Macedonian performed an act of justice in the restoration of Ignatius, whose age

and dignity had not been sufficiently respected. From his monastery, or prison, Photius solicited the favor of

the emperor by pathetic complaints and artful flattery; and the eyes of his rival were scarcely closed, when he

was again restored to the throne of Constantinople. After the death of Basil he experienced the vicissitudes of

courts and the ingratitude of a royal pupil: the patriarch was again deposed, and in his last solitary hours he

might regret the freedom of a secular and studious life. In each revolution, the breath, the nod, of the

sovereign had been accepted by a submissive clergy; and a synod of three hundred bishops was always

prepared to hail the triumph, or to stigmatize the fall, of the holy, or the execrable, Photius. ^9 By a delusive

promise of succor or reward, the popes were tempted to countenance these various proceedings; and the

synods of Constantinople were ratified by their epistles or legates. But the court and the people, Ignatius and

Photius, were equally adverse to their claims; their ministers were insulted or imprisoned; the procession of

the Holy Ghost was forgotten; Bulgaria was forever annexed to the Byzantine throne; and the schism was

prolonged by their rigid censure of all the multiplied ordinations of an irregular patriarch. The darkness and

corruption of the tenth century suspended the intercourse, without reconciling the minds, of the two nations.

But when the Norman sword restored the churches of Apulia to the jurisdiction of Rome, the departing flock

was warned, by a petulant epistle of the Greek patriarch, to avoid and abhor the errors of the Latins. The

rising majesty of Rome could no longer brook the insolence of a rebel; and Michael Cerularius was

excommunicated in the heart of Constantinople by the pope's legates. Shaking the dust from their feet, they

deposited on the altar of St. Sophia a direful anathema, ^10 which enumerates the seven mortal heresies of

the Greeks, and devotes the guilty teachers, and their unhappy sectaries, to the eternal society of the devil and

his angels. According to the emergencies of the church and state, a friendly correspondence was some times

resumed; the language of charity and concord was sometimes affected; but the Greeks have never recanted

their errors; the popes have never repealed their sentence; and from this thunderbolt we may date the

consummation of the schism. It was enlarged by each ambitious step of the Roman pontiffs: the emperors

blushed and trembled at the ignominious fate of their royal brethren of Germany; and the people were

[Footnote 8: The xth volume of the Venice edition of the Councils contains all the acts of the synods, and

history of Photius: they are abridged, with a faint tinge of prejudice or prudence, by Dupin and Fleury.]

[Footnote 9: The synod of Constantinople, held in the year 869, is the viiith of the general councils, the last

assembly of the East which is recognized by the Roman church. She rejects the synods of Constantinople of

the years 867 and 879, which were, however, equally numerous and noisy; but they were favorable to

[Footnote 11: Anna Comnena (Alexiad, l. i. p. 31 33) represents the abhorrence, not only of the church, but

of the palace, for Gregory VII., the popes and the Latin communion. The style of Cinnamus and Nicetas is

still more vehement. Yet how calm is the voice of history compared with that of polemics!]

The aversion of the Greeks and Latins was nourished and manifested in the three first expeditions to the Holy

Land. Alexius Comnenus contrived the absence at least of the formidable pilgrims: his successors, Manuel

and Isaac Angelus, conspired with the Moslems for the ruin of the greatest princes of the Franks; and their

crooked and malignant policy was seconded by the active and voluntary obedience of every order of their

subjects. Of this hostile temper, a large portion may doubtless be ascribed to the difference of language,

dress, and manners, which severs and alienates the nations of the globe. The pride, as well as the prudence, of

the sovereign was deeply wounded by the intrusion of foreign armies, that claimed a right of traversing his

dominions, and passing under the walls of his capital: his subjects were insulted and plundered by the rude

strangers of the West: and the hatred of the pusillanimous Greeks was sharpened by secret envy of the bold

and pious enterprises of the Franks. But these profane causes of national enmity were fortified and inflamed

by the venom of religious zeal. Instead of a kind embrace, a hospitable reception from their Christian brethren

of the East, every tongue was taught to repeat the names of schismatic and heretic, more odious to an

orthodox ear than those of pagan and infidel: instead of being loved for the general conformity of faith and

worship, they were abhorred for some rules of discipline, some questions of theology, in which themselves or

their teachers might differ from the Oriental church. In the crusade of Louis the Seventh, the Greek clergy

washed and purified the altars which had been defiled by the sacrifice of a French priest. The companions of

Frederic Barbarossa deplore the injuries which they endured, both in word and deed, from the peculiar rancor

of the bishops and monks. Their prayers and sermons excited the people against the impious Barbarians; and

the patriarch is accused of declaring, that the faithful might obtain the redemption of all their sins by the

extirpation of the schismatics. ^12 An enthusiast, named Dorotheus, alarmed the fears, and restored the

confidence, of the emperor, by a prophetic assurance, that the German heretic, after assaulting the gate of

Blachernes, would be made a signal example of the divine vengeance. The passage of these mighty armies

were rare and perilous events; but the crusades introduced a frequent and familiar intercourse between the

two nations, which enlarged their knowledge without abating their prejudices. The wealth and luxury of

Constantinople demanded the productions of every climate these imports were balanced by the art and labor

of her numerous inhabitants; her situation invites the commerce of the world; and, in every period of her

existence, that commerce has been in the hands of foreigners. After the decline of Amalphi, the Venetians,

Pisans, and Genoese, introduced their factories and settlements into the capital of the empire: their services

were rewarded with honors and immunities; they acquired the possession of lands and houses; their families

were multiplied by marriages with the natives; and, after the toleration of a Mahometan mosque, it was

impossible to interdict the churches of the Roman rite. ^13 The two wives of Manuel Comnenus ^14 were of

the race of the Franks: the first, a sisterinlaw of the emperor Conrad; the second, a daughter of the prince

of Antioch: he obtained for his son Alexius a daughter of Philip Augustus, king of France; and he bestowed

his own daughter on a marquis of Montferrat, who was educated and dignified in the palace of

Constantinople. The Greek encountered the arms, and aspired to the empire, of the West: he esteemed the

valor, and trusted the fidelity, of the Franks; ^15 their military talents were unfitly recompensed by the

lucrative offices of judges and treasures; the policy of Manuel had solicited the alliance of the pope; and the

popular voice accused him of a partial bias to the nation and religion of the Latins. ^16 During his reign, and

that of his successor Alexius, they were exposed at Constantinople to the reproach of foreigners, heretics, and

favorites; and this triple guilt was severely expiated in the tumult, which announced the return and elevation

of Andronicus. ^17 The people rose in arms: from the Asiatic shore the tyrant despatched his troops and

galleys to assist the national revenge; and the hopeless resistance of the strangers served only to justify the

rage, and sharpen the daggers, of the assassins. Neither age, nor sex, nor the ties of friendship or kindred,

could save the victims of national hatred, and avarice, and religious zeal; the Latins were slaughtered in their

houses and in the streets; their quarter was reduced to ashes; the clergy were burnt in their churches, and the

sick in their hospitals; and some estimate may be formed of the slain from the clemency which sold above

four thousand Christians in perpetual slavery to the Turks. The priests and monks were the loudest and most

active in the destruction of the schismatics; and they chanted a thanksgiving to the Lord, when the head of a

Roman cardinal, the pope's legate, was severed from his body, fastened to the tail of a dog, and dragged, with

savage mockery, through the city. The more diligent of the strangers had retreated, on the first alarm, to their

vessels, and escaped through the Hellespont from the scene of blood. In their flight, they burnt and ravaged

two hundred miles of the seacoast; inflicted a severe revenge on the guiltless subjects of the empire; marked

the priests and monks as their peculiar enemies; and compensated, by the accumulation of plunder, the loss of

their property and friends. On their return, they exposed to Italy and Europe the wealth and weakness, the

perfidy and malice, of the Greeks, whose vices were painted as the genuine characters of heresy and schism.

The scruples of the first crusaders had neglected the fairest opportunities of securing, by the possession of

Constantinople, the way to the Holy Land: domestic revolution invited, and almost compelled, the French and

Venetians to achieve the conquest of the Roman empire of the East. [Footnote 12: His anonymous historian

(de Expedit. Asiat. Fred. I. in Canisii Lection. Antiq. tom. iii. pars ii. p. 511, edit. Basnage) mentions the

sermons of the Greek patriarch, quomodo Graecis injunxerat in remissionem peccatorum peregrinos occidere

et delere de terra. Tagino observes, (in Scriptores Freher. tom. i. p. 409, edit. Struv.,) Graeci haereticos nos

appellant: clerici et monachi dictis et factis persequuntur. We may add the declaration of the emperor

Baldwin fifteen years afterwards: Haec est (gens) quae Latinos omnes non hominum nomine, sed canum

dignabatur; quorum sanguinem effundere pene inter merita reputabant, (Gesta Innocent. III., c. 92, in

Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. iii. pars i. p. 536.) There may be some exaggeration, but it was as

[Footnote 13: See Anna Comnena, (Alexiad, l. vi. p. 161, 162,) and a remarkable passage of Nicetas, (in

[Footnote 15: Nicetas in Manuel. l. vii. c. 2. Regnante enim (Manuele) . . apud eum tantam Latinus populus

repererat gratiam ut neglectis Graeculis suis tanquam viris mollibus et effoeminatis, . . . . solis Latinis grandia

committeret negotia . . . . erga eos profusa liberalitate abundabat . . . . ex omni orbe ad eum tanquam ad

[Footnote 16: The suspicions of the Greeks would have been confirmed, if they had seen the political epistles

of Manuel to Pope Alexander III., the enemy of his enemy Frederic I., in which the emperor declares his wish

of uniting the Greeks and Latins as one flock under one shephero, c(See Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. xv. p. 187,

[Footnote 17: See the Greek and Latin narratives in Nicetas (in Alexio Comneno, c. 10) and William of Tyre,

(l. xxii. c. 10, 11, 12, 13;) the first soft and concise, the second loud, copious, and tragical.]

In the series of the Byzantine princes, I have exhibited the hypocrisy and ambition, the tyranny and fall, of

Andronicus, the last male of the Comnenian family who reigned at Constantinople. The revolution, which

cast him headlong from the throne, saved and exalted Isaac Angelus, ^18 who descended by the females from

the same Imperial dynasty. The successor of a second Nero might have found it an easy task to deserve the

esteem and affection of his subjects; they sometimes had reason to regret the administration of Andronicus.

The sound and vigorous mind of the tyrant was capable of discerning the connection between his own and the

public interest; and while he was feared by all who could inspire him with fear, the unsuspected people, and

the remote provinces, might bless the inexorable justice of their master. But his successor was vain and

jealous of the supreme power, which he wanted courage and abilities to exercise: his vices were pernicious,

his virtues (if he possessed any virtues) were useless, to mankind; and the Greeks, who imputed their

calamities to his negligence, denied him the merit of any transient or accidental benefits of the times. Isaac

slept on the throne, and was awakened only by the sound of pleasure: his vacant hours were amused by

comedians and buffoons, and even to these buffoons the emperor was an object of contempt: his feasts and

buildings exceeded the examples of royal luxury: the number of his eunuchs and domestics amounted to

twenty thousand; and a daily sum of four thousand pounds of silver would swell to four millions sterling the

annual expense of his household and table. His poverty was relieved by oppression; and the public discontent

was inflamed by equal abuses in the collection, and the application, of the revenue. While the Greeks

numbered the days of their servitude, a flattering prophet, whom he rewarded with the dignity of patriarch,

assured him of a long and victorious reign of thirtytwo years; during which he should extend his sway to

Mount Libanus, and his conquests beyond the Euphrates. But his only step towards the accomplishment of

the prediction was a splendid and scandalous embassy to Saladin, ^19 to demand the restitution of the holy

sepulchre, and to propose an offensive and defensive league with the enemy of the Christian name. In these

unworthy hands, of Isaac and his brother, the remains of the Greek empire crumbled into dust. The Island of

Cyprus, whose name excites the ideas of elegance and pleasure, was usurped by his namesake, a Comnenian

prince; and by a strange concatenation of events, the sword of our English Richard bestowed that kingdom on

[Footnote 18: The history of the reign of Isaac Angelus is composed, in three books, by the senator Nicetas,

(p. 228 290;) and his offices of logothete, or principal secretary, and judge of the veil or palace, could not

bribe the impartiality of the historian. He wrote, it is true, after the fall and death of his benefactor.]

[Footnote 19: See Bohadin, Vit. Saladin. p. 129 131, 226, vers. Schultens. The ambassador of Isaac was

equally versed in the Greek, French, and Arabic languages; a rare instance in those times. His embassies were

received with honor, dismissed without effect, and reported with scandal in the West.]

The honor of the monarchy and the safety of the capital were deeply wounded by the revolt of the Bulgarians

and Walachians. Since the victory of the second Basil, they had supported, above a hundred and seventy

years, the loose dominion of the Byzantine princes; but no effectual measures had been adopted to impose the

yoke of laws and manners on these savage tribes. By the command of Isaac, their sole means of subsistence,

their flocks and herds, were driven away, to contribute towards the pomp of the royal nuptials; and their

fierce warriors were exasperated by the denial of equal rank and pay in the military service. Peter and Asan,

two powerful chiefs, of the race of the ancient kings, ^20 asserted their own rights and the national freedom;

their daemoniac impostors proclaimed to the crowd, that their glorious patron St. Demetrius had forever

deserted the cause of the Greeks; and the conflagration spread from the banks of the Danube to the hills of

Macedonia and Thrace. After some faint efforts, Isaac Angelus and his brother acquiesced in their

independence; and the Imperial troops were soon discouraged by the bones of their fellowsoldiers, that were

scattered along the passes of Mount Haemus. By the arms and policy of John or Joannices, the second

kingdom of Bulgaria was firmly established. The subtle Barbarian sent an embassy to Innocent the Third, to

acknowledge himself a genuine son of Rome in descent and religion, ^21 and humbly received from the pope

the license of coining money, the royal title, and a Latin archbishop or patriarch. The Vatican exulted in the

spiritual conquest of Bulgaria, the first object of the schism; and if the Greeks could have preserved the

prerogatives of the church, they would gladly have resigned the rights of the monarchy.

[Footnote 20: Ducange, Familiae, Dalmaticae, p. 318, 319, 320. The original correspondence of the Bulgarian

king and the Roman pontiff is inscribed in the Gesta Innocent. III. c. 66 82, p. 513 525.]

[Footnote 21: The pope acknowledges his pedigree, a nobili urbis Romae prosapia genitores tui originem

traxerunt. This tradition, and the strong resemblance of the Latin and Walachian idioms, is explained by M.

D'Anville, (Etats de l'Europe, p. 258 262.) The Italian colonies of the Dacia of Trajan were swept away by

the tide of emigration from the Danube to the Volga, and brought back by another wave from the Volga to the

The Bulgarians were malicious enough to pray for the long life of Isaac Angelus, the surest pledge of their

freedom and prosperity. Yet their chiefs could involve in the same indiscriminate contempt the family and

nation of the emperor. "In all the Greeks," said Asan to his troops, "the same climate, and character, and

education, will be productive of the same fruits. Behold my lance," continued the warrior, "and the long

streamers that float in the wind. They differ only in color; they are formed of the same silk, and fashioned by

the same workman; nor has the stripe that is stained in purple any superior price or value above its fellows."

^22 Several of these candidates for the purple successively rose and fell under the empire of Isaac; a general,

who had repelled the fleets of Sicily, was driven to revolt and ruin by the ingratitude of the prince; and his

luxurious repose was disturbed by secret conspiracies and popular insurrections. The emperor was saved by

accident, or the merit of his servants: he was at length oppressed by an ambitious brother, who, for the hope

of a precarious diadem, forgot the obligations of nature, of loyalty, and of friendship. ^23 While Isaac in the

Thracian valleys pursued the idle and solitary pleasures of the chase, his brother, Alexius Angelus, was

invested with the purple, by the unanimous suffrage of the camp; the capital and the clergy subscribed to their

choice; and the vanity of the new sovereign rejected the name of his fathers for the lofty and royal appellation

of the Comnenian race. On the despicable character of Isaac I have exhausted the language of contempt, and

can only add, that, in a reign of eight years, the baser Alexius ^24 was supported by the masculine vices of

his wife Euphrosyne. The first intelligence of his fall was conveyed to the late emperor by the hostile aspect

and pursuit of the guards, no longer his own: he fled before them above fifty miles, as far as Stagyra, in

Macedonia; but the fugitive, without an object or a follower, was arrested, brought back to Constantinople,

deprived of his eyes, and confined in a lonesome tower, on a scanty allowance of bread and water. At the

moment of the revolution, his son Alexius, whom he educated in the hope of empire, was twelve years of age.

He was spared by the usurper, and reduced to attend his triumph both in peace and war; but as the army was

encamped on the seashore, an Italian vessel facilitated the escape of the royal youth; and, in the disguise of

a common sailor, he eluded the search of his enemies, passed the Hellespont, and found a secure refuge in the

Isle of Sicily. After saluting the threshold of the apostles, and imploring the protection of Pope Innocent the

Third, Alexius accepted the kind invitation of his sister Irene, the wife of Philip of Swabia, king of the

Romans. But in his passage through Italy, he heard that the flower of Western chivalry was assembled at

Venice for the deliverance of the Holy Land; and a ray of hope was kindled in his bosom, that their invincible

swords might be employed in his father's restoration. [Footnote 22: This parable is in the best savage style;

but I wish the Walach had not introduced the classic name of Mysians, the experiment of the magnet or

loadstone, and the passage of an old comic poet, (Nicetas in Alex. Comneno, l. i. p. 299, 300.)]

[Footnote 23: The Latins aggravate the ingratitude of Alexius, by supposing that he had been released by his

brother Isaac from Turkish captivity This pathetic tale had doubtless been repeated at Venice and Zara but I

[Footnote 24: See the reign of Alexius Angelus, or Comnenus, in the three books of Nicetas, p. 291 352.]

About ten or twelve years after the loss of Jerusalem, the nobles of France were again summoned to the holy

war by the voice of a third prophet, less extravagant, perhaps, than Peter the hermit, but far below St. Bernard

in the merit of an orator and a statesman. An illiterate priest of the neighborhood of Paris, Fulk of Neuilly,

^25 forsook his parochial duty, to assume the more flattering character of a popular and itinerant missionary.

The fame of his sanctity and miracles was spread over the land; he declaimed, with severity and vehemence,

against the vices of the age; and his sermons, which he preached in the streets of Paris, converted the robbers,

the usurers, the prostitutes, and even the doctors and scholars of the university. No sooner did Innocent the

Third ascend the chair of St. Peter, than he proclaimed in Italy, Germany, and France, the obligation of a new

crusade. ^26 The eloquent pontiff described the ruin of Jerusalem, the triumph of the Pagans, and the shame

of Christendom; his liberality proposed the redemption of sins, a plenary indulgence to all who should serve

in Palestine, either a year in person, or two years by a substitute; ^27 and among his legates and orators who

blew the sacred trumpet, Fulk of Neuilly was the loudest and most successful. The situation of the principal

monarchs was averse to the pious summons. The emperor Frederic the Second was a child; and his kingdom

of Germany was disputed by the rival houses of Brunswick and Swabia, the memorable factions of the

Guelphs and Ghibelines. Philip Augustus of France had performed, and could not be persuaded to renew, the

perilous vow; but as he was not less ambitious of praise than of power, he cheerfully instituted a perpetual

fund for the defence of the Holy Land Richard of England was satiated with the glory and misfortunes of his

first adventure; and he presumed to deride the exhortations of Fulk of Neuilly, who was not abashed in the

presence of kings. "You advise me," said Plantagenet, "to dismiss my three daughters, pride, avarice, and

incontinence: I bequeath them to the most deserving; my pride to the knights templars, my avarice to the

monks of Cisteaux, and my incontinence to the prelates." But the preacher was heard and obeyed by the great

vassals, the princes of the second order; and Theobald, or Thibaut, count of Champagne, was the foremost in

the holy race. The valiant youth, at the age of twentytwo years, was encouraged by the domestic examples

of his father, who marched in the second crusade, and of his elder brother, who had ended his days in

Palestine with the title of King of Jerusalem; two thousand two hundred knights owed service and homage to

his peerage; ^28 the nobles of Champagne excelled in all the exercises of war; ^29 and, by his marriage with

the heiress of Navarre, Thibaut could draw a band of hardy Gascons from either side of the Pyrenaean

mountains. His companion in arms was Louis, count of Blois and Chartres; like himself of regal lineage, for

both the princes were nephews, at the same time, of the kings of France and England. In a crowd of prelates

and barons, who imitated their zeal, I distinguish the birth and merit of Matthew of Montmorency; the

famous Simon of Montfort, the scourge of the Albigeois; and a valiant noble, Jeffrey of Villehardouin, ^30

marshal of Champagne, ^31 who has condescended, in the rude idiom of his age and country, ^32 to write or

dictate ^33 an original narrative of the councils and actions in which he bore a memorable part. At the same

time, Baldwin, count of Flanders, who had married the sister of Thibaut, assumed the cross at Bruges, with

his brother Henry, and the principal knights and citizens of that rich and industrious province. ^34 The vow

which the chiefs had pronounced in churches, they ratified in tournaments; the operations of the war were

debated in full and frequent assemblies; and it was resolved to seek the deliverance of Palestine in Egypt, a

country, since Saladin's death, which was almost ruined by famine and civil war. But the fate of so many

royal armies displayed the toils and perils of a land expedition; and if the Flemings dwelt along the ocean, the

French barons were destitute of ships and ignorant of navigation. They embraced the wise resolution of

choosing six deputies or representatives, of whom Villehardouin was one, with a discretionary trust to direct

the motions, and to pledge the faith, of the whole confederacy. The maritime states of Italy were alone

possessed of the means of transporting the holy warriors with their arms and horses; and the six deputies

proceeded to Venice, to solicit, on motives of piety or interest, the aid of that powerful republic.

[Footnote 25: See Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. xvi. p. 26, and Villehardouin, No. 1, with the observations of

[Footnote 26: The contemporary life of Pope Innocent III., published by Baluze and Muratori, (Scriptores

Rerum Italicarum, tom. iii. pars i. p. 486 568, is most valuable for the important and original documents

which are inserted in the text. The bull of the crusade may be read, c. 84, 85.]

[Footnote 27: Porce que cil pardon, fut issi gran, si s'en esmeurent mult licuers des genz, et mult s'en

croisierent, porce que li pardons ere su gran. Villehardouin, No. 1. Our philosophers may refine on the causes

[Footnote 28: This number of fiefs (of which 1800 owed liege homage) was enrolled in the church of St.

Stephen at Troyes, and attested A.D. 1213, by the marshal and butler of Champagne, (Ducange, Observ. p.

[Footnote 29: Campania . . . . militiae privilegio singularius excellit . . . . in tyrociniis . . . . prolusione

[Footnote 30: The name of Villehardouin was taken from a village and castle in the diocese of Troyes, near

the River Aube, between Bar and Arcis. The family was ancient and noble; the elder branch of our historian

existed after the year 1400, the younger, which acquired the principality of Achaia, merged in the house of

[Footnote 31: This office was held by his father and his descendants; but Ducange has not hunted it with his

usual sagacity. I find that, in the year 1356, it was in the family of Conflans; but these provincial have been

[Footnote 32: This language, of which I shall produce some specimens, is explained by Vigenere and

Ducange, in a version and glossary. The president Des Brosses (Mechanisme des Langues, tom. ii. p. 83)

gives it as the example of a language which has ceased to be French, and is understood only by

[Footnote 33: His age, and his own expression, moi qui ceste oeuvre dicta. (No. 62, may justify the suspicion

(more probable than Mr. Wood's on Homer) that he could neither read nor write. Yet Champagne may boast

of the two first historians, the noble authors of French prose, Villehardouin and Joinville.]

[Footnote 34: The crusade and reigns of the counts of Flanders, Baldwin and his brother Henry, are the

subject of a particular history by the Jesuit Doutremens, (Constantinopolis Belgica; Turnaci, 1638, in 4to.,)

In the invasion of Italy by Attila, I have mentioned ^35 the flight of the Venetians from the fallen cities of the

continent, and their obscure shelter in the chain of islands that line the extremity of the Adriatic Gulf. In the

midst of the waters, free, indigent, laborious, and inaccessible, they gradually coalesced into a republic: the

first foundations of Venice were laid in the Island of Rialto; and the annual election of the twelve tribunes

was superseded by the permanent office of a duke or doge. On the verge of the two empires, the Venetians

exult in the belief of primitive and perpetual independence. ^36 Against the Latins, their antique freedom has

been asserted by the sword, and may be justified by the pen. Charlemagne himself resigned all claims of

sovereignty to the islands of the Adriatic Gulf: his son Pepin was repulsed in the attacks of the lagunas or

canals, too deep for the cavalry, and too shallow for the vessels; and in every age, under the German Caesars,

the lands of the republic have been clearly distinguished from the kingdom of Italy. But the inhabitants of

Venice were considered by themselves, by strangers, and by their sovereigns, as an inalienable portion of the

Greek empire: ^37 in the ninth and tenth centuries, the proofs of their subjection are numerous and

unquestionable; and the vain titles, the servile honors, of the Byzantine court, so ambitiously solicited by

their dukes, would have degraded the magistrates of a free people. But the bands of this dependence, which

was never absolute or rigid, were imperceptibly relaxed by the ambition of Venice and the weakness of

Constantinople. Obedience was softened into respect, privilege ripened into prerogative, and the freedom of

domestic government was fortified by the independence of foreign dominion. The maritime cities of Istria

and Dalmatia bowed to the sovereigns of the Adriatic; and when they armed against the Normans in the cause

of Alexius, the emperor applied, not to the duty of his subjects, but to the gratitude and generosity of his

faithful allies. The sea was their patrimony: ^38 the western parts of the Mediterranean, from Tuscany to

Gibraltar, were indeed abandoned to their rivals of Pisa and Genoa; but the Venetians acquired an early and

lucrative share of the commerce of Greece and Egypt. Their riches increased with the increasing demand of

Europe; their manufactures of silk and glass, perhaps the institution of their bank, are of high antiquity; and

they enjoyed the fruits of their industry in the magnificence of public and private life. To assert her flag, to

avenge her injuries, to protect the freedom of navigation, the republic could launch and man a fleet of a

hundred galleys; and the Greeks, the Saracens, and the Normans, were encountered by her naval arms. The

Franks of Syria were assisted by the Venetians in the reduction of the sea coast; but their zeal was neither

blind nor disinterested; and in the conquest of Tyre, they shared the sovereignty of a city, the first seat of the

commerce of the world. The policy of Venice was marked by the avarice of a trading, and the insolence of a

maritime, power; yet her ambition was prudent: nor did she often forget that if armed galleys were the effect

and safeguard, merchant vessels were the cause and supply, of her greatness. In her religion, she avoided the

schisms of the Greeks, without yielding a servile obedience to the Roman pontiff; and a free intercourse with

the infidels of every clime appears to have allayed betimes the fever of superstition. Her primitive

government was a loose mixture of democracy and monarchy; the doge was elected by the votes of the

general assembly; as long as he was popular and successful, he reigned with the pomp and authority of a

prince; but in the frequent revolutions of the state, he was deposed, or banished, or slain, by the justice or

injustice of the multitude. The twelfth century produced the first rudiments of the wise and jealous

aristocracy, which has reduced the doge to a pageant, and the people to a cipher. ^39

[Footnote 36: The foundation and independence of Venice, and Pepin's invasion, are discussed by Pagi

(Critica, tom. iii. A.D. 81), No. 4, and Beretti, (Dissert. Chorograph. Italiae Medii Aevi, in Muratori, Script.

tom. x. p. 153.) The two critics have a slight bias, the Frenchman adverse, the Italian favorable, to the

[Footnote 37: When the son of Charlemagne asserted his right of sovereignty, he was answered by the loyal

Venetians, (Constantin. Porphyrogenit. de Administrat Imperii, pars ii. c. 28, p. 85;) and the report of the ixth

establishes the fact of the xth century, which is confirmed by the embassy of Liutprand of Cremona. The

annual tribute, which the emperor allows them to pay to the king of Italy, alleviates, by doubling, their

servitude; but the hateful word must be translated, as in the charter of 827, (Laugier, Hist. de Venice, tom. i.

[Footnote 38: See the xxvth and xxxth dissertations of the Antiquitates Medii Aevi of Muratori. From

Anderson's History of Commerce, I understand that the Venetians did not trade to England before the year

1323. The most flourishing state of their wealth and commerce, in the beginning of the xvth century, is

agreeably described by the Abbe Dubos, (Hist. de la Ligue de Cambray, tom. ii. p. 443 480.)]

[Footnote 39: The Venetians have been slow in writing and publishing their history. Their most ancient

monuments are, 1. The rude Chronicle (perhaps) of John Sagorninus, (Venezia, 1765, in octavo,) which

represents the state and manners of Venice in the year 1008. 2. The larger history of the doge, (1342 1354,)

Andrew Dandolo, published for the first time in the xiith tom. of Muratori, A.D. 1728. The History of Venice

by the Abbe Laugier, (Paris, 1728,) is a work of some merit, which I have chiefly used for the constitutional

Note: It is scarcely necessary to mention the valuable work of Count Daru, "History de Venise," of which I

hear that an Italian translation has been published, with notes defensive of the ancient republic. I have not yet

When the six ambassadors of the French pilgrims arrived at Venice, they were hospitably entertained in the

palace of St. Mark, by the reigning duke; his name was Henry Dandolo; ^40 and he shone in the last period of

human life as one of the most illustrious characters of the times. Under the weight of years, and after the loss

of his eyes, ^41 Dandolo retained a sound understanding and a manly courage: the spirit of a hero, ambitious

to signalize his reign by some memorable exploits; and the wisdom of a patriot, anxious to build his fame on

the glory and advantage of his country. He praised the bold enthusiasm and liberal confidence of the barons

and their deputies: in such a cause, and with such associates, he should aspire, were he a private man, to

terminate his life; but he was the servant of the republic, and some delay was requisite to consult, on this

arduous business, the judgment of his colleagues. The proposal of the French was first debated by the six

sages who had been recently appointed to control the administration of the doge: it was next disclosed to the

forty members of the council of state; and finally communicated to the legislative assembly of four hundred

and fifty representatives, who were annually chosen in the six quarters of the city. In peace and war, the doge

was still the chief of the republic; his legal authority was supported by the personal reputation of Dandolo: his

arguments of public interest were balanced and approved; and he was authorized to inform the ambassadors

of the following conditions of the treaty. ^42 It was proposed that the crusaders should assemble at Venice,

on the feast of St. John of the ensuing year; that flatbottomed vessels should be prepared for four thousand

five hundred horses, and nine thousand squires, with a number of ships sufficient for the embarkation of four

thousand five hundred knights, and twenty thousand foot; that during a term of nine months they should be

supplied with provisions, and transported to whatsoever coast the service of God and Christendom should

require; and that the republic should join the armament with a squadron of fifty galleys. It was required, that

the pilgrims should pay, before their departure, a sum of eightyfive thousand marks of silver; and that all

conquests, by sea and land, should be equally divided between the confederates. The terms were hard; but the

emergency was pressing, and the French barons were not less profuse of money than of blood. A general

assembly was convened to ratify the treaty: the stately chapel and place of St. Mark were filled with ten

thousand citizens; and the noble deputies were taught a new lesson of humbling themselves before the

majesty of the people. "Illustrious Venetians," said the marshal of Champagne, "we are sent by the greatest

and most powerful barons of France to implore the aid of the masters of the sea for the deliverance of

Jerusalem. They have enjoined us to fall prostrate at your feet; nor will we rise from the ground till you have

promised to avenge with us the injuries of Christ." The eloquence of their words and tears, ^43 their martial

aspect, and suppliant attitude, were applauded by a universal shout; as it were, says Jeffrey, by the sound of

an earthquake. The venerable doge ascended the pulpit to urge their request by those motives of honor and

virtue, which alone can be offered to a popular assembly: the treaty was transcribed on parchment, attested

with oaths and seals, mutually accepted by the weeping and joyful representatives of France and Venice; and

despatched to Rome for the approbation of Pope Innocent the Third. Two thousand marks were borrowed of

the merchants for the first expenses of the armament. Of the six deputies, two repassed the Alps to announce

their success, while their four companions made a fruitless trial of the zeal and emulation of the republics of

Genoa and Pisa. [Footnote 40: Henry Dandolo was eightyfour at his election, (A.D. 1192,) and

ninetyseven at his death, (A.D. 1205.) See the Observations of Ducange sur Villehardouin, No. 204. But this

extraordinary longevity is not observed by the original writers, nor does there exist another example of a hero

near a hundred years of age. Theophrastus might afford an instance of a writer of ninetynine; but instead of

Prooem. ad Character.,)I am much inclined to read with his last editor Fischer, and the first thoughts of

Casaubon. It is scarcely possible that the powers of the mind and body should support themselves till such a

[Footnote 41: The modern Venetians (Laugier, tom. ii. p. 119) accuse the emperor Manuel; but the calumny

is refuted by Villehardouin and the older writers, who suppose that Dandolo lost his eyes by a wound, (No.

Note: The accounts differ, both as to the extent and the cause of his blindness According to Villehardouin and

others, the sight was totally lost; according to the Chronicle of Andrew Dandolo. (Murat. tom. xii. p. 322,) he

[Footnote 42: See the original treaty in the Chronicle of Andrew Dandolo, p. 323 326.]

[Footnote 43: A reader of Villehardouin must observe the frequent tears of the marshal and his brother

knights. Sachiez que la ot mainte lerme ploree de pitie, (No. 17;) mult plorant, (ibid;) mainte lerme ploree,

(No. 34;) si orent mult pitie et plorerent mult durement, (No. 60;) i ot mainte lerme ploree de pitie, (No. 202.)

The execution of the treaty was still opposed by unforeseen difficulties and delays. The marshal, on his return

to Troyes, was embraced and approved by Thibaut count of Champagne, who had been unanimously chosen

general of the confederates. But the health of that valiant youth already declined, and soon became hopeless;

and he deplored the untimely fate, which condemned him to expire, not in a field of battle, but on a bed of

sickness. To his brave and numerous vassals, the dying prince distributed his treasures: they swore in his

presence to accomplish his vow and their own; but some there were, says the marshal, who accepted his gifts

and forfeited their words. The more resolute champions of the cross held a parliament at Soissons for the

election of a new general; but such was the incapacity, or jealousy, or reluctance, of the princes of France,

that none could be found both able and willing to assume the conduct of the enterprise. They acquiesced in

the choice of a stranger, of Boniface marquis of Montferrat, descended of a race of heroes, and himself of

conspicuous fame in the wars and negotiations of the times; ^44 nor could the piety or ambition of the Italian

chief decline this honorable invitation. After visiting the French court, where he was received as a friend and

kinsman, the marquis, in the church of Soissons, was invested with the cross of a pilgrim and the staff of a

general; and immediately repassed the Alps, to prepare for the distant expedition of the East. About the

festival of the Pentecost he displayed his banner, and marched towards Venice at the head of the Italians: he

was preceded or followed by the counts of Flanders and Blois, and the most respectable barons of France; and

their numbers were swelled by the pilgrims of Germany, ^45 whose object and motives were similar to their

own. The Venetians had fulfilled, and even surpassed, their engagements: stables were constructed for the

horses, and barracks for the troops: the magazines were abundantly replenished with forage and provisions;

and the fleet of transports, ships, and galleys, was ready to hoist sail as soon as the republic had received the

price of the freight and armament. But that price far exceeded the wealth of the crusaders who were

assembled at Venice. The Flemings, whose obedience to their count was voluntary and precarious, had

embarked in their vessels for the long navigation of the ocean and Mediterranean; and many of the French

and Italians had preferred a cheaper and more convenient passage from Marseilles and Apulia to the Holy

Land. Each pilgrim might complain, that after he had furnished his own contribution, he was made

responsible for the deficiency of his absent brethren: the gold and silver plate of the chiefs, which they freely

delivered to the treasury of St. Marks, was a generous but inadequate sacrifice; and after all their efforts,

thirtyfour thousand marks were still wanting to complete the stipulated sum. The obstacle was removed by

the policy and patriotism of the doge, who proposed to the barons, that if they would join their arms in

reducing some revolted cities of Dalmatia, he would expose his person in the holy war, and obtain from the

republic a long indulgence, till some wealthy conquest should afford the means of satisfying the debt. After

much scruple and hesitation, they chose rather to accept the offer than to relinquish the enterprise; and the

first hostilities of the fleet and army were directed against Zara, ^46 a strong city of the Sclavonian coast,

which had renounced its allegiance to Venice, and implored the protection of the king of Hungary. ^47 The

crusaders burst the chain or boom of the harbor; landed their horses, troops, and military engines; and

compelled the inhabitants, after a defence of five days, to surrender at discretion: their lives were spared, but

the revolt was punished by the pillage of their houses and the demolition of their walls. The season was far

advanced; the French and Venetians resolved to pass the winter in a secure harbor and plentiful country; but

their repose was disturbed by national and tumultuous quarrels of the soldiers and mariners. The conquest of

Zara had scattered the seeds of discord and scandal: the arms of the allies had been stained in their outset with

the blood, not of infidels, but of Christians: the king of Hungary and his new subjects were themselves

enlisted under the banner of the cross; and the scruples of the devout were magnified by the fear of lassitude

of the reluctant pilgrims. The pope had excommunicated the false crusaders who had pillaged and massacred

their brethren, ^48 and only the marquis Boniface and Simon of Montfort ^* escaped these spiritual thunders;

the one by his absence from the siege, the other by his final departure from the camp. Innocent might absolve

the simple and submissive penitents of France; but he was provoked by the stubborn reason of the Venetians,

who refused to confess their guilt, to accept their pardon, or to allow, in their temporal concerns, the

[Footnote 44: By a victory (A.D. 1191) over the citizens of Asti, by a crusade to Palestine, and by an embassy

from the pope to the German princes, (Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. x. p. 163, 202.)]

[Footnote 45: See the crusade of the Germans in the Historia C. P. of Gunther, (Canisii Antiq. Lect. tom. iv.

p. v. viii.,) who celebrates the pilgrimage of his abbot Martin, one of the preaching rivals of Fulk of

Neuilly. His monastery, of the Cistercian order, was situate in the diocese of Basil]

[Footnote 46: Jadera, now Zara, was a Roman colony, which acknowledged Augustus for its parent. It is now

only two miles round, and contains five or six thousand inhabitants; but the fortifications are strong, and it is

joined to the main land by a bridge. See the travels of the two companions, Spon and Wheeler, (Voyage de

Dalmatie, de Grece, tom. i. p. 64 70. Journey into Greece, p. 8 14;) the last of whom, by mistaking

Sestertia for Sestertii, values an arch with statues and columns at twelve pounds. If, in his time, there were no

trees near Zara, the cherrytrees were not yet planted which produce our incomparable marasquin.]

[Footnote 47: Katona (Hist. Critica Reg. Hungariae, Stirpis Arpad. tom. iv. p. 536 558) collects all the facts

[Footnote 48: See the whole transaction, and the sentiments of the pope, in the Epistles of Innocent III. Gesta,

[Footnote *: Montfort protested against the siege. Guido, the abbot of Vaux de Sernay, in the name of the

pope, interdicted the attack on a Christian city; and the immediate surrender of the town was thus delayed for

five days of fruitless resistance. Wilken, vol. v. p. 167. See likewise, at length, the history of the interdict

The assembly of such formidable powers by sea and land had revived the hopes of young ^49 Alexius; and

both at Venice and Zara, he solicited the arms of the crusaders, for his own restoration and his father's ^50

deliverance. The royal youth was recommended by Philip king of Germany: his prayers and presence excited

the compassion of the camp; and his cause was embraced and pleaded by the marquis of Montferrat and the

doge of Venice. A double alliance, and the dignity of Caesar, had connected with the Imperial family the two

elder brothers of Boniface: ^51 he expected to derive a kingdom from the important service; and the more

generous ambition of Dandolo was eager to secure the inestimable benefits of trade and dominion that might

accrue to his country. ^52 Their influence procured a favorable audience for the ambassadors of Alexius; and

if the magnitude of his offers excited some suspicion, the motives and rewards which he displayed might

justify the delay and diversion of those forces which had been consecrated to the deliverance of Jerusalem.

He promised in his own and his father's name, that as soon as they should be seated on the throne of

Constantinople, they would terminate the long schism of the Greeks, and submit themselves and their people

to the lawful supremacy of the Roman church. He engaged to recompense the labors and merits of the

crusaders, by the immediate payment of two hundred thousand marks of silver; to accompany them in person

to Egypt; or, if it should be judged more advantageous, to maintain, during a year, ten thousand men, and,

during his life, five hundred knights, for the service of the Holy Land. These tempting conditions were

accepted by the republic of Venice; and the eloquence of the doge and marquis persuaded the counts of

Flanders, Blois, and St. Pol, with eight barons of France, to join in the glorious enterprise. A treaty of

offensive and defensive alliance was confirmed by their oaths and seals; and each individual, according to his

situation and character, was swayed by the hope of public or private advantage; by the honor of restoring an

exiled monarch; or by the sincere and probable opinion, that their efforts in Palestine would be fruitless and

unavailing, and that the acquisition of Constantinople must precede and prepare the recovery of Jerusalem.

But they were the chiefs or equals of a valiant band of freemen and volunteers, who thought and acted for

themselves: the soldiers and clergy were divided; and, if a large majority subscribed to the alliance, the

numbers and arguments of the dissidents were strong and respectable. ^53 The boldest hearts were appalled

by the report of the naval power and impregnable strength of Constantinople; and their apprehensions were

disguised to the world, and perhaps to themselves, by the more decent objections of religion and duty. They

alleged the sanctity of a vow, which had drawn them from their families and homes to the rescue of the holy

sepulchre; nor should the dark and crooked counsels of human policy divert them from a pursuit, the event of

which was in the hands of the Almighty. Their first offence, the attack of Zara, had been severely punished

by the reproach of their conscience and the censures of the pope; nor would they again imbrue their hands in

the blood of their fellowChristians. The apostle of Rome had pronounced; nor would they usurp the right of

avenging with the sword the schism of the Greeks and the doubtful usurpation of the Byzantine monarch. On

these principles or pretences, many pilgrims, the most distinguished for their valor and piety, withdrew from

the camp; and their retreat was less pernicious than the open or secret opposition of a discontented party, that

[Footnote 49: A modern reader is surprised to hear of the valet de Constantinople, as applied to young

Alexius, on account of his youth, like the infants of Spain, and the nobilissimus puer of the Romans. The

pages and valets of the knights were as noble as themselves, (Villehardouin and Ducange, No. 36.)]

[Footnote 50: The emperor Isaac is styled by Villehardouin, Sursac, (No. 35, which may be derived from the

French Sire, or the Greek melted into his proper name; the further corruptions of Tursac and Conserac will

instruct us what license may have been used in the old dynasties of Assyria and Egypt.]

[Footnote 51: Reinier and Conrad: the former married Maria, daughter of the emperor Manuel Comnenus; the

latter was the husband of Theodora Angela, sister of the emperors Isaac and Alexius. Conrad abandoned the

Greek court and princess for the glory of defending Tyre against Saladin, (Ducange, Fam. Byzant. p. 187,

[Footnote 52: Nicetas (in Alexio Comneno, l. iii. c. 9) accuses the doge and Venetians as the first authors of

the war against Constantinople, and considers the arrival and shameful offers of the royal exile.

Note: He admits, however, that the Angeli had committed depredations on the Venetian trade, and the

emperor himself had refused the payment of part of the stipulated compensation for the seizure of the

[Footnote 53: Villehardouin and Gunther represent the sentiments of the two parties. The abbot Martin left

the army at Zara, proceeded to Palestine, was sent ambassador to Constantinople, and became a reluctant

Notwithstanding this defection, the departure of the fleet and army was vigorously pressed by the Venetians,

whose zeal for the service of the royal youth concealed a just resentment to his nation and family. They were

mortified by the recent preference which had been given to Pisa, the rival of their trade; they had a long arrear

of debt and injury to liquidate with the Byzantine court; and Dandolo might not discourage the popular tale,

that he had been deprived of his eyes by the emperor Manuel, who perfidiously violated the sanctity of an

ambassador. A similar armament, for ages, had not rode the Adriatic: it was composed of one hundred and

twenty flat bottomed vessels or palanders for the horses; two hundred and forty transports filled with men

and arms; seventy storeships laden with provisions; and fifty stout galleys, well prepared for the encounter

of an enemy. ^54 While the wind was favorable, the sky serene, and the water smooth, every eye was fixed

with wonder and delight on the scene of military and naval pomp which overspread the sea. ^* The shields of

the knights and squires, at once an ornament and a defence, were arranged on either side of the ships; the

banners of the nations and families were displayed from the stern; our modern artillery was supplied by three

hundred engines for casting stones and darts: the fatigues of the way were cheered with the sound of music;

and the spirits of the adventurers were raised by the mutual assurance, that forty thousand Christian heroes

were equal to the conquest of the world. ^55 In the navigation ^56 from Venice and Zara, the fleet was

successfully steered by the skill and experience of the Venetian pilots: at Durazzo, the confederates first

landed on the territories of the Greek empire: the Isle of Corfu afforded a station and repose; they doubled,

without accident, the perilous cape of Malea, the southern point of Peloponnesus or the Morea; made a

descent in the islands of Negropont and Andros; and cast anchor at Abydus on the Asiatic side of the

Hellespont. These preludes of conquest were easy and bloodless: the Greeks of the provinces, without

patriotism or courage, were crushed by an irresistible force: the presence of the lawful heir might justify their

obedience; and it was rewarded by the modesty and discipline of the Latins. As they penetrated through the

Hellespont, the magnitude of their navy was compressed in a narrow channel, and the face of the waters was

darkened with innumerable sails. They again expanded in the basin of the Propontis, and traversed that placid

sea, till they approached the European shore, at the abbey of St. Stephen, three leagues to the west of

Constantinople. The prudent doge dissuaded them from dispersing themselves in a populous and hostile land;

and, as their stock of provisions was reduced, it was resolved, in the season of harvest, to replenish their

storeships in the fertile islands of the Propontis. With this resolution, they directed their course: but a strong

gale, and their own impatience, drove them to the eastward; and so near did they run to the shore and the city,

that some volleys of stones and darts were exchanged between the ships and the rampart. As they passed

along, they gazed with admiration on the capital of the East, or, as it should seem, of the earth; rising from

her seven hills, and towering over the continents of Europe and Asia. The swelling domes and lofty spires of

five hundred palaces and churches were gilded by the sun and reflected in the waters: the walls were crowded

with soldiers and spectators, whose numbers they beheld, of whose temper they were ignorant; and each heart

was chilled by the reflection, that, since the beginning of the world, such an enterprise had never been

undertaken by such a handful of warriors. But the momentary apprehension was dispelled by hope and valor;

and every man, says the marshal of Champagne, glanced his eye on the sword or lance which he must

speedily use in the glorious conflict. ^57 The Latins cast anchor before Chalcedon; the mariners only were

left in the vessels: the soldiers, horses, and arms, were safely landed; and, in the luxury of an Imperial palace,

the barons tasted the first fruits of their success. On the third day, the fleet and army moved towards Scutari,

the Asiatic suburb of Constantinople: a detachment of five hundred Greek horse was surprised and defeated

by fourscore French knights; and in a halt of nine days, the camp was plentifully supplied with forage and

provisions. [Footnote 54: The birth and dignity of Andrew Dandolo gave him the motive and the means of

searching in the archives of Venice the memorable story of his ancestor. His brevity seems to accuse the

copious and more recent narratives of Sanudo, (in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. xxii.,) Blondus,

[Footnote *: This description rather belongs to the first setting sail of the expedition from Venice, before the

[Footnote 55: Villehardouin, No. 62. His feelings and expressions are original: he often weeps, but he

rejoices in the glories and perils of war with a spirit unknown to a sedentary writer.]

[Footnote 56: In this voyage, almost all the geographical names are corrupted by the Latins. The modern

appellation of Chalcis, and all Euboea, is derived from its Euripus, Euripo, Negripo, Negropont, which

[Footnote 57: Et sachiez que il ni ot si hardi cui le cuer ne fremist, (c. 66.) . . Chascuns regardoit ses armes . .

In relating the invasion of a great empire, it may seem strange that I have not described the obstacles which

should have checked the progress of the strangers. The Greeks, in truth, were an unwarlike people; but they

were rich, industrious, and subject to the will of a single man: had that man been capable of fear, when his

enemies were at a distance, or of courage, when they approached his person. The first rumor of his nephew's

alliance with the French and Venetians was despised by the usurper Alexius: his flatterers persuaded him, that

in this contempt he was bold and sincere; and each evening, in the close of the banquet, he thrice discomfited

the Barbarians of the West. These Barbarians had been justly terrified by the report of his naval power; and

the sixteen hundred fishing boats of Constantinople ^58 could have manned a fleet, to sink them in the

Adriatic, or stop their entrance in the mouth of the Hellespont. But all force may be annihilated by the

negligence of the prince and the venality of his ministers. The great duke, or admiral, made a scandalous,

almost a public, auction of the sails, the masts, and the rigging: the royal forests were reserved for the more

important purpose of the chase; and the trees, says Nicetas, were guarded by the eunuchs, like the groves of

religious worship. ^59 From his dream of pride, Alexius was awakened by the siege of Zara, and the rapid

advances of the Latins; as soon as he saw the danger was real, he thought it inevitable, and his vain

presumption was lost in abject despondency and despair. He suffered these contemptible Barbarians to pitch

their camp in the sight of the palace; and his apprehensions were thinly disguised by the pomp and menace of

a suppliant embassy. The sovereign of the Romans was astonished (his ambassadors were instructed to say) at

the hostile appearance of the strangers. If these pilgrims were sincere in their vow for the deliverance of

Jerusalem, his voice must applaud, and his treasures should assist, their pious design but should they dare to

invade the sanctuary of empire, their numbers, were they ten times more considerable, should not protect

them from his just resentment. The answer of the doge and barons was simple and magnanimous. "In the

cause of honor and justice," they said, "we despise the usurper of Greece, his threats, and his offers. Our

friendship and his allegiance are due to the lawful heir, to the young prince, who is seated among us, and to

his father, the emperor Isaac, who has been deprived of his sceptre, his freedom, and his eyes, by the crime of

an ungrateful brother. Let that brother confess his guilt, and implore forgiveness, and we ourselves will

intercede, that he may be permitted to live in affluence and security. But let him not insult us by a second

[Footnote 58: Eandem urbem plus in solis navibus piscatorum abundare, quam illos in toto navigio. Habebat

enim mille et sexcentas piscatorias naves ..... Bellicas autem sive mercatorias habebant infinitae multitudinis

On the tenth day of their encampment at Scutari, the crusaders prepared themselves, as soldiers and as

Catholics, for the passage of the Bosphorus. Perilous indeed was the adventure; the stream was broad and

rapid: in a calm the current of the Euxine might drive down the liquid and unextinguishable fires of the

Greeks; and the opposite shores of Europe were defended by seventy thousand horse and foot in formidable

array. On this memorable day, which happened to be bright and pleasant, the Latins were distributed in six

battles or divisions; the first, or vanguard, was led by the count of Flanders, one of the most powerful of the

Christian princes in the skill and number of his crossbows. The four successive battles of the French were

commanded by his brother Henry, the counts of St. Pol and Blois, and Matthew of Montmorency; the last of

whom was honored by the voluntary service of the marshal and nobles of Champagne. The sixth division, the

rearguard and reserve of the army, was conducted by the marquis of Montferrat, at the head of the Germans

and Lombards. The chargers, saddled, with their long comparisons dragging on the ground, were embarked in

the flat palanders; ^60 and the knights stood by the side of their horses, in complete armor, their helmets

laced, and their lances in their hands. The numerous train of sergeants ^61 and archers occupied the

transports; and each transport was towed by the strength and swiftness of a galley. The six divisions traversed

the Bosphorus, without encountering an enemy or an obstacle: to land the foremost was the wish, to conquer

or die was the resolution, of every division and of every soldier. Jealous of the preeminence of danger, the

knights in their heavy armor leaped into the sea, when it rose as high as their girdle; the sergeants and archers

were animated by their valor; and the squires, letting down the drawbridges of the palanders, led the horses

to the shore. Before their squadrons could mount, and form, and couch their Lances, the seventy thousand

Greeks had vanished from their sight: the timid Alexius gave the example to his troops; and it was only by

the plunder of his rich pavilions that the Latins were informed that they had fought against an emperor. In the

first consternation of the flying enemy, they resolved, by a double attack, to open the entrance of the harbor.

The tower of Galata, ^62 in the suburb of Pera, was attacked and stormed by the French, while the Venetians

assumed the more difficult task of forcing the boom or chain that was stretched from that tower to the

Byzantine shore. After some fruitless attempts, their intrepid perseverance prevailed: twenty ships of war, the

relics of the Grecian navy, were either sunk or taken: the enormous and massy links of iron were cut asunder

by the shears, or broken by the weight, of the galleys; ^63 and the Venetian fleet, safe and triumphant, rode at

anchor in the port of Constantinople. By these daring achievements, a remnant of twenty thousand Latins

solicited the license of besieging a capital which contained above four hundred thousand inhabitants, ^64

able, though not willing, to bear arms in defence of their country. Such an account would indeed suppose a

population of near two millions; but whatever abatement may be required in the numbers of the Greeks, the

belief of those numbers will equally exalt the fearless spirit of their assailants.

[Footnote 60: From the version of Vignere I adopt the wellsounding word palander, which is still used, I

believe, in the Mediterranean. But had I written in French, I should have preserved the original and

expressive denomination of vessiers or huissiers, from the huis or door which was let down as a drawbridge;

but which, at sea, was closed into the side of the ship, (see Ducange au Villehardouin, No. 14, and Joinville.

[Footnote 61: To avoid the vague expressions of followers, I use, after Villehardouin, the word sergeants for

all horsemen who were not knights. There were sergeants at arms, and sergeants at law; and if we visit the

parade and Westminster Hall, we may observe the strange result of the distinction, (Ducange, Glossar. Latin,

[Footnote 62: It is needless to observe, that on the subject of Galata, the chain, Ducange is accurate and full.

Consult likewise the proper chapters of the C. P. Christiana of the same author. The inhabitants of Galata

were so vain and ignorant, that they applied to themselves St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians.]

[Footnote 63: The vessel that broke the chain was named the Eagle, Aquila, (Dandolo, Chronicon, p. 322,)

which Blondus (de Gestis Venet.) has changed into Aquilo, the north wind. Ducange (Observations, No. 83)

maintains the latter reading; but he had not seen the respectable text of Dandolo, nor did he enough consider

the topography of the harbor. The southeast would have been a more effectual wind. (Note to Wilken, vol.

[Footnote 64: Quatre cens mil homes ou plus, (Villehardouin, No. 134,) must be understood of men of a

military age. Le Beau (Hist. du. Bas Empire, tom. xx. p. 417) allows Constantinople a million of inhabitants,

of whom 60,000 horse, and an infinite number of footsoldiers. In its present decay, the capital of the

Ottoman empire may contain 400,000 souls, (Bell's Travels, vol. ii. p. 401, 402;) but as the Turks keep no

registers, and as circumstances are fallacious, it is impossible to ascertain (Niebuhr, Voyage en Arabie, tom.

In the choice of the attack, the French and Venetians were divided by their habits of life and warfare. The

former affirmed with truth, that Constantinople was most accessible on the side of the sea and the harbor. The

latter might assert with honor, that they had long enough trusted their lives and fortunes to a frail bark and a

precarious element, and loudly demanded a trial of knighthood, a firm ground, and a close onset, either on

foot or on horseback. After a prudent compromise, of employing the two nations by sea and land, in the

service best suited to their character, the fleet covering the army, they both proceeded from the entrance to

the extremity of the harbor: the stone bridge of the river was hastily repaired; and the six battles of the French

formed their encampment against the front of the capital, the basis of the triangle which runs about four miles

from the port to the Propontis. ^65 On the edge of a broad ditch, at the foot of a lofty rampart, they had

leisure to contemplate the difficulties of their enterprise. The gates to the right and left of their narrow camp

poured forth frequent sallies of cavalry and lightinfantry, which cut off their stragglers, swept the country of

provisions, sounded the alarm five or six times in the course of each day, and compelled them to plant a

palisade, and sink an intrenchment, for their immediate safety. In the supplies and convoys the Venetians had

been too sparing, or the Franks too voracious: the usual complaints of hunger and scarcity were heard, and

perhaps felt their stock of flour would be exhausted in three weeks; and their disgust of salt meat tempted

them to taste the flesh of their horses. The trembling usurper was supported by Theodore Lascaris, his

soninlaw, a valiant youth, who aspired to save and to rule his country; the Greeks, regardless of that

country, were awakened to the defence of their religion; but their firmest hope was in the strength and spirit

of the Varangian guards, of the Danes and English, as they are named in the writers of the times. ^66 After

ten days' incessant labor, the ground was levelled, the ditch filled, the approaches of the besiegers were

regularly made, and two hundred and fifty engines of assault exercised their various powers to clear the

rampart, to batter the walls, and to sap the foundations. On the first appearance of a breach, the

scalingladders were applied: the numbers that defended the vantage ground repulsed and oppressed the

adventurous Latins; but they admired the resolution of fifteen knights and sergeants, who had gained the

ascent, and maintained their perilous station till they were precipitated or made prisoners by the Imperial

guards. On the side of the harbor the naval attack was more successfully conducted by the Venetians; and that

industrious people employed every resource that was known and practiced before the invention of

gunpowder. A double line, three bowshots in front, was formed by the galleys and ships; and the swift

motion of the former was supported by the weight and loftiness of the latter, whose decks, and poops, and

turret, were the platforms of military engines, that discharged their shot over the heads of the first line. The

soldiers, who leaped from the galleys on shore, immediately planted and ascended their scalingladders,

while the large ships, advancing more slowly into the intervals, and lowering a drawbridge, opened a way

through the air from their masts to the rampart. In the midst of the conflict, the doge, a venerable and

conspicuous form, stood aloft in complete armor on the prow of his galley. The great standard of St. Mark

was displayed before him; his threats, promises, and exhortations, urged the diligence of the rowers; his

vessel was the first that struck; and Dandolo was the first warrior on the shore. The nations admired the

magnanimity of the blind old man, without reflecting that his age and infirmities diminished the price of life,

and enhanced the value of immortal glory. On a sudden, by an invisible hand, (for the standardbearer was

probably slain,) the banner of the republic was fixed on the rampart: twentyfive towers were rapidly

occupied; and, by the cruel expedient of fire, the Greeks were driven from the adjacent quarter. The doge had

despatched the intelligence of his success, when he was checked by the danger of his confederates. Nobly

declaring that he would rather die with the pilgrims than gain a victory by their destruction, Dandolo

relinquished his advantage, recalled his troops, and hastened to the scene of action. He found the six weary

diminutive battles of the French encompassed by sixty squadrons of the Greek cavalry, the least of which was

more numerous than the largest of their divisions. Shame and despair had provoked Alexius to the last effort

of a general sally; but he was awed by the firm order and manly aspect of the Latins; and, after skirmishing at

a distance, withdrew his troops in the close of the evening. The silence or tumult of the night exasperated his

fears; and the timid usurper, collecting a treasure of ten thousand pounds of gold, basely deserted his wife, his

people, and his fortune; threw himself into a bark; stole through the Bosphorus; and landed in shameful safety

in an obscure harbor of Thrace. As soon as they were apprised of his flight, the Greek nobles sought pardon

and peace in the dungeon where the blind Isaac expected each hour the visit of the executioner. Again saved

and exalted by the vicissitudes of fortune, the captive in his Imperial robes was replace on the throne, and

surrounded with prostrate slaves, whose real terror and affected joy he was incapable of discerning. At the

dawn of day, hostilities were suspended, and the Latin chiefs were surprised by a message from the lawful

and reigning emperor, who was impatient to embrace his son, and to reward his generous deliverers. ^67

[Footnote 65: On the most correct plans of Constantinople, I know not how to measure more than 4000 paces.

Yet Villehardouin computes the space at three leagues, (No. 86.) If his eye were not deceived, he must reckon

by the old Gallic league of 1500 paces, which might still be used in Champagne.]

[Footnote 66: The guards, the Varangi, are styled by Villehardouin, (No. 89, 95) Englois et Danois avec leurs

haches. Whatever had been their origin, a French pilgrim could not be mistaken in the nations of which they

[Footnote 67: For the first siege and conquest of Constantinople, we may read the original letter of the

crusaders to Innocent III., Gesta, c. 91, p. 533, 534. Villehardouin, No. 75 99. Nicetas, in Alexio Comnen.

l. iii. c. 10, p. 349 352. Dandolo, in Chron. p. 322. Gunther, and his abbot Martin, were not yet returned

from their obstinate pilgrim age to Jerusalem, or St. John d'Acre, where the greatest part of the company had

But these generous deliverers were unwilling to release their hostage, till they had obtained from his father

the payment, or at least the promise, of their recompense. They chose four ambassadors, Matthew of

Montmorency, our historian the marshal of Champagne, and two Venetians, to congratulate the emperor. The

gates were thrown open on their approach, the streets on both sides were lined with the battle axes of the

Danish and English guard: the presencechamber glittered with gold and jewels, the false substitute of virtue

and power: by the side of the blind Isaac his wife was seated, the sister of the king of Hungary: and by her

appearance, the noble matrons of Greece were drawn from their domestic retirement, and mingled with the

circle of senators and soldiers. The Latins, by the mouth of the marshal, spoke like men conscious of their

merits, but who respected the work of their own hands; and the emperor clearly understood, that his son's

engagements with Venice and the pilgrims must be ratified without hesitation or delay. Withdrawing into a

private chamber with the empress, a chamberlain, an interpreter, and the four ambassadors, the father of

young Alexius inquired with some anxiety into the nature of his stipulations. The submission of the Eastern

empire to the pope, the succor of the Holy Land, and a present contribution of two hundred thousand marks

of silver. "These conditions are weighty," was his prudent reply: "they are hard to accept, and difficult to

perform. But no conditions can exceed the measure of your services and deserts." After this satisfactory

assurance, the barons mounted on horseback, and introduced the heir of Constantinople to the city and palace:

his youth and marvellous adventures engaged every heart in his favor, and Alexius was solemnly crowned

with his father in the dome of St. Sophia. In the first days of his reign, the people, already blessed with the

restoration of plenty and peace, was delighted by the joyful catastrophe of the tragedy; and the discontent of

the nobles, their regret, and their fears, were covered by the polished surface of pleasure and loyalty The

mixture of two discordant nations in the same capital might have been pregnant with mischief and danger;

and the suburb of Galata, or Pera, was assigned for the quarters of the French and Venetians. But the liberty

of trade and familiar intercourse was allowed between the friendly nations: and each day the pilgrims were

tempted by devotion or curiosity to visit the churches and palaces of Constantinople. Their rude minds,

insensible perhaps of the finer arts, were astonished by the magnificent scenery: and the poverty of their

native towns enhanced the populousness and riches of the first metropolis of Christendom. ^68 Descending

from his state, young Alexius was prompted by interest and gratitude to repeat his frequent and familiar visits

to his Latin allies; and in the freedom of the table, the gay petulance of the French sometimes forgot the

emperor of the East. ^69 In their most serious conferences, it was agreed, that the reunion of the two churches

must be the result of patience and time; but avarice was less tractable than zeal; and a larger sum was

instantly disbursed to appease the wants, and silence the importunity, of the crusaders. ^70 Alexius was

alarmed by the approaching hour of their departure: their absence might have relieved him from the

engagement which he was yet incapable of performing; but his friends would have left him, naked and alone,

to the caprice and prejudice of a perfidious nation. He wished to bribe their stay, the delay of a year, by

undertaking to defray their expense, and to satisfy, in their name, the freight of the Venetian vessels. The

offer was agitated in the council of the barons; and, after a repetition of their debates and scruples, a majority

of votes again acquiesced in the advice of the doge and the prayer of the young emperor. At the price of

sixteen hundred pounds of gold, he prevailed on the marquis of Montferrat to lead him with an army round

the provinces of Europe; to establish his authority, and pursue his uncle, while Constantinople was awed by

the presence of Baldwin and his confederates of France and Flanders. The expedition was successful: the

blind emperor exulted in the success of his arms, and listened to the predictions of his flatterers, that the same

Providence which had raised him from the dungeon to the throne, would heal his gout, restore his sight, and

watch over the long prosperity of his reign. Yet the mind of the suspicious old man was tormented by the

rising glories of his son; nor could his pride conceal from his envy, that, while his own name was pronounced

in faint and reluctant acclamations, the royal youth was the theme of spontaneous and universal praise. ^71

[Footnote 68: Compare, in the rude energy of Villehardouin, (No. 66, 100,) the inside and outside views of

Constantinople, and their impression on the minds of the pilgrims: cette ville (says he) que de toutes les

autres ere souveraine. See the parallel passages of Fulcherius Carnotensis, Hist. Hierosol. l. i. c. 4, and Will.

[Footnote 69: As they played at dice, the Latins took off his diadem, and clapped on his head a woollen or

hairy cap, (Nicetas, p. 358.) If these merry companions were Venetians, it was the insolence of trade and a

[Footnote 70: Villehardouin, No. 101. Dandolo, p. 322. The doge affirms, that the Venetians were paid more

slowly than the French; but he owns, that the histories of the two nations differed on that subject. Had he read

Villehardouin? The Greeks complained, however, good totius Graeciae opes transtulisset, (Gunther, Hist. C.

[Footnote 71: The reign of Alexius Comnenus occupies three books in Nicetas, p. 291352. The short

By the recent invasion, the Greeks were awakened from a dream of nine centuries; from the vain presumption

that the capital of the Roman empire was impregnable to foreign arms. The strangers of the West had violated

the city, and bestowed the sceptre, of Constantine: their Imperial clients soon became as unpopular as

themselves: the wellknown vices of Isaac were rendered still more contemptible by his infirmities, and the

young Alexius was hated as an apostate, who had renounced the manners and religion of his country. His

secret covenant with the Latins was divulged or suspected; the people, and especially the clergy, were

devoutly attached to their faith and superstition; and every convent, and every shop, resounded with the

danger of the church and the tyranny of the pope. ^72 An empty treasury could ill supply the demands of

regal luxury and foreign extortion: the Greeks refused to avert, by a general tax, the impending evils of

servitude and pillage; the oppression of the rich excited a more dangerous and personal resentment; and if the

emperor melted the plate, and despoiled the images, of the sanctuary, he seemed to justify the complaints of

heresy and sacrilege. During the absence of Marquis Boniface and his Imperial pupil, Constantinople was

visited with a calamity which might be justly imputed to the zeal and indiscretion of the Flemish pilgrims.

^73 In one of their visits to the city, they were scandalized by the aspect of a mosque or synagogue, in which

one God was worshipped, without a partner or a son. Their effectual mode of controversy was to attack the

infidels with the sword, and their habitation with fire: but the infidels, and some Christian neighbors,

presumed to defend their lives and properties; and the flames which bigotry had kindled, consumed the most

orthodox and innocent structures. During eight days and nights, the conflagration spread above a league in

front, from the harbor to the Propontis, over the thickest and most populous regions of the city. It is not easy

to count the stately churches and palaces that were reduced to a smoking ruin, to value the merchandise that

perished in the trading streets, or to number the families that were involved in the common destruction. By

this outrage, which the doge and the barons in vain affected to disclaim, the name of the Latins became still

more unpopular; and the colony of that nation, above fifteen thousand persons, consulted their safety in a

hasty retreat from the city to the protection of their standard in the suburb of Pera. The emperor returned in

triumph; but the firmest and most dexterous policy would have been insufficient to steer him through the

tempest, which overwhelmed the person and government of that unhappy youth. His own inclination, and his

father's advice, attached him to his benefactors; but Alexius hesitated between gratitude and patriotism,

between the fear of his subjects and of his allies. ^74 By his feeble and fluctuating conduct he lost the esteem

and confidence of both; and, while he invited the marquis of Monferrat to occupy the palace, he suffered the

nobles to conspire, and the people to arm, for the deliverance of their country. Regardless of his painful

situation, the Latin chiefs repeated their demands, resented his delays, suspected his intentions, and exacted a

decisive answer of peace or war. The haughty summons was delivered by three French knights and three

Venetian deputies, who girded their swords, mounted their horses, pierced through the angry multitude, and

entered, with a fearful countenance, the palace and presence of the Greek emperor. In a peremptory tone, they

recapitulated their services and his engagements; and boldly declared, that unless their just claims were fully

and immediately satisfied, they should no longer hold him either as a sovereign or a friend. After this

defiance, the first that had ever wounded an Imperial ear, they departed without betraying any symptoms of

fear; but their escape from a servile palace and a furious city astonished the ambassadors themselves; and

[Footnote 72: When Nicetas reproaches Alexius for his impious league, he bestows the harshest names on the

pope's new religion, (p. 348.) Such was the sincere language of every Greek to the last gasp of the empire.]

[Footnote 73: Nicetas (p. 355) is positive in the charge, and specifies the Flemings, though he is wrong in

supposing it an ancient name. Villehardouin (No. 107) exculpates the barons, and is ignorant (perhaps

[Footnote 74: Compare the suspicions and complaints of Nicetas (p. 359 362) with the blunt charges of

Baldwin of Flanders, (Gesta Innocent III. c. 92, p. 534,) cum patriarcha et mole nobilium, nobis promises

Among the Greeks, all authority and wisdom were overborne by the impetuous multitude, who mistook their

rage for valor, their numbers for strength, and their fanaticism for the support and inspiration of Heaven. In

the eyes of both nations Alexius was false and contemptible; the base and spurious race of the Angeli was

rejected with clamorous disdain; and the people of Constantinople encompassed the senate, to demand at

their hands a more worthy emperor. To every senator, conspicuous by his birth or dignity, they successively

presented the purple: by each senator the deadly garment was repulsed: the contest lasted three days; and we

may learn from the historian Nicetas, one of the members of the assembly, that fear and weaknesses were the

guardians of their loyalty. A phantom, who vanished in oblivion, was forcibly proclaimed by the crowd: ^75

but the author of the tumult, and the leader of the war, was a prince of the house of Ducas; and his common

appellation of Alexius must be discriminated by the epithet of Mourzoufle, ^76 which in the vulgar idiom

expressed the close junction of his black and shaggy eyebrows. At once a patriot and a courtier, the perfidious

Mourzoufle, who was not destitute of cunning and courage, opposed the Latins both in speech and action,

inflamed the passions and prejudices of the Greeks, and insinuated himself into the favor and confidence of

Alexius, who trusted him with the office of great chamberlain, and tinged his buskins with the colors of

royalty. At the dead of night, he rushed into the bedchamber with an affrighted aspect, exclaiming, that the

palace was attacked by the people and betrayed by the guards. Starting from his couch, the unsuspecting

prince threw himself into the arms of his enemy, who had contrived his escape by a private staircase. But that

staircase terminated in a prison: Alexius was seized, stripped, and loaded with chains; and, after tasting some

days the bitterness of death, he was poisoned, or strangled, or beaten with clubs, at the command, or in the

presence, of the tyrant. The emperor Isaac Angelus soon followed his son to the grave; and Mourzoufle,

perhaps, might spare the superfluous crime of hastening the extinction of impotence and blindness. [Footnote

75: His name was Nicholas Canabus: he deserved the praise of Nicetas and the vengeance of Mourzoufle, (p.

[Footnote 76: Villehardouin (No. 116) speaks of him as a favorite, without knowing that he was a prince of

the blood, Angelus and Ducas. Ducange, who pries into every corner, believes him to be the son of Isaac

The death of the emperors, and the usurpation of Mourzoufle, had changed the nature of the quarrel. It was no

longer the disagreement of allies who overvalued their services, or neglected their obligations: the French and

Venetians forgot their complaints against Alexius, dropped a tear on the untimely fate of their companion,

and swore revenge against the perfidious nation who had crowned his assassin. Yet the prudent doge was still

inclined to negotiate: he asked as a debt, a subsidy, or a fine, fifty thousand pounds of gold, about two

millions sterling; nor would the conference have been abruptly broken, if the zeal, or policy, of Mourzoufle

had not refused to sacrifice the Greek church to the safety of the state. ^77 Amidst the invectives of his

foreign and domestic enemies, we may discern, that he was not unworthy of the character which he had

assumed, of the public champion: the second siege of Constantinople was far more laborious than the first;

the treasury was replenished, and discipline was restored, by a severe inquisition into the abuses of the former

reign; and Mourzoufle, an iron mace in his hand, visiting the posts, and affecting the port and aspect of a

warrior, was an object of terror to his soldiers, at least, and to his kinsmen. Before and after the death of

Alexius, the Greeks made two vigorous and wellconducted attempts to burn the navy in the harbor; but the

skill and courage of the Venetians repulsed the fireships; and the vagrant flames wasted themselves without

injury in the sea. ^78 In a nocturnal sally the Greek emperor was vanquished by Henry, brother of the count

of Flanders: the advantages of number and surprise aggravated the shame of his defeat: his buckler was found

on the field of battle; and the Imperial standard, ^79 a divine image of the Virgin, was presented, as a trophy

and a relic to the Cistercian monks, the disciples of St. Bernard. Near three months, without excepting the

holy season of Lent, were consumed in skirmishes and preparations, before the Latins were ready or resolved

for a general assault. The land fortifications had been found impregnable; and the Venetian pilots represented,

that, on the shore of the Propontis, the anchorage was unsafe, and the ships must be driven by the current far

away to the straits of the Hellespont; a prospect not unpleasing to the reluctant pilgrims, who sought every

opportunity of breaking the army. From the harbor, therefore, the assault was determined by the assailants,

and expected by the besieged; and the emperor had placed his scarlet pavilions on a neighboring height, to

direct and animate the efforts of his troops. A fearless spectator, whose mind could entertain the ideas of

pomp and pleasure, might have admired the long array of two embattled armies, which extended above half a

league, the one on the ships and galleys, the other on the walls and towers raised above the ordinary level by

several stages of wooden turrets. Their first fury was spent in the discharge of darts, stones, and fire, from the

engines; but the water was deep; the French were bold; the Venetians were skilful; they approached the walls;

and a desperate conflict of swords, spears, and battle axes, was fought on the trembling bridges that

grappled the floating, to the stable, batteries. In more than a hundred places, the assault was urged, and the

defence was sustained; till the superiority of ground and numbers finally prevailed, and the Latin trumpets

sounded a retreat. On the ensuing days, the attack was renewed with equal vigor, and a similar event; and, in

the night, the doge and the barons held a council, apprehensive only for the public danger: not a voice

pronounced the words of escape or treaty; and each warrior, according to his temper, embraced the hope of

victory, or the assurance of a glorious death. ^80 By the experience of the former siege, the Greeks were

instructed, but the Latins were animated; and the knowledge that Constantinople might be taken, was of more

avail than the local precautions which that knowledge had inspired for its defence. In the third assault, two

ships were linked together to double their strength; a strong north wind drove them on the shore; the bishops

of Troyes and Soissons led the van; and the auspicious names of the pilgrim and the paradise resounded along

the line. ^81 The episcopal banners were displayed on the walls; a hundred marks of silver had been

promised to the first adventurers; and if their reward was intercepted by death, their names have been

immortalized by fame. ^* Four towers were scaled; three gates were burst open; and the French knights, who

might tremble on the waves, felt themselves invincible on horseback on the solid ground. Shall I relate that

the thousands who guarded the emperor's person fled on the approach, and before the lance, of a single

warrior? Their ignominious flight is attested by their countryman Nicetas: an army of phantoms marched with

the French hero, and he was magnified to a giant in the eyes of the Greeks. ^82 While the fugitives deserted

their posts and cast away their arms, the Latins entered the city under the banners of their leaders: the streets

and gates opened for their passage; and either design or accident kindled a third conflagration, which

consumed in a few hours the measure of three of the largest cities of France. ^83 In the close of evening, the

barons checked their troops, and fortified their stations: They were awed by the extent and populousness of

the capital, which might yet require the labor of a month, if the churches and palaces were conscious of their

internal strength. But in the morning, a suppliant procession, with crosses and images, announced the

submission of the Greeks, and deprecated the wrath of the conquerors: the usurper escaped through the

golden gate: the palaces of Blachernae and Boucoleon were occupied by the count of Flanders and the

marquis of Montferrat; and the empire, which still bore the name of Constantine, and the title of Roman, was

subverted by the arms of the Latin pilgrims. ^84 [Footnote 77: This negotiation, probable in itself, and

attested by Nicetas, (p 65,) is omitted as scandalous by the delicacy of Dandolo and Villehardouin.

[Footnote 78: Baldwin mentions both attempts to fire the fleet, (Gest. c. 92, p. 534, 535;) Villehardouin, (No.

113 15) only describes the first. It is remarkable that neither of these warriors observe any peculiar

[Footnote 79: Ducange (No. 119) pours forth a torrent of learning on the Gonfanon Imperial. This banner of

the Virgin is shown at Venice as a trophy and relic: if it be genuine the pious doge must have cheated the

[Footnote 80: Villehardouin (No. 126) confesses, that mult ere grant peril; and Guntherus (Hist. C. P. c. 13)

affirms, that nulla spes victoriae arridere poterat. Yet the knight despises those who thought of flight, and the

[Footnote 81: Baldwin, and all the writers, honor the names of these two galleys, felici auspicio.]

[Footnote *: Pietro Alberti, a Venetion noble and Andrew d'Amboise a French knight. M.]

[Footnote 82: With an allusion to Homer, Nicetas calls him eighteen yards high, a stature which would,

indeed, have excused the terror of the Greek. On this occasion, the historian seems fonder of the marvellous

than of his country, or perhaps of truth. Baldwin exclaims in the words of the psalmist, persequitur unus ex

[Footnote 83: Villehardouin (No. 130) is again ignorant of the authors of this more legitimate fire, which is

ascribed by Gunther to a quidam comes Teutonicus, (c. 14.) They seem ashamed, the incendiaries!]

[Footnote 84: For the second siege and conquest of Constantinople, see Villehardouin (No. 113 132,)

Baldwin's iid Epistle to Innocent III., (Gesta c. 92, p. 534 537,) with the whole reign of Mourzoufle, in

Nicetas, (p 363 375;) and borrowed some hints from Dandolo (Chron. Venet. p. 323 330) and Gunther,

(Hist. C. P. c. 14 18,) who added the decorations of prophecy and vision. The former produces an oracle of

the Erythraean sibyl, of a great armament on the Adriatic, under a blind chief, against Byzantium, Curious

Constantinople had been taken by storm; and no restraints, except those of religion and humanity, were

imposed on the conquerors by the laws of war. Boniface, marquis of Montferrat, still acted as their general;

and the Greeks, who revered his name as that of their future sovereign, were heard to exclaim in a lamentable

tone, "Holy marquisking, have mercy upon us!" His prudence or compassion opened the gates of the city to

the fugitives; and he exhorted the soldiers of the cross to spare the lives of their fellow Christians. The

streams of blood that flowed down the pages of Nicetas may be reduced to the slaughter of two thousand of

his unresisting countrymen; ^85 and the greater part was massacred, not by the strangers, but by the Latins,

who had been driven from the city, and who exercised the revenge of a triumphant faction. Yet of these

exiles, some were less mindful of injuries than of benefits; and Nicetas himself was indebted for his safety to

the generosity of a Venetian merchant. Pope Innocent the Third accuses the pilgrims for respecting, in their

lust, neither age nor sex, nor religious profession; and bitterly laments that the deeds of darkness, fornication,

adultery, and incest, were perpetrated in open day; and that noble matrons and holy nuns were polluted by the

grooms and peasants of the Catholic camp. ^86 It is indeed probable that the license of victory prompted and

covered a multitude of sins: but it is certain, that the capital of the East contained a stock of venal or willing

beauty, sufficient to satiate the desires of twenty thousand pilgrims; and female prisoners were no longer

subject to the right or abuse of domestic slavery. The marquis of Montferrat was the patron of discipline and

decency; the count of Flanders was the mirror of chastity: they had forbidden, under pain of death, the rape of

married women, or virgins, or nuns; and the proclamation was sometimes invoked by the vanquished ^87 and

respected by the victors. Their cruelty and lust were moderated by the authority of the chiefs, and feelings of

the soldiers; for we are no longer describing an irruption of the northern savages; and however ferocious they

might still appear, time, policy, and religion had civilized the manners of the French, and still more of the

Italians. But a free scope was allowed to their avarice, which was glutted, even in the holy week, by the

pillage of Constantinople. The right of victory, unshackled by any promise or treaty, had confiscated the

public and private wealth of the Greeks; and every hand, according to its size and strength, might lawfully

execute the sentence and seize the forfeiture. A portable and universal standard of exchange was found in the

coined and uncoined metals of gold and silver, which each captor, at home or abroad, might convert into the

possessions most suitable to his temper and situation. Of the treasures, which trade and luxury had

accumulated, the silks, velvets, furs, the gems, spices, and rich movables, were the most precious, as they

could not be procured for money in the ruder countries of Europe. An order of rapine was instituted; nor was

the share of each individual abandoned to industry or chance. Under the tremendous penalties of perjury,

excommunication, and death, the Latins were bound to deliver their plunder into the common stock: three

churches were selected for the deposit and distribution of the spoil: a single share was allotted to a

footsoldier; two for a sergeant on horseback; four to a knight; and larger proportions according to the rank

and merit of the barons and princes. For violating this sacred engagement, a knight belonging to the count of

St. Paul was hanged with his shield and coat of arms round his neck; his example might render similar

offenders more artful and discreet; but avarice was more powerful than fear; and it is generally believed that

the secret far exceeded the acknowledged plunder. Yet the magnitude of the prize surpassed the largest scale

of experience or expectation. ^88 After the whole had been equally divided between the French and

Venetians, fifty thousand marks were deducted to satisfy the debts of the former and the demands of the

latter. The residue of the French amounted to four hundred thousand marks of silver, ^89 about eight hundred

thousand pounds sterling; nor can I better appreciate the value of that sum in the public and private

transactions of the age, than by defining it as seven times the annual revenue of the kingdom of England. ^90

[Footnote 85: Ceciderunt tamen ea die civium quasi duo millia, (Gunther, c. 18.) Arithmetic is an excellent

[Footnote 86: Quidam (says Innocent III., Gesta, c. 94, p. 538) nec religioni, nec aetati, nec sexui

pepercerunt: sed fornicationes, adulteria, et incestus in oculis omnium exercentes, non solum maritatas et

viduas, sed et matronas et virgines Deoque dicatas, exposuerunt spurcitiis garcionum. Villehardouin takes no

[Footnote 87: Nicetas saved, and afterwards married, a noble virgin, (p. 380,) whom a soldier, had almost

[Footnote 88: Of the general mass of wealth, Gunther observes, ut de pauperius et advenis cives ditissimi

redderentur, (Hist. C. P. c. 18; (Villehardouin, (No. 132,) that since the creation, ne fu tant gaaignie dans une

ville; Baldwin, (Gesta, c. 92,) ut tantum tota non videatur possidere Latinitas.]

[Footnote 89: Villehardouin, No. 133 135. Instead of 400,000, there is a various reading of 500,000. The

Venetians had offered to take the whole booty, and to give 400 marks to each knight, 200 to each priest and

horseman, and 100 to each footsoldier: they would have been great losers, (Le Beau, Hist. du. Bas Empire

[Footnote 90: At the council of Lyons (A.D. 1245) the English ambassadors stated the revenue of the crown

as below that of the foreign clergy, which amounted to 60,000 marks a year, (Matthew Paris, p. 451 Hume's

In this great revolution we enjoy the singular felicity of comparing the narratives of Villehardouin and

Nicetas, the opposite feelings of the marshal of Champagne and the Byzantine senator. ^91 At the first view it

should seem that the wealth of Constantinople was only transferred from one nation to another; and that the

loss and sorrow of the Greeks is exactly balanced by the joy and advantage of the Latins. But in the miserable

account of war, the gain is never equivalent to the loss, the pleasure to the pain; the smiles of the Latins were

transient and fallacious; the Greeks forever wept over the ruins of their country; and their real calamities were

aggravated by sacrilege and mockery. What benefits accrued to the conquerors from the three fires which

annihilated so vast a portion of the buildings and riches of the city? What a stock of such things, as could

neither be used nor transported, was maliciously or wantonly destroyed! How much treasure was idly wasted

in gaming, debauchery, and riot! And what precious objects were bartered for a vile price by the impatience

or ignorance of the soldiers, whose reward was stolen by the base industry of the last of the Greeks! These

alone, who had nothing to lose, might derive some profit from the revolution; but the misery of the upper

ranks of society is strongly painted in the personal adventures of Nicetas himself His stately palace had been

reduced to ashes in the second conflagration; and the senator, with his family and friends, found an obscure

shelter in another house which he possessed near the church of St. Sophia. It was the door of this mean

habitation that his friend, the Venetian merchant, guarded in the disguise of a soldier, till Nicetas could save,

by a precipitate flight, the relics of his fortune and the chastity of his daughter. In a cold, wintry season, these

fugitives, nursed in the lap of prosperity, departed on foot; his wife was with child; the desertion of their

slaves compelled them to carry their baggage on their own shoulders; and their women, whom they placed in

the centre, were exhorted to conceal their beauty with dirt, instead of adorning it with paint and jewels Every

step was exposed to insult and danger: the threats of the strangers were less painful than the taunts of the

plebeians, with whom they were now levelled; nor did the exiles breathe in safety till their mournful

pilgrimage was concluded at Sclymbria, above forty miles from the capital. On the way they overtook the

patriarch, without attendance and almost without apparel, riding on an ass, and reduced to a state of

apostolical poverty, which, had it been voluntary, might perhaps have been meritorious. In the mean while,

his desolate churches were profaned by the licentiousness and party zeal of the Latins. After stripping the

gems and pearls, they converted the chalices into drinkingcups; their tables, on which they gamed and

feasted, were covered with the pictures of Christ and the saints; and they trampled under foot the most

venerable objects of the Christian worship. In the cathedral of St. Sophia, the ample veil of the sanctuary was

rent asunder for the sake of the golden fringe; and the altar, a monument of art and riches, was broken in

pieces and shared among the captors. Their mules and horses were laden with the wrought silver and gilt

carvings, which they tore down from the doors and pulpit; and if the beasts stumbled under the burden, they

were stabbed by their impatient drivers, and the holy pavement streamed with their impure blood. A

prostitute was seated on the throne of the patriarch; and that daughter of Belial, as she is styled, sung and

danced in the church, to ridicule the hymns and processions of the Orientals. Nor were the repositories of the

royal dead secure from violation: in the church of the Apostles, the tombs of the emperors were rifled; and it

is said, that after six centuries the corpse of Justinian was found without any signs of decay or putrefaction. In

the streets, the French and Flemings clothed themselves and their horses in painted robes and flowing

headdresses of linen; and the coarse intemperance of their feasts ^92 insulted the splendid sobriety of the

East. To expose the arms of a people of scribes and scholars, they affected to display a pen, an inkhorn, and a

sheet of paper, without discerning that the instruments of science and valor were alike feeble and useless in

[Footnote 91: The disorders of the sack of Constantinople, and his own adventures, are feelingly described by

Nicetas, p. 367 369, and in the Status Urb. C. P. p. 375 384. His complaints, even of sacrilege, are

justified by Innocent III., (Gesta, c. 92;) but Villehardouin does not betray a symptom of pity or remorse]

[Footnote 92: If I rightly apprehend the Greek of Nicetas's receipts, their favorite dishes were boiled buttocks

of beef, salt pork and peas, and soup made of garlic and sharp or sour herbs, (p. 382.)]

Their reputation and their language encouraged them, however, to despise the ignorance and to overlook the

progress of the Latins. ^93 In the love of the arts, the national difference was still more obvious and real; the

Greeks preserved with reverence the works of their ancestors, which they could not imitate; and, in the

destruction of the statues of Constantinople, we are provoked to join in the complaints and invectives of the

Byzantine historian. ^94 We have seen how the rising city was adorned by the vanity and despotism of the

Imperial founder: in the ruins of paganism, some gods and heroes were saved from the axe of superstition;

and the forum and hippodrome were dignified with the relics of a better age. Several of these are described by

Nicetas, ^95 in a florid and affected style; and from his descriptions I shall select some interesting particulars.

1. The victorious charioteers were cast in bronze, at their own or the public charge, and fitly placed in the

hippodrome: they stood aloft in their chariots, wheeling round the goal: the spectators could admire their

attitude, and judge of the resemblance; and of these figures, the most perfect might have been transported

from the Olympic stadium. 2. The sphinx, riverhorse, and crocodile, denote the climate and manufacture of

Egypt and the spoils of that ancient province. 3. The shewolf suckling Romulus and Remus, a subject alike

pleasing to the old and the new Romans, but which could really be treated before the decline of the Greek

sculpture. 4. An eagle holding and tearing a serpent in his talons, a domestic monument of the Byzantines,

which they ascribed, not to a human artist, but to the magic power of the philosopher Apollonius, who, by

this talisman, delivered the city from such venomous reptiles. 5. An ass and his driver, which were erected by

Augustus in his colony of Nicopolis, to commemorate a verbal omen of the victory of Actium. 6. An

equestrian statue which passed, in the vulgar opinion, for Joshua, the Jewish conqueror, stretching out his

hand to stop the course of the descending sun. A more classical tradition recognized the figures of

Bellerophon and Pegasus; and the free attitude of the steed seemed to mark that he trod on air, rather than on

the earth. 7. A square and lofty obelisk of brass; the sides were embossed with a variety of picturesque and

rural scenes, birds singing; rustics laboring, or playing on their pipes; sheep bleating; lambs skipping; the sea,

and a scene of fish and fishing; little naked cupids laughing, playing, and pelting each other with apples; and,

on the summit, a female figure, turning with the slightest breath, and thence denominated the wind's

attendant. 8. The Phrygian shepherd presenting to Venus the prize of beauty, the apple of discord. 9. The

incomparable statue of Helen, which is delineated by Nicetas in the words of admiration and love: her

wellturned feet, snowy arms, rosy lips, bewitching smiles, swimming eyes, arched eyebrows, the harmony

of her shape, the lightness of her drapery, and her flowing locks that waved in the wind; a beauty that might

have moved her Barbarian destroyers to pity and remorse. 10. The manly or divine form of Hercules, ^96 as

he was restored to life by the masterhand of Lysippus; of such magnitude, that his thumb was equal to his

waist, his leg to the stature, of a common man: ^97 his chest ample, his shoulders broad, his limbs strong and

muscular, his hair curled, his aspect commanding. Without his bow, or quiver, or club, his lion's skin

carelessly thrown over him, he was seated on an osier basket, his right leg and arm stretched to the utmost,

his left knee bent, and supporting his elbow, his head reclining on his left hand, his countenance indignant

and pensive. 11. A colossal statue of Juno, which had once adorned her temple of Samos, the enormous head

by four yoke of oxen was laboriously drawn to the palace. 12. Another colossus, of Pallas or Minerva, thirty

feet in height, and representing with admirable spirit the attributes and character of the martial maid. Before

we accuse the Latins, it is just to remark, that this Pallas was destroyed after the first siege, by the fear and

superstition of the Greeks themselves. ^98 The other statues of brass which I have enumerated were broken

and melted by the unfeeling avarice of the crusaders: the cost and labor were consumed in a moment; the soul

of genius evaporated in smoke; and the remnant of base metal was coined into money for the payment of the

troops. Bronze is not the most durable of monuments: from the marble forms of Phidias and Praxiteles, the

Latins might turn aside with stupid contempt; ^99 but unless they were crushed by some accidental injury,

those useless stones stood secure on their pedestals. ^100 The most enlightened of the strangers, above the

gross and sensual pursuits of their countrymen, more piously exercised the right of conquest in the search and

seizure of the relics of the saints. ^101 Immense was the supply of heads and bones, crosses and images, that

were scattered by this revolution over the churches of Europe; and such was the increase of pilgrimage and

oblation, that no branch, perhaps, of more lucrative plunder was imported from the East. ^102 Of the writings

of antiquity, many that still existed in the twelfth century, are now lost. But the pilgrims were not solicitous to

save or transport the volumes of an unknown tongue: the perishable substance of paper or parchment can only

be preserved by the multiplicity of copies; the literature of the Greeks had almost centred in the metropolis;

and, without computing the extent of our loss, we may drop a tear over the libraries that have perished in the

[Footnote 93: Nicetas uses very harsh expressions, (Fragment, apud Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p. 414.)

This reproach, it is true, applies most strongly to their ignorance of Greek and of Homer. In their own

language, the Latins of the xiith and xiiith centuries were not destitute of literature. See Harris's Philological

[Footnote 94: Nicetas was of Chonae in Phrygia, (the old Colossae of St. Paul:) he raised himself to the

honors of senator, judge of the veil, and great logothete; beheld the fall of the empire, retired to Nice, and

composed an elaborate history from the death of Alexius Comnenus to the reign of Henry.]

[Footnote 95: A manuscript of Nicetas in the Bodleian library contains this curious fragment on the statues of

Constantinople, which fraud, or shame, or rather carelessness, has dropped in the common editions. It is

published by Fabricius, (Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p. 405 416,) and immoderately praised by the late

ingenious Mr. Harris of Salisbury, (Philological Inquiries, p. iii. c. 5, p. 301 312.)]

[Footnote 96: To illustrate the statue of Hercules, Mr. Harris quotes a Greek epigram, and engraves a

beautiful gem, which does not, however, copy the attitude of the statue: in the latter, Hercules had not his

[Footnote 97: I transcribe these proportions, which appear to me inconsistent with each other; and may

possibly show, that the boasted taste of Nicetas was no more than affectation and vanity.]

[Footnote 98: Nicetas in Isaaco Angelo et Alexio, c. 3, p. 359. The Latin editor very properly observes, that

[Footnote 99: In two passages of Nicetas (edit. Paris, p. 360. Fabric. p. 408) the Latins are branded with the

lively reproach and their avarice of brass is clearly expressed. Yet the Venetians had the merit of removing

four bronze horses from Constantinople to the place of St. Mark, (Sanuto, Vite del Dogi, in Muratori, Script.

[Footnote 101: See the pious robbery of the abbot Martin, who transferred a rich cargo to his monastery of

Paris, diocese of Basil, (Gunther, Hist. C. P. c. 19, 23, 24.) Yet in secreting this booty, the saint incurred an

excommunication, and perhaps broke his oath. (Compare Wilken vol. v. p. 308. M.)]

[Footnote 103: I shall conclude this chapter with the notice of a modern history, which illustrates the taking

of Constantinople by the Latins; but which has fallen somewhat late into my hands. Paolo Ramusio, the son

of the compiler of Voyages, was directed by the senate of Venice to write the history of the conquest: and this

order, which he received in his youth, he executed in a mature age, by an elegant Latin work, de Bello

Constantinopolitano et Imperatoribus Comnenis per Gallos et Venetos restitutis, (Venet. 1635, in folio.)

Ramusio, or Rhamnusus, transcribes and translates, sequitur ad unguem, a Ms. of Villehardouin, which he

possessed; but he enriches his narrative with Greek and Latin materials, and we are indebted to him for a

correct state of the fleet, the names of the fifty Venetian nobles who commanded the galleys of the republic,

and the patriot opposition of Pantaleon Barbus to the choice of the doge for emperor.]

Partition Of The Empire By The French And Venetians, Five Latin Emperors Of The Houses Of Flanders

And Courtenay. Their Wars Against The Bulgarians And Greeks. Weakness And Poverty Of The Latin

Empire. Recovery Of Constantinople By The Greeks. General Consequences Of The Crusades.

After the death of the lawful princes, the French and Venetians, confident of justice and victory, agreed to

divide and regulate their future possessions. ^1 It was stipulated by treaty, that twelve electors, six of either

nation, should be nominated; that a majority should choose the emperor of the East; and that, if the votes

were equal, the decision of chance should ascertain the successful candidate. To him, with all the titles and

prerogatives of the Byzantine throne, they assigned the two palaces of Boucoleon and Blachernae, with a

fourth part of the Greek monarchy. It was defined that the three remaining portions should be equally shared

between the republic of Venice and the barons of France; that each feudatory, with an honorable exception

for the doge, should acknowledge and perform the duties of homage and military service to the supreme head

of the empire; that the nation which gave an emperor, should resign to their brethren the choice of a patriarch;

and that the pilgrims, whatever might be their impatience to visit the Holy Land, should devote another year

to the conquest and defence of the Greek provinces. After the conquest of Constantinople by the Latins, the

treaty was confirmed and executed; and the first and most important step was the creation of an emperor. The

six electors of the French nation were all ecclesiastics, the abbot of Loces, the archbishop elect of Acre in

Palestine, and the bishops of Troyes, Soissons, Halberstadt, and Bethlehem, the last of whom exercised in the

camp the office of pope's legate: their profession and knowledge were respectable; and as they could not be

the objects, they were best qualified to be the authors of the choice. The six Venetians were the principal

servants of the state, and in this list the noble families of Querini and Contarini are still proud to discover

their ancestors. The twelve assembled in the chapel of the palace; and after the solemn invocation of the Holy

Ghost, they proceeded to deliberate and vote. A just impulse of respect and gratitude prompted them to crown

the virtues of the doge; his wisdom had inspired their enterprise; and the most youthful knights might envy

and applaud the exploits of blindness and age. But the patriot Dandolo was devoid of all personal ambition,

and fully satisfied that he had been judged worthy to reign. His nomination was overruled by the Venetians

themselves: his countrymen, and perhaps his friends, ^2 represented, with the eloquence of truth, the

mischiefs that might arise to national freedom and the common cause, from the union of two incompatible

characters, of the first magistrate of a republic and the emperor of the East. The exclusion of the doge left

room for the more equal merits of Boniface and Baldwin; and at their names all meaner candidates

respectfully withdrew. The marquis of Montferrat was recommended by his mature age and fair reputation,

by the choice of the adventurers, and the wishes of the Greeks; nor can I believe that Venice, the mistress of

the sea, could be seriously apprehensive of a petty lord at the foot of the Alps. ^3 But the count of Flanders

was the chief of a wealthy and warlike people: he was valiant, pious, and chaste; in the prime of life, since he

was only thirty two years of age; a descendant of Charlemagne, a cousin of the king of France, and a

compeer of the prelates and barons who had yielded with reluctance to the command of a foreigner. Without

the chapel, these barons, with the doge and marquis at their head, expected the decision of the twelve

electors. It was announced by the bishop of Soissons, in the name of his colleagues: "Ye have sworn to obey

the prince whom we should choose: by our unanimous suffrage, Baldwin count of Flanders and Hainault is

now your sovereign, and the emperor of the East." He was saluted with loud applause, and the proclamation

was reechoed through the city by the joy of the Latins, and the trembling adulation of the Greeks. Boniface

was the first to kiss the hand of his rival, and to raise him on the buckler: and Baldwin was transported to the

cathedral, and solemnly invested with the purple buskins. At the end of three weeks he was crowned by the

legate, in the vacancy of the patriarch; but the Venetian clergy soon filled the chapter of St. Sophia, seated

Thomas Morosini on the ecclesiastical throne, and employed every art to perpetuate in their own nation the

honors and benefices of the Greek church. ^4 Without delay the successor of Constantine instructed

Palestine, France, and Rome, of this memorable revolution. To Palestine he sent, as a trophy, the gates of

Constantinople, and the chain of the harbor; ^5 and adopted, from the Assise of Jerusalem, the laws or

customs best adapted to a French colony and conquest in the East. In his epistles, the natives of France are

encouraged to swell that colony, and to secure that conquest, to people a magnificent city and a fertile land,

which will reward the labors both of the priest and the soldier. He congratulates the Roman pontiff on the

restoration of his authority in the East; invites him to extinguish the Greek schism by his presence in a

general council; and implores his blessing and forgiveness for the disobedient pilgrims. Prudence and dignity

are blended in the answer of Innocent. ^6 In the subversion of the Byzantine empire, he arraigns the vices of

man, and adores the providence of God; the conquerors will be absolved or condemned by their future

conduct; the validity of their treaty depends on the judgment of St. Peter; but he inculcates their most sacred

duty of establishing a just subordination of obedience and tribute, from the Greeks to the Latins, from the

[Footnote 1: See the original treaty of partition, in the Venetian Chronicle of Andrew Dandolo, p. 326 330,

and the subsequent election in Ville hardouin, No. 136 140, with Ducange in his Observations, and the

[Footnote 2: After mentioning the nomination of the doge by a French elector his kinsman Andrew Dandolo

approves his exclusion, quidam Venetorum fidelis et nobilis senex, usus oratione satis probabili, which has

[Footnote 3: Nicetas, (p. 384,) with the vain ignorance of a Greek, describes the marquis of Montferrat as a

maritime power. Was he deceived by the Byzantine theme of Lombardy which extended along the coast of

[Footnote 4: They exacted an oath from Thomas Morosini to appoint no canons of St. Sophia the lawful

electors, except Venetians who had lived ten years at Venice, But the foreign clergy was envious, the pope

disapproved this national monopoly, and of the six Latin patriarchs of Constantinople, only the first and the

[Footnote 6: The Epistles of Innocent III. are a rich fund for the ecclesiastical and civil institution of the Latin

empire of Constantinople; and the most important of these epistles (of which the collection in 2 vols. in folio

is published by Stephen Baluze) are inserted in his Gesta, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum,, tom. iii. p. l.

In the division of the Greek provinces, ^7 the share of the Venetians was more ample than that of the Latin

emperor. No more than one fourth was appropriated to his domain; a clear moiety of the remainder was

reserved for Venice; and the other moiety was distributed among the adventures of France and Lombardy.

The venerable Dandolo was proclaimed despot of Romania, and invested after the Greek fashion with the

purple buskins. He ended at Constantinople his long and glorious life; and if the prerogative was personal, the

title was used by his successors till the middle of the fourteenth century, with the singular, though true,

addition of lords of one fourth and a half of the Roman empire. ^8 The doge, a slave of state, was seldom

permitted to depart from the helm of the republic; but his place was supplied by the bail, or regent, who

exercised a supreme jurisdiction over the colony of Venetians: they possessed three of the eight quarters of

the city; and his independent tribunal was composed of six judges, four counsellors, two chamberlains two

fiscal advocates, and a constable. Their long experience of the Eastern trade enabled them to select their

portion with discernment: they had rashly accepted the dominion and defence of Adrianople; but it was the

more reasonable aim of their policy to form a chain of factories, and cities, and islands, along the maritime

coast, from the neighborhood of Ragusa to the Hellespont and the Bosphorus. The labor and cost of such

extensive conquests exhausted their treasury: they abandoned their maxims of government, adopted a feudal

system, and contented themselves with the homage of their nobles, ^9 for the possessions which these private

vassals undertook to reduce and maintain. And thus it was that the family of Sanut acquired the duchy of

Naxos, which involved the greatest part of the archipelago. For the price of ten thousand marks, the republic

purchased of the marquis of Montferrat the fertile Island of Crete or Candia, with the ruins of a hundred

cities; ^10 but its improvement was stinted by the proud and narrow spirit of an aristocracy; ^11 and the

wisest senators would confess that the sea, not the land, was the treasury of St. Mark. In the moiety of the

adventurers the marquis Boniface might claim the most liberal reward; and, besides the Isle of Crete, his

exclusion from the throne was compensated by the royal title and the provinces beyond the Hellespont. But

he prudently exchanged that distant and difficult conquest for the kingdom of Thessalonica Macedonia,

twelve days' journey from the capital, where he might be supported by the neighboring powers of his

brotherinlaw 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 Thermopylae; 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 on

scanty supplies for the maintenance of soldiers and horses. Their presumption claimed and divided the

longlost 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 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

[Footnote 7: In the treaty of partition, most of the names are corrupted by the scribes: they might be restored,

and a good map, suited to the last age of the Byzantine empire, would be an improvement of geography. But,

[Footnote 8: Their style was dominus quartae partis et dimidiae imperii Romani, till Giovanni Dolfino, who

was elected doge in the year of 1356, (Sanuto, p. 530, 641.) For the government of Constantinople, see

[Footnote 9: Ducange (Hist. de C. P. ii. 6) has marked the conquests made by the state or nobles of Venice of

the Islands of Candia, Corfu, Cephalonia, Zante, Naxos, Paros, Melos, Andros, Mycone, Syro, Cea, and

[Footnote 10: Boniface sold the Isle of Candia, August 12, A.D. 1204. See the act in Sanuto, p. 533: but I

cannot understand how it could be his mother's portion, or how she could be the daughter of an emperor

[Footnote 11: In the year 1212, the doge Peter Zani sent a colony to Candia, drawn from every quarter of

Venice. But in their savage manners and frequent rebellions, the Candiots may be compared to the Corsicans

under the yoke of Genoa; and when I compare the accounts of Belon and Tournefort, I cannot discern much

[Footnote 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. Graec.

[Footnote 13: Napoli de Romania, or Nauplia, the ancient seaport of Argos, is still a place of strength and

consideration, situate on a rocky peninsula, with a good harbor, (Chandler's Travels into Greece, p. 227.)]

[Footnote 14: I have softened the expression of Nicetas, who strives to expose the presumption of the Franks.

[Footnote 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

[Footnote 16: Their quarrel is told by Villehardouin (No. 146 158) with the spirit of freedom. The merit and

reputation of the marshal are so knowledged by the Greek historian (p. 387): unlike some modern heroes,

Note: 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 an

investiture. Brosset's Add. to Le Beau, vol. xvii. p. 200. M. Brosset adds, from the Greek chronicler 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

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. Mourzoufle was received with smiles and honors in the camp of his father Alexius; but the wicked

can never love, and should rarely trust, their fellowcriminals; 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 fortyseven feet in height. ^18 From the

summit he was cast down 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 valor of Theodore Lascaris was signalized 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 feet: 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

Maeander to the suburbs of Nicomedia, and at length of Constantinople. Another portion, distant and obscure,

was possessed by the lineal heir of the Comneni, a son of the virtuous Manuel, a 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 third fragment was saved from the common shipwreck by Michael, a bastard of the

house of Angeli, who, before the revolution, had been known as a 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

commanded the important place of Durazzo, assumed the title of despot, and founded a strong and

conspicuous principality in Epirus, Aetolia, and Thessaly, which have ever been peopled by a warlike race.

The Greeks, who had offered their service to their new sovereigns, were excluded by the haughty Latins ^22

from all civil and military honors, as a nation born to tremble and obey. Their resentment prompted them to

show that they might have been useful friends, since they could be dangerous enemies: their nerves were

braced by adversity: whatever was learned or holy, whatever was noble or valiant, rolled away into the

independent states of Trebizond, Epirus, and Nice; and a single patrician is marked by the ambiguous praise

of attachment and loyalty to the Franks. The vulgar herd of the cities and the country would have gladly

submitted to a mild and regular servitude; and the transient disorders of war would have been obliterated by

some years of industry and peace. But peace was banished, and industry was crushed, in the disorders of the

feudal system. The Roman emperors of Constantinople, if they were endowed with abilities, were armed with

power for the protection of their subjects: their laws were wise, and their administration was simple. The

Latin throne was filled by a titular prince, the chief, and often the servant, of his licentious confederates; the

fiefs of the empire, from a kingdom to a castle, were held and ruled by the sword of the barons; and their

discord, poverty, and ignorance, extended the ramifications of tyranny to the most sequestered villages. The

Greeks were oppressed by the double weight of the priest, who were invested with temporal power, and of

the soldier, who was inflamed by fanatic hatred; and the insuperable bar of religion and language forever

separated the stranger and the native. As long as the crusaders were united at Constantinople, the memory of

their conquest, and the terror of their arms, imposed silence on the captive land: their dispersion betrayed the

smallness of their numbers and the defects of their discipline; and some failures and mischances revealed the

secret, that they were not invincible. As the fears of the Greeks abated, their hatred increased. They

murdered; they conspired; and before a year of slavery had elapsed, they implored, or accepted, the succor of

[Footnote 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

[Footnote 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 l. i. Antiquit. C.P. p. 507, and Tournefort, (Voyage du Levant, tom. ii. lettre xii. p. 231.)

[Footnote 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

Note: We read in the "Chronicle of the Conquest of Constantinople, and of the Establishment of the French in

the Morea," translated by J A Buchon, Paris, 1825, p. 64 that Leo VI., called the Philosopher, had prophesied

that a perfidious emperor should be precipitated from the top of this column. The crusaders considered

themselves under an obligation to fulfil this prophecy. Brosset, note on Le Beau, vol. xvii. p. 180. M Brosset

announces that a complete edition of this work, of which the original Greek of the first book only has been

published by M. Buchon in preparation, to form part of the new series of the Byzantine historian M.]

[Footnote 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 Familiae Byzantinae of Ducange.]

[Footnote *: This was a title, not a personal appellation. Joinville speaks of the "Grant Comnenie, et sire de

[Footnote 21: 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 romancers of the xivth or xvth centuries. Yet the indefatigable Ducange

has dug out (Fam. Byz. p. 192) two authentic passages in Vincent of Beauvais (l. xxxi. c. 144) and the

[Footnote !: 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 fled with her infant sons and her

treasure from the relentless enmity of Isaac Angelus. Fallmerayer conjectures that her arrival enabled the

Greeks of that region to make head against the formidable Thamar, the Georgian queen of Teflis, p. 42. They

gradually formed a dominion on the banks of the Phasis, which the distracted government of the Angeli

neglected or were unable to suppress. On the capture of Constantinople by the Latins, Alexius was joined by

many noble fugitives from Constantinople. He had always retained the name of Caesar. He now fixed the seat

of his empire at Trebizond; but he had never abandoned his pretensions to the Byzantine throne, ch. iii.

Fallmerayer appears to 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, (Munchen, 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

[Footnote !!: The successor of Alexius was his soninlaw Andronicus I., of the Comnenian family,

surnamed Gidon. There were five successions between Alexius and John, according to Fallmerayer, p. 103.

The troops of Trebizond fought in the army of Dschelaleddin, the Karismian, against Alleddin, the Seljukian

sultan of Roum, but as allies rather than vassals, p. 107. It was after the defeat of Dschelaleddin that they

furnished their contingent to Alaieddin. Fallmerayer struggles in vain to mitigate this mark of the subjection

[Footnote 22: The portrait of the French Latins is drawn in Nicetas by the hand of prejudice and resentment.

[Footnote 23: I here begin to use, with freedom and confidence, the eight books of the Histoire de C. P. sous

l'Empire des Francois, which Ducange has given as a supplement to Villehardouin; and which, in a barbarous

The Latin conquerors had been saluted with a solemn and early embassy from John, or Joannice, or

CaloJohn, the revolted chief of the Bulgarians and Walachians. He deemed himself their brother, as the

votary of the Roman pontiff, from whom he had received the regal title and a holy banner; and in the

subversion of the Greek monarchy, he might aspire to the name of their friend and accomplice. But

CaloJohn was astonished to find, that the Count of Flanders had assumed the pomp and pride of the

successors of Constantine; and his ambassadors were dismissed with a haughty message, that the rebel must

deserve a pardon, by touching with his forehead the footstool of the Imperial throne. His resentment ^24

would have exhaled in acts of violence and blood: his cooler policy watched the rising discontent of the

Greeks; affected a tender concern for their sufferings; and promised, that their first struggles for freedom

should be supported by his person and kingdom. The conspiracy was propagated by national hatred, the

firmest band of association and secrecy: the Greeks were impatient to sheathe their daggers in the breasts of

the victorious strangers; but the execution was prudently delayed, till Henry, the emperor's brother, had

transported the flower of his troops beyond the Hellespont. Most of the towns and villages of Thrace were

true to the moment and the signal; and the Latins, without arms or suspicion, were slaughtered by the vile and

merciless revenge of their slaves. From Demotica, the first scene of the massacre, the surviving vassals of the

count of St. Pol escaped to Adrianople; but the French and Venetians, who occupied that city, were slain or

expelled by the furious multitude: the garrisons that could effect their retreat fell back on each other towards

the metropolis; and the fortresses, that separately stood against the rebels, were ignorant of each other's and

of their sovereign's fate. The voice of fame and fear announced the revolt of the Greeks and the rapid

approach of their Bulgarian ally; and CaloJohn, not depending on the forces of his own kingdom, had drawn

from the Scythian wilderness a body of fourteen thousand Comans, who drank, as it was said, the blood of

[Footnote 24: In CaloJohn's answer to the pope we may find his claims and complaints, (Gesta Innocent III.

[Footnote 25: The Comans were a Tartar or Turkman horde, which encamped in the xiith and xiiith centuries

on the verge of Moldavia. The greater part were pagans, but some were Mahometans, and the whole horde

Alarmed by this sudden and growing danger, the emperor despatched a swift messenger to recall Count

Henry and his troops; and had Baldwin expected the return of his gallant brother, with a supply of twenty

thousand Armenians, he might have encountered the invader with equal numbers and a decisive superiority of

arms and discipline. But the spirit of chivalry could seldom discriminate caution from cowardice; and the

emperor took the field with a hundred and forty knights, and their train of archers and sergeants. The marshal,

who dissuaded and obeyed, led the vanguard in their march to Adrianople; the main body was commanded by

the count of Blois; the aged doge of Venice followed with the rear; and their scanty numbers were increased

from all sides by the fugitive Latins. They undertook to besiege the rebels of Adrianople; and such was the

pious tendency of the crusades that they employed the holy week in pillaging the country for their

subsistence, and in framing engines for the destruction of their fellow Christians. But the Latins were soon

interrupted and alarmed by the light cavalry of the Comans, who boldly skirmished to the edge of their

imperfect lines: and a proclamation was issued by the marshal of Romania, that, on the trumpet's sound, the

cavalry should mount and form; but that none, under pain of death, should abandon themselves to a desultory

and dangerous pursuit. This wise injunction was first disobeyed by the count of Blois, who involved the

emperor in his rashness and ruin. The Comans, of the Parthian or Tartar school, fled before their first charge;

but after a career of two leagues, when the knights and their horses were almost breathless, they suddenly

turned, rallied, and encompassed the heavy squadrons of the Franks. The count was slain on the field; the

emperor was made prisoner; and if the one disdained to fly, if the other refused to yield, their personal

bravery made a poor atonement for their ignorance, or neglect, of the duties of a general. ^26

[Footnote 26: Nicetas, from ignorance or malice, imputes the defeat to the cowardice of Dandolo, (p. 383;)

but Villehardouin shares his own glory with his venerable friend, qui viels home ere et gote ne veoit, mais

Note: Gibbon appears to me to have misapprehended the passage of Nicetas. He says, "that principal and

subtlest mischief. that primary cause of all the horrible miseries suffered by the Romans," i. e. the Byzantines.

It is an effusion of malicious triumph against the Venetians, to whom he always ascribes the capture of

Proud of his victory and his royal prize, the Bulgarian advanced to relieve Adrianople and achieve the

destruction of the Latins. They must inevitably have been destroyed, if the marshal of Romania had not

displayed a cool courage and consummate skill; uncommon in all ages, but most uncommon in those times,

when war was a passion, rather than a science. His grief and fears were poured into the firm and faithful

bosom of the doge; but in the camp he diffused an assurance of safety, which could only be realized by the

general belief. All day he maintained his perilous station between the city and the Barbarians: Villehardouin

decamped in silence at the dead of night; and his masterly retreat of three days would have deserved the

praise of Xenophon and the ten thousand. In the rear, the marshal supported the weight of the pursuit; in the

front, he moderated the impatience of the fugitives; and wherever the Comans approached, they were repelled

by a line of impenetrable spears. On the third day, the weary troops beheld the sea, the solitary town of

Rodosta, ^27 and their friends, who had landed from the Asiatic shore. They embraced, they wept; but they

united their arms and counsels; and in his brother's absence, Count Henry assumed the regency of the empire,

at once in a state of childhood and caducity. ^28 If the Comans withdrew from the summer heats, seven

thousand Latins, in the hour of danger, deserted Constantinople, their brethren, and their vows. Some partial

success was overbalanced by the loss of one hundred and twenty knights in the field of Rusium; and of the

Imperial domain, no more was left than the capital, with two or three adjacent fortresses on the shores of

Europe and Asia. The king of Bulgaria was resistless and inexorable; and CaloJohn respectfully eluded the

demands of the pope, who conjured his new proselyte to restore peace and the emperor to the afflicted Latins.

The deliverance of Baldwin was no longer, he said, in the power of man: that prince had died in prison; and

the manner of his death is variously related by ignorance and credulity. The lovers of a tragic legend will be

pleased to hear, that the royal captive was tempted by the amorous queen of the Bulgarians; that his chaste

refusal exposed him to the falsehood of a woman and the jealousy of a savage; that his hands and feet were

severed from his body; that his bleeding trunk was cast among the carcasses of dogs and horses; and that he

breathed three days, before he was devoured by the birds of prey. ^29 About twenty years afterwards, in a

wood of the Netherlands, a hermit announced himself as the true Baldwin, the emperor of Constantinople,

and lawful sovereign of Flanders. He related the wonders of his escape, his adventures, and his penance,

among a people prone to believe and to rebel; and, in the first transport, Flanders acknowledged her longlost

sovereign. A short examination before the French court detected the impostor, who was punished with an

ignominious death; but the Flemings still adhered to the pleasing error; and the countess Jane is accused by

the gravest historians of sacrificing to her ambition the life of an unfortunate father. ^30

[Footnote 27: The truth of geography, and the original text of Villehardouin, (No. 194,) place Rodosto three

days' journey (trois jornees) from Adrianople: but Vigenere, in his version, has most absurdly substituted

trois heures; and this error, which is not corrected by Ducange has entrapped several moderns, whose names I

[Footnote 28: The reign and end of Baldwin are related by Villehardouin and Nicetas, (p. 386 416;) and

their omissions are supplied by Ducange in his Observations, and to the end of his first book.]

[Footnote 29: After brushing away all doubtful and improbable circumstances, we may prove the death of

Baldwin, 1. By the firm belief of the French barons, (Villehardouin, No. 230.) 2. By the declaration of

CaloJohn himself, who excuses his not releasing the captive emperor, quia debitum carnis exsolverat cum

Note: Compare Von Raumer. Geschichte der Hohenstaufen, vol. ii. p. 237. Petitot, in his preface to

Villehardouin in the Collection des Memoires, relatifs a l'Histoire de France, tom. i. p. 85, expresses his

[Footnote 30: See the story of this impostor from the French and Flemish writers in Ducange, Hist. de C. P.

iii. 9; and the ridiculous fables that were believed by the monks of St. Alban's, in Matthew Paris, Hist. Major,

In all civilized hostility, a treaty is established for the exchange or ransom of prisoners; and if their captivity

be prolonged, their condition is known, and they are treated according to their rank with humanity or honor.

But the savage Bulgarian was a stranger to the laws of war: his prisons were involved in darkness and silence;

and above a year elapsed before the Latins could be assured of the death of Baldwin, before his brother, the

regent Henry, would consent to assume the title of emperor. His moderation was applauded by the Greeks as

an act of rare and inimitable virtue. Their light and perfidious ambition was eager to seize or anticipate the

moment of a vacancy, while a law of succession, the guardian both of the prince and people, was gradually

defined and confirmed in the hereditary monarchies of Europe. In the support of the Eastern empire, Henry

was gradually left without an associate, as the heroes of the crusade retired from the world or from the war.

The doge of Venice, the venerable Dandolo, in the fulness of years and glory, sunk into the grave. The

marquis of Montferrat was slowly recalled from the Peloponnesian war to the revenge of Baldwin and the

defence of Thessalonica. Some nice disputes of feudal homage and service were reconciled in a personal

interview between the emperor and the king; they were firmly united by mutual esteem and the common

danger; and their alliance was sealed by the nuptials of Henry with the daughter of the Italian prince. He soon

deplored the loss of his friend and father. At the persuasion of some faithful Greeks, Boniface made a bold

and successful inroad among the hills of Rhodope: the Bulgarians fled on his approach; they assembled to

harass his retreat. On the intelligence that his rear was attacked, without waiting for any defensive armor, he

leaped on horseback, couched his lance, and drove the enemies before him; but in the rash pursuit he was

pierced with a mortal wound; and the head of the king of Thessalonica was presented to CaloJohn, who

enjoyed the honors, without the merit, of victory. It is here, at this melancholy event, that the pen or the voice

of Jeffrey of Villehardouin seems to drop or to expire; ^31 and if he still exercised his military office of

marshal of Romania, his subsequent exploits are buried in oblivion. ^32 The character of Henry was not

unequal to his arduous situation: in the siege of Constantinople, and beyond the Hellespont, he had deserved

the fame of a valiant knight and a skilful commander; and his courage was tempered with a degree of

prudence and mildness unknown to his impetuous brother. In the double war against the Greeks of Asia and

the Bulgarians of Europe, he was ever the foremost on shipboard or on horseback; and though he cautiously

provided for the success of his arms, the drooping Latins were often roused by his example to save and to

second their fearless emperor. But such efforts, and some supplies of men and money from France, were of

less avail than the errors, the cruelty, and death, of their most formidable adversary. When the despair of the

Greek subjects invited Calo John as their deliverer, they hoped that he would protect their liberty and adopt

their laws: they were soon taught to compare the degrees of national ferocity, and to execrate the savage

conqueror, who no longer dissembled his intention of dispeopling Thrace, of demolishing the cities, and of

transplanting the inhabitants beyond the Danube. Many towns and villages of Thrace were already evacuated:

a heap of ruins marked the place of Philippopolis, and a similar calamity was expected at Demotica and

Adrianople, by the first authors of the revolt. They raised a cry of grief and repentance to the throne of Henry;

the emperor alone had the magnanimity to forgive and trust them. No more than four hundred knights, with

their sergeants and archers, could be assembled under his banner; and with this slender force he fought ^* and

repulsed the Bulgarian, who, besides his infantry, was at the head of forty thousand horse. In this expedition,

Henry felt the difference between a hostile and a friendly country: the remaining cities were preserved by his

arms; and the savage, with shame and loss, was compelled to relinquish his prey. The siege of Thessalonica

was the last of the evils which CaloJohn inflicted or suffered: he was stabbed in the night in his tent; and the

general, perhaps the assassin, who found him weltering in his blood, ascribed the blow, with general

applause, to the lance of St. Demetrius. ^33 After several victories, the prudence of Henry concluded an

honorable peace with the successor of the tyrant, and with the Greek princes of Nice and Epirus. If he ceded

some doubtful limits, an ample kingdom was reserved for himself and his feudatories; and his reign, which

lasted only ten years, afforded a short interval of prosperity and peace. Far above the narrow policy of

Baldwin and Boniface, he freely intrusted to the Greeks the most important offices of the state and army; and

this liberality of sentiment and practice was the more seasonable, as the princes of Nice and Epirus had

already learned to seduce and employ the mercenary valor of the Latins. It was the aim of Henry to unite and

reward his deserving subjects, of every nation and language; but he appeared less solicitous to accomplish the

impracticable union of the two churches. Pelagius, the pope's legate, who acted as the sovereign of

Constantinople, had interdicted the worship of the Greeks, and sternly imposed the payment of tithes, the

double procession of the Holy Ghost, and a blind obedience to the Roman pontiff. As the weaker party, they

pleaded the duties of conscience, and implored the rights of toleration: "Our bodies," they said, "are Caesar's,

but our souls belong only to God. The persecution was checked by the firmness of the emperor: ^34 and if we

can believe that the same prince was poisoned by the Greeks themselves, we must entertain a contemptible

idea of the sense and gratitude of mankind. His valor was a vulgar attribute, which he shared with ten

thousand knights; but Henry possessed the superior courage to oppose, in a superstitious age, the pride and

avarice of the clergy. In the cathedral of St. Sophia he presumed to place his throne on the right hand of the

patriarch; and this presumption excited the sharpest censure of Pope Innocent the Third. By a salutary edict,

one of the first examples of the laws of mortmain, he prohibited the alienation of fiefs: many of the Latins,

desirous of returning to Europe, resigned their estates to the church for a spiritual or temporal reward; these

holy lands were immediately discharged from military service, and a colony of soldiers would have been

[Footnote 31: Villehardouin, No. 257. I quote, with regret, this lamentable conclusion, where we lose at once

the original history, and the rich illustrations of Ducange. The last pages may derive some light from Henry's

[Footnote 32: The marshal was alive in 1212, but he probably died soon afterwards, without returning to

France, (Ducange, Observations sur Villehardouin, p. 238.) His fief of Messinople, the gift of Boniface, was

the ancient Maximianopolis, which flourished in the time of Ammianus Marcellinus, among the cities of

[Footnote *: There was no battle. On the advance of the Latins, John suddenly broke up his camp and

retreated. The Latins considered this unexpected deliverance almost a miracle. Le Beau suggests the

probability that the detection of the Comans, who usually quitted the camp during the heats of summer, may

have caused the flight of the Bulgarians. Nicetas, c. 8 Villebardouin, c. 225. Le Beau, vol. xvii. p. 242. M.]

[Footnote 33: The church of this patron of Thessalonica was served by the canons of the holy sepulchre, and

contained a divine ointment which distilled daily and stupendous miracles, (Ducange, Hist. de C. P. ii. 4.)]

[Footnote 34: Acropolita (c. 17) observes the persecution of the legate, and the toleration of Henry, ('Eon, as

[Footnote 35: See the reign of Henry, in Ducange, (Hist. de C. P. l. i. c. 35 41, l. ii. c. 1 22,) who is much

indebted to the Epistles of the Popes. Le Beau (Hist. du Bas Empire, tom. xxi. p. 120 122) has found,

perhaps in Doutreman, some laws of Henry, which determined the service of fiefs, and the prerogatives of the

The virtuous Henry died at Thessalonica, in the defence of that kingdom, and of an infant, the son of his

friend Boniface. In the two first emperors of Constantinople the male line of the counts of Flanders was

extinct. But their sister Yolande was the wife of a French prince, the mother of a numerous progeny; and one

of her daughters had married Andrew king of Hungary, a brave and pious champion of the cross. By seating

him on the Byzantine throne, the barons of Romania would have acquired the forces of a neighboring and

warlike kingdom; but the prudent Andrew revered the laws of succession; and the princess Yolande, with her

husband Peter of Courtenay, count of Auxerre, was invited by the Latins to assume the empire of the East.

The royal birth of his father, the noble origin of his mother, recommended to the barons of France the first

cousin of their king. His reputation was fair, his possessions were ample, and in the bloody crusade against

the Albigeois, the soldiers and the priests had been abundantly satisfied of his zeal and valor. Vanity might

applaud the elevation of a French emperor of Constantinople; but prudence must pity, rather than envy, his

treacherous and imaginary greatness. To assert and adorn his title, he was reduced to sell or mortgage the best

of his patrimony. By these expedients, the liberality of his royal kinsman Philip Augustus, and the national

spirit of chivalry, he was enabled to pass the Alps at the head of one hundred and forty knights, and five

thousand five hundred sergeants and archers. After some hesitation, Pope Honorius the Third was persuaded

to crown the successor of Constantine: but he performed the ceremony in a church without the walls, lest he

should seem to imply or to bestow any right of sovereignty over the ancient capital of the empire. The

Venetians had engaged to transport Peter and his forces beyond the Adriatic, and the empress, with her four

children, to the Byzantine palace; but they required, as the price of their service, that he should recover

Durazzo from the despot of Epirus. Michael Angelus, or Comnenus, the first of his dynasty, had bequeathed

the succession of his power and ambition to Theodore, his legitimate brother, who already threatened and

invaded the establishments of the Latins. After discharging his debt by a fruitless assault, the emperor raised

the siege to prosecute a long and perilous journey over land from Durazzo to Thessalonica. He was soon lost

in the mountains of Epirus: the passes were fortified; his provisions exhausted; he was delayed and deceived

by a treacherous negotiation; and, after Peter of Courtenay and the Roman legate had been arrested in a

banquet, the French troops, without leaders or hopes, were eager to exchange their arms for the delusive

promise of mercy and bread. The Vatican thundered; and the impious Theodore was threatened with the

vengeance of earth and heaven; but the captive emperor and his soldiers were forgotten, and the reproaches of

the pope are confined to the imprisonment of his legate. No sooner was he satisfied by the deliverance of the

priests and a promise of spiritual obedience, than he pardoned and protected the despot of Epirus. His

peremptory commands suspended the ardor of the Venetians and the king of Hungary; and it was only by a

natural or untimely death ^36 that Peter of Courtenay was released from his hopeless captivity. ^37 [Footnote

36: Acropolita (c. 14) affirms, that Peter of Courtenay died by the sword, but from his dark expressions, I

should conclude a previous captivity. The Chronicle of Auxerre delays the emperor's death till the year 1219;

Note: Whatever may have been the fact, this can hardly be made out from the expressions of Acropolita.

[Footnote 37: See the reign and death of Peter of Courtenay, in Ducange, (Hist. de C. P. l. ii. c. 22 28,) who

The long ignorance of his fate, and the presence of the lawful sovereign, of Yolande, his wife or widow,

delayed the proclamation of a new emperor. Before her death, and in the midst of her grief, she was delivered

of a son, who was named Baldwin, the last and most unfortunate of the Latin princes of Constantinople. His

birth endeared him to the barons of Romania; but his childhood would have prolonged the troubles of a

minority, and his claims were superseded by the elder claims of his brethren. The first of these, Philip of

Courtenay, who derived from his mother the inheritance of Namur, had the wisdom to prefer the substance of

a marquisate to the shadow of an empire; and on his refusal, Robert, the second of the sons of Peter and

Yolande, was called to the throne of Constantinople. Warned by his father's mischance, he pursued his slow

and secure journey through Germany and along the Danube: a passage was opened by his sister's marriage

with the king of Hungary; and the emperor Robert was crowned by the patriarch in the cathedral of St.

Sophia. But his reign was an aera of calamity and disgrace; and the colony, as it was styled, of New France

yielded on all sides to the Greeks of Nice and Epirus. After a victory, which he owed to his perfidy rather

than his courage, Theodore Angelus entered the kingdom of Thessalonica, expelled the feeble Demetrius, the

son of the marquis Boniface, erected his standard on the walls of Adrianople; and added, by his vanity, a third

or a fourth name to the list of rival emperors. The relics of the Asiatic province were swept away by John

Vataces, the soninlaw and successor of Theodore Lascaris, and who, in a triumphant reign of thirtythree

years, displayed the virtues both of peace and war. Under his discipline, the swords of the French mercenaries

were the most effectual instruments of his conquests, and their desertion from the service of their country was

at once a symptom and a cause of the rising ascendant of the Greeks. By the construction of a fleet, he

obtained the command of the Hellespont, reduced the islands of Lesbos and Rhodes, attacked the Venetians

of Candia, and intercepted the rare and parsimonious succors of the West. Once, and once only, the Latin

emperor sent an army against Vataces; and in the defeat of that army, the veteran knights, the last of the

original conquerors, were left on the field of battle. But the success of a foreign enemy was less painful to the

pusillanimous Robert than the insolence of his Latin subjects, who confounded the weakness of the emperor

and of the empire. His personal misfortunes will prove the anarchy of the government and the ferociousness

of the times. The amorous youth had neglected his Greek bride, the daughter of Vataces, to introduce into the

palace a beautiful maid, of a private, though noble family of Artois; and her mother had been tempted by the

lustre of the purple to forfeit her engagements with a gentleman of Burgundy. His love was converted into

rage; he assembled his friends, forced the palace gates, threw the mother into the sea, and inhumanly cut off

the nose and lips of the wife or concubine of the emperor. Instead of punishing the offender, the barons

avowed and applauded the savage deed, ^38 which, as a prince and as a man, it was impossible that Robert

should forgive. He escaped from the guilty city to implore the justice or compassion of the pope: the emperor

was coolly exhorted to return to his station; before he could obey, he sunk under the weight of grief, shame,

and impotent resentment. ^39 [Footnote 38: Marinus Sanutus (Secreta Fidelium Crucis, l. ii. p. 4, c. 18, p. 73)

is so much delighted with this bloody deed, that he has transcribed it in his margin as a bonum exemplum.

[Footnote 39: See the reign of Robert, in Ducange, (Hist. de C. P. l. ii. c. 12.)]

It was only in the age of chivalry, that valor could ascend from a private station to the thrones of Jerusalem

and Constantinople. The titular kingdom of Jerusalem had devolved to Mary, the daughter of Isabella and

Conrad of Montferrat, and the granddaughter of Almeric or Amaury. She was given to John of Brienne, of a

noble family in Champagne, by the public voice, and the judgment of Philip Augustus, who named him as the

most worthy champion of the Holy Land. ^40 In the fifth crusade, he led a hundred thousand Latins to the

conquest of Egypt: by him the siege of Damietta was achieved; and the subsequent failure was justly ascribed

to the pride and avarice of the legate. After the marriage of his daughter with Frederic the Second, ^41 he was

provoked by the emperor's ingratitude to accept the command of the army of the church; and though

advanced in life, and despoiled of royalty, the sword and spirit of John of Brienne were still ready for the

service of Christendom. In the seven years of his brother's reign, Baldwin of Courtenay had not emerged

from a state of childhood, and the barons of Romania felt the strong necessity of placing the sceptre in the

hands of a man and a hero. The veteran king of Jerusalem might have disdained the name and office of

regent; they agreed to invest him for his life with the title and prerogatives of emperor, on the sole condition

that Baldwin should marry his second daughter, and succeed at a mature age to the throne of Constantinople.

The expectation, both of the Greeks and Latins, was kindled by the renown, the choice, and the presence of

John of Brienne; and they admired his martial aspect, his green and vigorous age of more than fourscore

years, and his size and stature, which surpassed the common measure of mankind. ^42 But avarice, and the

love of ease, appear to have chilled the ardor of enterprise: ^* his troops were disbanded, and two years rolled

away without action or honor, till he was awakened by the dangerous alliance of Vataces emperor of Nice,

and of Azan king of Bulgaria. They besieged Constantinople by sea and land, with an army of one hundred

thousand men, and a fleet of three hundred ships of war; while the entire force of the Latin emperor was

reduced to one hundred and sixty knights, and a small addition of sergeants and archers. I tremble to relate,

that instead of defending the city, the hero made a sally at the head of his cavalry; and that of forty eight

squadrons of the enemy, no more than three escaped from the edge of his invincible sword. Fired by his

example, the infantry and the citizens boarded the vessels that anchored close to the walls; and twentyfive

were dragged in triumph into the harbor of Constantinople. At the summons of the emperor, the vassals and

allies armed in her defence; broke through every obstacle that opposed their passage; and, in the succeeding

year, obtained a second victory over the same enemies. By the rude poets of the age, John of Brienne is

compared to Hector, Roland, and Judas Machabaeus: ^43 but their credit, and his glory, receive some

abatement from the silence of the Greeks. The empire was soon deprived of the last of her champions; and

the dying monarch was ambitious to enter paradise in the habit of a Franciscan friar. ^44

[Footnote 40: Rex igitur Franciae, deliberatione habita, respondit nuntiis, se daturum hominem Syriae

partibus aptum; in armis probum (preux) in bellis securum, in agendis providum, Johannem comitem

Brennensem. Sanut. Secret. Fidelium, l. iii. p. xi. c. 4, p. 205 Matthew Paris, p. 159.]

[Footnote 41: Giannone (Istoria Civile, tom. ii. l. xvi. p. 380 385) discusses the marriage of Frederic II.

with the daughter of John of Brienne, and the double union of the crowns of Naples and Jerusalem.]

[Footnote 42: Acropolita, c. 27. The historian was at that time a boy, and educated at Constantinople. In

1233, when he was eleven years old, his father broke the Latin chain, left a splendid fortune, and escaped to

[Footnote *: John de Brienne, elected emperor 1229, wasted two years in preparations, and did not arrive at

Constantinople till 1231. Two years more glided away in inglorious inaction; he then made some ineffective

[Footnote 43: Philip Mouskes, bishop of Tournay, (A.D. 1274 1282,) has composed a poem, or rather string

of verses, in bad old Flemish French, on the Latin emperors of Constantinople, which Ducange has published

at the end of Villehardouin; see p. 38, for the prowess of John of Brienne. N'Aie, Ector, Roll' ne Ogiers Ne

Judas Machabeus li fiers Tant ne fit d'armes en estors Com fist li Rois Jehans cel jors Et il defors et il dedans

[Footnote 44: See the reign of John de Brienne, in Ducange, Hist. de C. P. l. ii. c. 13 26.]

In the double victory of John of Brienne, I cannot discover the name or exploits of his pupil Baldwin, who

had attained the age of military service, and who succeeded to the imperial dignity on the decease of his

adoptive father. ^45 The royal youth was employed on a commission more suitable to his temper; he was sent

to visit the Western courts, of the pope more especially, and of the king of France; to excite their pity by the

view of his innocence and distress; and to obtain some supplies of men or money for the relief of the sinking

empire. He thrice repeated these mendicant visits, in which he seemed to prolong his stay and postpone his

return; of the fiveandtwenty years of his reign, a greater number were spent abroad than at home; and in no

place did the emperor deem himself less free and secure than in his native country and his capital. On some

public occasions, his vanity might be soothed by the title of Augustus, and by the honors of the purple; and at

the general council of Lyons, when Frederic the Second was excommunicated and deposed, his Oriental

colleague was enthroned on the right hand of the pope. But how often was the exile, the vagrant, the Imperial

beggar, humbled with scorn, insulted with pity, and degraded in his own eyes and those of the nations! In his

first visit to England, he was stopped at Dover by a severe reprimand, that he should presume, without leave,

to enter an independent kingdom. After some delay, Baldwin, however, was permitted to pursue his journey,

was entertained with cold civility, and thankfully departed with a present of seven hundred marks. ^46 From

the avarice of Rome he could only obtain the proclamation of a crusade, and a treasure of indulgences; a coin

whose currency was depreciated by too frequent and indiscriminate abuse. His birth and misfortunes

recommended him to the generosity of his cousin Louis the Ninth; but the martial zeal of the saint was

diverted from Constantinople to Egypt and Palestine; and the public and private poverty of Baldwin was

alleviated, for a moment, by the alienation of the marquisate of Namur and the lordship of Courtenay, the last

remains of his inheritance. ^47 By such shameful or ruinous expedients, he once more returned to Romania,

with an army of thirty thousand soldiers, whose numbers were doubled in the apprehension of the Greeks. His

first despatches to France and England announced his victories and his hopes: he had reduced the country

round the capital to the distance of three days' journey; and if he succeeded against an important, though

nameless, city, (most probably Chiorli,) the frontier would be safe and the passage accessible. But these

expectations (if Baldwin was sincere) quickly vanished like a dream: the troops and treasures of France

melted away in his unskilful hands; and the throne of the Latin emperor was protected by a dishonorable

alliance with the Turks and Comans. To secure the former, he consented to bestow his niece on the

unbelieving sultan of Cogni; to please the latter, he complied with their Pagan rites; a dog was sacrificed

between the two armies; and the contracting parties tasted each other's blood, as a pledge of their fidelity. ^48

In the palace, or prison, of Constantinople, the successor of Augustus demolished the vacant houses for

winter fuel, and stripped the lead from the churches for the daily expense of his family. Some usurious loans

were dealt with a scanty hand by the merchants of Italy; and Philip, his son and heir, was pawned at Venice

as the security for a debt. ^49 Thirst, hunger, and nakedness, are positive evils: but wealth is relative; and a

prince who would be rich in a private station, may be exposed by the increase of his wants to all the anxiety

and bitterness of poverty. [Footnote 45: See the reign of Baldwin II. till his expulsion from Constantinople, in

[Footnote 46: Matthew Paris relates the two visits of Baldwin II. to the English court, p. 396, 637; his return

to Greece armata manu, p. 407 his letters of his nomen formidabile, p. 481, (a passage which has escaped

[Footnote 47: Louis IX. disapproved and stopped the alienation of Courtenay (Ducange, l. iv. c. 23.) It is now

annexed to the royal demesne but granted for a term (engage) to the family of Boulainvilliers. Courtenay, in

the election of Nemours in the Isle de France, is a town of 900 inhabitants, with the remains of a castle,

[Footnote 48: Joinville, p. 104, edit. du Louvre. A Coman prince, who died without baptism, was buried at

But in this abject distress, the emperor and empire were still possessed of an ideal treasure, which drew its

fantastic value from the superstition of the Christian world. The merit of the true cross was somewhat

impaired by its frequent division; and a long captivity among the infidels might shed some suspicion on the

fragments that were produced in the East and West. But another relic of the Passion was preserved in the

Imperial chapel of Constantinople; and the crown of thorns which had been placed on the head of Christ was

equally precious and authentic. It had formerly been the practice of the Egyptian debtors to deposit, as a

security, the mummies of their parents; and both their honor and religion were bound for the redemption of

the pledge. In the same manner, and in the absence of the emperor, the barons of Romania borrowed the sum

of thirteen thousand one hundred and thirtyfour pieces of gold ^50 on the credit of the holy crown: they

failed in the performance of their contract; and a rich Venetian, Nicholas Querini, undertook to satisfy their

impatient creditors, on condition that the relic should be lodged at Venice, to become his absolute property, if

it were not redeemed within a short and definite term. The barons apprised their sovereign of the hard treaty

and impending loss and as the empire could not afford a ransom of seven thousand pounds sterling, Baldwin

was anxious to snatch the prize from the Venetians, and to vest it with more honor and emolument in the

hands of the most Christian king. ^51 Yet the negotiation was attended with some delicacy. In the purchase of

relics, the saint would have started at the guilt of simony; but if the mode of expression were changed, he

might lawfully repay the debt, accept the gift, and acknowledge the obligation. His ambassadors, two

Dominicans, were despatched to Venice to redeem and receive the holy crown which had escaped the dangers

of the sea and the galleys of Vataces. On opening a wooden box, they recognized the seals of the doge and

barons, which were applied on a shrine of silver; and within this shrine the monument of the Passion was

enclosed in a golden vase. The reluctant Venetians yielded to justice and power: the emperor Frederic granted

a free and honorable passage; the court of France advanced as far as Troyes in Champagne, to meet with

devotion this inestimable relic: it was borne in triumph through Paris by the king himself, barefoot, and in his

shirt; and a free gift of ten thousand marks of silver reconciled Baldwin to his loss. The success of this

transaction tempted the Latin emperor to offer with the same generosity the remaining furniture of his chapel;

^52 a large and authentic portion of the true cross; the babylinen of the Son of God, the lance, the sponge,

and the chain, of his Passion; the rod of Moses, and part of the skull of St. John the Baptist. For the reception

of these spiritual treasures, twenty thousand marks were expended by St. Louis on a stately foundation, the

holy chapel of Paris, on which the muse of Boileau has bestowed a comic immortality. The truth of such

remote and ancient relics, which cannot be proved by any human testimony, must be admitted by those who

believe in the miracles which they have performed. About the middle of the last age, an inveterate ulcer was

touched and cured by a holy prickle of the holy crown: ^53 the prodigy is attested by the most pious and

enlightened Christians of France; nor will the fact be easily disproved, except by those who are armed with a

[Footnote 50: Under the words Perparus, Perpera, Hyperperum, Ducange is short and vague: Monetae genus.

From a corrupt passage of Guntherus, (Hist. C. P. c. 8, p. 10,) I guess that the Perpera was the nummus

aureus, the fourth part of a mark of silver, or about ten shillings sterling in value. In lead it would be too

[Footnote 51: For the translation of the holy crown, from Constantinople to Paris, see Ducange (Hist. de C. P.

[Footnote 52: Melanges tires d'une Grande Bibliotheque, tom. xliii. p. 201 205. The Lutrin of Boileau

exhibits the inside, the soul and manners of the Sainte Chapelle; and many facts relative to the institution are

[Footnote 53: It was performed A.D. 1656, March 24, on the niece of Pascal; and that superior genius, with

Arnauld, Nicole, were on the spot, to believe and attest a miracle which confounded the Jesuits, and saved

Port Royal, (Oeuvres de Racine, tom. vi. p. 176 187, in his eloquent History of Port Royal.)]

[Footnote 54: Voltaire (Siecle de Louis XIV. c. 37, (Oeuvres, tom. ix. p. 178, 179) strives to invalidate the

fact: but Hume, (Essays, vol. ii. p. 483, 484,) with more skill and success, seizes the battery, and turns the

The Latins of Constantinople ^55 were on all sides encompassed and pressed; their sole hope, the last delay

of their ruin, was in the division of their Greek and Bulgarian enemies; and of this hope they were deprived

by the superior arms and policy of Vataces, emperor of Nice. From the Propontis to the rocky coast of

Pamphylia, Asia was peaceful and prosperous under his reign; and the events of every campaign extended his

influence in Europe. The strong cities of the hills of Macedonia and Thrace were rescued from the

Bulgarians; and their kingdom was circumscribed by its present and proper limits, along the southern banks

of the Danube. The sole emperor of the Romans could no longer brook that a lord of Epirus, a Comnenian

prince of the West, should presume to dispute or share the honors of the purple; and the humble Demetrius

changed the color of his buskins, and accepted with gratitude the appellation of despot. His own subjects

were exasperated by his baseness and incapacity; they implored the protection of their supreme lord. After

some resistance, the kingdom of Thessalonica was united to the empire of Nice; and Vataces reigned without

a competitor from the Turkish borders to the Adriatic Gulf. The princes of Europe revered his merit and

power; and had he subscribed an orthodox creed, it should seem that the pope would have abandoned without

reluctance the Latin throne of Constantinople. But the death of Vataces, the short and busy reign of Theodore

his son, and the helpless infancy of his grandson John, suspended the restoration of the Greeks. In the next

chapter, I shall explain their domestic revolutions; in this place, it will be sufficient to observe, that the young

prince was oppressed by the ambition of his guardian and colleague, Michael Palaeologus, who displayed the

virtues and vices that belong to the founder of a new dynasty. The emperor Baldwin had flattered himself,

that he might recover some provinces or cities by an impotent negotiation. His ambassadors were dismissed

from Nice with mockery and contempt. At every place which they named, Palaeologus alleged some special

reason, which rendered it dear and valuable in his eyes: in the one he was born; in another he had been first

promoted to military command; and in a third he had enjoyed, and hoped long to enjoy, the pleasures of the

chase. "And what then do you propose to give us?" said the astonished deputies. "Nothing," replied the

Greek, "not a foot of land. If your master be desirous of peace, let him pay me, as an annual tribute, the sum

which he receives from the trade and customs of Constantinople. On these terms, I may allow him to reign. If

he refuses, it is war. I am not ignorant of the art of war, and I trust the event to God and my sword." ^56 An

expedition against the despot of Epirus was the first prelude of his arms. If a victory was followed by a

defeat; if the race of the Comneni or Angeli survived in those mountains his efforts and his reign; the

captivity of Villehardouin, prince of Achaia, deprived the Latins of the most active and powerful vassal of

their expiring monarchy. The republics of Venice and Genoa disputed, in the first of their naval wars, the

command of the sea and the commerce of the East. Pride and interest attached the Venetians to the defence of

Constantinople; their rivals were tempted to promote the designs of her enemies, and the alliance of the

Genoese with the schismatic conqueror provoked the indignation of the Latin church. ^57

[Footnote 55: The gradual losses of the Latins may be traced in the third fourth, and fifth books of the

compilation of Ducange: but of the Greek conquests he has dropped many circumstances, which may be

recovered from the larger history of George Acropolita, and the three first books of Nicephorus, Gregoras,

two writers of the Byzantine series, who have had the good fortune to meet with learned editors Leo Allatius

[Footnote 57: The Greeks, ashamed of any foreign aid, disguise the alliance and succor of the Genoese: but

the fact is proved by the testimony of J Villani (Chron. l. vi. c. 71, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum,

tom. xiii. p. 202, 203) and William de Nangis, (Annales de St. Louis, p. 248 in the Louvre Joinville,) two

impartial foreigners; and Urban IV threatened to deprive Genoa of her archbishop.]

Intent on his great object, the emperor Michael visited in person and strengthened the troops and fortifications

of Thrace. The remains of the Latins were driven from their last possessions: he assaulted without success the

suburb of Galata; and corresponded with a perfidious baron, who proved unwilling, or unable, to open the

gates of the metropolis. The next spring, his favorite general, Alexius Strategopulus, whom he had decorated

with the title of Caesar, passed the Hellespont with eight hundred horse and some infantry, ^58 on a secret

expedition. His instructions enjoined him to approach, to listen, to watch, but not to risk any doubtful or

dangerous enterprise against the city. The adjacent territory between the Propontis and the Black Sea was

cultivated by a hardy race of peasants and outlaws, exercised in arms, uncertain in their allegiance, but

inclined by language, religion, and present advantage, to the party of the Greeks. They were styled the

volunteers; ^59 and by their free service the army of Alexius, with the regulars of Thrace and the Coman

auxiliaries, ^60 was augmented to the number of fiveandtwenty thousand men. By the ardor of the

volunteers, and by his own ambition, the Caesar was stimulated to disobey the precise orders of his master, in

the just confidence that success would plead his pardon and reward. The weakness of Constantinople, and the

distress and terror of the Latins, were familiar to the observation of the volunteers; and they represented the

present moment as the most propitious to surprise and conquest. A rash youth, the new governor of the

Venetian colony, had sailed away with thirty galleys, and the best of the French knights, on a wild expedition

to Daphnusia, a town on the Black Sea, at the distance of forty leagues; ^* and the remaining Latins were

without strength or suspicion. They were informed that Alexius had passed the Hellespont; but their

apprehensions were lulled by the smallness of his original numbers; and their imprudence had not watched

the subsequent increase of his army. If he left his main body to second and support his operations, he might

advance unperceived in the night with a chosen detachment. While some applied scalingladders to the

lowest part of the walls, they were secure of an old Greek, who would introduce their companions through a

subterraneous passage into his house; they could soon on the inside break an entrance through the golden

gate, which had been long obstructed; and the conqueror would be in the heart of the city before the Latins

were conscious of their danger. After some debate, the Caesar resigned himself to the faith of the volunteers;

they were trusty, bold, and successful; and in describing the plan, I have already related the execution and

success. ^61 But no sooner had Alexius passed the threshold of the golden gate, than he trembled at his own

rashness; he paused, he deliberated; till the desperate volunteers urged him forwards, by the assurance that in

retreat lay the greatest and most inevitable danger. Whilst the Caesar kept his regulars in firm array, the

Comans dispersed themselves on all sides; an alarm was sounded, and the threats of fire and pillage

compelled the citizens to a decisive resolution. The Greeks of Constantinople remembered their native

sovereigns; the Genoese merchants their recent alliance and Venetian foes; every quarter was in arms; and the

air resounded with a general acclamation of "Long life and victory to Michael and John, the august emperors

of the Romans!" Their rival, Baldwin, was awakened by the sound; but the most pressing danger could not

prompt him to draw his sword in the defence of a city which he deserted, perhaps, with more pleasure than

regret: he fled from the palace to the seashore, where he descried the welcome sails of the fleet returning

from the vain and fruitless attempt on Daphnusia. Constantinople was irrecoverably lost; but the Latin

emperor and the principal families embarked on board the Venetian galleys, and steered for the Isle of

Euboea, and afterwards for Italy, where the royal fugitive was entertained by the pope and Sicilian king with

a mixture of contempt and pity. From the loss of Constantinople to his death, he consumed thirteen years,

soliciting the Catholic powers to join in his restoration: the lesson had been familiar to his youth; nor was his

last exile more indigent or shameful than his three former pilgrimages to the courts of Europe. His son Philip

was the heir of an ideal empire; and the pretensions of his daughter Catherine were transported by her

marriage to Charles of Valois, the brother of Philip the Fair, king of France. The house of Courtenay was

represented in the female line by successive alliances, till the title of emperor of Constantinople, too bulky

and sonorous for a private name, modestly expired in silence and oblivion. ^62 [Footnote 58: Some

precautions must be used in reconciling the discordant numbers; the 800 soldiers of Nicetas, the 25,000 of

Spandugino, (apud Ducange, l. v. c. 24;) the Greeks and Scythians of Acropolita; and the numerous army of

[Footnote 60: It is needless to seek these Comans in the deserts of Tartary, or even of Moldavia. A part of the

horde had submitted to John Vataces, and was probably settled as a nursery of soldiers on some waste lands

[Footnote *: According to several authorities, particularly Abulfaradj. Chron. Arab. p. 336, this was a

stratagem on the part of the Greeks to weaken the garrison of Constantinople. The Greek commander offered

[Footnote 61: The loss of Constantinople is briefly told by the Latins: the conquest is described with more

satisfaction by the Greeks; by Acropolita, (c. 85,) Pachymer, (l. ii. c. 26, 27,) Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. iv. c.

[Footnote 62: See the three last books (l. v. viii.) and the genealogical tables of Ducange. In the year 1382,

the titular emperor of Constantinople was James de Baux, duke of Andria in the kingdom of Naples, the son

of Margaret, daughter of Catherine de Valois, daughter of Catharine, daughter of Philip, son of Baldwin II.,

After this narrative of the expeditions of the Latins to Palestine and Constantinople, I cannot dismiss the

subject without resolving the general consequences on the countries that were the scene, and on the nations

that were the actors, of these memorable crusades. ^63 As soon as the arms of the Franks were withdrawn,

the impression, though not the memory, was erased in the Mahometan realms of Egypt and Syria. The

faithful disciples of the prophet were never tempted by a profane desire to study the laws or language of the

idolaters; nor did the simplicity of their primitive manners receive the slightest alteration from their

intercourse in peace and war with the unknown strangers of the West. The Greeks, who thought themselves

proud, but who were only vain, showed a disposition somewhat less inflexible. In the efforts for the recovery

of their empire, they emulated the valor, discipline, and tactics of their antagonists. The modern literature of

the West they might justly despise; but its free spirit would instruct them in the rights of man; and some

institutions of public and private life were adopted from the French. The correspondence of Constantinople

and Italy diffused the knowledge of the Latin tongue; and several of the fathers and classics were at length

honored with a Greek version. ^64 But the national and religious prejudices of the Orientals were inflamed by

persecution, and the reign of the Latins confirmed the separation of the two churches.

[Footnote 63: Abulfeda, who saw the conclusion of the crusades, speaks of the kingdoms of the Franks, and

those of the Negroes, as equally unknown, (Prolegom. ad Geograph.) Had he not disdained the Latin

language, how easily might the Syrian prince have found books and interpreters!]

[Footnote 64: A short and superficial account of these versions from Latin into Greek is given by Huet, (de

Interpretatione et de claris Interpretibus (p. 131 135.) Maximus Planudes, a monk of Constantinople, (A.D.

1327 1353) has translated Caesar's Commentaries, the Somnium Scipionis, the Metamorphoses and

If we compare the aera of the crusades, the Latins of Europe with the Greeks and Arabians, their respective

degrees of knowledge, industry, and art, our rude ancestors must be content with the third rank in the scale of

nations. Their successive improvement and present superiority may be ascribed to a peculiar energy of

character, to an active and imitative spirit, unknown to their more polished rivals, who at that time were in a

stationary or retrograde state. With such a disposition, the Latins should have derived the most early and

essential benefits from a series of events which opened to their eyes the prospect of the world, and introduced

them to a long and frequent intercourse with the more cultivated regions of the East. The first and most

obvious progress was in trade and manufactures, in the arts which are strongly prompted by the thirst of

wealth, the calls of necessity, and the gratification of the sense or vanity. Among the crowd of unthinking

fanatics, a captive or a pilgrim might sometimes observe the superior refinements of Cairo and

Constantinople: the first importer of windmills ^65 was the benefactor of nations; and if such blessings are

enjoyed without any grateful remembrance, history has condescended to notice the more apparent luxuries of

silk and sugar, which were transported into Italy from Greece and Egypt. But the intellectual wants of the

Latins were more slowly felt and supplied; the ardor of studious curiosity was awakened in Europe by

different causes and more recent events; and, in the age of the crusades, they viewed with careless

indifference the literature of the Greeks and Arabians. Some rudiments of mathematical and medicinal

knowledge might be imparted in practice and in figures; necessity might produce some interpreters for the

grosser business of merchants and soldiers; but the commerce of the Orientals had not diffused the study and

knowledge of their languages in the schools of Europe. ^66 If a similar principle of religion repulsed the

idiom of the Koran, it should have excited their patience and curiosity to understand the original text of the

gospel; and the same grammar would have unfolded the sense of Plato and the beauties of Homer. Yet in a

reign of sixty years, the Latins of Constantinople disdained the speech and learning of their subjects; and the

manuscripts were the only treasures which the natives might enjoy without rapine or envy. Aristotle was

indeed the oracle of the Western universities, but it was a barbarous Aristotle; and, instead of ascending to the

fountain head, his Latin votaries humbly accepted a corrupt and remote version, from the Jews and Moors of

Andalusia. The principle of the crusades was a savage fanaticism; and the most important effects were

analogous to the cause. Each pilgrim was ambitious to return with his sacred spoils, the relics of Greece and

Palestine; ^67 and each relic was preceded and followed by a train of miracles and visions. The belief of the

Catholics was corrupted by new legends, their practice by new superstitions; and the establishment of the

inquisition, the mendicant orders of monks and friars, the last abuse of indulgences, and the final progress of

idolatry, flowed from the baleful fountain of the holy war. The active spirit of the Latins preyed on the vitals

of their reason and religion; and if the ninth and tenth centuries were the times of darkness, the thirteenth and

[Footnote 65: Windmills, first invented in the dry country of Asia Minor, were used in Normandy as early as

the year 1105, (Vie privee des Francois, tom. i. p. 42, 43. Ducange, Gloss. Latin. tom. iv. p. 474)]

[Footnote 66: See the complaints of Roger Bacon, (Biographia Britannica, vol. i. p. 418, Kippis's edition.) If

Bacon himself, or Gerbert, understood some Greek, they were prodigies, and owed nothing to the commerce

[Footnote 67: Such was the opinion of the great Leibnitz, (Oeuvres de Fontenelle, tom. v. p. 458,) a master of

the history of the middle ages. I shall only instance the pedigree of the Carmelites, and the flight of the house

In the profession of Christianity, in the cultivation of a fertile land, the northern conquerors of the Roman

empire insensibly mingled with the provincials, and rekindled the embers of the arts of antiquity. Their

settlements about the age of Charlemagne had acquired some degree of order and stability, when they were

overwhelmed by new swarms of invaders, the Normans, Saracens, ^68 and Hungarians, who replunged the

western countries of Europe into their former state of anarchy and barbarism. About the eleventh century, the

second tempest had subsided by the expulsion or conversion of the enemies of Christendom: the tide of

civilization, which had so long ebbed, began to flow with a steady and accelerated course; and a fairer

prospect was opened to the hopes and efforts of the rising generations. Great was the increase, and rapid the

progress, during the two hundred years of the crusades; and some philosophers have applauded the propitious

influence of these holy wars, which appear to me to have checked rather than forwarded the maturity of

Europe. ^69 The lives and labors of millions, which were buried in the East, would have been more profitably

employed in the improvement of their native country: the accumulated stock of industry and wealth would

have overflowed in navigation and trade; and the Latins would have been enriched and enlightened by a pure

and friendly correspondence with the climates of the East. In one respect I can indeed perceive the accidental

operation of the crusades, not so much in producing a benefit as in removing an evil. The larger portion of the

inhabitants of Europe was chained to the soil, without freedom, or property, or knowledge; and the two orders

of ecclesiastics and nobles, whose numbers were comparatively small, alone deserved the name of citizens

and men. This oppressive system was supported by the arts of the clergy and the swords of the barons. The

authority of the priests operated in the darker ages as a salutary antidote: they prevented the total extinction of

letters, mitigated the fierceness of the times, sheltered the poor and defenceless, and preserved or revived the

peace and order of civil society. But the independence, rapine, and discord of the feudal lords were unmixed

with any semblance of good; and every hope of industry and improvement was crushed by the iron weight of

the martial aristocracy. Among the causes that undermined that Gothic edifice, a conspicuous place must be

allowed to the crusades. The estates of the barons were dissipated, and their race was often extinguished, in

these costly and perilous expeditions. Their poverty extorted from their pride those charters of freedom which

unlocked the fetters of the slave, secured the farm of the peasant and the shop of the artificer, and gradually

restored a substance and a soul to the most numerous and useful part of the community. The conflagration

which destroyed the tall and barren trees of the forest gave air and scope to the vegetation of the smaller and

[Footnote 68: If I rank the Saracens with the Barbarians, it is only relative to their wars, or rather inroads, in

[Footnote 69: On this interesting subject, the progress of society in Europe, a strong ray of philosophical light

has broke from Scotland in our own times; and it is with private, as well as public regard, that I repeat the

[Footnote *: On the consequences of the crusades, compare the valuable Essay of Reeren, that of M. Choiseul

d'Aillecourt, and a chapter of Mr. Forster's "Mahometanism Unveiled." I may admire this gentleman's

learning and industry, without pledging myself to his wild theory of prophets interpretation. M.] Digression

The purple of three emperors, who have reigned at Constantinople, will authorize or excuse a digression on

the origin and singular fortunes of the house of Courtenay, ^70 in the three principal branches: I. Of Edessa;

II. Of France; and III. Of England; of which the last only has survived the revolutions of eight hundred years.

[Footnote 70: I have applied, but not confined, myself to A genealogical History of the noble and illustrious

Family of Courtenay, by Ezra Cleaveland, Tutor to Sir William Courtenay, and Rector of Honiton; Exon.

1735, in folio. The first part is extracted from William of Tyre; the second from Bouchet's French history;

and the third from various memorials, public, provincial, and private, of the Courtenays of Devonshire The

rector of Honiton has more gratitude than industry, and more industry than criticism.]

I. Before the introduction of trade, which scatters riches, and of knowledge, which dispels prejudice, the

prerogative of birth is most strongly felt and most humbly acknowledged. In every age, the laws and manners

of the Germans have discriminated the ranks of society; the dukes and counts, who shared the empire of

Charlemagne, converted their office to an inheritance; and to his children, each feudal lord bequeathed his

honor and his sword. The proudest families are content to lose, in the darkness of the middle ages, the tree of

their pedigree, which, however deep and lofty, must ultimately rise from a plebeian root; and their historians

must descend ten centuries below the Christian aera, before they can ascertain any lineal succession by the

evidence of surnames, of arms, and of authentic records. With the first rays of light, ^71 we discern the

nobility and opulence of Atho, a French knight; his nobility, in the rank and title of a nameless father; his

opulence, in the foundation of the castle of Courtenay in the district of Gatinois, about fiftysix miles to the

south of Paris. From the reign of Robert, the son of Hugh Capet, the barons of Courtenay are conspicuous

among the immediate vassals of the crown; and Joscelin, the grandson of Atho and a noble dame, is enrolled

among the heroes of the first crusade. A domestic alliance (their mothers were sisters) attached him to the

standard of Baldwin of Bruges, the second count of Edessa; a princely fief, which he was worthy to receive,

and able to maintain, announces the number of his martial followers; and after the departure of his cousin,

Joscelin himself was invested with the county of Edessa on both sides of the Euphrates. By economy in

peace, his territories were replenished with Latin and Syrian subjects; his magazines with corn, wine, and oil;

his castles with gold and silver, with arms and horses. In a holy warfare of thirty years, he was alternately a

conqueror and a captive: but he died like a soldier, in a horse litter at the head of his troops; and his last

glance beheld the flight of the Turkish invaders who had presumed on his age and infirmities. His son and

successor, of the same name, was less deficient in valor than in vigilance; but he sometimes forgot that

dominion is acquired and maintained by the same arms. He challenged the hostility of the Turks, without

securing the friendship of the prince of Antioch; and, amidst the peaceful luxury of Turbessel, in Syria, ^72

Joscelin neglected the defence of the Christian frontier beyond the Euphrates. In his absence, Zenghi, the first

of the Atabeks, besieged and stormed his capital, Edessa, which was feebly defended by a timorous and

disloyal crowd of Orientals: the Franks were oppressed in a bold attempt for its recovery, and Courtenay

ended his days in the prison of Aleppo. He still left a fair and ample patrimony But the victorious Turks

oppressed on all sides the weakness of a widow and orphan; and, for the equivalent of an annual pension,

they resigned to the Greek emperor the charge of defending, and the shame of losing, the last relics of the

Latin conquest. The countessdowager of Edessa retired to Jerusalem with her two children; the daughter,

Agnes, became the wife and mother of a king; the son, Joscelin the Third, accepted the office of seneschal,

the first of the kingdom, and held his new estates in Palestine by the service of fifty knights. His name

appears with honor in the transactions of peace and war; but he finally vanishes in the fall of Jerusalem; and

the name of Courtenay, in this branch of Edessa, was lost by the marriage of his two daughters with a French

[Footnote 71: The primitive record of the family is a passage of the continuator of Aimoin, a monk of Fleury,

who wrote in the xiith century. See his Chronicle, in the Historians of France, (tom. xi. p. 276.)]

[Footnote 72: Turbessel, or, as it is now styled, Telbesher, is fixed by D'Anville fourandtwenty miles from

[Footnote 73: His possessions are distinguished in the Assises of Jerusalem (c. B26) among the feudal tenures

of the kingdom, which must therefore have been collected between the years 1153 and 1187. His pedigree

II. While Joscelin reigned beyond the Euphrates, his elder brother Milo, the son of Joscelin, the son of Atho,

continued, near the Seine, to possess the castle of their fathers, which was at length inherited by Rainaud, or

Reginald, the youngest of his three sons. Examples of genius or virtue must be rare in the annals of the oldest

families; and, in a remote age their pride will embrace a deed of rapine and violence; such, however, as could

not be perpetrated without some superiority of courage, or, at least, of power. A descendant of Reginald of

Courtenay may blush for the public robber, who stripped and imprisoned several merchants, after they had

satisfied the king's duties at Sens and Orleans. He will glory in the offence, since the bold offender could not

be compelled to obedience and restitution, till the regent and the count of Champagne prepared to march

against him at the head of an army. ^74 Reginald bestowed his estates on his eldest daughter, and his

daughter on the seventh son of King Louis the Fat; and their marriage was crowned with a numerous

offspring. We might expect that a private should have merged in a royal name; and that the descendants of

Peter of France and Elizabeth of Courtenay would have enjoyed the titles and honors of princes of the blood.

But this legitimate claim was long neglected, and finally denied; and the causes of their disgrace will

represent the story of this second branch. 1. Of all the families now extant, the most ancient, doubtless, and

the most illustrious, is the house of France, which has occupied the same throne above eight hundred years,

and descends, in a clear and lineal series of males, from the middle of the ninth century. ^75 In the age of the

crusades, it was already revered both in the East and West. But from Hugh Capet to the marriage of Peter, no

more than five reigns or generations had elapsed; and so precarious was their title, that the eldest sons, as a

necessary precaution, were previously crowned during the lifetime of their fathers. The peers of France have

long maintained their precedency before the younger branches of the royal line, nor had the princes of the

blood, in the twelfth century, acquired that hereditary lustre which is now diffused over the most remote

candidates for the succession. 2. The barons of Courtenay must have stood high in their own estimation, and

in that of the world, since they could impose on the son of a king the obligation of adopting for himself and

all his descendants the name and arms of their daughter and his wife. In the marriage of an heiress with her

inferior or her equal, such exchange often required and allowed: but as they continued to diverge from the

regal stem, the sons of Louis the Fat were insensibly confounded with their maternal ancestors; and the new

Courtenays might deserve to forfeit the honors of their birth, which a motive of interest had tempted them to

renounce. 3. The shame was far more permanent than the reward, and a momentary blaze was followed by a

long darkness. The eldest son of these nuptials, Peter of Courtenay, had married, as I have already mentioned,

the sister of the counts of Flanders, the two first emperors of Constantinople: he rashly accepted the invitation

of the barons of Romania; his two sons, Robert and Baldwin, successively held and lost the remains of the

Latin empire in the East, and the granddaughter of Baldwin the Second again mingled her blood with the

blood of France and of Valois. To support the expenses of a troubled and transitory reign, their patrimonial

estates were mortgaged or sold: and the last emperors of Constantinople depended on the annual charity of

Rome and Naples. [Footnote 74: The rapine and satisfaction of Reginald de Courtenay, are preposterously

arranged in the Epistles of the abbot and regent Suger, (cxiv. cxvi.,) the best memorials of the age,

[Footnote 75: In the beginning of the xith century, after naming the father and grandfather of Hugh Capet, the

monk Glaber is obliged to add, cujus genus valde inante reperitur obscurum. Yet we are assured that the

great grandfather of Hugh Capet was Robert the Strong count of Anjou, (A.D. 863 873,) a noble Frank of

Neustria, Neustricus . . . generosae stirpis, who was slain in the defence of his country against the Normans,

dum patriae fines tuebatur. Beyond Robert, all is conjecture or fable. It is a probable conjecture, that the third

race descended from the second by Childebrand, the brother of Charles Martel. It is an absurd fable that the

second was allied to the first by the marriage of Ansbert, a Roman senator and the ancestor of St. Arnoul,

with Blitilde, a daughter of Clotaire I. The Saxon origin of the house of France is an ancient but incredible

opinion. See a judicious memoir of M. de Foncemagne, (Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xx.

p. 548 579.) He had promised to declare his own opinion in a second memoir, which has never appeared.]

While the elder brothers dissipated their wealth in romantic adventures, and the castle of Courtenay was

profaned by a plebeian owner, the younger branches of that adopted name were propagated and multiplied.

But their splendor was clouded by poverty and time: after the decease of Robert, great butler of France, they

descended from princes to barons; the next generations were confounded with the simple gentry; the

descendants of Hugh Capet could no longer be visible in the rural lords of Tanlay and of Champignelles. The

more adventurous embraced without dishonor the profession of a soldier: the least active and opulent might

sink, like their cousins of the branch of Dreux, into the condition of peasants. Their royal descent, in a dark

period of four hundred years, became each day more obsolete and ambiguous; and their pedigree, instead of

being enrolled in the annals of the kingdom, must be painfully searched by the minute diligence of heralds

and genealogists. It was not till the end of the sixteenth century, on the accession of a family almost as remote

as their own, that the princely spirit of the Courtenays again revived; and the question of the nobility

provoked them to ascertain the royalty of their blood. They appealed to the justice and compassion of Henry

the Fourth; obtained a favorable opinion from twenty lawyers of Italy and Germany, and modestly compared

themselves to the descendants of King David, whose prerogatives were not impaired by the lapse of ages or

the trade of a carpenter. ^76 But every ear was deaf, and every circumstance was adverse, to their lawful

claims. The Bourbon kings were justified by the neglect of the Valois; the princes of the blood, more recent

and lofty, disdained the alliance of his humble kindred: the parliament, without denying their proofs, eluded a

dangerous precedent by an arbitrary distinction, and established St. Louis as the first father of the royal line.

^77 A repetition of complaints and protests was repeatedly disregarded; and the hopeless pursuit was

terminated in the present century by the death of the last male of the family. ^78 Their painful and anxious

situation was alleviated by the pride of conscious virtue: they sternly rejected the temptations of fortune and

favor; and a dying Courtenay would have sacrificed his son, if the youth could have renounced, for any

temporal interest, the right and title of a legitimate prince of the blood of France. ^79

[Footnote 76: Of the various petitions, apologies, published by the princes of Courtenay, I have seen the three

following, all in octavo: 1. De Stirpe et Origine Domus de Courtenay: addita sunt Responsa celeberrimorum

Europae Jurisconsultorum; Paris, 1607. 2. Representation du Procede tenu a l'instance faicte devant le Roi,

par Messieurs de Courtenay, pour la conservation de l'Honneur et Dignite de leur Maison, branche de la

royalle Maison de France; a Paris, 1613. 3. Representation du subject qui a porte Messieurs de Salles et de

Fraville, de la Maison de Courtenay, a se retirer hors du Royaume, 1614. It was a homicide, for which the

[Footnote 77: The sense of the parliaments is thus expressed by Thuanus Principis nomen nusquam in Gallia

tributum, nisi iis qui per mares e regibus nostris originem repetunt; qui nunc tantum a Ludovico none beatae

memoriae numerantur; nam Cortinoei et Drocenses, a Ludovico crasso genus ducentes, hodie inter eos

minime recensentur. A distinction of expediency rather than justice. The sanctity of Louis IX. could not

invest him with any special prerogative, and all the descendants of Hugh Capet must be included in his

[Footnote 78: The last male of the Courtenays was Charles Roger, who died in the year 1730, without leaving

any sons. The last female was Helene de Courtenay, who married Louis de Beaufremont. Her title of

Princesse du Sang Royal de France was suppressed (February 7th, 1737) by an arret of the parliament of

[Footnote 79: The singular anecdote to which I allude is related in the Recueil des Pieces interessantes et peu

connues, (Maestricht, 1786, in 4 vols. 12mo.;) and the unknown editor quotes his author, who had received it

III. According to the old register of Ford Abbey, the Courtenays of Devonshire are descended from Prince

Florus, the second son of Peter, and the grandson of Louis the Fat. ^80 This fable of the grateful or venal

monks was too respectfully entertained by our antiquaries, Cambden ^81 and Dugdale: ^82 but it is so clearly

repugnant to truth and time, that the rational pride of the family now refuses to accept this imaginary founder.

Their most faithful historians believe, that, after giving his daughter to the king's son, Reginald of Courtenay

abandoned his possessions in France, and obtained from the English monarch a second wife and a new

inheritance. It is certain, at least, that Henry the Second distinguished in his camps and councils a Reginald,

of the name and arms, and, as it may be fairly presumed, of the genuine race, of the Courtenays of France.

The right of wardship enabled a feudal lord to reward his vassal with the marriage and estate of a noble

heiress; and Reginald of Courtenay acquired a fair establishment in Devonshire, where his posterity has been

seated above six hundred years. ^83 From a Norman baron, Baldwin de Brioniis, who had been invested by

the Conqueror, Hawise, the wife of Reginald, derived the honor of Okehampton, which was held by the

service of ninetythree knights; and a female might claim the manly offices of hereditary viscount or sheriff,

and of captain of the royal castle of Exeter. Their son Robert married the sister of the earl of Devon: at the

end of a century, on the failure of the family of Rivers, ^84 his greatgrandson, Hugh the Second, succeeded

to a title which was still considered as a territorial dignity; and twelve earls of Devonshire, of the name of

Courtenay, have flourished in a period of two hundred and twenty years. They were ranked among the chief

of the barons of the realm; nor was it till after a strenuous dispute, that they yielded to the fief of Arundel the

first place in the parliament of England: their alliances were contracted with the noblest families, the Veres,

Despensers, St. Johns, Talbots, Bohuns, and even the Plantagenets themselves; and in a contest with John of

Lancaster, a Courtenay, bishop of London, and afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, might be accused of

profane confidence in the strength and number of his kindred. In peace, the earls of Devon resided in their

numerous castles and manors of the west; their ample revenue was appropriated to devotion and hospitality;

and the epitaph of Edward, surnamed from his misfortune, the blind, from his virtues, the good, earl,

inculcates with much ingenuity a moral sentence, which may, however, be abused by thoughtless generosity.

After a grateful commemoration of the fiftyfive years of union and happiness which he enjoyed with Mabel

But their losses, in this sense, were far superior to their gifts and expenses; and their heirs, not less than the

poor, were the objects of their paternal care. The sums which they paid for livery and seizin attest the

greatness of their possessions; and several estates have remained in their family since the thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries. In war, the Courtenays of England fulfilled the duties, and deserved the honors, of

chivalry. They were often intrusted to levy and command the militia of Devonshire and Cornwall; they often

attended their supreme lord to the borders of Scotland; and in foreign service, for a stipulated price, they

sometimes maintained fourscore menatarms and as many archers. By sea and land they fought under the

standard of the Edwards and Henries: their names are conspicuous in battles, in tournaments, and in the

original list of the Order of the Garter; three brothers shared the Spanish victory of the Black Prince; and in

the lapse of six generations, the English Courtenays had learned to despise the nation and country from which

they derived their origin. In the quarrel of the two roses, the earls of Devon adhered to the house of

Lancaster; and three brothers successively died either in the field or on the scaffold. Their honors and estates

were restored by Henry the Seventh; a daughter of Edward the Fourth was not disgraced by the nuptials of a

Courtenay; their son, who was created Marquis of Exeter, enjoyed the favor of his cousin Henry the Eighth;

and in the camp of Cloth of Gold, he broke a lance against the French monarch. But the favor of Henry was

the prelude of disgrace; his disgrace was the signal of death; and of the victims of the jealous tyrant, the

marquis of Exeter is one of the most noble and guiltless. His son Edward lived a prisoner in the Tower, and

died in exile at Padua; and the secret love of Queen Mary, whom he slighted, perhaps for the princess

Elizabeth, has shed a romantic color on the story of this beautiful youth. The relics of his patrimony were

conveyed into strange families by the marriages of his four aunts; and his personal honors, as if they had been

legally extinct, were revived by the patents of succeeding princes. But there still survived a lineal descendant

of Hugh, the first earl of Devon, a younger branch of the Courtenays, who have been seated at Powderham

Castle above four hundred years, from the reign of Edward the Third to the present hour. Their estates have

been increased by the grant and improvement of lands in Ireland, and they have been recently restored to the

honors of the peerage. Yet the Courtenays still retain the plaintive motto, which asserts the innocence, and

deplores the fall, of their ancient house. ^86 While they sigh for past greatness, they are doubtless sensible of

present blessings: in the long series of the Courtenay annals, the most splendid aera is likewise the most

unfortunate; nor can an opulent peer of Britain be inclined to envy the emperors of Constantinople, who

wandered over Europe to solicit alms for the support of their dignity and the defence of their capital.

[Footnote 80: Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, vol. i. p. 786. Yet this fable must have been invented before

the reign of Edward III. The profuse devotion of the three first generations to Ford Abbey was followed by

oppression on one side and ingratitude on the other; and in the sixth generation, the monks ceased to register

[Footnote 81: In his Britannia, in the list of the earls of Devonshire. His expression, e regio sanguine ortos,

[Footnote 82: In his Baronage, P. i. p. 634, he refers to his own Monasticon. Should he not have corrected the

[Footnote 83: Besides the third and most valuable book of Cleaveland's History, I have consulted Dugdale,

[Footnote 84: This great family, de Ripuariis, de Redvers, de Rivers, ended, in Edward the Fifth's time, in

Isabella de Fortibus, a famous and potent dowager, who long survived her brother and husband, (Dugdale,

[Footnote 85: Cleaveland p. 142. By some it is assigned to a Rivers earl of Devon; but the English denotes

[Footnote 86: Ubi lapsus!) Quid feci? a motto which was probably adopted by the Powderham branch, after

the loss of the earldom of Devonshire, The primitive arms of the Courtenays were, Or, three torteaux, Gules,

which seem to denote their affinity with Godfrey of Bouillon, and the ancient counts of Boulogne.]

The Greek Emperors Of Nice And Constantinople. Elevation And Reign Of Michael Palaeologus. His

False Union With The Pope And The Latin Church. Hostile Designs Of Charles Of Anjou. Revolt Of

Sicily. War Of The Catalans In Asia And Greece. Revolutions And Present State Of Athens.

The loss of Constantinople restored a momentary vigor to the Greeks. From their palaces, the princes and

nobles were driven into the field; and the fragments of the falling monarchy were grasped by the hands of the

most vigorous or the most skilful candidates. In the long and barren pages of the Byzantine annals, ^1 it

would not be an easy task to equal the two characters of Theodore Lascaris and John Ducas Vataces, ^2 who

replanted and upheld the Roman standard at Nice in Bithynia. The difference of their virtues was happily

suited to the diversity of their situation. In his first efforts, the fugitive Lascaris commanded only three cities

and two thousand soldiers: his reign was the season of generous and active despair: in every military

operation he staked his life and crown; and his enemies of the Hellespont and the Maeander, were surprised

by his celerity and subdued by his boldness. A victorious reign of eighteen years expanded the principality of

Nice to the magnitude of an empire. The throne of his successor and soninlaw Vataces was founded on a

more solid basis, a larger scope, and more plentiful resources; and it was the temper, as well as the interest, of

Vataces to calculate the risk, to expect the moment, and to insure the success, of his ambitious designs. In the

decline of the Latins, I have briefly exposed the progress of the Greeks; the prudent and gradual advances of

a conqueror, who, in a reign of thirtythree years, rescued the provinces from national and foreign usurpers,

till he pressed on all sides the Imperial city, a leafless and sapless trunk, which must full at the first stroke of

the axe. But his interior and peaceful administration is still more deserving of notice and praise. ^3 The

calamities of the times had wasted the numbers and the substance of the Greeks; the motives and the means

of agriculture were extirpated; and the most fertile lands were left without cultivation or inhabitants. A

portion of this vacant property was occupied and improved by the command, and for the benefit, of the

emperor: a powerful hand and a vigilant eye supplied and surpassed, by a skilful management, the minute

diligence of a private farmer: the royal domain became the garden and granary of Asia; and without

impoverishing the people, the sovereign acquired a fund of innocent and productive wealth. According to the

nature of the soil, his lands were sown with corn or planted with vines; the pastures were filled with horses

and oxen, with sheep and hogs; and when Vataces presented to the empress a crown of diamonds and pearls,

he informed her, with a smile, that this precious ornament arose from the sale of the eggs of his innumerable

poultry. The produce of his domain was applied to the maintenance of his palace and hospitals, the calls of

dignity and benevolence: the lesson was still more useful than the revenue: the plough was restored to its

ancient security and honor; and the nobles were taught to seek a sure and independent revenue from their

estates, instead of adorning their splendid beggary by the oppression of the people, or (what is almost the

same) by the favors of the court. The superfluous stock of corn and cattle was eagerly purchased by the

Turks, with whom Vataces preserved a strict and sincere alliance; but he discouraged the importation of

foreign manufactures, the costly silks of the East, and the curious labors of the Italian looms. "The demands

of nature and necessity," was he accustomed to say, "are indispensable; but the influence of fashion may rise

and sink at the breath of a monarch;" and both his precept and example recommended simplicity of manners

and the use of domestic industry. The education of youth and the revival of learning were the most serious

objects of his care; and, without deciding the precedency, he pronounced with truth, that a prince and a

philosopher ^4 are the two most eminent characters of human society. His first wife was Irene, the daughter

of Theodore Lascaris, a woman more illustrious by her personal merit, the milder virtues of her sex, than by

the blood of the Angeli and Comneni that flowed in her veins, and transmitted the inheritance of the empire.

After her death he was contracted to Anne, or Constance, a natural daughter of the emperor Frederic ^* the

Second; but as the bride had not attained the years of puberty, Vataces placed in his solitary bed an Italian

damsel of her train; and his amorous weakness bestowed on the concubine the honors, though not the title, of

a lawful empress. His frailty was censured as a flagitious and damnable sin by the monks; and their rude

invectives exercised and displayed the patience of the royal lover. A philosophic age may excuse a single

vice, which was redeemed by a crowd of virtues; and in the review of his faults, and the more intemperate

passions of Lascaris, the judgment of their contemporaries was softened by gratitude to the second founders

of the empire. ^5 The slaves of the Latins, without law or peace, applauded the happiness of their brethren

who had resumed their national freedom; and Vataces employed the laudable policy of convincing the Greeks

of every dominion that it was their interest to be enrolled in the number of his subjects. [Footnote 1: For the

reigns of the Nicene emperors, more especially of John Vataces and his son, their minister, George

Acropolita, is the only genuine contemporary; but George Pachymer returned to Constantinople with the

Greeks at the age of nineteen, (Hanckius de Script. Byzant. c. 33, 34, p. 564 578. Fabric. Bibliot. Graec.

tom. vi. p. 448 460.) Yet the history of Nicephorus Gregoras, though of the xivth century, is a valuable

[Footnote 2: Nicephorus Gregoras (l. ii. c. 1) distinguishes between Lascaris, and Vataces. The two portraits

[Footnote 3: Pachymer, l. i. c. 23, 24. Nic. Greg. l. ii. c. 6. The reader of the Byzantines must observe how

[Footnote 4: (Greg. Acropol. c. 32.) The emperor, in a familiar conversation, examined and encouraged the

[Footnote 5: Compare Acropolita, (c. 18, 52,) and the two first books of Nicephorus Gregoras.]

A strong shade of degeneracy is visible between John Vataces and his son Theodore; between the founder

who sustained the weight, and the heir who enjoyed the splendor, of the Imperial crown. ^6 Yet the character

of Theodore was not devoid of energy; he had been educated in the school of his father, in the exercise of war

and hunting; Constantinople was yet spared; but in the three years of a short reign, he thrice led his armies

into the heart of Bulgaria. His virtues were sullied by a choleric and suspicious temper: the first of these may

be ascribed to the ignorance of control; and the second might naturally arise from a dark and imperfect view

of the corruption of mankind. On a march in Bulgaria, he consulted on a question of policy his principal

ministers; and the Greek logothete, George Acropolita, presumed to offend him by the declaration of a free

and honest opinion. The emperor half unsheathed his cimeter; but his more deliberate rage reserved

Acropolita for a baser punishment. One of the first officers of the empire was ordered to dismount, stripped

of his robes, and extended on the ground in the presence of the prince and army. In this posture he was

chastised with so many and such heavy blows from the clubs of two guards or executioners, that when

Theodore commanded them to cease, the great logothete was scarcely able to rise and crawl away to his tent.

After a seclusion of some days, he was recalled by a peremptory mandate to his seat in council; and so dead

were the Greeks to the sense of honor and shame, that it is from the narrative of the sufferer himself that we

acquire the knowledge of his disgrace. ^7 The cruelty of the emperor was exasperated by the pangs of

sickness, the approach of a premature end, and the suspicion of poison and magic. The lives and fortunes, the

eyes and limbs, of his kinsmen and nobles, were sacrificed to each sally of passion; and before he died, the

son of Vataces might deserve from the people, or at least from the court, the appellation of tyrant. A matron

of the family of the Palaeologi had provoked his anger by refusing to bestow her beauteous daughter on the

vile plebeian who was recommended by his caprice. Without regard to her birth or age, her body, as high as

the neck, was enclosed in a sack with several cats, who were pricked with pins to irritate their fury against

their unfortunate fellowcaptive. In his last hours the emperor testified a wish to forgive and be forgiven, a

just anxiety for the fate of John his son and successor, who, at the age of eight years, was condemned to the

dangers of a long minority. His last choice intrusted the office of guardian to the sanctity of the patriarch

Arsenius, and to the courage of George Muzalon, the great domestic, who was equally distinguished by the

royal favor and the public hatred. Since their connection with the Latins, the names and privileges of

hereditary rank had insinuated themselves into the Greek monarchy; and the noble families ^8 were provoked

by the elevation of a worthless favorite, to whose influence they imputed the errors and calamities of the late

reign. In the first council, after the emperor's death, Muzalon, from a lofty throne, pronounced a labored

apology of his conduct and intentions: his modesty was subdued by a unanimous assurance of esteem and

fidelity; and his most inveterate enemies were the loudest to salute him as the guardian and savior of the

Romans. Eight days were sufficient to prepare the execution of the conspiracy. On the ninth, the obsequies of

the deceased monarch were solemnized in the cathedral of Magnesia, ^9 an Asiatic city, where he expired, on

the banks of the Hermus, and at the foot of Mount Sipylus. The holy rites were interrupted by a sedition of

the guards; Muzalon, his brothers, and his adherents, were massacred at the foot of the altar; and the absent

patriarch was associated with a new colleague, with Michael Palaeologus, the most illustrious, in birth and

[Footnote 6: A Persian saying, that Cyrus was the father and Darius the master, of his subjects, was applied to

Vataces and his son. But Pachymer (l. i. c. 23) has mistaken the mild Darius for the cruel Cambyses, despot

or tyrant of his people. By the institution of taxes, Darius had incurred the less odious, but more

[Footnote 7: Acropolita (c. 63) seems to admire his own firmness in sustaining a beating, and not returning to

council till he was called. He relates the exploits of Theodore, and his own services, from c. 53 to c. 74 of his

[Footnote 8: Pachymer (l. i. c. 21) names and discriminates fifteen or twenty Greek families. Does he mean,

[Footnote 9: The old geographers, with Cellarius and D'Anville, and our travellers, particularly Pocock and

Chandler, will teach us to distinguish the two Magnesias of Asia Minor, of the Maeander and of Sipylus. The

latter, our present object, is still flourishing for a Turkish city, and lies eight hours, or leagues, to the

northeast of Smyrna, (Tournefort, Voyage du Levant, tom. iii. lettre xxii. p. 365 370. Chandler's Travels

[Footnote 10: See Acropolita, (c. 75, 76, who lived too near the times; Pachymer, (l. i. c. 13 25,) Gregoras,

Of those who are proud of their ancestors, the far greater part must be content with local or domestic renown;

and few there are who dare trust the memorials of their family to the public annals of their country. As early

as the middle of the eleventh century, the noble race of the Palaeologi ^11 stands high and conspicuous in the

Byzantine history: it was the valiant George Palaeologus who placed the father of the Comneni on the throne;

and his kinsmen or descendants continue, in each generation, to lead the armies and councils of the state. The

purple was not dishonored by their alliance, and had the law of succession, and female succession, been

strictly observed, the wife of Theodore Lascaris must have yielded to her elder sister, the mother of Michael

Palaeologus, who afterwards raised his family to the throne. In his person, the splendor of birth was dignified

by the merit of the soldier and statesman: in his early youth he was promoted to the office of constable or

commander of the French mercenaries; the private expense of a day never exceeded three pieces of gold; but

his ambition was rapacious and profuse; and his gifts were doubled by the graces of his conversation and

manners. The love of the soldiers and people excited the jealousy of the court, and Michael thrice escaped

from the dangers in which he was involved by his own imprudence or that of his friends. I. Under the reign of

Justice and Vataces, a dispute arose ^12 between two officers, one of whom accused the other of maintaining

the hereditary right of the Palaeologi The cause was decided, according to the new jurisprudence of the

Latins, by single combat; the defendant was overthrown; but he persisted in declaring that himself alone was

guilty; and that he had uttered these rash or treasonable speeches without the approbation or knowledge of his

patron Yet a cloud of suspicion hung over the innocence of the constable; he was still pursued by the

whispers of malevolence; and a subtle courtier, the archbishop of Philadelphia, urged him to accept the

judgment of God in the fiery proof of the ordeal. ^13 Three days before the trial, the patient's arm was

enclosed in a bag, and secured by the royal signet; and it was incumbent on him to bear a redhot ball of iron

three times from the altar to the rails of the sanctuary, without artifice and without injury. Palaeologus eluded

the dangerous experiment with sense and pleasantry. "I am a soldier," said he, "and will boldly enter the lists

with my accusers; but a layman, a sinner like myself, is not endowed with the gift of miracles. Your piety,

most holy prelate, may deserve the interposition of Heaven, and from your hands I will receive the fiery

globe, the pledge of my innocence." The archbishop started; the emperor smiled; and the absolution or pardon

of Michael was approved by new rewards and new services. II. In the succeeding reign, as he held the

government of Nice, he was secretly informed, that the mind of the absent prince was poisoned with jealousy;

and that death, or blindness, would be his final reward. Instead of awaiting the return and sentence of

Theodore, the constable, with some followers, escaped from the city and the empire; and though he was

plundered by the Turkmans of the desert, he found a hospitable refuge in the court of the sultan. In the

ambiguous state of an exile, Michael reconciled the duties of gratitude and loyalty: drawing his sword against

the Tartars; admonishing the garrisons of the Roman limit; and promoting, by his influence, the restoration of

peace, in which his pardon and recall were honorably included. III. While he guarded the West against the

despot of Epirus, Michael was again suspected and condemned in the palace; and such was his loyalty or

weakness, that he submitted to be led in chains above six hundred miles from Durazzo to Nice. The civility of

the messenger alleviated his disgrace; the emperor's sickness dispelled his danger; and the last breath of

Theodore, which recommended his infant son, at once acknowledged the innocence and the power of

Palaeologus. [Footnote 11: The pedigree of Palaeologus is explained by Ducange, (Famil. Byzant. p. 230, the

events of his private life are related by Pachymer (l. i. c. 7 12) and Gregoras (l. ii. 8, l. iii. 2, 4, l. iv. 1) with

[Footnote 12: Acropolita (c. 50) relates the circumstances of this curious adventure, which seem to have

[Footnote 13: Pachymer, (l. i. c. 12,) who speaks with proper contempt of this barbarous trial, affirms, that he

had seen in his youth many person who had sustained, without injury, the fiery ordeal. As a Greek, he is

credulous; but the ingenuity of the Greeks might furnish some remedies of art or fraud against their own

But his innocence had been too unworthily treated, and his power was too strongly felt, to curb an aspiring

subject in the fair field that was opened to his ambition. ^14 In the council, after the death of Theodore, he

was the first to pronounce, and the first to violate, the oath of allegiance to Muzalon; and so dexterous was

his conduct, that he reaped the benefit, without incurring the guilt, or at least the reproach, of the subsequent

massacre. In the choice of a regent, he balanced the interests and passions of the candidates; turned their envy

and hatred from himself against each other, and forced every competitor to own, that after his own claims,

those of Palaeologus were best entitled to the preference. Under the title of great duke, he accepted or

assumed, during a long minority, the active powers of government; the patriarch was a venerable name; and

the factious nobles were seduced, or oppressed, by the ascendant of his genius. The fruits of the economy of

Vataces were deposited in a strong castle on the banks of the Hermus, in the custody of the faithful

Varangians: the constable retained his command or influence over the foreign troops; he employed the guards

to possess the treasure, and the treasure to corrupt the guards; and whatsoever might be the abuse of the

public money, his character was above the suspicion of private avarice. By himself, or by his emissaries, he

strove to persuade every rank of subjects, that their own prosperity would rise in just proportion to the

establishment of his authority. The weight of taxes was suspended, the perpetual theme of popular complaint;

and he prohibited the trials by the ordeal and judicial combat. These Barbaric institutions were already

abolished or undermined in France ^15 and England; ^16 and the appeal to the sword offended the sense of a

civilized, ^17 and the temper of an unwarlike, people. For the future maintenance of their wives and children,

the veterans were grateful: the priests and the philosophers applauded his ardent zeal for the advancement of

religion and learning; and his vague promise of rewarding merit was applied by every candidate to his own

hopes. Conscious of the influence of the clergy, Michael successfully labored to secure the suffrage of that

powerful order. Their expensive journey from Nice to Magnesia, afforded a decent and ample pretence: the

leading prelates were tempted by the liberality of his nocturnal visits; and the incorruptible patriarch was

flattered by the homage of his new colleague, who led his mule by the bridle into the town, and removed to a

respectful distance the importunity of the crowd. Without renouncing his title by royal descent, Palaeologus

encouraged a free discussion into the advantages of elective monarchy; and his adherents asked, with the

insolence of triumph, what patient would trust his health, or what merchant would abandon his vessel, to the

hereditary skill of a physician or a pilot? The youth of the emperor, and the impending dangers of a minority,

required the support of a mature and experienced guardian; of an associate raised above the envy of his

equals, and invested with the name and prerogatives of royalty. For the interest of the prince and people,

without any selfish views for himself or his family, the great duke consented to guard and instruct the son of

Theodore; but he sighed for the happy moment when he might restore to his firmer hands the administration

of his patrimony, and enjoy the blessings of a private station. He was first invested with the title and

prerogatives of despot, which bestowed the purple ornaments and the second place in the Roman monarchy.

It was afterwards agreed that John and Michael should be proclaimed as joint emperors, and raised on the

buckler, but that the preeminence should be reserved for the birthright of the former. A mutual league of

amity was pledged between the royal partners; and in case of a rupture, the subjects were bound, by their oath

of allegiance, to declare themselves against the aggressor; an ambiguous name, the seed of discord and civil

war. Palaeologus was content; but, on the day of the coronation, and in the cathedral of Nice, his zealous

adherents most vehemently urged the just priority of his age and merit. The unseasonable dispute was eluded

by postponing to a more convenient opportunity the coronation of John Lascaris; and he walked with a slight

diadem in the train of his guardian, who alone received the Imperial crown from the hands of the patriarch. It

was not without extreme reluctance that Arsenius abandoned the cause of his pupil; out the Varangians

brandished their battleaxes; a sign of assent was extorted from the trembling youth; and some voices were

heard, that the life of a child should no longer impede the settlement of the nation. A full harvest of honors

and employments was distributed among his friends by the grateful Palaeologus. In his own family he created

a despot and two sebastocrators; Alexius Strategopulus was decorated with the title of Caesar; and that

veteran commander soon repaid the obligation, by restoring Constantinople to the Greek emperor. [Footnote

14: Without comparing Pachymer to Thucydides or Tacitus, I will praise his narrative, (l. i. c. 13 32, l. ii. c.

1 9,) which pursues the ascent of Palaeologus with eloquence, perspicuity, and tolerable freedom.

[Footnote 15: The judicial combat was abolished by St. Louis in his own territories; and his example and

authority were at length prevalent in France, (Esprit des Loix, l. xxviii. c. 29.)]

[Footnote 16: In civil cases Henry II. gave an option to the defendant: Glanville prefers the proof by

evidence; and that by judicial combat is reprobated in the Fleta. Yet the trial by battle has never been

abrogated in the English law, and it was ordered by the judges as late as the beginning of the last century.

[Footnote 17: Yet an ingenious friend has urged to me in mitigation of this practice, 1. That in nations

emerging from barbarism, it moderates the license of private war and arbitrary revenge. 2. That it is less

absurd than the trials by the ordeal, or boiling water, or the cross, which it has contributed to abolish. 3. That

it served at least as a test of personal courage; a quality so seldom united with a base disposition, that the

danger of a trial might be some check to a malicious prosecutor, and a useful barrier against injustice

supported by power. The gallant and unfortunate earl of Surrey might probably have escaped his unmerited

It was in the second year of his reign, while he resided in the palace and gardens of Nymphaeum, ^18 near

Smyrna, that the first messenger arrived at the dead of night; and the stupendous intelligence was imparted to

Michael, after he had been gently waked by the tender precaution of his sister Eulogia. The man was

unknown or obscure; he produced no letters from the victorious Caesar; nor could it easily be credited, after

the defeat of Vataces and the recent failure of Palaeologus himself, that the capital had been surprised by a

detachment of eight hundred soldiers. As a hostage, the doubtful author was confined, with the assurance of

death or an ample recompense; and the court was left some hours in the anxiety of hope and fear, till the

messengers of Alexius arrived with the authentic intelligence, and displayed the trophies of the conquest, the

sword and sceptre, ^19 the buskins and bonnet, ^20 of the usurper Baldwin, which he had dropped in his

precipitate flight. A general assembly of the bishops, senators, and nobles, was immediately convened, and

never perhaps was an event received with more heartfelt and universal joy. In a studied oration, the new

sovereign of Constantinople congratulated his own and the public fortune. "There was a time," said he, "a far

distant time, when the Roman empire extended to the Adriatic, the Tigris, and the confines of Aethiopia.

After the loss of the provinces, our capital itself, in these last and calamitous days, has been wrested from our

hands by the Barbarians of the West. From the lowest ebb, the tide of prosperity has again returned in our

favor; but our prosperity was that of fugitives and exiles: and when we were asked, which was the country of

the Romans, we indicated with a blush the climate of the globe, and the quarter of the heavens. The divine

Providence has now restored to our arms the city of Constantine, the sacred seat of religion and empire; and it

will depend on our valor and conduct to render this important acquisition the pledge and omen of future

victories." So eager was the impatience of the prince and people, that Michael made his triumphal entry into

Constantinople only twenty days after the expulsion of the Latins. The golden gate was thrown open at his

approach; the devout conqueror dismounted from his horse; and a miraculous image of Mary the Conductress

was borne before him, that the divine Virgin in person might appear to conduct him to the temple of her Son,

the cathedral of St. Sophia. But after the first transport of devotion and pride, he sighed at the dreary prospect

of solitude and ruin. The palace was defiled with smoke and dirt, and the gross intemperance of the Franks;

whole streets had been consumed by fire, or were decayed by the injuries of time; the sacred and profane

edifices were stripped of their ornaments: and, as if they were conscious of their approaching exile, the

industry of the Latins had been confined to the work of pillage and destruction. Trade had expired under the

pressure of anarchy and distress, and the numbers of inhabitants had decreased with the opulence of the city.

It was the first care of the Greek monarch to reinstate the nobles in the palaces of their fathers; and the houses

or the ground which they occupied were restored to the families that could exhibit a legal right of inheritance.

But the far greater part was extinct or lost; the vacant property had devolved to the lord; he repeopled

Constantinople by a liberal invitation to the provinces; and the brave volunteers were seated in the capital

which had been recovered by their arms. The French barons and the principal families had retired with their

emperor; but the patient and humble crowd of Latins was attached to the country, and indifferent to the

change of masters. Instead of banishing the factories of the Pisans, Venetians, and Genoese, the prudent

conqueror accepted their oaths of allegiance, encouraged their industry, confirmed their privileges, and

allowed them to live under the jurisdiction of their proper magistrates. Of these nations, the Pisans and

Venetians preserved their respective quarters in the city; but the services and power of the Genoese deserved

at the same time the gratitude and the jealousy of the Greeks. Their independent colony was first planted at

the seaport town of Heraclea in Thrace. They were speedily recalled, and settled in the exclusive possession

of the suburb of Galata, an advantageous post, in which they revived the commerce, and insulted the majesty,

of the Byzantine empire. ^21 [Footnote 18: The site of Nymphaeum is not clearly defined in ancient or

modern geography. But from the last hours of Vataces, (Acropolita, c. 52,) it is evident the palace and

gardens of his favorite residence were in the neighborhood of Smyrna. Nymphaeum might be loosely placed

[Footnote 19: This sceptre, the emblem of justice and power, was a long staff, such as was used by the heroes

in Homer. By the latter Greeks it was named Dicanice, and the Imperial sceptre was distinguished as usual by

[Footnote 20: Acropolita affirms (c. 87,) that this bonnet was after the French fashion; but from the ruby at

the point or summit, Ducange (Hist. de C. P. l. v. c. 28, 29) believes that it was the highcrowned hat of the

[Footnote 21: See Pachymer, (l. ii. c. 28 33,) Acropolita, (c. 88,) Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. iv. 7,) and for the

The recovery of Constantinople was celebrated as the aera of a new empire: the conqueror, alone, and by the

right of the sword, renewed his coronation in the church of St. Sophia; and the name and honors of John

Lascaris, his pupil and lawful sovereign, were insensibly abolished. But his claims still lived in the minds of

the people; and the royal youth must speedily attain the years of manhood and ambition. By fear or

conscience, Palaeologus was restrained from dipping his hands in innocent and royal blood; but the anxiety of

a usurper and a parent urged him to secure his throne by one of those imperfect crimes so familiar to the

modern Greeks. The loss of sight incapacitated the young prince for the active business of the world; instead

of the brutal violence of tearing out his eyes, the visual nerve was destroyed by the intense glare of a redhot

basin, ^22 and John Lascaris was removed to a distant castle, where he spent many years in privacy and

oblivion. Such cool and deliberate guilt may seem incompatible with remorse; but if Michael could trust the

mercy of Heaven, he was not inaccessible to the reproaches and vengeance of mankind, which he had

provoked by cruelty and treason. His cruelty imposed on a servile court the duties of applause or silence; but

the clergy had a right to speak in the name of their invisible Master; and their holy legions were led by a

prelate, whose character was above the temptations of hope or fear. After a short abdication of his dignity,

Arsenius ^23 had consented to ascend the ecclesiastical throne of Constantinople, and to preside in the

restoration of the church. His pious simplicity was long deceived by the arts of Palaeologus; and his patience

and submission might soothe the usurper, and protect the safety of the young prince. On the news of his

inhuman treatment, the patriarch unsheathed the spiritual sword; and superstition, on this occasion, was

enlisted in the cause of humanity and justice. In a synod of bishops, who were stimulated by the example of

his zeal, the patriarch pronounced a sentence of excommunication; though his prudence still repeated the

name of Michael in the public prayers. The Eastern prelates had not adopted the dangerous maxims of ancient

Rome; nor did they presume to enforce their censures, by deposing princes, or absolving nations from their

oaths of allegiance. But the Christian, who had been separated from God and the church, became an object of

horror; and, in a turbulent and fanatic capital, that horror might arm the hand of an assassin, or inflame a

sedition of the people. Palaeologus felt his danger, confessed his guilt, and deprecated his judge: the act was

irretrievable; the prize was obtained; and the most rigorous penance, which he solicited, would have raised

the sinner to the reputation of a saint. The unrelenting patriarch refused to announce any means of atonement

or any hopes of mercy; and condescended only to pronounce, that for so great a crime, great indeed must be

the satisfaction. "Do you require," said Michael, "that I should abdicate the empire?" and at these words, he

offered, or seemed to offer, the sword of state. Arsenius eagerly grasped this pledge of sovereignty; but when

he perceived that the emperor was unwilling to purchase absolution at so dear a rate, he indignantly escaped

to his cell, and left the royal sinner kneeling and weeping before the door. ^24

[Footnote 22: This milder invention for extinguishing the sight was tried by the philosopher Democritus on

himself, when he sought to withdraw his mind from the visible world: a foolish story! The word abacinare, in

Latin and Italian, has furnished Ducange (Gloss. Lat.) with an opportunity to review the various modes of

blinding: the more violent were scooping, burning with an iron, or hot vinegar, and binding the head with a

[Footnote 23: See the first retreat and restoration of Arsenius, in Pachymer (l. ii. c. 15, l. iii. c. 1, 2) and

Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. iii. c. 1, l. iv. c. 1.) Posterity justly accused Arsenius the virtues of a hermit, the

[Footnote 24: The crime and excommunication of Michael are fairly told by Pachymer (l. iii. c. 10, 14, 19,

and Gregoras, (l. iv. c. 4.) His confession and penance restored their freedom.]

The danger and scandal of this excommunication subsisted above three years, till the popular clamor was

assuaged by time and repentance; till the brethren of Arsenius condemned his inflexible spirit, so repugnant

to the unbounded forgiveness of the gospel. The emperor had artfully insinuated, that, if he were still rejected

at home, he might seek, in the Roman pontiff, a more indulgent judge; but it was far more easy and effectual

to find or to place that judge at the head of the Byzantine church. Arsenius was involved in a vague rumor of

conspiracy and disaffection; ^* some irregular steps in his ordination and government were liable to censure;

a synod deposed him from the episcopal office; and he was transported under a guard of soldiers to a small

island of the Propontis. Before his exile, he sullenly requested that a strict account might be taken of the

treasures of the church; boasted, that his sole riches, three pieces of gold, had been earned by transcribing the

psalms; continued to assert the freedom of his mind; and denied, with his last breath, the pardon which was

implored by the royal sinner. ^25 After some delay, Gregory, ^* bishop of Adrianople, was translated to the

Byzantine throne; but his authority was found insufficient to support the absolution of the emperor; and

Joseph, a reverend monk, was substituted to that important function. This edifying scene was represented in

the presence of the senate and the people; at the end of six years the humble penitent was restored to the

communion of the faithful; and humanity will rejoice, that a milder treatment of the captive Lascaris was

stipulated as a proof of his remorse. But the spirit of Arsenius still survived in a powerful faction of the

monks and clergy, who persevered about fortyeight years in an obstinate schism. Their scruples were treated

with tenderness and respect by Michael and his son; and the reconciliation of the Arsenites was the serious

labor of the church and state. In the confidence of fanaticism, they had proposed to try their cause by a

miracle; and when the two papers, that contained their own and the adverse cause, were cast into a fiery

brazier, they expected that the Catholic verity would be respected by the flames. Alas! the two papers were

indiscriminately consumed, and this unforeseen accident produced the union of a day, and renewed the

quarrel of an age. ^26 The final treaty displayed the victory of the Arsenites: the clergy abstained during forty

days from all ecclesiastical functions; a slight penance was imposed on the laity; the body of Arsenius was

deposited in the sanctuary; and, in the name of the departed saint, the prince and people were released from

the sins of their fathers. ^27 [Footnote *: Except the omission of a prayer for the emperor, the charges against

Arsenius were of different nature: he was accused of having allowed the sultan of Iconium to bathe in vessels

signed with the cross, and to have admitted him to the church, though unbaptized, during the service. It was

pleaded, in favor of Arsenius, among other proofs of the sultan's Christianity, that he had offered to eat ham.

Pachymer, l. iv. c. 4, p. 265. It was after his exile that he was involved in a charge of conspiracy. M.]

[Footnote 25: Pachymer relates the exile of Arsenius, (l. iv. c. 1 16:) he was one of the commissaries who

visited him in the desert island. The last testament of the unforgiving patriarch is still extant, (Dupin,

[Footnote 26: Pachymer (l. vii. c. 22) relates this miraculous trial like a philosopher, and treats with similar

contempt a plot of the Arsenites, to hide a revelation in the coffin of some old saint, (l. vii. c. 13.) He

compensates this incredulity by an image that weeps, another that bleeds, (l. vii. c. 30,) and the miraculous

[Footnote 27: The story of the Arsenites is spread through the thirteen books of Pachymer. Their union and

triumph are reserved for Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. vii. c. 9,) who neither loves nor esteems these sectaries.]

The establishment of his family was the motive, or at least the pretence, of the crime of Palaeologus; and he

was impatient to confirm the succession, by sharing with his eldest son the honors of the purple. Andronicus,

afterwards surnamed the Elder, was proclaimed and crowned emperor of the Romans, in the fifteenth year of

his age; and, from the first aera of a prolix and inglorious reign, he held that august title nine years as the

colleague, and fifty as the successor, of his father. Michael himself, had he died in a private station, would

have been thought more worthy of the empire; and the assaults of his temporal and spiritual enemies left him

few moments to labor for his own fame or the happiness of his subjects. He wrested from the Franks several

of the noblest islands of the Archipelago, Lesbos, Chios, and Rhodes: his brother Constantine was sent to

command in Malvasia and Sparta; and the eastern side of the Morea, from Argos and Napoli to Cape

Thinners, was repossessed by the Greeks. This effusion of Christian blood was loudly condemned by the

patriarch; and the insolent priest presumed to interpose his fears and scruples between the arms of princes.

But in the prosecution of these western conquests, the countries beyond the Hellespont were left naked to the

Turks; and their depredations verified the prophecy of a dying senator, that the recovery of Constantinople

would be the ruin of Asia. The victories of Michael were achieved by his lieutenants; his sword rusted in the

palace; and, in the transactions of the emperor with the popes and the king of Naples, his political acts were

stained with cruelty and fraud. ^28 [Footnote 28: Of the xiii books of Pachymer, the first six (as the ivth and

vth of Nicephorus Gregoras) contain the reign of Michael, at the time of whose death he was forty years of

age. Instead of breaking, like his editor the Pere Poussin, his history into two parts, I follow Ducange and

I. The Vatican was the most natural refuge of a Latin emperor, who had been driven from his throne; and

Pope Urban the Fourth appeared to pity the misfortunes, and vindicate the cause, of the fugitive Baldwin. A

crusade, with plenary indulgence, was preached by his command against the schismatic Greeks: he

excommunicated their allies and adherents; solicited Louis the Ninth in favor of his kinsman; and demanded

a tenth of the ecclesiastical revenues of France and England for the service of the holy war. ^29 The subtle

Greek, who watched the rising tempest of the West, attempted to suspend or soothe the hostility of the pope,

by suppliant embassies and respectful letters; but he insinuated that the establishment of peace must prepare

the reconciliation and obedience of the Eastern church. The Roman court could not be deceived by so gross

an artifice; and Michael was admonished, that the repentance of the son should precede the forgiveness of the

father; and that faith (an ambiguous word) was the only basis of friendship and alliance. After a long and

affected delay, the approach of danger, and the importunity of Gregory the Tenth, compelled him to enter on

a more serious negotiation: he alleged the example of the great Vataces; and the Greek clergy, who

understood the intentions of their prince, were not alarmed by the first steps of reconciliation and respect. But

when he pressed the conclusion of the treaty, they strenuously declared, that the Latins, though not in name,

were heretics in fact, and that they despised those strangers as the vilest and most despicable portion of the

human race. ^30 It was the task of the emperor to persuade, to corrupt, to intimidate the most popular

ecclesiastics, to gain the vote of each individual, and alternately to urge the arguments of Christian charity

and the public welfare. The texts of the fathers and the arms of the Franks were balanced in the theological

and political scale; and without approving the addition to the Nicene creed, the most moderate were taught to

confess, that the two hostile propositions of proceeding from the Father by the Son, and of proceeding from

the Father and the Son, might be reduced to a safe and Catholic sense. ^31 The supremacy of the pope was a

doctrine more easy to conceive, but more painful to acknowledge: yet Michael represented to his monks and

prelates, that they might submit to name the Roman bishop as the first of the patriarchs; and that their

distance and discretion would guard the liberties of the Eastern church from the mischievous consequences of

the right of appeal. He protested that he would sacrifice his life and empire rather than yield the smallest

point of orthodox faith or national independence; and this declaration was sealed and ratified by a golden

bull. The patriarch Joseph withdrew to a monastery, to resign or resume his throne, according to the event of

the treaty: the letters of union and obedience were subscribed by the emperor, his son Andronicus, and

thirtyfive archbishops and metropolitans, with their respective synods; and the episcopal list was multiplied

by many dioceses which were annihilated under the yoke of the infidels. An embassy was composed of some

trusty ministers and prelates: they embarked for Italy, with rich ornaments and rare perfumes for the altar of

St. Peter; and their secret orders authorized and recommended a boundless compliance. They were received

in the general council of Lyons, by Pope Gregory the Tenth, at the head of five hundred bishops. ^32 He

embraced with tears his longlost and repentant children; accepted the oath of the ambassadors, who abjured

the schism in the name of the two emperors; adorned the prelates with the ring and mitre; chanted in Greek

and Latin the Nicene creed with the addition of filioque; and rejoiced in the union of the East and West,

which had been reserved for his reign. To consummate this pious work, the Byzantine deputies were speedily

followed by the pope's nuncios; and their instruction discloses the policy of the Vatican, which could not be

satisfied with the vain title of supremacy. After viewing the temper of the prince and people, they were

enjoined to absolve the schismatic clergy, who should subscribe and swear their abjuration and obedience; to

establish in all the churches the use of the perfect creed; to prepare the entrance of a cardinal legate, with the

full powers and dignity of his office; and to instruct the emperor in the advantages which he might derive

[Footnote 29: Ducange, Hist. de C. P. l. v. c. 33, from the Epistles of Urban IV.]

[Footnote 30: From their mercantile intercourse with the Venetians and Genoese, they branded the Latins:

(Pachymer, l. v. c. 10.) "Some are heretics in name; others, like the Latins, in fact," said the learned Veccus,

(l. v. c. 12,) who soon afterwards became a convert (c. 15, 16) and a patriarch, (c. 24.)]

[Footnote 31: In this class we may place Pachymer himself, whose copious and candid narrative occupies the

vth and vith books of his history. Yet the Greek is silent on the council of Lyons, and seems to believe that

[Footnote 32: See the acts of the council of Lyons in the year 1274. Fleury, Hist. Ecclesiastique, tom. xviii. p.

[Footnote 33: This curious instruction, which has been drawn with more or less honesty by Wading and Leo

Allatius from the archives of the Vatican, is given in an abstract or version by Fleury, (tom. xviii. p. 252

But they found a country without a friend, a nation in which the names of Rome and Union were pronounced

with abhorrence. The patriarch Joseph was indeed removed: his place was filled by Veccus, an ecclesiastic of

learning and moderation; and the emperor was still urged by the same motives, to persevere in the same

professions. But in his private language Palaeologus affected to deplore the pride, and to blame the

innovations, of the Latins; and while he debased his character by this double hypocrisy, he justified and

punished the opposition of his subjects. By the joint suffrage of the new and the ancient Rome, a sentence of

excommunication was pronounced against the obstinate schismatics; the censures of the church were

executed by the sword of Michael; on the failure of persuasion, he tried the arguments of prison and exile, of

whipping and mutilation; those touchstones, says an historian, of cowards and the brave. Two Greeks still

reigned in Aetolia, Epirus, and Thessaly, with the appellation of despots: they had yielded to the sovereign of

Constantinople, but they rejected the chains of the Roman pontiff, and supported their refusal by successful

arms. Under their protection, the fugitive monks and bishops assembled in hostile synods; and retorted the

name of heretic with the galling addition of apostate: the prince of Trebizond was tempted to assume the

forfeit title of emperor; ^* and even the Latins of Negropont, Thebes, Athens, and the Morea, forgot the

merits of the convert, to join, with open or clandestine aid, the enemies of Palaeologus. His favorite generals,

of his own blood, and family, successively deserted, or betrayed, the sacrilegious trust. His sister Eulogia, a

niece, and two female cousins, conspired against him; another niece, Mary queen of Bulgaria, negotiated his

ruin with the sultan of Egypt; and, in the public eye, their treason was consecrated as the most sublime virtue.

^34 To the pope's nuncios, who urged the consummation of the work, Palaeologus exposed a naked recital of

all that he had done and suffered for their sake. They were assured that the guilty sectaries, of both sexes and

every rank, had been deprived of their honors, their fortunes, and their liberty; a spreading list of confiscation

and punishment, which involved many persons, the dearest to the emperor, or the best deserving of his favor.

They were conducted to the prison, to behold four princes of the royal blood chained in the four corners, and

shaking their fetters in an agony of grief and rage. Two of these captives were afterwards released; the one by

submission, the other by death: but the obstinacy of their two companions was chastised by the loss of their

eyes; and the Greeks, the least adverse to the union, deplored that cruel and inauspicious tragedy. ^35

Persecutors must expect the hatred of those whom they oppress; but they commonly find some consolation in

the testimony of their conscience, the applause of their party, and, perhaps, the success of their undertaking.

But the hypocrisy of Michael, which was prompted only by political motives, must have forced him to hate

himself, to despise his followers, and to esteem and envy the rebel champions by whom he was detested and

despised. While his violence was abhorred at Constantinople, at Rome his slowness was arraigned, and his

sincerity suspected; till at length Pope Martin the Fourth excluded the Greek emperor from the pale of a

church, into which he was striving to reduce a schismatic people. No sooner had the tyrant expired, than the

union was dissolved, and abjured by unanimous consent; the churches were purified; the penitents were

reconciled; and his son Andronicus, after weeping the sins and errors of his youth most piously denied his

[Footnote 34: This frank and authentic confession of Michael's distress is exhibited in barbarous Latin by

Ogerius, who signs himself Protonotarius Interpretum, and transcribed by Wading from the MSS. of the

Vatican, (A.D. 1278, No. 3.) His annals of the Franciscan order, the Fratres Minores, in xvii. volumes in

folio, (Rome, 1741,) I have now accidentally seen among the waste paper of a bookseller.]

[Footnote 35: See the vith book of Pachymer, particularly the chapters 1, 11, 16, 18, 24 27. He is the more

[Footnote 36: Pachymer, l. vii. c. 1 ii. 17. The speech of Andronicus the Elder (lib. xii. c. 2) is a curious

record, which proves that if the Greeks were the slaves of the emperor, the emperor was not less the slave of

II. In the distress of the Latins, the walls and towers of Constantinople had fallen to decay: they were restored

and fortified by the policy of Michael, who deposited a plenteous store of corn and salt provisions, to sustain

the siege which he might hourly expect from the resentment of the Western powers. Of these, the sovereign

of the Two Sicilies was the most formidable neighbor: but as long as they were possessed by Mainfroy, the

bastard of Frederic the Second, his monarchy was the bulwark, rather than the annoyance, of the Eastern

empire. The usurper, though a brave and active prince, was sufficiently employed in the defence of his

throne: his proscription by successive popes had separated Mainfroy from the common cause of the Latins;

and the forces that might have besieged Constantinople were detained in a crusade against the domestic

enemy of Rome. The prize of her avenger, the crown of the Two Sicilies, was won and worn by the brother of

St Louis, by Charles count of Anjou and Provence, who led the chivalry of France on this holy expedition.

^37 The disaffection of his Christian subjects compelled Mainfroy to enlist a colony of Saracens whom his

father had planted in Apulia; and this odious succor will explain the defiance of the Catholic hero, who

rejected all terms of accommodation. "Bear this message," said Charles, "to the sultan of Nocera, that God

and the sword are umpire between us; and that he shall either send me to paradise, or I will send him to the

pit of hell." The armies met: and though I am ignorant of Mainfroy's doom in the other world, in this he lost

his friends, his kingdom, and his life, in the bloody battle of Benevento. Naples and Sicily were immediately

peopled with a warlike race of French nobles; and their aspiring leader embraced the future conquest of

Africa, Greece, and Palestine. The most specious reasons might point his first arms against the Byzantine

empire; and Palaeologus, diffident of his own strength, repeatedly appealed from the ambition of Charles to

the humanity of St. Louis, who still preserved a just ascendant over the mind of his ferocious brother. For a

while the attention of that brother was confined at home by the invasion of Conradin, the last heir to the

imperial house of Swabia; but the hapless boy sunk in the unequal conflict; and his execution on a public

scaffold taught the rivals of Charles to tremble for their heads as well as their dominions. A second respite

was obtained by the last crusade of St. Louis to the African coast; and the double motive of interest and duty

urged the king of Naples to assist, with his powers and his presence, the holy enterprise. The death of St.

Louis released him from the importunity of a virtuous censor: the king of Tunis confessed himself the

tributary and vassal of the crown of Sicily; and the boldest of the French knights were free to enlist under his

banner against the Greek empire. A treaty and a marriage united his interest with the house of Courtenay; his

daughter Beatrice was promised to Philip, son and heir of the emperor Baldwin; a pension of six hundred

ounces of gold was allowed for his maintenance; and his generous father distributed among his aliens the

kingdoms and provinces of the East, reserving only Constantinople, and one day's journey round the city for

the imperial domain. ^38 In this perilous moment, Palaeologus was the most eager to subscribe the creed, and

implore the protection, of the Roman pontiff, who assumed, with propriety and weight, the character of an

angel of peace, the common father of the Christians. By his voice, the sword of Charles was chained in the

scabbard; and the Greek ambassadors beheld him, in the pope's antechamber, biting his ivory sceptre in a

transport of fury, and deeply resenting the refusal to enfranchise and consecrate his arms. He appears to have

respected the disinterested mediation of Gregory the Tenth; but Charles was insensibly disgusted by the pride

and partiality of Nicholas the Third; and his attachment to his kindred, the Ursini family, alienated the most

strenuous champion from the service of the church. The hostile league against the Greeks, of Philip the Latin

emperor, the king of the Two Sicilies, and the republic of Venice, was ripened into execution; and the

election of Martin the Fourth, a French pope, gave a sanction to the cause. Of the allies, Philip supplied his

name; Martin, a bull of excommunication; the Venetians, a squadron of forty galleys; and the formidable

powers of Charles consisted of forty counts, ten thousand men at arms, a numerous body of infantry, and a

fleet of more than three hundred ships and transports. A distant day was appointed for assembling this mighty

force in the harbor of Brindisi; and a previous attempt was risked with a detachment of three hundred knights,

who invaded Albania, and besieged the fortress of Belgrade. Their defeat might amuse with a triumph the

vanity of Constantinople; but the more sagacious Michael, despairing of his arms, depended on the effects of

a conspiracy; on the secret workings of a rat, who gnawed the bowstring ^39 of the Sicilian tyrant.

[Footnote 37: The best accounts, the nearest the time, the most full and entertaining, of the conquest of

Naples by Charles of Anjou, may be found in the Florentine Chronicles of Ricordano Malespina, (c. 175

193,) and Giovanni Villani, (l. vii. c. 1 10, 25 30,) which are published by Muratori in the viiith and xiiith

volumes of the Historians of Italy. In his Annals (tom. xi. p. 56 72) he has abridged these great events

which are likewise described in the Istoria Civile of Giannone. tom. l. xix. tom. iii. l. xx]

[Footnote 38: Ducange, Hist. de C. P. l. v. c. 49 56, l. vi. c. 1 13. See Pachymer, l. iv. c. 29, l. v. c. 7 10,

[Footnote 39: The reader of Herodotus will recollect how miraculously the Assyrian host of Sennacherib was

Among the proscribed adherents of the house of Swabia, John of Procida forfeited a small island of that name

in the Bay of Naples. His birth was noble, but his education was learned; and in the poverty of exile, he was

relieved by the practice of physic, which he had studied in the school of Salerno. Fortune had left him nothing

to lose, except life; and to despise life is the first qualification of a rebel. Procida was endowed with the art of

negotiation, to enforce his reasons and disguise his motives; and in his various transactions with nations and

men, he could persuade each party that he labored solely for their interest. The new kingdoms of Charles

were afflicted by every species of fiscal and military oppression; ^40 and the lives and fortunes of his Italian

subjects were sacrificed to the greatness of their master and the licentiousness of his followers. The hatred of

Naples was repressed by his presence; but the looser government of his vicegerents excited the contempt, as

well as the aversion, of the Sicilians: the island was roused to a sense of freedom by the eloquence of Procida;

and he displayed to every baron his private interest in the common cause. In the confidence of foreign aid, he

successively visited the courts of the Greek emperor, and of Peter king of Arragon, ^41 who possessed the

maritime countries of Valentia and Catalonia. To the ambitious Peter a crown was presented, which he might

justly claim by his marriage with the sister ^* of Mainfroy, and by the dying voice of Conradin, who from the

scaffold had cast a ring to his heir and avenger. Palaeologus was easily persuaded to divert his enemy from a

foreign war by a rebellion at home; and a Greek subsidy of twentyfive thousand ounces of gold was most

profitably applied to arm a Catalan fleet, which sailed under a holy banner to the specious attack of the

Saracens of Africa. In the disguise of a monk or beggar, the indefatigable missionary of revolt flew from

Constantinople to Rome, and from Sicily to Saragossa: the treaty was sealed with the signet of Pope Nicholas

himself, the enemy of Charles; and his deed of gift transferred the fiefs of St. Peter from the house of Anjou

to that of Arragon. So widely diffused and so freely circulated, the secret was preserved above two years with

impenetrable discretion; and each of the conspirators imbibed the maxim of Peter, who declared that he

would cut off his left hand if it were conscious of the intentions of his right. The mine was prepared with

deep and dangerous artifice; but it may be questioned, whether the instant explosion of Palermo were the

[Footnote 40: According to Sabas Malaspina, (Hist. Sicula, l. iii. c. 16, in Muratori, tom. viii. p. 832,) a

zealous Guelph, the subjects of Charles, who had reviled Mainfroy as a wolf, began to regret him as a lamb;

and he justifies their discontent by the oppressions of the French government, (l. vi. c. 2, 7.) See the Sicilian

[Footnote 41: See the character and counsels of Peter, king of Arragon, in Mariana, (Hist. Hispan. l. xiv. c. 6,

tom. ii. p. 133.) The reader for gives the Jesuit's defects, in favor, always of his style, and often of his sense.]

On the vigil of Easter, a procession of the disarmed citizens visited a church without the walls; and a noble

damsel was rudely insulted by a French soldier. ^42 The ravisher was instantly punished with death; and if

the people was at first scattered by a military force, their numbers and fury prevailed: the conspirators seized

the opportunity; the flame spread over the island; and eight thousand French were exterminated in a

promiscuous massacre, which has obtained the name of the Sicilian Vespers. ^43 From every city the banners

of freedom and the church were displayed: the revolt was inspired by the presence or the soul of Procida and

Peter of Arragon, who sailed from the African coast to Palermo, was saluted as the king and savior of the isle.

By the rebellion of a people on whom he had so long trampled with impunity, Charles was astonished and

confounded; and in the first agony of grief and devotion, he was heard to exclaim, "O God! if thou hast

decreed to humble me, grant me at least a gentle and gradual descent from the pinnacle of greatness!" His

fleet and army, which already filled the seaports of Italy, were hastily recalled from the service of the Grecian

war; and the situation of Messina exposed that town to the first storm of his revenge. Feeble in themselves,

and yet hopeless of foreign succor, the citizens would have repented, and submitted on the assurance of full

pardon and their ancient privileges. But the pride of the monarch was already rekindled; and the most fervent

entreaties of the legate could extort no more than a promise, that he would forgive the remainder, after a

chosen list of eight hundred rebels had been yielded to his discretion. The despair of the Messinese renewed

their courage: Peter of Arragon approached to their relief; ^44 and his rival was driven back by the failure of

provision and the terrors of the equinox to the Calabrian shore. At the same moment, the Catalan admiral, the

famous Roger de Loria, swept the channel with an invincible squadron: the French fleet, more numerous in

transports than in galleys, was either burnt or destroyed; and the same blow assured the independence of

Sicily and the safety of the Greek empire. A few days before his death, the emperor Michael rejoiced in the

fall of an enemy whom he hated and esteemed; and perhaps he might be content with the popular judgment,

that had they not been matched with each other, Constantinople and Italy must speedily have obeyed the

same master. ^45 From this disastrous moment, the life of Charles was a series of misfortunes: his capital was

insulted, his son was made prisoner, and he sunk into the grave without recovering the Isle of Sicily, which,

after a war of twenty years, was finally severed from the throne of Naples, and transferred, as an independent

[Footnote 42: After enumerating the sufferings of his country, Nicholas Specialis adds, in the true spirit of

Italian jealousy, Quae omnia et graviora quidem, ut arbitror, patienti animo Siculi tolerassent, nisi (quod

primum cunctis dominantibus cavendum est) alienas foeminas invasissent, (l. i. c. 2, p. 924.)]

[Footnote 43: The French were long taught to remember this bloody lesson: "If I am provoked, (said Henry

the Fourth,) I will breakfast at Milan, and dine at Naples." "Your majesty (replied the Spanish ambassador)

[Footnote 44: This revolt, with the subsequent victory, are related by two national writers, Bartholemy a

Neocastro (in Muratori, tom. xiii.,) and Nicholas Specialis (in Muratori, tom. x.,) the one a contemporary, the

other of the next century. The patriot Specialis disclaims the name of rebellion, and all previous

correspondence with Peter of Arragon, (nullo communicato consilio,) who happened to be with a fleet and

[Footnote 45: Nicephorus Gregoras (l. v. c. 6) admires the wisdom of Providence in this equal balance of

states and princes. For the honor of Palaeologus, I had rather this balance had been observed by an Italian

[Footnote 46: See the Chronicle of Villani, the xith volume of the Annali d'Italia of Muratori, and the xxth

I shall not, I trust, be accused of superstition; but I must remark that, even in this world, the natural order of

events will sometimes afford the strong appearances of moral retribution. The first Palaeologus had saved his

empire by involving the kingdoms of the West in rebellion and blood; and from these scenes of discord

uprose a generation of iron men, who assaulted and endangered the empire of his son. In modern times our

debts and taxes are the secret poison which still corrodes the bosom of peace: but in the weak and disorderly

government of the middle ages, it was agitated by the present evil of the disbanded armies. Too idle to work,

too proud to beg, the mercenaries were accustomed to a life of rapine: they could rob with more dignity and

effect under a banner and a chief; and the sovereign, to whom their service was useless, and their presence

importunate, endeavored to discharge the torrent on some neighboring countries. After the peace of Sicily,

many thousands of Genoese, Catalans, ^47 who had fought, by sea and land, under the standard of Anjou or

Arragon, were blended into one nation by the resemblance of their manners and interest. They heard that the

Greek provinces of Asia were invaded by the Turks: they resolved to share the harvest of pay and plunder:

and Frederic king of Sicily most liberally contributed the means of their departure. In a warfare of twenty

years, a ship, or a camp, was become their country; arms were their sole profession and property; valor was

the only virtue which they knew; their women had imbibed the fearless temper of their lovers and husbands:

it was reported, that, with a stroke of their broadsword, the Catalans could cleave a horseman and a horse;

and the report itself was a powerful weapon. Roger de Flor ^* was the most popular of their chiefs; and his

personal merit overshadowed the dignity of his prouder rivals of Arragon. The offspring of a marriage

between a German gentleman of the court of Frederic the Second and a damsel of Brindisi, Roger was

successively a templar, an apostate, a pirate, and at length the richest and most powerful admiral of the

Mediterranean. He sailed from Messina to Constantinople, with eighteen galleys, four great ships, and eight

thousand adventurers; ^* and his previous treaty was faithfully accomplished by Andronicus the elder, who

accepted with joy and terror this formidable succor. A palace was allotted for his reception, and a niece of the

emperor was given in marriage to the valiant stranger, who was immediately created great duke or admiral of

Romania. After a decent repose, he transported his troops over the Propontis, and boldly led them against the

Turks: in two bloody battles thirty thousand of the Moslems were slain: he raised the siege of Philadelphia,

and deserved the name of the deliverer of Asia. But after a short season of prosperity, the cloud of slavery

and ruin again burst on that unhappy province. The inhabitants escaped (says a Greek historian) from the

smoke into the flames; and the hostility of the Turks was less pernicious than the friendship of the Catalans.

^! The lives and fortunes which they had rescued they considered as their own: the willing or reluctant maid

was saved from the race of circumcision for the embraces of a Christian soldier: the exaction of fines and

supplies was enforced by licentious rapine and arbitrary executions; and, on the resistance of Magnesia, the

great duke besieged a city of the Roman empire. ^48 These disorders he excused by the wrongs and passions

of a victorious army; nor would his own authority or person have been safe, had he dared to punish his

faithful followers, who were defrauded of the just and covenanted price of their services. The threats and

complaints of Andronicus disclosed the nakedness of the empire. His golden bull had invited no more than

five hundred horse and a thousand foot soldiers; yet the crowds of volunteers, who migrated to the East, had

been enlisted and fed by his spontaneous bounty. While his bravest allies were content with three byzants or

pieces of gold, for their monthly pay, an ounce, or even two ounces, of gold were assigned to the Catalans,

whose annual pension would thus amount to near a hundred pounds sterling: one of their chiefs had modestly

rated at three hundred thousand crowns the value of his future merits; and above a million had been issued

from the treasury for the maintenance of these costly mercenaries. A cruel tax had been imposed on the corn

of the husbandman: one third was retrenched from the salaries of the public officers; and the standard of the

coin was so shamefully debased, that of the fourandtwenty parts only five were of pure gold. ^49 At the

summons of the emperor, Roger evacuated a province which no longer supplied the materials of rapine; ^*

but he refused to disperse his troops; and while his style was respectful, his conduct was independent and

hostile. He protested, that if the emperor should march against him, he would advance forty paces to kiss the

ground before him; but in rising from this prostrate attitude Roger had a life and sword at the service of his

friends. The great duke of Romania condescended to accept the title and ornaments of Caesar; but he rejected

the new proposal of the government of Asia with a subsidy of corn and money, ^* on condition that he should

reduce his troops to the harmless number of three thousand men. Assassination is the last resource of

cowards. The Caesar was tempted to visit the royal residence of Adrianople; in the apartment, and before the

eyes, of the empress he was stabbed by the Alani guards; and though the deed was imputed to their private

revenge, ^!! his countrymen, who dwelt at Constantinople in the security of peace, were involved in the same

proscription by the prince or people. The loss of their leader intimidated the crowd of adventurers, who

hoisted the sails of flight, and were soon scattered round the coasts of the Mediterranean. But a veteran band

of fifteen hundred Catalans, or French, stood firm in the strong fortress of Gallipoli on the Hellespont,

displayed the banners of Arragon, and offered to revenge and justify their chief, by an equal combat of ten or

a hundred warriors. Instead of accepting this bold defiance, the emperor Michael, the son and colleague of

Andronicus, resolved to oppress them with the weight of multitudes: every nerve was strained to form an

army of thirteen thousand horse and thirty thousand foot; and the Propontis was covered with the ships of the

Greeks and Genoese. In two battles by sea and land, these mighty forces were encountered and overthrown

by the despair and discipline of the Catalans: the young emperor fled to the palace; and an insufficient guard

of lighthorse was left for the protection of the open country. Victory renewed the hopes and numbers of the

adventures: every nation was blended under the name and standard of the great company; and three thousand

Turkish proselytes deserted from the Imperial service to join this military association. In the possession of

Gallipoli, ^!!! the Catalans intercepted the trade of Constantinople and the Black Sea, while they spread their

devastation on either side of the Hellespont over the confines of Europe and Asia. To prevent their approach,

the greatest part of the Byzantine territory was laid waste by the Greeks themselves: the peasants and their

cattle retired into the city; and myriads of sheep and oxen, for which neither place nor food could be

procured, were unprofitably slaughtered on the same day. Four times the emperor Andronicus sued for peace,

and four times he was inflexibly repulsed, till the want of provisions, and the discord of the chiefs, compelled

the Catalans to evacuate the banks of the Hellespont and the neighborhood of the capital. After their

separation from the Turks, the remains of the great company pursued their march through Macedonia and

[Footnote 47: In this motley multitude, the Catalans and Spaniards, the bravest of the soldiery, were styled by

themselves and the Greeks Amogavares. Moncada derives their origin from the Goths, and Pachymer (l. xi. c.

22) from the Arabs; and in spite of national and religious pride, I am afraid the latter is in the right.]

[Footnote *: On Roger de Flor and his companions, see an historical fragment, detailed and interesting,

entitled "The Spaniards of the Fourteenth Century," and inserted in "L'Espagne en 1808," a work translated

from the German, vol. ii. p. 167. This narrative enables us to detect some slight errors which have crept into

[Footnote *: The troops of Roger de Flor, according to his companions Ramon de Montaner, were 1500 men

at arms, 4000 Almogavares, and 1040 other foot, besides the sailors and mariners, vol. ii. p. 137. M.]

[Footnote !: Ramon de Montaner suppresses the cruelties and oppressions of the Catalans, in which, perhaps,

[Footnote 48: Some idea may be formed of the population of these cities, from the 36,000 inhabitants of

Tralles, which, in the preceding reign, was rebuilt by the emperor, and ruined by the Turks. (Pachymer, l. vi.

[Footnote 49: I have collected these pecuniary circumstances from Pachymer, (l. xi. c. 21, l. xii. c. 4, 5, 8, 14,

19,) who describes the progressive degradation of the gold coin. Even in the prosperous times of John Ducas

Vataces, the byzants were composed in equal proportions of the pure and the baser metal. The poverty of

Michael Palaeologus compelled him to strike a new coin, with nine parts, or carats, of gold, and fifteen of

copper alloy. After his death, the standard rose to ten carats, till in the public distress it was reduced to the

moiety. The prince was relieved for a moment, while credit and commerce were forever blasted. In France,

the gold coin is of twentytwo carats, (one twelfth alloy,) and the standard of England and Holland is still

[Footnote *: Roger de Flor, according to Ramon de Montaner, was recalled from Natolia, on account of the

war which had arisen on the death of Asan, king of Bulgaria. Andronicus claimed the kingdom for his

nephew, the sons of Asan by his sister. Roger de Flor turned the tide of success in favor of the emperor of

[Footnote *: Andronicus paid the Catalans in the debased money, much to their indignation. M.]

[Footnote !!: According to Ramon de Montaner, he was murdered by order of Kyr Michael, son of the

[Footnote !!!: Ramon de Montaner describes his sojourn at Gallipoli: Nous etions si riches, que nous ne

semions, ni ne labourions, ni ne faisions enver des vins ni ne cultivions les vignes: et cependant tous les ans

nous recucillions tour ce qu'il nous fallait, en vin, froment et avoine. p. 193. This lasted for five merry years.

Ramon de Montaner is high authority, for he was "chancelier et maitre rational de l'armee," (commissary of

rations.) He was left governor; all the scribes of the army remained with him, and with their aid he kept the

books in which were registered the number of horse and foot employed on each expedition. According to this

book the plunder was shared, of which he had a fifth for his trouble. p. 197. M.]

[Footnote 50: The Catalan war is most copiously related by Pachymer, in the xith, xiith, and xiiith books, till

he breaks off in the year 1308. Nicephorus Gregoras (l. vii. 3 6) is more concise and complete. Ducange,

who adopts these adventurers as French, has hunted their footsteps with his usual diligence, (Hist. de C. P. l.

vi. c. 22 46.) He quotes an Arragonese history, which I have read with pleasure, and which the Spaniards

extol as a model of style and composition, (Expedicion de los Catalanes y Arragoneses contra Turcos y

Griegos: Barcelona, 1623 in quarto: Madrid, 1777, in octavo.) Don Francisco de Moncada Conde de Ossona,

may imitate Caesar or Sallust; he may transcribe the Greek or Italian contemporaries: but he never quotes his

authorities, and I cannot discern any national records of the exploits of his countrymen.

Note: Ramon de Montaner, one of the Catalans, who accompanied Roger de Flor, and who was governor of

Gallipoli, has written, in Spanish, the history of this band of adventurers, to which he belonged, and from

which he separated when it left the Thracian Chersonese to penetrate into Macedonia and Greece. G.

The autobiography of Ramon de Montaner has been published in French by M. Buchon, in the great

collection of Memoires relatifs a l'Histoire de France. I quote this edition. M.]

After some ages of oblivion, Greece was awakened to new misfortunes by the arms of the Latins. In the two

hundred and fifty years between the first and the last conquest of Constantinople, that venerable land was

disputed by a multitude of petty tyrants; without the comforts of freedom and genius, her ancient cities were

again plunged in foreign and intestine war; and, if servitude be preferable to anarchy, they might repose with

joy under the Turkish yoke. I shall not pursue the obscure and various dynasties, that rose and fell on the

continent or in the isles; but our silence on the fate of Athens ^51 would argue a strange ingratitude to the

first and purest school of liberal science and amusement. In the partition of the empire, the principality of

Athens and Thebes was assigned to Otho de la Roche, a noble warrior of Burgundy, ^52 with the title of great

duke, ^53 which the Latins understood in their own sense, and the Greeks more foolishly derived from the

age of Constantine. ^54 Otho followed the standard of the marquis of Montferrat: the ample state which he

acquired by a miracle of conduct or fortune, ^55 was peaceably inherited by his son and two grandsons, till

the family, though not the nation, was changed, by the marriage of an heiress into the elder branch of the

house of Brienne. The son of that marriage, Walter de Brienne, succeeded to the duchy of Athens; and, with

the aid of some Catalan mercenaries, whom he invested with fiefs, reduced above thirty castles of the vassal

or neighboring lords. But when he was informed of the approach and ambition of the great company, he

collected a force of seven hundred knights, six thousand four hundred horse, and eight thousand foot, and

boldly met them on the banks of the River Cephisus in Boeotia. The Catalans amounted to no more than three

thousand five hundred horse, and four thousand foot; but the deficiency of numbers was compensated by

stratagem and order. They formed round their camp an artificial inundation; the duke and his knights

advanced without fear or precaution on the verdant meadow; their horses plunged into the bog; and he was

cut in pieces, with the greatest part of the French cavalry. His family and nation were expelled; and his son

Walter de Brienne, the titular duke of Athens, the tyrant of Florence, and the constable of France, lost his life

in the field of Poitiers Attica and Boeotia were the rewards of the victorious Catalans; they married the

widows and daughters of the slain; and during fourteen years, the great company was the terror of the Grecian

states. Their factions drove them to acknowledge the sovereignty of the house of Arragon; and during the

remainder of the fourteenth century, Athens, as a government or an appanage, was successively bestowed by

the kings of Sicily. After the French and Catalans, the third dynasty was that of the Accaioli, a family,

plebeian at Florence, potent at Naples, and sovereign in Greece. Athens, which they embellished with new

buildings, became the capital of a state, that extended over Thebes, Argos, Corinth, Delphi, and a part of

Thessaly; and their reign was finally determined by Mahomet the Second, who strangled the last duke, and

[Footnote 51: See the laborious history of Ducange, whose accurate table of the French dynasties

recapitulates the thirtyfive passages, in which he mentions the dukes of Athens.]

[Footnote 52: He is twice mentioned by Villehardouin with honor, (No. 151, 235;) and under the first

[Footnote 53: From these Latin princes of the xivth century, Boccace, Chaucer. and Shakspeare, have

borrowed their Theseus duke of Athens. An ignorant age transfers its own language and manners to the most

[Footnote 54: The same Constantine gave to Sicily a king, to Russia the magnus dapifer of the empire, to

Thebes the primicerius; and these absurd fables are properly lashed by Ducange, (ad Nicephor. Greg. l. vii. c.

5.) By the Latins, the lord of Thebes was styled, by corruption, the Megas Kurios, or Grand Sire!]

[Footnote 55: Quodam miraculo, says Alberic. He was probably received by Michael Choniates, the

archbishop who had defended Athens against the tyrant Leo Sgurus, (Nicetas urbs capta, p. 805, ed. Bek.)

Michael was the brother of the historian Nicetas; and his encomium of Athens is still extant in Ms. in the

Note: Nicetas says expressly that Michael surrendered the Acropolis to the marquis. M.]

Athens, ^56 though no more than the shadow of her former self, still contains about eight or ten thousand

inhabitants; of these, three fourths are Greeks in religion and language; and the Turks, who compose the

remainder, have relaxed, in their intercourse with the citizens, somewhat of the pride and gravity of their

national character. The olivetree, the gift of Minerva, flourishes in Attica; nor has the honey of Mount

Hymettus lost any part of its exquisite flavor: ^57 but the languid trade is monopolized by strangers, and the

agriculture of a barren land is abandoned to the vagrant Walachians. The Athenians are still distinguished by

the subtlety and acuteness of their understandings; but these qualities, unless ennobled by freedom, and

enlightened by study, will degenerate into a low and selfish cunning: and it is a proverbial saying of the

country, "From the Jews of Thessalonica, the Turks of Negropont, and the Greeks of Athens, good Lord

deliver us!" This artful people has eluded the tyranny of the Turkish bashaws, by an expedient which

alleviates their servitude and aggravates their shame. About the middle of the last century, the Athenians

chose for their protector the Kislar Aga, or chief black eunuch of the seraglio. This Aethiopian slave, who

possesses the sultan's ear, condescends to accept the tribute of thirty thousand crowns: his lieutenant, the

Waywode, whom he annually confirms, may reserve for his own about five or six thousand more; and such is

the policy of the citizens, that they seldom fail to remove and punish an oppressive governor. Their private

differences are decided by the archbishop, one of the richest prelates of the Greek church, since he possesses

a revenue of one thousand pounds sterling; and by a tribunal of the eight geronti or elders, chosen in the eight

quarters of the city: the noble families cannot trace their pedigree above three hundred years; but their

principal members are distinguished by a grave demeanor, a fur cap, and the lofty appellation of archon. By

some, who delight in the contrast, the modern language of Athens is represented as the most corrupt and

barbarous of the seventy dialects of the vulgar Greek: ^58 this picture is too darkly colored: but it would not

be easy, in the country of Plato and Demosthenes, to find a reader or a copy of their works. The Athenians

walk with supine indifference among the glorious ruins of antiquity; and such is the debasement of their

character, that they are incapable of admiring the genius of their predecessors. ^59

[Footnote 56: The modern account of Athens, and the Athenians, is extracted from Spon, (Voyage en Grece,

tom. ii. p. 79 199,) and Wheeler, (Travels into Greece, p. 337 414,) Stuart, (Antiquities of Athens,

passim,) and Chandler, (Travels into Greece, p. 23 172.) The first of these travellers visited Greece in the

year 1676; the last, 1765; and ninety years had not produced much difference in the tranquil scene.]

[Footnote 57: The ancients, or at least the Athenians, believed that all the bees in the world had been

propagated from Mount Hymettus. They taught, that health might be preserved, and life prolonged, by the

external use of oil, and the internal use of honey, (Geoponica, l. xv. c 7, p. 1089 1094, edit. Niclas.)]

[Footnote 58: Ducange, Glossar. Graec. Praefat. p. 8, who quotes for his author Theodosius Zygomalas, a

modern grammarian. Yet Spon (tom. ii. p. 194) and Wheeler, (p. 355,) no incompetent judges, entertain a

[Footnote 59: Yet we must not accuse them of corrupting the name of Athens, which they still call Athini.

Note: Gibbon did not foresee a Bavarian prince on the throne of Greece, with Athens as his capital. M.]

Civil Wars, And Ruin Of The Greek Empire. Reigns Of Andronicus, The Elder And Younger, And John

Palaeologus. Regency, Revolt, Reign, And Abdication Of John Cantacuzene. Establishment Of A

Genoese Colony At Pera Or Galata. Their Wars With The Empire And City Of Constantinople.

The long reign of Andronicus ^1 the elder is chiefly memorable by the disputes of the Greek church, the

invasion of the Catalans, and the rise of the Ottoman power. He is celebrated as the most learned and virtuous

prince of the age; but such virtue, and such learning, contributed neither to the perfection of the individual,

nor to the happiness of society A slave of the most abject superstition, he was surrounded on all sides by

visible and invisible enemies; nor were the flames of hell less dreadful to his fancy, than those of a Catalan or

Turkish war. Under the reign of the Palaeologi, the choice of the patriarch was the most important business of

the state; the heads of the Greek church were ambitious and fanatic monks; and their vices or virtues, their

learning or ignorance, were equally mischievous or contemptible. By his intemperate discipline, the patriarch

Athanasius ^2 excited the hatred of the clergy and people: he was heard to declare, that the sinner should

swallow the last dregs of the cup of penance; and the foolish tale was propagated of his punishing a

sacrilegious ass that had tasted the lettuce of a convent garden. Driven from the throne by the universal

clamor, Athanasius composed before his retreat two papers of a very opposite cast. His public testament was

in the tone of charity and resignation; the private codicil breathed the direst anathemas against the authors of

his disgrace, whom he excluded forever from the communion of the holy trinity, the angels, and the saints.

This last paper he enclosed in an earthen pot, which was placed, by his order, on the top of one of the pillars,

in the dome of St. Sophia, in the distant hope of discovery and revenge. At the end of four years, some

youths, climbing by a ladder in search of pigeons' nests, detected the fatal secret; and, as Andronicus felt

himself touched and bound by the excommunication, he trembled on the brink of the abyss which had been so

treacherously dug under his feet. A synod of bishops was instantly convened to debate this important

question: the rashness of these clandestine anathemas was generally condemned; but as the knot could be

untied only by the same hand, as that hand was now deprived of the crosier, it appeared that this posthumous

decree was irrevocable by any earthly power. Some faint testimonies of repentance and pardon were extorted

from the author of the mischief; but the conscience of the emperor was still wounded, and he desired, with no

less ardor than Athanasius himself, the restoration of a patriarch, by whom alone he could be healed. At the

dead of night, a monk rudely knocked at the door of the royal bedchamber, announcing a revelation of

plague and famine, of inundations and earthquakes. Andronicus started from his bed, and spent the night in

prayer, till he felt, or thought that he felt, a slight motion of the earth. The emperor on foot led the bishops

and monks to the cell of Athanasius; and, after a proper resistance, the saint, from whom this message had

been sent, consented to absolve the prince, and govern the church of Constantinople. Untamed by disgrace,

and hardened by solitude, the shepherd was again odious to the flock, and his enemies contrived a singular,

and as it proved, a successful, mode of revenge. In the night, they stole away the footstool or footcloth of his

throne, which they secretly replaced with the decoration of a satirical picture. The emperor was painted with a

bridle in his mouth, and Athanasius leading the tractable beast to the feet of Christ. The authors of the libel

were detected and punished; but as their lives had been spared, the Christian priest in sullen indignation

retired to his cell; and the eyes of Andronicus, which had been opened for a moment, were again closed by

[Footnote 1: Andronicus himself will justify our freedom in the invective, (Nicephorus Gregoras, l. i. c. i.,)

which he pronounced against historic falsehood. It is true, that his censure is more pointedly urged against

[Footnote 2: For the anathema in the pigeon's nest, see Pachymer, (l. ix. c. 24,) who relates the general history

of Athanasius, (l. viii. c. 13 16, 20, 24, l. x. c. 27 29, 31 36, l. xi. c. 1 3, 5, 6, l. xiii. c. 8, 10, 23, 35,)

and is followed by Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. vi. c. 5, 7, l. vii. c. 1, 9,) who includes the second retreat of this

If this transaction be one of the most curious and important of a reign of fifty years, I cannot at least accuse

the brevity of my materials, since I reduce into some few pages the enormous folios of Pachymer, ^3

Cantacuzene, ^4 and Nicephorus Gregoras, ^5 who have composed the prolix and languid story of the times.

The name and situation of the emperor John Cantacuzene might inspire the most lively curiosity. His

memorials of forty years extend from the revolt of the younger Andronicus to his own abdication of the

empire; and it is observed, that, like Moses and Caesar, he was the principal actor in the scenes which he

describes. But in this eloquent work we should vainly seek the sincerity of a hero or a penitent. Retired in a

cloister from the vices and passions of the world, he presents not a confession, but an apology, of the life of

an ambitious statesman. Instead of unfolding the true counsels and characters of men, he displays the smooth

and specious surface of events, highly varnished with his own praises and those of his friends. Their motives

are always pure; their ends always legitimate: they conspire and rebel without any views of interest; and the

violence which they inflict or suffer is celebrated as the spontaneous effect of reason and virtue. [Footnote 3:

Pachymer, in seven books, 377 folio pages, describes the first twentysix years of Andronicus the Elder; and

marks the date of his composition by the current news or lie of the day, (A.D. 1308.) Either death or disgust

[Footnote 4: After an interval of twelve years, from the conclusion of Pachymer, Cantacuzenus takes up the

pen; and his first book (c. 1 59, p. 9 150) relates the civil war, and the eight last years of the elder

Andronicus. The ingenious comparison with Moses and Caesar is fancied by his French translator, the

[Footnote 5: Nicephorus Gregoras more briefly includes the entire life and reign of Andronicus the elder, (l.

vi. c. 1, p. 96 291.) This is the part of which Cantacuzene complains as a false and malicious representation

After the example of the first of the Palaeologi, the elder Andronicus associated his son Michael to the honors

of the purple; and from the age of eighteen to his premature death, that prince was acknowledged, above

twenty five years, as the second emperor of the Greeks. ^6 At the head of an army, he excited neither the

fears of the enemy, nor the jealousy of the court; his modesty and patience were never tempted to compute

the years of his father; nor was that father compelled to repent of his liberality either by the virtues or vices of

his son. The son of Michael was named Andronicus from his grandfather, to whose early favor he was

introduced by that nominal resemblance. The blossoms of wit and beauty increased the fondness of the elder

Andronicus; and, with the common vanity of age, he expected to realize in the second, the hope which had

been disappointed in the first, generation. The boy was educated in the palace as an heir and a favorite; and in

the oaths and acclamations of the people, the august triad was formed by the names of the father, the son, and

the grandson. But the younger Andronicus was speedily corrupted by his infant greatness, while he beheld

with puerile impatience the double obstacle that hung, and might long hang, over his rising ambition. It was

not to acquire fame, or to diffuse happiness, that he so eagerly aspired: wealth and impunity were in his eyes

the most precious attributes of a monarch; and his first indiscreet demand was the sovereignty of some rich

and fertile island, where he might lead a life of independence and pleasure. The emperor was offended by the

loud and frequent intemperance which disturbed his capital; the sums which his parsimony denied were

supplied by the Genoese usurers of Pera; and the oppressive debt, which consolidated the interest of a faction,

could be discharged only by a revolution. A beautiful female, a matron in rank, a prostitute in manners, had

instructed the younger Andronicus in the rudiments of love; but he had reason to suspect the nocturnal visits

of a rival; and a stranger passing through the street was pierced by the arrows of his guards, who were placed

in ambush at her door. That stranger was his brother, Prince Manuel, who languished and died of his wound;

and the emperor Michael, their common father, whose health was in a declining state, expired on the eighth

day, lamenting the loss of both his children. ^7 However guiltless in his intention, the younger Andronicus

might impute a brother's and a father's death to the consequence of his own vices; and deep was the sigh of

thinking and feeling men, when they perceived, instead of sorrow and repentance, his illdissembled joy on

the removal of two odious competitors. By these melancholy events, and the increase of his disorders, the

mind of the elder emperor was gradually alienated; and, after many fruitless reproofs, he transferred on

another grandson ^8 his hopes and affection. The change was announced by the new oath of allegiance to the

reigning sovereign, and the person whom he should appoint for his successor; and the acknowledged heir,

after a repetition of insults and complaints, was exposed to the indignity of a public trial. Before the sentence,

which would probably have condemned him to a dungeon or a cell, the emperor was informed that the palace

courts were filled with the armed followers of his grandson; the judgment was softened to a treaty of

reconciliation; and the triumphant escape of the prince encouraged the ardor of the younger faction. [Footnote

6: He was crowned May 21st, 1295, and died October 12th, 1320, (Ducange, Fam. Byz. p. 239.) His brother

Theodore, by a second marriage, inherited the marquisate of Montferrat, apostatized to the religion and

manners of the Latins, (Nic. Greg. l. ix. c. 1,) and founded a dynasty of Italian princes, which was

[Footnote 7: We are indebted to Nicephorus Gregoras (l. viii. c. 1) for the knowledge of this tragic adventure;

while Cantacuzene more discreetly conceals the vices of Andronicus the Younger, of which he was the

[Footnote 8: His destined heir was Michael Catharus, the bastard of Constantine his second son. In this

project of excluding his grandson Andronicus, Nicephorus Gregoras (l. viii. c. 3) agrees with Cantacuzene, (l.

Yet the capital, the clergy, and the senate, adhered to the person, or at least to the government, of the old

emperor; and it was only in the provinces, by flight, and revolt, and foreign succor, that the malecontents

could hope to vindicate their cause and subvert his throne. The soul of the enterprise was the great domestic

John Cantacuzene; the sally from Constantinople is the first date of his actions and memorials; and if his own

pen be most descriptive of his patriotism, an unfriendly historian has not refused to celebrate the zeal and

ability which he displayed in the service of the young emperor. ^* That prince escaped from the capital under

the pretence of hunting; erected his standard at Adrianople; and, in a few days, assembled fifty thousand

horse and foot, whom neither honor nor duty could have armed against the Barbarians. Such a force might

have saved or commanded the empire; but their counsels were discordant, their motions were slow and

doubtful, and their progress was checked by intrigue and negotiation. The quarrel of the two Andronici was

protracted, and suspended, and renewed, during a ruinous period of seven years. In the first treaty, the relics

of the Greek empire were divided: Constantinople, Thessalonica, and the islands, were left to the elder, while

the younger acquired the sovereignty of the greatest part of Thrace, from Philippi to the Byzantine limit. By

the second treaty, he stipulated the payment of his troops, his immediate coronation, and an adequate share of

the power and revenue of the state. The third civil war was terminated by the surprise of Constantinople, the

final retreat of the old emperor, and the sole reign of his victorious grandson. The reasons of this delay may

be found in the characters of the men and of the times. When the heir of the monarchy first pleaded his

wrongs and his apprehensions, he was heard with pity and applause: and his adherents repeated on all sides

the inconsistent promise, that he would increase the pay of the soldiers and alleviate the burdens of the

people. The grievances of forty years were mingled in his revolt; and the rising generation was fatigued by

the endless prospect of a reign, whose favorites and maxims were of other times. The youth of Andronicus

had been without spirit, his age was without reverence: his taxes produced an unusual revenue of five

hundred thousand pounds; yet the richest of the sovereigns of Christendom was incapable of maintaining

three thousand horse and twenty galleys, to resist the destructive progress of the Turks. ^9 "How different,"

said the younger Andronicus, "is my situation from that of the son of Philip! Alexander might complain, that

his father would leave him nothing to conquer: alas! my grandsire will leave me nothing to lose." But the

Greeks were soon admonished, that the public disorders could not be healed by a civil war; and that their

young favorite was not destined to be the savior of a falling empire. On the first repulse, his party was broken

by his own levity, their intestine discord, and the intrigues of the ancient court, which tempted each

malecontent to desert or betray the cause of the rebellion. Andronicus the younger was touched with remorse,

or fatigued with business, or deceived by negotiation: pleasure rather than power was his aim; and the license

of maintaining a thousand hounds, a thousand hawks, and a thousand huntsmen, was sufficient to sully his

fame and disarm his ambition. [Footnote *: The conduct of Cantacuzene, by his own showing, was

inexplicable. He was unwilling to dethrone the old emperor, and dissuaded the immediate march on

Constantinople. The young Andronicus, he says, entered into his views, and wrote to warn the emperor of his

danger when the march was determined. Cantacuzenus, in Nov. Byz. Hist. Collect. vol. i. p. 104, M.]

[Footnote 9: See Nicephorus Gregoras, l. viii. c. 6. The younger Andronicus complained, that in four years

and four months a sum of 350,000 byzants of gold was due to him for the expenses of his household,

(Cantacuzen l. i. c. 48.) Yet he would have remitted the debt, if he might have been allowed to squeeze the

Let us now survey the catastrophe of this busy plot, and the final situation of the principal actors. ^10 The age

of Andronicus was consumed in civil discord; and, amidst the events of war and treaty, his power and

reputation continually decayed, till the fatal night in which the gates of the city and palace were opened

without resistance to his grandson. His principal commander scorned the repeated warnings of danger; and

retiring to rest in the vain security of ignorance, abandoned the feeble monarch, with some priests and pages,

to the terrors of a sleepless night. These terrors were quickly realized by the hostile shouts, which proclaimed

the titles and victory of Andronicus the younger; and the aged emperor, falling prostrate before an image of

the Virgin, despatched a suppliant message to resign the sceptre, and to obtain his life at the hands of the

conqueror. The answer of his grandson was decent and pious; at the prayer of his friends, the younger

Andronicus assumed the sole administration; but the elder still enjoyed the name and preeminence of the first

emperor, the use of the great palace, and a pension of twentyfour thousand pieces of gold, one half of which

was assigned on the royal treasury, and the other on the fishery of Constantinople. But his impotence was

soon exposed to contempt and oblivion; the vast silence of the palace was disturbed only by the cattle and

poultry of the neighborhood, ^* which roved with impunity through the solitary courts; and a reduced

allowance of ten thousand pieces of gold ^11 was all that he could ask, and more than he could hope. His

calamities were imbittered by the gradual extinction of sight; his confinement was rendered each day more

rigorous; and during the absence and sickness of his grandson, his inhuman keepers, by the threats of instant

death, compelled him to exchange the purple for the monastic habit and profession. The monk Antony had

renounced the pomp of the world; yet he had occasion for a coarse fur in the winter season, and as wine was

forbidden by his confessor, and water by his physician, the sherbet of Egypt was his common drink. It was

not without difficulty that the late emperor could procure three or four pieces to satisfy these simple wants;

and if he bestowed the gold to relieve the more painful distress of a friend, the sacrifice is of some weight in

the scale of humanity and religion. Four years after his abdication, Andronicus or Antony expired in a cell, in

the seventyfourth year of his age: and the last strain of adulation could only promise a more splendid crown

of glory in heaven than he had enjoyed upon earth. ^12 ^* [Footnote 10: I follow the chronology of

Nicephorus Gregoras, who is remarkably exact. It is proved that Cantacuzene has mistaken the dates of his

own actions, or rather that his text has been corrupted by ignorant transcribers.]

[Footnote 11: I have endeavored to reconcile the 24,000 pieces of Cantacuzene (l. ii. c. 1) with the 10,000 of

Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. ix. c. 2;) the one of whom wished to soften, the other to magnify, the hardships of

[Footnote 12: See Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. ix. 6, 7, 8, 10, 14, l. x. c. 1.) The historian had tasted of the

prosperity, and shared the retreat, of his benefactor; and that friendship which "waits or to the scaffold or the

Note: But it may be accused of unparalleled absurdity. He compares the extinction of the feeble old man to

that of the sun: his coffin is to be floated like Noah's ark by a deluge of tears. M.]

[Footnote *: Prodigies (according to Nic. Gregoras, p. 460) announced the departure of the old and imbecile

Nor was the reign of the younger, more glorious or fortunate than that of the elder, Andronicus. ^13 He

gathered the fruits of ambition; but the taste was transient and bitter: in the supreme station he lost the

remains of his early popularity; and the defects of his character became still more conspicuous to the world.

The public reproach urged him to march in person against the Turks; nor did his courage fail in the hour of

trial; but a defeat and a wound were the only trophies of his expedition in Asia, which confirmed the

establishment of the Ottoman monarchy. The abuses of the civil government attained their full maturity and

perfection: his neglect of forms, and the confusion of national dresses, are deplored by the Greeks as the fatal

symptoms of the decay of the empire. Andronicus was old before his time; the intemperance of youth had

accelerated the infirmities of age; and after being rescued from a dangerous malady by nature, or physic, or

the Virgin, he was snatched away before he had accomplished his fortyfifth year. He was twice married;

and, as the progress of the Latins in arms and arts had softened the prejudices of the Byzantine court, his two

wives were chosen in the princely houses of Germany and Italy. The first, Agnes at home, Irene in Greece,

was daughter of the duke of Brunswick. Her father ^14 was a petty lord ^15 in the poor and savage regions of

the north of Germany: ^16 yet he derived some revenue from his silver mines; ^17 and his family is

celebrated by the Greeks as the most ancient and noble of the Teutonic name. ^18 After the death of this

childish princess, Andronicus sought in marriage Jane, the sister of the count of Savoy; ^19 and his suit was

preferred to that of the French king. ^20 The count respected in his sister the superior majesty of a Roman

empress: her retinue was composed of knights and ladies; she was regenerated and crowned in St. Sophia,

under the more orthodox appellation of Anne; and, at the nuptial feast, the Greeks and Italians vied with each

[Footnote 13: The sole reign of Andronicus the younger is described by Cantacuzene (l. ii. c. 1 40, p. 191

[Footnote 14: Agnes, or Irene, was the daughter of Duke Henry the Wonderful, the chief of the house of

Brunswick, and the fourth in descent from the famous Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria, and

conqueror of the Sclavi on the Baltic coast. Her brother Henry was surnamed the Greek, from his two

journeys into the East: but these journeys were subsequent to his sister's marriage; and I am ignorant how

Agnes was discovered in the heart of Germany, and recommended to the Byzantine court. (Rimius, Memoirs

[Footnote 15: Henry the Wonderful was the founder of the branch of Gruben hagen, extinct in the year 1596,

(Rimius, p. 287.) He resided in the castle of Wolfenbuttel, and possessed no more than a sixth part of the

allodial estates of Brunswick and Luneburgh, which the Guelph family had saved from the confiscation of

their great fiefs. The frequent partitions among brothers had almost ruined the princely houses of Germany,

till that just, but pernicious, law was slowly superseded by the right of primogeniture. The principality of

Grubenhagen, one of the last remains of the Hercynian forest, is a woody, mountainous, and barren tract,

[Footnote 16: The royal author of the Memoirs of Brandenburgh will teach us, how justly, in a much later

period, the north of Germany deserved the epithets of poor and barbarous. (Essai sur les Moeurs, In the year

1306, in the woods of Luneburgh, some wild people of the Vened race were allowed to bury alive their infirm

[Footnote 17: The assertion of Tacitus, that Germany was destitute of the precious metals, must be taken,

even in his own time, with some limitation, (Germania, c. 5. Annal. xi. 20.) According to Spener, (Hist.

Germaniae Pragmatica, tom. i. p. 351,) Argentifodinae in Hercyniis montibus, imperante Othone magno

(A.D. 968) primum apertae, largam etiam opes augendi dederunt copiam: but Rimius (p. 258, 259) defers till

the year 1016 the discovery of the silver mines of Grubenhagen, or the Upper Hartz, which were productive

in the beginning of the xivth century, and which still yield a considerable revenue to the house of Brunswick.]

[Footnote 18: Cantacuzene has given a most honorable testimony. The praise is just in itself, and pleasing to

[Footnote 19: Anne, or Jane, was one of the four daughters of Amedee the Great, by a second marriage, and

halfsister of his successor Edward count of Savoy. (Anderson's Tables, p. 650. See Cantacuzene, (l. i. c. 40

[Footnote 20: That king, if the fact be true, must have been Charles the Fair who in five years (1321 1326)

was married to three wives, (Anderson, p. 628.) Anne of Savoy arrived at Constantinople in February, 1326.]

The empress Anne of Savoy survived her husband: their son, John Palaeologus, was left an orphan and an

emperor in the ninth year of his age; and his weakness was protected by the first and most deserving of the

Greeks. The long and cordial friendship of his father for John Cantacuzene is alike honorable to the prince

and the subject. It had been formed amidst the pleasures of their youth: their families were almost equally

noble; ^21 and the recent lustre of the purple was amply compensated by the energy of a private education.

We have seen that the young emperor was saved by Cantacuzene from the power of his grandfather; and,

after six years of civil war, the same favorite brought him back in triumph to the palace of Constantinople.

Under the reign of Andronicus the younger, the great domestic ruled the emperor and the empire; and it was

by his valor and conduct that the Isle of Lesbos and the principality of Aetolia were restored to their ancient

allegiance. His enemies confess, that, among the public robbers, Cantacuzene alone was moderate and

abstemious; and the free and voluntary account which he produces of his own wealth ^22 may sustain the

presumption that he was devolved by inheritance, and not accumulated by rapine. He does not indeed specify

the value of his money, plate, and jewels; yet, after a voluntary gift of two hundred vases of silver, after much

had been secreted by his friends and plundered by his foes, his forfeit treasures were sufficient for the

equipment of a fleet of seventy galleys. He does not measure the size and number of his estates; but his

granaries were heaped with an incredible store of wheat and barley; and the labor of a thousand yoke of oxen

might cultivate, according to the practice of antiquity, about sixtytwo thousand five hundred acres of arable

land. ^23 His pastures were stocked with two thousand five hundred brood mares, two hundred camels, three

hundred mules, five hundred asses, five thousand horned cattle, fifty thousand hogs, and seventy thousand

sheep: ^24 a precious record of rural opulence, in the last period of the empire, and in a land, most probably

in Thrace, so repeatedly wasted by foreign and domestic hostility. The favor of Cantacuzene was above his

fortune. In the moments of familiarity, in the hour of sickness, the emperor was desirous to level the distance

between them and pressed his friend to accept the diadem and purple. The virtue of the great domestic, which

is attested by his own pen, resisted the dangerous proposal; but the last testament of Andronicus the younger

[Footnote 21: The noble race of the Cantacuzeni (illustrious from the xith century in the Byzantine annals)

was drawn from the Paladins of France, the heroes of those romances which, in the xiiith century, were

[Footnote 23: Saserna, in Gaul, and Columella, in Italy or Spain, allow two yoke of oxen, two drivers, and six

laborers, for two hundred jugera (125 English acres) of arable land, and three more men must be added if

there be much underwood, (Columella de Re Rustica, l. ii. c. 13, p 441, edit. Gesner.)]

[Footnote 24: In this enumeration (l. iii. c. 30) the French translation of the president Cousin is blotted with

three palpable and essential errors. 1. He omits the 1000 yoke of working oxen. 2. He interprets by the

number of fifteen hundred. 3. He confounds myriads with chiliads, and gives Cantacuzene no more than 5000

Had the regent found a suitable return of obedience and gratitude, perhaps he would have acted with pure and

zealous fidelity in the service of his pupil. ^25 A guard of five hundred soldiers watched over his person and

the palace; the funeral of the late emperor was decently performed; the capital was silent and submissive; and

five hundred letters, which Cantacuzene despatched in the first month, informed the provinces of their loss

and their duty. The prospect of a tranquil minority was blasted by the great duke or admiral Apocaucus, and

to exaggerate his perfidy, the Imperial historian is pleased to magnify his own imprudence, in raising him to

that office against the advice of his more sagacious sovereign. Bold and subtle, rapacious and profuse, the

avarice and ambition of Apocaucus were by turns subservient to each other; and his talents were applied to

the ruin of his country. His arrogance was heightened by the command of a naval force and an impregnable

castle, and under the mask of oaths and flattery he secretly conspired against his benefactor. The female court

of the empress was bribed and directed; he encouraged Anne of Savoy to assert, by the law of nature, the

tutelage of her son; the love of power was disguised by the anxiety of maternal tenderness: and the founder of

the Palaeologi had instructed his posterity to dread the example of a perfidious guardian. The patriarch John

of Apri was a proud and feeble old man, encompassed by a numerous and hungry kindred. He produced an

obsolete epistle of Andronicus, which bequeathed the prince and people to his pious care: the fate of his

predecessor Arsenius prompted him to prevent, rather than punish, the crimes of a usurper; and Apocaucus

smiled at the success of his own flattery, when he beheld the Byzantine priest assuming the state and

temporal claims of the Roman pontiff. ^26 Between three persons so different in their situation and character,

a private league was concluded: a shadow of authority was restored to the senate; and the people was tempted

by the name of freedom. By this powerful confederacy, the great domestic was assaulted at first with

clandestine, at length with open, arms. His prerogatives were disputed; his opinions slighted; his friends

persecuted; and his safety was threatened both in the camp and city. In his absence on the public service, he

was accused of treason; proscribed as an enemy of the church and state; and delivered with all his adherents

to the sword of justice, the vengeance of the people, and the power of the devil; his fortunes were confiscated;

his aged mother was cast into prison; ^* all his past services were buried in oblivion; and he was driven by

injustice to perpetrate the crime of which he was accused. ^27 From the review of his preceding conduct,

Cantacuzene appears to have been guiltless of any treasonable designs; and the only suspicion of his

innocence must arise from the vehemence of his protestations, and the sublime purity which he ascribes to his

own virtue. While the empress and the patriarch still affected the appearances of harmony, he repeatedly

solicited the permission of retiring to a private, and even a monastic, life. After he had been declared a public

enemy, it was his fervent wish to throw himself at the feet of the young emperor, and to receive without a

murmur the stroke of the executioner: it was not without reluctance that he listened to the voice of reason,

which inculcated the sacred duty of saving his family and friends, and proved that he could only save them by

[Footnote 25: See the regency and reign of John Cantacuzenus, and the whole progress of the civil war, in his

own history, (l. iii. c. 1 100, p. 348 700,) and in that of Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. xii. c. 1 l. xv. c. 9, p.

[Footnote 26: He assumes the royal privilege of red shoes or buskins; placed on his head a mitre of silk and

gold; subscribed his epistles with hyacinth or green ink, and claimed for the new, whatever Constantine had

given to the ancient, Rome, (Cantacuzen. l. iii. c. 36. Nic. Gregoras, l. xiv. c. 3.)]

[Footnote 27: Gregoras (l. xii. c. 5.) confesses the innocence and virtues of Cantacuzenus, the guilt and

flagitious vices of Apocaucus; nor does he dissemble the motive of his personal and religious enmity to the

In the strong city of Demotica, his peculiar domain, the emperor John Cantacuzenus was invested with the

purple buskins: his right leg was clothed by his noble kinsmen, the left by the Latin chiefs, on whom he

conferred the order of knighthood. But even in this act of revolt, he was still studious of loyalty; and the titles

of John Palaeologus and Anne of Savoy were proclaimed before his own name and that of his wife Irene.

Such vain ceremony is a thin disguise of rebellion, nor are there perhaps any personal wrongs that can

authorize a subject to take arms against his sovereign: but the want of preparation and success may confirm

the assurance of the usurper, that this decisive step was the effect of necessity rather than of choice.

Constantinople adhered to the young emperor; the king of Bulgaria was invited to the relief of Adrianople:

the principal cities of Thrace and Macedonia, after some hesitation, renounced their obedience to the great

domestic; and the leaders of the troops and provinces were induced, by their private interest, to prefer the

loose dominion of a woman and a priest. ^* The army of Cantacuzene, in sixteen divisions, was stationed on

the banks of the Melas to tempt or to intimidate the capital: it was dispersed by treachery or fear; and the

officers, more especially the mercenary Latins, accepted the bribes, and embraced the service, of the

Byzantine court. After this loss, the rebel emperor (he fluctuated between the two characters) took the road of

Thessalonica with a chosen remnant; but he failed in his enterprise on that important place; and he was

closely pursued by the great duke, his enemy Apocaucus, at the head of a superior power by sea and land.

Driven from the coast, in his march, or rather flight, into the mountains of Servia, Cantacuzene assembled his

troops to scrutinize those who were worthy and willing to accompany his broken fortunes. A base majority

bowed and retired; and his trusty band was diminished to two thousand, and at last to five hundred,

volunteers. The cral, ^28 or despot of the Servians received him with general hospitality; but the ally was

insensibly degraded to a suppliant, a hostage, a captive; and in this miserable dependence, he waited at the

door of the Barbarian, who could dispose of the life and liberty of a Roman emperor. The most tempting

offers could not persuade the cral to violate his trust; but he soon inclined to the stronger side; and his friend

was dismissed without injury to a new vicissitude of hopes and perils. Near six years the flame of discord

burnt with various success and unabated rage: the cities were distracted by the faction of the nobles and the

plebeians; the Cantacuzeni and Palaeologi: and the Bulgarians, the Servians, and the Turks, were invoked on

both sides as the instruments of private ambition and the common ruin. The regent deplored the calamities, of

which he was the author and victim: and his own experience might dictate a just and lively remark on the

different nature of foreign and civil war. "The former," said he, "is the external warmth of summer, always

tolerable, and often beneficial; the latter is the deadly heat of a fever, which consumes without a remedy the

[Footnote *: Cantacuzene asserts, that in all the cities, the populace were on the side of the emperor, the

aristocracy on his. The populace took the opportunity of rising and plundering the wealthy as Cantacuzenites,

vol. iii. c. 29 Ages of common oppression and ruin had not extinguished these republican factions. M.]

[Footnote 28: The princes of Servia (Ducange, Famil. Dalmaticae, c. 2, 3, 4, 9) were styled Despots in Greek,

and Cral in their native idiom, (Ducange, Gloss. Graec. p. 751.) That title, the equivalent of king, appears to

be of Sclavonic origin, from whence it has been borrowed by the Hungarians, the modern Greeks, and even

by the Turks, (Leunclavius, Pandect. Turc. p. 422,) who reserve the name of Padishah for the emperor. To

obtain the latter instead of the former is the ambition of the French at Constantinople, (Aversissement a

[Footnote 29: Nic. Gregoras, l. xii. c. 14. It is surprising that Cantacuzene has not inserted this just and lively

The introduction of barbarians and savages into the contests of civilized nations, is a measure pregnant with

shame and mischief; which the interest of the moment may compel, but which is reprobated by the best

principles of humanity and reason. It is the practice of both sides to accuse their enemies of the guilt of the

first alliances; and those who fail in their negotiations are loudest in their censure of the example which they

envy and would gladly imitate. The Turks of Asia were less barbarous perhaps than the shepherds of Bulgaria

and Servia; but their religion rendered them implacable foes of Rome and Christianity. To acquire the

friendship of their emirs, the two factions vied with each other in baseness and profusion: the dexterity of

Cantacuzene obtained the preference: but the succor and victory were dearly purchased by the marriage of his

daughter with an infidel, the captivity of many thousand Christians, and the passage of the Ottomans into

Europe, the last and fatal stroke in the fall of the Roman empire. The inclining scale was decided in his favor

by the death of Apocaucus, the just though singular retribution of his crimes. A crowd of nobles or plebeians,

whom he feared or hated, had been seized by his orders in the capital and the provinces; and the old palace of

Constantine was assigned as the place of their confinement. Some alterations in raising the walls, and

narrowing the cells, had been ingeniously contrived to prevent their escape, and aggravate their misery; and

the work was incessantly pressed by the daily visits of the tyrant. His guards watched at the gate, and as he

stood in the inner court to overlook the architects, without fear or suspicion, he was assaulted and laid

breathless on the ground, by two ^* resolute prisoners of the Palaeologian race, ^30 who were armed with

sticks, and animated by despair. On the rumor of revenge and liberty, the captive multitude broke their fetters,

fortified their prison, and exposed from the battlements the tyrant's head, presuming on the favor of the

people and the clemency of the empress. Anne of Savoy might rejoice in the fall of a haughty and ambitious

minister, but while she delayed to resolve or to act, the populace, more especially the mariners, were excited

by the widow of the great duke to a sedition, an assault, and a massacre. The prisoners (of whom the far

greater part were guiltless or inglorious of the deed) escaped to a neighboring church: they were slaughtered

at the foot of the altar; and in his death the monster was not less bloody and venomous than in his life. Yet his

talents alone upheld the cause of the young emperor; and his surviving associates, suspicious of each other,

abandoned the conduct of the war, and rejected the fairest terms of accommodation. In the beginning of the

dispute, the empress felt, and complained, that she was deceived by the enemies of Cantacuzene: the patriarch

was employed to preach against the forgiveness of injuries; and her promise of immortal hatred was sealed by

an oath, under the penalty of excommunication. ^31 But Anne soon learned to hate without a teacher: she

beheld the misfortunes of the empire with the indifference of a stranger: her jealousy was exasperated by the

competition of a rival empress; and on the first symptoms of a more yielding temper, she threatened the

patriarch to convene a synod, and degrade him from his office. Their incapacity and discord would have

afforded the most decisive advantage; but the civil war was protracted by the weakness of both parties; and

the moderation of Cantacuzene has not escaped the reproach of timidity and indolence. He successively

recovered the provinces and cities; and the realm of his pupil was measured by the walls of Constantinople;

but the metropolis alone counterbalanced the rest of the empire; nor could he attempt that important conquest

till he had secured in his favor the public voice and a private correspondence. An Italian, of the name of

Facciolati, ^32 had succeeded to the office of great duke: the ships, the guards, and the golden gate, were

subject to his command; but his humble ambition was bribed to become the instrument of treachery; and the

revolution was accomplished without danger or bloodshed. Destitute of the powers of resistance, or the hope

of relief, the inflexible Anne would have still defended the palace, and have smiled to behold the capital in

flames, rather than in the possession of a rival. She yielded to the prayers of her friends and enemies; and the

treaty was dictated by the conqueror, who professed a loyal and zealous attachment to the son of his

benefactor. The marriage of his daughter with John Palaeologus was at length consummated: the hereditary

right of the pupil was acknowledged; but the sole administration during ten years was vested in the guardian.

Two emperors and three empresses were seated on the Byzantine throne; and a general amnesty quieted the

apprehensions, and confirmed the property, of the most guilty subjects. The festival of the coronation and

nuptials was celebrated with the appearances of concord and magnificence, and both were equally fallacious.

During the late troubles, the treasures of the state, and even the furniture of the palace, had been alienated or

embezzled; the royal banquet was served in pewter or earthenware; and such was the proud poverty of the

times, that the absence of gold and jewels was supplied by the paltry artifices of glass and giltleather. ^33

[Footnote 30: The two avengers were both Palaeologi, who might resent, with royal indignation, the shame of

their chains. The tragedy of Apocaucus may deserve a peculiar reference to Cantacuzene (l. iii. c. 86) and

[Footnote 31: Cantacuzene accuses the patriarch, and spares the empress, the mother of his sovereign, (l. iii.

33, 34,) against whom Nic. Gregoras expresses a particular animosity, (l. xiv. 10, 11, xv. 5.) It is true that

[Footnote 32: The traitor and treason are revealed by Nic. Gregoras, (l. xv. c. 8;) but the name is more

[Footnote 33: Nic. Greg. l. xv. 11. There were, however, some true pearls, but very thinly sprinkled.]

I hasten to conclude the personal history of John Cantacuzene. ^34 He triumphed and reigned; but his reign

and triumph were clouded by the discontent of his own and the adverse faction. His followers might style the

general amnesty an act of pardon for his enemies, and of oblivion for his friends: ^35 in his cause their estates

had been forfeited or plundered; and as they wandered naked and hungry through the streets, they cursed the

selfish generosity of a leader, who, on the throne of the empire, might relinquish without merit his private

inheritance. The adherents of the empress blushed to hold their lives and fortunes by the precarious favor of a

usurper; and the thirst of revenge was concealed by a tender concern for the succession, and even the safety,

of her son. They were justly alarmed by a petition of the friends of Cantacuzene, that they might be released

from their oath of allegiance to the Palaeologi, and intrusted with the defence of some cautionary towns; a

measure supported with argument and eloquence; and which was rejected (says the Imperial historian) "by

my sublime, and almost incredible virtue." His repose was disturbed by the sound of plots and seditions; and

he trembled lest the lawful prince should be stolen away by some foreign or domestic enemy, who would

inscribe his name and his wrongs in the banners of rebellion. As the son of Andronicus advanced in the years

of manhood, he began to feel and to act for himself; and his rising ambition was rather stimulated than

checked by the imitation of his father's vices. If we may trust his own professions, Cantacuzene labored with

honest industry to correct these sordid and sensual appetites, and to raise the mind of the young prince to a

level with his fortune. In the Servian expedition, the two emperors showed themselves in cordial harmony to

the troops and provinces; and the younger colleague was initiated by the elder in the mysteries of war and

government. After the conclusion of the peace, Palaeologus was left at Thessalonica, a royal residence, and a

frontier station, to secure by his absence the peace of Constantinople, and to withdraw his youth from the

temptations of a luxurious capital. But the distance weakened the powers of control, and the son of

Andronicus was surrounded with artful or unthinking companions, who taught him to hate his guardian, to

deplore his exile, and to vindicate his rights. A private treaty with the cral or despot of Servia was soon

followed by an open revolt; and Cantacuzene, on the throne of the elder Andronicus, defended the cause of

age and prerogative, which in his youth he had so vigorously attacked. At his request the empressmother

undertook the voyage of Thessalonica, and the office of mediation: she returned without success; and unless

Anne of Savoy was instructed by adversity, we may doubt the sincerity, or at least the fervor, of her zeal.

While the regent grasped the sceptre with a firm and vigorous hand, she had been instructed to declare, that

the ten years of his legal administration would soon elapse; and that, after a full trial of the vanity of the

world, the emperor Cantacuzene sighed for the repose of a cloister, and was ambitious only of a heavenly

crown. Had these sentiments been genuine, his voluntary abdication would have restored the peace of the

empire, and his conscience would have been relieved by an act of justice. Palaeologus alone was responsible

for his future government; and whatever might be his vices, they were surely less formidable than the

calamities of a civil war, in which the Barbarians and infidels were again invited to assist the Greeks in their

mutual destruction. By the arms of the Turks, who now struck a deep and everlasting root in Europe,

Cantacuzene prevailed in the third contest in which he had been involved; and the young emperor, driven

from the sea and land, was compelled to take shelter among the Latins of the Isle of Tenedos. His insolence

and obstinacy provoked the victor to a step which must render the quarrel irreconcilable; and the association

of his son Matthew, whom he invested with the purple, established the succession in the family of the

Cantacuzeni. But Constantinople was still attached to the blood of her ancient princes; and this last injury

accelerated the restoration of the rightful heir. A noble Genoese espoused the cause of Palaeologus, obtained

a promise of his sister, and achieved the revolution with two galleys and two thousand five hundred

auxiliaries. Under the pretence of distress, they were admitted into the lesser port; a gate was opened, and the

Latin shout of, "Long life and victory to the emperor, John Palaeologus!" was answered by a general rising in

his favor. A numerous and loyal party yet adhered to the standard of Cantacuzene: but he asserts in his

history (does he hope for belief?) that his tender conscience rejected the assurance of conquest; that, in free

obedience to the voice of religion and philosophy, he descended from the throne and embraced with pleasure

the monastic habit and profession. ^36 So soon as he ceased to be a prince, his successor was not unwilling

that he should be a saint: the remainder of his life was devoted to piety and learning; in the cells of

Constantinople and Mount Athos, the monk Joasaph was respected as the temporal and spiritual father of the

emperor; and if he issued from his retreat, it was as the minister of peace, to subdue the obstinacy, and solicit

[Footnote 34: From his return to Constantinople, Cantacuzene continues his history and that of the empire,

one year beyond the abdication of his son Matthew, A.D. 1357, (l. iv. c. l 50, p. 705 911.) Nicephorus

Gregoras ends with the synod of Constantinople, in the year 1351, (l. xxii. c. 3, p. 660; the rest, to the

conclusion of the xxivth book, p. 717, is all controversy;) and his fourteen last books are still Mss. in the king

[Footnote 35: The emperor (Cantacuzen. l. iv. c. 1) represents his own virtues, and Nic. Gregoras (l. xv. c. 11)

the complaints of his friends, who suffered by its effects. I have lent them the words of our poor cavaliers

[Footnote 36: The awkward apology of Cantacuzene, (l. iv. c. 39 42,) who relates, with visible confusion,

his own downfall, may be supplied by the less accurate, but more honest, narratives of Matthew Villani (l. iv.

[Footnote 37: Cantacuzene, in the year 1375, was honored with a letter from the pope, (Fleury, Hist. Eccles.

tom. xx. p. 250.) His death is placed by a respectable authority on the 20th of November, 1411, (Ducange,

Fam. Byzant. p. 260.) But if he were of the age of his companion Andronicus the Younger, he must have

lived 116 years; a rare instance of longevity, which in so illustrious a person would have attracted universal

Yet in the cloister, the mind of Cantacuzene was still exercised by theological war. He sharpened a

controversial pen against the Jews and Mahometans; ^38 and in every state he defended with equal zeal the

divine light of Mount Thabor, a memorable question which consummates the religious follies of the Greeks.

The fakirs of India, ^39 and the monks of the Oriental church, were alike persuaded, that in the total

abstraction of the faculties of the mind and body, the purer spirit may ascend to the enjoyment and vision of

the Deity. The opinion and practice of the monasteries of Mount Athos ^40 will be best represented in the

words of an abbot, who flourished in the eleventh century. "When thou art alone in thy cell," says the ascetic

teacher, "shut thy door, and seat thyself in a corner: raise thy mind above all things vain and transitory;

recline thy beard and chin on thy breast; turn thy eyes and thy thoughts toward the middle of thy belly, the

region of the navel; and search the place of the heart, the seat of the soul. At first, all will be dark and

comfortless; but if you persevere day and night, you will feel an ineffable joy; and no sooner has the soul

discovered the place of the heart, than it is involved in a mystic and ethereal light." This light, the production

of a distempered fancy, the creature of an empty stomach and an empty brain, was adored by the Quietists as

the pure and perfect essence of God himself; and as long as the folly was confined to Mount Athos, the

simple solitaries were not inquisitive how the divine essence could be a material substance, or how an

immaterial substance could be perceived by the eyes of the body. But in the reign of the younger Andronicus,

these monasteries were visited by Barlaam, ^41 a Calabrian monk, who was equally skilled in philosophy and

theology; who possessed the language of the Greeks and Latins; and whose versatile genius could maintain

their opposite creeds, according to the interest of the moment. The indiscretion of an ascetic revealed to the

curious traveller the secrets of mental prayer and Barlaam embraced the opportunity of ridiculing the

Quietists, who placed the soul in the navel; of accusing the monks of Mount Athos of heresy and blasphemy.

His attack compelled the more learned to renounce or dissemble the simple devotion of their brethren; and

Gregory Palamas introduced a scholastic distinction between the essence and operation of God. His

inaccessible essence dwells in the midst of an uncreated and eternal light; and this beatific vision of the saints

had been manifested to the disciples on Mount Thabor, in the transfiguration of Christ. Yet this distinction

could not escape the reproach of polytheism; the eternity of the light of Thabor was fiercely denied; and

Barlaam still charged the Palamites with holding two eternal substances, a visible and an invisible God. From

the rage of the monks of Mount Athos, who threatened his life, the Calabrian retired to Constantinople, where

his smooth and specious manners introduced him to the favor of the great domestic and the emperor. The

court and the city were involved in this theological dispute, which flamed amidst the civil war; but the

doctrine of Barlaam was disgraced by his flight and apostasy: the Palamites triumphed; and their adversary,

the patriarch John of Apri, was deposed by the consent of the adverse factions of the state. In the character of

emperor and theologian, Cantacuzene presided in the synod of the Greek church, which established, as an

article of faith, the uncreated light of Mount Thabor; and, after so many insults, the reason of mankind was

slightly wounded by the addition of a single absurdity. Many rolls of paper or parchment have been blotted;

and the impenitent sectaries, who refused to subscribe the orthodox creed, were deprived of the honors of

Christian burial; but in the next age the question was forgotten; nor can I learn that the axe or the fagot were

[Footnote 38: His four discourses, or books, were printed at Bazil, 1543, (Fabric Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p.

473.) He composed them to satisfy a proselyte who was assaulted with letters from his friends of Ispahan.

Cantacuzene had read the Koran; but I understand from Maracci that he adopts the vulgar prejudices and

[Footnote 40: Mosheim, Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 522, 523. Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. xx. p. 22, 24, 107 114,

The former unfolds the causes with the judgment of a philosopher, the latter transcribes and transcribes and

[Footnote 41: Basnage (in Canisii antiq. Lectiones, tom. iv. p. 363 368) has investigated the character and

story of Barlaam. The duplicity of his opinions had inspired some doubts of the identity of his person. See

[Footnote 42: See Cantacuzene (l. ii. c. 39, 40, l. iv. c. 3, 23, 24, 25) and Nic. Gregoras, (l. xi. c. 10, l. xv. 3,

7, whose last books, from the xixth to xxivth, are almost confined to a subject so interesting to the authors.

Boivin, (in Vit. Nic. Gregorae,) from the unpublished books, and Fabricius, (Bibliot. Graec. tom. x. p. 462

473,) or rather Montfaucon, from the Mss. of the Coislin library, have added some facts and documents.]

For the conclusion of this chapter, I have reserved the Genoese war, which shook the throne of Cantacuzene,

and betrayed the debility of the Greek empire. The Genoese, who, after the recovery of Constantinople, were

seated in the suburb of Pera or Galata, received that honorable fief from the bounty of the emperor. They

were indulged in the use of their laws and magistrates; but they submitted to the duties of vassals and

subjects; the forcible word of liegemen ^43 was borrowed from the Latin jurisprudence; and their podesta, or

chief, before he entered on his office, saluted the emperor with loyal acclamations and vows of fidelity.

Genoa sealed a firm alliance with the Greeks; and, in case of a defensive war, a supply of fifty empty galleys

and a succor of fifty galleys, completely armed and manned, was promised by the republic to the empire. In

the revival of a naval force, it was the aim of Michael Palaeologus to deliver himself from a foreign aid; and

his vigorous government contained the Genoese of Galata within those limits which the insolence of wealth

and freedom provoked them to exceed. A sailor threatened that they should soon be masters of

Constantinople, and slew the Greek who resented this national affront; and an armed vessel, after refusing to

salute the palace, was guilty of some acts of piracy in the Black Sea. Their countrymen threatened to support

their cause; but the long and open village of Galata was instantly surrounded by the Imperial troops; till, in

the moment of the assault, the prostrate Genoese implored the clemency of their sovereign. The defenceless

situation which secured their obedience exposed them to the attack of their Venetian rivals, who, in the reign

of the elder Andronicus, presumed to violate the majesty of the throne. On the approach of their fleets, the

Genoese, with their families and effects, retired into the city: their empty habitations were reduced to ashes;

and the feeble prince, who had viewed the destruction of his suburb, expressed his resentment, not by arms,

but by ambassadors. This misfortune, however, was advantageous to the Genoese, who obtained, and

imperceptibly abused, the dangerous license of surrounding Galata with a strong wall; of introducing into the

ditch the waters of the sea; of erecting lofty turrets; and of mounting a train of military engines on the

rampart. The narrow bounds in which they had been circumscribed were insufficient for the growing colony;

each day they acquired some addition of landed property; and the adjacent hills were covered with their villas

and castles, which they joined and protected by new fortifications. ^44 The navigation and trade of the

Euxine was the patrimony of the Greek emperors, who commanded the narrow entrance, the gates, as it were,

of that inland sea. In the reign of Michael Palaeologus, their prerogative was acknowledged by the sultan of

Egypt, who solicited and obtained the liberty of sending an annual ship for the purchase of slaves in Circassia

and the Lesser Tartary: a liberty pregnant with mischief to the Christian cause; since these youths were

transformed by education and discipline into the formidable Mamalukes. ^45 From the colony of Pera, the

Genoese engaged with superior advantage in the lucrative trade of the Black Sea; and their industry supplied

the Greeks with fish and corn; two articles of food almost equally important to a superstitious people. The

spontaneous bounty of nature appears to have bestowed the harvests of Ukraine, the produce of a rude and

savage husbandry; and the endless exportation of salt fish and caviare is annually renewed by the enormous

sturgeons that are caught at the mouth of the Don or Tanais, in their last station of the rich mud and shallow

water of the Maeotis. ^46 The waters of the Oxus, the Caspian, the Volga, and the Don, opened a rare and

laborious passage for the gems and spices of India; and after three months' march the caravans of Carizme

met the Italian vessels in the harbors of Crimaea. ^47 These various branches of trade were monopolized by

the diligence and power of the Genoese. Their rivals of Venice and Pisa were forcibly expelled; the natives

were awed by the castles and cities, which arose on the foundations of their humble factories; and their

principal establishment of Caffa ^48 was besieged without effect by the Tartar powers. Destitute of a navy,

the Greeks were oppressed by these haughty merchants, who fed, or famished, Constantinople, according to

their interest. They proceeded to usurp the customs, the fishery, and even the toll, of the Bosphorus; and

while they derived from these objects a revenue of two hundred thousand pieces of gold, a remnant of thirty

thousand was reluctantly allowed to the emperor. ^49 The colony of Pera or Galata acted, in peace and war,

as an independent state; and, as it will happen in distant settlements, the Genoese podesta too often forgot that

he was the servant of his own masters. [Footnote 43: Pachymer (l. v. c. 10) very properly explains (ligios).

The use of these words in the Greek and Latin of the feudal times may be amply understood from the

[Footnote 44: The establishment and progress of the Genoese at Pera, or Galata, is described by Ducange (C.

P. Christiana, l. i. p. 68, 69) from the Byzantine historians, Pachymer, (l. ii. c. 35, l. v. 10, 30, l. ix. 15 l. xii. 6,

9,) Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. v. c. 4, l. vi. c. 11, l. ix. c. 5, l. ix. c. 1, l. xv. c. 1, 6,) and Cantacuzene, (l. i. c. 12,

[Footnote 45: Both Pachymer (l. iii. c. 3, 4, 5) and Nic. Greg. (l. iv. c. 7) understand and deplore the effects of

this dangerous indulgence. Bibars, sultan of Egypt, himself a Tartar, but a devout Mussulman, obtained from

the children of Zingis the permission to build a stately mosque in the capital of Crimea, (De Guignes, Hist.

[Footnote 46: Chardin (Voyages en Perse, tom. i. p. 48) was assured at Caffa, that these fishes were

sometimes twentyfour or twentysix feet long, weighed eight or nine hundred pounds, and yielded three or

four quintals of caviare. The corn of the Bosphorus had supplied the Athenians in the time of Demosthenes.]

[Footnote 47: De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. p. 343, 344. Viaggi di Ramusio, tom. i. fol. 400. But this

land or water carriage could only be practicable when Tartary was united under a wise and powerful

[Footnote 48: Nic. Gregoras (l. xiii. c. 12) is judicious and well informed on the trade and colonies of the

Black Sea. Chardin describes the present ruins of Caffa, where, in forty days, he saw above 400 sail

These usurpations were encouraged by the weakness of the elder Andronicus, and by the civil wars that

afflicted his age and the minority of his grandson. The talents of Cantacuzene were employed to the ruin,

rather than the restoration, of the empire; and after his domestic victory, he was condemned to an

ignominious trial, whether the Greeks or the Genoese should reign in Constantinople. The merchants of Pera

were offended by his refusal of some contiguous land, some commanding heights, which they proposed to

cover with new fortifications; and in the absence of the emperor, who was detained at Demotica by sickness,

they ventured to brave the debility of a female reign. A Byzantine vessel, which had presumed to fish at the

mouth of the harbor, was sunk by these audacious strangers; the fishermen were murdered. Instead of suing

for pardon, the Genoese demanded satisfaction; required, in a haughty strain, that the Greeks should renounce

the exercise of navigation; and encountered with regular arms the first sallies of the popular indignation. They

instantly occupied the debatable land; and by the labor of a whole people, of either sex and of every age, the

wall was raised, and the ditch was sunk, with incredible speed. At the same time, they attacked and burnt two

Byzantine galleys; while the three others, the remainder of the Imperial navy, escaped from their hands: the

habitations without the gates, or along the shore, were pillaged and destroyed; and the care of the regent, of

the empress Irene, was confined to the preservation of the city. The return of Cantacuzene dispelled the

public consternation: the emperor inclined to peaceful counsels; but he yielded to the obstinacy of his

enemies, who rejected all reasonable terms, and to the ardor of his subjects, who threatened, in the style of

Scripture, to break them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Yet they reluctantly paid the taxes, that he imposed

for the construction of ships, and the expenses of the war; and as the two nations were masters, the one of the

land, the other of the sea, Constantinople and Pera were pressed by the evils of a mutual siege. The merchants

of the colony, who had believed that a few days would terminate the war, already murmured at their losses:

the succors from their mothercountry were delayed by the factions of Genoa; and the most cautious

embraced the opportunity of a Rhodian vessel to remove their families and effects from the scene of hostility.

In the spring, the Byzantine fleet, seven galleys and a train of smaller vessels, issued from the mouth of the

harbor, and steered in a single line along the shore of Pera; unskilfully presenting their sides to the beaks of

the adverse squadron. The crews were composed of peasants and mechanics; nor was their ignorance

compensated by the native courage of Barbarians: the wind was strong, the waves were rough; and no sooner

did the Greeks perceive a distant and inactive enemy, than they leaped headlong into the sea, from a doubtful,

to an inevitable peril. The troops that marched to the attack of the lines of Pera were struck at the same

moment with a similar panic; and the Genoese were astonished, and almost ashamed, at their double victory.

Their triumphant vessels, crowned with flowers, and dragging after them the captive galleys, repeatedly

passed and repassed before the palace: the only virtue of the emperor was patience; and the hope of revenge

his sole consolation. Yet the distress of both parties interposed a temporary agreement; and the shame of the

empire was disguised by a thin veil of dignity and power. Summoning the chiefs of the colony, Cantacuzene

affected to despise the trivial object of the debate; and, after a mild reproof, most liberally granted the lands,

which had been previously resigned to the seeming custody of his officers. ^50 [Footnote 50: The events of

this war are related by Cantacuzene (l. iv. c. 11 with obscurity and confusion, and by Nic. Gregoras (l. xvii. c.

1 7) in a clear and honest narrative. The priest was less responsible than the prince for the defeat of the

But the emperor was soon solicited to violate the treaty, and to join his arms with the Venetians, the perpetual

enemies of Genoa and her colonies. While he compared the reasons of peace and war, his moderation was

provoked by a wanton insult of the inhabitants of Pera, who discharged from their rampart a large stone that

fell in the midst of Constantinople. On his just complaint, they coldly blamed the imprudence of their

engineer; but the next day the insult was repeated; and they exulted in a second proof that the royal city was

not beyond the reach of their artillery. Cantacuzene instantly signed his treaty with the Venetians; but the

weight of the Roman empire was scarcely felt in the balance of these opulent and powerful republics. ^51

From the Straits of Gibraltar to the mouth of the Tanais, their fleets encountered each other with various

success; and a memorable battle was fought in the narrow sea, under the walls of Constantinople. It would

not be an easy task to reconcile the accounts of the Greeks, the Venetians, and the Genoese; ^52 and while I

depend on the narrative of an impartial historian, ^53 I shall borrow from each nation the facts that redound

to their own disgrace, and the honor of their foes. The Venetians, with their allies the Catalans, had the

advantage of number; and their fleet, with the poor addition of eight Byzantine galleys, amounted to

seventyfive sail: the Genoese did not exceed sixtyfour; but in those times their ships of war were

distinguished by the superiority of their size and strength. The names and families of their naval commanders,

Pisani and Doria, are illustrious in the annals of their country; but the personal merit of the former was

eclipsed by the fame and abilities of his rival. They engaged in tempestuous weather; and the tumultuary

conflict was continued from the dawn to the extinction of light. The enemies of the Genoese applaud their

prowess; the friends of the Venetians are dissatisfied with their behavior; but all parties agree in praising the

skill and boldness of the Catalans, ^* who, with many wounds, sustained the brunt of the action. On the

separation of the fleets, the event might appear doubtful; but the thirteen Genoese galleys, that had been sunk

or taken, were compensated by a double loss of the allies; of fourteen Venetians, ten Catalans, and two

Greeks; ^! and even the grief of the conquerors expressed the assurance and habit of more decisive victories.

Pisani confessed his defeat, by retiring into a fortified harbor, from whence, under the pretext of the orders of

the senate, he steered with a broken and flying squadron for the Isle of Candia, and abandoned to his rivals

the sovereignty of the sea. In a public epistle, ^54 addressed to the doge and senate, Petrarch employs his

eloquence to reconcile the maritime powers, the two luminaries of Italy. The orator celebrates the valor and

victory of the Genoese, the first of men in the exercise of naval war: he drops a tear on the misfortunes of

their Venetian brethren; but he exhorts them to pursue with fire and sword the base and perfidious Greeks; to

purge the metropolis of the East from the heresy with which it was infected. Deserted by their friends, the

Greeks were incapable of resistance; and three months after the battle, the emperor Cantacuzene solicited and

subscribed a treaty, which forever banished the Venetians and Catalans, and granted to the Genoese a

monopoly of trade, and almost a right of dominion. The Roman empire (I smile in transcribing the name)

might soon have sunk into a province of Genoa, if the ambition of the republic had not been checked by the

ruin of her freedom and naval power. A long contest of one hundred and thirty years was determined by the

triumph of Venice; and the factions of the Genoese compelled them to seek for domestic peace under the

protection of a foreign lord, the duke of Milan, or the French king. Yet the spirit of commerce survived that

of conquest; and the colony of Pera still awed the capital and navigated the Euxine, till it was involved by the

[Footnote 51: The second war is darkly told by Cantacuzene, (l. iv. c. 18, p. 24, 25, 28 32,) who wishes to

disguise what he dares not deny. I regret this part of Nic. Gregoras, which is still in Ms. at Paris.

Note: This part of Nicephorus Gregoras has not been printed in the new edition of the Byzantine Historians.

The editor expresses a hope that it may be undertaken by Hase. I should join in the regret of Gibbon, if these

books contain any historical information: if they are but a continuation of the controversies which fill the last

books in our present copies, they may as well sleep their eternal sleep in Ms. as in print. M.]

[Footnote 52: Muratori (Annali d' Italia, tom. xii. p. 144) refers to the most ancient Chronicles of Venice

(Caresinus, the continuator of Andrew Dandulus, tom. xii. p. 421, 422) and Genoa, (George Stella Annales

Genuenses, tom. xvii. p. 1091, 1092;) both which I have diligently consulted in his great Collection of the

[Footnote 53: See the Chronicle of Matteo Villani of Florence, l. ii. c. 59, p. 145 147, c. 74, 75, p. 156, 157,

[Footnote *: Cantacuzene praises their bravery, but imputes their losses to their ignorance of the seas: they

[Footnote !: Cantacuzene says that the Genoese lost twentyeight ships with their crews; the Venetians and

Catalans sixteen, the Imperials, none Cantacuzene accuses Pisani of cowardice, in not following up the

victory, and destroying the Genoese. But Pisani's conduct, and indeed Cantacuzene's account of the battle,

[Footnote 54: The Abbe de Sade (Memoires sur la Vie de Petrarque, tom. iii. p. 257 263) translates this

letter, which he copied from a MS. in the king of France's library. Though a servant of the duke of Milan,

Petrarch pours forth his astonishment and grief at the defeat and despair of the Genoese in the following year,

Conquests Of Zingis Khan And The Moguls From China To Poland. Escape Of Constantinople And The

Greeks. Origin Of The Ottoman Turks In Bithynia. Reigns And Victories Of Othman, Orchan, Amurath

The First, And Bajazet The First. Foundation And Progress Of The Turkish Monarchy In Asia And Europe.

From the petty quarrels of a city and her suburbs, from the cowardice and discord of the falling Greeks, I

shall now ascend to the victorious Turks; whose domestic slavery was ennobled by martial discipline,

religious enthusiasm, and the energy of the national character. The rise and progress of the Ottomans, the

present sovereigns of Constantinople, are connected with the most important scenes of modern history; but

they are founded on a previous knowledge of the great eruption of the Moguls ^* and Tartars; whose rapid

conquests may be compared with the primitive convulsions of nature, which have agitated and altered the

surface of the globe. I have long since asserted my claim to introduce the nations, the immediate or remote

authors of the fall of the Roman empire; nor can I refuse myself to those events, which, from their uncommon

[Footnote *: Mongol seems to approach the nearest to the proper name of this race. The Chinese call them

Mongkou; the Mondchoux, their neighbors, Monggo or Monggou. They called themselves also Beda. This

fact seems to have been proved by M. Schmidt against the French Orientalists. See De Brosset. Note on Le

[Footnote 1: The reader is invited to review chapters xxii. to xxvi., and xxiii. to xxxviii., the manners of

pastoral nations, the conquests of Attila and the Huns, which were composed at a time when I entertained the

From the spacious highlands between China, Siberia, and the Caspian Sea, the tide of emigration and war has

repeatedly been poured. These ancient seats of the Huns and Turks were occupied in the twelfth century by

many pastoral tribes, of the same descent and similar manners, which were united and led to conquest by the

formidable Zingis. ^* In his ascent to greatness, that Barbarian (whose private appellation was Temugin) had

trampled on the necks of his equals. His birth was noble; but it was the pride of victory, that the prince or

people deduced his seventh ancestor from the immaculate conception of a virgin. His father had reigned over

thirteen hordes, which composed about thirty or forty thousand families: above two thirds refused to pay

tithes or obedience to his infant son; and at the age of thirteen, Temugin fought a battle against his rebellious

subjects. The future conqueror of Asia was reduced to fly and to obey; but he rose superior to his fortune, and

in his fortieth year he had established his fame and dominion over the circumjacent tribes. In a state of

society, in which policy is rude and valor is universal, the ascendant of one man must be founded on his

power and resolution to punish his enemies and recompense his friends. His first military league was ratified

by the simple rites of sacrificing a horse and tasting of a running stream: Temugin pledged himself to divide

with his followers the sweets and the bitters of life; and when he had shared among them his horses and

apparel, he was rich in their gratitude and his own hopes. After his first victory, he placed seventy caldrons

on the fire, and seventy of the most guilty rebels were cast headlong into the boiling water. The sphere of his

attraction was continually enlarged by the ruin of the proud and the submission of the prudent; and the

boldest chieftains might tremble, when they beheld, enchased in silver, the skull of the khan of Keraites; ^2

who, under the name of Prester John, had corresponded with the Roman pontiff and the princes of Europe.

The ambition of Temugin condescended to employ the arts of superstition; and it was from a naked prophet,

who could ascend to heaven on a white horse, that he accepted the title of Zingis, ^3 the most great; and a

divine right to the conquest and dominion of the earth. In a general couroultai, or diet, he was seated on a felt,

which was long afterwards revered as a relic, and solemnly proclaimed great khan, or emperor of the Moguls

^4 and Tartars. ^5 Of these kindred, though rival, names, the former had given birth to the imperial race; and

the latter has been extended by accident or error over the spacious wilderness of the north. [Footnote *: On

the traditions of the early life of Zingis, see D'Ohson, Hist des Mongols; Histoire des Mongols, Paris, 1824.

[Footnote 2: The khans of the Keraites were most probably incapable of reading the pompous epistles

composed in their name by the Nestorian missionaries, who endowed them with the fabulous wonders of an

Indian kingdom. Perhaps these Tartars (the Presbyter or Priest John) had submitted to the rites of baptism and

[Footnote 3: Since the history and tragedy of Voltaire, Gengis, at least in French, seems to be the more

fashionable spelling; but Abulghazi Khan must have known the true name of his ancestor. His etymology

appears just: Zin, in the Mogul tongue, signifies great, and gis is the superlative termination, (Hist.

Genealogique des Tatars, part iii. p. 194, 195.) From the same idea of magnitude, the appellation of Zingis is

[Footnote 4: The name of Moguls has prevailed among the Orientals, and still adheres to the titular sovereign,

Note: M. Remusat (sur les Langues Tartares, p. 233) justly observes, that Timour was a Turk, not a Mogul,

and, p. 242, that probably there was not Mogul in the army of Baber, who established the Indian throne of the

[Footnote 5: The Tartars (more properly Tatars) were descended from Tatar Khan, the brother of Mogul

Khan, (see Abulghazi, part i. and ii.,) and once formed a horde of 70,000 families on the borders of Kitay, (p.

103 112.) In the great invasion of Europe (A.D. 1238) they seem to have led the vanguard; and the

similitude of the name of Tartarei, recommended that of Tartars to the Latins, (Matt. Paris, p. 398,

Note: This relationship, according to M. Klaproth, is fabulous, and invented by the Mahometan writers, who,

from religious zeal, endeavored to connect the traditions of the nomads of Central Asia with those of the Old

Testament, as preserved in the Koran. There is no trace of it in the Chinese writers de l'Asie, p. 156. M.]

The code of laws which Zingis dictated to his subjects was adapted to the preservation of a domestic peace,

and the exercise of foreign hostility. The punishment of death was inflicted on the crimes of adultery, murder,

perjury, and the capital thefts of a horse or ox; and the fiercest of men were mild and just in their intercourse

with each other. The future election of the great khan was vested in the princes of his family and the heads of

the tribes; and the regulations of the chase were essential to the pleasures and plenty of a Tartar camp. The

victorious nation was held sacred from all servile labors, which were abandoned to slaves and strangers; and

every labor was servile except the profession of arms. The service and discipline of the troops, who were

armed with bows, cimeters, and iron maces, and divided by hundreds, thousands, and ten thousands, were the

institutions of a veteran commander. Each officer and soldier was made responsible, under pain of death, for

the safety and honor of his companions; and the spirit of conquest breathed in the law, that peace should

never be granted unless to a vanquished and suppliant enemy. But it is the religion of Zingis that best

deserves our wonder and applause. ^* The Catholic inquisitors of Europe, who defended nonsense by cruelty,

might have been confounded by the example of a Barbarian, who anticipated the lessons of philosophy, ^6

and established by his laws a system of pure theism and perfect toleration. His first and only article of faith

was the existence of one God, the Author of all good; who fills by his presence the heavens and earth, which

he has created by his power. The Tartars and Moguls were addicted to the idols of their peculiar tribes; and

many of them had been converted by the foreign missionaries to the religions of Moses, of Mahomet, and of

Christ. These various systems in freedom and concord were taught and practised within the precincts of the

same camp; and the Bonze, the Imam, the Rabbi, the Nestorian, and the Latin priest, enjoyed the same

honorable exemption from service and tribute: in the mosque of Bochara, the insolent victor might trample

the Koran under his horse's feet, but the calm legislator respected the prophets and pontiffs of the most hostile

sects. The reason of Zingis was not informed by books: the khan could neither read nor write; and, except the

tribe of the Igours, the greatest part of the Moguls and Tartars were as illiterate as their sovereign. ^* The

memory of their exploits was preserved by tradition: sixty eight years after the death of Zingis, these

traditions were collected and transcribed; ^7 the brevity of their domestic annals may be supplied by the

Chinese, ^8 Persians, ^9 Armenians, ^10 Syrians, ^11 Arabians, ^12 Greeks, ^13 Russians, ^14 Poles, ^15

Hungarians, ^16 and Latins; ^17 and each nation will deserve credit in the relation of their own disasters and

[Footnote *: Before his armies entered Thibet, he sent an embassy to Bogdosottnam Dsimmo, a Lama high

priest, with a letter to this effect: "I have chosen thee as high priest for myself and my empire. Repair then to

me, and promote the present and future happiness of man: I will be thy supporter and protector: let us

establish a system of religion, and unite it with the monarchy," The high priest accepted the invitation; and

the Mongol history literally terms this step the period of the first respect for religion; because the monarch, by

his public profession, made it the religion of the state. Klaproth. "Travels in Caucasus," ch. 7, Eng. Trans. p.

92. Neither Dshingis nor his son and successor Oegodah had, on account of their continual wars, much

leisure for the propagation of the religion of the Lama. By religion they understand a distinct, independent,

sacred moral code, which has but one origin, one source, and one object. This notion they universally

propagate, and even believe that the brutes, and all created beings, have a religion adapted to their sphere of

action. The different forms of the various religions they ascribe to the difference of individuals, nations, and

legislators. Never do you hear of their inveighing against any creed, even against the obviously absurd

Schaman paganism, or of their persecuting others on that account. They themselves, on the other hand,

endure every hardship, and even persecutions, with perfect resignation, and indulgently excuse the follies of

others, nay, consider them as a motive for increased arder in prayer, ch. ix. p. 109. M.]

[Footnote 6: A singular conformity may be found between the religious laws of Zingis Khan and of Mr.

Locke, (Constitutions of Carolina, in his works, vol. iv. p. 535, 4to. edition, 1777.)]

[Footnote *: See the notice on Thathatoungo, the Ouogour minister of Tchingis, in Abel Remusat's 2d

series of Recherch. Asiat. vol. ii. p. 61. He taught the son of Tchingis to write: "He was the instructor of the

Moguls in writing, of which they were before ignorant;" and hence the application of the Ouigour characters

to the Mogul language cannot be placed earlier than the year 1204 or 1205, nor so late as the time of

Passepa, who lived under Khubilai. A new alphabet, approaching to that of Thibet, was introduced under

[Footnote 7: In the year 1294, by the command of Cazan, khan of Persia, the fourth in descent from Zingis.

From these traditions, his vizier Fadlallah composed a Mogul history in the Persian language, which has been

used by Petit de la Croix, (Hist. de Genghizcan, p. 537 539.) The Histoire Genealogique des Tatars (a

Leyde, 1726, in 12mo., 2 tomes) was translated by the Swedish prisoners in Siberia from the Mogul MS. of

Abulgasi Bahadur Khan, a descendant of Zingis, who reigned over the Usbeks of Charasm, or Carizme, (A.D.

1644 1663.) He is of most value and credit for the names, pedigrees, and manners of his nation. Of his nine

parts, the ist descends from Adam to Mogul Khan; the iid, from Mogul to Zingis; the iiid is the life of Zingis;

the ivth, vth, vith, and viith, the general history of his four sons and their posterity; the viiith and ixth, the

particular history of the descendants of Sheibani Khan, who reigned in Maurenahar and Charasm.]

[Footnote 8: Histoire de Gentchiscan, et de toute la Dinastie des Mongous ses Successeurs, Conquerans de la

Chine; tiree de l'Histoire de la Chine par le R. P. Gaubil, de la Societe de Jesus, Missionaire a Peking; a Paris,

1739, in 4to. This translation is stamped with the Chinese character of domestic accuracy and foreign

[Footnote 9: See the Histoire du Grand Genghizcan, premier Empereur des Moguls et Tartares, par M. Petit

de la Croix, a Paris, 1710, in 12mo.; a work of ten years' labor, chiefly drawn from the Persian writers, among

whom Nisavi, the secretary of Sultan Gelaleddin, has the merit and prejudices of a contemporary. A slight air

of romance is the fault of the originals, or the compiler. See likewise the articles of Genghizcan, Mohammed,

Note: The preface to the Hist. des Mongols, (Paris, 1824) gives a catalogue of the Arabic and Persian

[Footnote 10: Haithonus, or Aithonus, an Armenian prince, and afterwards a monk of Premontre, (Fabric,

Bibliot. Lat. Medii Aevi, tom. i. p. 34,) dictated in the French language, his book de Tartaris, his old

fellowsoldiers. It was immediately translated into Latin, and is inserted in the Novus Orbis of Simon

Note: A precis at the end of the new edition of Le Beau, Hist. des Empereurs, vol. xvii., by M. Brosset, gives

large extracts from the accounts of the Armenian historians relating to the Mogul conquests. M.]

[Footnote 11: Zingis Khan, and his first successors, occupy the conclusion of the ixth Dynasty of

Abulpharagius, (vers. Pocock, Oxon. 1663, in 4to.;) and his xth Dynasty is that of the Moguls of Persia.

Assemannus (Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii.) has extracted some facts from his Syriac writings, and the lives of the

[Footnote 12: Among the Arabians, in language and religion, we may distinguish Abulfeda, sultan of Hamah

in Syria, who fought in person, under the Mamaluke standard, against the Moguls.]

[Footnote 13: Nicephorus Gregoras (l. ii. c. 5, 6) has felt the necessity of connecting the Scythian and

Byzantine histories. He describes with truth and elegance the settlement and manners of the Moguls of Persia,

but he is ignorant of their origin, and corrupts the names of Zingis and his sons.]

[Footnote 14: M. Levesque (Histoire de Russie, tom. ii.) has described the conquest of Russia by the Tartars,

[Footnote 15: For Poland, I am content with the Sarmatia Asiatica et Europaea of Matthew a Michou, or De

Michovia, a canon and physician of Cracow, (A.D. 1506,) inserted in the Novus Orbis of Grynaeus. Fabric

[Footnote 16: I should quote Thuroczius, the oldest general historian (pars ii. c. 74, p. 150) in the 1st volume

of the Scriptores Rerum Hungaricarum, did not the same volume contain the original narrative of a

contemporary, an eyewitness, and a sufferer, (M. Rogerii, Hungari, Varadiensis Capituli Canonici, Carmen

miserabile, seu Historia super Destructione Regni Hungariae Temporibus Belae IV. Regis per Tartaros facta,

p. 292 321;) the best picture that I have ever seen of all the circumstances of a Barbaric invasion.]

[Footnote 17: Matthew Paris has represented, from authentic documents, the danger and distress of Europe,

(consult the word Tartari in his copious Index.) From motives of zeal and curiosity, the court of the great

khan in the xiiith century was visited by two friars, John de Plano Carpini, and William Rubruquis, and by

Marco Polo, a Venetian gentleman. The Latin relations of the two former are inserted in the 1st volume of

Hackluyt; the Italian original or version of the third (Fabric. Bibliot. Latin. Medii Aevi, tom. ii. p. 198, tom.

[Footnote 18: In his great History of the Huns, M. de Guignes has most amply treated of Zingis Khan and his

successors. See tom. iii. l. xv. xix., and in the collateral articles of the Seljukians of Roum, tom. ii. l. xi., the

Carizmians, l. xiv., and the Mamalukes, tom. iv. l. xxi.; consult likewise the tables of the 1st volume. He is

ever learned and accurate; yet I am only indebted to him for a general view, and some passages of Abulfeda,

Note: To this catalogue of the historians of the Moguls may be added D'Ohson, Histoire des Mongols;

Histoire des Mongols, (from Arabic and Persian authorities,) Paris, 1824. Schmidt, Geschichte der Ost

Mongolen, St. Petersburgh, 1829. This curious work, by Ssanang Ssetsen Chungtaidschi, published in the

original Mongol, was written after the conversion of the nation to Buddhism: it is enriched with very valuable

notes by the editor and translator; but, unfortunately, is very barren of information about the European and

The arms of Zingis and his lieutenants successively reduced the hordes of the desert, who pitched their tents

between the wall of China and the Volga; and the Mogul emperor became the monarch of the pastoral world,

the lord of many millions of shepherds and soldiers, who felt their united strength, and were impatient to rush

on the mild and wealthy climates of the south. His ancestors had been the tributaries of the Chinese emperors;

and Temugin himself had been disgraced by a title of honor and servitude. The court of Pekin was astonished

by an embassy from its former vassal, who, in the tone of the king of nations, exacted the tribute and

obedience which he had paid, and who affected to treat the son of heaven as the most contemptible of

mankind. A haughty answer disguised their secret apprehensions; and their fears were soon justified by the

march of innumerable squadrons, who pierced on all sides the feeble rampart of the great wall. Ninety cities

were stormed, or starved, by the Moguls; ten only escaped; and Zingis, from a knowledge of the filial piety of

the Chinese, covered his vanguard with their captive parents; an unworthy, and by degrees a fruitless, abuse

of the virtue of his enemies. His invasion was supported by the revolt of a hundred thousand Khitans, who

guarded the frontier: yet he listened to a treaty; and a princess of China, three thousand horses, five hundred

youths, and as many virgins, and a tribute of gold and silk, were the price of his retreat. In his second

expedition, he compelled the Chinese emperor to retire beyond the yellow river to a more southern residence.

The siege of Pekin ^19 was long and laborious: the inhabitants were reduced by famine to decimate and

devour their fellowcitizens; when their ammunition was spent, they discharged ingots of gold and silver

from their engines; but the Moguls introduced a mine to the centre of the capital; and the conflagration of the

palace burnt above thirty days. China was desolated by Tartar war and domestic faction; and the five northern

[Footnote 19: More properly Yenking, an ancient city, whose ruins still appear some furlongs to the

southeast of the modern Pekin, which was built by Cublai Khan, (Gaubel, p. 146.) Peking and Nanking

are vague titles, the courts of the north and of the south. The identity and change of names perplex the most

Note: And likewise in Chinese history see Abel Remusat, Mel. Asiat. 2d tom. ii. p. 5. M.]

In the West, he touched the dominions of Mohammed, sultan of Carizime, who reigned from the Persian Gulf

to the borders of India and Turkestan; and who, in the proud imitation of Alexander the Great, forgot the

servitude and ingratitude of his fathers to the house of Seljuk. It was the wish of Zingis to establish a friendly

and commercial intercourse with the most powerful of the Moslem princes: nor could he be tempted by the

secret solicitations of the caliph of Bagdad, who sacrificed to his personal wrongs the safety of the church and

state. A rash and inhuman deed provoked and justified the Tartar arms in the invasion of the southern Asia. ^!

A caravan of three ambassadors and one hundred and fifty merchants were arrested and murdered at Otrar, by

the command of Mohammed; nor was it till after a demand and denial of justice, till he had prayed and fasted

three nights on a mountain, that the Mogul emperor appealed to the judgment of God and his sword. Our

European battles, says a philosophic writer, ^20 are petty skirmishes, if compared to the numbers that have

fought and fallen in the fields of Asia. Seven hundred thousand Moguls and Tartars are said to have marched

under the standard of Zingis and his four sons. In the vast plains that extend to the north of the Sihon or

Jaxartes, they were encountered by four hundred thousand soldiers of the sultan; and in the first battle, which

was suspended by the night, one hundred and sixty thousand Carizmians were slain. Mohammed was

astonished by the multitude and valor of his enemies: he withdrew from the scene of danger, and distributed

his troops in the frontier towns; trusting that the Barbarians, invincible in the field, would be repulsed by the

length and difficulty of so many regular sieges. But the prudence of Zingis had formed a body of Chinese

engineers, skilled in the mechanic arts; informed perhaps of the secret of gunpowder, and capable, under his

discipline, of attacking a foreign country with more vigor and success than they had defended their own. The

Persian historians will relate the sieges and reduction of Otrar, Cogende, Bochara, Samarcand, Carizme,

Herat, Merou, Nisabour, Balch, and Candahar; and the conquest of the rich and populous countries of

Transoxiana, Carizme, and Chorazan. ^* The destructive hostilities of Attila and the Huns have long since

been elucidated by the example of Zingis and the Moguls; and in this more proper place I shall be content to

observe, that, from the Caspian to the Indus, they ruined a tract of many hundred miles, which was adorned

with the habitations and labors of mankind, and that five centuries have not been sufficient to repair the

ravages of four years. The Mogul emperor encouraged or indulged the fury of his troops: the hope of future

possession was lost in the ardor of rapine and slaughter; and the cause of the war exasperated their native

fierceness by the pretence of justice and revenge. The downfall and death of the sultan Mohammed, who

expired, unpitied and alone, in a desert island of the Caspian Sea, is a poor atonement for the calamities of

which he was the author. Could the Carizmian empire have been saved by a single hero, it would have been

saved by his son Gelaleddin, whose active valor repeatedly checked the Moguls in the career of victory.

Retreating, as he fought, to the banks of the Indus, he was oppressed by their innumerable host, till, in the last

moment of despair, Gelaleddin spurred his horse into the waves, swam one of the broadest and most rapid

rivers of Asia, and extorted the admiration and applause of Zingis himself. It was in this camp that the Mogul

conqueror yielded with reluctance to the murmurs of his weary and wealthy troops, who sighed for the

enjoyment of their native land. Eucumbered with the spoils of Asia, he slowly measured back his footsteps,

betrayed some pity for the misery of the vanquished, and declared his intention of rebuilding the cities which

had been swept away by the tempest of his arms. After he had repassed the Oxus and Jaxartes, he was joined

by two generals, whom he had detached with thirty thousand horse, to subdue the western provinces of

Persia. They had trampled on the nations which opposed their passage, penetrated through the gates of

Derbent, traversed the Volga and the desert, and accomplished the circuit of the Caspian Sea, by an

expedition which had never been attempted, and has never been repeated. The return of Zingis was signalized

by the overthrow of the rebellious or independent kingdoms of Tartary; and he died in the fulness of years

and glory, with his last breath exhorting and instructing his sons to achieve the conquest of the Chinese

empire. ^* [Footnote !: See the particular account of this transaction, from the Kholauesut Akbaur, in Price,

[Footnote 20: M. de Voltaire, Essai sur l'Histoire Generale, tom. iii. c. 60, p. 8. His account of Zingis and the

Moguls contains, as usual, much general sense and truth, with some particular errors.]

[Footnote *: Every where they massacred all classes, except the artisans, whom they made slaves. Hist. des

[Footnote *: Their first duty, which he bequeathed to them, was to massacre the king of Tangcoute and all the

inhabitants of Ninhia, the surrender of the city being already agreed upon, Hist. des Mongols. vol. i. p. 286.

The harem of Zingis was composed of five hundred wives and concubines; and of his numerous progeny,

four sons, illustrious by their birth and merit, exercised under their father the principal offices of peace and

war. Toushi was his great huntsman, Zagatai ^21 his judge, Octai his minister, and Tuli his general; and their

names and actions are often conspicuous in the history of his conquests. Firmly united for their own and the

public interest, the three brothers and their families were content with dependent sceptres; and Octai, by

general consent, was proclaimed great khan, or emperor of the Moguls and Tartars. He was succeeded by his

son Gayuk, after whose death the empire devolved to his cousins Mangou and Cublai, the sons of Tuli, and

the grandsons of Zingis. In the sixtyeight years of his four first successors, the Mogul subdued almost all

Asia, and a large portion of Europe. Without confining myself to the order of time, without expatiating on the

detail of events, I shall present a general picture of the progress of their arms; I. In the East; II. In the South;

III. In the West; and IV. In the North. [Footnote 21: Zagatai gave his name to his dominions of Maurenahar,

or Transoxiana; and the Moguls of Hindostan, who emigrated from that country, are styled Zagatais by the

Persians. This certain etymology, and the similar example of Uzbek, Nogai, may warn us not absolutely to

I. Before the invasion of Zingis, China was divided into two empires or dynasties of the North and South; ^22

and the difference of origin and interest was smoothed by a general conformity of laws, language, and

national manners. The Northern empire, which had been dismembered by Zingis, was finally subdued seven

years after his death. After the loss of Pekin, the emperor had fixed his residence at Kaifong, a city many

leagues in circumference, and which contained, according to the Chinese annals, fourteen hundred thousand

families of inhabitants and fugitives. He escaped from thence with only seven horsemen, and made his last

stand in a third capital, till at length the hopeless monarch, protesting his innocence and accusing his fortune,

ascended a funeral pile, and gave orders, that, as soon as he had stabbed himself, the fire should be kindled by

his attendants. The dynasty of the Song, the native and ancient sovereigns of the whole empire, survived

about fortyfive years the fall of the Northern usurpers; and the perfect conquest was reserved for the arms of

Cublai. During this interval, the Moguls were often diverted by foreign wars; and, if the Chinese seldom

dared to meet their victors in the field, their passive courage presented and endless succession of cities to

storm and of millions to slaughter. In the attack and defence of places, the engines of antiquity and the Greek

fire were alternately employed: the use of gunpowder in cannon and bombs appears as a familiar practice;

^23 and the sieges were conducted by the Mahometans and Franks, who had been liberally invited into the

service of Cublai. After passing the great river, the troops and artillery were conveyed along a series of

canals, till they invested the royal residence of Hamcheu, or Quinsay, in the country of silk, the most

delicious climate of China. The emperor, a defenceless youth, surrendered his person and sceptre; and before

he was sent in exile into Tartary, he struck nine times the ground with his forehead, to adore in prayer or

thanksgiving the mercy of the great khan. Yet the war (it was now styled a rebellion) was still maintained in

the southern provinces from Hamcheu to Canton; and the obstinate remnant of independence and hostility

was transported from the land to the sea. But when the fleet of the Song was surrounded and oppressed by a

superior armament, their last champion leaped into the waves with his infant emperor in his arms. "It is more

glorious," he cried, "to die a prince, than to live a slave." A hundred thousand Chinese imitated his example;

and the whole empire, from Tonkin to the great wall, submitted to the dominion of Cublai. His boundless

ambition aspired to the conquest of Japan: his fleet was twice shipwrecked; and the lives of a hundred

thousand Moguls and Chinese were sacrificed in the fruitless expedition. But the circumjacent kingdoms,

Corea, Tonkin, Cochinchina, Pegu, Bengal, and Thibet, were reduced in different degrees of tribute and

obedience by the effort or terror of his arms. He explored the Indian Ocean with a fleet of a thousand ships:

they sailed in sixtyeight days, most probably to the Isle of Borneo, under the equinoctial line; and though

they returned not without spoil or glory, the emperor was dissatisfied that the savage king had escaped from

[Footnote 22: In Marco Polo, and the Oriental geographers, the names of Cathay and Mangi distinguish the

northern and southern empires, which, from A.D. 1234 to 1279, were those of the great khan, and of the

Chinese. The search of Cathay, after China had been found, excited and misled our navigators of the

[Footnote 23: I depend on the knowledge and fidelity of the Pere Gaubil, who translates the Chinese text of

the annals of the Moguls or Yuen, (p. 71, 93, 153;) but I am ignorant at what time these annals were

composed and published. The two uncles of Marco Polo, who served as engineers at the siege of

Siengyangfou, (l. ii. 61, in Ramusio, tom. ii. See Gaubil, p. 155, 157) must have felt and related the effects of

this destructive powder, and their silence is a weighty, and almost decisive objection. I entertain a suspicion,

that their recent discovery was carried from Europe to China by the caravans of the xvth century and falsely

adopted as an old national discovery before the arrival of the Portuguese and Jesuits in the xvith. Yet the Pere

Gaubil affirms, that the use of gunpowder has been known to the Chinese above 1600 years.

Note: La poudre a canon et d'autres compositions inflammantes, dont ils se servent pour construire des pieces

d'artifice d'un effet suprenant, leur etaient connues depuis tres longtemps, et l'on croit que des bombardes et

des pierriers, dont ils avaient enseigne l'usage aux Tartares, ont pu donner en Europe l'idee d'artillerie,

quoique la forme des fusils et des canons dont ils se servent actuellement, leur ait ete apportee par les Francs,

ainsi que l'attestent les noms memes qu'ils donnent a ces sortes d'armes. Abel Remusat, Melanges Asiat. 2d

II. The conquest of Hindostan by the Moguls was reserved in a later period for the house of Timour; but that

of Iran, or Persia, was achieved by Holagou Khan, ^* the grandson of Zingis, the brother and lieutenant of the

two successive emperors, Mangou and Cublai. I shall not enumerate the crowd of sultans, emirs, and atabeks,

whom he trampled into dust; but the extirpation of the Assassins, or Ismaelians ^24 of Persia, may be

considered as a service to mankind. Among the hills to the south of the Caspian, these odious sectaries had

reigned with impunity above a hundred and sixty years; and their prince, or Imam, established his lieutenant

to lead and govern the colony of Mount Libanus, so famous and formidable in the history of the crusades. ^25

With the fanaticism of the Koran the Ismaelians had blended the Indian transmigration, and the visions of

their own prophets; and it was their first duty to devote their souls and bodies in blind obedience to the vicar

of God. The daggers of his missionaries were felt both in the East and West: the Christians and the Moslems

enumerate, and persons multiply, the illustrious victims that were sacrificed to the zeal, avarice, or resentment

of the old man (as he was corruptly styled) of the mountain. But these daggers, his only arms, were broken by

the sword of Holagou, and not a vestige is left of the enemies of mankind, except the word assassin, which, in

the most odious sense, has been adopted in the languages of Europe. The extinction of the Abbassides cannot

be indifferent to the spectators of their greatness and decline. Since the fall of their Seljukian tyrants the

caliphs had recovered their lawful dominion of Bagdad and the Arabian Irak; but the city was distracted by

theological factions, and the commander of the faithful was lost in a harem of seven hundred conubines. The

invasion of the Moguls he encountered with feeble arms and haughty embassies. "On the divine decree," said

the caliph Mostasem, "is founded the throne of the sons of Abbas: and their foes shall surely be destroyed in

this world and in the next. Who is this Holagou that dares to rise against them? If he be desirous of peace, let

him instantly depart from the sacred territory; and perhaps he may obtain from our clemency the pardon of

his fault." This presumption was cherished by a perfidious vizier, who assured his master, that, even if the

Barbarians had entered the city, the women and children, from the terraces, would be sufficient to overwhelm

them with stones. But when Holagou touched the phantom, it instantly vanished into smoke. After a siege of

two months, Bagdad was stormed and sacked by the Moguls; ^* and their savage commander pronounced the

death of the caliph Mostasem, the last of the temporal successors of Mahomet; whose noble kinsmen, of the

race of Abbas, had reigned in Asia above five hundred years. Whatever might be the designs of the

conqueror, the holy cities of Mecca and Medina ^26 were protected by the Arabian desert; but the Moguls

spread beyond the Tigris and Euphrates, pillaged Aleppo and Damascus, and threatened to join the Franks in

the deliverance of Jerusalem. Egypt was lost, had she been defended only by her feeble offspring; but the

Mamalukes had breathed in their infancy the keenness of a Scythian air: equal in valor, superior in discipline,

they met the Moguls in many a wellfought field; and drove back the stream of hostility to the eastward of

the Euphrates. ^! But it overflowed with resistless violence the kingdoms of Armenia ^!! and Anatolia, of

which the former was possessed by the Christians, and the latter by the Turks. The sultans of Iconium

opposed some resistance to the Mogul arms, till Azzadin sought a refuge among the Greeks of

Constantinople, and his feeble successors, the last of the Seljukian dynasty, were finally extirpated by the

[Footnote *: See the curious account of the expedition of Holagou, translated from the Chinese, by M. Abel

[Footnote 24: All that can be known of the Assassins of Persia and Syria is poured from the copious, and

even profuse, erudition of M. Falconet, in two Memoires read before the Academy of Inscriptions, (tom. xvii.

Note: Von Hammer's History of the Assassins has now thrown Falconet's Dissertation into the shade. M.]

[Footnote 25: The Ismaelians of Syria, 40,000 Assassins, had acquired or founded ten castles in the hills

[Footnote *: Compare Von Hammer, Geschichte der Assassinen, p. 283, 307. Wilken, Geschichte der

Kreuzzuge, vol. vii. p. 406. Price, Chronological Retrospect, vol. ii. p. 217 223. M.]

[Footnote 26: As a proof of the ignorance of the Chinese in foreign transactions, I must observe, that some of

their historians extend the conquest of Zingis himself to Medina, the country of Mahomet, (Gaubil p. 42.)]

[Footnote !!: On the friendly relations of the Armenians with the Mongols see Wilken, Geschichte der

Kreuzzuge, vol. vii. p. 402. They eagerly desired an alliance against the Mahometan powers. M.]

[Footnote *: Trebizond escaped, apparently by the dexterous politics of the sovereign, but it acknowledged

III. No sooner had Octai subverted the northern empire of China, than he resolved to visit with his arms the

most remote countries of the West. Fifteen hundred thousand Moguls and Tartars were inscribed on the

military roll: of these the great khan selected a third, which he intrusted to the command of his nephew Batou,

the son of Tuli; who reigned over his father's conquests to the north of the Caspian Sea. ^! After a festival of

forty days, Batou set forwards on this great expedition; and such was the speed and ardor of his innumerable

squadrons, than in less than six years they had measured a line of ninety degrees of longitude, a fourth part of

the circumference of the globe. The great rivers of Asia and Europe, the Volga and Kama, the Don and

Borysthenes, the Vistula and Danube, they either swam with their horses or passed on the ice, or traversed in

leathern boats, which followed the camp, and transported their wagons and artillery. By the first victories of

Batou, the remains of national freedom were eradicated in the immense plains of Turkestan and Kipzak. ^27

In his rapid progress, he overran the kingdoms, as they are now styled, of Astracan and Cazan; and the troops

which he detached towards Mount Caucasus explored the most secret recesses of Georgia and Circassia. The

civil discord of the great dukes, or princes, of Russia, betrayed their country to the Tartars. They spread from

Livonia to the Black Sea, and both Moscow and Kiow, the modern and the ancient capitals, were reduced to

ashes; a temporary ruin, less fatal than the deep, and perhaps indelible, mark, which a servitude of two

hundred years has imprinted on the character of the Russians. The Tartars ravaged with equal fury the

countries which they hoped to possess, and those which they were hastening to leave. From the permanent

conquest of Russia they made a deadly, though transient, inroad into the heart of Poland, and as far as the

borders of Germany. The cities of Lublin and Cracow were obliterated: ^* they approached the shores of the

Baltic; and in the battle of Lignitz they defeated the dukes of Silesia, the Polish palatines, and the great

master of the Teutonic order, and filled nine sacks with the right ears of the slain. From Lignitz, the extreme

point of their western march, they turned aside to the invasion of Hungary; and the presence or spirit of Batou

inspired the host of five hundred thousand men: the Carpathian hills could not be long impervious to their

divided columns; and their approach had been fondly disbelieved till it was irresistibly felt. The king, Bela

the Fourth, assembled the military force of his counts and bishops; but he had alienated the nation by

adopting a vagrant horde of forty thousand families of Comans, and these savage guests were provoked to

revolt by the suspicion of treachery and the murder of their prince. The whole country north of the Danube

was lost in a day, and depopulated in a summer; and the ruins of cities and churches were overspread with the

bones of the natives, who expiated the sins of their Turkish ancestors. An ecclesiastic, who fled from the sack

of Waradin, describes the calamities which he had seen, or suffered; and the sanguinary rage of sieges and

battles is far less atrocious than the treatment of the fugitives, who had been allured from the woods under a

promise of peace and pardon and who were coolly slaughtered as soon as they had performed the labors of

the harvest and vintage. In the winter the Tartars passed the Danube on the ice, and advanced to Gran or

Strigonium, a German colony, and the metropolis of the kingdom. Thirty engines were planted against the

walls; the ditches were filled with sacks of earth and dead bodies; and after a promiscuous massacre, three

hundred noble matrons were slain in the presence of the khan. Of all the cities and fortresses of Hungary,

three alone survived the Tartar invasion, and the unfortunate Bata hid his head among the islands of the

Adriatic. [Footnote !: See the curious extracts from the Mahometan writers, Hist. des Mongols, p. 707. M.]

[Footnote 27: The Dashte Kipzak, or plain of Kipzak, extends on either side of the Volga, in a boundless

space towards the Jaik and Borysthenes, and is supposed to contain the primitive name and nation of the

[Footnote *: Olmutz was gallantly and successfully defended by Stenberg, Hist. des Mongols, p. 396. M.]

The Latin world was darkened by this cloud of savage hostility: a Russian fugitive carried the alarm to

Sweden; and the remote nations of the Baltic and the ocean trembled at the approach of the Tartars, ^28

whom their fear and ignorance were inclined to separate from the human species. Since the invasion of the

Arabs in the eighth century, Europe had never been exposed to a similar calamity: and if the disciples of

Mahomet would have oppressed her religion and liberty, it might be apprehended that the shepherds of

Scythia would extinguish her cities, her arts, and all the institutions of civil society. The Roman pontiff

attempted to appease and convert these invincible Pagans by a mission of Franciscan and Dominican friars;

but he was astonished by the reply of the khan, that the sons of God and of Zingis were invested with a divine

power to subdue or extirpate the nations; and that the pope would be involved in the universal destruction,

unless he visited in person, and as a suppliant, the royal horde. The emperor Frederic the Second embraced a

more generous mode of defence; and his letters to the kings of France and England, and the princes of

Germany, represented the common danger, and urged them to arm their vassals in this just and rational

crusade. ^29 The Tartars themselves were awed by the fame and valor of the Franks; the town of Newstadt in

Austria was bravely defended against them by fifty knights and twenty crossbows; and they raised the siege

on the appearance of a German army. After wasting the adjacent kingdoms of Servia, Bosnia, and Bulgaria,

Batou slowly retreated from the Danube to the Volga to enjoyed the rewards of victory in the city and palace

[Footnote 28: In the year 1238, the inhabitants of Gothia (Sweden) and Frise were prevented, by their fear of

the Tartars, from sending, as usual, their ships to the herring fishery on the coast of England; and as there was

no exportation, forty or fifty of these fish were sold for a shilling, (Matthew Paris, p. 396.) It is whimsical

enough, that the orders of a Mogul khan, who reigned on the borders of China, should have lowered the price

[Footnote 29: I shall copy his characteristic or flattering epithets of the different countries of Europe: Furens

ac fervens ad arma Germania, strenuae militiae genitrix et alumna Francia, bellicosa et audax Hispania,

virtuosa viris et classe munita fertilis Anglia, impetuosis bellatoribus referta Alemannia, navalis Dacia,

indomita Italia, pacis ignara Burgundia, inquieta Apulia, cum maris Graeci, Adriatici et Tyrrheni insulis

pyraticis et invictis, Creta, Cypro, Sicilia, cum Oceano conterminis insulis, et regionibus, cruenta Hybernia,

cum agili Wallia palustris Scotia, glacialis Norwegia, suam electam militiam sub vexillo Crucis destinabunt,

IV. Even the poor and frozen regions of the north attracted the arms of the Moguls: Sheibani khan, the

brother of the great Batou, led a horde of fifteen thousand families into the wilds of Siberia; and his

descendants reigned at Tobolskoi above three centuries, till the Russian conquest. The spirit of enterprise

which pursued the course of the Oby and Yenisei must have led to the discovery of the icy sea. After

brushing away the monstrous fables, of men with dogs' heads and cloven feet, we shall find, that, fifteen

years after the death of Zingis, the Moguls were informed of the name and manners of the Samoyedes in the

neighborhood of the polar circle, who dwelt in subterraneous huts, and derived their furs and their food from

[Footnote 30: See Carpin's relation in Hackluyt, vol. i. p. 30. The pedigree of the khans of Siberia is given by

Abulghazi, (part viii. p. 485 495.) Have the Russians found no Tartar chronicles at Tobolskoi?

Note: See the account of the Mongol library in Bergman, Nomadische Strensreyen, vol. iii. p. 185, 205, and

Remusat, Hist. des Langues Tartares, p. 327, and preface to Schmidt, Geschichte der OstMongolen. M.]

While China, Syria, and Poland, were invaded at the same time by the Moguls and Tartars, the authors of the

mighty mischief were content with the knowledge and declaration, that their word was the sword of death.

Like the first caliphs, the first successors of Zingis seldom appeared in person at the head of their victorious

armies. On the banks of the Onon and Selinga, the royal or golden horde exhibited the contrast of simplicity

and greatness; of the roasted sheep and mare's milk which composed their banquets; and of a distribution in

one day of five hundred wagons of gold and silver. The ambassadors and princes of Europe and Asia were

compelled to undertake this distant and laborious pilgrimage; and the life and reign of the great dukes of

Russia, the kings of Georgia and Armenia, the sultans of Iconium, and the emirs of Persia, were decided by

the frown or smile of the great khan. The sons and grandsons of Zingis had been accustomed to the pastoral

life; but the village of Caracorum ^31 was gradually ennobled by their election and residence. A change of

manners is implied in the removal of Octai and Mangou from a tent to a house; and their example was

imitated by the princes of their family and the great officers of the empire. Instead of the boundless forest, the

enclosure of a park afforded the more indolent pleasures of the chase; their new habitations were decorated

with painting and sculpture; their superfluous treasures were cast in fountains, and basins, and statues of

massy silver; and the artists of China and Paris vied with each other in the service of the great khan. ^32

Caracorum contained two streets, the one of Chinese mechanics, the other of Mahometan traders; and the

places of religious worship, one Nestorian church, two mosques, and twelve temples of various idols, may

represent in some degree the number and division of inhabitants. Yet a French missionary declares, that the

town of St. Denys, near Paris, was more considerable than the Tartar capital; and that the whole palace of

Mangou was scarcely equal to a tenth part of that Benedictine abbey. The conquests of Russia and Syria

might amuse the vanity of the great khans; but they were seated on the borders of China; the acquisition of

that empire was the nearest and most interesting object; and they might learn from their pastoral economy,

that it is for the advantage of the shepherd to protect and propagate his flock. I have already celebrated the

wisdom and virtue of a Mandarin who prevented the desolation of five populous and cultivated provinces. In

a spotless administration of thirty years, this friend of his country and of mankind continually labored to

mitigate, or suspend, the havoc of war; to save the monuments, and to rekindle the flame, of science; to

restrain the military commander by the restoration of civil magistrates; and to instil the love of peace and

justice into the minds of the Moguls. He struggled with the barbarism of the first conquerors; but his salutary

lessons produced a rich harvest in the second generation. ^* The northern, and by degrees the southern,

empire acquiesced in the government of Cublai, the lieutenant, and afterwards the successor, of Mangou; and

the nation was loyal to a prince who had been educated in the manners of China. He restored the forms of her

venerable constitution; and the victors submitted to the laws, the fashions, and even the prejudices, of the

vanquished people. This peaceful triumph, which has been more than once repeated, may be ascribed, in a

great measure, to the numbers and servitude of the Chinese. The Mogul army was dissolved in a vast and

populous country; and their emperors adopted with pleasure a political system, which gives to the prince the

solid substance of despotism, and leaves to the subject the empty names of philosophy, freedom, and filial

obedience. ^* Under the reign of Cublai, letters and commerce, peace and justice, were restored; the great

canal, of five hundred miles, was opened from Nankin to the capital: he fixed his residence at Pekin; and

displayed in his court the magnificence of the greatest monarch of Asia. Yet this learned prince declined from

the pure and simple religion of his great ancestor: he sacrificed to the idol Fo; and his blind attachment to the

lamas of Thibet and the bonzes of China ^33 provoked the censure of the disciples of Confucius. His

successors polluted the palace with a crowd of eunuchs, physicians, and astrologers, while thirteen millions

of their subjects were consumed in the provinces by famine. One hundred and forty years after the death of

Zingis, his degenerate race, the dynasty of the Yuen, was expelled by a revolt of the native Chinese; and the

Mogul emperors were lost in the oblivion of the desert. Before this revolution, they had forfeited their

supremacy over the dependent branches of their house, the khans of Kipzak and Russia, the khans of Zagatai,

or Transoxiana, and the khans of Iran or Persia. By their distance and power, these royal lieutenants had soon

been released from the duties of obedience; and after the death of Cublai, they scorned to accept a sceptre or a

title from his unworthy successors. According to their respective situations, they maintained the simplicity of

the pastoral life, or assumed the luxury of the cities of Asia; but the princes and their hordes were alike

disposed for the reception of a foreign worship. After some hesitation between the Gospel and the Koran,

they conformed to the religion of Mahomet; and while they adopted for their brethren the Arabs and Persians,

[Footnote 31: The Map of D'Anville and the Chinese Itineraries (De Guignes, tom. i. part ii. p. 57) seem to

mark the position of Holin, or Caracorum, about six hundred miles to the northwest of Pekin. The distance

between Selinginsky and Pekin is near 2000 Russian versts, between 1300 and 1400 English miles, (Bell's

[Footnote 32: Rubruquis found at Caracorum his countryman Guillaume Boucher, orfevre de Paris, who had

executed for the khan a silver tree supported by four lions, and ejecting four different liquors. Abulghazi (part

[Footnote *: See the interesting sketch of the life of this minister (Yelin Thsouthsai) in the second volume of

[Footnote 33: The attachment of the khans, and the hatred of the mandarins, to the bonzes and lamas

(Duhalde, Hist. de la Chine, tom. i. p. 502, 503) seems to represent them as the priests of the same god, of the

Indian Fo, whose worship prevails among the sects of Hindostan Siam, Thibet, China, and Japan. But this

mysterious subject is still lost in a cloud, which the researchers of our Asiatic Society may gradually dispel.]

In this shipwreck of nations, some surprise may be excited by the escape of the Roman empire, whose relics,

at the time of the Mogul invasion, were dismembered by the Greeks and Latins. Less potent than Alexander,

they were pressed, like the Macedonian, both in Europe and Asia, by the shepherds of Scythia; and had the

Tartars undertaken the siege, Constantinople must have yielded to the fate of Pekin, Samarcand, and Bagdad.

The glorious and voluntary retreat of Batou from the Danube was insulted by the vain triumph of the Franks

and Greeks; ^34 and in a second expedition death surprised him in full march to attack the capital of the

Caesars. His brother Borga carried the Tartar arms into Bulgaria and Thrace; but he was diverted from the

Byzantine war by a visit to Novogorod, in the fiftyseventh degree of latitude, where he numbered the

inhabitants and regulated the tributes of Russia. The Mogul khan formed an alliance with the Mamalukes

against his brethren of Persia: three hundred thousand horse penetrated through the gates of Derbend; and the

Greeks might rejoice in the first example of domestic war. After the recovery of Constantinople, Michael

Palaeologus, ^35 at a distance from his court and army, was surprised and surrounded in a Thracian castle, by

twenty thousand Tartars. But the object of their march was a private interest: they came to the deliverance of

Azzadin, the Turkish sultan; and were content with his person and the treasure of the emperor. Their general

Noga, whose name is perpetuated in the hordes of Astracan, raised a formidable rebellion against Mengo

Timour, the third of the khaus of Kipzak; obtained in marriage Maria, the natural daughter of Palaeologus;

and guarded the dominions of his friend and father. The subsequent invasions of a Scythian cast were those of

outlaws and fugitives: and some thousands of Alani and Comans, who had been driven from their native

zeats, were reclaimed from a vagrant life, and enlisted in the service of the empire. Such was the influence in

Europe of the invasion of the Moguls. The first terror of their arms secured, rather than disturbed, the peace

of the Roman Asia. The sultan of Iconium solicited a personal interview with John Vataces; and his artful

policy encouraged the Turks to defend their barrier against the common enemy. ^36 That barrier indeed was

soon overthrown; and the servitude and ruin of the Seljukians exposed the nakedness of the Greeks. The

formidable Holagou threatened to march to Constantinople at the head of four hundred thousand men; and the

groundless panic of the citizens of Nice will present an image of the terror which he had inspired. The

accident of a procession, and the sound of a doleful litany, "From the fury of the Tartars, good Lord, deliver

us," had scattered the hasty report of an assault and massacre. In the blind credulity of fear, the streets of Nice

were crowded with thousands of both sexes, who knew not from what or to whom they fled; and some hours

elapsed before the firmness of the military officers could relieve the city from this imaginary foe. But the

ambition of Holagou and his successors was fortunately diverted by the conquest of Bagdad, and a long

vicissitude of Syrian wars; their hostility to the Moslems inclined them to unite with the Greeks and Franks;

^37 and their generosity or contempt had offered the kingdom of Anatolia as the reward of an Armenian

vassal. The fragments of the Seljukian monarchy were disputed by the emirs who had occupied the cities or

the mountains; but they all confessed the supremacy of the khans of Persia; and he often interposed his

authority, and sometimes his arms, to check their depredations, and to preserve the peace and balance of his

Turkish frontier. The death of Cazan, ^38 one of the greatest and most accomplished princes of the house of

Zingis, removed this salutary control; and the decline of the Moguls gave a free scope to the rise and progress

of the Ottoman Empire. ^39 [Footnote 34: Some repulse of the Moguls in Hungary (Matthew Paris, p. 545,

546) might propagate and color the report of the union and victory of the kings of the Franks on the confines

of Bulgaria. Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 310) after forty years, beyond the Tigris, might be easily deceived.]

[Footnote 35: See Pachymer, l. iii. c. 25, and l. ix. c. 26, 27; and the false alarm at Nice, l. iii. c. 27.

[Footnote 37: Abulpharagius, who wrote in the year 1284, declares that the Moguls, since the fabulous defeat

of Batou, had not attacked either the Franks or Greeks; and of this he is a competent witness. Hayton

likewise, the Armenian prince, celebrates their friendship for himself and his nation.]

[Footnote 38: Pachymer gives a splendid character of Cazan Khan, the rival of Cyrus and Alexander, (l. xii. c.

1.) In the conclusion of his history (l. xiii. c. 36) he hopes much from the arrival of 30,000 Tochars, or

Tartars, who were ordered by the successor of Cazan to restrain the Turks of Bithynia, A.D. 1308.]

[Footnote 39: The origin of the Ottoman dynasty is illustrated by the critical learning of Mm. De Guignes

(Hist. des Huns, tom. iv. p. 329 337) and D'Anville, (Empire Turc, p. 14 22,) two inhabitants of Paris,

from whom the Orientals may learn the history and geography of their own country.

Note: They may be still more enlightened by the Geschichte des Osman Reiches, by M. von Hammer

After the retreat of Zingis, the sultan Gelaleddin of Carizme had returned from India to the possession and

defence of his Persian kingdoms. In the space of eleven years, than hero fought in person fourteen battles;

and such was his activity, that he led his cavalry in seventeen days from Teflia to Kerman, a march of a

thousand miles. Yet he was oppressed by the jealousy of the Moslem princes, and the innumerable armies of

the Moguls; and after his last defeat, Gelaleddin perished ignobly in the mountains of Curdistan. His death

dissolved a veteran and adventurous army, which included under the name of Carizmians or Corasmins many

Turkman hordes, that had attached themselves to the sultan's fortune. The bolder and more powerful chiefs

invaded Syria, and violated the holy sepulchre of Jerusalem: the more humble engaged in the service of

Aladin, sultan of Iconium; and among these were the obscure fathers of the Ottoman line. They had formerly

pitched their tents near the southern banks of the Oxus, in the plains of Mahan and Nesa; and it is somewhat

remarkable, that the same spot should have produced the first authors of the Parthian and Turkish empires. At

the head, or in the rear, of a Carizmian army, Soliman Shah was drowned in the passage of the Euphrates: his

son Orthogrul became the soldier and subject of Aladin, and established at Surgut, on the banks of the

Sangar, a camp of four hundred families or tents, whom he governed fiftytwo years both in peace and war.

He was the father of Thaman, or Athman, whose Turkish name has been melted into the appellation of the

caliph Othman; and if we describe that pastoral chief as a shepherd and a robber, we must separate from those

characters all idea of ignominy and baseness. Othman possessed, and perhaps surpassed, the ordinary virtues

of a soldier; and the circumstances of time and place were propitious to his independence and success. The

Seljukian dynasty was no more; and the distance and decline of the Mogul khans soon enfranchised him from

the control of a superior. He was situate on the verge of the Greek empire: the Koran sanctified his gazi, or

holy war, against the infidels; and their political errors unlocked the passes of Mount Olympus, and invited

him to descend into the plains of Bithynia. Till the reign of Palaeologus, these passes had been vigilantly

guarded by the militia of the country, who were repaid by their own safety and an exemption from taxes. The

emperor abolished their privilege and assumed their office; but the tribute was rigorously collected, the

custody of the passes was neglected, and the hardy mountaineers degenerated into a trembling crowd of

peasants without spirit or discipline. It was on the twentyseventh of July, in the year twelve hundred and

ninetynine of the Christian aera, that Othman first invaded the territory of Nicomedia; ^40 and the singular

accuracy of the date seems to disclose some foresight of the rapid and destructive growth of the monster. The

annals of the twentyseven years of his reign would exhibit a repetition of the same inroads; and his

hereditary troops were multiplied in each campaign by the accession of captives and volunteers. Instead of

retreating to the hills, he maintained the most useful and defensive posts; fortified the towns and castles

which he had first pillaged; and renounced the pastoral life for the baths and palaces of his infant capitals. But

it was not till Othman was oppressed by age and infirmities, that he received the welcome news of the

conquest of Prusa, which had been surrendered by famine or treachery to the arms of his son Orchan. The

glory of Othman is chiefly founded on that of his descendants; but the Turks have transcribed or composed a

[Footnote 40: See Pachymer, l. x. c. 25, 26, l. xiii. c. 33, 34, 36; and concerning the guard of the mountains, l.

i. c. 3 6: Nicephorus Gregoras, l. vii. c. l., and the first book of Laonicus Chalcondyles, the Athenian.]

[Footnote 41: I am ignorant whether the Turks have any writers older than Mahomet II., nor can I reach

beyond a meagre chronicle (Annales Turcici ad Annum 1550) translated by John Gaudier, and published by

Leunclavius, (ad calcem Laonic. Chalcond. p. 311 350,) with copious pandects, or commentaries. The

history of the Growth and Decay (A.D. 1300 1683) of the Othman empire was translated into English from

the Latin Ms. of Demetrius Cantemir, prince of Moldavia, (London, 1734, in folio.) The author is guilty of

strange blunders in Oriental history; but he was conversant with the language, the annals, and institutions of

the Turks. Cantemir partly draws his materials from the Synopsis of Saadi Effendi of Larissa, dedicated in the

year 1696 to Sultan Mustapha, and a valuable abridgment of the original historians. In one of the Ramblers,

Dr Johnson praises Knolles (a General History of the Turks to the present Year. London, 1603) as the first of

historians, unhappy only in the choice of his subject. Yet I much doubt whether a partial and verbose

compilation from Latin writers, thirteen hundred folio pages of speeches and battles, can either instruct or

amuse an enlightened age, which requires from the historian some tincture of philosophy and criticism.

Note: We could have wished that M. von Hammer had given a more clear and distinct reply to this question

of Gibbon. In a note, vol. i. p. 630. M. von Hammer shows that they had not only sheiks (religious writers)

and learned lawyers, but poets and authors on medicine. But the inquiry of Gibbon obviously refers to

historians. The oldest of their historical works, of which V. Hammer makes use, is the "Tarichi Aaschik

Paschasade," i. e. the History of the Great Grandson of Aaschik Pasha, who was a dervis and celebrated

ascetic poet in the reign of Murad (Amurath) I. Ahmed, the author of the work, lived during the reign of

Bajazet II., but, he says, derived much information from the book of Scheik Jachshi, the son of Elias, who

was Imaum to Sultan Orchan, (the second Ottoman king) and who related, from the lips of his father, the

circumstances of the earliest Ottoman history. This book (having searched for it in vain for fiveandtwenty

years) our author found at length in the Vatican. All the other Turkish histories on his list, as indeed this,

were written during the reign of Mahomet II. It does not appear whether any of the rest cite earlier authorities

of equal value with that claimed by the "Tarichi Aaschik Paschasade." M. (in Quarterly Review, vol. xlix.

From the conquest of Prusa, we may date the true aera of the Ottoman empire. The lives and possessions of

the Christian subjects were redeemed by a tribute or ransom of thirty thousand crowns of gold; and the city,

by the labors of Orchan, assumed the aspect of a Mahometan capital; Prusa was decorated with a mosque, a

college, and a hospital, of royal foundation; the Seljukian coin was changed for the name and impression of

the new dynasty: and the most skilful professors, of human and divine knowledge, attracted the Persian and

Arabian students from the ancient schools of Oriental learning. The office of vizier was instituted for Aladin,

the brother of Orchan; ^* and a different habit distinguished the citizens from the peasants, the Moslems from

the infidels. All the troops of Othman had consisted of loose squadrons of Turkman cavalry; who served

without pay and fought without discipline: but a regular body of infantry was first established and trained by

the prudence of his son. A great number of volunteers was enrolled with a small stipend, but with the

permission of living at home, unless they were summoned to the field: their rude manners, and seditious

temper, disposed Orchan to educate his young captives as his soldiers and those of the prophet; but the

Turkish peasants were still allowed to mount on horseback, and follow his standard, with the appellation and

the hopes of freebooters. ^! By these arts he formed an army of twentyfive thousand Moslems: a train of

battering engines was framed for the use of sieges; and the first successful experiment was made on the cities

of Nice and Nicomedia. Orchan granted a safeconduct to all who were desirous of departing with their

families and effects; but the widows of the slain were given in marriage to the conquerors; and the

sacrilegious plunder, the books, the vases, and the images, were sold or ransomed at Constantinople. The

emperor Andronicus the Younger was vanquished and wounded by the son of Othman: ^42 ^!! he subdued

the whole province or kingdom of Bithynia, as far as the shores of the Bosphorus and Hellespont; and the

Christians confessed the justice and clemency of a reign which claimed the voluntary attachment of the Turks

of Asia. Yet Orchan was content with the modest title of emir; and in the list of his compeers, the princes of

Roum or Anatolia, ^43 his military forces were surpassed by the emirs of Ghermian and Caramania, each of

whom could bring into the field an army of forty thousand men. Their domains were situate in the heart of the

Seljukian kingdom; but the holy warriors, though of inferior note, who formed new principalities on the

Greek empire, are more conspicuous in the light of history. The maritime country from the Propontis to the

Maeander and the Isle of Rhodes, so long threatened and so often pillaged, was finally lost about the

thirteenth year of Andronicus the Elder. ^44 Two Turkish chieftains, Sarukhan and Aidin, left their names to

their conquests, and their conquests to their posterity. The captivity or ruin of the seven churches of Asia was

consummated; and the barbarous lords of Ionia and Lydia still trample on the monuments of classic and

Christian antiquity. In the loss of Ephesus, the Christians deplored the fall of the first angel, the extinction of

the first candlestick, of the Revelations; ^45 the desolation is complete; and the temple of Diana, or the

church of Mary, will equally elude the search of the curious traveller. The circus and three stately theatres of

Laodicea are now peopled with wolves and foxes; Sardes is reduced to a miserable village; the God of

Mahomet, without a rival or a son, is invoked in the mosques of Thyatira and Pergamus; and the

populousness of Smyrna is supported by the foreign trade of the Franks and Armenians. Philadelphia alone

has been saved by prophecy, or courage. At a distance from the sea, forgotten by the emperors, encompassed

on all sides by the Turks, her valiant citizens defended their religion and freedom above fourscore years; and

at length capitulated with the proudest of the Ottomans. Among the Greek colonies and churches of Asia,

Philadelphia is still erect; a column in a scene of ruins; a pleasing example, that the paths of honor and safety

may sometimes be the same. The servitude of Rhodes was delayed about two centuries by the establishment

of the knights of St. John of Jerusalem: ^46 under the discipline of the order, that island emerged into fame

and opulence; the noble and warlike monks were renowned by land and sea: and the bulwark of Christendom

[Footnote 42: Cantacuzene, though he relates the battle and heroic flight of the younger Androcinus, (l. ii. c.

6, 7, 8,) dissembles by his silence the loss of Prusa, Nice, and Nicomedia, which are fairly confessed by

Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. viii. 15, ix. 9, 13, xi. 6.) It appears that Nice was taken by Orchan in 1330, and

[Footnote !!: For the conquests of Orchan over the ten pachaliks, or kingdoms of the Seljukians, in Asia

[Footnote 43: The partition of the Turkish emirs is extracted from two contemporaries, the Greek Nicephorus

Gregoras (l. vii. 1) and the Arabian Marakeschi, (De Guignes, tom. ii. P. ii. p. 76, 77.) See likewise the first

[Footnote 45: See the Travels of Wheeler and Spon, of Pocock and Chandler, and more particularly Smith's

Survey of the Seven Churches of Asia, p. 205 276. The more pious antiquaries labor to reconcile the

promises and threats of the author of the Revelations with the present state of the seven cities. Perhaps it

would be more prudent to confine his predictions to the characters and events of his own times.]

[Footnote 46: Consult the ivth book of the Histoire de 'Ordre de Malthe, par l'Abbe de Vertot. That pleasing

writer betrays his ignorance, in supposing that Othman, a freebooter of the Bithynian hills, could besiege

The Greeks, by their intestine divisions, were the authors of their final ruin. During the civil wars of the elder

and younger Andronicus, the son of Othman achieved, almost without resistance, the conquest of Bithynia;

and the same disorders encouraged the Turkish emirs of Lydia and Ionia to build a fleet, and to pillage the

adjacent islands and the seacoast of Europe. In the defence of his life and honor, Cantacuzene was tempted

to prevent, or imitate, his adversaries, by calling to his aid the public enemies of his religion and country.

Amir, the son of Aidin, concealed under a Turkish garb the humanity and politeness of a Greek; he was

united with the great domestic by mutual esteem and reciprocal services; and their friendship is compared, in

the vain rhetoric of the times, to the perfect union of Orestes and Pylades. ^47 On the report of the danger of

his friend, who was persecuted by an ungrateful court, the prince of Ionia assembled at Smyrna a fleet of

three hundred vessels, with an army of twentynine thousand men; sailed in the depth of winter, and cast

anchor at the mouth of the Hebrus. From thence, with a chosen band of two thousand Turks, he marched

along the banks of the river, and rescued the empress, who was besieged in Demotica by the wild Bulgarians.

At that disastrous moment, the life or death of his beloved Cantacuzene was concealed by his flight into

Servia: but the grateful Irene, impatient to behold her deliverer, invited him to enter the city, and

accompanied her message with a present of rich apparel and a hundred horses. By a peculiar strain of

delicacy, the Gentle Barbarian refused, in the absence of an unfortunate friend, to visit his wife, or to taste the

luxuries of the palace; sustained in his tent the rigor of the winter; and rejected the hospitable gift, that he

might share the hardships of two thousand companions, all as deserving as himself of that honor and

distinction. Necessity and revenge might justify his predatory excursions by sea and land: he left nine

thousand five hundred men for the guard of his fleet; and persevered in the fruitless search of Cantacuzene,

till his embarkation was hastened by a fictitious letter, the severity of the season, the clamors of his

independent troops, and the weight of his spoil and captives. In the prosecution of the civil war, the prince of

Ionia twice returned to Europe; joined his arms with those of the emperor; besieged Thessalonica, and

threatened Constantinople. Calumny might affix some reproach on his imperfect aid, his hasty departure, and

a bribe of ten thousand crowns, which he accepted from the Byzantine court; but his friend was satisfied; and

the conduct of Amir is excused by the more sacred duty of defending against the Latins his hereditary

dominions. The maritime power of the Turks had united the pope, the king of Cyprus, the republic of Venice,

and the order of St. John, in a laudable crusade; their galleys invaded the coast of Ionia; and Amir was slain

with an arrow, in the attempt to wrest from the Rhodian knights the citadel of Smyrna. ^48 Before his death,

he generously recommended another ally of his own nation; not more sincere or zealous than himself, but

more able to afford a prompt and powerful succor, by his situation along the Propontis and in the front of

Constantinople. By the prospect of a more advantageous treaty, the Turkish prince of Bithynia was detached

from his engagements with Anne of Savoy; and the pride of Orchan dictated the most solemn protestations,

that if he could obtain the daughter of Cantacuzene, he would invariably fulfil the duties of a subject and a

son. Parental tenderness was silenced by the voice of ambition: the Greek clergy connived at the marriage of

a Christian princess with a sectary of Mahomet; and the father of Theodora describes, with shameful

satisfaction, the dishonor of the purple. ^49 A body of Turkish cavalry attended the ambassadors, who

disembarked from thirty vessels, before his camp of Selybria. A stately pavilion was erected, in which the

empress Irene passed the night with her daughters. In the morning, Theodora ascended a throne, which was

surrounded with curtains of silk and gold: the troops were under arms; but the emperor alone was on

horseback. At a signal the curtains were suddenly withdrawn to disclose the bride, or the victim, encircled by

kneeling eunuchs and hymeneal torches: the sound of flutes and trumpets proclaimed the joyful event; and

her pretended happiness was the theme of the nuptial song, which was chanted by such poets as the age could

produce. Without the rites of the church, Theodora was delivered to her barbarous lord: but it had been

stipulated, that she should preserve her religion in the harem of Bursa; and her father celebrates her charity

and devotion in this ambiguous situation. After his peaceful establishment on the throne of Constantinople,

the Greek emperor visited his Turkish ally, who with four sons, by various wives, expected him at Scutari, on

the Asiatic shore. The two princes partook, with seeming cordiality, of the pleasures of the banquet and the

chase; and Theodora was permitted to repass the Bosphorus, and to enjoy some days in the society of her

mother. But the friendship of Orchan was subservient to his religion and interest; and in the Genoese war he

[Footnote 47: Nicephorus Gregoras has expatiated with pleasure on this amiable character, (l. xii. 7, xiii. 4,

10, xiv. 1, 9, xvi. 6.) Cantacuzene speaks with honor and esteem of his ally, (l. iii. c. 56, 57, 63, 64, 66, 67,

68, 86, 89, 95, 96;) but he seems ignorant of his own sentimental passion for the Turks, and indirectly denies

[Footnote 48: After the conquest of Smyrna by the Latins, the defence of this fortress was imposed by Pope

[Footnote 49: See Cantacuzenus, l. iii. c. 95. Nicephorus Gregoras, who, for the light of Mount Thabor,

brands the emperor with the names of tyrant and Herod, excuses, rather than blames, this Turkish marriage,

and alleges the passion and power of Orchan, Turkish, (l. xv. 5.) He afterwards celebrates his kingdom and

In the treaty with the empress Anne, the Ottoman prince had inserted a singular condition, that it should be

lawful for him to sell his prisoners at Constantinople, or transport them into Asia. A naked crowd of

Christians of both sexes and every age, of priests and monks, of matrons and virgins, was exposed in the

public market; the whip was frequently used to quicken the charity of redemption; and the indigent Greeks

deplored the fate of their brethren, who were led away to the worst evils of temporal and spiritual bondage

^50 Cantacuzene was reduced to subscribe the same terms; and their execution must have been still more

pernicious to the empire: a body of ten thousand Turks had been detached to the assistance of the empress

Anne; but the entire forces of Orchan were exerted in the service of his father. Yet these calamities were of a

transient nature; as soon as the storm had passed away, the fugitives might return to their habitations; and at

the conclusion of the civil and foreign wars, Europe was completely evacuated by the Moslems of Asia. It

was in his last quarrel with his pupil that Cantacuzene inflicted the deep and deadly wound, which could

never be healed by his successors, and which is poorly expiated by his theological dialogues against the

prophet Mahomet. Ignorant of their own history, the modern Turks confound their first and their final passage

of the Hellespont, ^51 and describe the son of Orchan as a nocturnal robber, who, with eighty companions,

explores by stratagem a hostile and unknown shore. Soliman, at the head of ten thousand horse, was

transported in the vessels, and entertained as the friend, of the Greek emperor. In the civil wars of Romania,

he performed some service and perpetrated more mischief; but the Chersonesus was insensibly filled with a

Turkish colony; and the Byzantine court solicited in vain the restitution of the fortresses of Thrace. After

some artful delays between the Ottoman prince and his son, their ransom was valued at sixty thousand

crowns, and the first payment had been made when an earthquake shook the walls and cities of the provinces;

the dismantled places were occupied by the Turks; and Gallipoli, the key of the Hellespont, was rebuilt and

repeopled by the policy of Soliman. The abdication of Cantacuzene dissolved the feeble bands of domestic

alliance; and his last advice admonished his countrymen to decline a rash contest, and to compare their own

weakness with the numbers and valor, the discipline and enthusiasm, of the Moslems. His prudent counsels

were despised by the headstrong vanity of youth, and soon justified by the victories of the Ottomans. But as

he practised in the field the exercise of the jerid, Soliman was killed by a fall from his horse; and the aged

[Footnote 50: The most lively and concise picture of this captivity may be found in the history of Ducas, (c.

[Footnote 51: In this passage, and the first conquests in Europe, Cantemir (p. 27, gives a miserable idea of his

Turkish guides; nor am I much better satisfied with Chalcondyles, (l. i. p. 12, They forget to consult the most

authentic record, the ivth book of Cantacuzene. I likewise regret the last books, which are still manuscript, of

Note: Von Hammer excuses the silence with which the Turkish historians pass over the earlier intercourse of

the Ottomans with the European continent, of which he enumerates sixteen different occasions, as if they

disdained those peaceful incursions by which they gained no conquest, and established no permanent footing

on the Byzantine territory. Of the romantic account of Soliman's first expedition, he says, "As yet the prose of

history had not asserted its right over the poetry of tradition." This defence would scarcely be accepted as

satisfactory by the historian of the Decline and Fall. M. (in Quarterly Review, vol. xlix. p. 293.)

But the Greeks had not time to rejoice in the death of their enemies; and the Turkish cimeter was wielded

with the same spirit by Amurath the First, the son of Orchan, and the brother of Soliman. By the pale and

fainting light of the Byzantine annals, ^52 we can discern, that he subdued without resistance the whole

province of Romania or Thrace, from the Hellespont to Mount Haemus, and the verge of the capital; and that

Adrianople was chosen for the royal seat of his government and religion in Europe. Constantinople, whose

decline is almost coeval with her foundation, had often, in the lapse of a thousand years, been assaulted by

the Barbarians of the East and West; but never till this fatal hour had the Greeks been surrounded, both in

Asia and Europe, by the arms of the same hostile monarchy. Yet the prudence or generosity of Amurath

postponed for a while this easy conquest; and his pride was satisfied with the frequent and humble attendance

of the emperor John Palaeologus and his four sons, who followed at his summons the court and camp of the

Ottoman prince. He marched against the Sclavonian nations between the Danube and the Adriatic, the

Bulgarians, Servians, Bosnians, and Albanians; and these warlike tribes, who had so often insulted the

majesty of the empire, were repeatedly broken by his destructive inroads. Their countries did not abound

either in gold or silver; nor were their rustic hamlets and townships enriched by commerce or decorated by

the arts of luxury. But the natives of the soil have been distinguished in every age by their hardiness of mind

and body; and they were converted by a prudent institution into the firmest and most faithful supporters of the

Ottoman greatness. ^53 The vizier of Amurath reminded his sovereign that, according to the Mahometan law,

he was entitled to a fifth part of the spoil and captives; and that the duty might easily be levied, if vigilant

officers were stationed in Gallipoli, to watch the passage, and to select for his use the stoutest and most

beautiful of the Christian youth. The advice was followed: the edict was proclaimed; many thousands of the

European captives were educated in religion and arms; and the new militia was consecrated and named by a

celebrated dervis. Standing in the front of their ranks, he stretched the sleeve of his gown over the head of the

foremost soldier, and his blessing was delivered in these words: "Let them be called Janizaries, (Yengi cheri,

or new soldiers;) may their countenance be ever bright! their hand victorious! their sword keen! may their

spear always hang over the heads of their enemies! and wheresoever they go, may they return with a white

face!" ^54 ^* Such was the origin of these haughty troops, the terror of the nations, and sometimes of the

sultans themselves. Their valor has declined, their discipline is relaxed, and their tumultuary array is

incapable of contending with the order and weapons of modern tactics; but at the time of their institution,

they possessed a decisive superiority in war; since a regular body of infantry, in constant exercise and pay,

was not maintained by any of the princes of Christendom. The Janizaries fought with the zeal of proselytes

against their idolatrous countrymen; and in the battle of Cossova, the league and independence of the

Sclavonian tribes was finally crushed. As the conqueror walked over the field, he observed that the greatest

part of the slain consisted of beardless youths; and listened to the flattering reply of his vizier, that age and

wisdom would have taught them not to oppose his irresistible arms. But the sword of his Janizaries could not

defend him from the dagger of despair; a Servian soldier started from the crowd of dead bodies, and Amurath

was pierced in the belly with a mortal wound. ^* The grandson of Othman was mild in his temper, modest in

his apparel, and a lover of learning and virtue; but the Moslems were scandalized at his absence from public

worship; and he was corrected by the firmness of the mufti, who dared to reject his testimony in a civil cause:

a mixture of servitude and freedom not unfrequent in Oriental history. ^55 [Footnote 52: After the conclusion

of Cantacuzene and Gregoras, there follows a dark interval of a hundred years. George Phranza, Michael

Ducas, and Laonicus Chalcondyles, all three wrote after the taking of Constantinople.]

[Footnote 53: See Cantemir, p. 37 41, with his own large and curious annotations.]

[Footnote 54: White and black face are common and proverbial expressions of praise and reproach in the

Turkish language. Hic niger est, hunc tu Romane caveto, was likewise a Latin sentence.]

[Footnote *: According to Von Hammer. vol. i. p. 90, Gibbon and the European writers assign too late a date

to this enrolment of the Janizaries. It took place not in the reign of Amurath, but in that of his predecessor

[Footnote *: Ducas has related this as a deliberate act of selfdevotion on the part of a Servian noble who

pretended to desert, and stabbed Amurath during a conference which he had requested. The Italian translator

of Ducas, published by Bekker in the new edition of the Byzantines, has still further heightened the romance.

See likewise in Von Hammer (Osmanische Geschichte, vol. i. p. 138) the popular Servian account, which

resembles that of Ducas, and may have been the source of that of his Italian translator. The Turkish account

agrees more nearly with Gibbon; but the Servian, (Milosch Kohilovisch) while he lay among the heap of the

dead, pretended to have some secret to impart to Amurath, and stabbed him while he leaned over to listen.

[Footnote 55: See the life and death of Morad, or Amurath I., in Cantemir, (p 33 45,) the first book of

Chalcondyles, and the Annales Turcici of Leunclavius. According to another story, the sultan was stabbed by

a Croat in his tent; and this accident was alleged to Busbequius (Epist i. p. 98) as an excuse for the unworthy

precaution of pinioning, as if were, between two attendants, an ambassador's arms, when he is introduced to

The character of Bajazet, the son and successor of Amurath, is strongly expressed in his surname of Ilderim,

or the lightning; and he might glory in an epithet, which was drawn from the fiery energy of his soul and the

rapidity of his destructive march. In the fourteen years of his reign, ^56 he incessantly moved at the head of

his armies, from Boursa to Adrianople, from the Danube to the Euphrates; and, though he strenuously labored

for the propagation of the law, he invaded, with impartial ambition, the Christian and Mahometan princes of

Europe and Asia. From Angora to Amasia and Erzeroum, the northern regions of Anatolia were reduced to

his obedience: he stripped of their hereditary possessions his brother emirs of Ghermian and Caramania, of

Aidin and Sarukhan; and after the conquest of Iconium the ancient kingdom of the Seljukians again revived

in the Ottoman dynasty. Nor were the conquests of Bajazet less rapid or important in Europe. No sooner had

he imposed a regular form of servitude on the Servians and Bulgarians, than he passed the Danube to seek

new enemies and new subjects in the heart of Moldavia. ^57 Whatever yet adhered to the Greek empire in

Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly, acknowledged a Turkish master: an obsequious bishop led him through the

gates of Thermopylae into Greece; and we may observe, as a singular fact, that the widow of a Spanish chief,

who possessed the ancient seat of the oracle of Delphi, deserved his favor by the sacrifice of a beauteous

daughter. The Turkish communication between Europe and Asia had been dangerous and doubtful, till he

stationed at Gallipoli a fleet of galleys, to command the Hellespont and intercept the Latin succors of

Constantinople. While the monarch indulged his passions in a boundless range of injustice and cruelty, he

imposed on his soldiers the most rigid laws of modesty and abstinence; and the harvest was peaceably reaped

and sold within the precincts of his camp. Provoked by the loose and corrupt administration of justice, he

collected in a house the judges and lawyers of his dominions, who expected that in a few moments the fire

would be kindled to reduce them to ashes. His ministers trembled in silence: but an Aethiopian buffoon

presumed to insinuate the true cause of the evil; and future venality was left without excuse, by annexing an

adequate salary to the office of cadhi. ^58 The humble title of emir was no longer suitable to the Ottoman

greatness; and Bajazet condescended to accept a patent of sultan from the caliphs who served in Egypt under

the yoke of the Mamalukes: ^59 a last and frivolous homage that was yielded by force to opinion; by the

Turkish conquerors to the house of Abbas and the successors of the Arabian prophet. The ambition of the

sultan was inflamed by the obligation of deserving this august title; and he turned his arms against the

kingdom of Hungary, the perpetual theatre of the Turkish victories and defeats. Sigismond, the Hungarian

king, was the son and brother of the emperors of the West: his cause was that of Europe and the church; and,

on the report of his danger, the bravest knights of France and Germany were eager to march under his

standard and that of the cross. In the battle of Nicopolis, Bajazet defeated a confederate army of a hundred

thousand Christians, who had proudly boasted, that if the sky should fall, they could uphold it on their lances.

The far greater part were slain or driven into the Danube; and Sigismond, escaping to Constantinople by the

river and the Black Sea, returned after a long circuit to his exhausted kingdom. ^60 In the pride of victory,

Bajazet threatened that he would besiege Buda; that he would subdue the adjacent countries of Germany and

Italy, and that he would feed his horse with a bushel of oats on the altar of St. Peter at Rome. His progress

was checked, not by the miraculous interposition of the apostle, not by a crusade of the Christian powers, but

by a long and painful fit of the gout. The disorders of the moral, are sometimes corrected by those of the

physical, world; and an acrimonious humor falling on a single fibre of one man, may prevent or suspend the

[Footnote 56: The reign of Bajazet I., or Ilderim Bayazid, is contained in Cantemir, (p. 46,) the iid book of

Chalcondyles, and the Annales Turcici. The surname of Ilderim, or lightning, is an example, that the

conquerors and poets of every age have felt the truth of a system which derives the sublime from the principle

[Footnote 57: Cantemir, who celebrates the victories of the great Stephen over the Turks, (p. 47,) had

composed the ancient and modern state of his principality of Moldavia, which has been long promised, and is

[Footnote 58: Leunclav. Annal. Turcici, p. 318, 319. The venality of the cadhis has long been an object of

scandal and satire; and if we distrust the observations of our travellers, we may consult the feeling of the

[Footnote 59: The fact, which is attested by the Arabic history of Ben Schounah, a contemporary Syrian, (De

Guignes Hist. des Huns. tom. iv. p. 336.) destroys the testimony of Saad Effendi and Cantemir, (p. 14, 15,) of

[Footnote 60: See the Decades Rerum Hungaricarum (Dec. iii. l. ii. p. 379) of Bonfinius, an Italian, who, in

the xvth century, was invited into Hungary to compose an eloquent history of that kingdom. Yet, if it be

extant and accessible, I should give the preference to some homely chronicle of the time and country.]

Such is the general idea of the Hungarian war; but the disastrous adventure of the French has procured us

some memorials which illustrate the victory and character of Bajazet. ^61 The duke of Burgundy, sovereign

of Flanders, and uncle of Charles the Sixth, yielded to the ardor of his son, John count of Nevers; and the

fearless youth was accompanied by four princes, his cousins, and those of the French monarch. Their

inexperience was guided by the Sire de Coucy, one of the best and oldest captain of Christendom; ^62 but the

constable, admiral, and marshal of France ^63 commanded an army which did not exceed the number of a

thousand knights and squires. ^* These splendid names were the source of presumption and the bane of

discipline. So many might aspire to command, that none were willing to obey; their national spirit despised

both their enemies and their allies; and in the persuasion that Bajazet would fly, or must fall, they began to

compute how soon they should visit Constantinople and deliver the holy sepulchre. When their scouts

announced the approach of the Turks, the gay and thoughtless youths were at table, already heated with wine;

they instantly clasped their armor, mounted their horses, rode full speed to the vanguard, and resented as an

affront the advice of Sigismond, which would have deprived them of the right and honor of the foremost

attack. The battle of Nicopolis would not have been lost, if the French would have obeyed the prudence of the

Hungarians; but it might have been gloriously won, had the Hungarians imitated the valor of the French.

They dispersed the first line, consisting of the troops of Asia; forced a rampart of stakes, which had been

planted against the cavalry; broke, after a bloody conflict, the Janizaries themselves; and were at length

overwhelmed by the numerous squadrons that issued from the woods, and charged on all sides this handful of

intrepid warriors. In the speed and secrecy of his march, in the order and evolutions of the battle, his enemies

felt and admired the military talents of Bajazet. They accuse his cruelty in the use of victory. After reserving

the count of Nevers, and fourandtwenty lords, ^* whose birth and riches were attested by his Latin

interpreters, the remainder of the French captives, who had survived the slaughter of the day, were led before

his throne; and, as they refused to abjure their faith, were successively beheaded in his presence. The sultan

was exasperated by the loss of his bravest Janizaries; and if it be true, that, on the eve of the engagement, the

French had massacred their Turkish prisoners, ^64 they might impute to themselves the consequences of a

just retaliation. ^! A knight, whose life had been spared, was permitted to return to Paris, that he might relate

the deplorable tale, and solicit the ransom of the noble captives. In the mean while, the count of Nevers, with

the princes and barons of France, were dragged along in the marches of the Turkish camp, exposed as a

grateful trophy to the Moslems of Europe and Asia, and strictly confined at Boursa, as often as Bajazet

resided in his capital. The sultan was pressed each day to expiate with their blood the blood of his martyrs;

but he had pronounced that they should live, and either for mercy or destruction his word was irrevocable. He

was assured of their value and importance by the return of the messenger, and the gifts and intercessions of

the kings of France and of Cyprus. Lusignan presented him with a gold saltcellar of curious workmanship,

and of the price of ten thousand ducats; and Charles the Sixth despatched by the way of Hungary a cast of

Norwegian hawks, and six horseloads of scarlet cloth, of fine linen of Rheims, and of Arras tapestry,

representing the battles of the great Alexander. After much delay, the effect of distance rather than of art,

Bajazet agreed to accept a ransom of two hundred thousand ducats for the count of Nevers and the surviving

princes and barons: the marshal Boucicault, a famous warrior, was of the number of the fortunate; but the

admiral of France had been slain in battle; and the constable, with the Sire de Coucy, died in the prison of

Boursa. This heavy demand, which was doubled by incidental costs, fell chiefly on the duke of Burgundy, or

rather on his Flemish subjects, who were bound by the feudal laws to contribute for the knighthood and

captivity of the eldest son of their lord. For the faithful discharge of the debt, some merchants of Genoa gave

security to the amount of five times the sum; a lesson to those warlike times, that commerce and credit are the

links of the society of nations. It had been stipulated in the treaty, that the French captives should swear never

to bear arms against the person of their conqueror; but the ungenerous restraint was abolished by Bajazet

himself. "I despise," said he to the heir of Burgundy, "thy oaths and thy arms. Thou art young, and mayest be

ambitious of effacing the disgrace or misfortune of thy first chivalry. Assemble thy powers, proclaim thy

design, and be assured that Bajazet will rejoice to meet thee a second time in a field of battle." Before their

departure, they were indulged in the freedom and hospitality of the court of Boursa. The French princes

admired the magnificence of the Ottoman, whose hunting and hawking equipage was composed of seven

thousand huntsmen and seven thousand falconers. ^65 In their presence, and at his command, the belly of one

of his chamberlains was cut open, on a complaint against him for drinking the goat's milk of a poor woman.

The strangers were astonished by this act of justice; but it was the justice of a sultan who disdains to balance

[Footnote 61: I should not complain of the labor of this work, if my materials were always derived from such

books as the chronicle of honest Froissard, (vol. iv. c. 67, 72, 74, 7983, 85, 87, 89,) who read little, inquired

much, and believed all. The original Memoires of the Marechal de Boucicault (Partie i. c. 2228) add some

facts, but they are dry and deficient, if compared with the pleasant garrulity of Froissard.]

[Footnote 62: An accurate Memoir on the Life of Enguerrand VII., Sire de Coucy, has been given by the

Baron de Zurlauben, (Hist. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxv.) His rank and possessions were equally

considerable in France and England; and, in 1375, he led an army of adventurers into Switzerland, to recover

a large patrimony which he claimed in right of his grandmother, the daughter of the emperor Albert I. of

[Footnote 63: That military office, so respectable at present, was still more conspicuous when it was divided

between two persons, (Daniel, Hist. de la Milice Francoise, tom. ii. p. 5.) One of these, the marshal of the

crusade, was the famous Boucicault, who afterwards defended Constantinople, governed Genoa, invaded the

[Footnote *: Daru, Hist. de Venice, vol. ii. p. 104, makes the whole French army amount to 10,000 men, of

whom 1000 were knights. The curious volume of Schiltberger, a German of Munich, who was taken prisoner

in the battle, (edit. Munich, 1813,) and which V. Hammer receives as authentic, gives the whole number at

[Footnote *: According to Shiltberger there were only twelve French lords granted to the prayer of the "duke

of Burgundy," and "Herr Stephan Synther, and Johann von Bodem." Schiltberger, p. 13. M.]

[Footnote 64: For this odious fact, the Abbe de Vertot quotes the Hist. Anonyme de St. Denys, l. xvi. c. 10,

[Footnote !: See Schiltberger's very graphic account of the massacre. He was led out to be slaughtered in cold

blood with the rest f the Christian prisoners, amounting to 10,000. He was spared at the intercession of the

son of Bajazet, with a few others, on account of their extreme youth. No one under 20 years of age was put to

death. The "duke of Burgundy" was obliged to be a spectator of this butchery which lasted from early in the

morning till four o'clock, P. M. It ceased only at the supplication of the leaders of Bajazet's army.

[Footnote 65: Sherefeddin Ali (Hist. de Timour Bec, l. v. c. 13) allows Bajazet a round number of 12,000

officers and servants of the chase. A part of his spoils was afterwards displayed in a huntingmatch of

Timour, l. hounds with satin housings; 2. leopards with collars set with jewels; 3. Grecian greyhounds; and 4,

dogs from Europe, as strong as African lions, (idem, l. vi. c. 15.) Bajazet was particularly fond of flying his

After his enfranchisement from an oppressive guardian, John Palaeologus remained thirtysix years, the

helpless, and, as it should seem, the careless spectator of the public ruin. ^66 Love, or rather lust, was his

only vigorous passion; and in the embraces of the wives and virgins of the city, the Turkish slave forgot the

dishonor of the emperor of the Romans Andronicus, his eldest son, had formed, at Adrianople, an intimate

and guilty friendship with Sauzes, the son of Amurath; and the two youths conspired against the authority and

lives of their parents. The presence of Amurath in Europe soon discovered and dissipated their rash counsels;

and, after depriving Sauzes of his sight, the Ottoman threatened his vassal with the treatment of an

accomplice and an enemy, unless he inflicted a similar punishment on his own son. Palaeologus trembled and

obeyed; and a cruel precaution involved in the same sentence the childhood and innocence of John, the son of

the criminal. But the operation was so mildly, or so unskilfully, performed, that the one retained the sight of

an eye, and the other was afflicted only with the infirmity of squinting. Thus excluded from the succession,

the two princes were confined in the tower of Anema; and the piety of Manuel, the second son of the reigning

monarch, was rewarded with the gift of the Imperial crown. But at the end of two years, the turbulence of the

Latins and the levity of the Greeks, produced a revolution; ^* and the two emperors were buried in the tower

from whence the two prisoners were exalted to the throne. Another period of two years afforded Palaeologus

and Manuel the means of escape: it was contrived by the magic or subtlety of a monk, who was alternately

named the angel or the devil: they fled to Scutari; their adherents armed in their cause; and the two Byzantine

factions displayed the ambition and animosity with which Caesar and Pompey had disputed the empire of the

world. The Roman world was now contracted to a corner of Thrace, between the Propontis and the Black Sea,

about fifty miles in length and thirty in breadth; a space of ground not more extensive than the lesser

principalities of Germany or Italy, if the remains of Constantinople had not still represented the wealth and

populousness of a kingdom. To restore the public peace, it was found necessary to divide this fragment of the

empire; and while Palaeologus and Manuel were left in possession of the capital, almost all that lay without

the walls was ceded to the blind princes, who fixed their residence at Rhodosto and Selybria. In the tranquil

slumber of royalty, the passions of John Palaeologus survived his reason and his strength: he deprived his

favorite and heir of a blooming princess of Trebizond; and while the feeble emperor labored to consummate

his nuptials, Manuel, with a hundred of the noblest Greeks, was sent on a peremptory summons to the

Ottoman porte. They served with honor in the wars of Bajazet; but a plan of fortifying Constantinople excited

his jealousy: he threatened their lives; the new works were instantly demolished; and we shall bestow a

praise, perhaps above the merit of Palaeologus, if we impute this last humiliation as the cause of his death.

[Footnote 66: For the reigns of John Palaeologus and his son Manuel, from 1354 to 1402, see Ducas, c. 9

15, Phranza, l. i. c. 16 21, and the ist and iid books of Chalcondyles, whose proper subject is drowned in a

[Footnote *: According to Von Hammer it was the power of Bajazet, vol. i. p. 218.]

The earliest intelligence of that event was communicated to Manuel, who escaped with speed and secrecy

from the palace of Boursa to the Byzantine throne. Bajazet affected a proud indifference at the loss of this

valuable pledge; and while he pursued his conquests in Europe and Asia, he left the emperor to struggle with

his blind cousin John of Selybria, who, in eight years of civil war, asserted his right of primogeniture. At

length, the ambition of the victorious sultan pointed to the conquest of Constantinople; but he listened to the

advice of his vizier, who represented that such an enterprise might unite the powers of Christendom in a

second and more formidable crusade. His epistle to the emperor was conceived in these words: "By the divine

clemency, our invincible cimeter has reduced to our obedience almost all Asia, with many and large countries

in Europe, excepting only the city of Constantinople; for beyond the walls thou hast nothing left. Resign that

city; stipulate thy reward; or tremble, for thyself and thy unhappy people, at the consequences of a rash

refusal." But his ambassadors were instructed to soften their tone, and to propose a treaty, which was

subscribed with submission and gratitude. A truce of ten years was purchased by an annual tribute of thirty

thousand crowns of gold; the Greeks deplored the public toleration of the law of Mahomet, and Bajazet

enjoyed the glory of establishing a Turkish cadhi, and founding a royal mosque in the metropolis of the

Eastern church. ^67 Yet this truce was soon violated by the restless sultan: in the cause of the prince of

Selybria, the lawful emperor, an army of Ottomans again threatened Constantinople; and the distress of

Manuel implored the protection of the king of France. His plaintive embassy obtained much pity and some

relief; and the conduct of the succor was intrusted to the marshal Boucicault, ^68 whose religious chivalry

was inflamed by the desire of revenging his captivity on the infidels. He sailed with four ships of war, from

Aiguesmortes to the Hellespont; forced the passage, which was guarded by seventeen Turkish galleys; landed

at Constantinople a supply of six hundred menatarms and sixteen hundred archers; and reviewed them in

the adjacent plain, without condescending to number or array the multitude of Greeks. By his presence, the

blockade was raised both by sea and land; the flying squadrons of Bajazet were driven to a more respectful

distance; and several castles in Europe and Asia were stormed by the emperor and the marshal, who fought

with equal valor by each other's side. But the Ottomans soon returned with an increase of numbers; and the

intrepid Boucicault, after a year's struggle, resolved to evacuate a country which could no longer afford either

pay or provisions for his soldiers. The marshal offered to conduct Manuel to the French court, where he

might solicit in person a supply of men and money; and advised, in the mean while, that, to extinguish all

domestic discord, he should leave his blind competitor on the throne. The proposal was embraced: the prince

of Selybria was introduced to the capital; and such was the public misery, that the lot of the exile seemed

more fortunate than that of the sovereign. Instead of applauding the success of his vassal, the Turkish sultan

claimed the city as his own; and on the refusal of the emperor John, Constantinople was more closely pressed

by the calamities of war and famine. Against such an enemy prayers and resistance were alike unavailing;

and the savage would have devoured his prey, if, in the fatal moment, he had not been overthrown by another

savage stronger than himself. By the victory of Timour or Tamerlane, the fall of Constantinople was delayed

about fifty years; and this important, though accidental, service may justly introduce the life and character of

[Footnote 67: Cantemir, p. 50 53. Of the Greeks, Ducas alone (c. 13, 15) acknowledges the Turkish cadhi at

[Footnote 68: Memoires du bon Messire Jean le Maingre, dit Boucicault, Marechal de France, partie c. 30,

Elevation Of Timour Or Tamerlane To The Throne Of Samarcand. His Conquests In Persia, Georgia,

Tartary Russia, India, Syria, And Anatolia. His Turkish War. Defeat And Captivity Of Bajazet. Death

Of Timour. Civil War Of The Sons Of Bajazet. Restoration Of The Turkish Monarchy By Mahomet The

The conquest and monarchy of the world was the first object of the ambition of Timour. To live in the

memory and esteem of future ages was the second wish of his magnanimous spirit. All the civil and military

transactions of his reign were diligently recorded in the journals of his secretaries: ^1 the authentic narrative

was revised by the persons best informed of each particular transaction; and it is believed in the empire and

family of Timour, that the monarch himself composed the commentaries ^2 of his life, and the institutions ^3

of his government. ^4 But these cares were ineffectual for the preservation of his fame, and these precious

memorials in the Mogul or Persian language were concealed from the world, or, at least, from the knowledge

of Europe. The nations which he vanquished exercised a base and impotent revenge; and ignorance has long

repeated the tale of calumny, ^5 which had disfigured the birth and character, the person, and even the name,

of Tamerlane. ^6 Yet his real merit would be enhanced, rather than debased, by the elevation of a peasant to

the throne of Asia; nor can his lameness be a theme of reproach, unless he had the weakness to blush at a

[Footnote 1: These journals were communicated to Sherefeddin, or Cherefeddin Ali, a native of Yezd, who

composed in the Persian language a history of Timour Beg, which has been translated into French by M. Petit

de la Croix, (Paris, 1722, in 4 vols. 12 mo.,) and has always been my faithful guide. His geography and

chronology are wonderfully accurate; and he may be trusted for public facts, though he servilely praises the

virtue and fortune of the hero. Timour's attention to procure intelligence from his own and foreign countries

[Footnote 2: These Commentaries are yet unknown in Europe: but Mr. White gives some hope that they may

be imported and translated by his friend Major Davy, who had read in the East this "minute and faithful

Note: The manuscript of Major Davy has been translated by Major Stewart, and published by the Oriental

Translation Committee of London. It contains the life of Timour, from his birth to his fortyfirst year; but the

last thirty years of western war and conquest are wanting. Major Stewart intimates that two manuscripts exist

in this country containing the whole work, but excuses himself, on account of his age, from undertaking the

laborious task of completing the translation. It is to be hoped that the European public will be soon enabled to

judge of the value and authenticity of the Commentaries of the Caesar of the East. Major Stewart's work

commences with the Book of Dreams and Omens a wild, but characteristic, chronicle of Visions and Sortes

Koranicae. Strange that a life of Timour should awaken a reminiscence of the diary of Archbishop Laud! The

early dawn and the gradual expression of his not less splendid but more real visions of ambition are touched

with the simplicity of truth and nature. But we long to escape from the petty feuds of the pastoral chieftain, to

[Footnote 3: I am ignorant whether the original institution, in the Turki or Mogul language, be still extant.

The Persic version, with an English translation, and most valuable index, was published (Oxford, 1783, in

4to.) by the joint labors of Major Davy and Mr. White, the Arabic professor. This work has been since

translated from the Persic into French, (Paris, 1787,) by M. Langles, a learned Orientalist, who has added the

[Footnote 4: Shaw Allum, the present Mogul, reads, values, but cannot imitate, the institutions of his great

ancestor. The English translator relies on their internal evidence; but if any suspicions should arise of fraud

and fiction, they will not be dispelled by Major Davy's letter. The Orientals have never cultivated the art of

criticism; the patronage of a prince, less honorable, perhaps, is not less lucrative than that of a bookseller; nor

can it be deemed incredible that a Persian, the real author, should renounce the credit, to raise the value and

[Footnote 5: The original of the tale is found in the following work, which is much esteemed for its florid

elegance of style: Ahmedis Arabsiadae (Ahmed Ebn Arabshah) Vitae et Rerum gestarum Timuri. Arabice et

Latine. Edidit Samuel Henricus Manger. Franequerae, 1767, 2 tom. in 4to. This Syrian author is ever a

malicious, and often an ignorant enemy: the very titles of his chapters are injurious; as how the wicked, as

how the impious, as how the viper, The copious article of Timur, in Bibliotheque Orientale, is of a mixed

nature, as D'Herbelot indifferently draws his materials (p. 877 888) from Khondemir Ebn Schounah, and

[Footnote 6: Demir or Timour signifies in the Turkish language, Iron; and it is the appellation of a lord or

prince. By the change of a letter or accent, it is changed into Lenc, or Lame; and a European corruption

Note: According to the memoirs he was so called by a Shaikh, who, when visited by his mother on his birth,

was reading the verse of the Koran, 'Are you sure that he who dwelleth in heaven will not cause the earth to

swallow you up, and behold it shall shake, Tamurn." The Shaikh then stopped and said, "We have named

[Footnote *: He was lamed by a wound at the siege of the capital of Sistan. Sherefeddin, lib. iii. c. 17. p. 136.

In the eyes of the Moguls, who held the indefeasible succession of the house of Zingis, he was doubtless a

rebel subject; yet he sprang from the noble tribe of Berlass: his fifth ancestor, Carashar Nevian, had been the

vizier ^! of Zagatai, in his new realm of Transoxiana; and in the ascent of some generations, the branch of

Timour is confounded, at least by the females, ^7 with the Imperial stem. ^8 He was born forty miles to the

south of Samarcand in the village of Sebzar, in the fruitful territory of Cash, of which his fathers were the

hereditary chiefs, as well as of a toman of ten thousand horse. ^9 His birth ^10 was cast on one of those

periods of anarchy, which announce the fall of the Asiatic dynasties, and open a new field to adventurous

ambition. The khans of Zagatai were extinct; the emirs aspired to independence; and their domestic feuds

could only be suspended by the conquest and tyranny of the khans of Kashgar, who, with an army of Getes or

Calmucks, ^11 invaded the Transoxian kingdom. From the twelfth year of his age, Timour had entered the

field of action; in the twentyfifth ^!! he stood forth as the deliverer of his country; and the eyes and wishes

of the people were turned towards a hero who suffered in their cause. The chiefs of the law and of the army

had pledged their salvation to support him with their lives and fortunes; but in the hour of danger they were

silent and afraid; and, after waiting seven days on the hills of Samarcand, he retreated to the desert with only

sixty horsemen. The fugitives were overtaken by a thousand Getes, whom he repulsed with incredible

slaughter, and his enemies were forced to exclaim, "Timour is a wonderful man: fortune and the divine favor

are with him." But in this bloody action his own followers were reduced to ten, a number which was soon

diminished by the desertion of three Carizmians. ^!!! He wandered in the desert with his wife, seven

companions, and four horses; and sixtytwo days was he plunged in a loathsome dungeon, from whence he

escaped by his own courage and the remorse of the oppressor. After swimming the broad and rapid steam of

the Jihoon, or Oxus, he led, during some months, the life of a vagrant and outlaw, on the borders of the

adjacent states. But his fame shone brighter in adversity; he learned to distinguish the friends of his person,

the associates of his fortune, and to apply the various characters of men for their advantage, and, above all,

for his own. On his return to his native country, Timour was successively joined by the parties of his

confederates, who anxiously sought him in the desert; nor can I refuse to describe, in his pathetic simplicity,

one of their fortunate encounters. He presented himself as a guide to three chiefs, who were at the head of

seventy horse. "When their eyes fell upon me," says Timour, "they were overwhelmed with joy; and they

alighted from their horses; and they came and kneeled; and they kissed my stirrup. I also came down from my

horse, and took each of them in my arms. And I put my turban on the head of the first chief; and my girdle,

rich in jewels and wrought with gold, I bound on the loins of the second; and the third I clothed in my own

coat. And they wept, and I wept also; and the hour of prayer was arrived, and we prayed. And we mounted

our horses, and came to my dwelling; and I collected my people, and made a feast." His trusty bands were

soon increased by the bravest of the tribes; he led them against a superior foe; and, after some vicissitudes of

war the Getes were finally driven from the kingdom of Transoxiana. He had done much for his own glory;

but much remained to be done, much art to be exerted, and some blood to be spilt, before he could teach his

equals to obey him as their master. The birth and power of emir Houssein compelled him to accept a vicious

and unworthy colleague, whose sister was the best beloved of his wives. Their union was short and jealous;

but the policy of Timour, in their frequent quarrels, exposed his rival to the reproach of injustice and perfidy;

and, after a final defeat, Houssein was slain by some sagacious friends, who presumed, for the last time, to

disobey the commands of their lord. ^* At the age of thirtyfour, ^12 and in a general diet or couroultai, he

was invested with Imperial command, but he affected to revere the house of Zingis; and while the emir

Timour reigned over Zagatai and the East, a nominal khan served as a private officer in the armies of his

servant. A fertile kingdom, five hundred miles in length and in breadth, might have satisfied the ambition of a

subject; but Timour aspired to the dominion of the world; and before his death, the crown of Zagatai was one

of the twenty seven crowns which he had placed on his head. Without expatiating on the victories of

thirtyfive campaigns; without describing the lines of march, which he repeatedly traced over the continent

of Asia; I shall briefly represent his conquests in, I. Persia, II. Tartary, and, III. India, ^13 and from thence

[Footnote !: In the memoirs, the title Gurgan is in one place (p. 23) interpreted the soninlaw; in another (p.

[Footnote 7: After relating some false and foolish tales of Timour Lenc, Arabshah is compelled to speak

truth, and to own him for a kinsman of Zingis, per mulieres, (as he peevishly adds,) laqueos Satanae, (pars i.

c. i. p. 25.) The testimony of Abulghazi Khan (P. ii. c. 5, P. v. c. 4) is clear, unquestionable, and decisive.]

[Footnote 8: According to one of the pedigrees, the fourth ancestor of Zingis, and the ninth of timour, were

brothers; and they agreed, that the posterity of the elder should succeed to the dignity of khan, and that the

descendants of the younger should fill the office of their minister and general. This tradition was at least

convenient to justify the first steps of Timour's ambition, (Institutions, p. 24, 25, from the MS. fragments of

[Footnote 9: See the preface of Sherefeddin, and Abulfeda's Geography, (Chorasmiae, Descriptio, p. 60, 61,)

[Footnote 10: See his nativity in Dr. Hyde, (Syntagma Dissertat. tom. ii. p. 466,) as it was cast by the

astrologers of his grandson Ulugh Beg. He was born, A.D. 1336, April 9, 11 degrees 57 minutes. P. M., lat.

36. I know not whether they can prove the great conjunction of the planets from whence, like other

conquerors and prophets, Timour derived the surname of Saheb Keran, or master of the conjunctions,

[Footnote 11: In the Institutions of Timour, these subjects of the khan of Kashgar are most improperly styled

Ouzbegs, or Usbeks, a name which belongs to another branch and country of Tartars, (Abulghazi, P. v. c. v.

P. vii. c. 5.) Could I be sure that this word is in the Turkish original, I would boldly pronounce, that the

Institutions were framed a century after the death of Timour, since the establishment of the Usbeks in

Note: Col. Stewart observes, that the Persian translator has sometimes made use of the name Uzbek by

anticipation. He observes, likewise, that these Jits (Getes) are not to be confounded with the ancient Getae:

they were unconverted Turks. Col. Tod (History of Rajasthan, vol. i. p. 166) would identify the Jits with the

[Footnote !!: He was twentyseven before he served his first wars under the emir Houssein, who ruled over

Khorasan and Mawerainnehr. Von Hammer, vol. i. p. 262. Neither of these statements agrees with the

Memoirs. At twelve he was a boy. "I fancied that I perceived in myself all the signs of greatness and wisdom,

and whoever came to visit me, I received with great hauteur and dignity." At seventeen he undertook the

management of the flocks and herds of the family, (p. 24.) At nineteen he became religious, and "left off

playing chess," made a kind of Budhist vow never to injure living thing and felt his foot paralyzed from

having accidentally trod upon an ant, (p. 30.) At twenty, thoughts of rebellion and greatness rose in his mind;

at twentyone, he seems to have performed his first feat of arms. He was a practised warrior when he served,

[Footnote !!!: Compare Memoirs, page 61. The imprisonment is there stated at fiftythree days. "At this time

I made a vow to God that I would never keep any person, whether guilty or innocent, for any length of time,

[Footnote *: Timour, on one occasion, sent him this message: "He who wishes to embrace the bride of royalty

must kiss her across the edge of the sharp sword," p. 83. The scene of the trial of Houssein, the resistance of

Timour gradually becoming more feeble, the vengeance of the chiefs becoming proportionably more

[Footnote 12: The ist book of Sherefeddin is employed on the private life of the hero: and he himself, or his

secretary, (Institutions, p. 3 77,) enlarges with pleasure on the thirteen designs and enterprises which most

truly constitute his personal merit. It even shines through the dark coloring of Arabshah, (P. i. c. 1 12.)]

[Footnote 13: The conquests of Persia, Tartary, and India, are represented in the iid and iiid books of

Sherefeddin, and by Arabshah, (c. 13 55.) Consult the excellent Indexes to the Institutions.

Note: Compare the seventh book of Von Hammer, Geschichte des Osman ischen Reiches. M.]

I. For every war, a motive of safety or revenge, of honor or zeal, of right or convenience, may be readily

found in the jurisprudence of conquerors. No sooner had Timour reunited to the patrimony of Zagatai the

dependent countries of Carizme and Candahar, than he turned his eyes towards the kingdoms of Iran or

Persia. From the Oxus to the Tigris, that extensive country was left without a lawful sovereign since the death

of Abousaid, the last of the descendants of the great Holacou. Peace and justice had been banished from the

land above forty years; and the Mogul invader might seem to listen to the cries of an oppressed people. Their

petty tyrants might have opposed him with confederate arms: they separately stood, and successively fell; and

the difference of their fate was only marked by the promptitude of submission or the obstinacy of resistance.

Ibrahim, prince of Shirwan, or Albania, kissed the footstool of the Imperial throne. His peaceofferings of

silks, horses, and jewels, were composed, according to the Tartar fashion, each article of nine pieces; but a

critical spectator observed, that there were only eight slaves. "I myself am the ninth," replied Ibrahim, who

was prepared for the remark; and his flattery was rewarded by the smile of Timour. ^14 Shah Mansour,

prince of Fars, or the proper Persia, was one of the least powerful, but most dangerous, of his enemies. In a

battle under the walls of Shiraz, he broke, with three or four thousand soldiers, the coul or main body of thirty

thousand horse, where the emperor fought in person. No more than fourteen or fifteen guards remained near

the standard of Timour: he stood firm as a rock, and received on his helmet two weighty strokes of a cimeter:

^15 the Moguls rallied; the head of Mansour was thrown at his feet; and he declared his esteem of the valor

of a foe, by extirpating all the males of so intrepid a race. From Shiraz, his troops advanced to the Persian

Gulf; and the richness and weakness of Ormuz ^16 were displayed in an annual tribute of six hundred

thousand dinars of gold. Bagdad was no longer the city of peace, the seat of the caliphs; but the noblest

conquest of Holacou could not be overlooked by his ambitious successor. The whole course of the Tigris and

Euphrates, from the mouth to the sources of those rivers, was reduced to his obedience: he entered Edessa;

and the Turkmans of the black sheep were chastised for the sacrilegious pillage of a caravan of Mecca. In the

mountains of Georgia, the native Christians still braved the law and the sword of Mahomet, by three

expeditions he obtained the merit of the gazie, or holy war; and the prince of Teflis became his proselyte and

friend. [Footnote 14: The reverence of the Tartars for the mysterious number of nine is declared by Abulghazi

[Footnote 15: According to Arabshah, (P. i. c. 28, p. 183,) the coward Timour ran away to his tent, and hid

himself from the pursuit of Shah Mansour under the women's garments. Perhaps Sherefeddin (l. iii. c. 25) has

[Footnote 16: The history of Ormuz is not unlike that of Tyre. The old city, on the continent, was destroyed

by the Tartars, and renewed in a neighboring island, without fresh water or vegetation. The kings of Ormuz,

rich in the Indian trade and the pearl fishery, possessed large territories both in Persia and Arabia; but they

were at first the tributaries of the sultans of Kerman, and at last were delivered (A.D. 1505) by the Portuguese

tyrants from the tyranny of their own viziers, (Marco Polo, l. i. c. 15, 16, fol. 7, 8. Abulfeda, Geograph. tabul.

xi. p. 261, 262, an original Chronicle of Ormuz, in Texeira, or Stevens's History of Persia, p. 376 416, and

the Itineraries inserted in the ist volume of Ramusio, of Ludovico Barthema, (1503,) fol. 167, of Andrea

Corsali, (1517) fol. 202, 203, and of Odoardo Barbessa, (in 1516,) fol 313 318.)]

II. A just retaliation might be urged for the invasion of Turkestan, or the Eastern Tartary. The dignity of

Timour could not endure the impunity of the Getes: he passed the Sihoon, subdued the kingdom of Kashgar,

and marched seven times into the heart of their country. His most distant camp was two months' journey, or

four hundred and eighty leagues to the northeast of Samarcand; and his emirs, who traversed the River

Irtish, engraved in the forests of Siberia a rude memorial of their exploits. The conquest of Kipzak, or the

Western Tartary, ^17 was founded on the double motive of aiding the distressed, and chastising the

ungrateful. Toctamish, a fugitive prince, was entertained and protected in his court: the ambassadors of

Auruss Khan were dismissed with a haughty denial, and followed on the same day by the armies of Zagatai;

and their success established Toctamish in the Mogul empire of the North. But, after a reign of ten years, the

new khan forgot the merits and the strength of his benefactor; the base usurper, as he deemed him, of the

sacred rights of the house of Zingis. Through the gates of Derbend, he entered Persia at the head of ninety

thousand horse: with the innumerable forces of Kipzak, Bulgaria, Circassia, and Russia, he passed the

Sihoon, burnt the palaces of Timour, and compelled him, amidst the winter snows, to contend for Samarcand

and his life. After a mild expostulation, and a glorious victory, the emperor resolved on revenge; and by the

east, and the west, of the Caspian, and the Volga, he twice invaded Kipzak with such mighty powers, that

thirteen miles were measured from his right to his left wing. In a march of five months, they rarely beheld the

footsteps of man; and their daily subsistence was often trusted to the fortune of the chase. At length the

armies encountered each other; but the treachery of the standardbearer, who, in the heat of action, reversed

the Imperial standard of Kipzak, determined the victory of the Zagatais; and Toctamish (I peak the language

of the Institutions) gave the tribe of Toushi to the wind of desolation. ^18 He fled to the Christian duke of

Lithuania; again returned to the banks of the Volga; and, after fifteen battles with a domestic rival, at last

perished in the wilds of Siberia. The pursuit of a flying enemy carried Timour into the tributary provinces of

Russia: a duke of the reigning family was made prisoner amidst the ruins of his capital; and Yeletz, by the

pride and ignorance of the Orientals, might easily be confounded with the genuine metropolis of the nation.

Moscow trembled at the approach of the Tartar, and the resistance would have been feeble, since the hopes of

the Russians were placed in a miraculous image of the Virgin, to whose protection they ascribed the casual

and voluntary retreat of the conqueror. Ambition and prudence recalled him to the South, the desolate country

was exhausted, and the Mogul soldiers were enriched with an immense spoil of precious furs, of linen of

Antioch, ^19 and of ingots of gold and silver. ^20 On the banks of the Don, or Tanais, he received an humble

deputation from the consuls and merchants of Egypt, ^21 Venice, Genoa, Catalonia, and Biscay, who

occupied the commerce and city of Tana, or Azoph, at the mouth of the river. They offered their gifts,

admired his magnificence, and trusted his royal word. But the peaceful visit of an emir, who explored the

state of the magazines and harbor, was speedily followed by the destructive presence of the Tartars. The city

was reduced to ashes; the Moslems were pillaged and dismissed; but all the Christians, who had not fled to

their ships, were condemned either to death or slavery. ^22 Revenge prompted him to burn the cities of Serai

and Astrachan, the monuments of rising civilization; and his vanity proclaimed, that he had penetrated to the

region of perpetual daylight, a strange phenomenon, which authorized his Mahometan doctors to dispense

with the obligation of evening prayer. ^23 [Footnote 17: Arabshah had travelled into Kipzak, and acquired a

singular knowledge of the geography, cities, and revolutions, of that northern region, (P. i. c. 45 49.)]

[Footnote 18: Institutions of Timour, p. 123, 125. Mr. White, the editor, bestows some animadversion on the

superficial account of Sherefeddin, (l. iii. c. 12, 13, 14,) who was ignorant of the designs of Timour, and the

[Footnote 19: The furs of Russia are more credible than the ingots. But the linen of Antioch has never been

famous: and Antioch was in ruins. I suspect that it was some manufacture of Europe, which the Hanse

[Footnote 20: M. Levesque (Hist. de Russie, tom. ii. p. 247. Vie de Timour, p. 64 67, before the French

version of the Institutes) has corrected the error of Sherefeddin, and marked the true limit of Timour's

conquests. His arguments are superfluous; and a simple appeal to the Russian annals is sufficient to prove

that Moscow, which six years before had been taken by Toctamish, escaped the arms of a more formidable

[Footnote 21: An Egyptian consul from Grand Cairo is mentioned in Barbaro's voyage to Tana in 1436, after

[Footnote 22: The sack of Azoph is described by Sherefeddin, (l. iii. c. 55,) and much more particularly by

the author of an Italian chronicle, (Andreas de Redusiis de Quero, in Chron. Tarvisiano, in Muratori, Script.

Rerum Italicarum, tom. xix. p. 802 805.) He had conversed with the Mianis, two Venetian brothers, one of

whom had been sent a deputy to the camp of Timour, and the other had lost at Azoph three sons and 12,000

[Footnote 23: Sherefeddin only says (l. iii. c. 13) that the rays of the setting, and those of the rising sun, were

scarcely separated by any interval; a problem which may be solved in the latitude of Moscow, (the 56th

degree,) with the aid of the Aurora Borealis, and a long summer twilight. But a day of forty days (Khondemir

III. When Timour first proposed to his princes and emirs the invasion of India or Hindostan, ^24 he was

answered by a murmur of discontent: "The rivers! and the mountains and deserts! and the soldiers clad in

armor! and the elephants, destroyers of men!" But the displeasure of the emperor was more dreadful than all

these terrors; and his superior reason was convinced, that an enterprise of such tremendous aspect was safe

and easy in the execution. He was informed by his spies of the weakness and anarchy of Hindostan: the

soubahs of the provinces had erected the standard of rebellion; and the perpetual infancy of Sultan Mahmoud

was despised even in the harem of Delhi. The Mogul army moved in three great divisions; and Timour

observes with pleasure, that the ninetytwo squadrons of a thousand horse most fortunately corresponded

with the ninetytwo names or epithets of the prophet Mahomet. ^* Between the Jihoon and the Indus they

crossed one of the ridges of mountains, which are styled by the Arabian geographers The Stony Girdles of the

Earth. The highland robbers were subdued or extirpated; but great numbers of men and horses perished in the

snow; the emperor himself was let down a precipice on a portable scaffold the ropes were one hundred and

fifty cubits in length; and before he could reach the bottom, this dangerous operation was five times repeated.

Timour crossed the Indus at the ordinary passage of Attok; and successively traversed, in the footsteps of

Alexander, the Punjab, or five rivers, ^25 that fall into the master stream. From Attok to Delhi, the high road

measures no more than six hundred miles; but the two conquerors deviated to the southeast; and the motive

of Timour was to join his grandson, who had achieved by his command the conquest of Moultan. On the

eastern bank of the Hyphasis, on the edge of the desert, the Macedonian hero halted and wept: the Mogul

entered the desert, reduced the fortress of Batmir, and stood in arms before the gates of Delhi, a great and

flourishing city, which had subsisted three centuries under the dominion of the Mahometan kings. ^! The

siege, more especially of the castle, might have been a work of time; but he tempted, by the appearance of

weakness, the sultan Mahmoud and his vizier to descend into the plain, with ten thousand cuirassiers, forty

thousand of his footguards, and one hundred and twenty elephants, whose tusks are said to have been armed

with sharp and poisoned daggers. Against these monsters, or rather against the imagination of his troops, he

condescended to use some extraordinary precautions of fire and a ditch, of iron spikes and a rampart of

bucklers; but the event taught the Moguls to smile at their own fears; and as soon as these unwieldy animals

were routed, the inferior species (the men of India) disappeared from the field. Timour made his triumphal

entry into the capital of Hindostan; and admired, with a view to imitate, the architecture of the stately

mosque; but the order or license of a general pillage and massacre polluted the festival of his victory. He

resolved to purify his soldiers in the blood of the idolaters, or Gentoos, who still surpass, in the proportion of

ten to one, the numbers of the Moslems. ^* In this pious design, he advanced one hundred miles to the

northeast of Delhi, passed the Ganges, fought several battles by land and water, and penetrated to the

famous rock of Coupele, the statue of the cow, ^!! that seems to discharge the mighty river, whose source is

far distant among the mountains of Thibet. ^26 His return was along the skirts of the northern hills; nor could

this rapid campaign of one year justify the strange foresight of his emirs, that their children in a warm climate

[Footnote 24: For the Indian war, see the Institutions, (p. 129 139,) the fourth book of Sherefeddin, and the

history of Ferishta, (in Dow, vol. ii. p. 1 20,) which throws a general light on the affairs of Hindostan.]

[Footnote *: Gibbon (observes M. von Hammer) is mistaken in the correspondence of the ninetytwo

squadrons of his army with the ninetytwo names of God: the names of God are ninetynine. and Allah is the

hundredth, p. 286, note. But Gibbon speaks of the names or epithets of Mahomet, not of God. M]

[Footnote 25: The rivers of the Punjab, the five eastern branches of the Indus, have been laid down for the

first time with truth and accuracy in Major Rennel's incomparable map of Hindostan. In this Critical Memoir

[Footnote !: They took, on their march, 100,000 slaves, Guebers they were all murdered. V. Hammer, vol. i.

[Footnote *: See a curious passage on the destruction of the Hindoo idols, Memoirs, p. 15. M.]

[Footnote !!: Consult the very striking description of the Cow's Mouth by Captain Hodgson, Asiat. Res. vol.

xiv. p. 117. "A most wonderful scene. The B'hagiratha or Ganges issues from under a very low arch at the

foot of the grand snow bed. My guide, an illiterate mountaineer compared the pendent icicles to Mahodeva's

hair." (Compare Poems, Quarterly Rev. vol. xiv. p. 37, and at the end of my translation of Nala.) "Hindoos of

research may formerly have been here; and f so. I cannot think of any place to which they might more aptly

[Footnote 26: The two great rivers, the Ganges and Burrampooter, rise in Thibet, from the opposite ridges of

the same hills, separate from each other to the distance of 1200 miles, and, after a winding course of 2000

miles, again meet in one point near the Gulf of Bengal. Yet so capricious is Fame, that the Burrampooter is a

late discovery, while his brother Ganges has been the theme of ancient and modern story Coupele, the scene

of Timour's last victory, must be situate near Loldong, 1100 miles from Calcutta; and in 1774, a British

It was on the banks of the Ganges that Timour was informed, by his speedy messengers, of the disturbances

which had arisen on the confines of Georgia and Anatolia, of the revolt of the Christians, and the ambitious

designs of the sultan Bajazet. His vigor of mind and body was not impaired by sixtythree years, and

innumerable fatigues; and, after enjoying some tranquil months in the palace of Samarcand, he proclaimed a

new expedition of seven years into the western countries of Asia. ^27 To the soldiers who had served in the

Indian war he granted the choice of remaining at home, or following their prince; but the troops of all the

provinces and kingdoms of Persia were commanded to assemble at Ispahan, and wait the arrival of the

Imperial standard. It was first directed against the Christians of Georgia, who were strong only in their rocks,

their castles, and the winter season; but these obstacles were overcome by the zeal and perseverance of

Timour: the rebels submitted to the tribute or the Koran; and if both religions boasted of their martyrs, that

name is more justly due to the Christian prisoners, who were offered the choice of abjuration or death. On his

descent from the hills, the emperor gave audience to the first ambassadors of Bajazet, and opened the hostile

correspondence of complaints and menaces, which fermented two years before the final explosion. Between

two jealous and haughty neighbors, the motives of quarrel will seldom be wanting. The Mogul and Ottoman

conquests now touched each other in the neighborhood of Erzerum, and the Euphrates; nor had the doubtful

limit been ascertained by time and treaty. Each of these ambitious monarchs might accuse his rival of

violating his territory, of threatening his vassals, and protecting his rebels; and, by the name of rebels, each

understood the fugitive princes, whose kingdoms he had usurped, and whose life or liberty he implacably

pursued. The resemblance of character was still more dangerous than the opposition of interest; and in their

victorious career, Timour was impatient of an equal, and Bajazet was ignorant of a superior. The first epistle

^28 of the Mogul emperor must have provoked, instead of reconciling, the Turkish sultan, whose family and

nation he affected to despise. ^29 "Dost thou not know, that the greatest part of Asia is subject to our arms

and our laws? that our invincible forces extend from one sea to the other? that the potentates of the earth form

a line before our gate? and that we have compelled Fortune herself to watch over the prosperity of our

empire. What is the foundation of thy insolence and folly? Thou hast fought some battles in the woods of

Anatolia; contemptible trophies! Thou hast obtained some victories over the Christians of Europe; thy sword

was blessed by the apostle of God; and thy obedience to the precept of the Koran, in waging war against the

infidels, is the sole consideration that prevents us from destroying thy country, the frontier and bulwark of the

Moslem world. Be wise in time; reflect; repent; and avert the thunder of our vengeance, which is yet

suspended over thy head. Thou art no more than a pismire; why wilt thou seek to provoke the elephants?

Alas! they will trample thee under their feet." In his replies, Bajazet poured forth the indignation of a soul

which was deeply stung by such unusual contempt. After retorting the basest reproaches on the thief and

rebel of the desert, the Ottoman recapitulates his boasted victories in Iran, Touran, and the Indies; and labors

to prove, that Timour had never triumphed unless by his own perfidy and the vices of his foes. "Thy armies

are innumerable: be they so; but what are the arrows of the flying Tartar against the cimeters and battleaxes

of my firm and invincible Janizaries? I will guard the princes who have implored my protection: seek them in

my tents. The cities of Arzingan and Erzeroum are mine; and unless the tribute be duly paid, I will demand

the arrears under the walls of Tauris and Sultania." The ungovernable rage of the sultan at length betrayed

him to an insult of a more domestic kind. "If I fly from thy arms," said he, "may my wives be thrice divorced

from my bed: but if thou hast not courage to meet me in the field, mayest thou again receive thy wives after

they have thrice endured the embraces of a stranger." ^30 Any violation by word or deed of the secrecy of the

harem is an unpardonable offence among the Turkish nations; ^31 and the political quarrel of the two

monarchs was imbittered by private and personal resentment. Yet in his first expedition, Timour was satisfied

with the siege and destruction of Siwas or Sebaste, a strong city on the borders of Anatolia; and he revenged

the indiscretion of the Ottoman, on a garrison of four thousand Armenians, who were buried alive for the

brave and faithful discharge of their duty. ^! As a Mussulman, he seemed to respect the pious occupation of

Bajazet, who was still engaged in the blockade of Constantinople; and after this salutary lesson, the Mogul

conqueror checked his pursuit, and turned aside to the invasion of Syria and Egypt. In these transactions, the

Ottoman prince, by the Orientals, and even by Timour, is styled the Kaissar of Roum, the Caesar of the

Romans; a title which, by a small anticipation, might be given to a monarch who possessed the provinces,

and threatened the city, of the successors of Constantine. ^32 [Footnote 27: See the Institutions, p. 141, to the

end of the 1st book, and Sherefeddin, (l. v. c. 1 16,) to the entrance of Timour into Syria.]

[Footnote 28: We have three copies of these hostile epistles in the Institutions, (p. 147,) in Sherefeddin, (l. v.

c. 14,) and in Arabshah, (tom. ii. c. 19 p. 183 201;) which agree with each other in the spirit and substance

rather than in the style. It is probable, that they have been translated, with various latitude, from the Turkish

Note: Von Hammer considers the letter which Gibbon inserted in the text to be spurious. On the various

[Footnote 29: The Mogul emir distinguishes himself and his countrymen by the name of Turks, and

stigmatizes the race and nation of Bajazet with the less honorable epithet of Turkmans. Yet I do not

understand how the Ottomans could be descended from a Turkman sailor; those inland shepherds were so

[Footnote 30: According to the Koran, (c. ii. p. 27, and Sale's Discourses, p. 134,) Mussulman who had thrice

divorced his wife, (who had thrice repeated the words of a divorce,) could not take her again, till after she had

been married to, and repudiated by, another husband; an ignominious transaction, which it is needless to

aggravate, by supposing that the first husband must see her enjoyed by a second before his face, (Rycaut's

[Footnote 31: The common delicacy of the Orientals, in never speaking of their women, is ascribed in a much

higher degree by Arabshah to the Turkish nations; and it is remarkable enough, that Chalcondyles (l. ii. p. 55)

[Footnote !: Still worse barbarities were perpetrated on these brave men. Von Hammer, vol. i. p. 295. M.]

[Footnote 32: For the style of the Moguls, see the Institutions, (p. 131, 147,) and for the Persians, the

Bibliotheque Orientale, (p. 882;) but I do not find that the title of Caesar has been applied by the Arabians, or

The military republic of the Mamalukes still reigned in Egypt and Syria: but the dynasty of the Turks was

overthrown by that of the Circassians; ^33 and their favorite Barkok, from a slave and a prisoner, was raised

and restored to the throne. In the midst of rebellion and discord, he braved the menaces, corresponded with

the enemies, and detained the ambassadors, of the Mogul, who patiently expected his decease, to revenge the

crimes of the father on the feeble reign of his son Farage. The Syrian emirs ^34 were assembled at Aleppo to

repel the invasion: they confided in the fame and discipline of the Mamalukes, in the temper of their swords

and lances of the purest steel of Damascus, in the strength of their walled cities, and in the populousness of

sixty thousand villages; and instead of sustaining a siege, they threw open their gates, and arrayed their forces

in the plain. But these forces were not cemented by virtue and union; and some powerful emirs had been

seduced to desert or betray their more loyal companions. Timour's front was covered with a line of Indian

elephants, whose turrets were filled with archers and Greek fire: the rapid evolutions of his cavalry completed

the dismay and disorder; the Syrian crowds fell back on each other: many thousands were stifled or

slaughtered in the entrance of the great street; the Moguls entered with the fugitives; and after a short

defence, the citadel, the impregnable citadel of Aleppo, was surrendered by cowardice or treachery. Among

the suppliants and captives, Timour distinguished the doctors of the law, whom he invited to the dangerous

honor of a personal conference. ^35 The Mogul prince was a zealous Mussulman; but his Persian schools had

taught him to revere the memory of Ali and Hosein; and he had imbibed a deep prejudice against the Syrians,

as the enemies of the son of the daughter of the apostle of God. To these doctors he proposed a captious

question, which the casuists of Bochara, Samarcand, and Herat, were incapable of resolving. "Who are the

true martyrs, of those who are slain on my side, or on that of my enemies?" But he was silenced, or satisfied,

by the dexterity of one of the cadhis of Aleppo, who replied in the words of Mahomet himself, that the

motive, not the ensign, constitutes the martyr; and that the Moslems of either party, who fight only for the

glory of God, may deserve that sacred appellation. The true succession of the caliphs was a controversy of a

still more delicate nature; and the frankness of a doctor, too honest for his situation, provoked the emperor to

exclaim, "Ye are as false as those of Damascus: Moawiyah was a usurper, Yezid a tyrant, and Ali alone is the

lawful successor of the prophet." A prudent explanation restored his tranquillity; and he passed to a more

familiar topic of conversation. "What is your age?" said he to the cadhi. "Fifty years." "It would be the age

of my eldest son: you see me here (continued Timour) a poor lame, decrepit mortal. Yet by my arm has the

Almighty been pleased to subdue the kingdoms of Iran, Touran, and the Indies. I am not a man of blood; and

God is my witness, that in all my wars I have never been the aggressor, and that my enemies have always

been the authors of their own calamity." During this peaceful conversation the streets of Aleppo streamed

with blood, and reechoed with the cries of mothers and children, with the shrieks of violated virgins. The rich

plunder that was abandoned to his soldiers might stimulate their avarice; but their cruelty was enforced by the

peremptory command of producing an adequate number of heads, which, according to his custom, were

curiously piled in columns and pyramids: the Moguls celebrated the feast of victory, while the surviving

Moslems passed the night in tears and in chains. I shall not dwell on the march of the destroyer from Aleppo

to Damascus, where he was rudely encountered, and almost overthrown, by the armies of Egypt. A retrograde

motion was imputed to his distress and despair: one of his nephews deserted to the enemy; and Syria rejoiced

in the tale of his defeat, when the sultan was driven by the revolt of the Mamalukes to escape with

precipitation and shame to his palace of Cairo. Abandoned by their prince, the inhabitants of Damascus still

defended their walls; and Timour consented to raise the siege, if they would adorn his retreat with a gift or

ransom; each article of nine pieces. But no sooner had he introduced himself into the city, under color of a

truce, than he perfidiously violated the treaty; imposed a contribution of ten millions of gold; and animated

his troops to chastise the posterity of those Syrians who had executed, or approved, the murder of the

grandson of Mahomet. A family which had given honorable burial to the head of Hosein, and a colony of

artificers, whom he sent to labor at Samarcand, were alone reserved in the general massacre, and after a

period of seven centuries, Damascus was reduced to ashes, because a Tartar was moved by religious zeal to

avenge the blood of an Arab. The losses and fatigues of the campaign obliged Timour to renounce the

conquest of Palestine and Egypt; but in his return to the Euphrates he delivered Aleppo to the flames; and

justified his pious motive by the pardon and reward of two thousand sectaries of Ali, who were desirous to

visit the tomb of his son. I have expatiated on the personal anecdotes which mark the character of the Mogul

hero; but I shall briefly mention, ^36 that he erected on the ruins of Bagdad a pyramid of ninety thousand

heads; again visited Georgia; encamped on the banks of Araxes; and proclaimed his resolution of marching

against the Ottoman emperor. Conscious of the importance of the war, he collected his forces from every

province: eight hundred thousand men were enrolled on his military list; ^37 but the splendid commands of

five, and ten, thousand horse, may be rather expressive of the rank and pension of the chiefs, than of the

genuine number of effective soldiers. ^38 In the pillage of Syria, the Moguls had acquired immense riches:

but the delivery of their pay and arrears for seven years more firmly attached them to the Imperial standard.

[Footnote 33: See the reigns of Barkok and Pharadge, in M. De Guignes, (tom. iv. l. xxii.,) who, from the

Arabic texts of Aboulmahasen, Ebn (Schounah, and Aintabi, has added some facts to our common stock of

[Footnote 34: For these recent and domestic transactions, Arabshah, though a partial, is a credible, witness,

(tom. i. c. 64 68, tom. ii. c. 1 14.) Timour must have been odious to a Syrian; but the notoriety of facts

would have obliged him, in some measure, to respect his enemy and himself. His bitters may correct the

[Footnote 35: These interesting conversations appear to have been copied by Arabshah (tom. i. c. 68, p. 625

645) from the cadhi and historian Ebn Schounah, a principal actor. Yet how could he be alive seventyfive

[Footnote 36: The marches and occupations of Timour between the Syrian and Ottoman wars are represented

[Footnote 37: This number of 800,000 was extracted by Arabshah, or rather by Ebn Schounah, ex rationario

Timuri, on the faith of a Carizmian officer, (tom. i. c. 68, p. 617;) and it is remarkable enough, that a Greek

historian (Phranza, l. i. c. 29) adds no more than 20,000 men. Poggius reckons 1,000,000; another Latin

contemporary (Chron. Tarvisianum, apud Muratori, tom. xix. p. 800) 1,100,000; and the enormous sum of

1,600,000 is attested by a German soldier, who was present at the battle of Angora, (Leunclay. ad

Chalcondyl. l. iii. p. 82.) Timour, in his Institutions, has not deigned to calculate his troops, his subjects, or

[Footnote 38: A wide latitude of noneffectives was allowed by the Great Mogul for his own pride and the

benefit of his officers. Bernier's patron was PengeHazari, commander of 5000 horse; of which he

During this diversion of the Mogul arms, Bajazet had two years to collect his forces for a more serious

encounter. They consisted of four hundred thousand horse and foot, ^39 whose merit and fidelity were of an

unequal complexion. We may discriminate the Janizaries, who have been gradually raised to an establishment

of forty thousand men; a national cavalry, the Spahis of modern times; twenty thousand cuirassiers of Europe,

clad in black and impenetrable armor; the troops of Anatolia, whose princes had taken refuge in the camp of

Timour, and a colony of Tartars, whom he had driven from Kipzak, and to whom Bajazet had assigned a

settlement in the plains of Adrianople. The fearless confidence of the sultan urged him to meet his antagonist;

and, as if he had chosen that spot for revenge, he displayed his banner near the ruins of the unfortunate Suvas.

In the mean while, Timour moved from the Araxes through the countries of Armenia and Anatolia: his

boldness was secured by the wisest precautions; his speed was guided by order and discipline; and the woods,

the mountains, and the rivers, were diligently explored by the flying squadrons, who marked his road and

preceded his standard. Firm in his plan of fighting in the heart of the Ottoman kingdom, he avoided their

camp; dexterously inclined to the left; occupied Caesarea; traversed the salt desert and the River Halys; and

invested Angora: while the sultan, immovable and ignorant in his post, compared the Tartar swiftness to the

crawling of a snail; ^40 he returned on the wings of indignation to the relief of Angora: and as both generals

were alike impatient for action, the plains round that city were the scene of a memorable battle, which has

immortalized the glory of Timour and the shame of Bajazet. For this signal victory the Mogul emperor was

indebted to himself, to the genius of the moment, and the discipline of thirty years. He had improved the

tactics, without violating the manners, of his nation, ^41 whose force still consisted in the missile weapons,

and rapid evolutions, of a numerous cavalry. From a single troop to a great army, the mode of attack was the

same: a foremost line first advanced to the charge, and was supported in a just order by the squadrons of the

great vanguard. The general's eye watched over the field, and at his command the front and rear of the right

and left wings successively moved forwards in their several divisions, and in a direct or oblique line: the

enemy was pressed by eighteen or twenty attacks; and each attack afforded a chance of victory. If they all

proved fruitless or unsuccessful, the occasion was worthy of the emperor himself, who gave the signal of

advancing to the standard and main body, which he led in person. ^42 But in the battle of Angora, the main

body itself was supported, on the flanks and in the rear, by the bravest squadrons of the reserve, commanded

by the sons and grandsons of Timour. The conqueror of Hindostan ostentatiously showed a line of elephants,

the trophies, rather than the instruments, of victory; the use of the Greek fire was familiar to the Moguls and

Ottomans; but had they borrowed from Europe the recent invention of gunpowder and cannon, the artificial

thunder, in the hands of either nation, must have turned the fortune of the day. ^43 In that day Bajazet

displayed the qualities of a soldier and a chief: but his genius sunk under a stronger ascendant; and, from

various motives, the greatest part of his troops failed him in the decisive moment. His rigor and avarice ^*

had provoked a mutiny among the Turks; and even his son Soliman too hastily withdrew from the field. The

forces of Anatolia, loyal in their revolt, were drawn away to the banners of their lawful princes. His Tartar

allies had been tempted by the letters and emissaries of Timour; ^44 who reproached their ignoble servitude

under the slaves of their fathers; and offered to their hopes the dominion of their new, or the liberty of their

ancient, country. In the right wing of Bajazet the cuirassiers of Europe charged, with faithful hearts and

irresistible arms: but these men of iron were soon broken by an artful flight and headlong pursuit; and the

Janizaries, alone, without cavalry or missile weapons, were encompassed by the circle of the Mogul hunters.

Their valor was at length oppressed by heat, thirst, and the weight of numbers; and the unfortunate sultan,

afflicted with the gout in his hands and feet, was transported from the field on the fleetest of his horses. He

was pursued and taken by the titular khan of Zagatai; and, after his capture, and the defeat of the Ottoman

powers, the kingdom of Anatolia submitted to the conqueror, who planted his standard at Kiotahia, and

dispersed on all sides the ministers of rapine and destruction. Mirza Mehemmed Sultan, the eldest and best

beloved of his grandsons, was despatched to Boursa, with thirty thousand horse; and such was his youthful

ardor, that he arrived with only four thousand at the gates of the capital, after performing in five days a march

of two hundred and thirty miles. Yet fear is still more rapid in its course; and Soliman, the son of Bajazet, had

already passed over to Europe with the royal treasure. The spoil, however, of the palace and city was

immense: the inhabitants had escaped; but the buildings, for the most part of wood, were reduced to ashes

From Boursa, the grandson of Timour advanced to Nice, ever yet a fair and flourishing city; and the Mogul

squadrons were only stopped by the waves of the Propontis. The same success attended the other mirzas and

emirs in their excursions; and Smyrna, defended by the zeal and courage of the Rhodian knights, alone

deserved the presence of the emperor himself. After an obstinate defence, the place was taken by storm: all

that breathed was put to the sword; and the heads of the Christian heroes were launched from the engines, on

board of two carracks, or great ships of Europe, that rode at anchor in the harbor. The Moslems of Asia

rejoiced in their deliverance from a dangerous and domestic foe; and a parallel was drawn between the two

rivals, by observing that Timour, in fourteen days, had reduced a fortress which had sustained seven years the

[Footnote 39: Timour himself fixes at 400,000 men the Ottoman army, (Institutions, p. 153,) which is

reduced to 150,000 by Phranza, (l. i. c. 29,) and swelled by the German soldier to 1,400,000. It is evident that

[Footnote 40: It may not be useless to mark the distances between Angora and the neighboring cities, by the

journeys of the caravans, each of twenty or twentyfive miles; to Smyrna xx., to Kiotahia x., to Boursa x., to

Caesarea, viii., to Sinope x., to Nicomed a ix., to Constantinople xii. or xiii., (see Tournefort, Voyage au

[Footnote 41: See the Systems of Tactics in the Institutions, which the English editors have illustrated with

[Footnote 42: The sultan himself (says Timour) must then put the foot of courage into the stirrup of patience.

A Tartar metaphor, which is lost in the English, but preserved in the French, version of the Institutes, (p. 156,

[Footnote 43: The Greek fire, on Timour's side, is attested by Sherefeddin, (l. v. c. 47;) but Voltaire's strange

suspicion, that some cannon, inscribed with strange characters, must have been sent by that monarch to Delhi,

[Footnote *: See V. Hammer, vol. i. p. 310, for the singular hints which were conveyed to him of the wisdom

[Footnote 44: Timour has dissembled this secret and important negotiation with the Tartars, which is

indisputably proved by the joint evidence of the Arabian, (tom. i. c. 47, p. 391,) Turkish, (Annal. Leunclav. p.

[Footnote 45: For the war of Anatolia or Roum, I add some hints in the Institutions, to the copious narratives

of Sherefeddin (l. v. c. 44 65) and Arabshah, (tom. ii. c. 20 35.) On this part only of Timour's history it is

lawful to quote the Turks, (Cantemir, p. 53 55, Annal. Leunclav. p. 320 322,) and the Greeks, (Phranza, l.

The iron cage in which Bajazet was imprisoned by Tamerlane, so long and so often repeated as a moral

lesson, is now rejected as a fable by the modern writers, who smile at the vulgar credulity. ^46 They appeal

with confidence to the Persian history of Sherefeddin Ali, which has been given to our curiosity in a French

version, and from which I shall collect and abridge a more specious narrative of this memorable transaction.

No sooner was Timour informed that the captive Ottoman was at the door of his tent, than he graciously

stepped forwards to receive him, seated him by his side, and mingled with just reproaches a soothing pity for

his rank and misfortune. "Alas!" said the emperor, "the decree of fate is now accomplished by your own fault;

it is the web which you have woven, the thorns of the tree which yourself have planted. I wished to spare, and

even to assist, the champion of the Moslems; you braved our threats; you despised our friendship; you forced

us to enter your kingdom with our invincible armies. Behold the event. Had you vanquished, I am not

ignorant of the fate which you reserved for myself and my troops. But I disdain to retaliate: your life and

honor are secure; and I shall express my gratitude to God by my clemency to man." The royal captive showed

some signs of repentance, accepted the humiliation of a robe of honor, and embraced with tears his son

Mousa, who, at his request, was sought and found among the captives of the field. The Ottoman princes were

lodged in a splendid pavilion; and the respect of the guards could be surpassed only by their vigilance. On the

arrival of the harem from Boursa, Timour restored the queen Despina and her daughter to their father and

husband; but he piously required, that the Servian princess, who had hitherto been indulged in the profession

of Christianity, should embrace without delay the religion of the prophet. In the feast of victory, to which

Bajazet was invited, the Mogul emperor placed a crown on his head and a sceptre in his hand, with a solemn

assurance of restoring him with an increase of glory to the throne of his ancestors. But the effect of his

promise was disappointed by the sultan's untimely death: amidst the care of the most skilful physicians, he

expired of an apoplexy at Akshehr, the Antioch of Pisidia, about nine months after his defeat. The victor

dropped a tear over his grave: his body, with royal pomp, was conveyed to the mausoleum which he had

erected at Boursa; and his son Mousa, after receiving a rich present of gold and jewels, of horses and arms,

was invested by a patent in red ink with the kingdom of Anatolia. [Footnote 46: The scepticism of Voltaire

(Essai sur l'Histoire Generale, c. 88) is ready on this, as on every occasion, to reject a popular tale, and to

diminish the magnitude of vice and virtue; and on most occasions his incredulity is reasonable.]

Such is the portrait of a generous conqueror, which has been extracted from his own memorials, and

dedicated to his son and grandson, nineteen years after his decease; ^47 and, at a time when the truth was

remembered by thousands, a manifest falsehood would have implied a satire on his real conduct. Weighty

indeed is this evidence, adopted by all the Persian histories; ^48 yet flattery, more especially in the East, is

base and audacious; and the harsh and ignominious treatment of Bajazet is attested by a chain of witnesses,

some of whom shall be produced in the order of their time and country. 1. The reader has not forgot the

garrison of French, whom the marshal Boucicault left behind him for the defence of Constantinople. They

were on the spot to receive the earliest and most faithful intelligence of the overthrow of their great

adversary; and it is more than probable, that some of them accompanied the Greek embassy to the camp of

Tamerlane. From their account, the hardships of the prison and death of Bajazet are affirmed by the marshal's

servant and historian, within the distance of seven years. ^49 2. The name of Poggius the Italian ^50 is

deservedly famous among the revivers of learning in the fifteenth century. His elegant dialogue on the

vicissitudes of fortune ^51 was composed in his fiftieth year, twentyeight years after the Turkish victory of

Tamerlane; ^52 whom he celebrates as not inferior to the illustrious Barbarians of antiquity. Of his exploits

and discipline Poggius was informed by several ocular witnesses; nor does he forget an example so apposite

to his theme as the Ottoman monarch, whom the Scythian confined like a wild beast in an iron cage, and

exhibited a spectacle to Asia. I might add the authority of two Italian chronicles, perhaps of an earlier date,

which would prove at least that the same story, whether false or true, was imported into Europe with the first

tidings of the revolution. ^53 3. At the time when Poggius flourished at Rome, Ahmed Ebn Arabshah

composed at Damascus the florid and malevolent history of Timour, for which he had collected materials in

his journeys over Turkey and Tartary. ^54 Without any possible correspondence between the Latin and the

Arabian writer, they agree in the fact of the iron cage; and their agreement is a striking proof of their common

veracity. Ahmed Arabshah likewise relates another outrage, which Bajazet endured, of a more domestic and

tender nature. His indiscreet mention of women and divorces was deeply resented by the jealous Tartar: in the

feast of victory the wine was served by female cupbearers, and the sultan beheld his own concubines and

wives confounded among the slaves, and exposed without a veil to the eyes of intemperance. To escape a

similar indignity, it is said that his successors, except in a single instance, have abstained from legitimate

nuptials; and the Ottoman practice and belief, at least in the sixteenth century, is asserted by the observing

Busbequius, ^55 ambassador from the court of Vienna to the great Soliman. 4. Such is the separation of

language, that the testimony of a Greek is not less independent than that of a Latin or an Arab. I suppress the

names of Chalcondyles and Ducas, who flourished in the latter period, and who speak in a less positive tone;

but more attention is due to George Phranza, ^56 protovestiare of the last emperors, and who was born a year

before the battle of Angora. Twentytwo years after that event, he was sent ambassador to Amurath the

Second; and the historian might converse with some veteran Janizaries, who had been made prisoners with

the sultan, and had themselves seen him in his iron cage. 5. The last evidence, in every sense, is that of the

Turkish annals, which have been consulted or transcribed by Leunclavius, Pocock, and Cantemir. ^57 They

unanimously deplore the captivity of the iron cage; and some credit may be allowed to national historians,

who cannot stigmatize the Tartar without uncovering the shame of their king and country. [Footnote 47: See

the History of Sherefeddin, (l. v. c. 49, 52, 53, 59, 60.) This work was finished at Shiraz, in the year 1424,

and dedicated to Sultan Ibrahim, the son of Sharokh, the son of Timour, who reigned in Farsistan in his

[Footnote 48: After the perusal of Khondemir, Ebn Schounah, the learned D'Herbelot (Bibliot. Orientale, p.

882) may affirm, that this fable is not mentioned in the most authentic histories; but his denial of the visible

[Footnote 49: Et fut luimeme (Bajazet) pris, et mene en prison, en laquelle mourut de dure mort! Memoires

de Boucicault, P. i. c. 37. These Memoirs were composed while the marshal was still governor of Genoa,

from whence he was expelled in the year 1409, by a popular insurrection, (Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. xii.

[Footnote 50: The reader will find a satisfactory account of the life and writings of Poggius in the Poggiana,

an entertaining work of M. Lenfant, and in the Bibliotheca Latina Mediae et Infimae Aetatis of Fabricius,

[Footnote 51: The dialogue de Varietate Fortunae, (of which a complete and elegant edition has been

published at Paris in 1723, in 4to.,) was composed a short time before the death of Pope Martin V., (p. 5,) and

[Footnote 52: See a splendid and eloquent encomium of Tamerlane, p. 36 39 ipse enim novi (says Poggius)

qui fuere in ejus castris . . . . Regen vivum cepit, caveaque in modum ferae inclusum per omnem Asian

[Footnote 53: The Chronicon Tarvisianum, (in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum tom. xix. p. 800,) and the

Annales Estenses, (tom. xviii. p. 974.) The two authors, Andrea de Redusiis de Quero, and James de Delayto,

were both contemporaries, and both chancellors, the one of Trevigi, the other of Ferrara. The evidence of the

[Footnote 54: See Arabshah, tom. ii. c. 28, 34. He travelled in regiones Romaeas, A. H. 839, (A.D. 1435, July

[Footnote 55: Busbequius in Legatione Turcica, epist. i. p. 52. Yet his respectable authority is somewhat

shaken by the subsequent marriages of Amurath II. with a Servian, and of Mahomet II. with an Asiatic,

[Footnote 56: See the testimony of George Phranza, (l. i. c. 29,) and his life in Hanckius (de Script. Byzant. P.

[Footnote 57: Annales Leunclav. p. 321. Pocock, Prolegomen. ad Abulpharag Dynast. Cantemir, p. 55.

From these opposite premises, a fair and moderate conclusion may be deduced. I am satisfied that

Sherefeddin Ali has faithfully described the first ostentatious interview, in which the conqueror, whose spirits

were harmonized by success, affected the character of generosity. But his mind was insensibly alienated by

the unseasonable arrogance of Bajazet; the complaints of his enemies, the Anatolian princes, were just and

vehement; and Timour betrayed a design of leading his royal captive in triumph to Samarcand. An attempt to

facilitate his escape, by digging a mine under the tent, provoked the Mogul emperor to impose a harsher

restraint; and in his perpetual marches, an iron cage on a wagon might be invented, not as a wanton insult, but

as a rigorous precaution. Timour had read in some fabulous history a similar treatment of one of his

predecessors, a king of Persia; and Bajazet was condemned to represent the person, and expiate the guilt, of

the Roman Caesar ^58 ^* But the strength of his mind and body fainted under the trial, and his premature

death might, without injustice, be ascribed to the severity of Timour. He warred not with the dead: a tear and

a sepulchre were all that he could bestow on a captive who was delivered from his power; and if Mousa, the

son of Bajazet, was permitted to reign over the ruins of Boursa, the greatest part of the province of Anatolia

[Footnote 58: Sapor, king of Persia, had been made prisoner, and enclosed in the figure of a cow's hide by

Maximian or Galerius Caesar. Such is the fable related by Eutychius, (Annal. tom. i. p. 421, vers. Pocock.

The recollection of the true history (Decline and Fall, vol. ii. p 140 152) will teach us to appreciate the

[Footnote *: Von Hammer's explanation of this contested point is both simple and satisfactory. It originates in

a mistake in the meaning of the Turkish word kafe, which means a covered litter or palanquin drawn by two

horses, and is generally used to convey the harem of an Eastern monarch. In such a litter, with the

latticework made of iron, Bajazet either chose or was constrained to travel. This was either mistaken for, or

transformed by, ignorant relaters into a cage. The European Schiltberger, the two oldest of the Turkish

historians, and the most valuable of the later compilers, Seadeddin, describe this litter. Seadeddin discusses

the question with some degree of historical criticism, and ascribes the choice of such a vehicle to the

indignant state of Bajazet's mind, which would not brook the sight of his Tartar conquerors. Von Hammer, p.

From the Irtish and Volga to the Persian Gulf, and from the Ganges to Damascus and the Archipelago, Asia

was in the hand of Timour: his armies were invincible, his ambition was boundless, and his zeal might aspire

to conquer and convert the Christian kingdoms of the West, which already trembled at his name. He touched

the utmost verge of the land; but an insuperable, though narrow, sea rolled between the two continents of

Europe and Asia; ^59 and the lord of so many tomans, or myriads, of horse, was not master of a single galley.

The two passages of the Bosphorus and Hellespont, of Constantinople and Gallipoli, were possessed, the one

by the Christians, the other by the Turks. On this great occasion, they forgot the difference of religion, to act

with union and firmness in the common cause: the double straits were guarded with ships and fortifications;

and they separately withheld the transports which Timour demanded of either nation, under the pretence of

attacking their enemy. At the same time, they soothed his pride with tributary gifts and suppliant embassies,

and prudently tempted him to retreat with the honors of victory. Soliman, the son of Bajazet, implored his

clemency for his father and himself; accepted, by a red patent, the investiture of the kingdom of Romania,

which he already held by the sword; and reiterated his ardent wish, of casting himself in person at the feet of

the king of the world. The Greek emperor ^60 (either John or Manuel) submitted to pay the same tribute

which he had stipulated with the Turkish sultan, and ratified the treaty by an oath of allegiance, from which

he could absolve his conscience so soon as the Mogul arms had retired from Anatolia. But the fears and fancy

of nations ascribed to the ambitious Tamerlane a new design of vast and romantic compass; a design of

subduing Egypt and Africa, marching from the Nile to the Atlantic Ocean, entering Europe by the Straits of

Gibraltar, and, after imposing his yoke on the kingdoms of Christendom, of returning home by the deserts of

Russia and Tartary. This remote, and perhaps imaginary, danger was averted by the submission of the sultan

of Egypt: the honors of the prayer and the coin attested at Cairo the supremacy of Timour; and a rare gift of a

giraffe, or camelopard, and nine ostriches, represented at Samarcand the tribute of the African world. Our

imagination is not less astonished by the portrait of a Mogul, who, in his camp before Smyrna, meditates, and

almost accomplishes, the invasion of the Chinese empire. ^61 Timour was urged to this enterprise by national

honor and religious zeal. The torrents which he had shed of Mussulman blood could be expiated only by an

equal destruction of the infidels; and as he now stood at the gates of paradise, he might best secure his

glorious entrance by demolishing the idols of China, founding mosques in every city, and establishing the

profession of faith in one God, and his prophet Mahomet. The recent expulsion of the house of Zingis was an

insult on the Mogul name; and the disorders of the empire afforded the fairest opportunity for revenge. The

illustrious Hongvou, founder of the dynasty of Ming, died four years before the battle of Angora; and his

grandson, a weak and unfortunate youth, was burnt in his palace, after a million of Chinese had perished in

the civil war. ^62 Before he evacuated Anatolia, Timour despatched beyond the Sihoon a numerous army, or

rather colony, of his old and new subjects, to open the road, to subdue the Pagan Calmucks and Mungals, and

to found cities and magazines in the desert; and, by the diligence of his lieutenant, he soon received a perfect

map and description of the unknown regions, from the source of the Irtish to the wall of China. During these

preparations, the emperor achieved the final conquest of Georgia; passed the winter on the banks of the

Araxes; appeased the troubles of Persia; and slowly returned to his capital, after a campaign of four years and

nine months. [Footnote 59: Arabshah (tom. ii. c. 25) describes, like a curious traveller, the Straits of Gallipoli

and Constantinople. To acquire a just idea of these events, I have compared the narratives and prejudices of

the Moguls, Turks, Greeks, and Arabians. The Spanish ambassador mentions this hostile union of the

[Footnote 60: Since the name of Caesar had been transferred to the sultans of Roum, the Greek princes of

Constantinople (Sherefeddin, l. v. c. 54 were confounded with the Christian lords of Gallipoli, Thessalonica,

under the title of Tekkur, which is derived by corruption from the genitive, (Cantemir, p. 51.)]

[Footnote 61: See Sherefeddin, l. v. c. 4, who marks, in a just itinerary, the road to China, which Arabshah

[Footnote 62: Synopsis Hist. Sinicae, p. 74 76, (in the ivth part of the Relations de Thevenot,) Duhalde,

Hist. de la Chine, (tom. i. p. 507, 508, folio edition;) and for the Chronology of the Chinese emperors, De

On the throne of Samarcand, ^63 he displayed, in a short repose, his magnificence and power; listened to the

complaints of the people; distributed a just measure of rewards and punishments; employed his riches in the

architecture of palaces and temples; and gave audience to the ambassadors of Egypt, Arabia, India, Tartary,

Russia, and Spain, the last of whom presented a suit of tapestry which eclipsed the pencil of the Oriental

artists. The marriage of six of the emperor's grandsons was esteemed an act of religion as well as of paternal

tenderness; and the pomp of the ancient caliphs was revived in their nuptials. They were celebrated in the

gardens of Canighul, decorated with innumerable tents and pavilions, which displayed the luxury of a great

city and the spoils of a victorious camp. Whole forests were cut down to supply fuel for the kitchens; the

plain was spread with pyramids of meat, and vases of every liquor, to which thousands of guests were

courteously invited: the orders of the state, and the nations of the earth, were marshalled at the royal banquet;

nor were the ambassadors of Europe (says the haughty Persian) excluded from the feast; since even the

casses, the smallest of fish, find their place in the ocean. ^64 The public joy was testified by illuminations and

masquerades; the trades of Samarcand passed in review; and every trade was emulous to execute some quaint

device, some marvellous pageant, with the materials of their peculiar art. After the marriage contracts had

been ratified by the cadhis, the bridegrooms and their brides retired to the nuptial chambers: nine times,

according to the Asiatic fashion, they were dressed and undressed; and at each change of apparel, pearls and

rubies were showered on their heads, and contemptuously abandoned to their attendants. A general

indulgence was proclaimed: every law was relaxed, every pleasure was allowed; the people was free, the

sovereign was idle; and the historian of Timour may remark, that, after devoting fifty years to the attainment

of empire, the only happy period of his life were the two months in which he ceased to exercise his power.

But he was soon awakened to the cares of government and war. The standard was unfurled for the invasion of

China: the emirs made their report of two hundred thousand, the select and veteran soldiers of Iran and

Touran: their baggage and provisions were transported by five hundred great wagons, and an immense train

of horses and camels; and the troops might prepare for a long absence, since more than six months were

employed in the tranquil journey of a caravan from Samarcand to Pekin. Neither age, nor the severity of the

winter, could retard the impatience of Timour; he mounted on horseback, passed the Sihoon on the ice,

marched seventysix parasangs, three hundred miles, from his capital, and pitched his last camp in the

neighborhood of Otrar, where he was expected by the angel of death. Fatigue, and the indiscreet use of iced

water, accelerated the progress of his fever; and the conqueror of Asia expired in the seventieth year of his

age, thirtyfive years after he had ascended the throne of Zagatai. His designs were lost; his armies were

disbanded; China was saved; and fourteen years after his decease, the most powerful of his children sent an

embassy of friendship and commerce to the court of Pekin. ^65 [Footnote 63: For the return, triumph, and

death of Timour, see Sherefeddin (l. vi. c. 1 30) and Arabshah, (tom. ii. c. 36 47.)]

[Footnote 64: Sherefeddin (l. vi. c. 24) mentions the ambassadors of one of the most potent sovereigns of

Europe. We know that it was Henry III. king of Castile; and the curious relation of his two embassies is still

extant, (Mariana, Hist. Hispan. l. xix. c. 11, tom. ii. p. 329, 330. Avertissement a l'Hist. de Timur Bec, p. 28

33.) There appears likewise to have been some correspondence between the Mogul emperor and the court of

Charles VII. king of France, (Histoire de France, par Velly et Villaret, tom. xii. p. 336.)]

[Footnote 65: See the translation of the Persian account of their embassy, a curious and original piece, (in the

ivth part of the Relations de Thevenot.) They presented the emperor of China with an old horse which Timour

had formerly rode. It was in the year 1419 that they departed from the court of Herat, to which place they

The fame of Timour has pervaded the East and West: his posterity is still invested with the Imperial title; and

the admiration of his subjects, who revered him almost as a deity, may be justified in some degree by the

praise or confession of his bitterest enemies. ^66 Although he was lame of a hand and foot, his form and

stature were not unworthy of his rank; and his vigorous health, so essential to himself and to the world, was

corroborated by temperance and exercise. In his familiar discourse he was grave and modest, and if he was

ignorant of the Arabic language, he spoke with fluency and elegance the Persian and Turkish idioms. It was

his delight to converse with the learned on topics of history and science; and the amusement of his leisure

hours was the game of chess, which he improved or corrupted with new refinements. ^67 In his religion he

was a zealous, though not perhaps an orthodox, Mussulman; ^68 but his sound understanding may tempt us

to believe, that a superstitious reverence for omens and prophecies, for saints and astrologers, was only

affected as an instrument of policy. In the government of a vast empire, he stood alone and absolute, without

a rebel to oppose his power, a favorite to seduce his affections, or a minister to mislead his judgment. It was

his firmest maxim, that whatever might be the consequence, the word of the prince should never be disputed

or recalled; but his foes have maliciously observed, that the commands of anger and destruction were more

strictly executed than those of beneficence and favor. His sons and grandsons, of whom Timour left

sixandthirty at his decease, were his first and most submissive subjects; and whenever they deviated from

their duty, they were corrected, according to the laws of Zingis, with the bastinade, and afterwards restored to

honor and command. Perhaps his heart was not devoid of the social virtues; perhaps he was not incapable of

loving his friends and pardoning his enemies; but the rules of morality are founded on the public interest; and

it may be sufficient to applaud the wisdom of a monarch, for the liberality by which he is not impoverished,

and for the justice by which he is strengthened and enriched. To maintain the harmony of authority and

obedience, to chastise the proud, to protect the weak, to reward the deserving, to banish vice and idleness

from his dominions, to secure the traveller and merchant, to restrain the depredations of the soldier, to cherish

the labors of the husbandman, to encourage industry and learning, and, by an equal and moderate assessment,

to increase the revenue, without increasing the taxes, are indeed the duties of a prince; but, in the discharge of

these duties, he finds an ample and immediate recompense. Timour might boast, that, at his accession to the

throne, Asia was the prey of anarchy and rapine, whilst under his prosperous monarchy a child, fearless and

unhurt, might carry a purse of gold from the East to the West. Such was his confidence of merit, that from

this reformation he derived an excuse for his victories, and a title to universal dominion. The four following

observations will serve to appreciate his claim to the public gratitude; and perhaps we shall conclude, that the

Mogul emperor was rather the scourge than the benefactor of mankind. 1. If some partial disorders, some

local oppressions, were healed by the sword of Timour, the remedy was far more pernicious than the disease.

By their rapine, cruelty, and discord, the petty tyrants of Persia might afflict their subjects; but whole nations

were crushed under the footsteps of the reformer. The ground which had been occupied by flourishing cities

was often marked by his abominable trophies, by columns, or pyramids, of human heads. Astracan, Carizme,

Delhi, Ispahan, Bagdad, Aleppo, Damascus, Boursa, Smyrna, and a thousand others, were sacked, or burnt, or

utterly destroyed, in his presence, and by his troops: and perhaps his conscience would have been startled, if a

priest or philosopher had dared to number the millions of victims whom he had sacrificed to the

establishment of peace and order. ^69 2. His most destructive wars were rather inroads than conquests. He

invaded Turkestan, Kipzak, Russia, Hindostan, Syria, Anatolia, Armenia, and Georgia, without a hope or a

desire of preserving those distant provinces. From thence he departed laden with spoil; but he left behind him

neither troops to awe the contumacious, nor magistrates to protect the obedient, natives. When he had broken

the fabric of their ancient government, he abandoned them to the evils which his invasion had aggravated or

caused; nor were these evils compensated by any present or possible benefits. 3. The kingdoms of

Transoxiana and Persia were the proper field which he labored to cultivate and adorn, as the perpetual

inheritance of his family. But his peaceful labors were often interrupted, and sometimes blasted, by the

absence of the conqueror. While he triumphed on the Volga or the Ganges, his servants, and even his sons,

forgot their master and their duty. The public and private injuries were poorly redressed by the tardy rigor of

inquiry and punishment; and we must be content to praise the Institutions of Timour, as the specious idea of a

perfect monarchy. 4. Whatsoever might be the blessings of his administration, they evaporated with his life.

To reign, rather than to govern, was the ambition of his children and grandchildren; ^70 the enemies of each

other and of the people. A fragment of the empire was upheld with some glory by Sharokh, his youngest son;

but after his decease, the scene was again involved in darkness and blood; and before the end of a century,

Transoxiana and Persia were trampled by the Uzbeks from the north, and the Turkmans of the black and

white sheep. The race of Timour would have been extinct, if a hero, his descendant in the fifth degree, had

not fled before the Uzbek arms to the conquest of Hindostan. His successors (the great Moguls ^71) extended

their sway from the mountains of Cashmir to Cape Comorin, and from Candahar to the Gulf of Bengal. Since

the reign of Aurungzebe, their empire had been dissolved; their treasures of Delhi have been rifled by a

Persian robber; and the richest of their kingdoms is now possessed by a company of Christian merchants, of a

remote island in the Northern Ocean. [Footnote 66: From Arabshah, tom. ii. c. 96. The bright or softer colors

[Footnote 67: His new system was multiplied from 32 pieces and 64 squares to 56 pieces and 110 or 130

squares; but, except in his court, the old game has been thought sufficiently elaborate. The Mogul emperor

was rather pleased than hurt with the victory of a subject: a chess player will feel the value of this

[Footnote 68: See Sherefeddin, l. v. c. 15, 25. Arabshah tom. ii. c. 96, p. 801, 803) approves the impiety of

Timour and the Moguls, who almost preferred to the Koran the Yacsa, or Law of Zingis, (cui Deus male

dicat;) nor will he believe that Sharokh had abolished the use and authority of that Pagan code.]

[Footnote 69: Besides the bloody passages of this narrative, I must refer to an anticipation in the third volume

of the Decline and Fall, which in a single note (p. 234, note 25) accumulates nearly 300,000 heads of the

monuments of his cruelty. Except in Rowe's play on the fifth of November, I did not expect to hear of

Timour's amiable moderation (White's preface, p. 7.) Yet I can excuse a generous enthusiasm in the reader,

[Footnote 70: Consult the last chapters of Sherefeddin and Arabshah, and M. De Guignes, (Hist. des Huns,

tom. iv. l. xx.) Fraser's History of Nadir Shah, (p. 1 62.) The story of Timour's descendants is imperfectly

[Footnote 71: Shah Allum, the present Mogul, is in the fourteenth degree from Timour, by Miran Shah, his

Far different was the fate of the Ottoman monarchy. The massy trunk was bent to the ground, but no sooner

did the hurricane pass away, than it again rose with fresh vigor and more lively vegetation. When Timour, in

every sense, had evacuated Anatolia, he left the cities without a palace, a treasure, or a king. The open

country was overspread with hordes of shepherds and robbers of Tartar or Turkman origin; the recent

conquests of Bajazet were restored to the emirs, one of whom, in base revenge, demolished his sepulchre; and

his five sons were eager, by civil discord, to consume the remnant of their patrimony. I shall enumerate their

names in the order of their age and actions. ^72 1. It is doubtful, whether I relate the story of the true

Mustapha, or of an impostor who personated that lost prince. He fought by his father's side in the battle of

Angora: but when the captive sultan was permitted to inquire for his children, Mousa alone could be found;

and the Turkish historians, the slaves of the triumphant faction, are persuaded that his brother was

confounded among the slain. If Mustapha escaped from that disastrous field, he was concealed twelve years

from his friends and enemies; till he emerged in Thessaly, and was hailed by a numerous party, as the son and

successor of Bajazet. His first defeat would have been his last, had not the true, or false, Mustapha been saved

by the Greeks, and restored, after the decease of his brother Mahomet, to liberty and empire. A degenerate

mind seemed to argue his spurious birth; and if, on the throne of Adrianople, he was adored as the Ottoman

sultan, his flight, his fetters, and an ignominious gibbet, delivered the impostor to popular contempt. A

similar character and claim was asserted by several rival pretenders: thirty persons are said to have suffered

under the name of Mustapha; and these frequent executions may perhaps insinuate, that the Turkish court was

not perfectly secure of the death of the lawful prince. 2. After his father's captivity, Isa ^73 reigned for some

time in the neighborhood of Angora, Sinope, and the Black Sea; and his ambassadors were dismissed from

the presence of Timour with fair promises and honorable gifts. But their master was soon deprived of his

province and life, by a jealous brother, the sovereign of Amasia; and the final event suggested a pious

allusion, that the law of Moses and Jesus, of Isa and Mousa, had been abrogated by the greater Mahomet. 3.

Soliman is not numbered in the list of the Turkish emperors: yet he checked the victorious progress of the

Moguls; and after their departure, united for a while the thrones of Adrianople and Boursa. In war he was

brave, active, and fortuntae; his courage was softened by clemency; but it was likewise inflamed by

presumption, and corrupted by intemperance and idleness. He relaxed the nerves of discipline, in a

government where either the subject or the sovereign must continually tremble: his vices alienated the chiefs

of the army and the law; and his daily drunkenness, so contemptible in a prince and a man, was doubly

odious in a disciple of the prophet. In the slumber of intoxication he was surprised by his brother Mousa; and

as he fled from Adrianople towards the Byzantine capital, Soliman was overtaken and slain in a bath, ^* after

a reign of seven years and ten months. 4. The investiture of Mousa degraded him as the slave of the Moguls:

his tributary kingdom of Anatolia was confined within a narrow limit, nor could his broken militia and empty

treasury contend with the hardy and veteran bands of the sovereign of Romania. Mousa fled in disguise from

the palace of Boursa; traversed the Propontis in an open boat; wandered over the Walachian and Servian hills;

and after some vain attempts, ascended the throne of Adrianople, so recently stained with the blood of

Soliman. In a reign of three years and a half, his troops were victorious against the Christians of Hungary and

the Morea; but Mousa was ruined by his timorous disposition and unseasonable clemency. After resigning the

sovereignty of Anatolia, he fell a victim to the perfidy of his ministers, and the superior ascendant of his

brother Mahomet. 5. The final victory of Mahomet was the just recompense of his prudence and moderation.

Before his father's captivity, the royal youth had been intrusted with the government of Amasia, thirty days'

journey from Constantinople, and the Turkish frontier against the Christians of Trebizond and Georgia. The

castle, in Asiatic warfare, was esteemed impregnable; and the city of Amasia, ^74 which is equally divided

by the River Iris, rises on either side in the form of an amphitheatre, and represents on a smaller scale the

image of Bagdad. In his rapid career, Timour appears to have overlooked this obscure and contumacious

angle of Anatolia; and Mahomet, without provoking the conqueror, maintained his silent independence, and

chased from the province the last stragglers of the Tartar host. ^! He relieved himself from the dangerous

neighborhood of Isa; but in the contests of their more powerful brethren his firm neutrality was respected; till,

after the triumph of Mousa, he stood forth the heir and avenger of the unfortunate Soliman. Mahomet

obtained Anatolia by treaty, and Romania by arms; and the soldier who presented him with the head of

Mousa was rewarded as the benefactor of his king and country. The eight years of his sole and peaceful reign

were usefully employed in banishing the vices of civil discord, and restoring on a firmer basis the fabric of

the Ottoman monarchy. His last care was the choice of two viziers, Bajazet and Ibrahim, ^75 who might

guide the youth of his son Amurath; and such was their union and prudence, that they concealed above forty

days the emperor's death, till the arrival of his successor in the palace of Boursa. A new war was kindled in

Europe by the prince, or impostor, Mustapha; the first vizier lost his army and his head; but the more

fortunate Ibrahim, whose name and family are still revered, extinguished the last pretender to the throne of

[Footnote 72: The civil wars, from the death of Bajazet to that of Mustapha, are related, according to the

Turks, by Demetrius Cantemir, (p. 58 82.) Of the Greeks, Chalcondyles, (l. iv. and v.,) Phranza, (l. i. c. 30

[Footnote 73: Arabshah, (tom. ii. c. 26,) whose testimony on this occasion is weighty and valuable. The

existence of Isa (unknown to the Turks) is likewise confirmed by Sherefeddin, (l. v. c. 57.)]

[Footnote *: He escaped from the bath, and fled towards Constantinople. Five mothers from a village,

Dugundschi, whose inhabitants had suffered severely from the exactions of his officers, recognized and

followed him. Soliman shot two of them, the others discharged their arrows in their turn the sultan fell and

[Footnote 74: Arabshah, loc. citat. Abulfeda, Geograph. tab. xvii. p. 302. Busbequius, epist. i. p. 96, 97, in

[Footnote 75: The virtues of Ibrahim are praised by a contemporary Greek, (Ducas, c. 25.) His descendants

are the sole nobles in Turkey: they content themselves with the administration of his pious foundations, are

excused from public offices, and receive two annual visits from the sultan, (Cantemir, p. 76.)]

In these conflicts, the wisest Turks, and indeed the body of the nation, were strongly attached to the unity of

the empire; and Romania and Anatolia, so often torn asunder by private ambition, were animated by a strong

and invincible tendency of cohesion. Their efforts might have instructed the Christian powers; and had they

occupied, with a confederate fleet, the Straits of Gallipoli, the Ottomans, at least in Europe, must have been

speedily annihilated. But the schism of the West, and the factions and wars of France and England, diverted

the Latins from this generous enterprise: they enjoyed the present respite, without a thought of futurity; and

were often tempted by a momentary interest to serve the common enemy of their religion. A colony of

Genoese, ^76 which had been planted at Phocaea ^77 on the Ionian coast, was enriched by the lucrative

monopoly of alum; ^78 and their tranquillity, under the Turkish empire, was secured by the annual payment

of tribute. In the last civil war of the Ottomans, the Genoese governor, Adorno, a bold and ambitious youth,

embraced the party of Amurath; and undertook, with seven stout galleys, to transport him from Asia to

Europe. The sultan and five hundred guards embarked on board the admiral's ship; which was manned by

eight hundred of the bravest Franks. His life and liberty were in their hands; nor can we, without reluctance,

applaud the fidelity of Adorno, who, in the midst of the passage, knelt before him, and gratefully accepted a

discharge of his arrears of tribute. They landed in sight of Mustapha and Gallipoli; two thousand Italians,

armed with lances and battleaxes, attended Amurath to the conquest of Adrianople; and this venal service

[Footnote 76: See Pachymer, (l. v. c. 29,) Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. ii. c. 1,) Sherefeddin, (l. v. c. 57,) and

Ducas, (c. 25.) The last of these, a curious and careful observer, is entitled, from his birth and station, to

particular credit in all that concerns Ionia and the islands. Among the nations that resorted to New Phocaea,

[Footnote 77: For the spirit of navigation, and freedom of ancient Phocaea, or rather the Phocaeans, consult

the first book of Herodotus, and the Geographical Index of his last and learned French translator, M. Larcher

[Footnote 78: Phocaea is not enumerated by Pliny (Hist. Nat. xxxv. 52) among the places productive of alum:

he reckons Egypt as the first, and for the second the Isle of Melos, whose alum mines are described by

Tournefort, (tom. i. lettre iv.,) a traveller and a naturalist. After the loss of Phocaea, the Genoese, in 1459,

found that useful mineral in the Isle of Ischia, (Ismael. Bouillaud, ad Ducam, c. 25.)]

If Timour had generously marched at the request, and to the relief, of the Greek emperor, he might be entitled

to the praise and gratitude of the Christians. ^79 But a Mussulman, who carried into Georgia the sword of

persecution, and respected the holy warfare of Bajazet, was not disposed to pity or succor the idolaters of

Europe. The Tartar followed the impulse of ambition; and the deliverance of Constantinople was the

accidental consequence. When Manuel abdicated the government, it was his prayer, rather than his hope, that

the ruin of the church and state might be delayed beyond his unhappy days; and after his return from a

western pilgrimage, he expected every hour the news of the sad catastrophe. On a sudden, he was astonished

and rejoiced by the intelligence of the retreat, the overthrow, and the captivity of the Ottoman. Manuel ^80

immediately sailed from Modon in the Morea; ascended the throne of Constantinople, and dismissed his blind

competitor to an easy exile in the Isle of Lesbos. The ambassadors of the son of Bajazet were soon introduced

to his presence; but their pride was fallen, their tone was modest: they were awed by the just apprehension,

lest the Greeks should open to the Moguls the gates of Europe. Soliman saluted the emperor by the name of

father; solicited at his hands the government or gift of Romania; and promised to deserve his favor by

inviolable friendship, and the restitution of Thessalonica, with the most important places along the Strymon,

the Propontis, and the Black Sea. The alliance of Soliman exposed the emperor to the enmity and revenge of

Mousa: the Turks appeared in arms before the gates of Constantinople; but they were repulsed by sea and

land; and unless the city was guarded by some foreign mercenaries, the Greeks must have wondered at their

own triumph. But, instead of prolonging the division of the Ottoman powers, the policy or passion of Manuel

was tempted to assist the most formidable of the sons of Bajazet. He concluded a treaty with Mahomet,

whose progress was checked by the insuperable barrier of Gallipoli: the sultan and his troops were

transported over the Bosphorus; he was hospitably entertained in the capital; and his successful sally was the

first step to the conquest of Romania. The ruin was suspended by the prudence and moderation of the

conqueror: he faithfully discharged his own obligations and those of Soliman, respected the laws of gratitude

and peace; and left the emperor guardian of his two younger sons, in the vain hope of saving them from the

jealous cruelty of their brother Amurath. But the execution of his last testament would have offended the

national honor and religion; and the divan unanimously pronounced, that the royal youths should never be

abandoned to the custody and education of a Christian dog. On this refusal, the Byzantine councils were

divided; but the age and caution of Manuel yielded to the presumption of his son John; and they unsheathed a

dangerous weapon of revenge, by dismissing the true or false Mustapha, who had long been detained as a

captive and hostage, and for whose maintenance they received an annual pension of three hundred thousand

aspers. ^81 At the door of his prison, Mustapha subscribed to every proposal; and the keys of Gallipoli, or

rather of Europe, were stipulated as the price of his deliverance. But no sooner was he seated on the throne of

Romania, than he dismissed the Greek ambassadors with a smile of contempt, declaring, in a pious tone, that,

at the day of judgment, he would rather answer for the violation of an oath, than for the surrender of a

Mussulman city into the hands of the infidels. The emperor was at once the enemy of the two rivals; from

whom he had sustained, and to whom he had offered, an injury; and the victory of Amurath was followed, in

[Footnote 79: The writer who has the most abused this fabulous generosity, is our ingenious Sir William

Temple, (his Works, vol. iii. p. 349, 350, octavo edition,) that lover of exotic virtue. After the conquest of

Russia, and the passage of the Danube, his Tartar hero relieves, visits, admires, and refuses the city of

Constantine. His flattering pencil deviates in every line from the truth of history; yet his pleasing fictions are

[Footnote 80: For the reigns of Manuel and John, of Mahomet I. and Amurath II., see the Othman history of

Cantemir, (p. 70 95,) and the three Greeks, Chalcondyles, Phranza, and Ducas, who is still superior to his

[Footnote 81: The Turkish asper is, or was, a piece of white or silver money, at present much debased, but

which was formerly equivalent to the 54th part, at least, of a Venetian ducat or sequin; and the 300,000

aspers, a princely allowance or royal tribute, may be computed at 2500l. sterling, (Leunclav. Pandect. Turc. p.

Note: According to Von Hammer, this calculation is much too low. The asper was a century before the time

of which writes, the tenth part of a ducat; for the same tribute which the Byzantine writers state at 300,000

[Footnote 82: For the siege of Constantinople in 1422, see the particular and contemporary narrative of John

Cananus, published by Leo Allatius, at the end of his edition of Acropolita, (p. 188 199.)]

The religious merit of subduing the city of the Caesars attracted from Asia a crowd of volunteers, who

aspired to the crown of martyrdom: their military ardor was inflamed by the promise of rich spoils and

beautiful females; and the sultan's ambition was consecrated by the presence and prediction of Seid Bechar, a

descendant of the prophet, ^83 who arrived in the camp, on a mule, with a venerable train of five hundred

disciples. But he might blush, if a fanatic could blush, at the failure of his assurances. The strength of the

walls resisted an army of two hundred thousand Turks; their assaults were repelled by the sallies of the

Greeks and their foreign mercenaries; the old resources of defence were opposed to the new engines of

attack; and the enthusiasm of the dervis, who was snatched to heaven in visionary converse with Mahomet,

was answered by the credulity of the Christians, who beheld the Virgin Mary, in a violet garment, walking on

the rampart and animating their courage. ^84 After a siege of two months, Amurath was recalled to Boursa by

a domestic revolt, which had been kindled by Greek treachery, and was soon extinguished by the death of a

guiltless brother. While he led his Janizaries to new conquests in Europe and Asia, the Byzantine empire was

indulged in a servile and precarious respite of thirty years. Manuel sank into the grave; and John Palaeologus

was permitted to reign, for an annual tribute of three hundred thousand aspers, and the dereliction of almost

all that he held beyond the suburbs of Constantinople. [Footnote 83: Cantemir, p. 80. Cananus, who describes

Seid Bechar, without naming him, supposes that the friend of Mahomet assumed in his amours the privilege

of a prophet, and that the fairest of the Greek nuns were promised to the saint and his disciples.]

[Footnote 84: For this miraculous apparition, Cananus appeals to the Mussulman saint; but who will bear

In the establishment and restoration of the Turkish empire, the first merit must doubtless be assigned to the

personal qualities of the sultans; since, in human life, the most important scenes will depend on the character

of a single actor. By some shades of wisdom and virtue, they may be discriminated from each other; but,

except in a single instance, a period of nine reigns, and two hundred and sixtyfive years, is occupied, from

the elevation of Othman to the death of Soliman, by a rare series of warlike and active princes, who

impressed their subjects with obedience and their enemies with terror. Instead of the slothful luxury of the

seraglio, the heirs of royalty were educated in the council and the field: from early youth they were intrusted

by their fathers with the command of provinces and armies; and this manly institution, which was often

productive of civil war, must have essentially contributed to the discipline and vigor of the monarchy. The

Ottomans cannot style themselves, like the Arabian caliphs, the descendants or successors of the apostle of

God; and the kindred which they claim with the Tartar khans of the house of Zingis appears to be founded in

flattery rather than in truth. ^85 Their origin is obscure; but their sacred and indefeasible right, which no time

can erase, and no violence can infringe, was soon and unalterably implanted in the minds of their subjects. A

weak or vicious sultan may be deposed and strangled; but his inheritance devolves to an infant or an idiot: nor

has the most daring rebel presumed to ascend the throne of his lawful sovereign. ^86

[Footnote 85: See Ricaut, (l. i. c. 13.) The Turkish sultans assume the title of khan. Yet Abulghazi is ignorant

[Footnote 86: The third grand vizier of the name of Kiuperli, who was slain at the battle of Salankanen in

1691, (Cantemir, p. 382,) presumed to say that all the successors of Soliman had been fools or tyrants, and

that it was time to abolish the race, (Marsigli Stato Militaire, p. 28.) This political heretic was a good Whig,

and justified against the French ambassador the revolution of England, (Mignot, Hist. des Ottomans, tom. iii.

p. 434.) His presumption condemns the singular exception of continuing offices in the same family.]

While the transient dynasties of Asia have been continually subverted by a crafty vizier in the palace, or a

victorious general in the camp, the Ottoman succession has been confirmed by the practice of five centuries,

To the spirit and constitution of that nation, a strong and singular influence may, however, be ascribed. The

primitive subjects of Othman were the four hundred families of wandering Turkmans, who had followed his

ancestors from the Oxus to the Sangar; and the plains of Anatolia are still covered with the white and black

tents of their rustic brethren. But this original drop was dissolved in the mass of voluntary and vanquished

subjects, who, under the name of Turks, are united by the common ties of religion, language, and manners. In

the cities, from Erzeroum to Belgrade, that national appellation is common to all the Moslems, the first and

most honorable inhabitants; but they have abandoned, at least in Romania, the villages, and the cultivation of

the land, to the Christian peasants. In the vigorous age of the Ottoman government, the Turks were

themselves excluded from all civil and military honors; and a servile class, an artificial people, was raised by

the discipline of education to obey, to conquer, and to command. ^87 From the time of Orchan and the first

Amurath, the sultans were persuaded that a government of the sword must be renewed in each generation

with new soldiers; and that such soldiers must be sought, not in effeminate Asia, but among the hardy and

warlike natives of Europe. The provinces of Thrace, Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, and Servia, became the

perpetual seminary of the Turkish army; and when the royal fifth of the captives was diminished by conquest,

an inhuman tax of the fifth child, or of every fifth year, was rigorously levied on the Christian families. At the

age of twelve or fourteen years, the most robust youths were torn from their parents; their names were

enrolled in a book; and from that moment they were clothed, taught, and maintained, for the public service.

According to the promise of their appearance, they were selected for the royal schools of Boursa, Pera, and

Adrianople, intrusted to the care of the bashaws, or dispersed in the houses of the Anatolian peasantry. It was

the first care of their masters to instruct them in the Turkish language: their bodies were exercised by every

labor that could fortify their strength; they learned to wrestle, to leap, to run, to shoot with the bow, and

afterwards with the musket; till they were drafted into the chambers and companies of the Janizaries, and

severely trained in the military or monastic discipline of the order. The youths most conspicuous for birth,

talents, and beauty, were admitted into the inferior class of Agiamoglans, or the more liberal rank of

Ichoglans, of whom the former were attached to the palace, and the latter to the person, of the prince. In four

successive schools, under the rod of the white eunuchs, the arts of horsemanship and of darting the javelin

were their daily exercise, while those of a more studious cast applied themselves to the study of the Koran,

and the knowledge of the Arabic and Persian tongues. As they advanced in seniority and merit, they were

gradually dismissed to military, civil, and even ecclesiastical employments: the longer their stay, the higher

was their expectation; till, at a mature period, they were admitted into the number of the forty agas, who

stood before the sultan, and were promoted by his choice to the government of provinces and the first honors

of the empire. ^88 Such a mode of institution was admirably adapted to the form and spirit of a despotic

monarchy. The ministers and generals were, in the strictest sense, the slaves of the emperor, to whose bounty

they were indebted for their instruction and support. When they left the seraglio, and suffered their beards to

grow as the symbol of enfranchisement, they found themselves in an important office, without faction or

friendship, without parents and without heirs, dependent on the hand which had raised them from the dust,

and which, on the slightest displeasure, could break in pieces these statues of glass, as they were aptly termed

by the Turkish proverb. ^89 In the slow and painful steps of education, their characters and talents were

unfolded to a discerning eye: the man, naked and alone, was reduced to the standard of his personal merit;

and, if the sovereign had wisdom to choose, he possessed a pure and boundless liberty of choice. The

Ottoman candidates were trained by the virtues of abstinence to those of action; by the habits of submission

to those of command. A similar spirit was diffused among the troops; and their silence and sobriety, their

patience and modesty, have extorted the reluctant praise of their Christian enemies. ^90 Nor can the victory

appear doubtful, if we compare the discipline and exercise of the Janizaries with the pride of birth, the

independence of chivalry, the ignorance of the new levies, the mutinous temper of the veterans, and the vices

[Footnote 87: Chalcondyles (l. v.) and Ducas (c. 23) exhibit the rude lineament of the Ottoman policy, and

[Footnote 88: This sketch of the Turkish education and discipline is chiefly borrowed from Ricaut's State of

the Ottoman Empire, the Stato Militaire del' Imperio Ottomano of Count Marsigli, (in Hava, 1732, in folio,)

and a description of the Seraglio, approved by Mr. Greaves himself, a curious traveller, and inserted in the

[Footnote 89: From the series of cxv. viziers, till the siege of Vienna, (Marsigli, p. 13,) their place may be

The only hope of salvation for the Greek empire, and the adjacent kingdoms, would have been some more

powerful weapon, some discovery in the art of war, that would give them a decisive superiority over their

Turkish foes. Such a weapon was in their hands; such a discovery had been made in the critical moment of

their fate. The chemists of China or Europe had found, by casual or elaborate experiments, that a mixture of

saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal, produces, with a spark of fire, a tremendous explosion. It was soon observed,

that if the expansive force were compressed in a strong tube, a ball of stone or iron might be expelled with

irresistible and destructive velocity. The precise aera of the invention and application of gunpowder ^91 is

involved in doubtful traditions and equivocal language; yet we may clearly discern, that it was known before

the middle of the fourteenth century; and that before the end of the same, the use of artillery in battles and

sieges, by sea and land, was familiar to the states of Germany, Italy, Spain, France, and England. ^92 The

priority of nations is of small account; none could derive any exclusive benefit from their previous or superior

knowledge; and in the common improvement, they stood on the same level of relative power and military

science. Nor was it possible to circumscribe the secret within the pale of the church; it was disclosed to the

Turks by the treachery of apostates and the selfish policy of rivals; and the sultans had sense to adopt, and

wealth to reward, the talents of a Christian engineer. The Genoese, who transported Amurath into Europe,

must be accused as his preceptors; and it was probably by their hands that his cannon was cast and directed at

the siege of Constantinople. ^93 The first attempt was indeed unsuccessful; but in the general warfare of the

age, the advantage was on their side, who were most commonly the assailants: for a while the proportion of

the attack and defence was suspended; and this thundering artillery was pointed against the walls and towers

which had been erected only to resist the less potent engines of antiquity. By the Venetians, the use of

gunpowder was communicated without reproach to the sultans of Egypt and Persia, their allies against the

Ottoman power; the secret was soon propagated to the extremities of Asia; and the advantage of the European

was confined to his easy victories over the savages of the new world. If we contrast the rapid progress of this

mischievous discovery with the slow and laborious advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace, a

philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep at the folly of mankind.

[Footnote 91: The first and second volumes of Dr. Watson's Chemical Essays contain two valuable discourses

[Footnote 92: On this subject modern testimonies cannot be trusted. The original passages are collected by

Ducange, (Gloss. Latin. tom. i. p. 675, Bombarda.) But in the early doubtful twilight, the name, sound, fire,

and effect, that seem to express our artillery, may be fairly interpreted of the old engines and the Greek fire.

For the English cannon at Crecy, the authority of John Villani (Chron. l. xii. c. 65) must be weighed against

the silence of Froissard. Yet Muratori (Antiquit. Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. ii. Dissert. xxvi. p. 514, 515) has

produced a decisive passage from Petrarch, (De Remediis utriusque Fortunae Dialog.,) who, before the year

Note: Mr. Hallam makes the following observation on the objection thrown our by Gibbon: "The positive

testimony of Villani, who died within two years afterwards, and had manifestly obtained much information as

to the great events passing in France, cannot be rejected. He ascribes a material effect to the cannon of

Edward, Colpi delle bombarde, which I suspect, from his strong expressions, had not been employed before,

except against stone walls. It seems, he says, as if God thundered con grande uccisione di genti e

[Footnote 93: The Turkish cannon, which Ducas (c. 30) first introduces before Belgrade, (A.D. 1436,) is

mentioned by Chalcondyles (l. v. p. 123) in 1422, at the siege of Constantinople.]

Applications Of The Eastern Emperors To The Popes. Visits To The West, Of John The First, Manuel, And

John The Second, Palaeologus. Union Of The Greek And Latin Churches, Promoted By The Council Of

Basil, And Concluded At Ferrara And Florence. State Of Literature At Constantinople. Its Revival In

In the four last centuries of the Greek emperors, their friendly or hostile aspect towards the pope and the

Latins may be observed as the thermometer of their prosperity or distress; as the scale of the rise and fall of

the Barbarian dynasties. When the Turks of the house of Seljuk pervaded Asia, and threatened

Constantinople, we have seen, at the council of Placentia, the suppliant ambassadors of Alexius imploring the

protection of the common father of the Christians. No sooner had the arms of the French pilgrims removed

the sultan from Nice to Iconium, than the Greek princes resumed, or avowed, their genuine hatred and

contempt for the schismatics of the West, which precipitated the first downfall of their empire. The date of

the Mogul invasion is marked in the soft and charitable language of John Vataces. After the recovery of

Constantinople, the throne of the first Palaeologus was encompassed by foreign and domestic enemies; as

long as the sword of Charles was suspended over his head, he basely courted the favor of the Roman pontiff;

and sacrificed to the present danger his faith, his virtue, and the affection of his subjects. On the decease of

Michael, the prince and people asserted the independence of their church, and the purity of their creed: the

elder Andronicus neither feared nor loved the Latins; in his last distress, pride was the safeguard of

superstition; nor could he decently retract in his age the firm and orthodox declarations of his youth. His

grandson, the younger Andronicus, was less a slave in his temper and situation; and the conquest of Bithynia

by the Turks admonished him to seek a temporal and spiritual alliance with the Western princes. After a

separation and silence of fifty years, a secret agent, the monk Barlaam, was despatched to Pope Benedict the

Twelfth; and his artful instructions appear to have been drawn by the masterhand of the great domestic. ^1

"Most holy father," was he commissioned to say, "the emperor is not less desirous than yourself of a union

between the two churches: but in this delicate transaction, he is obliged to respect his own dignity and the

prejudices of his subjects. The ways of union are twofold; force and persuasion. Of force, the inefficacy has

been already tried; since the Latins have subdued the empire, without subduing the minds, of the Greeks. The

method of persuasion, though slow, is sure and permanent. A deputation of thirty or forty of our doctors

would probably agree with those of the Vatican, in the love of truth and the unity of belief; but on their

return, what would be the use, the recompense, of such an agreement? the scorn of their brethren, and the

reproaches of a blind and obstinate nation. Yet that nation is accustomed to reverence the general councils,

which have fixed the articles of our faith; and if they reprobate the decrees of Lyons, it is because the Eastern

churches were neither heard nor represented in that arbitrary meeting. For this salutary end, it will be

expedient, and even necessary, that a wellchosen legate should be sent into Greece, to convene the

patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem; and, with their aid, to prepare a free and

universal synod. But at this moment," continued the subtle agent, "the empire is assaulted and endangered by

the Turks, who have occupied four of the greatest cities of Anatolia. The Christian inhabitants have expressed

a wish of returning to their allegiance and religion; but the forces and revenues of the emperor are insufficient

for their deliverance: and the Roman legate must be accompanied, or preceded, by an army of Franks, to

expel the infidels, and open a way to the holy sepulchre." If the suspicious Latins should require some pledge,

some previous effect of the sincerity of the Greeks, the answers of Barlaam were perspicuous and rational. "1.

A general synod can alone consummate the union of the churches; nor can such a synod be held till the three

Oriental patriarchs, and a great number of bishops, are enfranchised from the Mahometan yoke. 2. The

Greeks are alienated by a long series of oppression and injury: they must be reconciled by some act of

brotherly love, some effectual succor, which may fortify the authority and arguments of the emperor, and the

friends of the union. 3. If some difference of faith or ceremonies should be found incurable, the Greeks,

however, are the disciples of Christ; and the Turks are the common enemies of the Christian name. The

Armenians, Cyprians, and Rhodians, are equally attacked; and it will become the piety of the French princes

to draw their swords in the general defence of religion. 4. Should the subjects of Andronicus be treated as the

worst of schismatics, of heretics, of pagans, a judicious policy may yet instruct the powers of the West to

embrace a useful ally, to uphold a sinking empire, to guard the confines of Europe; and rather to join the

Greeks against the Turks, than to expect the union of the Turkish arms with the troops and treasures of

captive Greece." The reasons, the offers, and the demands, of Andronicus were eluded with cold and stately

indifference. The kings of France and Naples declined the dangers and glory of a crusade; the pope refused to

call a new synod to determine old articles of faith; and his regard for the obsolete claims of the Latin emperor

and clergy engaged him to use an offensive superscription, "To the moderator ^2 of the Greeks, and the

persons who style themselves the patriarchs of the Eastern churches." For such an embassy, a time and

character less propitious could not easily have been found. Benedict the Twelfth ^3 was a dull peasant,

perplexed with scruples, and immersed in sloth and wine: his pride might enrich with a third crown the papal

[Footnote 1: This curious instruction was transcribed (I believe) from the Vatican archives, by Odoricus

Raynaldus, in his Continuation of the Annals of Baronius, (Romae, 1646 1677, in x. volumes in folio.) I

have contented myself with the Abbe Fleury, (Hist. Ecclesiastique. tom. xx. p. 1 8,) whose abstracts I have

[Footnote 2: The ambiguity of this title is happy or ingenious; and moderator, as synonymous to rector,

gubernator, is a word of classical, and even Ciceronian, Latinity, which may be found, not in the Glossary of

[Footnote 3: The first epistle (sine titulo) of Petrarch exposes the danger of the bark, and the incapacity of the

pilot. Haec inter, vino madidus, aeve gravis, ac soporifero rore perfusus, jamjam nutitat, dormitat, jam somno

praeceps, atque (utinam solus) ruit . . . . . Heu quanto felicius patrio terram sulcasset aratro, quam scalmum

piscatorium ascendisset! This satire engages his biographer to weigh the virtues and vices of Benedict XII.

which have been exaggerated by Guelphs and Ghibe lines, by Papists and Protestants, (see Memoires sur la

Vie de Petrarque, tom. i. p. 259, ii. not. xv. p. 13 16.) He gave occasion to the saying, Bibamus papaliter.]

After the decease of Andronicus, while the Greeks were distracted by intestine war, they could not presume

to agitate a general union of the Christians. But as soon as Cantacuzene had subdued and pardoned his

enemies, he was anxious to justify, or at least to extenuate, the introduction of the Turks into Europe, and the

nuptials of his daughter with a Mussulman prince. Two officers of state, with a Latin interpreter, were sent in

his name to the Roman court, which was transplanted to Avignon, on the banks of the Rhone, during a period

of seventy years: they represented the hard necessity which had urged him to embrace the alliance of the

miscreants, and pronounced by his command the specious and edifying sounds of union and crusade. Pope

Clement the Sixth, ^4 the successor of Benedict, received them with hospitality and honor, acknowledged the

innocence of their sovereign, excused his distress, applauded his magnanimity, and displayed a clear

knowledge of the state and revolutions of the Greek empire, which he had imbibed from the honest accounts

of a Savoyard lady, an attendant of the empress Anne. ^5 If Clement was ill endowed with the virtues of a

priest, he possessed, however, the spirit and magnificence of a prince, whose liberal hand distributed

benefices and kingdoms with equal facility. Under his reign Avignon was the seat of pomp and pleasure: in

his youth he had surpassed the licentiousness of a baron; and the palace, nay, the bedchamber of the pope,

was adorned, or polluted, by the visits of his female favorites. The wars of France and England were adverse

to the holy enterprise; but his vanity was amused by the splendid idea; and the Greek ambassadors returned

with two Latin bishops, the ministers of the pontiff. On their arrival at Constantinople, the emperor and the

nuncios admired each other's piety and eloquence; and their frequent conferences were filled with mutual

praises and promises, by which both parties were amused, and neither could be deceived. "I am delighted,"

said the devout Cantacuzene, "with the project of our holy war, which must redound to my personal glory, as

well as to the public benefit of Christendom. My dominions will give a free passage to the armies of France:

my troops, my galleys, my treasures, shall be consecrated to the common cause; and happy would be my fate,

could I deserve and obtain the crown of martyrdom. Words are insufficient to express the ardor with which I

sigh for the reunion of the scattered members of Christ. If my death could avail, I would gladly present my

sword and my neck: if the spiritual phoenix could arise from my ashes, I would erect the pile, and kindle the

flame with my own hands." Yet the Greek emperor presumed to observe, that the articles of faith which

divided the two churches had been introduced by the pride and precipitation of the Latins: he disclaimed the

servile and arbitrary steps of the first Palaeologus; and firmly declared, that he would never submit his

conscience unless to the decrees of a free and universal synod. "The situation of the times," continued he,

"will not allow the pope and myself to meet either at Rome or Constantinople; but some maritime city may be

chosen on the verge of the two empires, to unite the bishops, and to instruct the faithful, of the East and

West." The nuncios seemed content with the proposition; and Cantacuzene affects to deplore the failure of his

hopes, which were soon overthrown by the death of Clement, and the different temper of his successor. His

own life was prolonged, but it was prolonged in a cloister; and, except by his prayers, the humble monk was

incapable of directing the counsels of his pupil or the state. ^6 [Footnote 4: See the original Lives of Clement

VI. in Muratori, (Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. iii. P. ii. p. 550 589;) Matteo Villani, (Chron. l. iii. c. 43, in

Muratori, tom. xiv. p. 186,) who styles him, molto cavallaresco, poco religioso; Fleury, (Hist. Eccles. tom.

xx. p. 126;) and the Vie de Petrarque, (tom. ii. p. 42 45.) The abbe de Sade treats him with the most

[Footnote 5: Her name (most probably corrupted) was Zampea. She had accompanied, and alone remained

with her mistress at Constantinople, where her prudence, erudition, and politeness deserved the praises of the

[Footnote 6: See this whole negotiation in Cantacuzene, (l. iv. c. 9,) who, amidst the praises and virtues

Yet of all the Byzantine princes, that pupil, John Palaeologus, was the best disposed to embrace, to believe,

and to obey, the shepherd of the West. His mother, Anne of Savoy, was baptized in the bosom of the Latin

church: her marriage with Andronicus imposed a change of name, of apparel, and of worship, but her heart

was still faithful to her country and religion: she had formed the infancy of her son, and she governed the

emperor, after his mind, or at least his stature, was enlarged to the size of man. In the first year of his

deliverance and restoration, the Turks were still masters of the Hellespont; the son of Cantacuzene was in

arms at Adrianople; and Palaeologus could depend neither on himself nor on his people. By his mother's

advice, and in the hope of foreign aid, he abjured the rights both of the church and state; and the act of

slavery, ^7 subscribed in purple ink, and sealed with the golden bull, was privately intrusted to an Italian

agent. The first article of the treaty is an oath of fidelity and obedience to Innocent the Sixth and his

successors, the supreme pontiffs of the Roman and Catholic church. The emperor promises to entertain with

due reverence their legates and nuncios; to assign a palace for their residence, and a temple for their worship;

and to deliver his second son Manuel as the hostage of his faith. For these condescensions he requires a

prompt succor of fifteen galleys, with five hundred men at arms, and a thousand archers, to serve against his

Christian and Mussulman enemies. Palaeologus engages to impose on his clergy and people the same

spiritual yoke; but as the resistance of the Greeks might be justly foreseen, he adopts the two effectual

methods of corruption and education. The legate was empowered to distribute the vacant benefices among the

ecclesiastics who should subscribe the creed of the Vatican: three schools were instituted to instruct the youth

of Constantinople in the language and doctrine of the Latins; and the name of Andronicus, the heir of the

empire, was enrolled as the first student. Should he fail in the measures of persuasion or force, Palaeologus

declares himself unworthy to reign; transferred to the pope all regal and paternal authority; and invests

Innocent with full power to regulate the family, the government, and the marriage, of his son and successor.

But this treaty was neither executed nor published: the Roman galleys were as vain and imaginary as the

submission of the Greeks; and it was only by the secrecy that their sovereign escaped the dishonor of this

fruitless humiliation. [Footnote 7: See this ignominious treaty in Fleury, (Hist. Eccles. p. 151 154,) from

Raynaldus, who drew it from the Vatican archives. It was not worth the trouble of a pious forgery.]

The tempest of the Turkish arms soon burst on his head; and after the loss of Adrianople and Romania, he

was enclosed in his capital, the vassal of the haughty Amurath, with the miserable hope of being the last

devoured by the savage. In this abject state, Palaeologus embraced the resolution of embarking for Venice,

and casting himself at the feet of the pope: he was the first of the Byzantine princes who had ever visited the

unknown regions of the West, yet in them alone he could seek consolation or relief; and with less violation of

his dignity he might appear in the sacred college than at the Ottoman Porte. After a long absence, the Roman

pontiffs were returning from Avignon to the banks of the Tyber: Urban the Fifth, ^8 of a mild and virtuous

character, encouraged or allowed the pilgrimage of the Greek prince; and, within the same year, enjoyed the

glory of receiving in the Vatican the two Imperial shadows who represented the majesty of Constantine and

Charlemagne. In this suppliant visit, the emperor of Constantinople, whose vanity was lost in his distress,

gave more than could be expected of empty sounds and formal submissions. A previous trial was imposed;

and, in the presence of four cardinals, he acknowledged, as a true Catholic, the supremacy of the pope, and

the double procession of the Holy Ghost. After this purification, he was introduced to a public audience in the

church of St. Peter: Urban, in the midst of the cardinals, was seated on his throne; the Greek monarch, after

three genuflections, devoutly kissed the feet, the hands, and at length the mouth, of the holy father, who

celebrated high mass in his presence, allowed him to lead the bridle of his mule, and treated him with a

sumptuous banquet in the Vatican. The entertainment of Palaeologus was friendly and honorable; yet some

difference was observed between the emperors of the East and West; ^9 nor could the former be entitled to

the rare privilege of chanting the gospel in the rank of a deacon. ^10 In favor of his proselyte, Urban strove to

rekindle the zeal of the French king and the other powers of the West; but he found them cold in the general

cause, and active only in their domestic quarrels. The last hope of the emperor was in an English mercenary,

John Hawkwood, ^11 or Acuto, who, with a band of adventurers, the white brotherhood, had ravaged Italy

from the Alps to Calabria; sold his services to the hostile states; and incurred a just excommunication by

shooting his arrows against the papal residence. A special license was granted to negotiate with the outlaw,

but the forces, or the spirit, of Hawkwood, were unequal to the enterprise: and it was for the advantage,

perhaps, of Palaeologus to be disappointed of succor, that must have been costly, that could not be effectual,

and which might have been dangerous. ^12 The disconsolate Greek ^13 prepared for his return, but even his

return was impeded by a most ignominious obstacle. On his arrival at Venice, he had borrowed large sums at

exorbitant usury; but his coffers were empty, his creditors were impatient, and his person was detained as the

best security for the payment. His eldest son, Andronicus, the regent of Constantinople, was repeatedly urged

to exhaust every resource; and even by stripping the churches, to extricate his father from captivity and

disgrace. But the unnatural youth was insensible of the disgrace, and secretly pleased with the captivity of the

emperor: the state was poor, the clergy were obstinate; nor could some religious scruple be wanting to excuse

the guilt of his indifference and delay. Such undutiful neglect was severely reproved by the piety of his

brother Manuel, who instantly sold or mortgaged all that he possessed, embarked for Venice, relieved his

father, and pledged his own freedom to be responsible for the debt. On his return to Constantinople, the

parent and king distinguished his two sons with suitable rewards; but the faith and manners of the slothful

Palaeologus had not been improved by his Roman pilgrimage; and his apostasy or conversion, devoid of any

spiritual or temporal effects, was speedily forgotten by the Greeks and Latins. ^14

[Footnote 8: See the two first original Lives of Urban V., (in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. iii. P.

ii. p. 623, 635,) and the Ecclesiastical Annals of Spondanus, (tom. i. p. 573, A.D. 1369, No. 7,) and

Raynaldus, (Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. xx. p. 223, 224.) Yet, from some variations, I suspect the papal writers

[Footnote 9: Paullo minus quam si fuisset Imperator Romanorum. Yet his title of Imperator Graecorum was

[Footnote 10: It was confined to the successors of Charlemagne, and to them only on Christmasday. On all

other festivals these Imperial deacons were content to serve the pope, as he said mass, with the book and the

corporale. Yet the abbe de Sade generously thinks that the merits of Charles IV. might have entitled him,

though not on the proper day, (A.D. 1368, November 1,) to the whole privilege. He seems to affix a just value

[Footnote 11: Through some Italian corruptions, the etymology of Falcone in bosco, (Matteo Villani, l. xi. c.

79, in Muratori, tom. xv. p. 746,) suggests the English word Hawkwood, the true name of our adventurous

countryman, (Thomas Walsingham, Hist. Anglican. inter Scriptores Cambdeni, p. 184.) After

twoandtwenty victories, and one defeat, he died, in 1394, general of the Florentines, and was buried with

such honors as the republic has not paid to Dante or Petrarch, (Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. xii. p. 212

[Footnote 12: This torrent of English (by birth or service) overflowed from France into Italy after the peace of

Bretigny in 1630. Yet the exclamation of Muratori (Annali, tom. xii. p. 197) is rather true than civil. "Ci

mancava ancor questo, che dopo essere calpestrata l'Italia da tanti masnadieri Tedeschi ed Ungheri, venissero

[Footnote 13: Chalcondyles, l. i. p. 25, 26. The Greek supposes his journey to the king of France, which is

sufficiently refuted by the silence of the national historians. Nor am I much more inclined to believe, that

Palaeologus departed from Italy, valde bene consolatus et contentus, (Vit. Urban V. p. 623.)]

[Footnote 14: His return in 1370, and the coronation of Manuel, Sept. 25, 1373, (Ducange, Fam. Byzant. p.

241,) leaves some intermediate aera for the conspiracy and punishment of Andronicus.]

Thirty years after the return of Palaeologus, his son and successor, Manuel, from a similar motive, but on a

larger scale, again visited the countries of the West. In a preceding chapter I have related his treaty with

Bajazet, the violation of that treaty, the siege or blockade of Constantinople, and the French succor under the

command of the gallant Boucicault. ^15 By his ambassadors, Manuel had solicited the Latin powers; but it

was thought that the presence of a distressed monarch would draw tears and supplies from the hardest

Barbarians; ^16 and the marshal who advised the journey prepared the reception of the Byzantine prince. The

land was occupied by the Turks; but the navigation of Venice was safe and open: Italy received him as the

first, or, at least, as the second, of the Christian princes; Manuel was pitied as the champion and confessor of

the faith; and the dignity of his behavior prevented that pity from sinking into contempt. From Venice he

proceeded to Padua and Pavia; and even the duke of Milan, a secret ally of Bajazet, gave him safe and

honorable conduct to the verge of his dominions. ^17 On the confines of France ^18 the royal officers

undertook the care of his person, journey, and expenses; and two thousand of the richest citizens, in arms and

on horseback, came forth to meet him as far as Charenton, in the neighborhood of the capital. At the gates of

Paris, he was saluted by the chancellor and the parliament; and Charles the Sixth, attended by his princes and

nobles, welcomed his brother with a cordial embrace. The successor of Constantine was clothed in a robe of

white silk, and mounted on a milkwhite steed, a circumstance, in the French ceremonial, of singular

importance: the white color is considered as the symbol of sovereignty; and, in a late visit, the German

emperor, after a haughty demand and a peevish refusal, had been reduced to content himself with a black

courser. Manuel was lodged in the Louvre; a succession of feasts and balls, the pleasures of the banquet and

the chase, were ingeniously varied by the politeness of the French, to display their magnificence, and amuse

his grief: he was indulged in the liberty of his chapel; and the doctors of the Sorbonne were astonished, and

possibly scandalized, by the language, the rites, and the vestments, of his Greek clergy. But the slightest

glance on the state of the kingdom must teach him to despair of any effectual assistance. The unfortunate

Charles, though he enjoyed some lucid intervals, continually relapsed into furious or stupid insanity: the reins

of government were alternately seized by his brother and uncle, the dukes of Orleans and Burgundy, whose

factious competition prepared the miseries of civil war. The former was a gay youth, dissolved in luxury and

love: the latter was the father of John count of Nevers, who had so lately been ransomed from Turkish

captivity; and, if the fearless son was ardent to revenge his defeat, the more prudent Burgundy was content

with the cost and peril of the first experiment. When Manuel had satiated the curiosity, and perhaps fatigued

the patience, of the French, he resolved on a visit to the adjacent island. In his progress from Dover, he was

entertained at Canterbury with due reverence by the prior and monks of St. Austin; and, on Blackheath, King

Henry the Fourth, with the English court, saluted the Greek hero, (I copy our old historian,) who, during

many days, was lodged and treated in London as emperor of the East. ^19 But the state of England was still

more adverse to the design of the holy war. In the same year, the hereditary sovereign had been deposed and

murdered: the reigning prince was a successful usurper, whose ambition was punished by jealousy and

remorse: nor could Henry of Lancaster withdraw his person or forces from the defence of a throne incessantly

shaken by conspiracy and rebellion. He pitied, he praised, he feasted, the emperor of Constantinople; but if

the English monarch assumed the cross, it was only to appease his people, and perhaps his conscience, by the

merit or semblance of his pious intention. ^20 Satisfied, however, with gifts and honors, Manuel returned to

Paris; and, after a residence of two years in the West, shaped his course through Germany and Italy,

embarked at Venice, and patiently expected, in the Morea, the moment of his ruin or deliverance. Yet he had

escaped the ignominious necessity of offering his religion to public or private sale. The Latin church was

distracted by the great schism; the kings, the nations, the universities, of Europe were divided in their

obedience between the popes of Rome and Avignon; and the emperor, anxious to conciliate the friendship of

both parties, abstained from any correspondence with the indigent and unpopular rivals. His journey

coincided with the year of the jubilee; but he passed through Italy without desiring, or deserving, the plenary

indulgence which abolished the guilt or penance of the sins of the faithful. The Roman pope was offended by

this neglect; accused him of irreverence to an image of Christ; and exhorted the princes of Italy to reject and

[Footnote 16: His journey into the west of Europe is slightly, and I believe reluctantly, noticed by

[Footnote 17: Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. xii. p. 406. John Galeazzo was the first and most powerful duke

of Milan. His connection with Bajazet is attested by Froissard; and he contributed to save and deliver the

[Footnote 18: For the reception of Manuel at Paris, see Spondanus, (Annal. Eccles. tom. i. p. 676, 677, A.D.

1400, No. 5,) who quotes Juvenal des Ursins and the monk of St. Denys; and Villaret, (Hist. de France, tom.

xii. p. 331 334,) who quotes nobody according to the last fashion of the French writers.]

[Footnote 19: A short note of Manuel in England is extracted by Dr. Hody from a Ms. at Lambeth, (de

Graecis illustribus, p. 14,) C. P. Imperator, diu variisque et horrendis Paganorum insultibus coarctatus, ut pro

eisdem resistentiam triumphalem perquireret, Anglorum Regem visitare decrevit, Rex (says Walsingham, p.

364) nobili apparatu . . . suscepit (ut decuit) tantum Heroa, duxitque Londonias, et per multos dies exhibuit

gloriose, pro expensis hospitii sui solvens, et eum respiciens tanto fastigio donativis. He repeats the same in

[Footnote 20: Shakspeare begins and ends the play of Henry IV. with that prince's vow of a crusade, and his

[Footnote 21: This fact is preserved in the Historia Politica, A.D. 1391 1478, published by Martin Crusius,

(Turco Graecia, p. 1 43.) The image of Christ, which the Greek emperor refused to worship, was probably a

During the period of the crusades, the Greeks beheld with astonishment and terror the perpetual stream of

emigration that flowed, and continued to flow, from the unknown climates of their West. The visits of their

last emperors removed the veil of separation, and they disclosed to their eyes the powerful nations of Europe,

whom they no longer presumed to brand with the name of Barbarians. The observations of Manuel, and his

more inquisitive followers, have been preserved by a Byzantine historian of the times: ^22 his scattered ideas

I shall collect and abridge; and it may be amusing enough, perhaps instructive, to contemplate the rude

pictures of Germany, France, and England, whose ancient and modern state are so familiar to our minds. I.

Germany (says the Greek Chalcondyles) is of ample latitude from Vienna to the ocean; and it stretches (a

strange geography) from Prague in Bohemia to the River Tartessus, and the Pyrenaean Mountains. ^23 The

soil, except in figs and olives, is sufficiently fruitful; the air is salubrious; the bodies of the natives are robust

and healthy; and these cold regions are seldom visited with the calamities of pestilence, or earthquakes. After

the Scythians or Tartars, the Germans are the most numerous of nations: they are brave and patient; and were

they united under a single head, their force would be irresistible. By the gift of the pope, they have acquired

the privilege of choosing the Roman emperor; ^24 nor is any people more devoutly attached to the faith and

obedience of the Latin patriarch. The greatest part of the country is divided among the princes and prelates;

but Strasburg, Cologne, Hamburgh, and more than two hundred free cities, are governed by sage and equal

laws, according to the will, and for the advantage, of the whole community. The use of duels, or single

combats on foot, prevails among them in peace and war: their industry excels in all the mechanic arts; and the

Germans may boast of the invention of gunpowder and cannon, which is now diffused over the greatest part

of the world. II. The kingdom of France is spread above fifteen or twenty days' journey from Germany to

Spain, and from the Alps to the British Ocean; containing many flourishing cities, and among these Paris, the

seat of the king, which surpasses the rest in riches and luxury. Many princes and lords alternately wait in his

palace, and acknowledge him as their sovereign: the most powerful are the dukes of Bretagne and Burgundy;

of whom the latter possesses the wealthy province of Flanders, whose harbors are frequented by the ships and

merchants of our own, and the more remote, seas. The French are an ancient and opulent people; and their

language and manners, though somewhat different, are not dissimilar from those of the Italians. Vain of the

Imperial dignity of Charlemagne, of their victories over the Saracens, and of the exploits of their heroes,

Oliver and Rowland, ^25 they esteem themselves the first of the western nations; but this foolish arrogance

has been recently humbled by the unfortunate events of their wars against the English, the inhabitants of the

British island. III. Britain, in the ocean, and opposite to the shores of Flanders, may be considered either as

one, or as three islands; but the whole is united by a common interest, by the same manners, and by a similar

government. The measure of its circumference is five thousand stadia: the land is overspread with towns and

villages: though destitute of wine, and not abounding in fruittrees, it is fertile in wheat and barley; in honey

and wool; and much cloth is manufactured by the inhabitants. In populousness and power, in richness and

luxury, London, ^26 the metropolis of the isle, may claim a preeminence over all the cities of the West. It is

situate on the Thames, a broad and rapid river, which at the distance of thirty miles falls into the Gallic Sea;

and the daily flow and ebb of the tide affords a safe entrance and departure to the vessels of commerce. The

king is head of a powerful and turbulent aristocracy: his principal vassals hold their estates by a free and

unalterable tenure; and the laws define the limits of his authority and their obedience. The kingdom has been

often afflicted by foreign conquest and domestic sedition: but the natives are bold and hardy, renowned in

arms and victorious in war. The form of their shields or targets is derived from the Italians, that of their

swords from the Greeks; the use of the long bow is the peculiar and decisive advantage of the English. Their

language bears no affinity to the idioms of the Continent: in the habits of domestic life, they are not easily

distinguished from their neighbors of France: but the most singular circumstance of their manners is their

disregard of conjugal honor and of female chastity. In their mutual visits, as the first act of hospitality, the

guest is welcomed in the embraces of their wives and daughters: among friends they are lent and borrowed

without shame; nor are the islanders offended at this strange commerce, and its inevitable consequences. ^27

Informed as we are of the customs of Old England and assured of the virtue of our mothers, we may smile at

the credulity, or resent the injustice, of the Greek, who must have confounded a modest salute ^28 with a

criminal embrace. But his credulity and injustice may teach an important lesson; to distrust the accounts of

foreign and remote nations, and to suspend our belief of every tale that deviates from the laws of nature and

[Footnote 22: The Greek and Turkish history of Laonicus Chalcondyles ends with the winter of 1463; and the

abrupt conclusion seems to mark, that he laid down his pen in the same year. We know that he was an

Athenian, and that some contemporaries of the same name contributed to the revival of the Greek language in

Italy. But in his numerous digressions, the modest historian has never introduced himself; and his editor

Leunclavius, as well as Fabricius, (Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p. 474,) seems ignorant of his life and character.

For his descriptions of Germany, France, and England, see l. ii. p. 36, 37, 44 50.]

[Footnote 23: I shall not animadvert on the geographical errors of Chalcondyles. In this instance, he perhaps

followed, and mistook, Herodotus, (l. ii. c. 33,) whose text may be explained, (Herodote de Larcher, tom. ii.

p. 219, 220,) or whose ignorance may be excused. Had these modern Greeks never read Strabo, or any of

[Footnote 24: A citizen of new Rome, while new Rome survived, would have scorned to dignify the German

with titles: but all pride was extinct in the bosom of Chalcondyles; and he describes the Byzantine prince, and

[Footnote 25: Most of the old romances were translated in the xivth century into French prose, and soon

became the favorite amusement of the knights and ladies in the court of Charles VI. If a Greek believed in the

exploits of Rowland and Oliver, he may surely be excused, since the monks of St. Denys, the national

historians, have inserted the fables of Archbishop Turpin in their Chronicles of France.]

[Footnote 26: Even since the time of Fitzstephen, (the xiith century,) London appears to have maintained this

preeminence of wealth and magnitude; and her gradual increase has, at least, kept pace with the general

[Footnote 27: If the double sense of the verb (osculor, and in utero gero) be equivocal, the context and pious

Note: I can discover no "pious horror" in the plain manner in which Chalcondyles relates this strange usage.

[Footnote 28: Erasmus (Epist. Fausto Andrelino) has a pretty passage on the English fashion of kissing

strangers on their arrival and departure, from whence, however, he draws no scandalous inferences.]

[Footnote 29: Perhaps we may apply this remark to the community of wives among the old Britons, as it is

supposed by Caesar and Dion, (Dion Cassius, l. lxii. tom. ii. p. 1007,) with Reimar's judicious annotation.

The Arreoy of Otaheite, so certain at first, is become less visible and scandalous, in proportion as we have

After his return, and the victory of Timour, Manuel reigned many years in prosperity and peace. As long as

the sons of Bajazet solicited his friendship and spared his dominions, he was satisfied with the national

religion; and his leisure was employed in composing twenty theological dialogues for its defence. The

appearance of the Byzantine ambassadors at the council of Constance, ^30 announces the restoration of the

Turkish power, as well as of the Latin church: the conquest of the sultans, Mahomet and Amurath, reconciled

the emperor to the Vatican; and the siege of Constantinople almost tempted him to acquiesce in the double

procession of the Holy Ghost. When Martin the Fifth ascended without a rival the chair of St. Peter, a

friendly intercourse of letters and embassies was revived between the East and West. Ambition on one side,

and distress on the other, dictated the same decent language of charity and peace: the artful Greek expressed a

desire of marrying his six sons to Italian princesses; and the Roman, not less artful, despatched the daughter

of the marquis of Montferrat, with a company of noble virgins, to soften, by their charms, the obstinacy of the

schismatics. Yet under this mask of zeal, a discerning eye will perceive that all was hollow and insincere in

the court and church of Constantinople. According to the vicissitudes of danger and repose, the emperor

advanced or retreated; alternately instructed and disavowed his ministers; and escaped from the importunate

pressure by urging the duty of inquiry, the obligation of collecting the sense of his patriarchs and bishops, and

the impossibility of convening them at a time when the Turkish arms were at the gates of his capital. From a

review of the public transactions it will appear that the Greeks insisted on three successive measures, a

succor, a council, and a final reunion, while the Latins eluded the second, and only promised the first, as a

consequential and voluntary reward of the third. But we have an opportunity of unfolding the most secret

intentions of Manuel, as he explained them in a private conversation without artifice or disguise. In his

declining age, the emperor had associated John Palaeologus, the second of the name, and the eldest of his

sons, on whom he devolved the greatest part of the authority and weight of government. One day, in the

presence only of the historian Phranza, ^31 his favorite chamberlain, he opened to his colleague and

successor the true principle of his negotiations with the pope. ^32 "Our last resource," said Manuel, against

the Turks, "is their fear of our union with the Latins, of the warlike nations of the West, who may arm for our

relief and for their destruction. As often as you are threatened by the miscreants, present this danger before

their eyes. Propose a council; consult on the means; but ever delay and avoid the convocation of an assembly,

which cannot tend either to our spiritual or temporal emolument. The Latins are proud; the Greeks are

obstinate; neither party will recede or retract; and the attempt of a perfect union will confirm the schism,

alienate the churches, and leave us, without hope or defence, at the mercy of the Barbarians." Impatient of

this salutary lesson, the royal youth arose from his seat, and departed in silence; and the wise monarch

(continued Phranza) casting his eyes on me, thus resumed his discourse: "My son deems himself a great and

heroic prince; but, alas! our miserable age does not afford scope for heroism or greatness. His daring spirit

might have suited the happier times of our ancestors; but the present state requires not an emperor, but a

cautious steward of the last relics of our fortunes. Well do I remember the lofty expectations which he built

on our alliance with Mustapha; and much do I fear, that this rash courage will urge the ruin of our house, and

that even religion may precipitate our downfall." Yet the experience and authority of Manuel preserved the

peace, and eluded the council; till, in the seventyeighth year of his age, and in the habit of a monk, he

terminated his career, dividing his precious movables among his children and the poor, his physicians and his

favorite servants. Of his six sons, ^33 Andronicus the Second was invested with the principality of

Thessalonica, and died of a leprosy soon after the sale of that city to the Venetians and its final conquest by

the Turks. Some fortunate incidents had restored Peloponnesus, or the Morea, to the empire; and in his more

prosperous days, Manuel had fortified the narrow isthmus of six miles ^34 with a stone wall and one hundred

and fiftythree towers. The wall was overthrown by the first blast of the Ottomans; the fertile peninsula

might have been sufficient for the four younger brothers, Theodore and Constantine, Demetrius and Thomas;

but they wasted in domestic contests the remains of their strength; and the least successful of the rivals were

[Footnote 30: See Lenfant, Hist. du Concile de Constance, tom. ii. p. 576; and or the ecclesiastical history of

the times, the Annals of Spondanus the Bibliotheque of Dupin, tom. xii., and xxist and xxiid volumes of the

[Footnote 31: From his early youth, George Phranza, or Phranzes, was employed in the service of the state

and palace; and Hanckius (de Script. Byzant. P. i. c. 40) has collected his life from his own writings. He was

no more than fourandtwenty years of age at the death of Manuel, who recommended him in the strongest

terms to his successor: Imprimis vero hunc Phranzen tibi commendo, qui ministravit mihi fideliter et

diligenter (Phranzes, l. ii. c. i.) Yet the emperor John was cold, and he preferred the service of the despots of

[Footnote 32: See Phranzes, l. ii. c. 13. While so many manuscripts of the Greek original are extant in the

libraries of Rome, Milan, the Escurial, it is a matter of shame and reproach, that we should be reduced to the

Latin version, or abstract, of James Pontanus, (ad calcem Theophylact, Simocattae: Ingolstadt, 1604,) so

deficient in accuracy and elegance, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p. 615 620.)

Note: The Greek text of Phranzes was edited by F. C. Alter Vindobonae. It has been reedited by Bekker for

[Footnote 34: The exact measure of the Hexamilion, from sea to sea, was 3800 orgyiae, or toises, of six

Greek feet, (Phranzes, l. i. c. 38,) which would produce a Greek mile, still smaller than that of 660 French

toises, which is assigned by D'Anville, as still in use in Turkey. Five miles are commonly reckoned for the

The eldest of the sons of Manuel, John Palaeologus the Second, was acknowledged, after his father's death, as

the sole emperor of the Greeks. He immediately proceeded to repudiate his wife, and to contract a new

marriage with the princess of Trebizond: beauty was in his eyes the first qualification of an empress; and the

clergy had yielded to his firm assurance, that unless he might be indulged in a divorce, he would retire to a

cloister, and leave the throne to his brother Constantine. The first, and in truth the only, victory of

Palaeologus, was over a Jew, ^35 whom, after a long and learned dispute, he converted to the Christian faith;

and this momentous conquest is carefully recorded in the history of the times. But he soon resumed the

design of uniting the East and West; and, regardless of his father's advice, listened, as it should seem with

sincerity, to the proposal of meeting the pope in a general council beyond the Adriatic. This dangerous

project was encouraged by Martin the Fifth, and coldly entertained by his successor Eugenius, till, after a

tedious negotiation, the emperor received a summons from the Latin assembly of a new character, the

independent prelates of Basil, who styled themselves the representatives and judges of the Catholic church.

[Footnote 35: The first objection of the Jews is on the death of Christ: if it were voluntary, Christ was a

suicide; which the emperor parries with a mystery. They then dispute on the conception of the Virgin, the

The Roman pontiff had fought and conquered in the cause of ecclesiastical freedom; but the victorious clergy

were soon exposed to the tyranny of their deliverer; and his sacred character was invulnerable to those arms

which they found so keen and effectual against the civil magistrate. Their great charter, the right of election,

was annihilated by appeals, evaded by trusts or commendams, disappointed by reversionary grants, and

superseded by previous and arbitrary reservations. ^36 A public auction was instituted in the court of Rome:

the cardinals and favorites were enriched with the spoils of nations; and every country might complain that

the most important and valuable benefices were accumulated on the heads of aliens and absentees. During

their residence at Avignon, the ambition of the popes subsided in the meaner passions of avarice ^37 and

luxury: they rigorously imposed on the clergy the tributes of firstfruits and tenths; but they freely tolerated

the impunity of vice, disorder, and corruption. These manifold scandals were aggravated by the great schism

of the West, which continued above fifty years. In the furious conflicts of Rome and Avignon, the vices of

the rivals were mutually exposed; and their precarious situation degraded their authority, relaxed their

discipline, and multiplied their wants and exactions. To heal the wounds, and restore the monarchy, of the

church, the synods of Pisa and Constance ^38 were successively convened; but these great assemblies,

conscious of their strength, resolved to vindicate the privileges of the Christian aristocracy. From a personal

sentence against two pontiffs, whom they rejected, and a third, their acknowledged sovereign, whom they

deposed, the fathers of Constance proceeded to examine the nature and limits of the Roman supremacy; nor

did they separate till they had established the authority, above the pope, of a general council. It was enacted,

that, for the government and reformation of the church, such assemblies should be held at regular intervals;

and that each synod, before its dissolution, should appoint the time and place of the subsequent meeting. By

the influence of the court of Rome, the next convocation at Sienna was easily eluded; but the bold and

vigorous proceedings of the council of Basil ^39 had almost been fatal to the reigning pontiff, Eugenius the

Fourth. A just suspicion of his design prompted the fathers to hasten the promulgation of their first decree,

that the representatives of the churchmilitant on earth were invested with a divine and spiritual jurisdiction

over all Christians, without excepting the pope; and that a general council could not be dissolved, prorogued,

or transferred, unless by their free deliberation and consent. On the notice that Eugenius had fulminated a bull

for that purpose, they ventured to summon, to admonish, to threaten, to censure the contumacious successor

of St. Peter. After many delays, to allow time for repentance, they finally declared, that, unless he submitted

within the term of sixty days, he was suspended from the exercise of all temporal and ecclesiastical authority.

And to mark their jurisdiction over the prince as well as the priest, they assumed the government of Avignon,

annulled the alienation of the sacred patrimony, and protected Rome from the imposition of new taxes. Their

boldness was justified, not only by the general opinion of the clergy, but by the support and power of the first

monarchs of Christendom: the emperor Sigismond declared himself the servant and protector of the synod;

Germany and France adhered to their cause; the duke of Milan was the enemy of Eugenius; and he was

driven from the Vatican by an insurrection of the Roman people. Rejected at the same time by temporal and

spiritual subjects, submission was his only choice: by a most humiliating bull, the pope repealed his own acts,

and ratified those of the council; incorporated his legates and cardinals with that venerable body; and seemed

to resign himself to the decrees of the supreme legislature. Their fame pervaded the countries of the East: and

it was in their presence that Sigismond received the ambassadors of the Turkish sultan, ^40 who laid at his

feet twelve large vases, filled with robes of silk and pieces of gold. The fathers of Basil aspired to the glory of

reducing the Greeks, as well as the Bohemians, within the pale of the church; and their deputies invited the

emperor and patriarch of Constantinople to unite with an assembly which possessed the confidence of the

Western nations. Palaeologus was not averse to the proposal; and his ambassadors were introduced with due

honors into the Catholic senate. But the choice of the place appeared to be an insuperable obstacle, since he

refused to pass the Alps, or the sea of Sicily, and positively required that the synod should be adjourned to

some convenient city in Italy, or at least on the Danube. The other articles of this treaty were more readily

stipulated: it was agreed to defray the travelling expenses of the emperor, with a train of seven hundred

persons, ^41 to remit an immediate sum of eight thousand ducats ^42 for the accommodation of the Greek

clergy; and in his absence to grant a supply of ten thousand ducats, with three hundred archers and some

galleys, for the protection of Constantinople. The city of Avignon advanced the funds for the preliminary

expenses; and the embarkation was prepared at Marseilles with some difficulty and delay. [Footnote 36: In

the treatise delle Materie Beneficiarie of Fra Paolo, (in the ivth volume of the last, and best, edition of his

works,) the papal system is deeply studied and freely described. Should Rome and her religion be annihilated,

this golden volume may still survive, a philosophical history, and a salutary warning.]

[Footnote 37: Pope John XXII. (in 1334) left behind him, at Avignon, eighteen millions of gold florins, and

the value of seven millions more in plate and jewels. See the Chronicle of John Villani, (l. xi. c. 20, in

Muratori's Collection, tom. xiii. p. 765,) whose brother received the account from the papal treasurers. A

treasure of six or eight millions sterling in the xivth century is enormous, and almost incredible.]

[Footnote 38: A learned and liberal Protestant, M. Lenfant, has given a fair history of the councils of Pisa,

Constance, and Basil, in six volumes in quarto; but the last part is the most hasty and imperfect, except in the

[Footnote 39: The original acts or minutes of the council of Basil are preserved in the public library, in twelve

volumes in folio. Basil was a free city, conveniently situate on the Rhine, and guarded by the arms of the

neighboring and confederate Swiss. In 1459, the university was founded by Pope Pius II., (Aeneas Sylvius,)

who had been secretary to the council. But what is a council, or a university, to the presses o Froben and the

[Footnote 40: This Turkish embassy, attested only by Crantzius, is related with some doubt by the annalist

[Footnote 41: Syropulus, p. 19. In this list, the Greeks appear to have exceeded the real numbers of the clergy

and laity which afterwards attended the emperor and patriarch, but which are not clearly specified by the

great ecclesiarch. The 75,000 florins which they asked in this negotiation of the pope, (p. 9,) were more than

[Footnote 42: I use indifferently the words ducat and florin, which derive their names, the former from the

dukes of Milan, the latter from the republic of Florence. These gold pieces, the first that were coined in Italy,

perhaps in the Latin world, may be compared in weight and value to one third of the English guinea.]

In his distress, the friendship of Palaeologus was disputed by the ecclesiastical powers of the West; but the

dexterous activity of a monarch prevailed over the slow debates and inflexible temper of a republic. The

decrees of Basil continually tended to circumscribe the despotism of the pope, and to erect a supreme and

perpetual tribunal in the church. Eugenius was impatient of the yoke; and the union of the Greeks might

afford a decent pretence for translating a rebellious synod from the Rhine to the Po. The independence of the

fathers was lost if they passed the Alps: Savoy or Avignon, to which they acceded with reluctance, were

described at Constantinople as situate far beyond the pillars of Hercules; ^43 the emperor and his clergy were

apprehensive of the dangers of a long navigation; they were offended by a haughty declaration, that after

suppressing the new heresy of the Bohemians, the council would soon eradicate the old heresy of the Greeks.

^44 On the side of Eugenius, all was smooth, and yielding, and respectful; and he invited the Byzantine

monarch to heal by his presence the schism of the Latin, as well as of the Eastern, church. Ferrara, near the

coast of the Adriatic, was proposed for their amicable interview; and with some indulgence of forgery and

theft, a surreptitious decree was procured, which transferred the synod, with its own consent, to that Italian

city. Nine galleys were equipped for the service at Venice, and in the Isle of Candia; their diligence

anticipated the slower vessels of Basil: the Roman admiral was commissioned to burn, sink, and destroy; ^45

and these priestly squadrons might have encountered each other in the same seas where Athens and Sparta

had formerly contended for the preeminence of glory. Assaulted by the importunity of the factions, who were

ready to fight for the possession of his person, Palaeologus hesitated before he left his palace and country on

a perilous experiment. His father's advice still dwelt on his memory; and reason must suggest, that since the

Latins were divided among themselves, they could never unite in a foreign cause. Sigismond dissuaded the

unreasonable adventure; his advice was impartial, since he adhered to the council; and it was enforced by the

strange belief, that the German Caesar would nominate a Greek his heir and successor in the empire of the

West. ^46 Even the Turkish sultan was a counsellor whom it might be unsafe to trust, but whom it was

dangerous to offend. Amurath was unskilled in the disputes, but he was apprehensive of the union, of the

Christians. From his own treasures, he offered to relieve the wants of the Byzantine court; yet he declared

with seeming magnanimity, that Constantinople should be secure and inviolate, in the absence of her

sovereign. ^47 The resolution of Palaeologus was decided by the most splendid gifts and the most specious

promises: he wished to escape for a while from a scene of danger and distress and after dismissing with an

ambiguous answer the messengers of the council, he declared his intention of embarking in the Roman

galleys. The age of the patriarch Joseph was more susceptible of fear than of hope; he trembled at the perils

of the sea, and expressed his apprehension, that his feeble voice, with thirty perhaps of his orthodox brethren,

would be oppressed in a foreign land by the power and numbers of a Latin synod. He yielded to the royal

mandate, to the flattering assurance, that he would be heard as the oracle of nations, and to the secret wish of

learning from his brother of the West, to deliver the church from the yoke of kings. ^48 The five

crossbearers, or dignitaries, of St.Sophia, were bound to attend his person; and one of these, the great

ecclesiarch or preacher, Sylvester Syropulus, ^49 has composed a free and curious history ^50 of the false

union. ^51 Of the clergy that reluctantly obeyed the summons of the emperor and the patriarch, submission

was the first duty, and patience the most useful virtue. In a chosen list of twenty bishops, we discover the

metropolitan titles of Heracleae and Cyzicus, Nice and Nicomedia, Ephesus and Trebizond, and the personal

merit of Mark and Bessarion who, in the confidence of their learning and eloquence, were promoted to the

episcopal rank. Some monks and philosophers were named to display the science and sanctity of the Greek

church; and the service of the choir was performed by a select band of singers and musicians. The patriarchs

of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, appeared by their genuine or fictitious deputies; the primate of Russia

represented a national church, and the Greeks might contend with the Latins in the extent of their spiritual

empire. The precious vases of St. Sophia were exposed to the winds and waves, that the patriarch might

officiate with becoming splendor: whatever gold the emperor could procure, was expended in the massy

ornaments of his bed and chariot; ^52 and while they affected to maintain the prosperity of their ancient

fortune, they quarrelled for the division of fifteen thousand ducats, the first alms of the Roman pontiff. After

the necessary preparations, John Palaeologus, with a numerous train, accompanied by his brother Demetrius,

and the most respectable persons of the church and state, embarked in eight vessels with sails and oars which

steered through the Turkish Straits of Gallipoli to the Archipelago, the Morea, and the Adriatic Gulf. ^53

[Footnote 43: At the end of the Latin version of Phranzes, we read a long Greek epistle or declamation of

George of Trebizond, who advises the emperor to prefer Eugenius and Italy. He treats with contempt the

schismatic assembly of Basil, the Barbarians of Gaul and Germany, who had conspired to transport the chair

[Footnote 44: Syropulus (p. 26 31) attests his own indignation, and that of his countrymen; and the Basil

deputies, who excused the rash declaration, could neither deny nor alter an act of the council.]

[Footnote 45: The naval orders of the synod were less peremptory, and, till the hostile squadrons appeared,

[Footnote 46: Syropulus mentions the hopes of Palaeologus, (p. 36,) and the last advice of Sigismond,(p. 57.)

At Corfu, the Greek emperor was informed of his friend's death; had he known it sooner, he would have

[Footnote 47: Phranzes himself, though from different motives, was of the advice of Amurath, (l. ii. c. 13.)

Utinam ne synodus ista unquam fuisset, si tantes offensiones et detrimenta paritura erat. This Turkish

embassy is likewise mentioned by Syropulus, (p. 58;) and Amurath kept his word. He might threaten, (p. 125,

[Footnote 48: The reader will smile at the simplicity with which he imparted these hopes to his favorites (p.

92.) Yet it would have been difficult for him to have practised the lessons of Gregory VII.]

[Footnote 49: The Christian name of Sylvester is borrowed from the Latin calendar. In modern Greek, as a

diminutive, is added to the end of words: nor can any reasoning of Creyghton, the editor, excuse his changing

into Sguropulus, (Sguros, fuscus,) the Syropulus of his own manuscript, whose name is subscribed with his

own hand in the acts of the council of Florence. Why might not the author be of Syrian extraction?]

[Footnote 50: From the conclusion of the history, I should fix the date to the year 1444, four years after the

synod, when great ecclesiarch had abdicated his office, (section xii. p. 330 350.) His passions were cooled

by time and retirement; and, although Syropulus is often partial, he is never intemperate.]

[Footnote 51: Vera historia unionis non veroe inter Graecos et Latinos, (Hagae Comitis, 1660, in folio,) was

first published with a loose and florid version, by Robert Creyghton, chaplain to Charles II. in his exile. The

zeal of the editor has prefixed a polemic title, for the beginning of the original is wanting. Syropulus may be

ranked with the best of the Byzantine writers for the merit of his narration, and even of his style; but he is

[Footnote 52: Syropulus (p. 63) simply expresses his intention; and the Latin of Creyghton may afford a

specimen of his florid paraphrase. Ut pompa circumductus noster Imperator Italiae populis aliquis deauratus

[Footnote 53: Although I cannot stop to quote Syropulus for every fact, I will observe that the navigation of

the Greeks from Constantinople to Venice and Ferrara is contained in the ivth section, (p. 67 100,) and that

the historian has the uncommon talent of placing each scene before the reader's eye.]

After a tedious and troublesome navigation of seventyseven days, this religious squadron cast anchor before

Venice; and their reception proclaimed the joy and magnificence of that powerful republic. In the command

of the world, the modest Augustus had never claimed such honors from his subjects as were paid to his feeble

successor by an independent state. Seated on the poop on a lofty throne, he received the visit, or, in the Greek

style, the adoration of the doge and senators. ^54 They sailed in the Bucentaur, which was accompanied by

twelve stately galleys: the sea was overspread with innumerable gondolas of pomp and pleasure; the air

resounded with music and acclamations; the mariners, and even the vessels, were dressed in silk and gold;

and in all the emblems and pageants, the Roman eagles were blended with the lions of St. Mark. The

triumphal procession, ascending the great canal, passed under the bridge of the Rialto; and the Eastern

strangers gazed with admiration on the palaces, the churches, and the populousness of a city, that seems to

float on the bosom of the waves. ^55 They sighed to behold the spoils and trophies with which it had been

decorated after the sack of Constantinople. After a hospitable entertainment of fifteen days, Palaeologus

pursued his journey by land and water from Venice to Ferrara; and on this occasion the pride of the Vatican

was tempered by policy to indulge the ancient dignity of the emperor of the East. He made his entry on a

black horse; but a milkwhite steed, whose trappings were embroidered with golden eagles, was led before

him; and the canopy was borne over his head by the princes of Este, the sons or kinsmen of Nicholas,

marquis of the city, and a sovereign more powerful than himself. ^56 Palaeologus did not alight till he

reached the bottom of the staircase: the pope advanced to the door of the apartment; refused his proffered

genuflection; and, after a paternal embrace, conducted the emperor to a seat on his left hand. Nor would the

patriarch descend from his galley, till a ceremony almost equal, had been stipulated between the bishops of

Rome and Constantinople. The latter was saluted by his brother with a kiss of union and charity; nor would

any of the Greek ecclesiastics submit to kiss the feet of the Western primate. On the opening of the synod, the

place of honor in the centre was claimed by the temporal and ecclesiastical chiefs; and it was only by alleging

that his predecessors had not assisted in person at Nice or Chalcedon, that Eugenius could evade the ancient

precedents of Constantine and Marcian. After much debate, it was agreed that the right and left sides of the

church should be occupied by the two nations; that the solitary chair of St. Peter should be raised the first of

the Latin line; and that the throne of the Greek emperor, at the head of his clergy, should be equal and

[Footnote 54: At the time of the synod, Phranzes was in Peloponnesus: but he received from the despot

Demetrius a faithful account of the honorable reception of the emperor and patriarch both at Venice and

Ferrara, (Dux . . . . sedentem Imperatorem adorat,) which are more slightly mentioned by the Latins, (l. ii. c.

[Footnote 55: The astonishment of a Greek prince and a French ambassador (Memoires de Philippe de

Comines, l. vii. c. 18,) at the sight of Venice, abundantly proves that in the xvth century it was the first and

most splendid of the Christian cities. For the spoils of Constantinople at Venice, see Syropulus, (p. 87.)]

[Footnote 56: Nicholas III. of Este reigned fortyeight years, (A.D. 1393 1441,) and was lord of Ferrara,

Modena, Reggio, Parma, Rovigo, and Commachio. See his Life in Muratori, (Antichita Estense, tom. ii. p.

[Footnote 57: The Latin vulgar was provoked to laughter at the strange dresses of the Greeks, and especially

the length of their garments, their sleeves, and their beards; nor was the emperor distinguished, except by the

purple color, and his diadem or tiara, with a jewel on the top, (Hody de Graecis Illustribus, p. 31.) Yet

another spectator confesses that the Greek fashion was piu grave e piu degna than the Italian. (Vespasiano in

But as soon as festivity and form had given place to a more serious treaty, the Greeks were dissatisfied with

their journey, with themselves, and with the pope. The artful pencil of his emissaries had painted him in a

prosperous state; at the head of the princes and prelates of Europe, obedient at his voice, to believe and to

arm. The thin appearance of the universal synod of Ferrara betrayed his weakness: and the Latins opened the

first session with only five archbishops, eighteen bishops, and ten abbots, the greatest part of whom were the

subjects or countrymen of the Italian pontiff. Except the duke of Burgundy, none of the potentates of the

West condescended to appear in person, or by their ambassadors; nor was it possible to suppress the judicial

acts of Basil against the dignity and person of Eugenius, which were finally concluded by a new election.

Under these circumstances, a truce or delay was asked and granted, till Palaeologus could expect from the

consent of the Latins some temporal reward for an unpopular union; and after the first session, the public

proceedings were adjourned above six months. The emperor, with a chosen band of his favorites and

Janizaries, fixed his summer residence at a pleasant, spacious monastery, six miles from Ferrara; forgot, in

the pleasures of the chase, the distress of the church and state; and persisted in destroying the game, without

listening to the just complaints of the marquis or the husbandman. ^58 In the mean while, his unfortunate

Greeks were exposed to all the miseries of exile and poverty; for the support of each stranger, a monthly

allowance was assigned of three or four gold florins; and although the entire sum did not amount to seven

hundred florins, a long arrear was repeatedly incurred by the indigence or policy of the Roman court. ^59

They sighed for a speedy deliverance, but their escape was prevented by a triple chain: a passport from their

superiors was required at the gates of Ferrara; the government of Venice had engaged to arrest and send back

the fugitives; and inevitable punishment awaited them at Constantinople; excommunication, fines, and a

sentence, which did not respect the sacerdotal dignity, that they should be stripped naked and publicly

whipped. ^60 It was only by the alternative of hunger or dispute that the Greeks could be persuaded to open

the first conference; and they yielded with extreme reluctance to attend from Ferrara to Florence the rear of a

flying synod. This new translation was urged by inevitable necessity: the city was visited by the plague; the

fidelity of the marquis might be suspected; the mercenary troops of the duke of Milan were at the gates; and

as they occupied Romagna, it was not without difficulty and danger that the pope, the emperor, and the

bishops, explored their way through the unfrequented paths of the Apennine. ^61 [Footnote 58: For the

emperor's hunting, see Syropulus, (p. 143, 144, 191.) The pope had sent him eleven miserable hacks; but he

bought a strong and swift horse that came from Russia. The name of Janizaries may surprise; but the name,

rather than the institution, had passed from the Ottoman, to the Byzantine, court, and is often used in the last

[Footnote 59: The Greeks obtained, with much difficulty, that instead of provisions, money should be

distributed, four florins per month to the persons of honorable rank, and three florins to their servants, with an

addition of thirty more to the emperor, twentyfive to the patriarch, and twenty to the prince, or despot,

Demetrius. The payment of the first month amounted to 691 florins, a sum which will not allow us to reckon

above 200 Greeks of every condition. (Syropulus, p. 104, 105.) On the 20th October, 1438, there was an

arrear of four months; in April, 1439, of three; and of five and a half in July, at the time of the union, (p. 172,

[Footnote 60: Syropulus (p. 141, 142, 204, 221) deplores the imprisonment of the Greeks, and the tyranny of

[Footnote 61: The wars of Italy are most clearly represented in the xiiith vol. of the Annals of Muratori. The

schismatic Greek, Syropulus, (p. 145,) appears to have exaggerated the fear and disorder of the pope in his

his retreat from Ferrara to Florence, which is proved by the acts to have been somewhat more decent and

Yet all these obstacles were surmounted by time and policy. The violence of the fathers of Basil rather

promoted than injured the cause of Eugenius; the nations of Europe abhorred the schism, and disowned the

election, of Felix the Fifth, who was successively a duke of Savoy, a hermit, and a pope; and the great princes

were gradually reclaimed by his competitor to a favorable neutrality and a firm attachment. The legates, with

some respectable members, deserted to the Roman army, which insensibly rose in numbers and reputation;

the council of Basil was reduced to thirtynine bishops, and three hundred of the inferior clergy; ^62 while

the Latins of Florence could produce the subscriptions of the pope himself, eight cardinals, two patriarchs,

eight archbishops, fifty two bishops, and forty five abbots, or chiefs of religious orders. After the labor of

nine months, and the debates of twentyfive sessions, they attained the advantage and glory of the reunion of

the Greeks. Four principal questions had been agitated between the two churches; 1. The use of unleaven

bread in the communion of Christ's body. 2. The nature of purgatory. 3. The supremacy of the pope. And, 4.

The single or double procession of the Holy Ghost. The cause of either nation was managed by ten

theological champions: the Latins were supported by the inexhaustible eloquence of Cardinal Julian; and

Mark of Ephesus and Bessarion of Nice were the bold and able leaders of the Greek forces. We may bestow

some praise on the progress of human reason, by observing that the first of these questions was now treated

as an immaterial rite, which might innocently vary with the fashion of the age and country. With regard to the

second, both parties were agreed in the belief of an intermediate state of purgation for the venial sins of the

faithful; and whether their souls were purified by elemental fire was a doubtful point, which in a few years

might be conveniently settled on the spot by the disputants. The claims of supremacy appeared of a more

weighty and substantial kind; yet by the Orientals the Roman bishop had ever been respected as the first of

the five patriarchs; nor did they scruple to admit, that his jurisdiction should be exercised agreeably to the

holy canons; a vague allowance, which might be defined or eluded by occasional convenience. The

procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father alone, or from the Father and the Son, was an article of faith

which had sunk much deeper into the minds of men; and in the sessions of Ferrara and Florence, the Latin

addition of filioque was subdivided into two questions, whether it were legal, and whether it were orthodox.

Perhaps it may not be necessary to boast on this subject of my own impartial indifference; but I must think

that the Greeks were strongly supported by the prohibition of the council of Chalcedon, against adding any

article whatsoever to the creed of Nice, or rather of Constantinople. ^63 In earthly affairs, it is not easy to

conceive how an assembly equal of legislators can bind their successors invested with powers equal to their

own. But the dictates of inspiration must be true and unchangeable; nor should a private bishop, or a

provincial synod, have presumed to innovate against the judgment of the Catholic church. On the substance

of the doctrine, the controversy was equal and endless: reason is confounded by the procession of a deity: the

gospel, which lay on the altar, was silent; the various texts of the fathers might be corrupted by fraud or

entangled by sophistry; and the Greeks were ignorant of the characters and writings of the Latin saints. ^64

Of this at least we may be sure, that neither side could be convinced by the arguments of their opponents.

Prejudice may be enlightened by reason, and a superficial glance may be rectified by a clear and more perfect

view of an object adapted to our faculties. But the bishops and monks had been taught from their infancy to

repeat a form of mysterious words: their national and personal honor depended on the repetition of the same

sounds; and their narrow minds were hardened and inflamed by the acrimony of a public dispute. [Footnote

62: Syropulus is pleased to reckon seven hundred prelates in the council of Basil. The error is manifest, and

perhaps voluntary. That extravagant number could not be supplied by all the ecclesiastics of every degree

who were present at the council, nor by all the absent bishops of the West, who, expressly or tacitly, might

[Footnote 63: The Greeks, who disliked the union, were unwilling to sally from this strong fortress, (p. 178,

193, 195, 202, of Syropulus.) The shame of the Latins was aggravated by their producing an old MS. of the

second council of Nice, with filioque in the Nicene creed. A palpable forgery! (p. 173.)]

[Footnote 64: (Syropulus, p. 109.) See the perplexity of the Greeks, (p. 217, 218, 252, 253, 273.)]

While they were most in a cloud of dust and darkness, the Pope and emperor were desirous of a seeming

union, which could alone accomplish the purposes of their interview; and the obstinacy of public dispute was

softened by the arts of private and personal negotiation. The patriarch Joseph had sunk under the weight of

age and infirmities; his dying voice breathed the counsels of charity and concord, and his vacant benefice

might tempt the hopes of the ambitious clergy. The ready and active obedience of the archbishops of Russia

and Nice, of Isidore and Bessarion, was prompted and recompensed by their speedy promotion to the dignity

of cardinals. Bessarion, in the first debates, had stood forth the most strenuous and eloquent champion of the

Greek church; and if the apostate, the bastard, was reprobated by his country, ^65 he appears in ecclesiastical

story a rare example of a patriot who was recommended to court favor by loud opposition and welltimed

compliance. With the aid of his two spiritual coadjutors, the emperor applied his arguments to the general

situation and personal characters of the bishops, and each was successively moved by authority and example.

Their revenues were in the hands of the Turks, their persons in those of the Latins: an episcopal treasure,

three robes and forty ducats, was soon exhausted: ^66 the hopes of their return still depended on the ships of

Venice and the alms of Rome; and such was their indigence, that their arrears, the payment of a debt, would

be accepted as a favor, and might operate as a bribe. ^67 The danger and relief of Constantinople might

excuse some prudent and pious dissimulation; and it was insinuated, that the obstinate heretics who should

resist the consent of the East and West would be abandoned in a hostile land to the revenge or justice of the

Roman pontiff. ^68 In the first private assembly of the Greeks, the formulary of union was approved by

twentyfour, and rejected by twelve, members; but the five crossbearers of St. Sophia, who aspired to

represent the patriarch, were disqualified by ancient discipline; and their right of voting was transferred to the

obsequious train of monks, grammarians, and profane laymen. The will of the monarch produced a false and

servile unanimity, and no more than two patriots had courage to speak their own sentiments and those of their

country. Demetrius, the emperor's brother, retired to Venice, that he might not be witness of the union; and

Mark of Ephesus, mistaking perhaps his pride for his conscience, disclaimed all communion with the Latin

heretics, and avowed himself the champion and confessor of the orthodox creed. ^69 In the treaty between

the two nations, several forms of consent were proposed, such as might satisfy the Latins, without

dishonoring the Greeks; and they weighed the scruples of words and syllables, till the theological balance

trembled with a slight preponderance in favor of the Vatican. It was agreed (I must entreat the attention of the

reader) that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son, as from one principle and one substance;

that he proceeds by the Son, being of the same nature and substance, and that he proceeds from the Father

and the Son, by one spiration and production. It is less difficult to understand the articles of the preliminary

treaty; that the pope should defray all the expenses of the Greeks in their return home; that he should annually

maintain two galleys and three hundred soldiers for the defence of Constantinople: that all the ships which

transported pilgrims to Jerusalem should be obliged to touch at that port; that as often as they were required,

the pope should furnish ten galleys for a year, or twenty for six months; and that he should powerfully solicit

the princes of Europe, if the emperor had occasion for land forces. [Footnote 65: See the polite altercation of

Marc and Bessarion in Syropulus, (p. 257,) who never dissembles the vices of his own party, and fairly

[Footnote 66: For the poverty of the Greek bishops, see a remarkable passage of Ducas, (c. 31.) One had

possessed, for his whole property, three old gowns, By teaching oneandtwenty years in his monastery,

Bessarion himself had collected forty gold florins; but of these, the archbishop had expended twentyeight in

his voyage from Peloponnesus, and the remainder at Constantinople, (Syropulus, p. 127.)]

[Footnote 67: Syropulus denies that the Greeks received any money before they had subscribed the art of

union, (p. 283:) yet he relates some suspicious circumstances; and their bribery and corruption are positively

[Footnote 68: The Greeks most piteously express their own fears of exile and perpetual slavery, (Syropul. p.

[Footnote 69: I had forgot another popular and orthodox protester: a favorite bound, who usually lay quiet on

the footcloth of the emperor's throne but who barked most furiously while the act of union was reading

without being silenced by the soothing or the lashes of the royal attendants, (Syropul. p. 265, 266.)]

The same year, and almost the same day, were marked by the deposition of Eugenius at Basil; and, at

Florence, by his reunion of the Greeks and Latins. In the former synod, (which he styled indeed an assembly

of daemons,) the pope was branded with the guilt of simony, perjury, tyranny, heresy, and schism; ^70 and

declared to be incorrigible in his vices, unworthy of any title, and incapable of holding any ecclesiastical

office. In the latter, he was revered as the true and holy vicar of Christ, who, after a separation of six hundred

years, had reconciled the Catholics of the East and West in one fold, and under one shepherd. The act of

union was subscribed by the pope, the emperor, and the principal members of both churches; even by those

who, like Syropulus, ^71 had been deprived of the right of voting. Two copies might have sufficed for the

East and West; but Eugenius was not satisfied, unless four authentic and similar transcripts were signed and

attested as the monuments of his victory. ^72 On a memorable day, the sixth of July, the successors of St.

Peter and Constantine ascended their thrones the two nations assembled in the cathedral of Florence; their

representatives, Cardinal Julian and Bessarion archbishop of Nice, appeared in the pulpit, and, after reading

in their respective tongues the act of union, they mutually embraced, in the name and the presence of their

applauding brethren. The pope and his ministers then officiated according to the Roman liturgy; the creed

was chanted with the addition of filioque; the acquiescence of the Greeks was poorly excused by their

ignorance of the harmonious, but inarticulate sounds; ^73 and the more scrupulous Latins refused any public

celebration of the Byzantine rite. Yet the emperor and his clergy were not totally unmindful of national

honor. The treaty was ratified by their consent: it was tacitly agreed that no innovation should be attempted in

their creed or ceremonies: they spared, and secretly respected, the generous firmness of Mark of Ephesus;

and, on the decease of the patriarch, they refused to elect his successor, except in the cathedral of St. Sophia.

In the distribution of public and private rewards, the liberal pontiff exceeded their hopes and his promises: the

Greeks, with less pomp and pride, returned by the same road of Ferrara and Venice; and their reception at

Constantinople was such as will be described in the following chapter. ^74 The success of the first trial

encouraged Eugenius to repeat the same edifying scenes; and the deputies of the Armenians, the Maronites,

the Jacobites of Syria and Egypt, the Nestorians and the Aethiopians, were successively introduced, to kiss

the feet of the Roman pontiff, and to announce the obedience and the orthodoxy of the East. These Oriental

embassies, unknown in the countries which they presumed to represent, ^75 diffused over the West the fame

of Eugenius; and a clamor was artfully propagated against the remnant of a schism in Switzerland and Savoy,

which alone impeded the harmony of the Christian world. The vigor of opposition was succeeded by the

lassitude of despair: the council of Basil was silently dissolved; and Felix, renouncing the tiara, again

withdrew to the devout or delicious hermitage of Ripaille. ^76 A general peace was secured by mutual acts of

oblivion and indemnity: all ideas of reformation subsided; the popes continued to exercise and abuse their

ecclesiastical despotism; nor has Rome been since disturbed by the mischiefs of a contested election. ^77

[Footnote 70: From the original Lives of the Popes, in Muratori's Collection, (tom. iii. p. ii. tom. xxv.,) the

manners of Eugenius IV. appear to have been decent, and even exemplary. His situation, exposed to the

[Footnote 71: Syropulus, rather than subscribe, would have assisted, as the least evil, at the ceremony of the

union. He was compelled to do both; and the great ecclesiarch poorly excuses his submission to the emperor,

[Footnote 72: None of these original acts of union can at present be produced. Of the ten MSS. that are

preserved, (five at Rome, and the remainder at Florence, Bologna, Venice, Paris, and London,) nine have

been examined by an accurate critic, (M. de Brequigny,) who condemns them for the variety and

imperfections of the Greek signatures. Yet several of these may be esteemed as authentic copies, which were

subscribed at Florence, before (26th of August, 1439) the final separation of the pope and emperor,

[Footnote 74: In their return, the Greeks conversed at Bologna with the ambassadors of England: and after

some questions and answers, these impartial strangers laughed at the pretended union of Florence, (Syropul.

[Footnote 75: So nugatory, or rather so fabulous, are these reunions of the Nestorians, Jacobites, that I have

turned over, without success, the Bibliotheca Orientalis of Assemannus, a faithful slave of the Vatican.]

[Footnote 76: Ripaille is situate near Thonon in Savoy, on the southern side of the Lake of Geneva. It is now

a Carthusian abbey; and Mr. Addison (Travels into Italy, vol. ii. p. 147, 148, of Baskerville's edition of his

works) has celebrated the place and the founder. Aeneas Sylvius, and the fathers of Basil, applaud the austere

life of the ducal hermit; but the French and Italian proverbs most unluckily attest the popular opinion of his

[Footnote 77: In this account of the councils of Basil, Ferrara, and Florence, I have consulted the original

acts, which fill the xviith and xviiith tome of the edition of Venice, and are closed by the perspicuous, though

partial, history of Augustin Patricius, an Italian of the xvth century. They are digested and abridged by Dupin,

(Bibliotheque Eccles. tom. xii.,) and the continuator of Fleury, (tom. xxii.;) and the respect of the Gallican

church for the adverse parties confines their members to an awkward moderation.]

The journeys of three emperors were unavailing for their temporal, or perhaps their spiritual, salvation; but

they were productive of a beneficial consequence the revival of the Greek learning in Italy, from whence it

was propagated to the last nations of the West and North. In their lowest servitude and depression, the

subjects of the Byzantine throne were still possessed of a golden key that could unlock the treasures of

antiquity; of a musical and prolific language, that gives a soul to the objects of sense, and a body to the

abstractions of philosophy. Since the barriers of the monarchy, and even of the capital, had been trampled

under foot, the various Barbarians had doubtless corrupted the form and substance of the national dialect; and

ample glossaries have been composed, to interpret a multitude of words, of Arabic, Turkish, Sclavonian,

Latin, or French origin. ^78 But a purer idiom was spoken in the court and taught in the college; and the

flourishing state of the language is described, and perhaps embellished, by a learned Italian, ^79 who, by a

long residence and noble marriage, ^80 was naturalized at Constantinople about thirty years before the

Turkish conquest. "The vulgar speech," says Philelphus, ^81 "has been depraved by the people, and infected

by the multitude of strangers and merchants, who every day flock to the city and mingle with the inhabitants.

It is from the disciples of such a school that the Latin language received the versions of Aristotle and Plato;

so obscure in sense, and in spirit so poor. But the Greeks who have escaped the contagion, are those whom

we follow; and they alone are worthy of our imitation. In familiar discourse, they still speak the tongue of

Aristophanes and Euripides, of the historians and philosophers of Athens; and the style of their writings is

still more elaborate and correct. The persons who, by their birth and offices, are attached to the Byzantine

court, are those who maintain, with the least alloy, the ancient standard of elegance and purity; and the native

graces of language most conspicuously shine among the noble matrons, who are excluded from all

intercourse with foreigners. With foreigners do I say? They live retired and sequestered from the eyes of their

fellowcitizens. Seldom are they seen in the streets; and when they leave their houses, it is in the dusk of

evening, on visits to the churches and their nearest kindred. On these occasions, they are on horseback,

covered with a veil, and encompassed by their parents, their husbands, or their servants." ^82

[Footnote 78: In the first attempt, Meursius collected 3600 Graecobarbarous words, to which, in a second

edition, he subjoined 1800 more; yet what plenteous gleanings did he leave to Portius, Ducange, Fabrotti, the

Bollandists, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. x. p. 101, Some Persic words may be found in Xenophon, and some

Latin ones in Plutarch; and such is the inevitable effect of war and commerce; but the form and substance of

[Footnote 79: The life of Francis Philelphus, a sophist, proud, restless, and rapacious, has been diligently

composed by Lancelot (Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. x. p. 691 751) (Istoria della

Letteratura Italiana, tom. vii. p. 282 294,) for the most part from his own letters. His elaborate writings, and

those of his contemporaries, are forgotten; but their familiar epistles still describe the men and the times.]

[Footnote 80: He married, and had perhaps debauched, the daughter of John, and the granddaughter of

Manuel Chrysoloras. She was young, beautiful, and wealthy; and her noble family was allied to the Dorias of

[Footnote 81: Graeci quibus lingua depravata non sit . . . . ita loquuntur vulgo hac etiam tempestate ut

Aristophanes comicus, aut Euripides tragicus, ut oratores omnes, ut historiographi, ut philosophi . . . . litterati

autem homines et doctius et emendatius . . . . Nam viri aulici veterem sermonis dignitatem atque elegantiam

retinebant in primisque ipsae nobiles mulieres; quibus cum nullum esset omnino cum viris peregrinis

commercium, merus ille ac purus Graecorum sermo servabatur intactus, (Philelph. Epist. ad ann. 1451, apud

Hodium, p. 188, 189.) He observes in another passage, uxor illa mea Theodora locutione erat admodum

[Footnote 82: Philelphus, absurdly enough, derives this Greek or Oriental jealousy from the manners of

Among the Greeks a numerous and opulent clergy was dedicated to the service of religion: their monks and

bishops have ever been distinguished by the gravity and austerity of their manners; nor were they diverted,

like the Latin priests, by the pursuits and pleasures of a secular, and even military, life. After a large

deduction for the time and talent that were lost in the devotion, the laziness, and the discord, of the church

and cloister, the more inquisitive and ambitious minds would explore the sacred and profane erudition of their

native language. The ecclesiastics presided over the education of youth; the schools of philosophy and

eloquence were perpetuated till the fall of the empire; and it may be affirmed, that more books and more

knowledge were included within the walls of Constantinople, than could be dispersed over the extensive

countries of the West. ^83 But an important distinction has been already noticed: the Greeks were stationary

or retrograde, while the Latins were advancing with a rapid and progressive motion. The nations were excited

by the spirit of independence and emulation; and even the little world of the Italian states contained more

people and industry than the decreasing circle of the Byzantine empire. In Europe, the lower ranks of society

were relieved from the yoke of feudal servitude; and freedom is the first step to curiosity and knowledge. The

use, however rude and corrupt, of the Latin tongue had been preserved by superstition; the universities, from

Bologna to Oxford, ^84 were peopled with thousands of scholars; and their misguided ardor might be

directed to more liberal and manly studies. In the resurrection of science, Italy was the first that cast away her

shroud; and the eloquent Petrarch, by his lessons and his example, may justly be applauded as the first

harbinger of day. A purer style of composition, a more generous and rational strain of sentiment, flowed from

the study and imitation of the writers of ancient Rome; and the disciples of Cicero and Virgil approached,

with reverence and love, the sanctuary of their Grecian masters. In the sack of Constantinople, the French,

and even the Venetians, had despised and destroyed the works of Lysippus and Homer: the monuments of art

may be annihilated by a single blow; but the immortal mind is renewed and multiplied by the copies of the

pen; and such copies it was the ambition of Petrarch and his friends to possess and understand. The arms of

the Turks undoubtedly pressed the flight of the Muses; yet we may tremble at the thought, that Greece might

have been overwhelmed, with her schools and libraries, before Europe had emerged from the deluge of

barbarism; that the seeds of science might have been scattered by the winds, before the Italian soil was

prepared for their cultivation. [Footnote 83: See the state of learning in the xiiith and xivth centuries, in the

[Footnote 84: At the end of the xvth century, there existed in Europe about fifty universities, and of these the

foundation of ten or twelve is prior to the year 1300. They were crowded in proportion to their scarcity.

Bologna contained 10,000 students, chiefly of the civil law. In the year 1357 the number at Oxford had

decreased from 30,000 to 6000 scholars, (Henry's History of Great Britain, vol. iv. p. 478.) Yet even this

decrease is much superior to the present list of the members of the university.]

The most learned Italians of the fifteenth century have confessed and applauded the restoration of Greek

literature, after a long oblivion of many hundred years. ^85 Yet in that country, and beyond the Alps, some

names are quoted; some profound scholars, who in the darker ages were honorably distinguished by their

knowledge of the Greek tongue; and national vanity has been loud in the praise of such rare examples of

erudition. Without scrutinizing the merit of individuals, truth must observe, that their science is without a

cause, and without an effect; that it was easy for them to satisfy themselves and their more ignorant

contemporaries; and that the idiom, which they had so marvellously acquired was transcribed in few

manuscripts, and was not taught in any university of the West. In a corner of Italy, it faintly existed as the

popular, or at least as the ecclesiastical dialect. ^86 The first impression of the Doric and Ionic colonies has

never been completely erased: the Calabrian churches were long attached to the throne of Constantinople: and

the monks of St. Basil pursued their studies in Mount Athos and the schools of the East. Calabria was the

native country of Barlaam, who has already appeared as a sectary and an ambassador; and Barlaam was the

first who revived, beyond the Alps, the memory, or at least the writings, of Homer. ^87 He is described, by

Petrarch and Boccace, ^88 as a man of diminutive stature, though truly great in the measure of learning and

genius; of a piercing discernment, though of a slow and painful elocution. For many ages (as they affirm)

Greece had not produced his equal in the knowledge of history, grammar, and philosophy; and his merit was

celebrated in the attestations of the princes and doctors of Constantinople. One of these attestations is still

extant; and the emperor Cantacuzene, the protector of his adversaries, is forced to allow, that Euclid,

Aristotle, and Plato, were familiar to that profound and subtle logician. ^89 In the court of Avignon, he

formed an intimate connection with Petrarch, ^90 the first of the Latin scholars; and the desire of mutual

instruction was the principle of their literary commerce. The Tuscan applied himself with eager curiosity and

assiduous diligence to the study of the Greek language; and in a laborious struggle with the dryness and

difficulty of the first rudiments, he began to reach the sense, and to feel the spirit, of poets and philosophers,

whose minds were congenial to his own. But he was soon deprived of the society and lessons of this useful

assistant: Barlaam relinquished his fruitless embassy; and, on his return to Greece, he rashly provoked the

swarms of fanatic monks, by attempting to substitute the light of reason to that of their navel. After a

separation of three years, the two friends again met in the court of Naples: but the generous pupil renounced

the fairest occasion of improvement; and by his recommendation Barlaam was finally settled in a small

bishopric of his native Calabria. ^91 The manifold avocations of Petrarch, love and friendship, his various

correspondence and frequent journeys, the Roman laurel, and his elaborate compositions in prose and verse,

in Latin and Italian, diverted him from a foreign idiom; and as he advanced in life, the attainment of the

Greek language was the object of his wishes rather than of his hopes. When he was about fifty years of age, a

Byzantine ambassador, his friend, and a master of both tongues, presented him with a copy of Homer; and the

answer of Petrarch is at one expressive of his eloquence, gratitude, and regret. After celebrating the

generosity of the donor, and the value of a gift more precious in his estimation than gold or rubies, he thus

proceeds: "Your present of the genuine and original text of the divine poet, the fountain of all inventions, is

worthy of yourself and of me: you have fulfilled your promise, and satisfied my desires. Yet your liberality is

still imperfect: with Homer you should have given me yourself; a guide, who could lead me into the fields of

light, and disclose to my wondering eyes the spacious miracles of the Iliad and Odyssey. But, alas! Homer is

dumb, or I am deaf; nor is it in my power to enjoy the beauty which I possess. I have seated him by the side

of Plato, the prince of poets near the prince of philosophers; and I glory in the sight of my illustrious guests.

Of their immortal writings, whatever had been translated into the Latin idiom, I had already acquired; but, if

there be no profit, there is some pleasure, in beholding these venerable Greeks in their proper and national

habit. I am delighted with the aspect of Homer; and as often as I embrace the silent volume, I exclaim with a

sigh, Illustrious bard! with what pleasure should I listen to thy song, if my sense of hearing were not

obstructed and lost by the death of one friend, and in the muchlamented absence of another. Nor do I yet

despair; and the example of Cato suggests some comfort and hope, since it was in the last period of age that

[Footnote 85: Of those writers who professedly treat of the restoration of the Greek learning in Italy, the two

principal are Hodius, Dr. Humphrey Hody, (de Graecis Illustribus, Linguae Graecae Literarumque

humaniorum Instauratoribus; Londini, 1742, in large octavo,) and Tiraboschi, (Istoria della Letteratura

Italiana, tom. v. p. 364 377, tom. vii. p. 112 143.) The Oxford professor is a laborious scholar, but the

[Footnote 86: In Calabria quae olim magna Graecia dicebatur, coloniis Graecis repleta, remansit quaedam

linguae veteris, cognitio, (Hodius, p. 2.) If it were eradicated by the Romans, it was revived and perpetuated

by the monks of St. Basil, who possessed seven convents at Rossano alone, (Giannone, Istoria di Napoli, tom.

[Footnote 87: Ii Barbari (says Petrarch, the French and Germans) vix, non dicam libros sed nomen Homeri

audiverunt. Perhaps, in that respect, the xiiith century was less happy than the age of Charlemagne.]

[Footnote 88: See the character of Barlaam, in Boccace de Genealog. Deorum, l. xv. c. 6.]

[Footnote 90: For the connection of Petrarch and Barlaam, and the two interviews at Avignon in 1339, and at

Naples in 1342, see the excellent Memoires sur la Vie de Petrarque, tom. i. p. 406 410, tom. ii. p. 74 77.]

[Footnote 91: The bishopric to which Barlaam retired, was the old Locri, in the middle ages. Scta. Cyriaca,

and by corruption Hieracium, Gerace, (Dissert. Chorographica Italiae Medii Aevi, p. 312.) The dives opum of

the Norman times soon lapsed into poverty, since even the church was poor: yet the town still contains 3000

[Footnote 92: I will transcribe a passage from this epistle of Petrarch, (Famil. ix. 2;) Donasti Homerum non in

alienum sermonem Alienum sermonen violento alveo derivatum, sed ex ipsis Graeci eloquii scatebris, et

qualis divino illi profluxit ingenio . . . . Sine tua voce Homerus tuus apud me mutus, immo vero ego apud

illum surdus sum. Gaudeo tamen vel adspectu solo, ac saepe illum amplexus atque suspirans dico, O magne

The prize which eluded the efforts of Petrarch, was obtained by the fortune and industry of his friend

Boccace, the father of the Tuscan prose. That popular writer, who derives his reputation from the Decameron,

a hundred novels of pleasantry and love, may aspire to the more serious praise of restoring in Italy the study

of the Greek language. In the year one thousand three hundred and sixty, a disciple of Barlaam, whose name

was Leo, or Leontius Pilatus, was detained in his way to Avignon by the advice and hospitality of Boccace,

who lodged the stranger in his house, prevailed on the republic of Florence to allow him an annual stipend,

and devoted his leisure to the first Greek professor, who taught that language in the Western countries of

Europe. The appearance of Leo might disgust the most eager disciple, he was clothed in the mantle of a

philosopher, or a mendicant; his countenance was hideous; his face was overshadowed with black hair; his

beard long an uncombed; his deportment rustic; his temper gloomy and inconstant; nor could he grace his

discourse with the ornaments, or even the perspicuity, of Latin elocution. But his mind was stored with a

treasure of Greek learning: history and fable, philosophy and grammar, were alike at his command; and he

read the poems of Homer in the schools of Florence. It was from his explanation that Boccace composed ^*

and transcribed a literal prose version of the Iliad and Odyssey, which satisfied the thirst of his friend

Petrarch, and which, perhaps, in the succeeding century, was clandestinely used by Laurentius Valla, the

Latin interpreter. It was from his narratives that the same Boccace collected the materials for his treatise on

the genealogy of the heathen gods, a work, in that age, of stupendous erudition, and which he ostentatiously

sprinkled with Greek characters and passages, to excite the wonder and applause of his more ignorant

readers. ^94 The first steps of learning are slow and laborious; no more than ten votaries of Homer could be

enumerated in all Italy; and neither Rome, nor Venice, nor Naples, could add a single name to this studious

catalogue. But their numbers would have multiplied, their progress would have been accelerated, if the

inconstant Leo, at the end of three years, had not relinquished an honorable and beneficial station. In his

passage, Petrarch entertained him at Padua a short time: he enjoyed the scholar, but was justly offended with

the gloomy and unsocial temper of the man. Discontented with the world and with himself, Leo depreciated

his present enjoyments, while absent persons and objects were dear to his imagination. In Italy he was a

Thessalian, in Greece a native of Calabria: in the company of the Latins he disdained their language, religion,

and manners: no sooner was he landed at Constantinople, than he again sighed for the wealth of Venice and

the elegance of Florence. His Italian friends were deaf to his importunity: he depended on their curiosity and

indulgence, and embarked on a second voyage; but on his entrance into the Adriatic, the ship was assailed by

a tempest, and the unfortunate teacher, who like Ulysses had fastened himself to the mast, was struck dead by

a flash of lightning. The humane Petrarch dropped a tear on his disaster; but he was most anxious to learn

whether some copy of Euripides or Sophocles might not be saved from the hands of the mariners. ^95

[Footnote 93: For the life and writings of Boccace, who was born in 1313, and died in 1375, Fabricius

(Bibliot. Latin. Medii Aevi, tom. i. p. 248, and Tiraboschi (tom. v. p. 83, 439 451) may be consulted. The

editions, versions, imitations of his novels, are innumerable. Yet he was ashamed to communicate that

trifling, and perhaps scandalous, work to Petrarch, his respectable friend, in whose letters and memoirs he

[Footnote *: This translation of Homer was by Pilatus, not by Boccacio. See Halleza, Hist. of Lit. vol. i. p.

[Footnote 94: Boccace indulges an honest vanity: Ostentationis causa Graeca carmina adscripsi . . . . jure utor

meo; meum est hoc decus, mea gloria scilicet inter Etruscos Graecis uti carminibus. Nonne ego fui qui

Leontium Pilatum, (de Genealogia Deorum, l. xv. c. 7, a work which, though now forgotten, has run through

[Footnote 95: Leontius, or Leo Pilatus, is sufficiently made known by Hody, (p. 2 11,) and the abbe de

Sade, (Vie de Petrarque, tom. iii. p. 625 634, 670 673,) who has very happily caught the lively and

But the faint rudiments of Greek learning, which Petrarch had encouraged and Boccace had planted, soon

withered and expired. The succeeding generation was content for a while with the improvement of Latin

eloquence; nor was it before the end of the fourteenth century that a new and perpetual flame was rekindled

in Italy. ^96 Previous to his own journey the emperor Manuel despatched his envoys and orators to implore

the compassion of the Western princes. Of these envoys, the most conspicuous, or the most learned, was

Manuel Chrysoloras, ^97 of noble birth, and whose Roman ancestors are supposed to have migrated with the

great Constantine. After visiting the courts of France and England, where he obtained some contributions and

more promises, the envoy was invited to assume the office of a professor; and Florence had again the honor

of this second invitation. By his knowledge, not only of the Greek, but of the Latin tongue, Chrysoloras

deserved the stipend, and surpassed the expectation, of the republic. His school was frequented by a crowd of

disciples of every rank and age; and one of these, in a general history, has described his motives and his

success. "At that time," says Leonard Aretin, ^98 "I was a student of the civil law; but my soul was inflamed

with the love of letters; and I bestowed some application on the sciences of logic and rhetoric. On the arrival

of Manuel, I hesitated whether I should desert my legal studies, or relinquish this golden opportunity; and

thus, in the ardor of youth, I communed with my own mind Wilt thou be wanting to thyself and thy

fortune? Wilt thou refuse to be introduced to a familiar converse with Homer, Plato, and Demosthenes; with

those poets, philosophers, and orators, of whom such wonders are related, and who are celebrated by every

age as the great masters of human science? Of professors and scholars in civil law, a sufficient supply will

always be found in our universities; but a teacher, and such a teacher, of the Greek language, if he once be

suffered to escape, may never afterwards be retrieved. Convinced by these reasons, I gave myself to

Chrysoloras; and so strong was my passion, that the lessons which I had imbibed in the day were the constant

object of my nightly dreams." ^99 At the same time and place, the Latin classics were explained by John of

Ravenna, the domestic pupil of Petrarch; ^100 the Italians, who illustrated their age and country, were formed

in this double school; and Florence became the fruitful seminary of Greek and Roman erudition. ^101 The

presence of the emperor recalled Chrysoloras from the college to the court; but he afterwards taught at Pavia

and Rome with equal industry and applause. The remainder of his life, about fifteen years, was divided

between Italy and Constantinople, between embassies and lessons. In the noble office of enlightening a

foreign nation, the grammarian was not unmindful of a more sacred duty to his prince and country; and

Emanuel Chrysoloras died at Constance on a public mission from the emperor to the council.

[Footnote 96: Dr. Hody (p. 54) is angry with Leonard Aretin, Guarinus, Paulus Jovius, for affirming, that the

Greek letters were restored in Italy post septingentos annos; as if, says he, they had flourished till the end of

the viith century. These writers most probably reckoned from the last period of the exarchate; and the

presence of the Greek magistrates and troops at Ravenna and Rome must have preserved, in some degree, the

[Footnote 97: See the article of Emanuel, or Manuel Chrysoloras, in Hody (p 12 54) and Tiraboschi, (tom.

vii. p. 113 118.) The precise date of his arrival floats between the years 1390 and 1400, and is only

[Footnote 98: The name of Aretinus has been assumed by five or six natives of Arezzo in Tuscany, of whom

the most famous and the most worthless lived in the xvith century. Leonardus Brunus Aretinus, the disciple

of Chrysoloras, was a linguist, an orator, and an historian, the secretary of four successive popes, and the

chancellor of the republic of Florence, where he died A.D. 1444, at the age of seventyfive, (Fabric. Bibliot.

[Footnote 99: See the passage in Aretin. Commentario Rerum suo Tempore in Italia gestarum, apud Hodium,

[Footnote 100: In this domestic discipline, Petrarch, who loved the youth, often complains of the eager

curiosity, restless temper, and proud feelings, which announce the genius and glory of a riper age, (Memoires

[Footnote 101: Hinc Graecae Latinaeque scholae exortae sunt, Guarino Philelpho, Leonardo Aretino,

Caroloque, ac plerisque aliis tanquam ex equo Trojano prodeuntibus, quorum emulatione multa ingenia

deinceps ad laudem excitata sunt, (Platina in Bonifacio IX.) Another Italian writer adds the names of Paulus

Petrus Vergerius, Omnibonus Vincentius, Poggius, Franciscus Barbarus, But I question whether a rigid

chronology would allow Chrysoloras all these eminent scholars, (Hodius, p. 25 27,

After his example, the restoration of the Greek letters in Italy was prosecuted by a series of emigrants, who

were destitute of fortune, and endowed with learning, or at least with language. From the terror or oppression

of the Turkish arms, the natives of Thessalonica and Constantinople escaped to a land of freedom, curiosity,

and wealth. The synod introduced into Florence the lights of the Greek church, and the oracles of the Platonic

philosophy; and the fugitives who adhered to the union, had the double merit of renouncing their country, not

only for the Christian, but for the catholic cause. A patriot, who sacrifices his party and conscience to the

allurements of favor, may be possessed, however, of the private and social virtues: he no longer hears the

reproachful epithets of slave and apostate; and the consideration which he acquires among his new associates

will restore in his own eyes the dignity of his character. The prudent conformity of Bessarion was rewarded

with the Roman purple: he fixed his residence in Italy; and the Greek cardinal, the titular patriarch of

Constantinople, was respected as the chief and protector of his nation: ^102 his abilities were exercised in the

legations of Bologna, Venice, Germany, and France; and his election to the chair of St. Peter floated for a

moment on the uncertain breath of a conclave. ^103 His ecclesiastical honors diffused a splendor and

preeminence over his literary merit and service: his palace was a school; as often as the cardinal visited the

Vatican, he was attended by a learned train of both nations; ^104 of men applauded by themselves and the

public; and whose writings, now overspread with dust, were popular and useful in their own times. I shall not

attempt to enumerate the restorers of Grecian literature in the fifteenth century; and it may be sufficient to

mention with gratitude the names of Theodore Gaza, of George of Trebizond, of John Argyropulus, and

Demetrius Chalcocondyles, who taught their native language in the schools of Florence and Rome. Their

labors were not inferior to those of Bessarion, whose purple they revered, and whose fortune was the secret

object of their envy. But the lives of these grammarians were humble and obscure: they had declined the

lucrative paths of the church; their dress and manners secluded them from the commerce of the world; and

since they were confined to the merit, they might be content with the rewards, of learning. From this

character, Janus Lascaris ^105 will deserve an exception. His eloquence, politeness, and Imperial descent,

recommended him to the French monarch; and in the same cities he was alternately employed to teach and to

negotiate. Duty and interest prompted them to cultivate the study of the Latin language; and the most

successful attained the faculty of writing and speaking with fluency and elegance in a foreign idiom. But they

ever retained the inveterate vanity of their country: their praise, or at least their esteem, was reserved for the

national writers, to whom they owed their fame and subsistence; and they sometimes betrayed their contempt

in licentious criticism or satire on Virgil's poetry, and the oratory of Tully. ^106 The superiority of these

masters arose from the familiar use of a living language; and their first disciples were incapable of discerning

how far they had degenerated from the knowledge, and even the practice of their ancestors. A vicious

pronunciation, ^107 which they introduced, was banished from the schools by the reason of the succeeding

age. Of the power of the Greek accents they were ignorant; and those musical notes, which, from an Attic

tongue, and to an Attic ear, must have been the secret soul of harmony, were to their eyes, as to our own, no

more than minute and unmeaning marks, in prose superfluous and troublesome in verse. The art of grammar

they truly possessed; the valuable fragments of Apollonius and Herodian were transfused into their lessons;

and their treatises of syntax and etymology, though devoid of philosophic spirit, are still useful to the Greek

student. In the shipwreck of the Byzantine libraries, each fugitive seized a fragment of treasure, a copy of

some author, who without his industry might have perished: the transcripts were multiplied by an assiduous,

and sometimes an elegant pen; and the text was corrected and explained by their own comments, or those of

the elder scholiasts. The sense, though not the spirit, of the Greek classics, was interpreted to the Latin world:

the beauties of style evaporate in a version; but the judgment of Theodore Gaza selected the more solid works

of Aristotle and Theophrastus, and their natural histories of animals and plants opened a rich fund of genuine

and experimental science. [Footnote 102: See in Hody the article of Bessarion, (p. 136 177.) Theodore

Gaza, George of Trebizond, aud the rest of the Greeks whom I have named or omitted, are inserted in their

proper chapters of his learned work. See likewise Tiraboschi, in the 1st and 2d parts of the vith tome.]

[Footnote 103: The cardinals knocked at his door, but his conclavist refused to interrupt the studies of

Bessarion: "Nicholas," said he, "thy respect has cost thee a hat, and me the tiara."

Note: Roscoe (Life of Lorenzo de Medici, vol. i. p. 75) considers that Hody has refuted this "idle tale." M.]

[Footnote 104: Such as George of Trebizond, Theodore Gaza, Argyropulus, Andronicus of Thessalonica,

Philelphus, Poggius, Blondus, Nicholas Perrot, Valla, Campanus, Platina, Viri (says Hody, with the pious

[Footnote 105: He was born before the taking of Constantinople, but his honorable life was stretched far into

the xvith century, (A.D. 1535.) Leo X. and Francis I. were his noblest patrons, under whose auspices he

founded the Greek colleges of Rome and Paris, (Hody, p. 247 275.) He left posterity in France; but the

counts de Vintimille, and their numerous branches, derive the name of Lascaris from a doubtful marriage in

the xiiith century with the daughter of a Greek emperor (Ducange, Fam. Byzant. p. 224 230.)]

[Footnote 106: Two of his epigrams against Virgil, and three against Tully, are preserved and refuted by

Franciscus Floridus, who can find no better names than Graeculus ineptus et impudens, (Hody, p. 274.) In our

own times, an English critic has accused the Aeneid of containing multa languida, nugatoria, spiritu et

majestate carminis heroici defecta; many such verses as he, the said Jeremiah Markland, would have been

[Footnote 107: Emanuel Chrysoloras, and his colleagues, are accused of ignorance, envy, or avarice,

(Sylloge, tom. ii. p. 235.) The modern Greeks pronounce it as a V consonant, and confound three vowels, and

several diphthongs. Such was the vulgar pronunciation which the stern Gardiner maintained by penal statutes

in the university of Cambridge: but the monosyllable represented to an Attic ear the bleating of sheep, and a

bellwether is better evidence than a bishop or a chancellor. The treatises of those scholars, particularly

Erasmus, who asserted a more classical pronunciation, are collected in the Sylloge of Havercamp, (2 vols. in

octavo, Lugd. Bat. 1736, 1740:) but it is difficult to paint sounds by words: and in their reference to modern

use, they can be understood only by their respective countrymen. We may observe, that our peculiar

Yet the fleeting shadows of metaphysics were pursued with more curiosity and ardor. After a long oblivion,

Plato was revived in Italy by a venerable Greek, ^108 who taught in the house of Cosmo of Medicis. While

the synod of Florence was involved in theological debate, some beneficial consequences might flow from the

study of his elegant philosophy: his style is the purest standard of the Attic dialect, and his sublime thoughts

are sometimes adapted to familiar conversation, and sometimes adorned with the richest colors of poetry and

eloquence. The dialogues of Plato are a dramatic picture of the life and death of a sage; and, as often as he

descends from the clouds, his moral system inculcates the love of truth, of our country, and of mankind. The

precept and example of Socrates recommended a modest doubt and liberal inquiry; and if the Platonists, with

blind devotion, adored the visions and errors of their divine master, their enthusiasm might correct the dry,

dogmatic method of the Peripatetic school. So equal, yet so opposite, are the merits of Plato and Aristotle,

that they may be balanced in endless controversy; but some spark of freedom may be produced by the

collision of adverse servitude. The modern Greeks were divided between the two sects: with more fury than

skill they fought under the banner of their leaders; and the field of battle was removed in their flight from

Constantinople to Rome. But this philosophical debate soon degenerated into an angry and personal quarrel

of grammarians; and Bessarion, though an advocate for Plato, protected the national honor, by interposing the

advice and authority of a mediator. In the gardens of the Medici, the academical doctrine was enjoyed by the

polite and learned: but their philosophic society was quickly dissolved; and if the writings of the Attic sage

were perused in the closet, the more powerful Stagyrite continued to reign, the oracle of the church and

school. ^109 [Footnote 108: George Gemistus Pletho, a various and voluminous writer, the master of

Bessarion, and all the Platonists of the times. He visited Italy in his old age, and soon returned to end his days

in Peloponnesus. See the curious Diatribe of Leo Allatius de Georgiis, in Fabricius. (Bibliot. Graec. tom. x. p.

[Footnote 109: The state of the Platonic philosophy in Italy is illustrated by Boivin, (Mem. de l'Acad. des

Inscriptions, tom. ii. p. 715 729,) and Tiraboschi, (tom. vi. P. i. p. 259 288.)]

I have fairly represented the literary merits of the Greeks; yet it must be confessed, that they were seconded

and surpassed by the ardor of the Latins. Italy was divided into many independent states; and at that time it

was the ambition of princes and republics to vie with each other in the encouragement and reward of

literature. The fame of Nicholas the Fifth ^110 has not been adequate to his merits. From a plebeian origin he

raised himself by his virtue and learning: the character of the man prevailed over the interest of the pope; and

he sharpened those weapons which were soon pointed against the Roman church. ^111 He had been the

friend of the most eminent scholars of the age: he became their patron; and such was the humility of his

manners, that the change was scarcely discernible either to them or to himself. If he pressed the acceptance of

a liberal gift, it was not as the measure of desert, but as the proof of benevolence; and when modest merit

declined his bounty, "Accept it," would he say, with a consciousness of his own worth: "ye will not always

have a Nicholas among you." The influence of the holy see pervaded Christendom; and he exerted that

influence in the search, not of benefices, but of books. From the ruins of the Byzantine libraries, from the

darkest monasteries of Germany and Britain, he collected the dusty manuscripts of the writers of antiquity;

and wherever the original could not be removed, a faithful copy was transcribed and transmitted for his use.

The Vatican, the old repository for bulls and legends, for superstition and forgery, was daily replenished with

more precious furniture; and such was the industry of Nicholas, that in a reign of eight years he formed a

library of five thousand volumes. To his munificence the Latin world was indebted for the versions of

Xenophon, Diodorus, Polybius, Thucydides, Herodotus, and Appian; of Strabo's Geography, of the Iliad, of

the most valuable works of Plato and Aristotle, of Ptolemy and Theophrastus, and of the fathers of the Greek

church. The example of the Roman pontiff was preceded or imitated by a Florentine merchant, who governed

the republic without arms and without a title. Cosmo of Medicis ^112 was the father of a line of princes,

whose name and age are almost synonymous with the restoration of learning: his credit was ennobled into

fame; his riches were dedicated to the service of mankind; he corresponded at once with Cairo and London:

and a cargo of Indian spices and Greek books was often imported in the same vessel. The genius and

education of his grandson Lorenzo rendered him not only a patron, but a judge and candidate, in the literary

race. In his pallace, distress was entitled to relief, and merit to reward: his leisure hours were delightfully

spent in the Platonic academy; he encouraged the emulation of Demetrius Chalcocondyles and Angelo

Politian; and his active missionary Janus Lascaris returned from the East with a treasure of two hundred

manuscripts, fourscore of which were as yet unknown in the libraries of Europe. ^113 The rest of Italy was

animated by a similar spirit, and the progress of the nation repaid the liberality of their princes. The Latins

held the exclusive property of their own literature; and these disciples of Greece were soon capable of

transmitting and improving the lessons which they had imbibed. After a short succession of foreign teachers,

the tide of emigration subsided; but the language of Constantinople was spread beyond the Alps and the

natives of France, Germany, and England, ^114 imparted to their country the sacred fire which they had

kindled in the schools of Florence and Rome. ^115 In the productions of the mind, as in those of the soil, the

gifts of nature are excelled by industry and skill: the Greek authors, forgotten on the banks of the Ilissus, have

been illustrated on those of the Elbe and the Thames: and Bessarion or Gaza might have envied the superior

science of the Barbarians; the accuracy of Budaeus, the taste of Erasmus, the copiousness of Stephens, the

erudition of Scaliger, the discernment of Reiske, or of Bentley. On the side of the Latins, the discovery of

printing was a casual advantage: but this useful art has been applied by Aldus, and his innumerable

successors, to perpetuate and multiply the works of antiquity. ^116 A single manuscript imported from

Greece is revived in ten thousand copies; and each copy is fairer than the original. In this form, Homer and

Plato would peruse with more satisfaction their own writings; and their scholiasts must resign the prize to the

[Footnote 110: See the Life of Nicholas V. by two contemporary authors, Janottus Manettus, (tom. iii. P. ii. p.

905 962,) and Vespasian of Florence, (tom. xxv. p. 267 290,) in the collection of Muratori; and consult

Tiraboschi, (tom. vi. P. i. p. 46 52, 109,) and Hody in the articles of Theodore Gaza, George of Trebizond,

[Footnote 111: Lord Bolingbroke observes, with truth and spirit, that the popes in this instance, were worse

politicians than the muftis, and that the charm which had bound mankind for so many ages was broken by the

magicians themselves, (Letters on the Study of History, l. vi. p. 165, 166, octavo edition, 1779.)]

[Footnote 112: See the literary history of Cosmo and Lorenzo of Medicis, in Tiraboschi, (tom. vi. P. i. l. i. c.

2,) who bestows a due measure of praise on Alphonso of Arragon, king of Naples, the dukes of Milan,

Ferrara Urbino, The republic of Venice has deserved the least from the gratitude of scholars.]

[Footnote 113: Tiraboschi, (tom. vi. P. i. p. 104,) from the preface of Janus Lascaris to the Greek Anthology,

printed at Florence, 1494. Latebant (says Aldus in his preface to the Greek orators, apud Hodium, p. 249) in

Atho Thraciae monte. Eas Larcaris . . . . in Italiam reportavit. Miserat enim ipsum Laurentius ille Medices in

Graeciam ad inquirendos simul, et quantovis emendos pretio bonos libros. It is remarkable enough, that the

[Footnote 114: The Greek language was introduced into the university of Oxford in the last years of the xvth

century, by Grocyn, Linacer, and Latimer, who had all studied at Florence under Demetrius Chalcocondyles.

See Dr. Knight's curious Life of Erasmus. Although a stout academical patriot, he is forced to acknowledge

[Footnote 115: The jealous Italians were desirous of keeping a monopoly of Greek learning. When Aldus was

about to publish the Greek scholiasts on Sophocles and Euripides, Cave, (said they,) cave hoc facias, ne

Barbari istis adjuti domi maneant, et pauciores in Italiam ventitent, (Dr. Knight, in his Life of Erasmus, p.

[Footnote 116: The press of Aldus Manutius, a Roman, was established at Venice about the year 1494: he

printed above sixty considerable works of Greek literature, almost all for the first time; several containing

different treatises and authors, and of several authors, two, three, or four editions, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec.

tom. xiii. p. 605, Yet his glory must not tempt us to forget, that the first Greek book, the Grammar of

Constantine Lascaris, was printed at Milan in 1476; and that the Florence Homer of 1488 displays all the

luxury of the typographical art. See the Annales Typographical of Mattaire, and the Bibliographie Instructive

Before the revival of classic literature, the Barbarians in Europe were immersed in ignorance; and their vulgar

tongues were marked with the rudeness and poverty of their manners. The students of the more perfect

idioms of Rome and Greece were introduced to a new world of light and science; to the society of the free

and polished nations of antiquity; and to a familiar converse with those immortal men who spoke the sublime

language of eloquence and reason. Such an intercourse must tend to refine the taste, and to elevate the genius,

of the moderns; and yet, from the first experiments, it might appear that the study of the ancients had given

fetters, rather than wings, to the human mind. However laudable, the spirit of imitation is of a servile cast;

and the first disciples of the Greeks and Romans were a colony of strangers in the midst of their age and

country. The minute and laborious diligence which explored the antiquities of remote times might have

improved or adorned the present state of society, the critic and metaphysician were the slaves of Aristotle; the

poets, historians, and orators, were proud to repeat the thoughts and words of the Augustan age: the works of

nature were observed with the eyes of Pliny and Theophrastus; and some Pagan votaries professed a secret

devotion to the gods of Homer and Plato. ^117 The Italians were oppressed by the strength and number of

their ancient auxiliaries: the century after the deaths of Petrarch and Boccace was filled with a crowd of Latin

imitators, who decently repose on our shelves; but in that aera of learning it will not be easy to discern a real

discovery of science, a work of invention or eloquence, in the popular language of the country. ^118 But as

soon as it had been deeply saturated with the celestial dew, the soil was quickened into vegetation and life;

the modern idioms were refined; the classics of Athens and Rome inspired a pure taste and a generous

emulation; and in Italy, as afterwards in France and England, the pleasing reign of poetry and fiction was

succeeded by the light of speculative and experimental philosophy. Genius may anticipate the season of

maturity; but in the education of a people, as in that of an individual, memory must be exercised, before the

powers of reason and fancy can be expanded: nor may the artist hope to equal or surpass, till he has learned to

[Footnote 117: I will select three singular examples of this classic enthusiasm. I. At the synod of Florence,

Gemistus Pletho said, in familiar conversation to George of Trebizond, that in a short time mankind would

unanimously renounce the Gospel and the Koran, for a religion similar to that of the Gentiles, (Leo Allatius,

apud Fabricium, tom. x. p. 751.) 2. Paul II. persecuted the Roman academy, which had been founded by

Pomponius Laetus; and the principal members were accused of heresy, impiety, and paganism, (Tiraboschi,

tom. vi. P. i. p. 81, 82.) 3. In the next century, some scholars and poets in France celebrated the success of

Jodelle's tragedy of Cleopatra, by a festival of Bacchus, and, as it is said, by the sacrifice of a goat, (Bayle,

Dictionnaire, Jodelle. Fontenelle, tom. iii. p. 56 61.) Yet the spirit of bigotry might often discern a serious

[Footnote 118: The survivor Boccace died in the year 1375; and we cannot place before 1480 the composition

of the Morgante Maggiore of Pulo and the Orlando Innamorato of Boyardo, (Tiraboschi, tom. vi. P. ii. p. 174

Schism Of The Greeks And Latins. Reign And Character Of Amurath The Second. Crusade Of Ladislaus,

King Of Hungary. His Defeat And Death. John Huniades. Scanderbeg. Constantine Palaeologus, Last

The respective merits of Rome and Constantinople are compared and celebrated by an eloquent Greek, the

father of the Italian schools. ^1 The view of the ancient capital, the seat of his ancestors, surpassed the most

sanguine expectations of Emanuel Chrysoloras; and he no longer blamed the exclamation of an old sophist,

that Rome was the habitation, not of men, but of gods. Those gods, and those men, had long since vanished;

but to the eye of liberal enthusiasm, the majesty of ruin restored the image of her ancient prosperity. The

monuments of the consuls and Caesars, of the martyrs and apostles, engaged on all sides the curiosity of the

philosopher and the Christian; and he confessed that in every age the arms and the religion of Rome were

destined to reign over the earth. While Chrysoloras admired the venerable beauties of the mother, he was not

forgetful of his native country, her fairest daughter, her Imperial colony; and the Byzantine patriot expatiates

with zeal and truth on the eternal advantages of nature, and the more transitory glories of art and dominion,

which adorned, or had adorned, the city of Constantine. Yet the perfection of the copy still redounds (as he

modestly observes) to the honor of the original, and parents are delighted to be renewed, and even excelled,

by the superior merit of their children. "Constantinople," says the orator, "is situate on a commanding point,

between Europe and Asia, between the Archipelago and the Euxine. By her interposition, the two seas, and

the two continents, are united for the common benefit of nations; and the gates of commerce may be shut or

opened at her command. The harbor, encompassed on all sides by the sea, and the continent, is the most

secure and capacious in the world. The walls and gates of Constantinople may be compared with those of

Babylon: the towers many; each tower is a solid and lofty structure; and the second wall, the outer

fortification, would be sufficient for the defence and dignity of an ordinary capital. A broad and rapid stream

may be introduced into the ditches and the artificial island may be encompassed, like Athens, by land or

water." Two strong and natural causes are alleged for the perfection of the model of new Rome. The royal

founder reigned over the most illustrious nations of the globe; and in the accomplishment of his designs, the

power of the Romans was combined with the art and science of the Greeks. Other cities have been reared to

maturity by accident and time: their beauties are mingled with disorder and deformity; and the inhabitants,

unwilling to remove from their natal spot, are incapable of correcting the errors of their ancestors, and the

original vices of situation or climate. But the free idea of Constantinople was formed and executed by a single

mind; and the primitive model was improved by the obedient zeal of the subjects and successors of the first

monarch. The adjacent isles were stored with an inexhaustible supply of marble; but the various materials

were transported from the most remote shores of Europe and Asia; and the public and private buildings, the

palaces, churches, aqueducts, cisterns, porticos, columns, baths, and hippodromes, were adapted to the

greatness of the capital of the East. The superfluity of wealth was spread along the shores of Europe and

Asia; and the Byzantine territory, as far as the Euxine, the Hellespont, and the long wall, might be considered

as a populous suburb and a perpetual garden. In this flattering picture, the past and the present, the times of

prosperity and decay, are art fully confounded; but a sigh and a confession escape, from the orator, that his

wretched country was the shadow and sepulchre of its former self. The works of ancient sculpture had been

defaced by Christian zeal or Barbaric violence; the fairest structures were demolished; and the marbles of

Paros or Numidia were burnt for lime, or applied to the meanest uses. Of many a statue, the place was marked

by an empty pedestal; of many a column, the size was determined by a broken capital; the tombs of the

emperors were scattered on the ground; the stroke of time was accelerated by storms and earthquakes; and the

vacant space was adorned, by vulgar tradition, with fabulous monuments of gold and silver. From these

wonders, which lived only in memory or belief, he distinguishes, however, the porphyry pillar, the column

and colossus of Justinian, ^3 and the church, more especially the dome, of St. Sophia; the best conclusion,

since it could not be described according to its merits, and after it no other object could deserve to be

mentioned. But he forgets that, a century before, the trembling fabrics of the colossus and the church had

been saved and supported by the timely care of Andronicus the Elder. Thirty years after the emperor had

fortified St. Sophia with two new buttresses or pyramids, the eastern hemisphere suddenly gave way: and the

images, the altars, and the sanctuary, were crushed by the falling ruin. The mischief indeed was speedily

repaired; the rubbish was cleared by the incessant labor of every rank and age; and the poor remains of riches

and industry were consecrated by the Greeks to the most stately and venerable temple of the East. ^4

[Footnote 1: The epistle of Emanuel Chrysoloras to the emperor John Palaeologus will not offend the eye or

ear of a classical student, (ad calcem Codini de Antiquitatibus C. P. p. 107 126.) The superscription

suggests a chronological remark, that John Palaeologus II. was associated in the empire before the year 1414,

the date of Chrysoloras's death. A still earlier date, at least 1408, is deduced from the age of his youngest

sons, Demetrius and Thomas, who were both Porphyrogeniti (Ducange, Fam. Byzant. p. 244, 247.)]

[Footnote 2: Somebody observed that the city of Athens might be circumnavigated. But what may be true in a

rhetorical sense of Constantinople, cannot be applied to the situation of Athens, five miles from the sea, and

[Footnote 3: Nicephorus Gregoras has described the Colossus of Justinian, (l. vii. 12:) but his measures are

false and inconsistent. The editor Boivin consulted his friend Girardon; and the sculptor gave him the true

proportions of an equestrian statue. That of Justinian was still visible to Peter Gyllius, not on the column, but

in the outward court of the seraglio; and he was at Constantinople when it was melted down, and cast into a

[Footnote 4: See the decay and repairs of St. Sophia, in Nicephorus Gregoras (l. vii. 12, l. xv. 2.) The building

was propped by Andronicus in 1317, the eastern hemisphere fell in 1345. The Greeks, in their pompous

rhetoric, exalt the beauty and holiness of the church, an earthly heaven the abode of angels, and of God

The last hope of the falling city and empire was placed in the harmony of the mother and daughter, in the

maternal tenderness of Rome, and the filial obedience of Constantinople. In the synod of Florence, the Greeks

and Latins had embraced, and subscribed, and promised; but these signs of friendship were perfidious or

fruitless; ^5 and the baseless fabric of the union vanished like a dream. ^6 The emperor and his prelates

returned home in the Venetian galleys; but as they touched at the Morea and the Isles of Corfu and Lesbos,

the subjects of the Latins complained that the pretended union would be an instrument of oppression. No

sooner did they land on the Byzantine shore, than they were saluted, or rather assailed, with a general murmur

of zeal and discontent. During their absence, above two years, the capital had been deprived of its civil and

ecclesiastical rulers; fanaticism fermented in anarchy; the most furious monks reigned over the conscience of

women and bigots; and the hatred of the Latin name was the first principle of nature and religion. Before his

departure for Italy, the emperor had flattered the city with the assurance of a prompt relief and a powerful

succor; and the clergy, confident in their orthodoxy and science, had promised themselves and their flocks an

easy victory over the blind shepherds of the West. The double disappointment exasperated the Greeks; the

conscience of the subscribing prelates was awakened; the hour of temptation was past; and they had more to

dread from the public resentment, than they could hope from the favor of the emperor or the pope. Instead of

justifying their conduct, they deplored their weakness, professed their contrition, and cast themselves on the

mercy of God and of their brethren. To the reproachful question, what had been the event or the use of their

Italian synod? they answered with sighs and tears, "Alas! we have made a new faith; we have exchanged

piety for impiety; we have betrayed the immaculate sacrifice; and we are become Azymites." (The Azymites

were those who celebrated the communion with unleavened bread; and I must retract or qualify the praise

which I have bestowed on the growing philosophy of the times.) "Alas! we have been seduced by distress, by

fraud, and by the hopes and fears of a transitory life. The hand that has signed the union should be cut off;

and the tongue that has pronounced the Latin creed deserves to be torn from the root." The best proof of their

repentance was an increase of zeal for the most trivial rites and the most incomprehensible doctrines; and an

absolute separation from all, without excepting their prince, who preserved some regard for honor and

consistency. After the decease of the patriarch Joseph, the archbishops of Heraclea and Trebizond had

courage to refuse the vacant office; and Cardinal Bessarion preferred the warm and comfortable shelter of the

Vatican. The choice of the emperor and his clergy was confined to Metrophanes of Cyzicus: he was

consecrated in St. Sophia, but the temple was vacant. The crossbearers abdicated their service; the infection

spread from the city to the villages; and Metrophanes discharged, without effect, some ecclesiastical thunders

against a nation of schismatics. The eyes of the Greeks were directed to Mark of Ephesus, the champion of

his country; and the sufferings of the holy confessor were repaid with a tribute of admiration and applause.

His example and writings propagated the flame of religious discord; age and infirmity soon removed him

from the world; but the gospel of Mark was not a law of forgiveness; and he requested with his dying breath,

that none of the adherents of Rome might attend his obsequies or pray for his soul.

[Footnote 5: The genuine and original narrative of Syropulus (p. 312 351) opens the schism from the first

office of the Greeks at Venice to the general opposition at Constantinople, of the clergy and people.]

[Footnote 6: On the schism of Constantinople, see Phranza, (l. ii. c. 17,) Laonicus Chalcondyles, (l. vi. p. 155,

156,) and Ducas, (c. 31;) the last of whom writes with truth and freedom. Among the moderns we may

distinguish the continuator of Fleury, (tom. xxii. p. 338, 401, 420, and Spondanus, (A.D. 1440 50.) The

sense of the latter is drowned in prejudice and passion, as soon as Rome and religion are concerned.]

The schism was not confined to the narrow limits of the Byzantine empire. Secure under the Mamaluke

sceptre, the three patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, assembled a numerous synod; disowned

their representatives at Ferrara and Florence; condemned the creed and council of the Latins; and threatened

the emperor of Constantinople with the censures of the Eastern church. Of the sectaries of the Greek

communion, the Russians were the most powerful, ignorant, and superstitious. Their primate, the cardinal

Isidore, hastened from Florence to Moscow, ^7 to reduce the independent nation under the Roman yoke. But

the Russian bishops had been educated at Mount Athos; and the prince and people embraced the theology of

their priests. They were scandalized by the title, the pomp, the Latin cross of the legate, the friend of those

impious men who shaved their beards, and performed the divine office with gloves on their hands and rings

on their fingers: Isidore was condemned by a synod; his person was imprisoned in a monastery; and it was

with extreme difficulty that the cardinal could escape from the hands of a fierce and fanatic people. ^8 The

Russians refused a passage to the missionaries of Rome who aspired to convert the Pagans beyond the

Tanais; ^9 and their refusal was justified by the maxim, that the guilt of idolatry is less damnable than that of

schism. The errors of the Bohemians were excused by their abhorrence for the pope; and a deputation of the

Greek clergy solicited the friendship of those sanguinary enthusiasts. ^10 While Eugenius triumphed in the

union and orthodoxy of the Greeks, his party was contracted to the walls, or rather to the palace of

Constantinople. The zeal of Palaeologus had been excited by interest; it was soon cooled by opposition: an

attempt to violate the national belief might endanger his life and crown; not could the pious rebels be

destitute of foreign and domestic aid. The sword of his brother Demetrius, who in Italy had maintained a

prudent and popular silence, was half unsheathed in the cause of religion; and Amurath, the Turkish sultan,

[Footnote 7: Isidore was metropolitan of Kiow, but the Greeks subject to Poland have removed that see from

the ruins of Kiow to Lemberg, or Leopold, (Herbestein, in Ramusio, tom. ii. p. 127.) On the other hand, the

Russians transferred their spiritual obedience to the archbishop, who became, in 1588, the patriarch, of

Moscow, (Levesque Hist. de Russie, tom. iii. p. 188, 190, from a Greek Ms. at Turin, Iter et labores

[Footnote 8: The curious narrative of Levesque (Hist. de Russie, tom. ii. p. 242 247) is extracted from the

patriarchal archives. The scenes of Ferrara and Florence are described by ignorance and passion; but the

[Footnote 9: The Shamanism, the ancient religion of the Samanaeans and Gymnosophists, has been driven by

the more popular Bramins from India into the northern deserts: the naked philosophers were compelled to

wrap themselves in fur; but they insensibly sunk into wizards and physicians. The Mordvans and

Tcheremisses in the European Russia adhere to this religion, which is formed on the earthly model of one

king or God, his ministers or angels, and the rebellious spirits who oppose his government. As these tribes of

the Volga have no images, they might more justly retort on the Latin missionaries the name of idolaters,

(Levesque, Hist. des Peuples soumis a la Domination des Russes, tom. i. p. 194 237, 423 460.)]

[Footnote 10: Spondanus, Annal. Eccles. tom ii. A.D. 1451, No. 13. The epistle of the Greeks with a Latin

"Sultan Murad, or Amurath, lived fortynine, and reigned thirty years, six months, and eight days. He was a

just and valiant prince, of a great soul, patient of labors, learned, merciful, religious, charitable; a lover and

encourager of the studious, and of all who excelled in any art or science; a good emperor and a great general.

No man obtained more or greater victories than Amurath; Belgrade alone withstood his attacks. ^* Under his

reign, the soldier was ever victorious, the citizen rich and secure. If he subdued any country, his first care was

to build mosques and caravansaras, hospitals, and colleges. Every year he gave a thousand pieces of gold to

the sons of the Prophet; and sent two thousand five hundred to the religious persons of Mecca, Medina, and

Jerusalem." ^11 This portrait is transcribed from the historian of the Othman empire: but the applause of a

servile and superstitious people has been lavished on the worst of tyrants; and the virtues of a sultan are often

the vices most useful to himself, or most agreeable to his subjects. A nation ignorant of the equal benefits of

liberty and law, must be awed by the flashes of arbitrary power: the cruelty of a despot will assume the

character of justice; his profusion, of liberality; his obstinacy, of firmness. If the most reasonable excuse be

rejected, few acts of obedience will be found impossible; and guilt must tremble, where innocence cannot

always be secure. The tranquillity of the people, and the discipline of the troops, were best maintained by

perpetual action in the field; war was the trade of the Janizaries; and those who survived the peril, and

divided the spoil, applauded the generous ambition of their sovereign. To propagate the true religion, was the

duty of a faithful Mussulman: the unbelievers were his enemies, and those of the Prophet; and, in the hands of

the Turks, the scimeter was the only instrument of conversion. Under these circumstances, however, the

justice and moderation of Amurath are attested by his conduct, and acknowledged by the Christians

themselves; who consider a prosperous reign and a peaceful death as the reward of his singular merits. In the

vigor of his age and military power, he seldom engaged in war till he was justified by a previous and

adequate provocation: the victorious sultan was disarmed by submission; and in the observance of treaties,

his word was inviolate and sacred. ^12 The Hungarians were commonly the aggressors; he was provoked by

the revolt of Scanderbeg; and the perfidious Caramanian was twice vanquished, and twice pardoned, by the

Ottoman monarch. Before he invaded the Morea, Thebes had been surprised by the despot: in the conquest of

Thessalonica, the grandson of Bajazet might dispute the recent purchase of the Venetians; and after the first

siege of Constantinople, the sultan was never tempted, by the distress, the absence, or the injuries of

[Footnote *: See the siege and massacre at Thessalonica. Von Hammer vol. i p. 433 M.]

[Footnote 11: See Cantemir, History of the Othman Empire, p. 94. Muraq, or Morad, may be more correct:

but I have preferred the popular name to that obscure diligence which is rarely successful in translating an

[Footnote 12: See Chalcondyles, (l. vii. p. 186, 198,) Ducas, (c. 33,) and Marinus Barletius, (in Vit.

Scanderbeg, p. 145, 146.) In his good faith towards the garrison of Sfetigrade, he was a lesson and example to

But the most striking feature in the life and character of Amurath is the double abdication of the Turkish

throne; and, were not his motives debased by an alloy of superstition, we must praise the royal philosopher,

^13 who at the age of forty could discern the vanity of human greatness. Resigning the sceptre to his son, he

retired to the pleasant residence of Magnesia; but he retired to the society of saints and hermits. It was not till

the fourth century of the Hegira, that the religion of Mahomet had been corrupted by an institution so adverse

to his genius; but in the age of the crusades, the various orders of Dervises were multiplied by the example of

the Christian, and even the Latin, monks. ^14 The lord of nations submitted to fast, and pray, and turn round

^* in endless rotation with the fanatics, who mistook the giddiness of the head for the illumination of the

spirit. ^15 But he was soon awakened from his dreams of enthusiasm by the Hungarian invasion; and his

obedient son was the foremost to urge the public danger and the wishes of the people. Under the banner of

their veteran leader, the Janizaries fought and conquered but he withdrew from the field of Varna, again to

pray, to fast, and to turn round with his Magnesian brethren. These pious occupations were again interrupted

by the danger of the state. A victorious army disdained the inexperience of their youthful ruler: the city of

Adrianople was abandoned to rapine and slaughter; and the unanimous divan implored his presence to

appease the tumult, and prevent the rebellion, of the Janizaries. At the wellknown voice of their master, they

trembled and obeyed; and the reluctant sultan was compelled to support his splendid servitude, till at the end

of four years, he was relieved by the angel of death. Age or disease, misfortune or caprice, have tempted

several princes to descend from the throne; and they have had leisure to repent of their irretrievable step. But

Amurath alone, in the full liberty of choice, after the trial of empire and solitude, has repeated his preference

[Footnote 13: Voltaire (Essai sur l'Histoire Generale, c. 89, p. 283, 284) admires le Philosophe Turc: would

he have bestowed the same praise on a Christian prince for retiring to a monastery? In his way, Voltaire was a

[Footnote 14: See the articles Dervische, Fakir, Nasser, Rohbaniat, in D'Herbelot's Bibliotheque Orientale.

Yet the subject is superficially treated from the Persian and Arabian writers. It is among the Turks that these

[Footnote *: Gibbon has fallen into a remarkable error. The unmonastic retreat of Amurath was that of an

epicurean rather than of a dervis; more like that of Sardanapalus than of Charles the Fifth. Profane, not

divine, love was its chief occupation: the only dance, that described by Horace as belonging to the country,

[Footnote 15: Ricaut (in the Present State of the Ottoman Empire, p. 242 268) affords much information,

which he drew from his personal conversation with the heads of the dervises, most of whom ascribed their

origin to the time of Orchan. He does not mention the Zichidae of Chalcondyles, (l. vii. p. 286,) among whom

After the departure of his Greek brethren, Eugenius had not been unmindful of their temporal interest; and his

tender regard for the Byzantine empire was animated by a just apprehension of the Turks, who approached,

and might soon invade, the borders of Italy. But the spirit of the crusades had expired; and the coldness of the

Franks was not less unreasonable than their headlong passion. In the eleventh century, a fanatic monk could

precipitate Europe on Asia for the recovery of the holy sepulchre; but in the fifteenth, the most pressing

motives of religion and policy were insufficient to unite the Latins in the defence of Christendom. Germany

was an inexhaustible storehouse of men and arms: ^16 but that complex and languid body required the

impulse of a vigorous hand; and Frederic the Third was alike impotent in his personal character and his

Imperial dignity. A long war had impaired the strength, without satiating the animosity, of France and

England: ^17 but Philip duke of Burgundy was a vain and magnificent prince; and he enjoyed, without

danger or expense, the adventurous piety of his subjects, who sailed, in a gallant fleet, from the coast of

Flanders to the Hellespont. The maritime republics of Venice and Genoa were less remote from the scene of

action; and their hostile fleets were associated under the standard of St. Peter. The kingdoms of Hungary and

Poland, which covered as it were the interior pale of the Latin church, were the most nearly concerned to

oppose the progress of the Turks. Arms were the patrimony of the Scythians and Sarmatians; and these

nations might appear equal to the contest, could they point, against the common foe, those swords that were

so wantonly drawn in bloody and domestic quarrels. But the same spirit was adverse to concord and

obedience: a poor country and a limited monarch are incapable of maintaining a standing force; and the loose

bodies of Polish and Hungarian horse were not armed with the sentiments and weapons which, on some

occasions, have given irresistible weight to the French chivalry. Yet, on this side, the designs of the Roman

pontiff, and the eloquence of Cardinal Julian, his legate, were promoted by the circumstances of the times:

^18 by the union of the two crowns on the head of Ladislaus, ^19 a young and ambitious soldier; by the valor

of a hero, whose name, the name of John Huniades, was already popular among the Christians, and

formidable to the Turks. An endless treasure of pardons and indulgences was scattered by the legate; many

private warriors of France and Germany enlisted under the holy banner; and the crusade derived some

strength, or at least some reputation, from the new allies both of Europe and Asia. A fugitive despot of Servia

exaggerated the distress and ardor of the Christians beyond the Danube, who would unanimously rise to

vindicate their religion and liberty. The Greek emperor, ^20 with a spirit unknown to his fathers, engaged to

guard the Bosphorus, and to sally from Constantinople at the head of his national and mercenary troops. The

sultan of Caramania ^21 announced the retreat of Amurath, and a powerful diversion in the heart of Anatolia;

and if the fleets of the West could occupy at the same moment the Straits of the Hellespont, the Ottoman

monarchy would be dissevered and destroyed. Heaven and earth must rejoice in the perdition of the

miscreants; and the legate, with prudent ambiguity, instilled the opinion of the invisible, perhaps the visible,

[Footnote 16: In the year 1431, Germany raised 40,000 horse, menatarms, against the Hussites of

Bohemia, (Lenfant, Hist. du Concile de Basle, tom. i. p. 318.) At the siege of Nuys, on the Rhine, in 1474, the

princes, prelates, and cities, sent their respective quotas; and the bishop of Munster (qui n'est pas des plus

grands) furnished 1400 horse, 6000 foot, all in green, with 1200 wagons. The united armies of the king of

England and the duke of Burgundy scarcely equalled one third of this German host, (Memoires de Philippe

de Comines, l. iv. c. 2.) At present, six or seven hundred thousand men are maintained in constant pay and

[Footnote 17: It was not till the year 1444, that France and England could agree on a truce of some months.

[Footnote 18: In the Hungarian crusade, Spondanus (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 1443, 1444) has been my leading

guide. He has diligently read, and critically compared, the Greek and Turkish materials, the historians of

Hungary, Poland, and the West. His narrative is perspicuous and where he can be free from a religious bias,

[Footnote 19: I have curtailed the harsh letter (Wladislaus) which most writers affix to his name, either in

compliance with the Polish pronunciation, or to distinguish him from his rival the infant Ladislaus of Austria.

Their competition for the crown of Hungary is described by Callimachus, (l. i. ii. p. 447 486,) Bonfinius,

[Footnote 20: The Greek historians, Phranza, Chalcondyles, and Ducas, do not ascribe to their prince a very

active part in this crusade, which he seems to have promoted by his wishes, and injured by his fears.]

[Footnote 21: Cantemir (p. 88) ascribes to his policy the original plan, and transcribes his animating epistle to

the king of Hungary. But the Mahometan powers are seldom it formed of the state of Christendom and the

situation and correspondence of the knights of Rhodes must connect them with the sultan of Caramania.]

Of the Polish and Hungarian diets, a religious war was the unanimous cry; and Ladislaus, after passing the

Danube, led an army of his confederate subjects as far as Sophia, the capital of the Bulgarian kingdom. In this

expedition they obtained two signal victories, which were justly ascribed to the valor and conduct of

Huniades. In the first, with a vanguard of ten thousand men, he surprised the Turkish camp; in the second, he

vanquished and made prisoner the most renowned of their generals, who possessed the double advantage of

ground and numbers. The approach of winter, and the natural and artificial obstacles of Mount Haemus,

arrested the progress of the hero, who measured a narrow interval of six days' march from the foot of the

mountains to the hostile towers of Adrianople, and the friendly capital of the Greek empire. The retreat was

undisturbed; and the entrance into Buda was at once a military and religious triumph. An ecclesiastical

procession was followed by the king and his warriors on foot: he nicely balanced the merits and rewards of

the two nations; and the pride of conquest was blended with the humble temper of Christianity. Thirteen

bashaws, nine standards, and four thousand captives, were unquestionable trophies; and as all were willing to

believe, and none were present to contradict, the crusaders multiplied, with unblushing confidence, the

myriads of Turks whom they had left on the field of battle. ^22 The most solid proof, and the most salutary

consequence, of victory, was a deputation from the divan to solicit peace, to restore Servia, to ransom the

prisoners, and to evacuate the Hungarian frontier. By this treaty, the rational objects of the war were

obtained: the king, the despot, and Huniades himself, in the diet of Segedin, were satisfied with public and

private emolument; a truce of ten years was concluded; and the followers of Jesus and Mahomet, who swore

on the Gospel and the Koran, attested the word of God as the guardian of truth and the avenger of perfidy. In

the place of the Gospel, the Turkish ministers had proposed to substitute the Eucharist, the real presence of

the Catholic deity; but the Christians refused to profane their holy mysteries; and a superstitious conscience is

less forcibly bound by the spiritual energy, than by the outward and visible symbols of an oath. ^23 [Footnote

22: In their letters to the emperor Frederic III. the Hungarians slay 80,000 Turks in one battle; but the modest

Julian reduces the slaughter to 6000 or even 2000 infidels, (Aeneas Sylvius in Europ. c. 5, and epist. 44, 81,

[Footnote 23: See the origin of the Turkish war, and the first expedition of Ladislaus, in the vth and vith

books of the iiid decad of Bonfinius, who, in his division and style, copies Livy with tolerable success

During the whole transaction, the cardinal legate had observed a sullen silence, unwilling to approve, and

unable to oppose, the consent of the king and people. But the diet was not dissolved before Julian was

fortified by the welcome intelligence, that Anatolia was invaded by the Caramanian, and Thrace by the Greek

emperor; that the fleets of Genoa, Venice, and Burgundy, were masters of the Hellespont; and that the allies,

informed of the victory, and ignorant of the treaty, of Ladislaus, impatiently waited for the return of his

victorious army. "And is it thus," exclaimed the cardinal, ^24 "that you will desert their expectations and your

own fortune? It is to them, to your God, and your fellowChristians, that you have pledged your faith; and

that prior obligation annihilates a rash and sacrilegious oath to the enemies of Christ. His vicar on earth is the

Roman pontiff; without whose sanction you can neither promise nor perform. In his name I absolve your

perjury and sanctify your arms: follow my footsteps in the paths of glory and salvation; and if still ye have

scruples, devolve on my head the punishment and the sin." This mischievous casuistry was seconded by his

respectable character, and the levity of popular assemblies: war was resolved, on the same spot where peace

had so lately been sworn; and, in the execution of the treaty, the Turks were assaulted by the Christians; to

whom, with some reason, they might apply the epithet of Infidels. The falsehood of Ladislaus to his word and

oath was palliated by the religion of the times: the most perfect, or at least the most popular, excuse would

have been the success of his arms and the deliverance of the Eastern church. But the same treaty which

should have bound his conscience had diminished his strength. On the proclamation of the peace, the French

and German volunteers departed with indignant murmurs: the Poles were exhausted by distant warfare, and

perhaps disgusted with foreign command; and their palatines accepted the first license, and hastily retired to

their provinces and castles. Even Hungary was divided by faction, or restrained by a laudable scruple; and the

relics of the crusade that marched in the second expedition were reduced to an inadequate force of twenty

thousand men. A Walachian chief, who joined the royal standard with his vassals, presumed to remark that

their numbers did not exceed the hunting retinue that sometimes attended the sultan; and the gift of two

horses of matchless speed might admonish Ladislaus of his secret foresight of the event. But the despot of

Servia, after the restoration of his country and children, was tempted by the promise of new realms; and the

inexperience of the king, the enthusiasm of the legate, and the martial presumption of Huniades himself, were

persuaded that every obstacle must yield to the invincible virtue of the sword and the cross. After the passage

of the Danube, two roads might lead to Constantinople and the Hellespont: the one direct, abrupt, and

difficult through the mountains of Haemus; the other more tedious and secure, over a level country, and along

the shores of the Euxine; in which their flanks, according to the Scythian discipline, might always be covered

by a movable fortification of wagons. The latter was judiciously preferred: the Catholics marched through the

plains of Bulgaria, burning, with wanton cruelty, the churches and villages of the Christian natives; and their

last station was at Warna, near the seashore; on which the defeat and death of Ladislaus have bestowed a

memorable name. ^25 [Footnote 24: I do not pretend to warrant the literal accuracy of Julian's speech, which

is variously worded by Callimachus, (l. iii. p. 505 507,) Bonfinius, (dec. iii. l. vi. p. 457, 458,) and other

historians, who might indulge their own eloquence, while they represent one of the orators of the age. But

they all agree in the advice and arguments for perjury, which in the field of controversy are fiercely attacked

by the Protestants, and feebly defended by the Catholics. The latter are discouraged by the misfortune of

[Footnote 25: Warna, under the Grecian name of Odessus, was a colony of the Milesians, which they

denominated from the hero Ulysses, (Cellarius, tom. i. p. 374. D'Anville, tom. i. p. 312.) According to

Arrian's Periplus of the Euxine, (p. 24, 25, in the first volume of Hudson's Geographers,) it was situate 1740

stadia, or furlongs, from the mouth of the Danube, 2140 from Byzantium, and 360 to the north of a ridge of

It was on this fatal spot, that, instead of finding a confederate fleet to second their operations, they were

alarmed by the approach of Amurath himself, who had issued from his Magnesian solitude, and transported

the forces of Asia to the defence of Europe. According to some writers, the Greek emperor had been awed, or

seduced, to grant the passage of the Bosphorus; and an indelible stain of corruption is fixed on the Genoese,

or the pope's nephew, the Catholic admiral, whose mercenary connivance betrayed the guard of the

Hellespont. From Adrianople, the sultan advanced by hasty marches, at the head of sixty thousand men; and

when the cardinal, and Huniades, had taken a nearer survey of the numbers and order of the Turks, these

ardent warriors proposed the tardy and impracticable measure of a retreat. The king alone was resolved to

conquer or die; and his resolution had almost been crowned with a glorious and salutary victory. The princes

were opposite to each other in the centre; and the Beglerbegs, or generals of Anatolia and Romania,

commanded on the right and left, against the adverse divisions of the despot and Huniades. The Turkish

wings were broken on the first onset: but the advantage was fatal; and the rash victors, in the heat of the

pursuit, were carried away far from the annoyance of the enemy, or the support of their friends. When

Amurath beheld the flight of his squadrons, he despaired of his fortune and that of the empire: a veteran

Janizary seized his horse's bridle; and he had magnanimity to pardon and reward the soldier who dared to

perceive the terror, and arrest the flight, of his sovereign. A copy of the treaty, the monument of Christian

perfidy, had been displayed in the front of battle; and it is said, that the sultan in his distress, lifting his eyes

and his hands to heaven, implored the protection of the God of truth; and called on the prophet Jesus himself

to avenge the impious mockery of his name and religion. ^26 With inferior numbers and disordered ranks, the

king of Hungary rushed forward in the confidence of victory, till his career was stopped by the impenetrable

phalanx of the Janizaries. If we may credit the Ottoman annals, his horse was pierced by the javelin of

Amurath; ^27 he fell among the spears of the infantry; and a Turkish soldier proclaimed with a loud voice,

"Hungarians, behold the head of your king!" The death of Ladislaus was the signal of their defeat. On his

return from an intemperate pursuit, Huniades deplored his error, and the public loss; he strove to rescue the

royal body, till he was overwhelmed by the tumultuous crowd of the victors and vanquished; and the last

efforts of his courage and conduct were exerted to save the remnant of his Walachian cavalry. Ten thousand

Christians were slain in the disastrous battle of Warna: the loss of the Turks, more considerable in numbers,

bore a smaller proportion to their total strength; yet the philosophic sultan was not ashamed to confess, that

his ruin must be the consequence of a second and similar victory. ^* At his command a column was erected

on the spot where Ladislaus had fallen; but the modest inscription, instead of accusing the rashness, recorded

[Footnote 26: Some Christian writers affirm, that he drew from his bosom the host or wafer on which the

treaty had not been sworn. The Moslems suppose, with more simplicity, an appeal to God and his prophet

Jesus, which is likewise insinuated by Callimachus, (l. iii. p. 516. Spondan. A.D. 1444, No. 8.)]

[Footnote 27: A critic will always distrust these spolia opima of a victorious general, so difficult for valor to

obtain, so easy for flattery to invent, (Cantemir, p. 90, 91.) Callimachus (l. iii. p. 517) more simply and

probably affirms, supervenitibus Janizaris, telorum multitudine, non jam confossus est, quam obrutus.]

[Footnote 28: Besides some valuable hints from Aeneas Sylvius, which are diligently collected by

Spondanus, our best authorities are three historians of the xvth century, Philippus Callimachus, (de Rebus a

Vladislao Polonorum atque Hungarorum Rege gestis, libri iii. in Bel. Script. Rerum Hungaricarum, tom. i. p.

433 518,) Bonfinius, (decad. iii. l. v. p. 460 467,) and Chalcondyles, (l. vii. p. 165 179.) The two first

were Italians, but they passed their lives in Poland and Hungary, (Fabric. Bibliot. Latin. Med. et Infimae

Aetatis, tom. i. p. 324. Vossius, de Hist. Latin. l. iii. c. 8, 11. Bayle, Dictionnaire, Bonfinius.) A small tract of

Faelix Petancius, chancellor of Segnia, (ad calcem Cuspinian. de Caesaribus, p. 716 722,) represents the

Before I lose sight of the field of Warna, I am tempted to pause on the character and story of two principal

actors, the cardinal Julian and John Huniades. Julian ^29 Caesarini was born of a noble family of Rome: his

studies had embraced both the Latin and Greek learning, both the sciences of divinity and law; and his

versatile genius was equally adapted to the schools, the camp, and the court. No sooner had he been invested

with the Roman purple, than he was sent into Germany to arm the empire against the rebels and heretics of

Bohemia. The spirit of persecution is unworthy of a Christian; the military profession ill becomes a priest; but

the former is excused by the times; and the latter was ennobled by the courage of Julian, who stood dauntless

and alone in the disgraceful flight of the German host. As the pope's legate, he opened the council of Basil;

but the president soon appeared the most strenuous champion of ecclesiastical freedom; and an opposition of

seven years was conducted by his ability and zeal. After promoting the strongest measures against the

authority and person of Eugenius, some secret motive of interest or conscience engaged him to desert on a

sudden the popular party. The cardinal withdrew himself from Basil to Ferrara; and, in the debates of the

Greeks and Latins, the two nations admired the dexterity of his arguments and the depth of his theological

erudition. ^30 In his Hungarian embassy, we have already seen the mischievous effects of his sophistry and

eloquence, of which Julian himself was the first victim. The cardinal, who performed the duties of a priest

and a soldier, was lost in the defeat of Warna. The circumstances of his death are variously related; but it is

believed, that a weighty encumbrance of gold impeded his flight, and tempted the cruel avarice of some

[Footnote 29: M. Lenfant has described the origin (Hist. du Concile de Basle, tom. i. p. 247, and Bohemian

campaign (p. 315, of Cardinal Julian. His services at Basil and Ferrara, and his unfortunate end, are

From an humble, or at least a doubtful origin, the merit of John Huniades promoted him to the command of

the Hungarian armies. His father was a Walachian, his mother a Greek: her unknown race might possibly

ascend to the emperors of Constantinople; and the claims of the Walachians, with the surname of Corvinus,

from the place of his nativity, might suggest a thin pretence for mingling his blood with the patricians of

ancient Rome. ^31 In his youth he served in the wars of Italy, and was retained, with twelve horsemen, by the

bishop of Zagrab: the valor of the white knight ^32 was soon conspicuous; he increased his fortunes by a

noble and wealthy marriage; and in the defence of the Hungarian borders he won in the same year three

battles against the Turks. By his influence, Ladislaus of Poland obtained the crown of Hungary; and the

important service was rewarded by the title and office of Waivod of Transylvania. The first of Julian's

crusades added two Turkish laurels on his brow; and in the public distress the fatal errors of Warna were

forgotten. During the absence and minority of Ladislaus of Austria, the titular king, Huniades was elected

supreme captain and governor of Hungary; and if envy at first was silenced by terror, a reign of twelve years

supposes the arts of policy as well as of war. Yet the idea of a consummate general is not delineated in his

campaigns; the white knight fought with the hand rather than the head, as the chief of desultory Barbarians,

who attack without fear and fly without shame; and his military life is composed of a romantic alternative of

victories and escapes. By the Turks, who employed his name to frighten their perverse children, he was

corruptly denominated Jancus Lain, or the Wicked: their hatred is the proof of their esteem; the kingdom

which he guarded was inaccessible to their arms; and they felt him most daring and formidable, when they

fondly believed the captain and his country irrecoverably lost. Instead of confining himself to a defensive

war, four years after the defeat of Warna he again penetrated into the heart of Bulgaria, and in the plain of

Cossova, sustained, till the third day, the shock of the Ottoman army, four times more numerous than his

own. As he fled alone through the woods of Walachia, the hero was surprised by two robbers; but while they

disputed a gold chain that hung at his neck, he recovered his sword, slew the one, terrified the other, and,

after new perils of captivity or death, consoled by his presence an afflicted kingdom. But the last and most

glorious action of his life was the defence of Belgrade against the powers of Mahomet the Second in person.

After a siege of forty days, the Turks, who had already entered the town, were compelled to retreat; and the

joyful nations celebrated Huniades and Belgrade as the bulwarks of Christendom. ^33 About a month after

this great deliverance, the champion expired; and his most splendid epitaph is the regret of the Ottoman

prince, who sighed that he could no longer hope for revenge against the single antagonist who had triumphed

over his arms. On the first vacancy of the throne, Matthias Corvinus, a youth of eighteen years of age, was

elected and crowned by the grateful Hungarians. His reign was prosperous and long: Matthias aspired to the

glory of a conqueror and a saint: but his purest merit is the encouragement of learning; and the Latin orators

and historians, who were invited from Italy by the son, have shed the iustre of their eloquence on the father's

[Footnote 31: See Bonfinius, decad. iii. l. iv. p. 423. Could the Italian historian pronounce, or the king of

Hungary hear, without a blush, the absurd flattery which confounded the name of a Walachian village with

the casual, though glorious, epithet of a single branch of the Valerian family at Rome?]

[Footnote 32: Philip de Comines, (Memoires, l. vi. c. 13,) from the tradition of the times, mentions him with

high encomiums, but under the whimsical name of the Chevalier Blanc de Valaigne, (Valachia.) The Greek

Chalcondyles, and the Turkish annals of Leunclavius, presume to accuse his fidelity or valor.]

[Footnote 33: See Bonfinius (decad. iii. l. viii. p. 492) and Spondanus, (A.D. 456, No. 1 7.) Huniades

shared the glory of the defence of Belgrade with Capistran, a Franciscan friar; and in their respective

narratives, neither the saint nor the hero condescend to take notice of his rival's merit.]

[Footnote 34: See Bonfinius, decad. iii. l. viii. decad. iv. l. viii. The observations of Spondanus on the life

and character of Matthias Corvinus are curious and critical, (A.D. 1464, No. 1, 1475, No. 6, 1476, No. 14

16, 1490, No. 4, 5.) Italian fame was the object of his vanity. His actions are celebrated in the Epitome Rerum

Hungaricarum (p. 322 412) of Peter Ranzanus, a Sicilian. His wise and facetious sayings are registered by

Galestus Martius of Narni, (528 568,) and we have a particular narrative of his wedding and coronation.

These three tracts are all contained in the first vol. of Bel's Scriptores Rerum Hungaricarum.]

In the list of heroes, John Huniades and Scanderbeg are commonly associated; ^35 and they are both entitled

to our notice, since their occupation of the Ottoman arms delayed the ruin of the Greek empire. John Castriot,

the father of Scanderbeg, ^36 was the hereditary prince of a small district of Epirus or Albania, between the

mountains and the Adriatic Sea. Unable to contend with the sultan's power, Castriot submitted to the hard

conditions of peace and tribute: he delivered his four sons as the pledges of his fidelity; and the Christian

youths, after receiving the mark of circumcision, were instructed in the Mahometan religion, and trained in

the arms and arts of Turkish policy. ^37 The three elder brothers were confounded in the crowd of slaves; and

the poison to which their deaths are ascribed cannot be verified or disproved by any positive evidence. Yet

the suspicion is in a great measure removed by the kind and paternal treatment of George Castriot, the fourth

brother, who, from his tender youth, displayed the strength and spirit of a soldier. The successive overthrow

of a Tartar and two Persians, who carried a proud defiance to the Turkish court, recommended him to the

favor of Amurath, and his Turkish appellation of Scanderbeg, (Iskender beg,) or the lord Alexander, is an

indelible memorial of his glory and servitude. His father's principality was reduced into a province; but the

loss was compensated by the rank and title of Sanjiak, a command of five thousand horse, and the prospect of

the first dignities of the empire. He served with honor in the wars of Europe and Asia; and we may smile at

the art or credulity of the historian, who supposes, that in every encounter he spared the Christians, while he

fell with a thundering arm on his Mussulman foes. The glory of Huniades is without reproach: he fought in

the defence of his religion and country; but the enemies who applaud the patriot, have branded his rival with

the name of traitor and apostate. In the eyes of the Christian, the rebellion of Scanderberg is justified by his

father's wrongs, the ambiguous death of his three brothers, his own degradation, and the slavery of his

country; and they adore the generous, though tardy, zeal, with which he asserted the faith and independence

of his ancestors. But he had imbibed from his ninth year the doctrines of the Koran; he was ignorant of the

Gospel; the religion of a soldier is determined by authority and habit; nor is it easy to conceive what new

illumination at the age of forty ^38 could be poured into his soul. His motives would be less exposed to the

suspicion of interest or revenge, had he broken his chain from the moment that he was sensible of its weight:

but a long oblivion had surely impaired his original right; and every year of obedience and reward had

cemented the mutual bond of the sultan and his subject. If Scanderbeg had long harbored the belief of

Christianity and the intention of revolt, a worthy mind must condemn the base dissimulation, that could serve

only to betray, that could promise only to be forsworn, that could actively join in the temporal and spiritual

perdition of so many thousands of his unhappy brethren. Shall we praise a secret correspondence with

Huniades, while he commanded the vanguard of the Turkish army? shall we excuse the desertion of his

standard, a treacherous desertion which abandoned the victory to the enemies of his benefactor? In the

confusion of a defeat, the eye of Scanderbeg was fixed on the Reis Effendi or principal secretary: with the

dagger at his breast, he extorted a firman or patent for the government of Albania; and the murder of the

guiltless scribe and his train prevented the consequences of an immediate discovery. With some bold

companions, to whom he had revealed his design he escaped in the night, by rapid marches, from the field or

battle to his paternal mountains. The gates of Croya were opened to the royal mandate; and no sooner did he

command the fortress, than George Castriot dropped the mask of dissimulation; abjured the prophet and the

sultan, and proclaimed himself the avenger of his family and country. The names of religion and liberty

provoked a general revolt: the Albanians, a martial race, were unanimous to live and die with their hereditary

prince; and the Ottoman garrisons were indulged in the choice of martyrdom or baptism. In the assembly of

the states of Epirus, Scanderbeg was elected general of the Turkish war; and each of the allies engaged to

furnish his respective proportion of men and money. From these contributions, from his patrimonial estate,

and from the valuable saltpits of Selina, he drew an annual revenue of two hundred thousand ducats; ^39

and the entire sum, exempt from the demands of luxury, was strictly appropriated to the public use. His

manners were popular; but his discipline was severe; and every superfluous vice was banished from his

camp: his example strengthened his command; and under his conduct, the Albanians were invincible in their

own opinion and that of their enemies. The bravest adventurers of France and Germany were allured by his

fame and retained in his service: his standing militia consisted of eight thousand horse and seven thousand

foot; the horses were small, the men were active; but he viewed with a discerning eye the difficulties and

resources of the mountains; and, at the blaze of the beacons, the whole nation was distributed in the strongest

posts. With such unequal arms Scanderbeg resisted twentythree years the powers of the Ottoman empire;

and two conquerors, Amurath the Second, and his greater son, were repeatedly baffled by a rebel, whom they

pursued with seeming contempt and implacable resentment. At the head of sixty thousand horse and forty

thousand Janizaries, Amurath entered Albania: he might ravage the open country, occupy the defenceless

towns, convert the churches into mosques, circumcise the Christian youths, and punish with death his adult

and obstinate captives: but the conquests of the sultan were confined to the petty fortress of Sfetigrade; and

the garrison, invincible to his arms, was oppressed by a paltry artifice and a superstitious scruple. ^40

Amurath retired with shame and loss from the walls of Croya, the castle and residence of the Castriots; the

march, the siege, the retreat, were harassed by a vexatious, and almost invisible, adversary; ^41 and the

disappointment might tend to imbitter, perhaps to shorten, the last days of the sultan. ^42 In the fulness of

conquest, Mahomet the Second still felt at his bosom this domestic thorn: his lieutenants were permitted to

negotiate a truce; and the Albanian prince may justly be praised as a firm and able champion of his national

independence. The enthusiasm of chivalry and religion has ranked him with the names of Alexander and

Pyrrhus; nor would they blush to acknowledge their intrepid countryman: but his narrow dominion, and

slender powers, must leave him at an humble distance below the heroes of antiquity, who triumphed over the

East and the Roman legions. His splendid achievements, the bashaws whom he encountered, the armies that

he discomfited, and the three thousand Turks who were slain by his single hand, must be weighed in the

scales of suspicious criticism. Against an illiterate enemy, and in the dark solitude of Epirus, his partial

biographers may safely indulge the latitude of romance: but their fictions are exposed by the light of Italian

history; and they afford a strong presumption against their own truth, by a fabulous tale of his exploits, when

he passed the Adriatic with eight hundred horse to the succor of the king of Naples. ^43 Without

disparagement to his fame, they might have owned, that he was finally oppressed by the Ottoman powers: in

his extreme danger he applied to Pope Pius the Second for a refuge in the ecclesiastical state; and his

resources were almost exhausted, since Scanderbeg died a fugitive at Lissus, on the Venetian territory. ^44

His sepulchre was soon violated by the Turkish conquerors; but the Janizaries, who wore his bones enchased

in a bracelet, declared by this superstitious amulet their involuntary reverence for his valor. The instant ruin

of his country may redound to the hero's glory; yet, had he balanced the consequences of submission and

resistance, a patriot perhaps would have declined the unequal contest which must depend on the life and

genius of one man. Scanderbeg might indeed be supported by the rational, though fallacious, hope, that the

pope, the king of Naples, and the Venetian republic, would join in the defence of a free and Christian people,

who guarded the seacoast of the Adriatic, and the narrow passage from Greece to Italy. His infant son was

saved from the national shipwreck; the Castriots ^45 were invested with a Neapolitan dukedom, and their

blood continues to flow in the noblest families of the realm. A colony of Albanian fugitives obtained a

settlement in Calabria, and they preserve at this day the language and manners of their ancestors. ^46

[Footnote 35: They are ranked by Sir William Temple, in his pleasing Essay on Heroic Virtue, (Works, vol.

iii. p. 385,) among the seven chiefs who have deserved without wearing, a royal crown; Belisarius, Narses,

Gonsalvo of Cordova, William first prince of Orange, Alexander duke of Parma, John Huniades, and George

[Footnote 36: I could wish for some simple authentic memoirs of a friend of Scanderbeg, which would

introduce me to the man, the time, and the place. In the old and national history of Marinus Barletius, a priest

of Scodra, (de Vita. Moribus, et Rebus gestis Georgii Castrioti, libri xiii. p. 367. Argentorat. 1537, in fol.,) his

gaudy and cumbersoms robes are stuck with many false jewels. See likewise Chalcondyles, l vii. p. 185, l.

[Footnote 37: His circumcision, education, are marked by Marinus with brevity and reluctance, (l. i. p. 6, 7.)]

[Footnote 38: Since Scanderbeg died A.D. 1466, in the lxiiid year of his age, (Marinus, l. xiii. p. 370,) he was

born in 1403; since he was torn from his parents by the Turks, when he was novennis, (Marinus, l. i. p. 1, 6,)

that event must have happened in 1412, nine years before the accession of Amurath II., who must have

inherited, not acquired the Albanian slave. Spondanus has remarked this inconsistency, A.D. 1431, No. 31,

[Footnote 39: His revenue and forces are luckily given by Marinus, (l. ii. p. 44.)]

[Footnote 40: There were two Dibras, the upper aud lower, the Bulgarian and Albanian: the former, 70 miles

from Croya, (l. i. p. 17,) was contiguous to the fortress of Sfetigrade, whose inhabitants refused to drink from

a well into which a dead dog had traitorously been cast, (l. v. p. 139, 140.) We want a good map of Epirus.]

[Footnote 41: Compare the Turkish narrative of Cantemir (p. 92) with the pompous and prolix declamation in

the ivth, vth, and vith books of the Albanian priest, who has been copied by the tribe of strangers and

[Footnote 42: In honor of his hero, Barletius (l. vi. p. 188 192) kills the sultan by disease indeed, under the

walls of Croya. But this audacious fiction is disproved by the Greeks and Turks, who agree in the time and

[Footnote 43: See the marvels of his Calabrian expedition in the ixth and xth books of Marinus Barletius,

which may be rectified by the testimony or silence of Muratori, (Annali d'Italia, tom. xiii. p. 291,) and his

original authors, (Joh. Simonetta de Rebus Francisci Sfortiae, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital. tom. xxi. p.

728, et alios.) The Albanian cavalry, under the name of Stradiots, soon became famous in the wars of Italy,

[Footnote 44: Spondanus, from the best evidence, and the most rational criticism, has reduced the giant

Scanderbeg to the human size, (A.D. 1461, No. 20, 1463, No. 9, 1465, No. 12, 13, 1467, No. 1.) His own

letter to the pope, and the testimony of Phranza, (l. iii. c. 28,) a refugee in the neighboring isle of Corfu,

demonstrate his last distress, which is awkwardly concealed by Marinus Barletius, (l. x.)]

[Footnote 45: See the family of the Castriots, in Ducange, (Fam. Dalmaticae, xviii. p. 348 350.)]

[Footnote 46: This colony of Albanese is mentioned by Mr. Swinburne, (Travels into the Two Sicilies, vol. i.

In the long career of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, I have reached at length the last reign of the

princes of Constantinople, who so feebly sustained the name and majesty of the Caesars. On the decease of

John Palaeologus, who survived about four years the Hungarian crusade, ^47 the royal family, by the death of

Andronicus and the monastic profession of Isidore, was reduced to three princes, Constantine, Demetrius, and

Thomas, the surviving sons of the emperor Manuel. Of these the first and the last were far distant in the

Morea; but Demetrius, who possessed the domain of Selybria, was in the suburbs, at the head of a party: his

ambition was not chilled by the public distress; and his conspiracy with the Turks and the schismatics had

already disturbed the peace of his country. The funeral of the late emperor was accelerated with singular and

even suspicious haste: the claim of Demetrius to the vacant throne was justified by a trite and flimsy sophism,

that he was born in the purple, the eldest son of his father's reign. But the empressmother, the senate and

soldiers, the clergy and people, were unanimous in the cause of the lawful successor: and the despot Thomas,

who, ignorant of the change, accidentally returned to the capital, asserted with becoming zeal the interest of

his absent brother. An ambassador, the historian Phranza, was immediately despatched to the court of

Adrianople. Amurath received him with honor and dismissed him with gifts; but the gracious approbation of

the Turkish sultan announced his supremacy, and the approaching downfall of the Eastern empire. By the

hands of two illustrious deputies, the Imperial crown was placed at Sparta on the head of Constantine. In the

spring he sailed from the Morea, escaped the encounter of a Turkish squadron, enjoyed the acclamations of

his subjects, celebrated the festival of a new reign, and exhausted by his donatives the treasure, or rather the

indigence, of the state. The emperor immediately resigned to his brothers the possession of the Morea; and

the brittle friendship of the two princes, Demetrius and Thomas, was confirmed in their mother's presence by

the frail security of oaths and embraces. His next occupation was the choice of a consort. A daughter of the

doge of Venice had been proposed; but the Byzantine nobles objected the distance between an hereditary

monarch and an elective magistrate; and in their subsequent distress, the chief of that powerful republic was

not unmindful of the affront. Constantine afterwards hesitated between the royal families of Trebizond and

Georgia; and the embassy of Phranza represents in his public and private life the last days of the Byzantine

empire. ^48 [Footnote 47: The Chronology of Phranza is clear and authentic; but instead of four years and

seven months, Spondanus (A.D. 1445, No. 7,) assigns seven or eight years to the reign of the last Constantine

which he deduces from a spurious epistle of Eugenius IV. to the king of Aethiopia.]

The protovestiare, or great chamberlain, Phranza sailed from Constantinople as the minister of a bridegroom;

and the relics of wealth and luxury were applied to his pompous appearance. His numerous retinue consisted

of nobles and guards, of physicians and monks: he was attended by a band of music; and the term of his

costly embassy was protracted above two years. On his arrival in Georgia or Iberia, the natives from the

towns and villages flocked around the strangers; and such was their simplicity, that they were delighted with

the effects, without understanding the cause, of musical harmony. Among the crowd was an old man, above a

hundred years of age, who had formerly been carried away a captive by the Barbarians, ^49 and who amused

his hearers with a tale of the wonders of India, ^50 from whence he had returned to Portugal by an unknown

sea. ^51 From this hospitable land, Phranza proceeded to the court of Trebizond, where he was informed by

the Greek prince of the recent decease of Amurath. Instead of rejoicing in the deliverance, the experienced

statesman expressed his apprehension, that an ambitious youth would not long adhere to the sage and pacific

system of his father. After the sultan's decease, his Christian wife, Maria, ^52 the daughter of the Servian

despot, had been honorably restored to her parents; on the fame of her beauty and merit, she was

recommended by the ambassador as the most worthy object of the royal choice; and Phranza recapitulates

and refutes the specious objections that might be raised against the proposal. The majesty of the purple would

ennoble an unequal alliance; the bar of affinity might be removed by liberal alms and the dispensation of the

church; the disgrace of Turkish nuptials had been repeatedly overlooked; and, though the fair Maria was

nearly fifty years of age, she might yet hope to give an heir to the empire. Constantine listened to the advice,

which was transmitted in the first ship that sailed from Trebizond; but the factions of the court opposed his

marriage; and it was finally prevented by the pious vow of the sultana, who ended her days in the monastic

profession. Reduced to the first alternative, the choice of Phranza was decided in favor of a Georgian

princess; and the vanity of her father was dazzled by the glorious alliance. Instead of demanding, according to

the primitive and national custom, a price for his daughter, ^53 he offered a portion of fiftysix thousand,

with an annual pension of five thousand, ducats; and the services of the ambassador were repaid by an

assurance, that, as his son had been adopted in baptism by the emperor, the establishment of his daughter

should be the peculiar care of the empress of Constantinople. On the return of Phranza, the treaty was ratified

by the Greek monarch, who with his own hand impressed three vermilion crosses on the golden bull, and

assured the Georgian envoy that in the spring his galleys should conduct the bride to her Imperial palace. But

Constantine embraced his faithful servant, not with the cold approbation of a sovereign, but with the warm

confidence of a friend, who, after a long absence, is impatient to pour his secrets into the bosom of his friend.

"Since the death of my mother and of Cantacuzene, who alone advised me without interest or passion, ^54 I

am surrounded," said the emperor, "by men whom I can neither love nor trust, nor esteem. You are not a

stranger to Lucas Notaras, the great admiral; obstinately attached to his own sentiments, he declares, both in

private and public, that his sentiments are the absolute measure of my thoughts and actions. The rest of the

courtiers are swayed by their personal or factious views; and how can I consult the monks on questions of

policy and marriage? I have yet much employment for your diligence and fidelity. In the spring you shall

engage one of my brothers to solicit the succor of the Western powers; from the Morea you shall sail to

Cyprus on a particular commission; and from thence proceed to Georgia to receive and conduct the future

empress." "Your commands," replied Phranza, "are irresistible; but deign, great sir," he added, with a

serious smile, "to consider, that if I am thus perpetually absent from my family, my wife may be tempted

either to seek another husband, or to throw herself into a monastery." After laughing at his apprehensions, the

emperor more gravely consoled him by the pleasing assurance that this should be his last service abroad, and

that he destined for his son a wealthy and noble heiress; for himself, the important office of great logothete,

or principal minister of state. The marriage was immediately stipulated: but the office, however incompatible

with his own, had been usurped by the ambition of the admiral. Some delay was requisite to negotiate a

consent and an equivalent; and the nomination of Phranza was half declared, and half suppressed, lest it

might be displeasing to an insolent and powerful favorite. The winter was spent in the preparations of his

embassy; and Phranza had resolved, that the youth his son should embrace this opportunity of foreign travel,

and be left, on the appearance of danger, with his maternal kindred of the Morea. Such were the private and

public designs, which were interrupted by a Turkish war, and finally buried in the ruins of the empire.

[Footnote 49: Suppose him to have been captured in 1394, in Timour's first war in Georgia, (Sherefeddin, l.

iii. c. 50;) he might follow his Tartar master into Hindostan in 1398, and from thence sail to the spice

[Footnote 50: The happy and pious Indians lived a hundred and fifty years, and enjoyed the most perfect

productions of the vegetable and mineral kingdoms. The animals were on a large scale: dragons seventy

cubits, ants (the formica Indica) nine inches long, sheep like elephants, elephants like sheep. Quidlibet

[Footnote 51: He sailed in a country vessel from the spice islands to one of the ports of the exterior India;

invenitque navem grandem Ibericam qua in Portugalliam est delatus. This passage, composed in 1477,

(Phranza, l. iii. c. 30,) twenty years before the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, is spurious or wonderful.

But this new geography is sullied by the old and incompatible error which places the source of the Nile in

[Footnote 52: Cantemir, (p. 83,) who styles her the daughter of Lazarus Ogli, and the Helen of the Servians,

places her marriage with Amurath in the year 1424. It will not easily be believed, that in sixandtwenty

years' cohabitation, the sultan corpus ejus non tetigit. After the taking of Constantinople, she fled to Mahomet

[Footnote 53: The classical reader will recollect the offers of Agamemnon, (Iliad, c. v. 144,) and the general

[Footnote 54: Cantacuzene (I am ignorant of his relation to the emperor of that name) was great domestic, a

firm assertor of the Greek creed, and a brother of the queen of Servia, whom he visited with the character of

Reign And Character Of Mahomet The Second. Siege, Assault, And Final Conquest, Of Constantinople By

The Turks. Death Of Constantine Palaeologus. Servitude Of The Greeks. Extinction Of The Roman

Empire In The East. Consternation Of Europe. Conquests And Death Of Mahomet The Second.

The siege of Constantinople by the Turks attracts our first attention to the person and character of the great

destroyer. Mahomet the Second ^1 was the son of the second Amurath; and though his mother has been

decorated with the titles of Christian and princess, she is more probably confounded with the numerous

concubines who peopled from every climate the harem of the sultan. His first education and sentiments were

those of a devout Mussulman; and as often as he conversed with an infidel, he purified his hands and face by

the legal rites of ablution. Age and empire appear to have relaxed this narrow bigotry: his aspiring genius

disdained to acknowledge a power above his own; and in his looser hours he presumed (it is said) to brand

the prophet of Mecca as a robber and impostor. Yet the sultan persevered in a decent reverence for the

doctrine and discipline of the Koran: ^2 his private indiscretion must have been sacred from the vulgar ear;

and we should suspect the credulity of strangers and sectaries, so prone to believe that a mind which is

hardened against truth must be armed with superior contempt for absurdity and error. Under the tuition of the

most skilful masters, Mahomet advanced with an early and rapid progress in the paths of knowledge; and

besides his native tongue it is affirmed that he spoke or understood five languages, ^3 the Arabic, the Persian,

the Chaldaean or Hebrew, the Latin, and the Greek. The Persian might indeed contribute to his amusement,

and the Arabic to his edification; and such studies are familiar to the Oriental youth. In the intercourse of the

Greeks and Turks, a conqueror might wish to converse with the people over which he was ambitious to reign:

his own praises in Latin poetry ^4 or prose ^5 might find a passage to the royal ear; but what use or merit

could recommend to the statesman or the scholar the uncouth dialect of his Hebrew slaves? The history and

geography of the world were familiar to his memory: the lives of the heroes of the East, perhaps of the West,

^6 excited his emulation: his skill in astrology is excused by the folly of the times, and supposes some

rudiments of mathematical science; and a profane taste for the arts is betrayed in his liberal invitation and

reward of the painters of Italy. ^7 But the influence of religion and learning were employed without effect on

his savage and licentious nature. I will not transcribe, nor do I firmly believe, the stories of his fourteen

pages, whose bellies were ripped open in search of a stolen melon; or of the beauteous slave, whose head he

severed from her body, to convince the Janizaries that their master was not the votary of love. ^* His sobriety

is attested by the silence of the Turkish annals, which accuse three, and three only, of the Ottoman line of the

vice of drunkenness. ^8 But it cannot be denied that his passions were at once furious and inexorable; that in

the palace, as in the field, a torrent of blood was spilt on the slightest provocation; and that the noblest of the

captive youth were often dishonored by his unnatural lust. In the Albanian war he studied the lessons, and

soon surpassed the example, of his father; and the conquest of two empires, twelve kingdoms, and two

hundred cities, a vain and flattering account, is ascribed to his invincible sword. He was doubtless a soldier,

and possibly a general; Constantinople has sealed his glory; but if we compare the means, the obstacles, and

the achievements, Mahomet the Second must blush to sustain a parallel with Alexander or Timour. Under his

command, the Ottoman forces were always more numerous than their enemies; yet their progress was

bounded by the Euphrates and the Adriatic; and his arms were checked by Huniades and Scanderbeg, by the

Rhodian knights and by the Persian king. [Footnote 1: For the character of Mahomet II. it is dangerous to

trust either the Turks or the Christians. The most moderate picture appears to be drawn by Phranza, (l. i. c.

33,) whose resentment had cooled in age and solitude; see likewise Spondanus, (A.D. 1451, No. 11,) and the

continuator of Fleury, (tom. xxii. p. 552,) the Elogia of Paulus Jovius, (l. iii. p. 164 166,) and the

[Footnote 2: Cantemir, (p. 115.) and the mosques which he founded, attest his public regard for religion.

Mahomet freely disputed with the Gennadius on the two religions, (Spond. A.D. 1453, No. 22.)]

[Footnote 3: Quinque linguas praeter suam noverat, Graecam, Latinam, Chaldaicam, Persicam. The Latin

translator of Phranza has dropped the Arabic, which the Koran must recommend to every Mussulman.

[Footnote 4: Philelphus, by a Latin ode, requested and obtained the liberty of his wife's mother and sisters

from the conqueror of Constantinople. It was delivered into the sultan's hands by the envoys of the duke of

Milan. Philelphus himself was suspected of a design of retiring to Constantinople; yet the orator often

sounded the trumpet of holy war, (see his Life by M. Lancelot, in the Memoires de l'Academie des

[Footnote 5: Robert Valturio published at Verona, in 1483, his xii. books de Re Militari, in which he first

mentions the use of bombs. By his patron Sigismund Malatesta, prince of Rimini, it had been addressed with

[Footnote 6: According to Phranza, he assiduously studied the lives and actions of Alexander, Augustus,

Constantine, and Theodosius. I have read somewhere, that Plutarch's Lives were translated by his orders into

the Turkish language. If the sultan himself understood Greek, it must have been for the benefit of his subjects.

Note: Von Hammer disdainfully rejects this fable of Mahomet's knowledge of languages. Knolles adds, that

he delighted in reading the history of Alexander the Great, and of Julius Caesar. The former, no doubt, was

the Persian legend, which, it is remarkable, came back to Europe, and was popular throughout the middle

ages as the "Romaunt of Alexander." The founder of the Imperial dynasty of Rome, according to M. Von

Hammer, is altogether unknown in the East. Mahomet was a great patron of Turkish literature: the romantic

poems of Persia were translated, or imitated, under his patronage. Von Hammer vol ii. p. 268. M.]

[Footnote 7: The famous Gentile Bellino, whom he had invited from Venice, was dismissed with a chain and

collar of gold, and a purse of 3000 ducats. With Voltaire I laugh at the foolish story of a slave purposely

[Footnote *: This story, the subject of Johnson's Irene, is rejected by M. Von Hammer, vol. ii. p. 208. The

German historian's general estimate of Mahomet's character agrees in its more marked features with

[Footnote 8: These Imperial drunkards were Soliman I., Selim II., and Amurath IV., (Cantemir, p. 61.) The

sophis of Persia can produce a more regular succession; and in the last age, our European travellers were the

In the reign of Amurath, he twice tasted of royalty, and twice descended from the throne: his tender age was

incapable of opposing his father's restoration, but never could he forgive the viziers who had recommended

that salutary measure. His nuptials were celebrated with the daughter of a Turkman emir; and, after a festival

of two months, he departed from Adrianople with his bride, to reside in the government of Magnesia. Before

the end of six weeks, he was recalled by a sudden message from the divan, which announced the decease of

Amurath, and the mutinous spirit of the Janizaries. His speed and vigor commanded their obedience: he

passed the Hellespont with a chosen guard: and at the distance of a mile from Adrianople, the viziers and

emirs, the imams and candhis, the soldiers and the people, fell prostrate before the new sultan. They affected

to weep, they affected to rejoice: he ascended the throne at the age of twentyone years, and removed the

cause of sedition by the death, the inevitable death, of his infant brothers. ^9 ^* The ambassadors of Europe

and Asia soon appeared to congratulate his accession and solicit his friendship; and to all he spoke the

language of moderation and peace. The confidence of the Greek emperor was revived by the solemn oaths

and fair assurances with which he sealed the ratification of the treaty: and a rich domain on the banks of the

Strymon was assigned for the annual payment of three hundred thousand aspers, the pension of an Ottoman

prince, who was detained at his request in the Byzantine court. Yet the neighbors of Mahomet might tremble

at the severity with which a youthful monarch reformed the pomp of his father's household: the expenses of

luxury were applied to those of ambition, and a useless train of seven thousand falconers was either dismissed

from his service, or enlisted in his troops. ^! In the first summer of his reign, he visited with an army the

Asiatic provinces; but after humbling the pride, Mahomet accepted the submission, of the Caramanian, that

he might not be diverted by the smallest obstacle from the execution of his great design. ^10

[Footnote 9: Calapin, one of these royal infants, was saved from his cruel brother, and baptized at Rome

under the name of Callistus Othomannus. The emperor Frederic III. presented him with an estate in Austria,

where he ended his life; and Cuspinian, who in his youth conversed with the aged prince at Vienna, applauds

[Footnote *: Ahmed, the son of a Greek princess, was the object of his especial jealousy. Von Hammer, p.

[Footnote !: The Janizaries obtained, for the first time, a gift on the accession of a new sovereign, p. 504.

[Footnote 10: See the accession of Mahomet II. in Ducas, (c. 33,) Phranza, (l. i. c. 33, l. iii. c. 2,)

The Mahometan, and more especially the Turkish casuists, have pronounced that no promise can bind the

faithful against the interest and duty of their religion; and that the sultan may abrogate his own treaties and

those of his predecessors. The justice and magnanimity of Amurath had scorned this immoral privilege; but

his son, though the proudest of men, could stoop from ambition to the basest arts of dissimulation and deceit.

Peace was on his lips, while war was in his heart: he incessantly sighed for the possession of Constantinople;

and the Greeks, by their own indiscretion, afforded the first pretence of the fatal rupture. ^11 Instead of

laboring to be forgotten, their ambassadors pursued his camp, to demand the payment, and even the increase,

of their annual stipend: the divan was importuned by their complaints, and the vizier, a secret friend of the

Christians, was constrained to deliver the sense of his brethren. "Ye foolish and miserable Romans," said

Calil, "we know your devices, and ye are ignorant of your own danger! The scrupulous Amurath is no more;

his throne is occupied by a young conqueror, whom no laws can bind, and no obstacles can resist: and if you

escape from his hands, give praise to the divine clemency, which yet delays the chastisement of your sins.

Why do ye seek to affright us by vain and indirect menaces? Release the fugitive Orchan, crown him sultan

of Romania; call the Hungarians from beyond the Danube; arm against us the nations of the West; and be

assured, that you will only provoke and precipitate your ruin." But if the fears of the ambassadors were

alarmed by the stern language of the vizier, they were soothed by the courteous audience and friendly

speeches of the Ottoman prince; and Mahomet assured them that on his return to Adrianople he would redress

the grievances, and consult the true interests, of the Greeks. No sooner had he repassed the Hellespont, than

he issued a mandate to suppress their pension, and to expel their officers from the banks of the Strymon: in

this measure he betrayed a hostile mind; and the second order announced, and in some degree commenced,

the siege of Constantinople. In the narrow pass of the Bosphorus, an Asiatic fortress had formerly been raised

by his grandfather; in the opposite situation, on the European side, he resolved to erect a more formidable

castle; and a thousand masons were commanded to assemble in the spring on a spot named Asomaton, about

five miles from the Greek metropolis. ^12 Persuasion is the resource of the feeble; and the feeble can seldom

persuade: the ambassadors of the emperor attempted, without success, to divert Mahomet from the execution

of his design. They represented, that his grandfather had solicited the permission of Manuel to build a castle

on his own territories; but that this double fortification, which would command the strait, could only tend to

violate the alliance of the nations; to intercept the Latins who traded in the Black Sea, and perhaps to

annihilate the subsistence of the city. "I form the enterprise," replied the perfidious sultan, "against the city;

but the empire of Constantinople is measured by her walls. Have you forgot the distress to which my father

was reduced when you formed a league with the Hungarians; when they invaded our country by land, and the

Hellespont was occupied by the French galleys? Amurath was compelled to force the passage of the

Bosphorus; and your strength was not equal to your malevolence. I was then a child at Adrianople; the

Moslems trembled; and, for a while, the Gabours ^13 insulted our disgrace. But when my father had

triumphed in the field of Warna, he vowed to erect a fort on the western shore, and that vow it is my duty to

accomplish. Have ye the right, have ye the power, to control my actions on my own ground? For that ground

is my own: as far as the shores of the Bosphorus, Asia is inhabited by the Turks, and Europe is deserted by

the Romans. Return, and inform your king, that the present Ottoman is far different from his predecessors;

that his resolutions surpass their wishes; and that he performs more than they could resolve. Return in safety

but the next who delivers a similar message may expect to be flayed alive." After this declaration,

Constantine, the first of the Greeks in spirit as in rank, ^14 had determined to unsheathe the sword, and to

resist the approach and establishment of the Turks on the Bosphorus. He was disarmed by the advice of his

civil and ecclesiastical ministers, who recommended a system less generous, and even less prudent, than his

own, to approve their patience and longsuffering, to brand the Ottoman with the name and guilt of an

aggressor, and to depend on chance and time for their own safety, and the destruction of a fort which could

not long be maintained in the neighborhood of a great and populous city. Amidst hope and fear, the fears of

the wise, and the hopes of the credulous, the winter rolled away; the proper business of each man, and each

hour, was postponed; and the Greeks shut their eyes against the impending danger, till the arrival of the

[Footnote 11: Before I enter on the siege of Constantinople, I shall observe, that except the short hints of

Cantemir and Leunclavius, I have not been able to obtain any Turkish account of this conquest; such an

account as we possess of the siege of Rhodes by Soliman II., (Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom.

xxvi. p. 723 769.) I must therefore depend on the Greeks, whose prejudices, in some degree, are subdued

by their distress. Our standard texts ar those of Ducas, (c. 34 42,) Phranza, (l. iii. c. 7 20,) Chalcondyles,

(l. viii. p. 201 214,) and Leonardus Chiensis, (Historia C. P. a Turco expugnatae. Norimberghae, 1544, in

4to., 20 leaves.) The last of these narratives is the earliest in date, since it was composed in the Isle of Chios,

the 16th of August, 1453, only seventynine days after the loss of the city, and in the first confusion of ideas

and passions. Some hints may be added from an epistle of Cardinal Isidore (in Farragine Rerum Turcicarum,

ad calcem Chalcondyl. Clauseri, Basil, 1556) to Pope Nicholas V., and a tract of Theodosius Zygomala,

which he addressed in the year 1581 to Martin Crucius, (TurcoGraecia, l. i. p. 74 98, Basil, 1584.) The

various facts and materials are briefly, though critically, reviewed by Spondanus, (A.D. 1453, No. 1 27.)

The hearsay relations of Monstrelet and the distant Latins I shall take leave to disregard.

Note: M. Von Hammer has added little new information on the siege of Constantinople, and, by his general

agreement, has borne an honorable testimony to the truth, and by his close imitation to the graphic spirit and

[Footnote 12: The situation of the fortress, and the topography of the Bosphorus, are best learned from Peter

Gyllius, (de Bosphoro Thracio, l. ii. c. 13,) Leunclavius, (Pandect. p. 445,) and Tournefort, (Voyage dans le

Levant, tom. ii. lettre xv. p. 443, 444;) but I must regret the map or plan which Tournefort sent to the French

minister of the marine. The reader may turn back to chap. xvii. of this History.]

[Footnote 13: The opprobrious name which the Turks bestow on the infidels, is expressed by Ducas, and

Giaour by Leunclavius and the moderns. The former term is derived by Ducange (Gloss. Graec tom. i. p.

530), in vulgar Greek, a tortoise, as denoting a retrograde motion from the faith. But alas! Gabour is no more

than Gheber, which was transferred from the Persian to the Turkish language, from the worshippers of fire to

[Footnote 14: Phranza does justice to his master's sense and courage. Calliditatem hominis non ignorans

Imperator prior arma movere constituit, and stigmatizes the folly of the cum sacri tum profani proceres,

Of a master who never forgives, the orders are seldom disobeyed. On the twentysixth of March, the

appointed spot of Asomaton was covered with an active swarm of Turkish artificers; and the materials by sea

and land were diligently transported from Europe and Asia. ^15 The lime had been burnt in Cataphrygia; the

timber was cut down in the woods of Heraclea and Nicomedia; and the stones were dug from the Anatolian

quarries. Each of the thousand masons was assisted by two workmen; and a measure of two cubits was

marked for their daily task. The fortress ^16 was built in a triangular form; each angle was flanked by a

strong and massy tower; one on the declivity of the hill, two along the seashore: a thickness of twentytwo

feet was assigned for the walls, thirty for the towers; and the whole building was covered with a solid

platform of lead. Mahomet himself pressed and directed the work with indefatigable ardor: his three viziers

claimed the honor of finishing their respective towers; the zeal of the cadhis emulated that of the Janizaries;

the meanest labor was ennobled by the service of God and the sultan; and the diligence of the multitude was

quickened by the eye of a despot, whose smile was the hope of fortune, and whose frown was the messenger

of death. The Greek emperor beheld with terror the irresistible progress of the work; and vainly strove, by

flattery and gifts, to assuage an implacable foe, who sought, and secretly fomented, the slightest occasion of a

quarrel. Such occasions must soon and inevitably be found. The ruins of stately churches, and even the

marble columns which had been consecrated to Saint Michael the archangel, were employed without scruple

by the profane and rapacious Moslems; and some Christians, who presumed to oppose the removal, received

from their hands the crown of martyrdom. Constantine had solicited a Turkish guard to protect the fields and

harvests of his subjects: the guard was fixed; but their first order was to allow free pasture to the mules and

horses of the camp, and to defend their brethren if they should be molested by the natives. The retinue of an

Ottoman chief had left their horses to pass the night among the ripe corn; the damage was felt; the insult was

resented; and several of both nations were slain in a tumultuous conflict. Mahomet listened with joy to the

complaint; and a detachment was commanded to exterminate the guilty village: the guilty had fled; but forty

innocent and unsuspecting reapers were massacred by the soldiers. Till this provocation, Constantinople had

been opened to the visits of commerce and curiosity: on the first alarm, the gates were shut; but the emperor,

still anxious for peace, released on the third day his Turkish captives; ^17 and expressed, in a last message,

the firm resignation of a Christian and a soldier. "Since neither oaths, nor treaty, nor submission, can secure

peace, pursue," said he to Mahomet, "your impious warfare. My trust is in God alone; if it should please him

to mollify your heart, I shall rejoice in the happy change; if he delivers the city into your hands, I submit

without a murmur to his holy will. But until the Judge of the earth shall pronounce between us, it is my duty

to live and die in the defence of my people." The sultan's answer was hostile and decisive: his fortifications

were completed; and before his departure for Adrianople, he stationed a vigilant Aga and four hundred

Janizaries, to levy a tribute on the ships of every nation that should pass within the reach of their cannon. A

Venetian vessel, refusing obedience to the new lords of the Bosphorus, was sunk with a single bullet. ^* The

master and thirty sailors escaped in the boat; but they were dragged in chains to the Porte: the chief was

impaled; his companions were beheaded; and the historian Ducas ^18 beheld, at Demotica, their bodies

exposed to the wild beasts. The siege of Constantinople was deferred till the ensuing spring; but an Ottoman

army marched into the Morea to divert the force of the brothers of Constantine. At this aera of calamity, one

of these princes, the despot Thomas, was blessed or afflicted with the birth of a son; "the last heir," says the

[Footnote 15: Instead of this clear and consistent account, the Turkish Annals (Cantemir, p. 97) revived the

foolish tale of the ox's hide, and Dido's stratagem in the foundation of Carthage. These annals (unless we are

swayed by an antiChristian prejudice) are far less valuable than the Greek historians.]

[Footnote 16: In the dimensions of this fortress, the old castle of Europe, Phranza does not exactly agree with

Chalcondyles, whose description has been verified on the spot by his editor Leunclavius.]

[Footnote 17: Among these were some pages of Mahomet, so conscious of his inexorable rigor, that they

[Footnote *: This was from a model cannon cast by Urban the Hungarian. See p. 291. Von Hammer. p. 510.

[Footnote 18: Ducas, c. 35. Phranza, (l. iii. c. 3,) who had sailed in his vessel, commemorates the Venetian

[Footnote 19: Auctum est Palaeologorum genus, et Imperii successor, parvaeque Romanorum scintillae

haeres natus, Andreas, (Phranza, l. iii. c. 7.) The strong expression was inspired by his feelings.]

The Greeks and the Turks passed an anxious and sleepless winter: the former were kept awake by their fears,

the latter by their hopes; both by the preparations of defence and attack; and the two emperors, who had the

most to lose or to gain, were the most deeply affected by the national sentiment. In Mahomet, that sentiment

was inflamed by the ardor of his youth and temper: he amused his leisure with building at Adrianople ^20 the

lofty palace of Jehan Numa, (the watchtower of the world;) but his serious thoughts were irrevocably bent on

the conquest of the city of Caesar. At the dead of night, about the second watch, he started from his bed, and

commanded the instant attendance of his prime vizier. The message, the hour, the prince, and his own

situation, alarmed the guilty conscience of Calil Basha; who had possessed the confidence, and advised the

restoration, of Amurath. On the accession of the son, the vizier was confirmed in his office and the

appearances of favor; but the veteran statesman was not insensible that he trod on a thin and slippery ice,

which might break under his footsteps, and plunge him in the abyss. His friendship for the Christians, which

might be innocent under the late reign, had stigmatized him with the name of Gabour Ortachi, or

fosterbrother of the infidels; ^21 and his avarice entertained a venal and treasonable correspondence, which

was detected and punished after the conclusion of the war. On receiving the royal mandate, he embraced,

perhaps for the last time, his wife and children; filled a cup with pieces of gold, hastened to the palace, adored

the sultan, and offered, according to the Oriental custom, the slight tribute of his duty and gratitude. ^22 "It is

not my wish," said Mahomet, "to resume my gifts, but rather to heap and multiply them on thy head. In my

turn, I ask a present far more valuable and important; Constantinople." As soon as the vizier had recovered

from his surprise, "The same God," said he, "who has already given thee so large a portion of the Roman

empire, will not deny the remnant, and the capital. His providence, and thy power, assure thy success; and

myself, with the rest of thy faithful slaves, will sacrifice our lives and fortunes." "Lala," ^23 (or preceptor,)

continued the sultan, "do you see this pillow? All the night, in my agitation, I have pulled it on one side and

the other; I have risen from my bed, again have I lain down; yet sleep has not visited these weary eyes.

Beware of the gold and silver of the Romans: in arms we are superior; and with the aid of God, and the

prayers of the prophet, we shall speedily become masters of Constantinople." To sound the disposition of his

soldiers, he often wandered through the streets alone, and in disguise; and it was fatal to discover the sultan,

when he wished to escape from the vulgar eye. His hours were spent in delineating the plan of the hostile

city; in debating with his generals and engineers, on what spot he should erect his batteries; on which side he

should assault the walls; where he should spring his mines; to what place he should apply his

scalingladders: and the exercises of the day repeated and proved the lucubrations of the night.

[Footnote 20: Cantemir, p. 97, 98. The sultan was either doubtful of his conquest, or ignorant of the superior

merits of Constantinople. A city or a kingdom may sometimes be ruined by the Imperial fortune of their

[Footnote 21: It, by the president Cousin, is translated pere nourricier, most correctly indeed from the Latin

version; but in his haste he has overlooked the note by which Ishmael Boillaud (ad Ducam, c. 35)

[Footnote 22: The Oriental custom of never appearing without gifts before a sovereign or a superior is of high

antiquity, and seems analogous with the idea of sacrifice, still more ancient and universal. See the examples

[Footnote 23: The Lala of the Turks (Cantemir, p. 34) and the Tata of the Greeks (Ducas, c. 35) are derived

from the natural language of children; and it may be observed, that all such primitive words which denote

their parents, are the simple repetition of one syllable, composed of a labial or a dental consonant and an open

Among the implements of destruction, he studied with peculiar care the recent and tremendous discovery of

the Latins; and his artillery surpassed whatever had yet appeared in the world. A founder of cannon, a Dane

^* or Hungarian, who had been almost starved in the Greek service, deserted to the Moslems, and was

liberally entertained by the Turkish sultan. Mahomet was satisfied with the answer to his first question, which

he eagerly pressed on the artist. "Am I able to cast a cannon capable of throwing a ball or stone of sufficient

size to batter the walls of Constantinople? I am not ignorant of their strength; but were they more solid than

those of Babylon, I could oppose an engine of superior power: the position and management of that engine

must be left to your engineers." On this assurance, a foundry was established at Adrianople: the metal was

prepared; and at the end of three months, Urban produced a piece of brass ordnance of stupendous, and

almost incredible magnitude; a measure of twelve palms is assigned to the bore; and the stone bullet weighed

above six hundred pounds. ^24 ^* A vacant place before the new palace was chosen for the first experiment;

but to prevent the sudden and mischievous effects of astonishment and fear, a proclamation was issued, that

the cannon would be discharged the ensuing day. The explosion was felt or heard in a circuit of a hundred

furlongs: the ball, by the force of gunpowder, was driven above a mile; and on the spot where it fell, it buried

itself a fathom deep in the ground. For the conveyance of this destructive engine, a frame or carriage of thirty

wagons was linked together and drawn along by a team of sixty oxen: two hundred men on both sides were

stationed, to poise and support the rolling weight; two hundred and fifty workmen marched before to smooth

the way and repair the bridges; and near two months were employed in a laborious journey of one hundred

and fifty miles. A lively philosopher ^25 derides on this occasion the credulity of the Greeks, and observes,

with much reason, that we should always distrust the exaggerations of a vanquished people. He calculates,

that a ball, even o two hundred pounds, would require a charge of one hundred and fifty pounds of powder;

and that the stroke would be feeble and impotent, since not a fifteenth part of the mass could be inflamed at

the same moment. A stranger as I am to the art of destruction, I can discern that the modern improvements of

artillery prefer the number of pieces to the weight of metal; the quickness of the fire to the sound, or even the

consequence, of a single explosion. Yet I dare not reject the positive and unanimous evidence of

contemporary writers; nor can it seem improbable, that the first artists, in their rude and ambitious efforts,

should have transgressed the standard of moderation. A Turkish cannon, more enormous than that of

Mahomet, still guards the entrance of the Dardanelles; and if the use be inconvenient, it has been found on a

late trial that the effect was far from contemptible. A stone bullet of eleven hundred pounds' weight was once

discharged with three hundred and thirty pounds of powder: at the distance of six hundred yards it shivered

into three rocky fragments; traversed the strait; and leaving the waters in a foam, again rose and bounded

[Footnote *: Gibbon has written Dane by mistake for Dace, or Dacian. Chalcondyles, Von Hammer, p. 510.

[Footnote 24: The Attic talent weighed about sixty minae, or avoirdupois pounds (see Hooper on Ancient

Weights, Measures, ) but among the modern Greeks, that classic appellation was extended to a weight of one

hundred, or one hundred and twentyfive pounds, (Ducange.) Leonardus Chiensis measured the ball or stone

[Footnote *: 1200, according to Leonardus Chiensis. Von Hammer states that he had himself seen the great

cannon of the Dardanelles, in which a tailor who had run away from his creditors, had concealed himself

several days Von Hammer had measured balls twelve spans round. Note. p. 666. M.]

[Footnote 25: See Voltaire, (Hist. Generale, c. xci. p. 294, 295.) He was ambitious of universal monarchy;

and the poet frequently aspires to the name and style of an astronomer, a chemist,

[Footnote 26: The Baron de Tott, (tom. iii. p. 85 89,) who fortified the Dardanelles against the Russians,

describes in a lively, and even comic, strain his own prowess, and the consternation of the Turks. But that

While Mahomet threatened the capital of the East, the Greek emperor implored with fervent prayers the

assistance of earth and heaven. But the invisible powers were deaf to his supplications; and Christendom

beheld with indifference the fall of Constantinople, while she derived at least some promise of supply from

the jealous and temporal policy of the sultan of Egypt. Some states were too weak, and others too remote; by

some the danger was considered as imaginary by others as inevitable: the Western princes were involved in

their endless and domestic quarrels; and the Roman pontiff was exasperated by the falsehood or obstinacy of

the Greeks. Instead of employing in their favor the arms and treasures of Italy, Nicholas the Fifth had foretold

their approaching ruin; and his honor was engaged in the accomplishment of his prophecy. ^* Perhaps he was

softened by the last extremity o their distress; but his compassion was tardy; his efforts were faint and

unavailing; and Constantinople had fallen, before the squadrons of Genoa and Venice could sail from their

harbors. ^27 Even the princes of the Morea and of the Greek islands affected a cold neutrality: the Genoese

colony of Galata negotiated a private treaty; and the sultan indulged them in the delusive hope, that by his

clemency they might survive the ruin of the empire. A plebeian crowd, and some Byzantine nobles basely

withdrew from the danger of their country; and the avarice of the rich denied the emperor, and reserved for

the Turks, the secret treasures which might have raised in their defence whole armies of mercenaries. ^28 The

indigent and solitary prince prepared, however, to sustain his formidable adversary; but if his courage were

equal to the peril, his strength was inadequate to the contest. In the beginning of the spring, the Turkish

vanguard swept the towns and villages as far as the gates of Constantinople: submission was spared and

protected; whatever presumed to resist was exterminated with fire and sword. The Greek places on the Black

Sea, Mesembria, Acheloum, and Bizon, surrendered on the first summons; Selybria alone deserved the

honors of a siege or blockade; and the bold inhabitants, while they were invested by land, launched their

boats, pillaged the opposite coast of Cyzicus, and sold their captives in the public market. But on the

approach of Mahomet himself all was silent and prostrate: he first halted at the distance of five miles; and

from thence advancing in battle array, planted before the gates of St. Romanus the Imperial standard; and on

the sixth day of April formed the memorable siege of Constantinople. [Footnote *: See the curious Christian

and Mahometan predictions of the fall of Constantinople, Von Hammer, p. 518. M.]

[Footnote 27: Non audivit, indignum ducens, says the honest Antoninus; but as the Roman court was

afterwards grieved and ashamed, we find the more courtly expression of Platina, in animo fuisse pontifici

juvare Graecos, and the positive assertion of Aeneas Sylvius, structam classem (Spond. A.D. 1453, No. 3.)]

[Footnote 28: Antonin. in Proem. Epist. Cardinal. Isidor. apud Spondanum and Dr. Johnson, in the tragedy

The groaning Greeks dig up the golden caverns. The accumulated wealth of hoarding ages; That wealth

which, granted to their weeping prince, Had ranged embattled nations at their gates.]

The troops of Asia and Europe extended on the right and left from the Propontis to the harbor; the Janizaries

in the front were stationed before the sultan's tent; the Ottoman line was covered by a deep intrenchment; and

a subordinate army enclosed the suburb of Galata, and watched the doubtful faith of the Genoese. The

inquisitive Philelphus, who resided in Greece about thirty years before the siege, is confident, that all the

Turkish forces of any name or value could not exceed the number of sixty thousand horse and twenty

thousand foot; and he upbraids the pusillanimity of the nations, who had tamely yielded to a handful of

Barbarians. Such indeed might be the regular establishment of the Capiculi, ^29 the troops of the Porte who

marched with the prince, and were paid from his royal treasury. But the bashaws, in their respective

governments, maintained or levied a provincial militia; many lands were held by a military tenure; many

volunteers were attracted by the hope of spoil and the sound of the holy trumpet invited a swarm of hungry

and fearless fanatics, who might contribute at least to multiply the terrors, and in a first attack to blunt the

swords, of the Christians. The whole mass of the Turkish powers is magnified by Ducas, Chalcondyles, and

Leonard of Chios, to the amount of three or four hundred thousand men; but Phranza was a less remote and

more accurate judge; and his precise definition of two hundred and fiftyeight thousand does not exceed the

measure of experience and probability. ^30 The navy of the besiegers was less formidable: the Propontis was

overspread with three hundred and twenty sail; but of these no more than eighteen could be rated as galleys of

war; and the far greater part must be degraded to the condition of storeships and transports, which poured

into the camp fresh supplies of men, ammunition, and provisions. In her last decay, Constantinople was still

peopled with more than a hundred thousand inhabitants; but these numbers are found in the accounts, not of

war, but of captivity; and they mostly consisted of mechanics, of priests, of women, and of men devoid of

that spirit which even women have sometimes exerted for the common safety. I can suppose, I could almost

excuse, the reluctance of subjects to serve on a distant frontier, at the will of a tyrant; but the man who dares

not expose his life in the defence of his children and his property, has lost in society the first and most active

energies of nature. By the emperor's command, a particular inquiry had been made through the streets and

houses, how many of the citizens, or even of the monks, were able and willing to bear arms for their country.

The lists were intrusted to Phranza; ^31 and, after a diligent addition, he informed his master, with grief and

surprise, that the national defence was reduced to four thousand nine hundred and seventy Romans. Between

Constantine and his faithful minister this comfortless secret was preserved; and a sufficient proportion of

shields, crossbows, and muskets, were distributed from the arsenal to the city bands. They derived some

accession from a body of two thousand strangers, under the command of John Justiniani, a noble Genoese; a

liberal donative was advanced to these auxiliaries; and a princely recompense, the Isle of Lemnos, was

promised to the valor and victory of their chief. A strong chain was drawn across the mouth of the harbor: it

was supported by some Greek and Italian vessels of war and merchandise; and the ships of every Christian

nation, that successively arrived from Candia and the Black Sea, were detained for the public service. Against

the powers of the Ottoman empire, a city of the extent of thirteen, perhaps of sixteen, miles was defended by

a scanty garrison of seven or eight thousand soldiers. Europe and Asia were open to the besiegers; but the

strength and provisions of the Greeks must sustain a daily decrease; nor could they indulge the expectation of

[Footnote 29: The palatine troops are styled Capiculi, the provincials, Seratculi; and most of the names and

institutions of the Turkish militia existed before the Canon Nameh of Soliman II, from which, and his own

experience, Count Marsigli has composed his military state of the Ottoman empire.]

[Footnote 30: The observation of Philelphus is approved by Cuspinian in the year 1508, (de Caesaribus, in

Epilog. de Militia Turcica, p. 697.) Marsigli proves, that the effective armies of the Turks are much less

numerous than they appear. In the army that besieged Constantinople Leonardus Chiensis reckons no more

[Footnote 31: Ego, eidem (Imp.) tabellas extribui non absque dolore et moestitia, mansitque apud nos duos

aliis occultus numerus, (Phranza, l. iii. c. 8.) With some indulgence for national prejudices, we cannot desire

The primitive Romans would have drawn their swords in the resolution of death or conquest. The primitive

Christians might have embraced each other, and awaited in patience and charity the stroke of martyrdom. But

the Greeks of Constantinople were animated only by the spirit of religion, and that spirit was productive only

of animosity and discord. Before his death, the emperor John Palaeologus had renounced the unpopular

measure of a union with the Latins; nor was the idea revived, till the distress of his brother Constantine

imposed a last trial of flattery and dissimulation. ^32 With the demand of temporal aid, his ambassadors were

instructed to mingle the assurance of spiritual obedience: his neglect of the church was excused by the urgent

cares of the state; and his orthodox wishes solicited the presence of a Roman legate. The Vatican had been

too often deluded; yet the signs of repentance could not decently be overlooked; a legate was more easily

granted than an army; and about six months before the final destruction, the cardinal Isidore of Russia

appeared in that character with a retinue of priests and soldiers. The emperor saluted him as a friend and

father; respectfully listened to his public and private sermons; and with the most obsequious of the clergy and

laymen subscribed the act of union, as it had been ratified in the council of Florence. On the twelfth of

December, the two nations, in the church of St. Sophia, joined in the communion of sacrifice and prayer; and

the names of the two pontiffs were solemnly commemorated; the names of Nicholas the Fifth, the vicar of

Christ, and of the patriarch Gregory, who had been driven into exile by a rebellious people.

[Footnote 32: In Spondanus, the narrative of the union is not only partial, but imperfect. The bishop of

Pamiers died in 1642, and the history of Ducas, which represents these scenes (c. 36, 37) with such truth and

But the dress and language of the Latin priest who officiated at the altar were an object of scandal; and it was

observed with horror, that he consecrated a cake or wafer of unleavened bread, and poured cold water into the

cup of the sacrament. A national historian acknowledges with a blush, that none of his countrymen, not the

emperor himself, were sincere in this occasional conformity. ^33 Their hasty and unconditional submission

was palliated by a promise of future revisal; but the best, or the worst, of their excuses was the confession of

their own perjury. When they were pressed by the reproaches of their honest brethren, "Have patience," they

whispered, "have patience till God shall have delivered the city from the great dragon who seeks to devour

us. You shall then perceive whether we are truly reconciled with the Azymites." But patience is not the

attribute of zeal; nor can the arts of a court be adapted to the freedom and violence of popular enthusiasm.

From the dome of St. Sophia the inhabitants of either sex, and of every degree, rushed in crowds to the cell of

the monk Gennadius, ^34 to consult the oracle of the church. The holy man was invisible; entranced, as it

should seem, in deep meditation, or divine rapture: but he had exposed on the door of his cell a speaking

tablet; and they successively withdrew, after reading those tremendous words: "O miserable Romans, why

will ye abandon the truth? and why, instead of confiding in God, will ye put your trust in the Italians? In

losing your faith you will lose your city. Have mercy on me, O Lord! I protest in thy presence that I am

innocent of the crime. O miserable Romans, consider, pause, and repent. At the same moment that you

renounce the religion of your fathers, by embracing impiety, you submit to a foreign servitude." According to

the advice of Gennadius, the religious virgins, as pure as angels, and as proud as daemons, rejected the act of

union, and abjured all communion with the present and future associates of the Latins; and their example was

applauded and imitated by the greatest part of the clergy and people. From the monastery, the devout Greeks

dispersed themselves in the taverns; drank confusion to the slaves of the pope; emptied their glasses in honor

of the image of the holy Virgin; and besought her to defend against Mahomet the city which she had formerly

saved from Chosroes and the Chagan. In the double intoxication of zeal and wine, they valiantly exclaimed,

"What occasion have we for succor, or union, or Latins? Far from us be the worship of the Azymites!"

During the winter that preceded the Turkish conquest, the nation was distracted by this epidemical frenzy;

and the season of Lent, the approach of Easter, instead of breathing charity and love, served only to fortify

the obstinacy and influence of the zealots. The confessors scrutinized and alarmed the conscience of their

votaries, and a rigorous penance was imposed on those who had received the communion from a priest who

had given an express or tacit consent to the union. His service at the altar propagated the infection to the mute

and simple spectators of the ceremony: they forfeited, by the impure spectacle, the virtue of the sacerdotal

character; nor was it lawful, even in danger of sudden death, to invoke the assistance of their prayers or

absolution. No sooner had the church of St. Sophia been polluted by the Latin sacrifice, than it was deserted

as a Jewish synagogue, or a heathen temple, by the clergy and people; and a vast and gloomy silence

prevailed in that venerable dome, which had so often smoked with a cloud of incense, blazed with

innumerable lights, and resounded with the voice of prayer and thanksgiving. The Latins were the most

odious of heretics and infidels; and the first minister of the empire, the great duke, was heard to declare, that

he had rather behold in Constantinople the turban of Mahomet, than the pope's tiara or a cardinal's hat. ^35 A

sentiment so unworthy of Christians and patriots was familiar and fatal to the Greeks: the emperor was

deprived of the affection and support of his subjects; and their native cowardice was sanctified by resignation

[Footnote 33: Phranza, one of the conforming Greeks, acknowledges that the measure was adopted only

propter spem auxilii; he affirms with pleasure, that those who refused to perform their devotions in St.

[Footnote 34: His primitive and secular name was George Scholarius, which he changed for that of

Gennadius, either when he became a monk or a patriarch. His defence, at Florence, of the same union, which

he so furiously attacked at Constantinople, has tempted Leo Allatius (Diatrib. de Georgiis, in Fabric. Bibliot.

Graec. tom. x. p. 760 786) to divide him into two men; but Renaudot (p. 343 383) has restored the

[Footnote 35: It, may be fairly translated a cardinal's hat. The difference of the Greek and Latin habits

Of the triangle which composes the figure of Constantinople, the two sides along the sea were made

inaccessible to an enemy; the Propontis by nature, and the harbor by art. Between the two waters, the basis of

the triangle, the land side was protected by a double wall, and a deep ditch of the depth of one hundred feet.

Against this line of fortification, which Phranza, an eyewitness, prolongs to the measure of six miles, ^36

the Ottomans directed their principal attack; and the emperor, after distributing the service and command of

the most perilous stations, undertook the defence of the external wall. In the first days of the siege the Greek

soldiers descended into the ditch, or sallied into the field; but they soon discovered, that, in the proportion of

their numbers, one Christian was of more value than twenty Turks: and, after these bold preludes, they were

prudently content to maintain the rampart with their missile weapons. Nor should this prudence be accused of

pusillanimity. The nation was indeed pusillanimous and base; but the last Constantine deserves the name of a

hero: his noble band of volunteers was inspired with Roman virtue; and the foreign auxiliaries supported the

honor of the Western chivalry. The incessant volleys of lances and arrows were accompanied with the smoke,

the sound, and the fire, of their musketry and cannon. Their small arms discharged at the same time either

five, or even ten, balls of lead, of the size of a walnut; and, according to the closeness of the ranks and the

force of the powder, several breastplates and bodies were transpierced by the same shot. But the Turkish

approaches were soon sunk in trenches, or covered with ruins. Each day added to the science of the

Christians; but their inadequate stock of gunpowder was wasted in the operations of each day. Their ordnance

was not powerful, either in size or number; and if they possessed some heavy cannon, they feared to plant

them on the walls, lest the aged structure should be shaken and overthrown by the explosion. ^37 The same

destructive secret had been revealed to the Moslems; by whom it was employed with the superior energy of

zeal, riches, and despotism. The great cannon of Mahomet has been separately noticed; an important and

visible object in the history of the times: but that enormous engine was flanked by two fellows almost of

equal magnitude: ^38 the long order of the Turkish artillery was pointed against the walls; fourteen batteries

thundered at once on the most accessible places; and of one of these it is ambiguously expressed, that it was

mounted with one hundred and thirty guns, or that it discharged one hundred and thirty bullets. Yet in the

power and activity of the sultan, we may discern the infancy of the new science. Under a master who counted

the moments, the great cannon could be loaded and fired no more than seven times in one day. ^39 The

heated metal unfortunately burst; several workmen were destroyed; and the skill of an artist ^* was admired

who bethought himself of preventing the danger and the accident, by pouring oil, after each explosion, into

the mouth of the cannon. [Footnote 36: We are obliged to reduce the Greek miles to the smallest measure

which is preserved in the wersts of Russia, of 547 French toises, and of 104 2/5 to a degree. The six miles of

Phranza do not exceed four English miles, (D'Anville, Mesures Itineraires, p. 61, 123,

[Footnote 37: At indies doctiores nostri facti paravere contra hostes machina menta, quae tamen avare

dabantur. Pulvis erat nitri modica exigua; tela modica; bombardae, si aderant incommoditate loci primum

hostes offendere, maceriebus alveisque tectos, non poterant. Nam si quae magnae erant, ne murus

concuteretur noster, quiescebant. This passage of Leonardus Chiensis is curious and important.]

[Footnote 38: According to Chalcondyles and Phranza, the great cannon burst; an incident which, according

to Ducas, was prevented by the artist's skill. It is evident that they do not speak of the same gun.

Note: They speak, one of a Byzantine, one of a Turkish, gun. Von Hammer note, p. 669]

[Footnote 39: Near a hundred years after the siege of Constantinople, the French and English fleets in the

Channel were proud of firing 300 shot in an engagement of two hours, (Memoires de Martin du Bellay, l. x.,

The first random shots were productive of more sound than effect; and it was by the advice of a Christian,

that the engineers were taught to level their aim against the two opposite sides of the salient angles of a

bastion. However imperfect, the weight and repetition of the fire made some impression on the walls; and the

Turks, pushing their approaches to the edge of the ditch, attempted to fill the enormous chasm, and to build a

road to the assault. ^40 Innumerable fascines, and hogsheads, and trunks of trees, were heaped on each other;

and such was the impetuosity of the throng, that the foremost and the weakest were pushed headlong down

the precipice, and instantly buried under the accumulated mass. To fill the ditch was the toil of the besiegers;

to clear away the rubbish was the safety of the besieged; and after a long and bloody conflict, the web that

had been woven in the day was still unravelled in the night. The next resource of Mahomet was the practice

of mines; but the soil was rocky; in every attempt he was stopped and undermined by the Christian engineers;

nor had the art been yet invented of replenishing those subterraneous passages with gunpowder, and blowing

whole towers and cities into the air. ^41 A circumstance that distinguishes the siege of Constantinople is the

reunion of the ancient and modern artillery. The cannon were intermingled with the mechanical engines for

casting stones and darts; the bullet and the batteringram ^* were directed against the same walls: nor had the

discovery of gunpowder superseded the use of the liquid and unextinguishable fire. A wooden turret of the

largest size was advanced on rollers this portable magazine of ammunition and fascines was protected by a

threefold covering of bulls' hides: incessant volleys were securely discharged from the loopholes; in the

front, three doors were contrived for the alternate sally and retreat of the soldiers and workmen. They

ascended by a staircase to the upper platform, and, as high as the level of that platform, a scalingladder

could be raised by pulleys to form a bridge, and grapple with the adverse rampart. By these various arts of

annoyance, some as new as they were pernicious to the Greeks, the tower of St. Romanus was at length

overturned: after a severe struggle, the Turks were repulsed from the breach, and interrupted by darkness; but

they trusted that with the return of light they should renew the attack with fresh vigor and decisive success.

Of this pause of action, this interval of hope, each moment was improved, by the activity of the emperor and

Justiniani, who passed the night on the spot, and urged the labors which involved the safety of the church and

city. At the dawn of day, the impatient sultan perceived, with astonishment and grief, that his wooden turret

had been reduced to ashes: the ditch was cleared and restored; and the tower of St. Romanus was again strong

and entire. He deplored the failure of his design; and uttered a profane exclamation, that the word of the

thirtyseven thousand prophets should not have compelled him to believe that such a work, in so short a time,

[Footnote 40: I have selected some curious facts, without striving to emulate the bloody and obstinate

eloquence of the abbe de Vertot, in his prolix descriptions of the sieges of Rhodes, Malta, But that agreeable

historian had a turn for romance; and as he wrote to please the order he had adopted the same spirit of

[Footnote 41: The first theory of mines with gunpowder appears in 1480 in a Ms. of George of Sienna,

(Tiraboschi, tom. vi. P. i. p. 324.) They were first practised by Sarzanella, in 1487; but the honor and

improvement in 1503 is ascribed to Peter of Navarre, who used them with success in the wars of Italy, (Hist.

[Footnote *: The batteringram according to Von Hammer, (p. 670,) was not used M.]

The generosity of the Christian princes was cold and tardy; but in the first apprehension of a siege,

Constantine had negotiated, in the isles of the Archipelago, the Morea, and Sicily, the most indispensable

supplies. As early as the beginning of April, five ^42 great ships, equipped for merchandise and war, would

have sailed from the harbor of Chios, had not the wind blown obstinately from the north. ^43 One of these

ships bore the Imperial flag; the remaining four belonged to the Genoese; and they were laden with wheat and

barley, with wine, oil, and vegetables, and, above all, with soldiers and mariners for the service of the capital.

After a tedious delay, a gentle breeze, and, on the second day, a strong gale from the south, carried them

through the Hellespont and the Propontis: but the city was already invested by sea and land; and the Turkish

fleet, at the entrance of the Bosphorus, was stretched from shore to shore, in the form of a crescent, to

intercept, or at least to repel, these bold auxiliaries. The reader who has present to his mind the geographical

picture of Constantinople, will conceive and admire the greatness of the spectacle. The five Christian ships

continued to advance with joyful shouts, and a full press both of sails and oars, against a hostile fleet of three

hundred vessels; and the rampart, the camp, the coasts of Europe and Asia, were lined with innumerable

spectators, who anxiously awaited the event of this momentous succor. At the first view that event could not

appear doubtful; the superiority of the Moslems was beyond all measure or account: and, in a calm, their

numbers and valor must inevitably have prevailed. But their hasty and imperfect navy had been created, not

by the genius of the people, but by the will of the sultan: in the height of their prosperity, the Turks have

acknowledged, that if God had given them the earth, he had left the sea to the infidels; ^44 and a series of

defeats, a rapid progress of decay, has established the truth of their modest confession. Except eighteen

galleys of some force, the rest of their fleet consisted of open boats, rudely constructed and awkwardly

managed, crowded with troops, and destitute of cannon; and since courage arises in a great measure from the

consciousness of strength, the bravest of the Janizaries might tremble on a new element. In the Christian

squadron, five stout and lofty ships were guided by skilful pilots, and manned with the veterans of Italy and

Greece, long practised in the arts and perils of the sea. Their weight was directed to sink or scatter the weak

obstacles that impeded their passage: their artillery swept the waters: their liquid fire was poured on the heads

of the adversaries, who, with the design of boarding, presumed to approach them; and the winds and waves

are always on the side of the ablest navigators. In this conflict, the Imperial vessel, which had been almost

overpowered, was rescued by the Genoese; but the Turks, in a distant and closer attack, were twice repulsed

with considerable loss. Mahomet himself sat on horseback on the beach to encourage their valor by his voice

and presence, by the promise of reward, and by fear more potent than the fear of the enemy. The passions of

his soul, and even the gestures of his body, ^45 seemed to imitate the actions of the combatants; and, as if he

had been the lord of nature, he spurred his horse with a fearless and impotent effort into the sea. His loud

reproaches, and the clamors of the camp, urged the Ottomans to a third attack, more fatal and bloody than the

two former; and I must repeat, though I cannot credit, the evidence of Phranza, who affirms, from their own

mouth, that they lost above twelve thousand men in the slaughter of the day. They fled in disorder to the

shores of Europe and Asia, while the Christian squadron, triumphant and unhurt, steered along the

Bosphorus, and securely anchored within the chain of the harbor. In the confidence of victory, they boasted

that the whole Turkish power must have yielded to their arms; but the admiral, or captain bashaw, found

some consolation for a painful wound in his eye, by representing that accident as the cause of his defeat.

Balthi Ogli was a renegade of the race of the Bulgarian princes: his military character was tainted with the

unpopular vice of avarice; and under the despotism of the prince or people, misfortune is a sufficient

evidence of guilt. ^* His rank and services were annihilated by the displeasure of Mahomet. In the royal

presence, the captain bashaw was extended on the ground by four slaves, and received one hundred strokes

with a golden rod: ^46 his death had been pronounced; and he adored the clemency of the sultan, who was

satisfied with the milder punishment of confiscation and exile. The introduction of this supply revived the

hopes of the Greeks, and accused the supineness of their Western allies. Amidst the deserts of Anatolia and

the rocks of Palestine, the millions of the crusades had buried themselves in a voluntary and inevitable grave;

but the situation of the Imperial city was strong against her enemies, and accessible to her friends; and a

rational and moderate armament of the marine states might have saved the relics of the Roman name, and

maintained a Christian fortress in the heart of the Ottoman empire. Yet this was the sole and feeble attempt

for the deliverance of Constantinople: the more distant powers were insensible of its danger; and the

ambassador of Hungary, or at least of Huniades, resided in the Turkish camp, to remove the fears, and to

[Footnote 42: It is singular that the Greeks should not agree in the number of these illustrious vessels; the five

of Ducas, the four of Phranza and Leonardus, and the two of Chalcondyles, must be extended to the smaller,

or confined to the larger, size. Voltaire, in giving one of these ships to Frederic III., confounds the emperors

[Footnote 43: In bold defiance, or rather in gross ignorance, of language and geography, the president Cousin

detains them in Chios with a south, and wafts them to Constantinople with a north, wind.]

[Footnote 44: The perpetual decay and weakness of the Turkish navy may be observed in Ricaut, (State of the

Ottoman Empire, p. 372 378,) Thevenot, (Voyages, P. i. p. 229 242, and Tott, (Memoires, tom. iii;) the

[Footnote 45: I must confess that I have before my eyes the living picture which Thucydides (l. vii. c. 71) has

drawn of the passions and gestures of the Athenians in a naval engagement in the great harbor of Syracuse.]

[Footnote *: According to Ducas, one of the Afabi beat out his eye with a stone Compare Von Hammer.

[Footnote 46: According to the exaggeration or corrupt text of Ducas, (c. 38,) this golden bar was of the

enormous or incredible weight of 500 librae, or pounds. Bouillaud's reading of 500 drachms, or five pounds,

is sufficient to exercise the arm of Mahomet, and bruise the back of his admiral.]

[Footnote 47: Ducas, who confesses himself ill informed of the affairs of Hungary assigns a motive of

superstition, a fatal belief that Constantinople would be the term of the Turkish conquests. See Phranza (l. iii.

It was difficult for the Greeks to penetrate the secret of the divan; yet the Greeks are persuaded, that a

resistance so obstinate and surprising, had fatigued the perseverance of Mahomet. He began to meditate a

retreat; and the siege would have been speedily raised, if the ambition and jealousy of the second vizier had

not opposed the perfidious advice of Calil Bashaw, who still maintained a secret correspondence with the

Byzantine court. The reduction of the city appeared to be hopeless, unless a double attack could be made

from the harbor as well as from the land; but the harbor was inaccessible: an impenetrable chain was now

defended by eight large ships, more than twenty of a smaller size, with several galleys and sloops; and,

instead of forcing this barrier, the Turks might apprehend a naval sally, and a second encounter in the open

sea. In this perplexity, the genius of Mahomet conceived and executed a plan of a bold and marvellous cast,

of transporting by land his lighter vessels and military stores from the Bosphorus into the higher part of the

harbor. The distance is about ten ^* miles; the ground is uneven, and was overspread with thickets; and, as

the road must be opened behind the suburb of Galata, their free passage or total destruction must depend on

the option of the Genoese. But these selfish merchants were ambitious of the favor of being the last devoured;

and the deficiency of art was supplied by the strength of obedient myraids. A level way was covered with a

broad platform of strong and solid planks; and to render them more slippery and smooth, they were anointed

with the fat of sheep and oxen. Fourscore light galleys and brigantines, of fifty and thirty oars, were

disembarked on the Bosphorus shore; arranged successively on rollers; and drawn forwards by the power of

men and pulleys. Two guides or pilots were stationed at the helm, and the prow, of each vessel: the sails were

unfurled to the winds; and the labor was cheered by song and acclamation. In the course of a single night, this

Turkish fleet painfully climbed the hill, steered over the plain, and was launched from the declivity into the

shallow waters of the harbor, far above the molestation of the deeper vessels of the Greeks. The real

importance of this operation was magnified by the consternation and confidence which it inspired: but the

notorious, unquestionable fact was displayed before the eyes, and is recorded by the pens, of the two nations.

^48 A similar stratagem had been repeatedly practised by the ancients; ^49 the Ottoman galleys (I must again

repeat) should be considered as large boats; and, if we compare the magnitude and the distance, the obstacles

and the means, the boasted miracle ^50 has perhaps been equalled by the industry of our own times. ^51 As

soon as Mahomet had occupied the upper harbor with a fleet and army, he constructed, in the narrowest part,

a bridge, or rather mole, of fifty cubits in breadth, and one hundred in length: it was formed of casks and

hogsheads; joined with rafters, linked with iron, and covered with a solid floor. On this floating battery he

planted one of his largest cannon, while the fourscore galleys, with troops and scaling ladders, approached the

most accessible side, which had formerly been stormed by the Latin conquerors. The indolence of the

Christians has been accused for not destroying these unfinished works; ^! but their fire, by a superior fire,

was controlled and silenced; nor were they wanting in a nocturnal attempt to burn the vessels as well as the

bridge of the sultan. His vigilance prevented their approach; their foremost galiots were sunk or taken; forty

youths, the bravest of Italy and Greece, were inhumanly massacred at his command; nor could the emperor's

grief be assuaged by the just though cruel retaliation, of exposing from the walls the heads of two hundred

and sixty Mussulman captives. After a siege of forty days, the fate of Constantinople could no longer be

averted. The diminutive garrison was exhausted by a double attack: the fortifications, which had stood for

ages against hostile violence, were dismantled on all sides by the Ottoman cannon: many breaches were

opened; and near the gate of St. Romanus, four towers had been levelled with the ground. For the payment of

his feeble and mutinous troops, Constantine was compelled to despoil the churches with the promise of a

fourfold restitution; and his sacrilege offered a new reproach to the enemies of the union. A spirit of discord

impaired the remnant of the Christian strength; the Genoese and Venetian auxiliaries asserted the

preeminence of their respective service; and Justiniani and the great duke, whose ambition was not

extinguished by the common danger, accused each other of treachery and cowardice.

[Footnote 48: The unanimous testimony of the four Greeks is confirmed by Cantemir (p. 96) from the

Turkish annals; but I could wish to contract the distance of ten miles, and to prolong the term of one night.

[Footnote 49: Phranza relates two examples of a similar transportation over the six miles of the Isthmus of

Corinth; the one fabulous, of Augustus after the battle of Actium; the other true, of Nicetas, a Greek general

in the xth century. To these he might have added a bold enterprise of Hannibal, to introduce his vessels into

Note: Von Hammer gives a longer list of such transportations, p. 533. Dion Cassius distinctly relates the

[Footnote 50: A Greek of Candia, who had served the Venetians in a similar undertaking, (Spond. A.D. 1438,

[Footnote 51: I particularly allude to our own embarkations on the lakes of Canada in the years 1776 and

[Footnote !: They were betrayed, according to some accounts, by the Genoese of Galata. Von Hammer, p.

During the siege of Constantinople, the words of peace and capitulation had been sometimes pronounced; and

several embassies had passed between the camp and the city. ^52 The Greek emperor was humbled by

adversity; and would have yielded to any terms compatible with religion and royalty. The Turkish sultan was

desirous of sparing the blood of his soldiers; still more desirous of securing for his own use the Byzantine

treasures: and he accomplished a sacred duty in presenting to the Gabours the choice of circumcision, of

tribute, or of death. The avarice of Mahomet might have been satisfied with an annual sum of one hundred

thousand ducats; but his ambition grasped the capital of the East: to the prince he offered a rich equivalent, to

the people a free toleration, or a safe departure: but after some fruitless treaty, he declared his resolution of

finding either a throne, or a grave, under the walls of Constantinople. A sense of honor, and the fear of

universal reproach, forbade Palaeologus to resign the city into the hands of the Ottomans; and he determined

to abide the last extremities of war. Several days were employed by the sultan in the preparations of the

assault; and a respite was granted by his favorite science of astrology, which had fixed on the twentyninth of

May, as the fortunate and fatal hour. On the evening of the twentyseventh, he issued his final orders;

assembled in his presence the military chiefs, and dispersed his heralds through the camp to proclaim the

duty, and the motives, of the perilous enterprise. Fear is the first principle of a despotic government; and his

menaces were expressed in the Oriental style, that the fugitives and deserters, had they the wings of a bird,

^53 should not escape from his inexorable justice. The greatest part of his bashaws and Janizaries were the

offspring of Christian parents: but the glories of the Turkish name were perpetuated by successive adoption;

and in the gradual change of individuals, the spirit of a legion, a regiment, or an oda, is kept alive by

imitation and discipline. In this holy warfare, the Moslems were exhorted to purify their minds with prayer,

their bodies with seven ablutions; and to abstain from food till the close of the ensuing day. A crowd of

dervises visited the tents, to instil the desire of martyrdom, and the assurance of spending an immortal youth

amidst the rivers and gardens of paradise, and in the embraces of the blackeyed virgins. Yet Mahomet

principally trusted to the efficacy of temporal and visible rewards. A double pay was promised to the

victorious troops: "The city and the buildings," said Mahomet, "are mine; but I resign to your valor the

captives and the spoil, the treasures of gold and beauty; be rich and be happy. Many are the provinces of my

empire: the intrepid soldier who first ascends the walls of Constantinople shall be rewarded with the

government of the fairest and most wealthy; and my gratitude shall accumulate his honors and fortunes above

the measure of his own hopes." Such various and potent motives diffused among the Turks a general ardor,

regardless of life and impatient for action: the camp reechoed with the Moslem shouts of "God is God: there

is but one God, and Mahomet is the apostle of God;" ^54 and the sea and land, from Galata to the seven

[Footnote 52: Chalcondyles and Ducas differ in the time and circumstances of the negotiation; and as it was

neither glorious nor salutory, the faithful Phranza spares his prince even the thought of a surrender.]

[Footnote 53: These wings (Chalcondyles, l. viii. p. 208) are no more than an Oriental figure: but in the

Should the fierce North, upon his frozen wings. Bear him aloft above the wondering clouds, And seat him in

Besides the extravagance of the rant, I must observe, 1. That the operation of the winds must be confined to

the lower region of the air. 2. That the name, etymology, and fable of the Pleiads are purely Greek, (Scholiast

ad Homer, Sigma 686. Eudocia in Ionia, p. 399. Apollodor. l. iii. c. 10. Heyne, p. 229, Not. 682,) and had no

affinity with the astronomy of the East, (Hyde ad Ulugbeg, Tabul. in Syntagma Dissert. tom. i. p. 40, 42.

Goguet, Origine des Arts, tom. vi. p. 73 78. Gebelin, Hist. du Calendrier, p. 73,) which Mahomet had

studied. 3. The golden chariot does not exist either in science or fiction; but I much fear Dr. Johnson has

confounded the Pleiades with the great bear or wagon, the zodiac with a northern constalation.]

[Footnote 54: Phranza quarrels with these Moslem acclamations, not for the name of God, but for that of the

[Footnote *: The picture is heightened by the addition of the wailing cries of Kyris, which were heard from

Far different was the state of the Christians; who, with loud and impotent complaints, deplored the guilt, or

the punishment, of their sins. The celestial image of the Virgin had been exposed in solemn procession; but

their divine patroness was deaf to their entreaties: they accused the obstinacy of the emperor for refusing a

timely surrender; anticipated the horrors of their fate; and sighed for the repose and security of Turkish

servitude. The noblest of the Greeks, and the bravest of the allies, were summoned to the palace, to prepare

them, on the evening of the twentyeighth, for the duties and dangers of the general assault. The last speech

of Palaeologus was the funeral oration of the Roman empire: ^55 he promised, he conjured, and he vainly

attempted to infuse the hope which was extinguished in his own mind. In this world all was comfortless and

gloomy; and neither the gospel nor the church have proposed any conspicuous recompense to the heroes who

fall in the service of their country. But the example of their prince, and the confinement of a siege, had armed

these warriors with the courage of despair, and the pathetic scene is described by the feelings of the historian

Phranza, who was himself present at this mournful assembly. They wept, they embraced; regardless of their

families and fortunes, they devoted their lives; and each commander, departing to his station, maintained all

night a vigilant and anxious watch on the rampart. The emperor, and some faithful companions, entered the

dome of St. Sophia, which in a few hours was to be converted into a mosque; and devoutly received, with

tears and prayers, the sacrament of the holy communion. He reposed some moments in the palace, which

resounded with cries and lamentations; solicited the pardon of all whom he might have injured; ^56 and

mounted on horseback to visit the guards, and explore the motions of the enemy. The distress and fall of the

last Constantine are more glorious than the long prosperity of the Byzantine Caesars. ^* [Footnote 55: I am

afraid that this discourse was composed by Phranza himself; and it smells so grossly of the sermon and the

convent, that I almost doubt whether it was pronounced by Constantine. Leonardus assigns him another

speech, in which he addresses himself more respectfully to the Latin auxiliaries.]

[Footnote 56: This abasement, which devotion has sometimes extorted from dying princes, is an

improvement of the gospel doctrine of the forgiveness of injuries: it is more easy to forgive 490 times, than

[Footnote *: Compare the very curious Armenian elegy on the fall of Constantinople, translated by M. Bore,

in the Journal Asiatique for March, 1835; and by M. Brosset, in the new edition of Le Beau, (tom. xxi. p.

308.) The author thus ends his poem: "I, Abraham, loaded with sins, have composed this elegy with the most

In the confusion of darkness, an assailant may sometimes succeed; out in this great and general attack, the

military judgment and astrological knowledge of Mahomet advised him to expect the morning, the

memorable twenty ninth of May, in the fourteen hundred and fiftythird year of the Christian aera. The

preceding night had been strenuously employed: the troops, the cannons, and the fascines, were advanced to

the edge of the ditch, which in many parts presented a smooth and level passage to the breach; and his

fourscore galleys almost touched, with the prows and their scalingladders, the less defensible walls of the

harbor. Under pain of death, silence was enjoined: but the physical laws of motion and sound are not obedient

to discipline or fear; each individual might suppress his voice and measure his footsteps; but the march and

labor of thousands must inevitably produce a strange confusion of dissonant clamors, which reached the ears

of the watchmen of the towers. At daybreak, without the customary signal of the morning gun, the Turks

assaulted the city by sea and land; and the similitude of a twined or twisted thread has been applied to the

closeness and continuity of their line of attack. ^57 The foremost ranks consisted of the refuse of the host, a

voluntary crowd who fought without order or command; of the feebleness of age or childhood, of peasants

and vagrants, and of all who had joined the camp in the blind hope of plunder and martyrdom. The common

impulse drove them onwards to the wall; the most audacious to climb were instantly precipitated; and not a

dart, not a bullet, of the Christians, was idly wasted on the accumulated throng. But their strength and

ammunition were exhausted in this laborious defence: the ditch was filled with the bodies of the slain; they

supported the footsteps of their companions; and of this devoted vanguard the death was more serviceable

than the life. Under their respective bashaws and sanjaks, the troops of Anatolia and Romania were

successively led to the charge: their progress was various and doubtful; but, after a conflict of two hours, the

Greeks still maintained, and improved their advantage; and the voice of the emperor was heard, encouraging

his soldiers to achieve, by a last effort, the deliverance of their country. In that fatal moment, the Janizaries

arose, fresh, vigorous, and invincible. The sultan himself on horseback, with an iron mace in his hand, was

the spectator and judge of their valor: he was surrounded by ten thousand of his domestic troops, whom he

reserved for the decisive occasion; and the tide of battle was directed and impelled by his voice and eye. His

numerous ministers of justice were posted behind the line, to urge, to restrain, and to punish; and if danger

was in the front, shame and inevitable death were in the rear, of the fugitives. The cries of fear and of pain

were drowned in the martial music of drums, trumpets, and attaballs; and experience has proved, that the

mechanical operation of sounds, by quickening the circulation of the blood and spirits, will act on the human

machine more forcibly than the eloquence of reason and honor. From the lines, the galleys, and the bridge,

the Ottoman artillery thundered on all sides; and the camp and city, the Greeks and the Turks, were involved

in a cloud of smoke which could only be dispelled by the final deliverance or destruction of the Roman

empire. The single combats of the heroes of history or fable amuse our fancy and engage our affections: the

skilful evolutions of war may inform the mind, and improve a necessary, though pernicious, science. But in

the uniform and odious pictures of a general assault, all is blood, and horror, and confusion nor shall I strive,

at the distance of three centuries, and a thousand miles, to delineate a scene of which there could be no

spectators, and of which the actors themselves were incapable of forming any just or adequate idea.

[Footnote 57: Besides the 10,000 guards, and the sailors and the marines, Ducas numbers in this general

The immediate loss of Constantinople may be ascribed to the bullet, or arrow, which pierced the gauntlet of

John Justiniani. The sight of his blood, and the exquisite pain, appalled the courage of the chief, whose arms

and counsels were the firmest rampart of the city. As he withdrew from his station in quest of a surgeon, his

flight was perceived and stopped by the indefatigable emperor. "Your wound," exclaimed Palaeologus, "is

slight; the danger is pressing: your presence is necessary; and whither will you retire?" "I will retire," said

the trembling Genoese, "by the same road which God has opened to the Turks;" and at these words he hastily

passed through one of the breaches of the inner wall. By this pusillanimous act he stained the honors of a

military life; and the few days which he survived in Galata, or the Isle of Chios, were embittered by his own

and the public reproach. ^58 His example was imitated by the greatest part of the Latin auxiliaries, and the

defence began to slacken when the attack was pressed with redoubled vigor. The number of the Ottomans

was fifty, perhaps a hundred, times superior to that of the Christians; the double walls were reduced by the

cannon to a heap of ruins: in a circuit of several miles, some places must be found more easy of access, or

more feebly guarded; and if the besiegers could penetrate in a single point, the whole city was irrecoverably

lost. The first who deserved the sultan's reward was Hassan the Janizary, of gigantic stature and strength.

With his cimeter in one hand and his buckler in the other, he ascended the outward fortification: of the thirty

Janizaries, who were emulous of his valor, eighteen perished in the bold adventure. Hassan and his twelve

companions had reached the summit: the giant was precipitated from the rampart: he rose on one knee, and

was again oppressed by a shower of darts and stones. But his success had proved that the achievement was

possible: the walls and towers were instantly covered with a swarm of Turks; and the Greeks, now driven

from the vantage ground, were overwhelmed by increasing multitudes. Amidst these multitudes, the emperor,

^59 who accomplished all the duties of a general and a soldier, was long seen and finally lost. The nobles,

who fought round his person, sustained, till their last breath, the honorable names of Palaeologus and

Cantacuzene: his mournful exclamation was heard, "Cannot there be found a Christian to cut off my head?"

^60 and his last fear was that of falling alive into the hands of the infidels. ^61 The prudent despair of

Constantine cast away the purple: amidst the tumult he fell by an unknown hand, and his body was buried

under a mountain of the slain. After his death, resistance and order were no more: the Greeks fled towards the

city; and many were pressed and stifled in the narrow pass of the gate of St. Romanus. The victorious Turks

rushed through the breaches of the inner wall; and as they advanced into the streets, they were soon joined by

their brethren, who had forced the gate Phenar on the side of the harbor. ^62 In the first heat of the pursuit,

about two thousand Christians were put to the sword; but avarice soon prevailed over cruelty; and the victors

acknowledged, that they should immediately have given quarter if the valor of the emperor and his chosen

bands had not prepared them for a similar opposition in every part of the capital. It was thus, after a siege of

fiftythree days, that Constantinople, which had defied the power of Chosroes, the Chagan, and the caliphs,

was irretrievably subdued by the arms of Mahomet the Second. Her empire only had been subverted by the

Latins: her religion was trampled in the dust by the Moslem conquerors. ^63 [Footnote 58: In the severe

censure of the flight of Justiniani, Phranza expresses his own feelings and those of the public. For some

private reasons, he is treated with more lenity and respect by Ducas; but the words of Leonardus Chiensis

express his strong and recent indignation, gloriae salutis suique oblitus. In the whole series of their Eastern

Note: M. Brosset has given some extracts from the Georgian account of the siege of Constantinople, in which

Justiniani's wound in the left foot is represented as more serious. With charitable ambiguity the chronicler

[Footnote 59: Ducas kills him with two blows of Turkish soldiers; Chalcondyles wounds him in the shoulder,

and then tramples him in the gate. The grief of Phranza, carrying him among the enemy, escapes from the

precise image of his death; but we may, without flattery, apply these noble lines of Dryden:

As to Sebastian, let them search the field; And where they find a mountain of the slain, Send one to climb,

and looking down beneath, There they will find him at his manly length, With his face up to heaven, in that

[Footnote 60: Spondanus, (A.D. 1453, No. 10,) who has hopes of his salvation, wishes to absolve this

[Footnote 61: Leonardus Chiensis very properly observes, that the Turks, had they known the emperor, would

[Footnote 62: Cantemir, p. 96. The Christian ships in the mouth of the harbor had flanked and retarded this

[Footnote 63: Chalcondyles most absurdly supposes, that Constantinople was sacked by the Asiatics in

revenge for the ancient calamities of Troy; and the grammarians of the xvth century are happy to melt down

The tidings of misfortune fly with a rapid wing; yet such was the extent of Constantinople, that the more

distant quarters might prolong, some moments, the happy ignorance of their ruin. ^64 But in the general

consternation, in the feelings of selfish or social anxiety, in the tumult and thunder of the assault, a sleepless

night and morning ^* must have elapsed; nor can I believe that many Grecian ladies were awakened by the

Janizaries from a sound and tranquil slumber. On the assurance of the public calamity, the houses and

convents were instantly deserted; and the trembling inhabitants flocked together in the streets, like a herd of

timid animals, as if accumulated weakness could be productive of strength, or in the vain hope, that amid the

crowd each individual might be safe and invisible. From every part of the capital, they flowed into the church

of St. Sophia: in the space of an hour, the sanctuary, the choir, the nave, the upper and lower galleries, were

filled with the multitudes of fathers and husbands, of women and children, of priests, monks, and religious

virgins: the doors were barred on the inside, and they sought protection from the sacred dome, which they

had so lately abhorred as a profane and polluted edifice. Their confidence was founded on the prophecy of an

enthusiast or impostor; that one day the Turks would enter Constantinople, and pursue the Romans as far as

the column of Constantine in the square before St. Sophia: but that this would be the term of their calamities:

that an angel would descend from heaven, with a sword in his hand, and would deliver the empire, with that

celestial weapon, to a poor man seated at the foot of the column. "Take this sword," would he say, "and

avenge the people of the Lord." At these animating words, the Turks would instantly fly, and the victorious

Romans would drive them from the West, and from all Anatolia as far as the frontiers of Persia. It is on this

occasion that Ducas, with some fancy and much truth, upbraids the discord and obstinacy of the Greeks. "Had

that angel appeared," exclaims the historian, "had he offered to exterminate your foes if you would consent to

the union of the church, even event then, in that fatal moment, you would have rejected your safety, or have

[Footnote 64: When Cyrus suppressed Babylon during the celebration of a festival, so vast was the city, and

so careless were the inhabitants, that much time elapsed before the distant quarters knew that they were

captives. Herodotus, (l. i. c. 191,) and Usher, (Annal. p. 78,) who has quoted from the prophet Jeremiah a

[Footnote *: This refers to an expression in Ducas, who, to heighten the effect of his description, speaks of

the "sweet morning sleep resting on the eyes of youths and maidens," p. 288. Edit. Bekker. M.]

[Footnote 65: This lively description is extracted from Ducas, (c. 39,) who two years afterwards was sent

ambassador from the prince of Lesbos to the sultan, (c. 44.) Till Lesbos was subdued in 1463, (Phranza, l. iii.

c. 27,) that island must have been full of the fugitives of Constantinople, who delighted to repeat, perhaps to

State Of Rome From The Twelfth Century. Temporal Dominion Of The Popes. Seditions Of The City.

Political Heresy Of Arnold Of Brescia. Restoration Of The Republic. The Senators. Pride Of The

Romans. Their Wars. They Are Deprived Of The Election And Presence Of The Popes, Who Retire To

In the first ages of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, our eye is invariably fixed on the royal city,

which had given laws to the fairest portion of the globe. We contemplate her fortunes, at first with

admiration, at length with pity, always with attention, and when that attention is diverted from the capital to

the provinces, they are considered as so many branches which have been successively severed from the

Imperial trunk. The foundation of a second Rome, on the shores of the Bosphorus, has compelled the

historian to follow the successors of Constantine; and our curiosity has been tempted to visit the most remote

countries of Europe and Asia, to explore the causes and the authors of the long decay of the Byzantine

monarchy. By the conquest of Justinian, we have been recalled to the banks of the Tyber, to the deliverance

of the ancient metropolis; but that deliverance was a change, or perhaps an aggravation, of servitude. Rome

had been already stripped of her trophies, her gods, and her Caesars; nor was the Gothic dominion more

inglorious and oppressive than the tyranny of the Greeks. In the eighth century of the Christian aera, a

religious quarrel, the worship of images, provoked the Romans to assert their independence: their bishop

became the temporal, as well as the spiritual, father of a free people; and of the Western empire, which was

restored by Charlemagne, the title and image still decorate the singular constitution of modern Germany. The

name of Rome must yet command our involuntary respect: the climate (whatsoever may be its influence) was

no longer the same: ^1 the purity of blood had been contaminated through a thousand channels; but the

venerable aspect of her ruins, and the memory of past greatness, rekindled a spark of the national character.

The darkness of the middle ages exhibits some scenes not unworthy of our notice. Nor shall I dismiss the

present work till I have reviewed the state and revolutions of the Roman City, which acquiesced under the

absolute dominion of the popes, about the same time that Constantinople was enslaved by the Turkish arms.

[Footnote 1: The abbe Dubos, who, with less genius than his successor Montesquieu, has asserted and

magnified the influence of climate, objects to himself the degeneracy of the Romans and Batavians. To the

first of these examples he replies, 1. That the change is less real than apparent, and that the modern Romans

prudently conceal in themselves the virtues of their ancestors. 2. That the air, the soil, and the climate of

Rome have suffered a great and visible alteration, (Reflexions sur la Poesie et sur la Peinture, part ii. sect.

Note: This question is discussed at considerable length in Dr. Arnold's History of Rome, ch. xxiii. See

likewise Bunsen's Dissertation on the Aria Cattiva Roms Beschreibung, pp. 82, 108. M.]

In the beginning of the twelfth century, ^2 the aera of the first crusade, Rome was revered by the Latins, as

the metropolis of the world, as the throne of the pope and the emperor, who, from the eternal city, derived

their title, their honors, and the right or exercise of temporal dominion. After so long an interruption, it may

not be useless to repeat that the successors of Charlemagne and the Othos were chosen beyond the Rhine in a

national diet; but that these princes were content with the humble names of kings of Germany and Italy, till

they had passed the Alps and the Apennine, to seek their Imperial crown on the banks of the Tyber. ^3 At

some distance from the city, their approach was saluted by a long procession of the clergy and people with

palms and crosses; and the terrific emblems of wolves and lions, of dragons and eagles, that floated in the

military banners, represented the departed legions and cohorts of the republic. The royal path to maintain the

liberties of Rome was thrice reiterated, at the bridge, the gate, and on the stairs of the Vatican; and the

distribution of a customary donative feebly imitated the magnificence of the first Caesars. In the church of St.

Peter, the coronation was performed by his successor: the voice of God was confounded with that of the

people; and the public consent was declared in the acclamations of "Long life and victory to our lord the

pope! long life and victory to our lord the emperor! long life and victory to the Roman and Teutonic armies!"

^4 The names of Caesar and Augustus, the laws of Constantine and Justinian, the example of Charlemagne

and Otho, established the supreme dominion of the emperors: their title and image was engraved on the papal

coins; ^5 and their jurisdiction was marked by the sword of justice, which they delivered to the praefect of the

city. But every Roman prejudice was awakened by the name, the language, and the manners, of a Barbarian

lord. The Caesars of Saxony or Franconia were the chiefs of a feudal aristocracy; nor could they exercise the

discipline of civil and military power, which alone secures the obedience of a distant people, impatient of

servitude, though perhaps incapable of freedom. Once, and once only, in his life, each emperor, with an army

of Teutonic vassals, descended from the Alps. I have described the peaceful order of his entry and coronation;

but that order was commonly disturbed by the clamor and sedition of the Romans, who encountered their

sovereign as a foreign invader: his departure was always speedy, and often shameful; and, in the absence of a

long reign, his authority was insulted, and his name was forgotten. The progress of independence in Germany

and Italy undermined the foundations of the Imperial sovereignty, and the triumph of the popes was the

[Footnote 2: The reader has been so long absent from Rome, that I would advise him to recollect or review

[Footnote 3: The coronation of the German emperors at Rome, more especially in the xith century, is best

represented from the original monuments by Muratori (Antiquitat. Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. i. dissertat. ii. p.

99, and Cenni, (Monument. Domin. Pontif. tom. ii. diss. vi. p. 261,) the latter of whom I only know from the

[Footnote 4: Exercitui Romano et Teutonico! The latter was both seen and felt; but the former was no more

[Footnote 5: Muratori has given the series of the papal coins, (Antiquitat. tom. ii. diss. xxvii. p. 548 554.)

He finds only two more early than the year 800: fifty are still extant from Leo III. to Leo IX., with the

addition of the reigning emperor none remain of Gregory VII. or Urban II.; but in those of Paschal II. he

Of her two sovereigns, the emperor had precariously reigned by the right of conquest; but the authority of the

pope was founded on the soft, though more solid, basis of opinion and habit. The removal of a foreign

influence restored and endeared the shepherd to his flock. Instead of the arbitrary or venal nomination of a

German court, the vicar of Christ was freely chosen by the college of cardinals, most of whom were either

natives or inhabitants of the city. The applause of the magistrates and people confirmed his election, and the

ecclesiastical power that was obeyed in Sweden and Britain had been ultimately derived from the suffrage of

the Romans. The same suffrage gave a prince, as well as a pontiff, to the capital. It was universally believed,

that Constantine had invested the popes with the temporal dominion of Rome; and the boldest civilians, the

most profane skeptics, were satisfied with disputing the right of the emperor and the validity of his gift. The

truth of the fact, the authenticity of his donation, was deeply rooted in the ignorance and tradition of four

centuries; and the fabulous origin was lost in the real and permanent effects. The name of Dominus or Lord

was inscribed on the coin of the bishops: their title was acknowledged by acclamations and oaths of

allegiance, and with the free, or reluctant, consent of the German Caesars, they had long exercised a supreme

or subordinate jurisdiction over the city and patrimony of St. Peter. The reign of the popes, which gratified

the prejudices, was not incompatible with the liberties, of Rome; and a more critical inquiry would have

revealed a still nobler source of their power; the gratitude of a nation, whom they had rescued from the heresy

and oppression of the Greek tyrant. In an age of superstition, it should seem that the union of the royal and

sacerdotal characters would mutually fortify each other; and that the keys of Paradise would be the surest

pledge of earthly obedience. The sanctity of the office might indeed be degraded by the personal vices of the

man. But the scandals of the tenth century were obliterated by the austere and more dangerous virtues of

Gregory the Seventh and his successors; and in the ambitious contests which they maintained for the rights of

the church, their sufferings or their success must equally tend to increase the popular veneration. They

sometimes wandered in poverty and exile, the victims of persecution; and the apostolic zeal with which they

offered themselves to martyrdom must engage the favor and sympathy of every Catholic breast. And

sometimes, thundering from the Vatican, they created, judged, and deposed the kings of the world; nor could

the proudest Roman be disgraced by submitting to a priest, whose feet were kissed, and whose stirrup was

held, by the successors of Charlemagne. ^6 Even the temporal interest of the city should have protected in

peace and honor the residence of the popes; from whence a vain and lazy people derived the greatest part of

their subsistence and riches. The fixed revenue of the popes was probably impaired; many of the old

patrimonial estates, both in Italy and the provinces, had been invaded by sacrilegious hands; nor could the

loss be compensated by the claim, rather than the possession, of the more ample gifts of Pepin and his

descendants. But the Vatican and Capitol were nourished by the incessant and increasing swarms of pilgrims

and suppliants: the pale of Christianity was enlarged, and the pope and cardinals were overwhelmed by the

judgment of ecclesiastical and secular causes. A new jurisprudence had established in the Latin church the

right and practice of appeals; ^7 and from the North and West the bishops and abbots were invited or

summoned to solicit, to complain, to accuse, or to justify, before the threshold of the apostles. A rare prodigy

is once recorded, that two horses, belonging to the archbishops of Mentz and Cologne, repassed the Alps, yet

laden with gold and silver: ^8 but it was soon understood, that the success, both of the pilgrims and clients,

depended much less on the justice of their cause than on the value of their offering. The wealth and piety of

these strangers were ostentatiously displayed; and their expenses, sacred or profane, circulated in various

[Footnote 6: See Ducange, Gloss. mediae et infimae Latinitat. tom. vi. p. 364, 365, Staffa. This homage was

paid by kings to archbishops, and by vassals to their lords, (Schmidt, tom. iii. p. 262;) and it was the nicest

[Footnote 7: The appeals from all the churches to the Roman pontiff are deplored by the zeal of St. Bernard

(de Consideratione, l. iii. tom. ii. p. 431 442, edit. Mabillon, Venet. 1750) and the judgment of Fleury,

(Discours sur l'Hist. Ecclesiastique, iv. et vii.) But the saint, who believed in the false decretals condemns

only the abuse of these appeals; the more enlightened historian investigates the origin, and rejects the

[Footnote 8: Germanici . . . . summarii non levatis sarcinis onusti nihilominus repatriant inviti. Nova res!

quando hactenus aurum Roma refudit? Et nunc Romanorum consilio id usurpatum non credimus, (Bernard,

de Consideratione, l. iii. c. 3, p. 437.) The first words of the passage are obscure, and probably corrupt.]

Such powerful motives should have firmly attached the voluntary and pious obedience of the Roman people

to their spiritual and temporal father. But the operation of prejudice and interest is often disturbed by the

sallies of ungovernable passion. The Indian who fells the tree, that he may gather the fruit, ^9 and the Arab

who plunders the caravans of commerce, are actuated by the same impulse of savage nature, which overlooks

the future in the present, and relinquishes for momentary rapine the long and secure possession of the most

important blessings. And it was thus, that the shrine of St. Peter was profaned by the thoughtless Romans;

who pillaged the offerings, and wounded the pilgrims, without computing the number and value of similar

visits, which they prevented by their inhospitable sacrilege. Even the influence of superstition is fluctuating

and precarious; and the slave, whose reason is subdued, will often be delivered by his avarice or pride. A

credulous devotion for the fables and oracles of the priesthood most powerfully acts on the mind of a

Barbarian; yet such a mind is the least capable of preferring imagination to sense, of sacrificing to a distant

motive, to an invisible, perhaps an ideal, object, the appetites and interests of the present world. In the vigor

of health and youth, his practice will perpetually contradict his belief; till the pressure of age, or sickness, or

calamity, awakens his terrors, and compels him to satisfy the double debt of piety and remorse. I have already

observed, that the modern times of religious indifference are the most favorable to the peace and security of

the clergy. Under the reign of superstition, they had much to hope from the ignorance, and much to fear from

the violence, of mankind. The wealth, whose constant increase must have rendered them the sole proprietors

of the earth, was alternately bestowed by the repentant father and plundered by the rapacious son: their

persons were adored or violated; and the same idol, by the hands of the same votaries, was placed on the

altar, or trampled in the dust. In the feudal system of Europe, arms were the title of distinction and the

measure of allegiance; and amidst their tumult, the still voice of law and reason was seldom heard or obeyed.

The turbulent Romans disdained the yoke, and insulted the impotence, of their bishop: ^10 nor would his

education or character allow him to exercise, with decency or effect, the power of the sword. The motives of

his election and the frailties of his life were exposed to their familiar observation; and proximity must

diminish the reverence which his name and his decrees impressed on a barbarous world. This difference has

not escaped the notice of our philosophic historian: "Though the name and authority of the court of Rome

were so terrible in the remote countries of Europe, which were sunk in profound ignorance, and were entirely

unacquainted with its character and conduct, the pope was so little revered at home, that his inveterate

enemies surrounded the gates of Rome itself, and even controlled his government in that city; and the

ambassadors, who, from a distant extremity of Europe, carried to him the humble, or rather abject,

submissions of the greatest potentate of the age, found the utmost difficulty to make their way to him, and to

[Footnote 9: Quand les sauvages de la Louisiane veulent avoir du fruit, ils coupent l'arbre au pied et cueillent

le fruit. Voila le gouvernement despotique, (Esprit des Loix, l. v. c. 13;) and passion and ignorance are

[Footnote 10: In a free conversation with his countryman Adrian IV., John of Salisbury accuses the avarice of

the pope and clergy: Provinciarum diripiunt spolia, ac si thesauros Croesi studeant reparare. Sed recte cum eis

agit Altissimus, quoniam et ipsi aliis et saepe vilissimis hominibus dati sunt in direptionem, (de Nugis

Curialium, l. vi. c. 24, p. 387.) In the next page, he blames the rashness and infidelity of the Romans, whom

their bishops vainly strove to conciliate by gifts, instead of virtues. It is pity that this miscellaneous writer has

not given us less morality and erudition, and more pictures of himself and the times.]

[Footnote 11: Hume's History of England, vol. i. p. 419. The same writer has given us, from FitzStephen, a

singular act of cruelty perpetrated on the clergy by Geoffrey, the father of Henry II. "When he was master of

Normandy, the chapter of Seez presumed, without his consent, to proceed to the election of a bishop: upon

which he ordered all of them, with the bishop elect, to be castrated, and made all their testicles be brought

him in a platter." Of the pain and danger they might justly complain; yet since they had vowed chastity he

Since the primitive times, the wealth of the popes was exposed to envy, their powers to opposition, and their

persons to violence. But the long hostility of the mitre and the crown increased the numbers, and inflamed the

passions, of their enemies. The deadly factions of the Guelphs and Ghibelines, so fatal to Italy, could never

be embraced with truth or constancy by the Romans, the subjects and adversaries both of the bishop and

emperor; but their support was solicited by both parties, and they alternately displayed in their banners the

keys of St. Peter and the German eagle. Gregory the Seventh, who may be adored or detested as the founder

of the papal monarchy, was driven from Rome, and died in exile at Salerno. Six andthirty of his

successors, ^12 till their retreat to Avignon, maintained an unequal contest with the Romans: their age and

dignity were often violated; and the churches, in the solemn rites of religion, were polluted with sedition and

murder. A repetition ^13 of such capricious brutality, without connection or design, would be tedious and

disgusting; and I shall content myself with some events of the twelfth century, which represent the state of the

popes and the city. On Holy Thursday, while Paschal officiated before the altar, he was interrupted by the

clamors of the multitude, who imperiously demanded the confirmation of a favorite magistrate. His silence

exasperated their fury; his pious refusal to mingle the affairs of earth and heaven was encountered with

menaces, and oaths, that he should be the cause and the witness of the public ruin. During the festival of

Easter, while the bishop and the clergy, barefooted and in procession, visited the tombs of the martyrs, they

were twice assaulted, at the bridge of St. Angelo, and before the Capitol, with volleys of stones and darts. The

houses of his adherents were levelled with the ground: Paschal escaped with difficulty and danger; he levied

an army in the patrimony of St. Peter; and his last days were embittered by suffering and inflicting the

calamities of civil war. The scenes that followed the election of his successor Gelasius the Second were still

more scandalous to the church and city. Cencio Frangipani, ^14 a potent and factious baron, burst into the

assembly furious and in arms: the cardinals were stripped, beaten, and trampled under foot; and he seized,

without pity or respect, the vicar of Christ by the throat. Gelasius was dragged by the hair along the ground,

buffeted with blows, wounded with spurs, and bound with an iron chain in the house of his brutal tyrant. An

insurrection of the people delivered their bishop: the rival families opposed the violence of the Frangipani;

and Cencio, who sued for pardon, repented of the failure, rather than of the guilt, of his enterprise. Not many

days had elapsed, when the pope was again assaulted at the altar. While his friends and enemies were

engaged in a bloody contest, he escaped in his sacerdotal garments. In this unworthy flight, which excited the

compassion of the Roman matrons, his attendants were scattered or unhorsed; and, in the fields behind the

church of St. Peter, his successor was found alone and half dead with fear and fatigue. Shaking the dust from

his feet, the apostle withdrew from a city in which his dignity was insulted and his person was endangered;

and the vanity of sacerdotal ambition is revealed in the involuntary confession, that one emperor was more

tolerable than twenty. ^15 These examples might suffice; but I cannot forget the sufferings of two pontiffs of

the same age, the second and third of the name of Lucius. The former, as he ascended in battle array to

assault the Capitol, was struck on the temple by a stone, and expired in a few days. The latter was severely

wounded in the person of his servants. In a civil commotion, several of his priests had been made prisoners;

and the inhuman Romans, reserving one as a guide for his brethren, put out their eyes, crowned them with

ludicrous mitres, mounted them on asses with their faces towards the tail, and extorted an oath, that, in this

wretched condition, they should offer themselves as a lesson to the head of the church. Hope or fear, lassitude

or remorse, the characters of the men, and the circumstances of the times, might sometimes obtain an interval

of peace and obedience; and the pope was restored with joyful acclamations to the Lateran or Vatican, from

whence he had been driven with threats and violence. But the root of mischief was deep and perennial; and a

momentary calm was preceded and followed by such tempests as had almost sunk the bark of St. Peter. Rome

continually presented the aspect of war and discord: the churches and palaces were fortified and assaulted by

the factions and families; and, after giving peace to Europe, Calistus the Second alone had resolution and

power to prohibit the use of private arms in the metropolis. Among the nations who revered the apostolic

throne, the tumults of Rome provoked a general indignation; and in a letter to his disciple Eugenius the Third,

St. Bernard, with the sharpness of his wit and zeal, has stigmatized the vices of the rebellious people. ^16

"Who is ignorant," says the monk of Clairvaux, "of the vanity and arrogance of the Romans? a nation nursed

in sedition, untractable, and scorning to obey, unless they are too feeble to resist. When they promise to serve,

they aspire to reign; if they swear allegiance, they watch the opportunity of revolt; yet they vent their

discontent in loud clamors, if your doors, or your counsels, are shut against them. Dexterous in mischief, they

have never learned the science of doing good. Odious to earth and heaven, impious to God, seditious among

themselves, jealous of their neighbors, inhuman to strangers, they love no one, by no one are they beloved;

and while they wish to inspire fear, they live in base and continual apprehension. They will not submit; they

know not how to govern faithless to their superiors, intolerable to their equals, ungrateful to their benefactors,

and alike impudent in their demands and their refusals. Lofty in promise, poor in execution; adulation and

calumny, perfidy and treason, are the familiar arts of their policy." Surely this dark portrait is not colored by

the pencil of Christian charity; ^17 yet the features, however harsh or ugly, express a lively resemblance of

the Roman of the twelfth century. ^18 [Footnote 12: From Leo IX. and Gregory VII. an authentic and

contemporary series of the lives of the popes by the cardinal of Arragon, Pandulphus Pisanus, Bernard Guido,

is inserted in the Italian Historians of Muratori, (tom. iii. P. i. p. 277 685,) and has been always before my

[Footnote 13: The dates of years int he in the contents may throughout his this chapter be understood as tacit

references to the Annals of Muratori, my ordinary and excellent guide. He uses, and indeed quotes, with the

freedom of a master, his great collection of the Italian Historians, in xxviii. volumes; and as that treasure is in

my library, I have thought it an amusement, if not a duty, to consult the originals.]

[Footnote 14: I cannot refrain from transcribing the highcolored words of Pandulphus Pisanus, (p. 384.) Hoc

audiens inimicus pacis atque turbator jam fatus Centius Frajapane, more draconis immanissimi sibilans, et ab

imis pectoribus trahens longa suspiria, accinctus retro gladio sine more cucurrit, valvas ac fores confregit.

Ecclesiam furibundus introiit, inde custode remoto papam per gulam accepit, distraxit pugnis calcibusque

percussit, et tanquam brutum animal intra limen ecclesiae acriter calcaribus cruentavit; et latro tantum

dominum per capillos et brachia, Jesu bono interim dormiente, detraxit, ad domum usque deduxit, inibi

[Footnote 15: Ego coram Deo et Ecclesia dico, si unquam possibile esset, mallem unum imperatorem quam

[Footnote 16: Quid tam notum seculis quam protervia et cervicositas Romanorum? Gens insueta paci,

tumultui assueta, gens immitis et intractabilis usque adhuc, subdi nescia, nisi cum non valet resistere, (de

Considerat. l. iv. c. 2, p. 441.) The saint takes breath, and then begins again: Hi, invisi terrae et coelo, utrique

[Footnote 17: As a Roman citizen, Petrarch takes leave to observe, that Bernard, though a saint, was a man;

that he might be provoked by resentment, and possibly repent of his hasty passion, (Memoires sur la Vie de

[Footnote 18: Baronius, in his index to the xiith volume of his Annals, has found a fair and easy excuse. He

makes two heads, of Romani Catholici and Schismatici: to the former he applies all the good, to the latter all

The Jews had rejected the Christ when he appeared among them in a plebeian character; and the Romans

might plead their ignorance of his vicar when he assumed the pomp and pride of a temporal sovereign. In the

busy age of the crusades, some sparks of curiosity and reason were rekindled in the Western world: the

heresy of Bulgaria, the Paulician sect, was successfully transplanted into the soil of Italy and France; the

Gnostic visions were mingled with the simplicity of the gospel; and the enemies of the clergy reconciled their

passions with their conscience, the desire of freedom with the profession of piety. ^19 The trumpet of Roman

liberty was first sounded by Arnold of Brescia, ^20 whose promotion in the church was confined to the

lowest rank, and who wore the monastic habit rather as a garb of poverty than as a uniform of obedience. His

adversaries could not deny the wit and eloquence which they severely felt; they confess with reluctance the

specious purity of his morals; and his errors were recommended to the public by a mixture of important and

beneficial truths. In his theological studies, he had been the disciple of the famous and unfortunate Abelard,

^21 who was likewise involved in the suspicion of heresy: but the lover of Eloisa was of a soft and flexible

nature; and his ecclesiastic judges were edified and disarmed by the humility of his repentance. From this

master, Arnold most probably imbibed some metaphysical definitions of the Trinity, repugnant to the taste of

the times: his ideas of baptism and the eucharist are loosely censured; but a political heresy was the source of

his fame and misfortunes. He presumed to quote the declaration of Christ, that his kingdom is not of this

world: he boldly maintained, that the sword and the sceptre were intrusted to the civil magistrate; that

temporal honors and possessions were lawfully vested in secular persons; that the abbots, the bishops, and the

pope himself, must renounce either their state or their salvation; and that after the loss of their revenues, the

voluntary tithes and oblations of the faithful would suffice, not indeed for luxury and avarice, but for a frugal

life in the exercise of spiritual labors. During a short time, the preacher was revered as a patriot; and the

discontent, or revolt, of Brescia against her bishop, was the first fruits of his dangerous lessons. But the favor

of the people is less permanent than the resentment of the priest; and after the heresy of Arnold had been

condemned by Innocent the Second, ^22 in the general council of the Lateran, the magistrates themselves

were urged by prejudice and fear to execute the sentence of the church. Italy could no longer afford a refuge;

and the disciple of Abelard escaped beyond the Alps, till he found a safe and hospitable shelter in Zurich,

now the first of the Swiss cantons. From a Roman station, ^23 a royal villa, a chapter of noble virgins, Zurich

had gradually increased to a free and flourishing city; where the appeals of the Milanese were sometimes

tried by the Imperial commissaries. ^24 In an age less ripe for reformation, the precursor of Zuinglius was

heard with applause: a brave and simple people imbibed, and long retained, the color of his opinions; and his

art, or merit, seduced the bishop of Constance, and even the pope's legate, who forgot, for his sake, the

interest of their master and their order. Their tardy zeal was quickened by the fierce exhortations of St.

Bernard; ^25 and the enemy of the church was driven by persecution to the desperate measures of erecting his

[Footnote 19: The heresies of the xiith century may be found in Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 419

427,) who entertains a favorable opinion of Arnold of Brescia. In the vth volume I have described the sect of

the Paulicians, and followed their migration from Armenia to Thrace and Bulgaria, Italy and France.]

[Footnote 20: The original pictures of Arnold of Brescia are drawn by Otho, bishop of Frisingen, (Chron. l.

vii. c. 31, de Gestis Frederici I. l. i. c. 27, l. ii. c. 21,) and in the iiid book of the Ligurinus, a poem of

Gunthur, who flourished A.D. 1200, in the monastery of Paris near Basil, (Fabric. Bibliot. Latin. Med. et

Infimae Aetatis, tom. iii. p. 174, 175.) The long passage that relates to Arnold is produced by Guilliman, (de

[Footnote 21: The wicked wit of Bayle was amused in composing, with much levity and learning, the articles

of Abelard, Foulkes, Heloise, in his Dictionnaire Critique. The dispute of Abelard and St. Bernard, of

scholastic and positive divinity, is well understood by Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 412 415.)]

[Footnote 22: Damnatus ab illo Praesule, qui numeros vetitum contingere nostros Nomen ad innocua ducit

laudabile vita. We may applaud the dexterity and correctness of Ligurinus, who turns the unpoetical name of

[Footnote 23: A Roman inscription of Statio Turicensis has been found at Zurich, (D'Anville, Notice de

l'ancienne Gaul, p. 642 644;) but it is without sufficient warrant, that the city and canton have usurped, and

[Footnote 24: Guilliman (de Rebus Helveticis, l. iii. c. 5, p. 106) recapitulates the donation (A.D. 833) of the

emperor Lewis the Pious to his daughter the abbess Hildegardis. Curtim nostram Turegum in ducatu

Alamanniae in pago Durgaugensi, with villages, woods, meadows, waters, slaves, churches, a noble gift.

Charles the Bald gave the jus monetae, the city was walled under Otho I., and the line of the bishop of

[Footnote 25: Bernard, Epistol. cxcv. tom. i. p. 187 190. Amidst his invectives he drops a precious

acknowledgment, qui, utinam quam sanae esset doctrinae quam districtae est vitae. He owns that Arnold

While they expected the descent of the tardy angel, the doors were broken with axes; and as the Turks

encountered no resistance, their bloodless hands were employed in selecting and securing the multitude of

their prisoners. Youth, beauty, and the appearance of wealth, attracted their choice; and the right of property

was decided among themselves by a prior seizure, by personal strength, and by the authority of command. In

the space of an hour, the male captives were bound with cords, the females with their veils and girdles. The

senators were linked with their slaves; the prelates, with the porters of the church; and young men of the

plebeian class, with noble maids, whose faces had been invisible to the sun and their nearest kindred. In this

common captivity, the ranks of society were confounded; the ties of nature were cut asunder; and the

inexorable soldier was careless of the father's groans, the tears of the mother, and the lamentations of the

children. The loudest in their wailings were the nuns, who were torn from the altar with naked bosoms,

outstretched hands, and dishevelled hair; and we should piously believe that few could be tempted to prefer

the vigils of the harem to those of the monastery. Of these unfortunate Greeks, of these domestic animals,

whole strings were rudely driven through the streets; and as the conquerors were eager to return for more

prey, their trembling pace was quickened with menaces and blows. At the same hour, a similar rapine was

exercised in all the churches and monasteries, in all the palaces and habitations, of the capital; nor could any

place, however sacred or sequestered, protect the persons or the property of the Greeks. Above sixty thousand

of this devoted people were transported from the city to the camp and fleet; exchanged or sold according to

the caprice or interest of their masters, and dispersed in remote servitude through the provinces of the

Ottoman empire. Among these we may notice some remarkable characters. The historian Phranza, first

chamberlain and principal secretary, was involved with his family in the common lot. After suffering four

months the hardships of slavery, he recovered his freedom: in the ensuing winter he ventured to Adrianople,

and ransomed his wife from the mir bashi, or master of the horse; but his two children, in the flower of youth

and beauty, had been seized for the use of Mahomet himself. The daughter of Phranza died in the seraglio,

perhaps a virgin: his son, in the fifteenth year of his age, preferred death to infamy, and was stabbed by the

hand of the royal lover. ^66 A deed thus inhuman cannot surely be expiated by the taste and liberality with

which he released a Grecian matron and her two daughters, on receiving a Latin doe From ode from

Philelphus, who had chosen a wife in that noble family. ^67 The pride or cruelty of Mahomet would have

been most sensibly gratified by the capture of a Roman legate; but the dexterity of Cardinal Isidore eluded the

search, and he escaped from Galata in a plebeian habit. ^68 The chain and entrance of the outward harbor

was still occupied by the Italian ships of merchandise and war. They had signalized their valor in the siege:

they embraced the moment of retreat, while the Turkish mariners were dissipated in the pillage of the city.

When they hoisted sail, the beach was covered with a suppliant and lamentable crowd; but the means of

transportation were scanty: the Venetians and Genoese selected their countrymen; and, notwithstanding the

fairest promises of the sultan, the inhabitants of Galata evacuated their houses, and embarked with their most

[Footnote 66: See Phranza, l. iii. c. 20, 21. His expressions are positive: Ameras sua manu jugulavit . . . .

volebat enim eo turpiter et nefarie abuti. Me miserum et infelicem! Yet he could only learn from report the

[Footnote 67: See Tiraboschi (tom. vi. P. i. p. 290) and Lancelot, (Mem. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom.

x. p. 718.) I should be curious to learn how he could praise the public enemy, whom he so often reviles as the

[Footnote 68: The commentaries of Pius II. suppose that he craftily placed his cardinal's hat on the head of a

corpse which was cut off and exposed in triumph, while the legate himself was bought and delivered as a

captive of no value. The great Belgic Chronicle adorns his escape with new adventures, which he suppressed

(says Spondanus, A.D. 1453, No. 15) in his own letters, lest he should lose the merit and reward of suffering

Note: He was sold as a slave in Galata, according to Von Hammer, p. 175. See the somewhat vague and

declamatory letter of Cardinal Isidore, in the appendix to Clarke's Travels, vol. ii. p. 653. M.]

In the fall and the sack of great cities, an historian is condemned to repeat the tale of uniform calamity: the

same effects must be produced by the same passions; and when those passions may be indulged without

control, small, alas! is the difference between civilized and savage man. Amidst the vague exclamations of

bigotry and hatred, the Turks are not accused of a wanton or immoderate effusion of Christian blood: but

according to their maxims, (the maxims of antiquity,) the lives of the vanquished were forfeited; and the

legitimate reward of the conqueror was derived from the service, the sale, or the ransom, of his captives of

both sexes. ^69 The wealth of Constantinople had been granted by the sultan to his victorious troops; and the

rapine of an hour is more productive than the industry of years. But as no regular division was attempted of

the spoil, the respective shares were not determined by merit; and the rewards of valor were stolen away by

the followers of the camp, who had declined the toil and danger of the battle. The narrative of their

depredations could not afford either amusement or instruction: the total amount, in the last poverty of the

empire, has been valued at four millions of ducats; ^70 and of this sum a small part was the property of the

Venetians, the Genoese, the Florentines, and the merchants of Ancona. Of these foreigners, the stock was

improved in quick and perpetual circulation: but the riches of the Greeks were displayed in the idle

ostentation of palaces and wardrobes, or deeply buried in treasures of ingots and old coin, lest it should be

demanded at their hands for the defence of their country. The profanation and plunder of the monasteries and

churches excited the most tragic complaints. The dome of St. Sophia itself, the earthly heaven, the second

firmament, the vehicle of the cherubim, the throne of the glory of God, ^71 was despoiled of the oblation of

ages; and the gold and silver, the pearls and jewels, the vases and sacerdotal ornaments, were most wickedly

converted to the service of mankind. After the divine images had been stripped of all that could be valuable to

a profane eye, the canvas, or the wood, was torn, or broken, or burnt, or trod under foot, or applied, in the

stables or the kitchen, to the vilest uses. The example of sacrilege was imitated, however, from the Latin

conquerors of Constantinople; and the treatment which Christ, the Virgin, and the saints, had sustained from

the guilty Catholic, might be inflicted by the zealous Mussulman on the monuments of idolatry. Perhaps,

instead of joining the public clamor, a philosopher will observe, that in the decline of the arts the

workmanship could not be more valuable than the work, and that a fresh supply of visions and miracles

would speedily be renewed by the craft of the priests and the credulity of the people. He will more seriously

deplore the loss of the Byzantine libraries, which were destroyed or scattered in the general confusion: one

hundred and twenty thousand manuscripts are said to have disappeared; ^72 ten volumes might be purchased

for a single ducat; and the same ignominious price, too high perhaps for a shelf of theology, included the

whole works of Aristotle and Homer, the noblest productions of the science and literature of ancient Greece.

We may reflect with pleasure that an inestimable portion of our classic treasures was safely deposited in Italy;

and that the mechanics of a German town had invented an art which derides the havoc of time and barbarism.

[Footnote 69: Busbequius expatiates with pleasure and applause on the rights of war, and the use of slavery,

[Footnote 70: This sum is specified in a marginal note of Leunclavius, (Chalcondyles, l. viii. p. 211,) but in

the distribution to Venice, Genoa, Florence, and Ancona, of 50, 20, and 15,000 ducats, I suspect that a figure

has been dropped. Even with the restitution, the foreign property would scarcely exceed one fourth.]

[Footnote 71: See the enthusiastic praises and lamentations of Phranza, (l. iii. c. 17.)]

[Footnote 72: See Ducas, (c. 43,) and an epistle, July 15th, 1453, from Laurus Quirinus to Pope Nicholas V.,

From the first hour ^73 of the memorable twentyninth of May, disorder and rapine prevailed in

Constantinople, till the eighth hour of the same day; when the sultan himself passed in triumph through the

gate of St. Romanus. He was attended by his viziers, bashaws, and guards, each of whom (says a Byzantine

historian) was robust as Hercules, dexterous as Apollo, and equal in battle to any ten of the race of ordinary

mortals. The conqueror ^74 gazed with satisfaction and wonder on the strange, though splendid, appearance

of the domes and palaces, so dissimilar from the style of Oriental architecture. In the hippodrome, or

atmeidan, his eye was attracted by the twisted column of the three serpents; and, as a trial of his strength, he

shattered with his iron mace or battleaxe the under jaw of one of these monsters, ^75 which in the eyes of

the Turks were the idols or talismans of the city. ^* At the principal door of St. Sophia, he alighted from his

horse, and entered the dome; and such was his jealous regard for that monument of his glory, that on

observing a zealous Mussulman in the act of breaking the marble pavement, he admonished him with his

cimeter, that, if the spoil and captives were granted to the soldiers, the public and private buildings had been

reserved for the prince. By his command the metropolis of the Eastern church was transformed into a

mosque: the rich and portable instruments of superstition had been removed; the crosses were thrown down;

and the walls, which were covered with images and mosaics, were washed and purified, and restored to a

state of naked simplicity. On the same day, or on the ensuing Friday, the muezin, or crier, ascended the most

lofty turret, and proclaimed the ezan, or public invitation in the name of God and his prophet; the imam

preached; and Mahomet and Second performed the namaz of prayer and thanksgiving on the great altar,

where the Christian mysteries had so lately been celebrated before the last of the Caesars. ^76 From St.

Sophia he proceeded to the august, but desolate mansion of a hundred successors of the great Constantine, but

which in a few hours had been stripped of the pomp of royalty. A melancholy reflection on the vicissitudes of

human greatness forced itself on his mind; and he repeated an elegant distich of Persian poetry: "The spider

has wove his web in the Imperial palace; and the owl hath sung her watchsong on the towers of Afrasiab."

[Footnote 73: The Julian Calendar, which reckons the days and hours from midnight, was used at

[Footnote 74: See the Turkish Annals, p. 329, and the Pandects of Leunclarius, p. 448.]

[Footnote 75: I have had occasion (vol. ii. p. 100) to mention this curious relic of Grecian antiquity.]

[Footnote *: Von Hammer passes over this circumstance, which is treated by Dr. Clarke (Travels, vol. ii. p.

58, 4to. edit,) as a fiction of Thevenot. Chishull states that the monument was broken by some attendants of

[Footnote 76: We are obliged to Cantemir (p. 102) for the Turkish account of the conversion of St. Sophia, so

bitterly deplored by Phranza and Ducas. It is amusing enough to observe, in what opposite lights the same

[Footnote 77: This distich, which Cantemir gives in the original, derives new beauties from the application. It

was thus that Scipio repeated, in the sack of Carthage, the famous prophecy of Homer. The same generous

Yet his mind was not satisfied, nor did the victory seem complete, till he was informed of the fate of

Constantine; whether he had escaped, or been made prisoner, or had fallen in the battle. Two Janizaries

claimed the honor and reward of his death: the body, under a heap of slain, was discovered by the golden

eagles embroidered on his shoes; the Greeks acknowledged, with tears, the head of their late emperor; and,

after exposing the bloody trophy, ^78 Mahomet bestowed on his rival the honors of a decent funeral. After

his decease, Lucas Notaras, great duke, ^79 and first minister of the empire, was the most important prisoner.

When he offered his person and his treasures at the foot of the throne, "And why," said the indignant sultan,

"did you not employ these treasures in the defence of your prince and country?" "They were yours,"

answered the slave; "God had reserved them for your hands." "If he reserved them for me," replied the

despot, "how have you presumed to withhold them so long by a fruitless and fatal resistance?" The great duke

alleged the obstinacy of the strangers, and some secret encouragement from the Turkish vizier; and from this

perilous interview he was at length dismissed with the assurance of pardon and protection. Mahomet

condescended to visit his wife, a venerable princess oppressed with sickness and grief; and his consolation for

her misfortunes was in the most tender strain of humanity and filial reverence. A similar clemency was

extended to the principal officers of state, of whom several were ransomed at his expense; and during some

days he declared himself the friend and father of the vanquished people. But the scene was soon changed; and

before his departure, the hippodrome streamed with the blood of his noblest captives. His perfidious cruelty is

execrated by the Christians: they adorn with the colors of heroic martyrdom the execution of the great duke

and his two sons; and his death is ascribed to the generous refusal of delivering his children to the tyrant's

lust. ^* Yet a Byzantine historian has dropped an unguarded word of conspiracy, deliverance, and Italian

succor: such treason may be glorious; but the rebel who bravely ventures, has justly forfeited his life; nor

should we blame a conqueror for destroying the enemies whom he can no longer trust. On the eighteenth of

June the victorious sultan returned to Adrianople; and smiled at the base and hollow embassies of the

Christian princes, who viewed their approaching ruin in the fall of the Eastern empire.

[Footnote 78: I cannot believe with Ducas (see Spondanus, A.D. 1453, No. 13) that Mahomet sent round

Persia, Arabia, the head of the Greek emperor: he would surely content himself with a trophy less inhuman.]

[Footnote 79: Phranza was the personal enemy of the great duke; nor could time, or death, or his own retreat

to a monastery, extort a feeling of sympathy or forgiveness. Ducas is inclined to praise and pity the martyr;

Chalcondyles is neuter, but we are indebted to him for the hint of the Greek conspiracy.]

[Footnote *: Von Hammer relates this undoubtingly, apparently on good authority, p. 559. M.]

Constantinople had been left naked and desolate, without a prince or a people. But she could not be despoiled

of the incomparable situation which marks her for the metropolis of a great empire; and the genius of the

place will ever triumph over the accidents of time and fortune. Boursa and Adrianople, the ancient seats of

the Ottomans, sunk into provincial towns; and Mahomet the Second established his own residence, and that

of his successors, on the same commanding spot which had been chosen by Constantine. ^80 The

fortifications of Galata, which might afford a shelter to the Latins, were prudently destroyed; but the damage

of the Turkish cannon was soon repaired; and before the month of August, great quantities of lime had been

burnt for the restoration of the walls of the capital. As the entire property of the soil and buildings, whether

public or private, or profane or sacred, was now transferred to the conqueror, he first separated a space of

eight furlongs from the point of the triangle for the establishment of his seraglio or palace. It is here, in the

bosom of luxury, that the Grand Signor (as he has been emphatically named by the Italians) appears to reign

over Europe and Asia; but his person on the shores of the Bosphorus may not always be secure from the

insults of a hostile navy. In the new character of a mosque, the cathedral of St. Sophia was endowed with an

ample revenue, crowned with lofty minarets, and surrounded with groves and fountains, for the devotion and

refreshment of the Moslems. The same model was imitated in the jami, or royal mosques; and the first of

these was built, by Mahomet himself, on the ruins of the church of the holy apostles, and the tombs of the

Greek emperors. On the third day after the conquest, the grave of Abu Ayub, or Job, who had fallen in the

first siege of the Arabs, was revealed in a vision; and it is before the sepulchre of the martyr that the new

sultans are girded with the sword of empire. ^81 Constantinople no longer appertains to the Roman historian;

nor shall I enumerate the civil and religious edifices that were profaned or erected by its Turkish masters: the

population was speedily renewed; and before the end of September, five thousand families of Anatolia and

Romania had obeyed the royal mandate, which enjoined them, under pain of death, to occupy their new

habitations in the capital. The throne of Mahomet was guarded by the numbers and fidelity of his Moslem

subjects: but his rational policy aspired to collect the remnant of the Greeks; and they returned in crowds, as

soon as they were assured of their lives, their liberties, and the free exercise of their religion. In the election

and investiture of a patriarch, the ceremonial of the Byzantine court was revived and imitated. With a mixture

of satisfaction and horror, they beheld the sultan on his throne; who delivered into the hands of Gennadius the

crosier or pastoral staff, the symbol of his ecclesiastical office; who conducted the patriarch to the gate of the

seraglio, presented him with a horse richly caparisoned, and directed the viziers and bashaws to lead him to

the palace which had been allotted for his residence. ^82 The churches of Constantinople were shared

between the two religions: their limits were marked; and, till it was infringed by Selim, the grandson of

Mahomet, the Greeks ^83 enjoyed above sixty years the benefit of this equal partition. Encouraged by the

ministers of the divan, who wished to elude the fanaticism of the sultan, the Christian advocates presumed to

allege that this division had been an act, not of generosity, but of justice; not a concession, but a compact; and

that if one half of the city had been taken by storm, the other moiety had surrendered on the faith of a sacred

capitulation. The original grant had indeed been consumed by fire: but the loss was supplied by the testimony

of three aged Janizaries who remembered the transaction; and their venal oaths are of more weight in the

opinion of Cantemir, than the positive and unanimous consent of the history of the times. ^84

[Footnote 80: For the restitution of Constantinople and the Turkish foundations, see Cantemir, (p. 102 109,)

Ducas, (c. 42,) with Thevenot, Tournefort, and the rest of our modern travellers. From a gigantic picture of

the greatness, population, of Constantinople and the Ottoman empire, (Abrege de l'Histoire Ottomane, tom. i.

p. 16 21,) we may learn, that in the year 1586 the Moslems were less numerous in the capital than the

[Footnote 81: The Turbe, or sepulchral monument of Abu Ayub, is described and engraved in the Tableau

Generale de l'Empire Ottoman, (Paris 1787, in large folio,) a work of less use, perhaps, than magnificence,

[Footnote 82: Phranza (l. iii. c. 19) relates the ceremony, which has possibly been adorned in the Greek

reports to each other, and to the Latins. The fact is confirmed by Emanuel Malaxus, who wrote, in vulgar

Greek, the History of the Patriarchs after the taking of Constantinople, inserted in the TurcoGraecia of

Crusius, (l. v. p. 106 184.) But the most patient reader will not believe that Mahomet adopted the Catholic

form, "Sancta Trinitas quae mihi donavit imperium te in patriarcham novae Romae deligit."]

[Footnote 83: From the TurcoGraecia of Crusius, Spondanus (A.D. 1453, No. 21, 1458, No. 16) describes

the slavery and domestic quarrels of the Greek church. The patriarch who succeeded Gennadius threw

[Footnote 84: Cantemir (p. 101 105) insists on the unanimous consent of the Turkish historians, ancient as

well as modern, and argues, that they would not have violated the truth to diminish their national glory, since

it is esteemed more honorable to take a city by force than by composition. But, 1. I doubt this consent, since

he quotes no particular historian, and the Turkish Annals of Leunclavius affirm, without exception, that

Mahomet took Constantinople per vim, (p. 329.) 2 The same argument may be turned in favor of the Greeks

of the times, who would not have forgotten this honorable and salutary treaty. Voltaire, as usual, prefers the

The remaining fragments of the Greek kingdom in Europe and Asia I shall abandon to the Turkish arms; but

the final extinction of the two last dynasties ^85 which have reigned in Constantinople should terminate the

decline and fall of the Roman empire in the East. The despots of the Morea, Demetrius and Thomas, ^86 the

two surviving brothers of the name of Palaeologus, were astonished by the death of the emperor Constantine,

and the ruin of the monarchy. Hopeless of defence, they prepared, with the noble Greeks who adhered to their

fortune, to seek a refuge in Italy, beyond the reach of the Ottoman thunder. Their first apprehensions were

dispelled by the victorious sultan, who contented himself with a tribute of twelve thousand ducats; and while

his ambition explored the continent and the islands, in search of prey, he indulged the Morea in a respite of

seven years. But this respite was a period of grief, discord, and misery. The hexamilion, the rampart of the

Isthmus, so often raised and so often subverted, could not long be defended by three hundred Italian archers:

the keys of Corinth were seized by the Turks: they returned from their summer excursions with a train of

captives and spoil; and the complaints of the injured Greeks were heard with indifference and disdain. The

Albanians, a vagrant tribe of shepherds and robbers, filled the peninsula with rapine and murder: the two

despots implored the dangerous and humiliating aid of a neighboring bashaw; and when he had quelled the

revolt, his lessons inculcated the rule of their future conduct. Neither the ties of blood, nor the oaths which

they repeatedly pledged in the communion and before the altar, nor the stronger pressure of necessity, could

reconcile or suspend their domestic quarrels. They ravaged each other's patrimony with fire and sword: the

alms and succors of the West were consumed in civil hostility; and their power was only exerted in savage

and arbitrary executions. The distress and revenge of the weaker rival invoked their supreme lord; and, in the

season of maturity and revenge, Mahomet declared himself the friend of Demetrius, and marched into the

Morea with an irresistible force. When he had taken possession of Sparta, "You are too weak," said the

sultan, "to control this turbulent province: I will take your daughter to my bed; and you shall pass the

remainder of your life in security and honor." Demetrius sighed and obeyed; surrendered his daughter and his

castles; followed to Adrianople his sovereign and his son; and received for his own maintenance, and that of

his followers, a city in Thrace and the adjacent isles of Imbros, Lemnos, and Samothrace. He was joined the

next year by a companion ^* of misfortune, the last of the Comnenian race, who, after the taking of

Constantinople by the Latins, had founded a new empire on the coast of the Black Sea. ^87 In the progress of

his Anatolian conquest, Mahomet invested with a fleet and army the capital of David, who presumed to style

himself emperor of Trebizond; ^88 and the negotiation was comprised in a short and peremptory question,

"Will you secure your life and treasures by resigning your kingdom? or had you rather forfeit your kingdom,

your treasures, and your life?" The feeble Comnenus was subdued by his own fears, ^! and the example of a

Mussulman neighbor, the prince of Sinope, ^89 who, on a similar summons, had yielded a fortified city, with

four hundred cannon and ten or twelve thousand soldiers. The capitulation of Trebizond was faithfully

performed: ^* and the emperor, with his family, was transported to a castle in Romania; but on a slight

suspicion of corresponding with the Persian king, David, and the whole Comnenian race, were sacrificed to

the jealousy or avarice of the conqueror. ^!! Nor could the name of father long protect the unfortunate

Demetrius from exile and confiscation; his abject submission moved the pity and contempt of the sultan; his

followers were transplanted to Constantinople; and his poverty was alleviated by a pension of fifty thousand

aspers, till a monastic habit and a tardy death released Palaeologus from an earthly master. It is not easy to

pronounce whether the servitude of Demetrius, or the exile of his brother Thomas, ^90 be the most

inglorious. On the conquest of the Morea, the despot escaped to Corfu, and from thence to Italy, with some

naked adherents: his name, his sufferings, and the head of the apostle St. Andrew, entitled him to the

hospitality of the Vatican; and his misery was prolonged by a pension of six thousand ducats from the pope

and cardinals. His two sons, Andrew and Manuel, were educated in Italy; but the eldest, contemptible to his

enemies and burdensome to his friends, was degraded by the baseness of his life and marriage. A title was his

sole inheritance; and that inheritance he successively sold to the kings of France and Arragon. ^91 During his

transient prosperity, Charles the Eighth was ambitious of joining the empire of the East with the kingdom of

Naples: in a public festival, he assumed the appellation and the purple of Augustus: the Greeks rejoiced and

the Ottoman already trembled, at the approach of the French chivalry. ^92 Manuel Palaeologus, the second

son, was tempted to revisit his native country: his return might be grateful, and could not be dangerous, to the

Porte: he was maintained at Constantinople in safety and ease; and an honorable train of Christians and

Moslems attended him to the grave. If there be some animals of so generous a nature that they refuse to

propagate in a domestic state, the last of the Imperial race must be ascribed to an inferior kind: he accepted

from the sultan's liberality two beautiful females; and his surviving son was lost in the habit and religion of a

[Footnote 85: For the genealogy and fall of the Comneni of Trebizond, see Ducange, (Fam. Byzant. p. 195;)

for the last Palaeologi, the same accurate antiquarian, (p. 244, 247, 248.) The Palaeologi of Montferrat were

not extinct till the next century; but they had forgotten their Greek origin and kindred.]

[Footnote 86: In the worthless story of the disputes and misfortunes of the two brothers, Phranza (l. iii. c. 21

30) is too partial on the side of Thomas Ducas (c. 44, 45) is too brief, and Chalcondyles (l. viii. ix. x.) too

[Footnote *: KaloJohannes, the predecessor of David his brother, the last emperor of Trebizond, had

attempted to organize a confederacy against Mahomet it comprehended Hassan Bei, sultan of Mesopotamia,

the Christian princes of Georgia and Iberia, the emir of Sinope, and the sultan of Caramania. The negotiations

[Footnote 87: See the loss or conquest of Trebizond in Chalcondyles, (l. ix. p. 263 266,) Ducas, (c. 45,)

[Footnote 88: Though Tournefort (tom. iii. lettre xvii. p. 179) speaks of Trebizond as mal peuplee, Peysonnel,

the latest and most accurate observer, can find 100,000 inhabitants, (Commerce de la Mer Noire, tom. ii. p.

72, and for the province, p. 53 90.) Its prosperity and trade are perpetually disturbed by the factious

quarrels of two odas of Janizaries, in one which 30,000 Lazi are commonly enrolled, (Memoires de Tott, tom.

[Footnote !: According to the Georgian account of these transactions, (translated by M. Brosset, additions to

Le Beau, vol. xxi. p. 325,) the emperor of Trebizond humbly entreated the sultan to have the goodness to

[Footnote 89: Ismael Beg, prince of Sinope or Sinople, was possessed (chiefly from his copper mines) of a

revenure of 200,000 ducats, (Chalcond. l. ix. p. 258, 259.) Peysonnel (Commerce de la Mer Noire, tom. ii. p.

100) ascribes to the modern city 60,000 inhabitants. This account seems enormous; yet it is by trading with

[Footnote *: M. Boissonade has published, in the fifth volume of his Anecdota Graeca (p. 387, 401.) a very

interesting letter from George Amiroutzes, protovestia rius of Trebizond, to Bessarion, describing the

[Footnote !!: See in Von Hammer, vol. ii. p. 60, the striking account of the mother, the empress Helena the

Cantacuzene, who, in defiance of the edict, like that of Creon in the Greek tragedy, dug the grave for her

[Footnote 90: Spondanus (from Gobelin Comment. Pii II. l. v.) relates the arrival and reception of of the

[Footnote 91: By an act dated A.D. 1494, Sept. 6, and lately transmitted from the archives of the Capitol to

the royal library of Paris, the despot Andrew Palaeologus, reserving the Morea, and stipulating some private

advantages, conveys to Charles VIII., king of France, the empires of Constantinople and Trebizond,

(Spondanus, A.D. 1495, No. 2.) M. D. Foncemagne (Mem. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xvii. p. 539

578) has bestowed a dissertation on his national title, of which he had obtained a copy from Rome.]

[Footnote 92: See Philippe de Comines, (l. vii. c. 14,) who reckons with pleasure the number of Greeks who

were prepared to rise, 60 miles of an easy navigation, eighteen days' journey from Valona to Constantinople,

The importance of Constantinople was felt and magnified in its loss: the pontificate of Nicholas the Fifth,

however peaceful and prosperous, was dishonored by the fall of the Eastern empire; and the grief and terror

of the Latins revived, or seemed to revive, the old enthusiasm of the crusades. In one of the most distant

countries of the West, Philip duke of Burgundy entertained, at Lisle in Flanders, an assembly of his nobles;

and the pompous pageants of the feast were skilfully adapted to their fancy and feelings. ^93 In the midst of

the banquet a gigantic Saracen entered the hall, leading a fictitious elephant with a castle on his back: a

matron in a mourning robe, the symbol of religion, was seen to issue from the castle: she deplored her

oppression, and accused the slowness of her champions: the principal herald of the golden fleece advanced,

bearing on his fist a live pheasant, which, according to the rites of chivalry, he presented to the duke. At this

extraordinary summons, Philip, a wise and aged prince, engaged his person and powers in the holy war

against the Turks: his example was imitated by the barons and knights of the assembly: they swore to God,

the Virgin, the ladies and the pheasant; and their particular vows were not less extravagant than the general

sanction of their oath. But the performance was made to depend on some future and foreign contingency; and

during twelve years, till the last hour of his life, the duke of Burgundy might be scrupulously, and perhaps

sincerely, on the eve of his departure. Had every breast glowed with the same ardor; had the union of the

Christians corresponded with their bravery; had every country, from Sweden ^94 to Naples, supplied a just

proportion of cavalry and infantry, of men and money, it is indeed probable that Constantinople would have

been delivered, and that the Turks might have been chased beyond the Hellespont or the Euphrates. But the

secretary of the emperor, who composed every epistle, and attended every meeting, Aeneas Sylvius, ^95 a

statesman and orator, describes from his own experience the repugnant state and spirit of Christendom. "It is

a body," says he, "without a head; a republic without laws or magistrates. The pope and the emperor may

shine as lofty titles, as splendid images; but they are unable to command, and none are willing to obey: every

state has a separate prince, and every prince has a separate interest. What eloquence could unite so many

discordant and hostile powers under the same standard? Could they be assembled in arms, who would dare to

assume the office of general? What order could be maintained? what military discipline? Who would

undertake to feed such an enormous multitude? Who would understand their various languages, or direct their

stranger and incompatible manners? What mortal could reconcile the English with the French, Genoa with

Arragon the Germans with the natives of Hungary and Bohemia? If a small number enlisted in the holy war,

they must be overthrown by the infidels; if many, by their own weight and confusion." Yet the same Aeneas,

when he was raised to the papal throne, under the name of Pius the Second, devoted his life to the prosecution

of the Turkish war. In the council of Mantua he excited some sparks of a false or feeble enthusiasm; but when

the pontiff appeared at Ancona, to embark in person with the troops, engagements vanished in excuses; a

precise day was adjourned to an indefinite term; and his effective army consisted of some German pilgrims,

whom he was obliged to disband with indulgences and arms. Regardless of futurity, his successors and the

powers of Italy were involved in the schemes of present and domestic ambition; and the distance or proximity

of each object determined in their eyes its apparent magnitude. A more enlarged view of their interest would

have taught them to maintain a defensive and naval war against the common enemy; and the support of

Scanderbeg and his brave Albanians might have prevented the subsequent invasion of the kingdom of Naples.

The siege and sack of Otranto by the Turks diffused a general consternation; and Pope Sixtus was preparing

to fly beyond the Alps, when the storm was instantly dispelled by the death of Mahomet the Second, in the

fiftyfirst year of his age. ^96 His lofty genius aspired to the conquest of Italy: he was possessed of a strong

city and a capacious harbor; and the same reign might have been decorated with the trophies of the New and

the Ancient Rome. ^97 [Footnote 93: See the original feast in Olivier de la Marche, (Memoires, P. i. c. 29,

30,) with the abstract and observations of M. de Ste. Palaye, (Memoires sur la Chevalerie, tom. i. P. iii. p. 182

[Footnote 94: It was found by an actual enumeration, that Sweden, Gothland, and Finland, contained

1,800,000 fighting men, and consequently were far more populous than at present.]

[Footnote 95: In the year 1454, Spondanus has given, from Aeneas Sylvius, a view of the state of Europe,

enriched with his own observations. That valuable annalist, and the Italian Muratori, will continue the series

of events from the year 1453 to 1481, the end of Mahomet's life, and of this chapter.]

[Footnote 96: Besides the two annalists, the reader may consult Giannone (Istoria Civile, tom. iii. p. 449

455) for the Turkish invasion of the kingdom of Naples. For the reign and conquests of Mahomet II., I have

occasionally used the Memorie Istoriche de Monarchi Ottomanni di Giovanni Sagredo, (Venezia, 1677, in

4to.) In peace and war, the Turks have ever engaged the attention of the republic of Venice. All her

despatches and archives were open to a procurator of St. Mark, and Sagredo is not contemptible either in

sense or style. Yet he too bitterly hates the infidels: he is ignorant of their language and manners; and his

narrative, which allows only 70 pages to Mahomet II., (p. 69 140,) becomes more copious and authentic as

he approaches the years 1640 and 1644, the term of the historic labors of John Sagredo.]

[Footnote 97: As I am now taking an everlasting farewell of the Greek empire, I shall briefly mention the

great collection of Byzantine writers whose names and testimonies have been successively repeated in this

work. The Greeks presses of Aldus and the Italians were confined to the classics of a better age; and the first

rude editions of Procopius, Agathias, Cedrenus, Zonaras, were published by the learned diligence of the

Germans. The whole Byzantine series (xxxvi. volumes in folio) has gradually issued (A.D. 1648, from the

royal press of the Louvre, with some collateral aid from Rome and Leipsic; but the Venetian edition, (A.D.

1729,) though cheaper and more copious, is not less inferior in correctness than in magnificence to that of

Paris. The merits of the French editors are various; but the value of Anna Comnena, Cinnamus,

Villehardouin, is enhanced by the historical notes of Charles de Fresne du Cange. His supplemental works,

the Greek Glossary, the Constantinopolis Christiana, the Familiae Byzantinae, diffuse a steady light over the

Note: The new edition of the Byzantines, projected by Niebuhr, and continued under the patronage of the

Prussian government, is the most convenient in size, and contains some authors (Leo Diaconus, Johannes

Lydus, Corippus, the new fragment of Dexippus, Eunapius, discovered by Mai) which could not be

comprised in the former collections; but the names of such editors as Bekker, the Dindorfs, raised hopes of

something more than the mere republication of the text, and the notes of former editors. Little, I regret to say,

has been added of annotation, and in some cases, the old incorrect versions have been retained. M.]

Yet the courage of Arnold was not devoid of discretion: he was protected, and had perhaps been invited, by

the nobles and people; and in the service of freedom, his eloquence thundered over the seven hills. Blending

in the same discourse the texts of Livy and St. Paul, uniting the motives of gospel, and of classic, enthusiasm,

he admonished the Romans, how strangely their patience and the vices of the clergy had degenerated from

the primitive times of the church and the city. He exhorted them to assert the inalienable rights of men and

Christians; to restore the laws and magistrates of the republic; to respect the name of the emperor; but to

confine their shepherd to the spiritual government of his flock. ^26 Nor could his spiritual government escape

the censure and control of the reformer; and the inferior clergy were taught by his lessons to resist the

cardinals, who had usurped a despotic command over the twentyeight regions or parishes of Rome. ^27 The

revolution was not accomplished without rapine and violence, the diffusion of blood and the demolition of

houses: the victorious faction was enriched with the spoils of the clergy and the adverse nobles. Arnold of

Brescia enjoyed, or deplored, the effects of his mission: his reign continued above ten years, while two popes,

Innocent the Second and Anastasius the Fourth, either trembled in the Vatican, or wandered as exiles in the

adjacent cities. They were succeeded by a more vigorous and fortunate pontiff. Adrian the Fourth, ^28 the

only Englishman who has ascended the throne of St. Peter; and whose merit emerged from the mean

condition of a monk, and almost a beggar, in the monastery of St. Albans. On the first provocation, of a

cardinal killed or wounded in the streets, he cast an interdict on the guilty people; and from Christmas to

Easter, Rome was deprived of the real or imaginary comforts of religious worship. The Romans had despised

their temporal prince: they submitted with grief and terror to the censures of their spiritual father: their guilt

was expiated by penance, and the banishment of the seditious preacher was the price of their absolution. But

the revenge of Adrian was yet unsatisfied, and the approaching coronation of Frederic Barbarossa was fatal to

the bold reformer, who had offended, though not in an equal degree, the heads of the church and state. In

their interview at Viterbo, the pope represented to the emperor the furious, ungovernable spirit of the

Romans; the insults, the injuries, the fears, to which his person and his clergy were continually exposed; and

the pernicious tendency of the heresy of Arnold, which must subvert the principles of civil, as well as

ecclesiastical, subordination. Frederic was convinced by these arguments, or tempted by the desire of the

Imperial crown: in the balance of ambition, the innocence or life of an individual is of small account; and

their common enemy was sacrificed to a moment of political concord. After his retreat from Rome, Arnold

had been protected by the viscounts of Campania, from whom he was extorted by the power of Caesar: the

praefect of the city pronounced his sentence: the martyr of freedom was burned alive in the presence of a

careless and ungrateful people; and his ashes were cast into the Tyber, lest the heretics should collect and

worship the relics of their master. ^29 The clergy triumphed in his death: with his ashes, his sect was

dispersed; his memory still lived in the minds of the Romans. From his school they had probably derived a

new article of faith, that the metropolis of the Catholic church is exempt from the penalties of

excommunication and interdict. Their bishops might argue, that the supreme jurisdiction, which they

exercised over kings and nations, more especially embraced the city and diocese of the prince of the apostles.

But they preached to the winds, and the same principle that weakened the effect, must temper the abuse, of

Consiliis armisque sua moderamina summa Arbitrio tractare suo: nil juris in hac re Pontifici summo,

modicum concedere regi Suadebat populo. Sic laesa stultus utraque Majestate, reum geminae se fecerat aulae.

[Footnote 27: See Baronius (A.D. 1148, No. 38, 39) from the Vatican MSS. He loudly condemns Arnold

(A.D. 1141, No. 3) as the father of the political heretics, whose influence then hurt him in France.]

[Footnote 28: The English reader may consult the Biographia Britannica, Adrian IV.; but our own writers

[Footnote 29: Besides the historian and poet already quoted, the last adventures of Arnold are related by the

biographer of Adrian IV. (Muratori. Script. Rerum Ital. tom. iii. P. i. p. 441, 442.)]

The love of ancient freedom has encouraged a belief that as early as the tenth century, in their first struggles

against the Saxon Othos, the commonwealth was vindicated and restored by the senate and people of Rome;

that two consuls were annually elected among the nobles, and that ten or twelve plebeian magistrates revived

the name and office of the tribunes of the commons. ^30 But this venerable structure disappears before the

light of criticism. In the darkness of the middle ages, the appellations of senators, of consuls, of the sons of

consuls, may sometimes be discovered. ^31 They were bestowed by the emperors, or assumed by the most

powerful citizens, to denote their rank, their honors, ^32 and perhaps the claim of a pure and patrician

descent: but they float on the surface, without a series or a substance, the titles of men, not the orders of

government; ^33 and it is only from the year of Christ one thousand one hundred and fortyfour that the

establishment of the senate is dated, as a glorious aera, in the acts of the city. A new constitution was hastily

framed by private ambition or popular enthusiasm; nor could Rome, in the twelfth century, produce an

antiquary to explain, or a legislator to restore, the harmony and proportions of the ancient model. The

assembly of a free, of an armed, people, will ever speak in loud and weighty acclamations. But the regular

distribution of the thirtyfive tribes, the nice balance of the wealth and numbers of the centuries, the debates

of the adverse orators, and the slow operations of votes and ballots, could not easily be adapted by a blind

multitude, ignorant of the arts, and insensible of the benefits, of legal government. It was proposed by Arnold

to revive and discriminate the equestrian order; but what could be the motive or measure of such distinction?

^34 The pecuniary qualification of the knights must have been reduced to the poverty of the times: those

times no longer required their civil functions of judges and farmers of the revenue; and their primitive duty,

their military service on horseback, was more nobly supplied by feudal tenures and the spirit of chivalry. The

jurisprudence of the republic was useless and unknown: the nations and families of Italy who lived under the

Roman and Barbaric laws were insensibly mingled in a common mass; and some faint tradition, some

imperfect fragments, preserved the memory of the Code and Pandects of Justinian. With their liberty the

Romans might doubtless have restored the appellation and office of consuls; had they not disdained a title so

promiscuously adopted in the Italian cities, that it has finally settled on the humble station of the agents of

commerce in a foreign land. But the rights of the tribunes, the formidable word that arrested the public

counsels, suppose or must produce a legitimate democracy. The old patricians were the subjects, the modern

barons the tyrants, of the state; nor would the enemies of peace and order, who insulted the vicar of Christ,

[Footnote 30: Ducange (Gloss. Latinitatis Mediae et Infimae Aetatis, Decarchones, tom. ii. p. 726) gives me a

quotation from Blondus, (Decad. ii. l. ii.:) Duo consules ex nobilitate quotannis fiebant, qui ad vetustum

consulum exemplar summaererum praeessent. And in Sigonius (de Regno Italiae, l. v. Opp. tom. ii. p. 400) I

read of the consuls and tribunes of the xth century. Both Blondus, and even Sigonius, too freely copied the

[Footnote 31: In the panegyric of Berengarius (Muratori, Script. Rer. Ital. tom. ii. P. i. p. 408) a Roman is

mentioned as consulis natus in the beginning of the xth century. Muratori (Dissert. v.) discovers, in the years

952 and 956, Gratianus in Dei nomine consul et dux, Georgius consul et dux; and in 1015, Romanus, brother

of Gregory VIII., proudly, but vaguely, styles himself consul et dux et omnium Roma norum senator.]

[Footnote 32: As late as the xth century, the Greek emperors conferred on the dukes of Venice, Naples,

Amalphi, the title of consuls, (see Chron. Sagornini, passim;) and the successors of Charlemagne would not

abdicate any of their prerogative. But in general the names of consul and senator, which may be found among

the French and Germans, signify no more than count and lord, (Signeur, Ducange Glossar.) The monkish

[Footnote 33: The most constitutional form is a diploma of Otho III., (A. D 998,) consulibus senatus

populique Romani; but the act is probably spurious. At the coronation of Henry I., A.D. 1014, the historian

Dithmar (apud Muratori, Dissert. xxiii.) describes him, a senatoribus duodecem vallatum, quorum sex rasi

barba, alii prolixa, mystice incedebant cum baculis. The senate is mentioned in the panegyric of Berengarius,

[Footnote 34: In ancient Rome the equestrian order was not ranked with the senate and people as a third

branch of the republic till the consulship of Cicero, who assumes the merit of the establishment, (Plin. Hist.

[Footnote 35: The republican plan of Arnold of Brescia is thus stated by Gunther:

Quin etiam titulos urbis renovare vetustos; Nomine plebeio secernere nomen equestre, Jura tribunorum,

sanctum reparare senatum, Et senio fessas mutasque reponere leges. Lapsa ruinosis, et adhuc pendentia muris

But of these reformations, some were no more than ideas, others no more than words.]

In the revolution of the twelfth century, which gave a new existence and aera to Rome, we may observe the

real and important events that marked or confirmed her political independence. I. The Capitoline hill, one of

her seven eminences, ^36 is about four hundred yards in length, and two hundred in breadth. A flight of a

hundred steps led to the summit of the Tarpeian rock; and far steeper was the ascent before the declivities had

been smoothed and the precipices filled by the ruins of fallen edifices. From the earliest ages, the Capitol had

been used as a temple in peace, a fortress in war: after the loss of the city, it maintained a siege against the

victorious Gauls, and the sanctuary of the empire was occupied, assaulted, and burnt, in the civil wars of

Vitellius and Vespasian. ^37 The temples of Jupiter and his kindred deities had crumbled into dust; their

place was supplied by monasteries and houses; and the solid walls, the long and shelving porticos, were

decayed or ruined by the lapse of time. It was the first act of the Romans, an act of freedom, to restore the

strength, though not the beauty, of the Capitol; to fortify the seat of their arms and counsels; and as often as

they ascended the hill, the coldest minds must have glowed with the remembrance of their ancestors. II. The

first Caesars had been invested with the exclusive coinage of the gold and silver; to the senate they

abandoned the baser metal of bronze or copper: ^38 the emblems and legends were inscribed on a more

ample field by the genius of flattery; and the prince was relieved from the care of celebrating his own virtues.

The successors of Diocletian despised even the flattery of the senate: their royal officers at Rome, and in the

provinces, assumed the sole direction of the mint; and the same prerogative was inherited by the Gothic kings

of Italy, and the long series of the Greek, the French, and the German dynasties. After an abdication of eight

hundred years, the Roman senate asserted this honorable and lucrative privilege; which was tacitly renounced

by the popes, from Paschal the Second to the establishment of their residence beyond the Alps. Some of these

republican coins of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are shown in the cabinets of the curious. On one of

these, a gold medal, Christ is depictured holding in his left hand a book with this inscription: "The vow of the

Roman senate and people: Rome the capital of the world;" on the reverse, St. Peter delivering a banner to a

kneeling senator in his cap and gown, with the name and arms of his family impressed on a shield. ^39 III.

With the empire, the praefect of the city had declined to a municipal officer; yet he still exercised in the last

appeal the civil and criminal jurisdiction; and a drawn sword, which he received from the successors of Otho,

was the mode of his investiture and the emblem of his functions. ^40 The dignity was confined to the noble

families of Rome: the choice of the people was ratified by the pope; but a triple oath of fidelity must have

often embarrassed the praefect in the conflict of adverse duties. ^41 A servant, in whom they possessed but a

third share, was dismissed by the independent Romans: in his place they elected a patrician; but this title,

which Charlemagne had not disdained, was too lofty for a citizen or a subject; and, after the first fervor of

rebellion, they consented without reluctance to the restoration of the praefect. About fifty years after this

event, Innocent the Third, the most ambitious, or at least the most fortunate, of the Pontiffs, delivered the

Romans and himself from this badge of foreign dominion: he invested the praefect with a banner instead of a

sword, and absolved him from all dependence of oaths or service to the German emperors. ^42 In his place an

ecclesiastic, a present or future cardinal, was named by the pope to the civil government of Rome; but his

jurisdiction has been reduced to a narrow compass; and in the days of freedom, the right or exercise was

derived from the senate and people. IV. After the revival of the senate, ^43 the conscript fathers (if I may use

the expression) were invested with the legislative and executive power; but their views seldom reached

beyond the present day; and that day was most frequently disturbed by violence and tumult. In its utmost

plenitude, the order or assembly consisted of fiftysix senators, ^44 the most eminent of whom were

distinguished by the title of counsellors: they were nominated, perhaps annually, by the people; and a

previous choice of their electors, ten persons in each region, or parish, might afford a basis for a free and

permanent constitution. The popes, who in this tempest submitted rather to bend than to break, confirmed by

treaty the establishment and privileges of the senate, and expected from time, peace, and religion, the

restoration of their government. The motives of public and private interest might sometimes draw from the

Romans an occasional and temporary sacrifice of their claims; and they renewed their oath of allegiance to

the successor of St. Peter and Constantine, the lawful head of the church and the republic. ^45

[Footnote 36: After many disputes among the antiquaries of Rome, it seems determined, that the summit of

the Capitoline hill next the river is strictly the Mons Tarpeius, the Arx; and that on the other summit, the

church and convent of Araceli, the barefoot friars of St. Francis occupy the temple of Jupiter, (Nardini, Roma

Note: The authority of Nardini is now vigorously impugned, and the question of the Arx and the Temple of

Jupiter revived, with new arguments by Niebuhr and his accomplished follower, M. Bunsen. Roms

[Footnote 38: This partition of the noble and baser metals between the emperor and senate must, however, be

adopted, not as a positive fact, but as the probable opinion of the best antiquaries, (see the Science des

Medailles of the Pere Joubert, tom. ii. p. 208 211, in the improved and scarce edition of the Baron de la

Note: Dr Cardwell (Lecture on Ancient Coins, p. 70, et seq.) assigns convincing reasons in support of this

[Footnote 39: In his xxviith dissertation on the Antiquities of Italy, (tom. ii. p. 559 569,) Muratori exhibits a

series of the senatorian coins, which bore the obscure names of Affortiati, Infortiati, Provisini, Paparini.

During this period, all the popes, without excepting Boniface VIII, abstained from the right of coining, which

was resumed by his successor Benedict XI., and regularly exercised in the court of Avignon.]

[Footnote 40: A German historian, Gerard of Reicherspeg (in Baluz. Miscell. tom. v. p. 64, apud Schmidt,

Hist. des Allemands, tom. iii. p. 265) thus describes the constitution of Rome in the xith century: Grandiora

urbis et orbis negotia spectant ad Romanum pontificem itemque ad Romanum Imperatorem, sive illius

vicarium urbis praefectum, qui de sua dignitate respicit utrumque, videlicet dominum papam cui facit

hominum, et dominum imperatorem a quo accipit suae potestatis insigne, scilicet gladium exertum.]

[Footnote 41: The words of a contemporary writer (Pandulph. Pisan. in Vit. Paschal. II. p. 357, 358) describe

the election and oath of the praefect in 1118, inconsultis patribus .... loca praefectoria .... Laudes praefectoriae

.... comitiorum applausum .... juraturum populo in ambonem sublevant .... confirmari eum in urbe praefectum

[Footnote 42: Urbis praefectum ad ligiam fidelitatem recepit, et per mantum quod illi donavit de praefectura

eum publice investivit, qui usque ad id tempus juramento fidelitatis imperatori fuit obligatus et ab eo

praefecturae tenuit honorem, (Gesta Innocent. III. in Muratori, tom. iii. P. i. p. 487.)]

[Footnote 43: See Otho Frising. Chron. vii. 31, de Gest. Frederic. I., l. i. c. 27]

[Footnote 44: Cur countryman, Roger Hoveden, speaks of the single senators, of the Capuzzi family, quorum

temporibus melius regebatur Roma quam nunc (A.D. 1194) est temporibus lvi. senatorum, (Ducange, Gloss.

[Footnote 45: Muratori (dissert. xlii. tom. iii. p. 785 788) has published an original treaty: Concordia inter

D. nostrum papam Clementem III. et senatores populi Romani super regalibus et aliis dignitatibus urbis, anno

44 Degrees senatus. The senate speaks, and speaks with authority: Reddimus ad praesens .... habebimus ....

dabitis presbyteria .... jurabimus pacem et fidelitatem, A chartula de Tenementis Tusculani, dated in the 47th

year of the same aera, and confirmed decreto amplissimi ordinis senatus, acclamatione P. R. publice Capitolio

consistentis. It is there we find the difference of senatores consiliarii and simple senators, (Muratori, dissert.

The union and vigor of a public council was dissolved in a lawless city; and the Romans soon adopted a more

strong and simple mode of administration. They condensed the name and authority of the senate in a single

magistrate, or two colleagues; and as they were changed at the end of a year, or of six months, the greatness

of the trust was compensated by the shortness of the term. But in this transient reign, the senators of Rome

indulged their avarice and ambition: their justice was perverted by the interest of their family and faction; and

as they punished only their enemies, they were obeyed only by their adherents. Anarchy, no longer tempered

by the pastoral care of their bishop, admonished the Romans that they were incapable of governing

themselves; and they sought abroad those blessings which they were hopeless of finding at home. In the same

age, and from the same motives, most of the Italian republics were prompted to embrace a measure, which,

however strange it may seem, was adapted to their situation, and productive of the most salutary effects. ^46

They chose, in some foreign but friendly city, an impartial magistrate of noble birth and unblemished

character, a soldier and a statesman, recommended by the voice of fame and his country, to whom they

delegated for a time the supreme administration of peace and war. The compact between the governor and the

governed was sealed with oaths and subscriptions; and the duration of his power, the measure of his stipend,

the nature of their mutual obligations, were defined with scrupulous precision. They swore to obey him as

their lawful superior: he pledged his faith to unite the indifference of a stranger with the zeal of a patriot. At

his choice, four or six knights and civilians, his assessors in arms and justice, attended the Podesta, ^47 who

maintained at his own expense a decent retinue of servants and horses: his wife, his son, his brother, who

might bias the affections of the judge, were left behind: during the exercise of his office he was not permitted

to purchase land, to contract an alliance, or even to accept an invitation in the house of a citizen; nor could he

honorably depart till he had satisfied the complaints that might be urged against his government.

[Footnote 46: Muratori (dissert. xlv. tom. iv. p. 64 92) has fully explained this mode of government; and the

Occulus Pastoralis, which he has given at the end, is a treatise or sermon on the duties of these foreign

[Footnote 47: In the Latin writers, at least of the silver age, the title of Potestas was transferred from the

Hujus qui trahitur praetextam sumere mavis; An Fidenarum Gabiorumque esse Potestas.

It was thus, about the middle of the thirteenth century, that the Romans called from Bologna the senator

Brancaleone, ^48 whose fame and merit have been rescued from oblivion by the pen of an English historian.

A just anxiety for his reputation, a clear foresight of the difficulties of the task, had engaged him to refuse the

honor of their choice: the statutes of Rome were suspended, and his office prolonged to the term of three

years. By the guilty and licentious he was accused as cruel; by the clergy he was suspected as partial; but the

friends of peace and order applauded the firm and upright magistrate by whom those blessings were restored.

No criminals were so powerful as to brave, so obscure as to elude, the justice of the senator. By his sentence

two nobles of the Annibaldi family were executed on a gibbet; and he inexorably demolished, in the city and

neighborhood, one hundred and forty towers, the strong shelters of rapine and mischief. The bishop, as a

simple bishop, was compelled to reside in his diocese; and the standard of Brancaleone was displayed in the

field with terror and effect. His services were repaid by the ingratitude of a people unworthy of the happiness

which they enjoyed. By the public robbers, whom he had provoked for their sake, the Romans were excited to

depose and imprison their benefactor; nor would his life have been spared, if Bologna had not possessed a

pledge for his safety. Before his departure, the prudent senator had required the exchange of thirty hostages of

the noblest families of Rome: on the news of his danger, and at the prayer of his wife, they were more strictly

guarded; and Bologna, in the cause of honor, sustained the thunders of a papal interdict. This generous

resistance allowed the Romans to compare the present with the past; and Brancaleone was conducted from

the prison to the Capitol amidst the acclamations of a repentant people. The remainder of his government was

firm and fortunate; and as soon as envy was appeased by death, his head, enclosed in a precious vase, was

deposited on a lofty column of marble. ^49 [Footnote 48: See the life and death of Brancaleone, in the

Historia Major of Matthew Paris, p. 741, 757, 792, 797, 799, 810, 823, 833, 836, 840. The multitude of

pilgrims and suitors connected Rome and St. Albans, and the resentment of the English clergy prompted them

[Footnote 49: Matthew Paris thus ends his account: Caput vero ipsius Branca leonis in vase pretioso super

marmoream columnam collocatum, in signum sui valoris et probitatis, quasi reliquias, superstitiose nimis et

pompose sustulerunt. Fuerat enim superborum potentum et malefactorum urbis malleus et extirpator, et

populi protector et defensor veritatis et justitiae imitator et amator, (p. 840.) A biographer of Innocent IV.

(Muratori, Script. tom. iii. P. i. p. 591, 592) draws a less favorable portrait of this Ghibeline senator.]

The impotence of reason and virtue recommended in Italy a more effectual choice: instead of a private

citizen, to whom they yielded a voluntary and precarious obedience, the Romans elected for their senator

some prince of independent power, who could defend them from their enemies and themselves. Charles of

Anjou and Provence, the most ambitious and warlike monarch of the age, accepted at the same time the

kingdom of Naples from the pope, and the office of senator from the Roman people. ^50 As he passed

through the city, in his road to victory, he received their oath of allegiance, lodged in the Lateran palace, and

smoothed in a short visit the harsh features of his despotic character. Yet even Charles was exposed to the

inconstancy of the people, who saluted with the same acclamations the passage of his rival, the unfortunate

Conradin; and a powerful avenger, who reigned in the Capitol, alarmed the fears and jealousy of the popes.

The absolute term of his life was superseded by a renewal every third year; and the enmity of Nicholas the

Third obliged the Sicilian king to abdicate the government of Rome. In his bull, a perpetual law, the

imperious pontiff asserts the truth, validity, and use of the donation of Constantine, not less essential to the

peace of the city than to the independence of the church; establishes the annual election of the senator; and

formally disqualifies all emperors, kings, princes, and persons of an eminent and conspicuous rank. ^51 This

prohibitory clause was repealed in his own behalf by Martin the Fourth, who humbly solicited the suffrage of

the Romans. In the presence, and by the authority, of the people, two electors conferred, not on the pope, but

on the noble and faithful Martin, the dignity of senator, and the supreme administration of the republic, ^52 to

hold during his natural life, and to exercise at pleasure by himself or his deputies. About fifty years

afterwards, the same title was granted to the emperor Lewis of Bavaria; and the liberty of Rome was

acknowledged by her two sovereigns, who accepted a municipal office in the government of their own

[Footnote 50: The election of Charles of Anjou to the office of perpetual senator of Rome is mentioned by the

historians in the viiith volume of the Collection of Muratori, by Nicholas de Jamsilla, (p. 592,) the monk of

Padua, (p. 724,) Sabas Malaspina, (l. ii. c. 9, p. 308,) and Ricordano Malespini, (c. 177, p. 999.)]

[Footnote 51: The highsounding bull of Nicholas III., which founds his temporal sovereignty on the

donation of Constantine, is still extant; and as it has been inserted by Boniface VIII. in the Sexte of the

Decretals, it must be received by the Catholics, or at least by the Papists, as a sacred and perpetual law.]

[Footnote 52: I am indebted to Fleury (Hist. Eccles. tom. xviii. p. 306) for an extract of this Roman act, which

he has taken from the Ecclesiastical Annals of Odericus Raynaldus, A.D. 1281, No. 14, 15]

In the first moments of rebellion, when Arnold of Brescia had inflamed their minds against the church, the

Romans artfully labored to conciliate the favor of the empire, and to recommend their merit and services in

the cause of Caesar. The style of their ambassadors to Conrad the Third and Frederic the First is a mixture of

flattery and pride, the tradition and the ignorance of their own history. ^53 After some complaint of his

silence and neglect, they exhort the former of these princes to pass the Alps, and assume from their hands the

Imperial crown. "We beseech your majesty not to disdain the humility of your sons and vassals, not to listen

to the accusations of our common enemies; who calumniate the senate as hostile to your throne, who sow the

seeds of discord, that they may reap the harvest of destruction. The pope and the Sicilian are united in an

impious league to oppose our liberty and your coronation. With the blessing of God, our zeal and courage has

hitherto defeated their attempts. Of their powerful and factious adherents, more especially the Frangipani, we

have taken by assault the houses and turrets: some of these are occupied by our troops, and some are levelled

with the ground. The Milvian bridge, which they had broken, is restored and fortified for your safe passage;

and your army may enter the city without being annoyed from the castle of St. Angelo. All that we have done,

and all that we design, is for your honor and service, in the loyal hope, that you will speedily appear in

person, to vindicate those rights which have been invaded by the clergy, to revive the dignity of the empire,

and to surpass the fame and glory of your predecessors. May you fix your residence in Rome, the capital of

the world; give laws to Italy, and the Teutonic kingdom; and imitate the example of Constantine and

Justinian, ^54 who, by the vigor of the senate and people, obtained the sceptre of the earth." ^55 But these

splendid and fallacious wishes were not cherished by Conrad the Franconian, whose eyes were fixed on the

Holy Land, and who died without visiting Rome soon after his return from the Holy Land.

[Footnote 53: These letters and speeches are preserved by Otho bishop of Frisingen, (Fabric. Bibliot. Lat.

Med. et Infim. tom. v. p. 186, 187,) perhaps the noblest of historians: he was son of Leopold marquis of

Austria; his mother, Agnes, was daughter of the emperor Henry IV., and he was half brother and uncle to

Conrad III. and Frederic I. He has left, in seven books, a Chronicle of the Times; in two, the Gesta Frederici

[Footnote 54: We desire (said the ignorant Romans) to restore the empire in um statum, quo fuit tempore

Constantini et Justiniani, qui totum orbem vigore senatus et populi Romani suis tenuere manibus.]

His nephew and successor, Frederic Barbarossa, was more ambitious of the Imperial crown; nor had any of

the successors of Otho acquired such absolute sway over the kingdom of Italy. Surrounded by his

ecclesiastical and secular princes, he gave audience in his camp at Sutri to the ambassadors of Rome, who

thus addressed him in a free and florid oration: "Incline your ear to the queen of cities; approach with a

peaceful and friendly mind the precincts of Rome, which has cast away the yoke of the clergy, and is

impatient to crown her legitimate emperor. Under your auspicious influence, may the primitive times be

restored. Assert the prerogatives of the eternal city, and reduce under her monarchy the insolence of the

world. You are not ignorant, that, in former ages, by the wisdom of the senate, by the valor and discipline of

the equestrian order, she extended her victorious arms to the East and West, beyond the Alps, and over the

islands of the ocean. By our sins, in the absence of our princes, the noble institution of the senate has sunk in

oblivion; and with our prudence, our strength has likewise decreased. We have revived the senate, and the

equestrian order: the counsels of the one, the arms of the other, will be devoted to your person and the service

of the empire. Do you not hear the language of the Roman matron? You were a guest, I have adopted you as a

citizen; a Transalpine stranger, I have elected you for my sovereign; ^56 and given you myself, and all that is

mine. Your first and most sacred duty is to swear and subscribe, that you will shed your blood for the

republic; that you will maintain in peace and justice the laws of the city and the charters of your predecessors;

and that you will reward with five thousand pounds of silver the faithful senators who shall proclaim your

titles in the Capitol. With the name, assume the character, of Augustus." The flowers of Latin rhetoric were

not yet exhausted; but Frederic, impatient of their vanity, interrupted the orators in the high tone of royalty

and conquest. "Famous indeed have been the fortitude and wisdom of the ancient Romans; but your speech is

not seasoned with wisdom, and I could wish that fortitude were conspicuous in your actions. Like all

sublunary things, Rome has felt the vicissitudes of time and fortune. Your noblest families were translated to

the East, to the royal city of Constantine; and the remains of your strength and freedom have long since been

exhausted by the Greeks and Franks. Are you desirous of beholding the ancient glory of Rome, the gravity of

the senate, the spirit of the knights, the discipline of the camp, the valor of the legions? you will find them in

the German republic. It is not empire, naked and alone, the ornaments and virtues of empire have likewise

migrated beyond the Alps to a more deserving people: ^57 they will be employed in your defence, but they

claim your obedience. You pretend that myself or my predecessors have been invited by the Romans: you

mistake the word; they were not invited, they were implored. From its foreign and domestic tyrants, the city

was rescued by Charlemagne and Otho, whose ashes repose in our country; and their dominion was the price

of your deliverance. Under that dominion your ancestors lived and died. I claim by the right of inheritance

and possession, and who shall dare to extort you from my hands? Is the hand of the Franks ^58 and Germans

enfeebled by age? Am I vanquished? Am I a captive? Am I not encompassed with the banners of a potent and

invincible army? You impose conditions on your master; you require oaths: if the conditions are just, an oath

is superfluous; if unjust, it is criminal. Can you doubt my equity? It is extended to the meanest of my

subjects. Will not my sword be unsheathed in the defence of the Capitol? By that sword the northern

kingdom of Denmark has been restored to the Roman empire. You prescribe the measure and the objects of

my bounty, which flows in a copious but a voluntary stream. All will be given to patient merit; all will be

denied to rude importunity." ^59 Neither the emperor nor the senate could maintain these lofty pretensions of

dominion and liberty. United with the pope, and suspicious of the Romans, Frederic continued his march to

the Vatican; his coronation was disturbed by a sally from the Capitol; and if the numbers and valor of the

Germans prevailed in the bloody conflict, he could not safely encamp in the presence of a city of which he

styled himself the sovereign. About twelve years afterwards, he besieged Rome, to seat an antipope in the

chair of St. Peter; and twelve Pisan galleys were introduced into the Tyber: but the senate and people were

saved by the arts of negotiation and the progress of disease; nor did Frederic or his successors reiterate the

hostile attempt. Their laborious reigns were exercised by the popes, the crusades, and the independence of

Lombardy and Germany: they courted the alliance of the Romans; and Frederic the Second offered in the

Capitol the great standard, the Caroccio of Milan. ^60 After the extinction of the house of Swabia, they were

banished beyond the Alps: and their last coronations betrayed the impotence and poverty of the Teutonic

[Footnote 56: Hospes eras, civem feci. Advena fuisti ex Transalpinis partibus principem constitui.]

[Footnote 57: Non cessit nobis nudum imperium, virtute sua amictum venit, ornamenta sua secum traxit.

Penes nos sunt consules tui, Cicero or Livy would not have rejected these images, the eloquence of a

[Footnote 58: Otho of Frisingen, who surely understood the language of the court and diet of Germany,

speaks of the Franks in the xiith century as the reigning nation, (Proceres Franci, equites Franci, manus

[Footnote 59: Otho Frising. de Gestis Frederici I., l. ii. c. 22, p. 720 733. These original and authentic acts I

[Footnote 60: From the Chronicles of Ricobaldo and Francis Pipin, Muratori (dissert. xxvi. tom. ii. p. 492)

has translated this curious fact with the doggerel verses that accompanied the gift:

Ave decus orbis, ave! victus tibi destinor, ave! Currus ab Augusto Frederico Caesare justo. Vae Mediolanum!

jam sentis spernere vanum Imperii vires, proprias tibi tollere vires. Ergo triumphorum urbs potes memor esse

Ne si dee tacere (I now use the Italian Dissertations, tom. i. p. 444) che nell' anno 1727, una copia desso

Caroccio in marmo dianzi ignoto si scopri, nel campidoglio, presso alle carcere di quel luogo, dove Sisto V.

l'avea falto rinchiudere. Stava esso posto sopra quatro colonne di marmo fino colla sequente inscrizione, to

[Footnote 61: The decline of the Imperial arms and authority in Italy is related with impartial learning in the

Annals of Muratori, (tom. x. xi. xii.;) and the reader may compare his narrative with the Histoires des

Allemands (tom. iii. iv.) by Schmidt, who has deserved the esteem of his countrymen.]

Under the reign of Adrian, when the empire extended from the Euphrates to the ocean, from Mount Atlas to

the Grampian hills, a fanciful historian ^62 amused the Romans with the picture of their ancient wars. "There

was a time," says Florus, "when Tibur and Praeneste, our summer retreats, were the objects of hostile vows in

the Capitol, when we dreaded the shades of the Arician groves, when we could triumph without a blush over

the nameless villages of the Sabines and Latins, and even Corioli could afford a title not unworthy of a

victorious general." The pride of his contemporaries was gratified by the contrast of the past and the present:

they would have been humbled by the prospect of futurity; by the prediction, that after a thousand years,

Rome, despoiled of empire, and contracted to her primaeval limits, would renew the same hostilities, on the

same ground which was then decorated with her villas and gardens. The adjacent territory on either side of

the Tyber was always claimed, and sometimes possessed, as the patrimony of St. Peter; but the barons

assumed a lawless independence, and the cities too faithfully copied the revolt and discord of the metropolis.

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Romans incessantly labored to reduce or destroy the contumacious

vassals of the church and senate; and if their headstrong and selfish ambition was moderated by the pope, he

often encouraged their zeal by the alliance of his spiritual arms. Their warfare was that of the first consuls

and dictators, who were taken from the plough. The assembled in arms at the foot of the Capitol; sallied from

the gates, plundered or burnt the harvests of their neighbors, engaged in tumultuary conflict, and returned

home after an expedition of fifteen or twenty days. Their sieges were tedious and unskilful: in the use of

victory, they indulged the meaner passions of jealousy and revenge; and instead of adopting the valor, they

trampled on the misfortunes, of their adversaries. The captives, in their shirts, with a rope round their necks,

solicited their pardon: the fortifications, and even the buildings, of the rival cities, were demolished, and the

inhabitants were scattered in the adjacent villages. It was thus that the seats of the cardinal bishops, Porto,

Ostia, Albanum, Tusculum, Praeneste, and Tibur or Tivoli, were successively overthrown by the ferocious

hostility of the Romans. ^63 Of these, ^64 Porto and Ostia, the two keys of the Tyber, are still vacant and

desolate: the marshy and unwholesome banks are peopled with herds of buffaloes, and the river is lost to

every purpose of navigation and trade. The hills, which afford a shady retirement from the autumnal heats,

have again smiled with the blessings of peace; Frescati has arisen near the ruins of Tusculum; Tibur or Tivoli

has resumed the honors of a city, ^65 and the meaner towns of Albano and Palestrina are decorated with the

villas of the cardinals and princes of Rome. In the work of destruction, the ambition of the Romans was often

checked and repulsed by the neighboring cities and their allies: in the first siege of Tibur, they were driven

from their camp; and the battles of Tusculum ^66 and Viterbo ^67 might be compared in their relative state to

the memorable fields of Thrasymene and Cannae. In the first of these petty wars, thirty thousand Romans

were overthrown by a thousand German horse, whom Frederic Barbarossa had detached to the relief of

Tusculum: and if we number the slain at three, the prisoners at two, thousand, we shall embrace the most

authentic and moderate account. Sixty eight years afterwards they marched against Viterbo in the

ecclesiastical state with the whole force of the city; by a rare coalition the Teutonic eagle was blended, in the

adverse banners, with the keys of St. Peter; and the pope's auxiliaries were commanded by a count of

Thoulouse and a bishop of Winchester. The Romans were discomfited with shame and slaughter: but the

English prelate must have indulged the vanity of a pilgrim, if he multiplied their numbers to one hundred, and

their loss in the field to thirty, thousand men. Had the policy of the senate and the discipline of the legions

been restored with the Capitol, the divided condition of Italy would have offered the fairest opportunity of a

second conquest. But in arms, the modern Romans were not above, and in arts, they were far below, the

common level of the neighboring republics. Nor was their warlike spirit of any long continuance; after some

irregular sallies, they subsided in the national apathy, in the neglect of military institutions, and in the

disgraceful and dangerous use of foreign mercenaries. [Footnote 62: Tibur nunc suburbanum, et aestivae

Praeneste deliciae, nuncupatia in Capitolio votis petebantur. The whole passage of Florus (l. i. c. 11) may be

read with pleasure, and has deserved the praise of a man of genius, (Oeuvres de Montesquieu, tom. iii. p. 634,

[Footnote 63: Ne a feritate Romanorum, sicut fuerant Hostienses, Portuenses, Tusculanenses, Albanenses,

Labicenses, et nuper Tiburtini destruerentur, (Matthew Paris, p. 757.) These events are marked in the Annals

[Footnote 64: For the state or ruin of these suburban cities, the banks of the Tyber, see the lively picture of

the P. Labat, (Voyage en Espagne et en Italiae,) who had long resided in the neighborhood of Rome, and the

more accurate description of which P. Eschinard (Roma, 1750, in octavo) has added to the topographical map

[Footnote 65: Labat (tom. iii. p. 233) mentions a recent decree of the Roman government, which has severely

mortified the pride and poverty of Tivoli: in civitate Tiburtina non vivitur civiliter.]

[Footnote 66: I depart from my usual method, of quoting only by the date the Annals of Muratori, in

consideration of the critical balance in which he has weighed nine contemporary writers who mention the

[Footnote 67: Matthew Paris, p. 345. This bishop of Winchester was Peter de Rupibus, who occupied the see

thirtytwo years, (A.D. 1206 1238.) and is described, by the English historian, as a soldier and a statesman.

Ambition is a weed of quick and early vegetation in the vineyard of Christ. Under the first Christian princes,

the chair of St. Peter was disputed by the votes, the venality, the violence, of a popular election: the

sanctuaries of Rome were polluted with blood; and, from the third to the twelfth century, the church was

distracted by the mischief of frequent schisms. As long as the final appeal was determined by the civil

magistrate, these mischiefs were transient and local: the merits were tried by equity or favor; nor could the

unsuccessful competitor long disturb the triumph of his rival. But after the emperors had been divested of

their prerogatives, after a maxim had been established that the vicar of Christ is amenable to no earthly

tribunal, each vacancy of the holy see might involve Christendom in controversy and war. The claims of the

cardinals and inferior clergy, of the nobles and people, were vague and litigious: the freedom of choice was

overruled by the tumults of a city that no longer owned or obeyed a superior. On the decease of a pope, two

factions proceeded in different churches to a double election: the number and weight of votes, the priority of

time, the merit of the candidates, might balance each other: the most respectable of the clergy were divided;

and the distant princes, who bowed before the spiritual throne, could not distinguish the spurious, from the

legitimate, idol. The emperors were often the authors of the schism, from the political motive of opposing a

friendly to a hostile pontiff; and each of the competitors was reduced to suffer the insults of his enemies, who

were not awed by conscience, and to purchase the support of his adherents, who were instigated by avarice or

ambition a peaceful and perpetual succession was ascertained by Alexander the Third, ^68 who finally

abolished the tumultuary votes of the clergy and people, and defined the right of election in the sole college

of cardinals. ^69 The three orders of bishops, priests, and deacons, were assimilated to each other by this

important privilege; the parochial clergy of Rome obtained the first rank in the hierarchy: they were

indifferently chosen among the nations of Christendom; and the possession of the richest benefices, of the

most important bishoprics, was not incompatible with their title and office. The senators of the Catholic

church, the coadjutors and legates of the supreme pontiff, were robed in purple, the symbol of martyrdom or

royalty; they claimed a proud equality with kings; and their dignity was enhanced by the smallness of their

number, which, till the reign of Leo the Tenth, seldom exceeded twenty or twentyfive persons. By this wise

regulation, all doubt and scandal were removed, and the root of schism was so effectually destroyed, that in a

period of six hundred years a double choice has only once divided the unity of the sacred college. But as the

concurrence of two thirds of the votes had been made necessary, the election was often delayed by the private

interest and passions of the cardinals; and while they prolonged their independent reign, the Christian world

was left destitute of a head. A vacancy of almost three years had preceded the elevation of George the Tenth,

who resolved to prevent the future abuse; and his bull, after some opposition, has been consecrated in the

code of the canon law. ^70 Nine days are allowed for the obsequies of the deceased pope, and the arrival of

the absent cardinals; on the tenth, they are imprisoned, each with one domestic, in a common apartment or

conclave, without any separation of walls or curtains: a small window is reserved for the introduction of

necessaries; but the door is locked on both sides and guarded by the magistrates of the city, to seclude them

from all correspondence with the world. If the election be not consummated in three days, the luxury of their

table is contracted to a single dish at dinner and supper; and after the eighth day, they are reduced to a scanty

allowance of bread, water, and wine. During the vacancy of the holy see, the cardinals are prohibited from

touching the revenues, or assuming, unless in some rare emergency, the government of the church: all

agreements and promises among the electors are formally annulled; and their integrity is fortified by their

solemn oath and the prayers of the Catholics. Some articles of inconvenient or superfluous rigor have been

gradually relaxed, but the principle of confinement is vigorous and entire: they are still urged, by the personal

motives of health and freedom, to accelerate the moment of their deliverance; and the improvement of ballot

or secret votes has wrapped the struggles of the conclave ^71 in the silky veil of charity and politeness. ^72

By these institutions the Romans were excluded from the election of their prince and bishop; and in the fever

of wild and precarious liberty, they seemed insensible of the loss of this inestimable privilege. The emperor

Lewis of Bavaria revived the example of the great Otho. After some negotiation with the magistrates, the

Roman people were assembled ^73 in the square before St. Peter's: the pope of Avignon, John the

Twentysecond, was deposed: the choice of his successor was ratified by their consent and applause. They

freely voted for a new law, that their bishop should never be absent more than three months in the year, and

two days' journey from the city; and that if he neglected to return on the third summons, the public servant

should be degraded and dismissed. ^74 But Lewis forgot his own debility and the prejudices of the times:

beyond the precincts of a German camp, his useless phantom was rejected; the Romans despised their own

workmanship; the antipope implored the mercy of his lawful sovereign; ^75 and the exclusive right of the

[Footnote 68: See Mosheim, Institut. Histor. Ecclesiast. p. 401, 403. Alexander himself had nearly been the

victim of a contested election; and the doubtful merits of Innocent had only preponderated by the weight of

genius and learning which St. Bernard cast into the scale, (see his life and writings.)]

[Footnote 69: The origin, titles, importance, dress, precedency, of the Roman cardinals, are very ably

discussed by Thomassin, (Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. i. p. 1262 1287;) but their purple is now much faded.

The sacred college was raised to the definite number of seventytwo, to represent, under his vicar, the

[Footnote 70: See the bull of Gregory X. approbante sacro concilio, in the Sexts of the Canon Law, (l. i. tit. 6,

c. 3,) a supplement to the Decretals, which Boniface VIII. promulgated at Rome in 1298, and addressed in all

[Footnote 71: The genius of Cardinal de Retz had a right to paint a conclave, (of 1665,) in which he was a

spectator and an actor, (Memoires, tom. iv. p. 15 57;) but I am at a loss to appreciate the knowledge or

authority of an anonymous Italian, whose history (Conclavi de' Pontifici Romani, in 4to. 1667) has been

continued since the reign of Alexander VII. The accidental form of the work furnishes a lesson, though not an

antidote, to ambition. From a labyrinth of intrigues, we emerge to the adoration of the successful candidate;

[Footnote 72: The expressions of Cardinal de Retz are positive and picturesque: On y vecut toujours

ensemble avec le meme respect, et la meme civilite que l'on observe dans le cabinet des rois, avec la meme

politesse qu'on avoit dans la cour de Henri III., avec la meme familiarite que l'on voit dans les colleges; avec

la meme modestie, qui se remarque dans les noviciats; et avec la meme charite, du moins en apparence, qui

[Footnote 73: Richiesti per bando (says John Villani) sanatori di Roma, e 52 del popolo, et capitani de' 25, e

consoli, (consoli?) et 13 buone huomini, uno per rione. Our knowledge is too imperfect to pronounce how

much of this constitution was temporary, and how much ordinary and permanent. Yet it is faintly illustrated

[Footnote 74: Villani (l. x. c. 68 71, in Muratori, Script. tom. xiii. p. 641 645) relates this law, and the

whole transaction, with much less abhorrence than the prudent Muratori. Any one conversant with the darker

ages must have observed how much the sense (I mean the nonsense) of superstition is fluctuating and

[Footnote 75: In the first volume of the Popes of Avignon, see the second original Life of John XXII. p. 142

145, the confession of the antipope p. 145 152, and the laborious notes of Baluze, p. 714, 715.]

Had the election been always held in the Vatican, the rights of the senate and people would not have been

violated with impunity. But the Romans forgot, and were forgotten. in the absence of the successors of

Gregory the Seventh, who did not keep as a divine precept their ordinary residence in the city and diocese.

The care of that diocese was less important than the government of the universal church; nor could the popes

delight in a city in which their authority was always opposed, and their person was often endangered. From

the persecution of the emperors, and the wars of Italy, they escaped beyond the Alps into the hospitable

bosom of France; from the tumults of Rome they prudently withdrew to live and die in the more tranquil

stations of Anagni, Perugia, Viterbo, and the adjacent cities. When the flock was offended or impoverished

by the absence of the shepherd, they were recalled by a stern admonition, that St. Peter had fixed his chair,

not in an obscure village, but in the capital of the world; by a ferocious menace, that the Romans would

march in arms to destroy the place and people that should dare to afford them a retreat. They returned with

timorous obedience; and were saluted with the account of a heavy debt, of all the losses which their desertion

had occasioned, the hire of lodgings, the sale of provisions, and the various expenses of servants and

strangers who attended the court. ^76 After a short interval of peace, and perhaps of authority, they were

again banished by new tumults, and again summoned by the imperious or respectful invitation of the senate.

In these occasional retreats, the exiles and fugitives of the Vatican were seldom long, or far, distant from the

metropolis; but in the beginning of the fourteenth century, the apostolic throne was transported, as it might

seem forever, from the Tyber to the Rhone; and the cause of the transmigration may be deduced from the

furious contest between Boniface the Eighth and the king of France. ^77 The spiritual arms of

excommunication and interdict were repulsed by the union of the three estates, and the privileges of the

Gallican church; but the pope was not prepared against the carnal weapons which Philip the Fair had courage

to employ. As the pope resided at Anagni, without the suspicion of danger, his palace and person were

assaulted by three hundred horse, who had been secretly levied by William of Nogaret, a French minister, and

Sciarra Colonna, of a noble but hostile family of Rome. The cardinals fled; the inhabitants of Anagni were

seduced from their allegiance and gratitude; but the dauntless Boniface, unarmed and alone, seated himself in

his chair, and awaited, like the conscript fathers of old, the swords of the Gauls. Nogaret, a foreign adversary,

was content to execute the orders of his master: by the domestic enmity of Colonna, he was insulted with

words and blows; and during a confinement of three days his life was threatened by the hardships which they

inflicted on the obstinacy which they provoked. Their strange delay gave time and courage to the adherents of

the church, who rescued him from sacrilegious violence; but his imperious soul was wounded in the vital

part; and Boniface expired at Rome in a frenzy of rage and revenge. His memory is stained with the glaring

vices of avarice and pride; nor has the courage of a martyr promoted this ecclesiastical champion to the

honors of a saint; a magnanimous sinner, (say the chronicles of the times,) who entered like a fox, reigned

like a lion, and died like a dog. He was succeeded by Benedict the Eleventh, the mildest of mankind. Yet he

excommunicated the impious emissaries of Philip, and devoted the city and people of Anagni by a

tremendous curse, whose effects are still visible to the eyes of superstition. ^78 [Footnote 76: Romani autem

non valentes nec volentes ultra suam celare cupiditatem gravissimam, contra papam movere coeperunt

questionem, exigentes ab eo urgentissime omnia quae subierant per ejus absentiam damna et jacturas,

videlicet in hispitiis locandis, in mercimoniis, in usuris, in redditibus, in provisionibus, et in aliis modis

innumerabilibus. Quod cum audisset papa, praecordialiter ingemuit, et se comperiens muscipulatum, Matt.

Paris, p. 757. For the ordinary history of the popes, their life and death, their residence and absence, it is

[Footnote 77: Besides the general historians of the church of Italy and of France, we possess a valuable

treatise composed by a learned friend of Thuanus, which his last and best editors have published in the

appendix (Histoire particuliere du grand Differend entre Boniface VIII et Philippe le Bel, par Pierre du Puis,

[Footnote 78: It is difficult to know whether Labat (tom. iv. p. 53 57) be in jest or in earnest, when he

supposes that Anagni still feels the weight of this curse, and that the cornfields, or vineyards, or olivetrees,

After his decease, the tedious and equal suspense of the conclave was fixed by the dexterity of the French

faction. A specious offer was made and accepted, that, in the term of forty days, they would elect one of the

three candidates who should be named by their opponents. The archbishop of Bourdeaux, a furious enemy of

his king and country, was the first on the list; but his ambition was known; and his conscience obeyed the

calls of fortune and the commands of a benefactor, who had been informed by a swift messenger that the

choice of a pope was now in his hands. The terms were regulated in a private interview; and with such speed

and secrecy was the business transacted, that the unanimous conclave applauded the elevation of Clement the

Fifth. ^79 The cardinals of both parties were soon astonished by a summons to attend him beyond the Alps;

from whence, as they soon discovered, they must never hope to return. He was engaged, by promise and

affection, to prefer the residence of France; and, after dragging his court through Poitou and Gascony, and

devouring, by his expense, the cities and convents on the road, he finally reposed at Avignon, ^80 which

flourished above seventy years ^81 the seat of the Roman pontiff and the metropolis of Christendom. By

land, by sea, by the Rhone, the position of Avignon was on all sides accessible; the southern provinces of

France do not yield to Italy itself; new palaces arose for the accommodation of the pope and cardinals; and

the arts of luxury were soon attracted by the treasures of the church. They were already possessed of the

adjacent territory, the Venaissin county, ^82 a populous and fertile spot; and the sovereignty of Avignon was

afterwards purchased from the youth and distress of Jane, the first queen of Naples and countess of Provence,

for the inadequate price of fourscore thousand florins. ^83 Under the shadow of a French monarchy, amidst

an obedient people, the popes enjoyed an honorable and tranquil state, to which they long had been strangers:

but Italy deplored their absence; and Rome, in solitude and poverty, might repent of the ungovernable

freedom which had driven from the Vatican the successor of St. Peter. Her repentance was tardy and fruitless:

after the death of the old members, the sacred college was filled with French cardinals, ^84 who beheld Rome

and Italy with abhorrence and contempt, and perpetuated a series of national, and even provincial, popes,

[Footnote 79: See, in the Chronicle of Giovanni Villani, (l. viii. c. 63, 64, 80, in Muratori, tom. xiii.,) the

imprisonment of Boniface VIII., and the election of Clement V., the last of which, like most anecdotes, is

[Footnote 80: The original lives of the eight popes of Avignon, Clement V., John XXII., Benedict XI.,

Clement VI., Innocent VI., Urban V., Gregory XI., and Clement VII., are published by Stephen Baluze,

(Vitae Paparum Avenionensium; Paris, 1693, 2 vols. in 4to.,) with copious and elaborate notes, and a second

volume of acts and documents. With the true zeal of an editor and a patriot, he devoutly justifies or excuses

[Footnote 81: The exile of Avignon is compared by the Italians with Babylon, and the Babylonish captivity.

Such furious metaphors, more suitable to the ardor of Petrarch than to the judgment of Muratori, are gravely

refuted in Baluze's preface. The abbe de Sade is distracted between the love of Petrarch and of his country.

Yet he modestly pleads, that many of the local inconveniences of Avignon are now removed; and many of the

vices against which the poet declaims, had been imported with the Roman court by the strangers of Italy,

[Footnote 82: The comtat Venaissin was ceded to the popes in 1273 by Philip III. king of France, after he had

inherited the dominions of the count of Thoulouse. Forty years before, the heresy of Count Raymond had

given them a pretence of seizure, and they derived some obscure claim from the xith century to some lands

citra Rhodanum, (Valesii Notitia Galliarum, p. 495, 610. Longuerue, Description de la France, tom. i. p. 376

[Footnote 83: If a possession of four centuries were not itself a title, such objections might annul the bargain;

but the purchase money must be refunded, for indeed it was paid. Civitatem Avenionem emit . . . per

ejusmodi venditionem pecunia redundates, (iida Vita Clement. VI. in Baluz. tom. i. p. 272. Muratori, Script.

tom. iii. P. ii. p. 565.) The only temptation for Jane and her second husband was ready money, and without it

[Footnote 84: Clement V immediately promoted ten cardinals, nine French and one English, (Vita ivta, p. 63,

et Baluz. p. 625, In 1331, the pope refused two candidates recommended by the king of France, quod xx.

Cardinales, de quibus xvii. de regno Fraciae originem traxisse noscuntur in memorato collegio existant,

The progress of industry had produced and enriched the Italian republics: the aera of their liberty is the most

flourishing period of population and agriculture, of manufactures and commerce; and their mechanic labors

were gradually refined into the arts of elegance and genius. But the position of Rome was less favorable, the

territory less fruitful: the character of the inhabitants was debased by indolence and elated by pride; and they

fondly conceived that the tribute of subjects must forever nourish the metropolis of the church and empire.

This prejudice was encouraged in some degree by the resort of pilgrims to the shrines of the apostles; and the

last legacy of the popes, the institution of the holy year, ^85 was not less beneficial to the people than to the

clergy. Since the loss of Palestine, the gift of plenary indulgences, which had been applied to the crusades,

remained without an object; and the most valuable treasure of the church was sequestered above eight years

from public circulation. A new channel was opened by the diligence of Boniface the Eighth, who reconciled

the vices of ambition and avarice; and the pope had sufficient learning to recollect and revive the secular

games which were celebrated in Rome at the conclusion of every century. To sound without danger the depth

of popular credulity, a sermon was seasonably pronounced, a report was artfully scattered, some aged

witnesses were produced; and on the first of January of the year thirteen hundred, the church of St. Peter was

crowded with the faithful, who demanded the customary indulgence of the holy time. The pontiff, who

watched and irritated their devout impatience, was soon persuaded by ancient testimony of the justice of their

claim; and he proclaimed a plenary absolution to all Catholics who, in the course of that year, and at every

similar period, should respectfully visit the apostolic churches of St. Peter and St. Paul. The welcome sound

was propagated through Christendom; and at first from the nearest provinces of Italy, and at length from the

remote kingdoms of Hungary and Britain, the highways were thronged with a swarm of pilgrims who sought

to expiate their sins in a journey, however costly or laborious, which was exempt from the perils of military

service. All exceptions of rank or sex, of age or infirmity, were forgotten in the common transport; and in the

streets and churches many persons were trampled to death by the eagerness of devotion. The calculation of

their numbers could not be easy nor accurate; and they have probably been magnified by a dexterous clergy,

well apprised of the contagion of example: yet we are assured by a judicious historian, who assisted at the

ceremony, that Rome was never replenished with less than two hundred thousand strangers; and another

spectator has fixed at two millions the total concourse of the year. A trifling oblation from each individual

would accumulate a royal treasure; and two priests stood night and day, with rakes in their hands, to collect,

without counting, the heaps of gold and silver that were poured on the altar of St. Paul. ^86 It was fortunately

a season of peace and plenty; and if forage was scarce, if inns and lodgings were extravagantly dear, an

inexhaustible supply of bread and wine, of meat and fish, was provided by the policy of Boniface and the

venal hospitality of the Romans. From a city without trade or industry, all casual riches will speedily

evaporate: but the avarice and envy of the next generation solicited Clement the Sixth ^87 to anticipate the

distant period of the century. The gracious pontiff complied with their wishes; afforded Rome this poor

consolation for his loss; and justified the change by the name and practice of the Mosaic Jubilee. ^88 His

summons was obeyed; and the number, zeal, and liberality of the pilgrims did not yield to the primitive

festival. But they encountered the triple scourge of war, pestilence, and famine: many wives and virgins were

violated in the castles of Italy; and many strangers were pillaged or murdered by the savage Romans, no

longer moderated by the presence of their bishops. ^89 To the impatience of the popes we may ascribe the

successive reduction to fifty, thirtythree, and twentyfive years; although the second of these terms is

commensurate with the life of Christ. The profusion of indulgences, the revolt of the Protestants, and the

decline of superstition, have much diminished the value of the jubilee; yet even the nineteenth and last

festival was a year of pleasure and profit to the Romans; and a philosophic smile will not disturb the triumph

of the priest or the happiness of the people. ^90 [Footnote 85: Our primitive account is from Cardinal James

Caietan, (Maxima Bibliot. Patrum, tom. xxv.;) and I am at a loss to determine whether the nephew of

[Footnote 86: See John Villani (l. viii. c. 36) in the xiith, and the Chronicon Astense, in the xith volume (p.

191, 192) of Muratori's Collection Papa innumerabilem pecuniam abeisdem accepit, nam duo clerici, cum

[Footnote 87: The two bulls of Boniface VIII. and Clement VI. are inserted on the Corpus Juris Canonici,

[Footnote 88: The sabbatic years and jubilees of the Mosaic law, (Car. Sigon. de Republica Hebraeorum,

Opp. tom. iv. l. iii. c. 14, 14, p. 151, 152,) the suspension of all care and labor, the periodical release of lands,

debts, servitude, may seem a noble idea, but the execution would be impracticable in a profane republic; and I

should be glad to learn that this ruinous festival was observed by the Jewish people.]

[Footnote 89: See the Chronicle of Matteo Villani, (l. i. c. 56,) in the xivth vol. of Muratori, and the

[Footnote 90: The subject is exhausted by M. Chais, a French minister at the Hague, in his Lettres

Historiques et Dogmatiques, sur les Jubiles et es Indulgences; la Haye, 1751, 3 vols. in 12mo.; an elaborate

and pleasing work, had not the author preferred the character of a polemic to that of a philosopher.]

In the beginning of the eleventh century, Italy was exposed to the feudal tyranny, alike oppressive to the

sovereign and the people. The rights of human nature were vindicated by her numerous republics, who soon

extended their liberty and dominion from the city to the adjacent country. The sword of the nobles was

broken; their slaves were enfranchised; their castles were demolished; they assumed the habits of society and

obedience; their ambition was confined to municipal honors, and in the proudest aristocracy of Venice on

Genoa, each patrician was subject to the laws. ^91 But the feeble and disorderly government of Rome was

unequal to the task of curbing her rebellious sons, who scorned the authority of the magistrate within and

without the walls. It was no longer a civil contention between the nobles and plebeians for the government of

the state: the barons asserted in arms their personal independence; their palaces and castles were fortified

against a siege; and their private quarrels were maintained by the numbers of their vassals and retainers. In

origin and affection, they were aliens to their country: ^92 and a genuine Roman, could such have been

produced, might have renounced these haughty strangers, who disdained the appellation of citizens, and

proudly styled themselves the princes, of Rome. ^93 After a dark series of revolutions, all records of pedigree

were lost; the distinction of surnames was abolished; the blood of the nations was mingled in a thousand

channels; and the Goths and Lombards, the Greeks and Franks, the Germans and Normans, had obtained the

fairest possessions by royal bounty, or the prerogative of valor. These examples might be readily presumed;

but the elevation of a Hebrew race to the rank of senators and consuls is an event without a parallel in the

long captivity of these miserable exiles. ^94 In the time of Leo the Ninth, a wealthy and learned Jew was

converted to Christianity, and honored at his baptism with the name of his godfather, the reigning Pope. The

zeal and courage of Peter the son of Leo were signalized in the cause of Gregory the Seventh, who intrusted

his faithful adherent with the government of Adrian's mole, the tower of Crescentius, or, as it is now called,

the castle of St. Angelo. Both the father and the son were the parents of a numerous progeny: their riches, the

fruits of usury, were shared with the noblest families of the city; and so extensive was their alliance, that the

grandson of the proselyte was exalted by the weight of his kindred to the throne of St. Peter. A majority of the

clergy and people supported his cause: he reigned several years in the Vatican; and it is only the eloquence of

St. Bernard, and the final triumph of Innocence the Second, that has branded Anacletus with the epithet of

antipope. After his defeat and death, the posterity of Leo is no longer conspicuous; and none will be found of

the modern nobles ambitious of descending from a Jewish stock. It is not my design to enumerate the Roman

families which have failed at different periods, or those which are continued in different degrees of splendor

to the present time. ^95 The old consular line of the Frangipani discover their name in the generous act of

breaking or dividing bread in a time of famine; and such benevolence is more truly glorious than to have

enclosed, with their allies the Corsi, a spacious quarter of the city in the chains of their fortifications; the

Savelli, as it should seem a Sabine race, have maintained their original dignity; the obsolete surname of the

Capizucchi is inscribed on the coins of the first senators; the Conti preserve the honor, without the estate, of

the counts of Signia; and the Annibaldi must have been very ignorant, or very modest, if they had not

[Footnote 91: Muratori (Dissert. xlvii.) alleges the Annals of Florence, Padua, Genoa, the analogy of the rest,

the evidence of Otho of Frisingen, (de Gest. Fred. I. l. ii. c. 13,) and the submission of the marouis of Este.]

[Footnote 92: As early as the year 824, the emperor Lothaire I. found it expedient to interrogate the Roman

people, to learn from each individual by what national law he chose to be governed. (Muratori, Dissertat

[Footnote 93: Petrarch attacks these foreigners, the tyrants of Rome, in a declamation or epistle, full of bold

truths and absurd pedantry, in which he applies the maxims, and even prejudices, of the old republic to the

[Footnote 94: The origin and adventures of the Jewish family are noticed by Pagi, (Critica, tom. iv. p. 435,

A.D. 1124, No. 3, 4,) who draws his information from the Chronographus Maurigniacensis, and Arnulphus

Sagiensis de Schismate, (in Muratori, Script. Ital. tom. iii. P. i. p. 423 432.) The fact must in some degree

be true; yet I could wish that it had been coolly related, before it was turned into a reproach against the

[Footnote 95: Muratori has given two dissertations (xli. and xlii.) to the names, surnames, and families of

Italy. Some nobles, who glory in their domestic fables, may be offended with his firm and temperate

criticism; yet surely some ounces of pure gold are of more value than many pounds of base metal.]

[Footnote 96: The cardinal of St. George, in his poetical, or rather metrical history of the election and

coronation of Boniface VIII., (Muratori Script. Ital. tom. iii. P. i. p. 641, describes the state and families of

Interea titulis redimiti sanguine et armis Illustresque viri Romana a stirpe trahentes Nomen in emeritos tantae

virtutis honores Insulerant sese medios festumque colebant Aurata fulgente toga, sociante caterva. Ex ipsis

devota domus praestantis ab Ursa Ecclesiae, vultumque gerens demissius altum Festa Columna jocis, necnon

Sabellia mitis; Stephanides senior, Comites Annibalica proles, Praefectusque urbis magnum sine viribus

The ancient statutes of Rome (l. iii. c. 59, p. 174, 175) distinguish eleven families of barons, who are obliged

to swear in concilio communi, before the senator, that they would not harbor or protect any malefactors,

But among, perhaps above, the peers and princes of the city, I distinguish the rival houses of Colonna and

Ursini, whose private story is an essential part of the annals of modern Rome. I. The name and arms of

Colonna ^97 have been the theme of much doubtful etymology; nor have the orators and antiquarians

overlooked either Trajan's pillar, or the columns of Hercules, or the pillar of Christ's flagellation, or the

luminous column that guided the Israelites in the desert. Their first historical appearance in the year eleven

hundred and four attests the power and antiquity, while it explains the simple meaning, of the name. By the

usurpation of Cavae, the Colonna provoked the arms of Paschal the Second; but they lawfully held in the

Campagna of Rome the hereditary fiefs of Zagarola and Colonna; and the latter of these towns was probably

adorned with some lofty pillar, the relic of a villa or temple. ^98 They likewise possessed one moiety of the

neighboring city of Tusculum, a strong presumption of their descent from the counts of Tusculum, who in the

tenth century were the tyrants of the apostolic see. According to their own and the public opinion, the

primitive and remote source was derived from the banks of the Rhine; ^99 and the sovereigns of Germany

were not ashamed of a real or fabulous affinity with a noble race, which in the revolutions of seven hundred

years has been often illustrated by merit and always by fortune. ^100 About the end of the thirteenth century,

the most powerful branch was composed of an uncle and six bothers, all conspicuous in arms, or in the

honors of the church. Of these, Peter was elected senator of Rome, introduced to the Capitol in a triumphal

car, and hailed in some vain acclamations with the title of Caesar; while John and Stephen were declared

marquis of Ancona and count of Romagna, by Nicholas the Fourth, a patron so partial to their family, that he

has been delineated in satirical portraits, imprisoned as it were in a hollow pillar. ^101 After his decease their

haughty behavior provoked the displeasure of the most implacable of mankind. The two cardinals, the uncle

and the nephew, denied the election of Boniface the Eighth; and the Colonna were oppressed for a moment

by his temporal and spiritual arms. ^102 He proclaimed a crusade against his personal enemies; their estates

were confiscated; their fortresses on either side of the Tyber were besieged by the troops of St. Peter and

those of the rival nobles; and after the ruin of Palestrina or Praeneste, their principal seat, the ground was

marked with a ploughshare, the emblem of perpetual desolation. Degraded, banished, proscribed, the six

brothers, in disguise and danger, wandered over Europe without renouncing the hope of deliverance and

revenge. In this double hope, the French court was their surest asylum; they prompted and directed the

enterprise of Philip; and I should praise their magnanimity, had they respected the misfortune and courage of

the captive tyrant. His civil acts were annulled by the Roman people, who restored the honors and

possessions of the Colonna; and some estimate may be formed of their wealth by their losses, of their losses

by the damages of one hundred thousand gold florins which were granted them against the accomplices and

heirs of the deceased pope. All the spiritual censures and disqualifications were abolished ^103 by his

prudent successors; and the fortune of the house was more firmly established by this transient hurricane. The

boldness of Sciarra Colonna was signalized in the captivity of Boniface, and long afterwards in the

coronation of Lewis of Bavaria; and by the gratitude of the emperor, the pillar in their arms was encircled

with a royal crown. But the first of the family in fame and merit was the elder Stephen, whom Petrarch loved

and esteemed as a hero superior to his own times, and not unworthy of ancient Rome. Persecution and exile

displayed to the nations his abilities in peace and war; in his distress he was an object, not of pity, but of

reverence; the aspect of danger provoked him to avow his name and country; and when he was asked,

"Where is now your fortress?" he laid his hand on his heart, and answered, "Here." He supported with the

same virtue the return of prosperity; and, till the ruin of his declining age, the ancestors, the character, and the

children of Stephen Colonna, exalted his dignity in the Roman republic, and at the court of Avignon. II. The

Ursini migrated from Spoleto; ^104 the sons of Ursus, as they are styled in the twelfth century, from some

eminent person, who is only known as the father of their race. But they were soon distinguished among the

nobles of Rome, by the number and bravery of their kinsmen, the strength of their towers, the honors of the

senate and sacred college, and the elevation of two popes, Celestin the Third and Nicholas the Third, of their

name and lineage. ^105 Their riches may be accused as an early abuse of nepotism: the estates of St. Peter

were alienated in their favor by the liberal Celestin; ^106 and Nicholas was ambitious for their sake to solicit

the alliance of monarchs; to found new kingdoms in Lombardy and Tuscany; and to invest them with the

perpetual office of senators of Rome. All that has been observed of the greatness of the Colonna will likewise

redeemed to the glory of the Ursini, their constant and equal antagonists in the long hereditary feud, which

distracted above two hundred and fifty years the ecclesiastical state. The jealously of preeminence and power

was the true ground of their quarrel; but as a specious badge of distinction, the Colonna embraced the name

of Ghibelines and the party of the empire; the Ursini espoused the title of Guelphs and the cause of the

church. The eagle and the keys were displayed in their adverse banners; and the two factions of Italy most

furiously raged when the origin and nature of the dispute were long since forgotten. ^107 After the retreat of

the popes to Avignon they disputed in arms the vacant republic; and the mischiefs of discord were

perpetuated by the wretched compromise of electing each year two rival senators. By their private hostilities

the city and country were desolated, and the fluctuating balance inclined with their alternate success. But

none of either family had fallen by the sword, till the most renowned champion of the Ursini was surprised

and slain by the younger Stephen Colonna. ^108 His triumph is stained with the reproach of violating the

truce; their defeat was basely avenged by the assassination, before the church door, of an innocent boy and

his two servants. Yet the victorious Colonna, with an annual colleague, was declared senator of Rome during

the term of five years. And the muse of Petrarch inspired a wish, a hope, a prediction, that the generous

youth, the son of his venerable hero, would restore Rome and Italy to their pristine glory; that his justice

would extirpate the wolves and lions, the serpents and bears, who labored to subvert the eternal basis of the

[Footnote 97: It is pity that the Colonna themselves have not favored the world with a complete and critical

history of their illustrious house. I adhere to Muratori, (Dissert. xlii. tom. iii. p. 647, 648.)]

[Footnote 98: Pandulph. Pisan. in Vit. Paschal. II. in Muratori, Script. Ital. tom. iii. P. i. p. 335. The family

has still great possessions in the Campagna of Rome; but they have alienated to the Rospigliosi this original

[Footnote 99: Te longinqua dedit tellus et pascua Rheni, says Petrarch; and, in 1417, a duke of Guelders and

Juliers acknowledges (Lenfant, Hist. du Concile de Constance, tom. ii. p. 539) his descent from the ancestors

of Martin V., (Otho Colonna:) but the royal author of the Memoirs of Brandenburg observes, that the sceptre

in his arms has been confounded with the column. To maintain the Roman origin of the Colonna, it was

ingeniously supposed (Diario di Monaldeschi, in the Script. Ital. tom. xii. p. 533) that a cousin of the emperor

[Footnote 100: I cannot overlook the Roman triumph of ovation on Marce Antonio Colonna, who had

commanded the pope's galleys at the naval victory of Lepanto, (Thuan. Hist. l. 7, tom. iii. p. 55, 56. Muret.

[Footnote 102: Petrarch's attachment to the Colonna has authorized the abbe de Sade to expatiate on the state

of the family in the fourteenth century, the persecution of Boniface VIII., the character of Stephen and his

sons, their quarrels with the Ursini, (Memoires sur Petrarque, tom. i. p. 98 110, 146 148, 174 176, 222

230, 275 280.) His criticism often rectifies the hearsay stories of Villani, and the errors of the less diligent

[Footnote 103: Alexander III. had declared the Colonna who adhered to the emperor Frederic I. incapable of

holding any ecclesiastical benefice, (Villani, l. v. c. 1;) and the last stains of annual excommunication were

purified by Sixtus V., (Vita di Sisto V. tom. iii. p. 416.) Treason, sacrilege, and proscription are often the best

[Footnote 104: Vallis te proxima misit, Appenninigenae qua prata virentia sylvae Spoletana metunt armenta

gregesque protervi. Monaldeschi (tom. xii. Script. Ital. p. 533) gives the Ursini a French origin, which may be

[Footnote 105: In the metrical life of Celestine V. by the cardinal of St. George (Muratori, tom. iii. P. i. p.

genuit quem nobilis Ursae (Ursi?) Progenies, Romana domus, veterataque magnis Fascibus in clero,

pompasque experta senatus, Bellorumque manu grandi stipata parentum Cardineos apices necnon fastigia

Muratori (Dissert. xlii. tom. iii.) observes, that the first Ursini pontificate of Celestine III. was unknown: he is

[Footnote 106: Filii Ursi, quondam Coelestini papae nepotes, de bonis ecclesiae Romanae ditati, (Vit.

Innocent. III. in Muratori, Script. tom. iii. P. i.) The partial prodigality of Nicholas III. is more conspicuous in

Villani and Muratori. Yet the Ursini would disdain the nephews of a modern pope.]

[Footnote 107: In his fiftyfirst Dissertation on the Italian Antiquities, Muratori explains the factions of the

[Footnote 108: Petrarch (tom. i. p. 222 230) has celebrated this victory according to the Colonna; but two

contemporaries, a Florentine (Giovanni Villani, l. x. c. 220) and a Roman, (Ludovico Monaldeschi, p. 532

[Footnote 109: The abbe de Sade (tom. i. Notes, p. 61 66) has applied the vith Canzone of Petrarch, Spirto

Orsi, lupi, leoni, aquile e serpi Al una gran marmorea colonna Fanno noja sovente e a se danno]

Character And Coronation Of Petrarch. Restoration Of The Freedom And Government Of Rome By The

Tribune Rienzi. His Virtues And Vices, His Expulsion And Death. Return Of The Popes From Avignon.

Great Schism Of The West. Reunion Of The Latin Church. Last Struggles Of Roman Liberty.

In the apprehension of modern times, Petrarch ^1 is the Italian songster of Laura and love. In the harmony of

his Tuscan rhymes, Italy applauds, or rather adores, the father of her lyric poetry; and his verse, or at least his

name, is repeated by the enthusiasm, or affectation, of amorous sensibility. Whatever may be the private taste

of a stranger, his slight and superficial knowledge should humbly acquiesce in the judgment of a learned

nation; yet I may hope or presume, that the Italians do not compare the tedious uniformity of sonnets and

elegies with the sublime compositions of their epic muse, the original wildness of Dante, the regular beauties

of Tasso, and the boundless variety of the incomparable Ariosto. The merits of the lover I am still less

qualified to appreciate: nor am I deeply interested in a metaphysical passion for a nymph so shadowy, that her

existence has been questioned; ^2 for a matron so prolific, ^3 that she was delivered of eleven legitimate

children, ^4 while her amorous swain sighed and sung at the fountain of Vaucluse. ^5 But in the eyes of

Petrarch, and those of his graver contemporaries, his love was a sin, and Italian verse a frivolous amusement.

His Latin works of philosophy, poetry, and eloquence, established his serious reputation, which was soon

diffused from Avignon over France and Italy: his friends and disciples were multiplied in every city; and if

the ponderous volume of his writings ^6 be now abandoned to a long repose, our gratitude must applaud the

man, who by precept and example revived the spirit and study of the Augustan age. From his earliest youth,

Petrarch aspired to the poetic crown. The academical honors of the three faculties had introduced a royal

degree of master or doctor in the art of poetry; ^7 and the title of poet laureate, which custom, rather than

vanity, perpetuates in the English court, ^8 was first invented by the Caesars of Germany. In the musical

games of antiquity, a prize was bestowed on the victor: ^9 the belief that Virgil and Horace had been crowned

in the Capitol inflamed the emulation of a Latin bard; ^10 and the laurel ^11 was endeared to the lover by a

verbal resemblance with the name of his mistress. The value of either object was enhanced by the difficulties

of the pursuit; and if the virtue or prudence of Laura was inexorable, ^12 he enjoyed, and might boast of

enjoying, the nymph of poetry. His vanity was not of the most delicate kind, since he applauds the success of

his own labors; his name was popular; his friends were active; the open or secret opposition of envy and

prejudice was surmounted by the dexterity of patient merit. In the thirtysixth year of his age, he was

solicited to accept the object of his wishes; and on the same day, in the solitude of Vaucluse, he received a

similar and solemn invitation from the senate of Rome and the university of Paris. The learning of a

theological school, and the ignorance of a lawless city, were alike unqualified to bestow the ideal though

immortal wreath which genius may obtain from the free applause of the public and of posterity: but the

candidate dismissed this troublesome reflection; and after some moments of complacency and suspense,

[Footnote 1: The Memoires sur la Vie de Francois Petrarque, (Amsterdam, 1764, 1767, 3 vols. in 4to.,) form

a copious, original, and entertaining work, a labor of love, composed from the accurate study of Petrarch and

his contemporaries; but the hero is too often lost in the general history of the age, and the author too often

languishes in the affectation of politeness and gallantry. In the preface to his first volume, he enumerates and

weighs twenty Italian biographers, who have professedly treated of the same subject.]

[Footnote 2: The allegorical interpretation prevailed in the xvth century; but the wise commentators were not

agreed whether they should understand by Laura, religion, or virtue, or the blessed virgin, or see the

[Footnote 3: Laure de Noves, born about the year 1307, was married in January 1325, to Hugues de Sade, a

noble citizen of Avignon, whose jealousy was not the effect of love, since he married a second wife within

seven months of her death, which happened the 6th of April, 1348, precisely oneandtwenty years after

[Footnote 4: Corpus crebris partubus exhaustum: from one of these is issued, in the tenth degree, the abbe de

Sade, the fond and grateful biographer of Petrarch; and this domestic motive most probably suggested the

idea of his work, and urged him to inquire into every circumstance that could affect the history and character

of his grandmother, (see particularly tom. i. p. 122 133, notes, p. 7 58, tom. ii. p. 455 495 not. p. 76

[Footnote 5: Vaucluse, so familiar to our English travellers, is described from the writings of Petrarch, and

the local knowledge of his biographer, (Memoires, tom. i. p. 340 359.) It was, in truth, the retreat of a

hermit; and the moderns are much mistaken, if they place Laura and a happy lover in the grotto.]

[Footnote 6: Of 1250 pages, in a close print, at Basil in the xvith century, but without the date of the year.

The abbe de Sade calls aloud for a new edition of Petrarch's Latin works; but I much doubt whether it would

[Footnote 7: Consult Selden's Titles of Honor, in his works, (vol. iii. p. 457 466.) A hundred years before

Petrarch, St. Francis received the visit of a poet, qui ab imperatore fuerat coronatus et exinde rex versuum

[Footnote 8: From Augustus to Louis, the muse has too often been false and venal: but I much doubt whether

any age or court can produce a similar establishment of a stipendiary poet, who in every reign, and at all

events, is bound to furnish twice a year a measure of praise and verse, such as may be sung in the chapel, and,

I believe, in the presence, of the sovereign. I speak the more freely, as the best time for abolishing this

ridiculous custom is while the prince is a man of virtue and the poet a man of genius.]

[Footnote 9: Isocrates (in Panegyrico, tom. i. p. 116, 117, edit. Battie, Cantab. 1729) claims for his native

Athens the glory of first instituting and recommending. The example of the Panathenaea was imitated at

Delphi; but the Olympic games were ignorant of a musical crown, till it was extorted by the vain tyranny of

Nero, (Sueton. in Nerone, c. 23; Philostrat. apud Casaubon ad locum; Dion Cassius, or Xiphilin, l. lxiii. p.

[Footnote 10: The Capitoline games (certamen quinquenale, musicum, equestre, gymnicum) were instituted

by Domitian (Sueton. c. 4) in the year of Christ 86, (Censorin. de Die Natali, c. 18, p. 100, edit. Havercamp.)

and were not abolished in the ivth century, (Ausonius de Professoribus Burdegal. V.) If the crown were given

to superior merit, the exclusion of Statius (Capitolia nostrae inficiata lyrae, Sylv. l. iii. v. 31) may do honor to

the games of the Capitol; but the Latin poets who lived before Domitian were crowned only in the public

[Footnote 11: Petrarch and the senators of Rome were ignorant that the laurel was not the Capitoline, but the

Delphic crown, (Plin. Hist. Natur p. 39. Hist. Critique de la Republique des Lettres, tom. i. p. 150 220.) The

victors in the Capitol were crowned with a garland of oak eaves, (Martial, l. iv. epigram 54.)]

[Footnote 12: The pious grandson of Laura has labored, and not without success, to vindicate her immaculate

chastity against the censures of the grave and the sneers of the profane, (tom. ii. notes, p. 76 82.)]

The ceremony of his coronation ^13 was performed in the Capitol, by his friend and patron the supreme

magistrate of the republic. Twelve patrician youths were arrayed in scarlet; six representatives of the most

illustrious families, in green robes, with garlands of flowers, accompanied the procession; in the midst of the

princes and nobles, the senator, count of Anguillara, a kinsman of the Colonna, assumed his throne; and at the

voice of a herald Petrarch arose. After discoursing on a text of Virgil, and thrice repeating his vows for the

prosperity of Rome, he knelt before the throne, and received from the senator a laurel crown, with a more

precious declaration, "This is the reward of merit." The people shouted, "Long life to the Capitol and the

poet!" A sonnet in praise of Rome was accepted as the effusion of genius and gratitude; and after the whole

procession had visited the Vatican, the profane wreath was suspended before the shrine of St. Peter. In the act

or diploma ^14 which was presented to Petrarch, the title and prerogatives of poetlaureate are revived in the

Capitol, after the lapse of thirteen hundred years; and he receives the perpetual privilege of wearing, at his

choice, a crown of laurel, ivy, or myrtle, of assuming the poetic habit, and of teaching, disputing, interpreting,

and composing, in all places whatsoever, and on all subjects of literature. The grant was ratified by the

authority of the senate and people; and the character of citizen was the recompense of his affection for the

Roman name. They did him honor, but they did him justice. In the familiar society of Cicero and Livy, he had

imbibed the ideas of an ancient patriot; and his ardent fancy kindled every idea to a sentiment, and every

sentiment to a passion. The aspect of the seven hills and their majestic ruins confirmed these lively

impressions; and he loved a country by whose liberal spirit he had been crowned and adopted. The poverty

and debasement of Rome excited the indignation and pity of her grateful son; he dissembled the faults of his

fellowcitizens; applauded with partial fondness the last of their heroes and matrons; and in the remembrance

of the past, in the hopes of the future, was pleased to forget the miseries of the present time. Rome was still

the lawful mistress of the world: the pope and the emperor, the bishop and general, had abdicated their station

by an inglorious retreat to the Rhone and the Danube; but if she could resume her virtue, the republic might

again vindicate her liberty and dominion. Amidst the indulgence of enthusiasm and eloquence, ^15 Petrarch,

Italy, and Europe, were astonished by a revolution which realized for a moment his most splendid visions.

The rise and fall of the tribune Rienzi will occupy the following pages: ^16 the subject is interesting, the

materials are rich, and the glance of a patriot bard ^17 will sometimes vivify the copious, but simple,

narrative of the Florentine, ^18 and more especially of the Roman, historian. ^19 [Footnote 13: The whole

process of Petrarch's coronation is accurately described by the abbe de Sade, (tom. i. p. 425 435, tom. ii. p.

1 6, notes, p. 1 13,) from his own writings, and the Roman diary of Ludovico, Monaldeschi, without

mixing in this authentic narrative the more recent fables of Sannuccio Delbene.]

[Footnote 14: The original act is printed among the Pieces Justificatives in the Memoires sur Petrarque, tom.

[Footnote 15: To find the proofs of his enthusiasm for Rome, I need only request that the reader would open,

by chance, either Petrarch, or his French biographer. The latter has described the poet's first visit to Rome,

(tom. i. p. 323 335.) But in the place of much idle rhetoric and morality, Petrarch might have amused the

present and future age with an original account of the city and his coronation.]

[Footnote 16: It has been treated by the pen of a Jesuit, the P. de Cerceau whose posthumous work

(Conjuration de Nicolas Gabrini, dit de Rienzi, Tyran de Rome, en 1347) was published at Paris, 1748, in

12mo. I am indebted to him for some facts and documents in John Hocsemius, canon of Liege, a

contemporary historian, (Fabricius Bibliot. Lat. Med. Aevi, tom. iii. p. 273, tom. iv. p. 85.)]

[Footnote 17: The abbe de Sade, who so freely expatiates on the history of the xivth century, might treat, as

his proper subject, a revolution in which the heart of Petrarch was so deeply engaged, (Memoires, tom. ii. p.

50, 51, 320 417, notes, p. 70 76, tom. iii. p. 221 243, 366 375.) Not an idea or a fact in the writings of

[Footnote 18: Giovanni Villani, l. xii. c. 89, 104, in Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, tom. xiii. p. 969,

[Footnote 19: In his third volume of Italian antiquities, (p. 249 548,) Muratori has inserted the Fragmenta

Historiae Romanae ab Anno 1327 usque ad Annum 1354, in the original dialect of Rome or Naples in the

xivth century, and a Latin version for the benefit of strangers. It contains the most particular and authentic life

of Cola (Nicholas) di Rienzi; which had been printed at Bracciano, 1627, in 4to., under the name of Tomaso

Fortifiocca, who is only mentioned in this work as having been punished by the tribune for forgery. Human

nature is scarcely capable of such sublime or stupid impartiality: but whosoever in the author of these

Fragments, he wrote on the spot and at the time, and paints, without design or art, the manners of Rome and

Note: Since the publication of my first edition of Gibbon, some new and very remarkable documents have

been brought to light in a life of Nicolas Rienzi, Cola di Rienzo und seine Zeit, by Dr. Felix Papencordt.

The most important of these documents are letters from Rienzi to Charles the Fourth, emperor and king of

Bohemia, and to the archbishop of Praque; they enter into the whole history of his adventurous career during

its first period, and throw a strong light upon his extraordinary character. These documents were first

discovered and made use of, to a certain extent, by Pelzel, the historian of Bohemia. The originals have

disappeared, but a copy made by Pelzel for his own use is now in the library of Count Thun at Teschen. There

seems no doubt of their authenticity. Dr. Papencordt has printed the whole in his i:Urkunden, with the

In a quarter of the city which was inhabited only by mechanics and Jews, the marriage of an innkeeper and a

washer woman produced the future deliverer of Rome. ^20 ^! From such parents Nicholas Rienzi Gabrini

could inherit neither dignity nor fortune; and the gift of a liberal education, which they painfully bestowed,

was the cause of his glory and untimely end. The study of history and eloquence, the writings of Cicero,

Seneca, Livy, Caesar, and Valerius Maximus, elevated above his equals and contemporaries the genius of the

young plebeian: he perused with indefatigable diligence the manuscripts and marbles of antiquity; loved to

dispense his knowledge in familiar language; and was often provoked to exclaim, "Where are now these

Romans? their virtue, their justice, their power? why was I not born in those happy times?" ^21 When the

republic addressed to the throne of Avignon an embassy of the three orders, the spirit and eloquence of Rienzi

recommended him to a place among the thirteen deputies of the commons. The orator had the honor of

haranguing Pope Clement the Sixth, and the satisfaction of conversing with Petrarch, a congenial mind: but

his aspiring hopes were chilled by disgrace and poverty and the patriot was reduced to a single garment and

the charity of the hospital. ^* From this misery he was relieved by the sense of merit or the smile of favor;

and the employment of apostolic notary afforded him a daily stipend of five gold florins, a more honorable

and extensive connection, and the right of contrasting, both in words and actions, his own integrity with the

vices of the state. The eloquence of Rienzi was prompt and persuasive: the multitude is always prone to envy

and censure: he was stimulated by the loss of a brother and the impunity of the assassins; nor was it possible

to excuse or exaggerate the public calamities. The blessings of peace and justice, for which civil society has

been instituted, were banished from Rome: the jealous citizens, who might have endured every personal or

pecuniary injury, were most deeply wounded in the dishonor of their wives and daughters: ^22 they were

equally oppressed by the arrogance of the nobles and the corruption of the magistrates; ^!! and the abuse of

arms or of laws was the only circumstance that distinguished the lions from the dogs and serpents of the

Capitol. These allegorical emblems were variously repeated in the pictures which Rienzi exhibited in the

streets and churches; and while the spectators gazed with curious wonder, the bold and ready orator unfolded

the meaning, applied the satire, inflamed their passions, and announced a distant hope of comfort and

deliverance. The privileges of Rome, her eternal sovereignty over her princes and provinces, was the theme

of his public and private discourse; and a monument of servitude became in his hands a title and incentive of

liberty. The decree of the senate, which granted the most ample prerogatives to the emperor Vespasian, had

been inscribed on a copper plate still extant in the choir of the church of St. John Lateran. ^23 A numerous

assembly of nobles and plebeians was invited to this political lecture, and a convenient theatre was erected

for their reception. The notary appeared in a magnificent and mysterious habit, explained the inscription by a

version and commentary, ^24 and descanted with eloquence and zeal on the ancient glories of the senate and

people, from whom all legal authority was derived. The supine ignorance of the nobles was incapable of

discerning the serious tendency of such representations: they might sometimes chastise with words and blows

the plebeian reformer; but he was often suffered in the Colonna palace to amuse the company with his threats

and predictions; and the modern Brutus ^25 was concealed under the mask of folly and the character of a

buffoon. While they indulged their contempt, the restoration of the good estate, his favorite expression, was

entertained among the people as a desirable, a possible, and at length as an approaching, event; and while all

had the disposition to applaud, some had the courage to assist, their promised deliverer.

[Footnote 20: The first and splendid period of Rienzi, his tribunitian government, is contained in the xviiith

chapter of the Fragments, (p. 399 479,) which, in the new division, forms the iid book of the history in

[Footnote !: But see in Dr. Papencordt's work, and in Rienzi's own words, his claim to be a bastard son of the

emperor Henry the Seventh, whose intrigue with his mother Rienzi relates with a sort of proud

shamelessness. Compare account by the editor of Dr. Papencordt's work in Quarterly Review vol. lxix. M.

[Footnote 21: The reader may be pleased with a specimen of the original idiom: Fo da soa juventutine

nutricato di latte de eloquentia, bono gramatico, megliore rettuorico, autorista bravo. Deh como et quanto era

veloce leitore! moito usava Tito Livio, Seneca, et Tullio, et Balerio Massimo, moito li dilettava le

magnificentie di Julio Cesare raccontare. Tutta la die se speculava negl' intagli di marmo lequali iaccio

intorno Roma. Non era altri che esso, che sapesse lejere li antichi pataffii. Tutte scritture antiche

vulgarizzava; quesse fiure di marmo justamente interpretava. On come spesso diceva, "Dove suono quelli

buoni Romani? dove ene loro somma justitia? poleramme trovare in tempo che quessi fiuriano!"]

[Footnote *: Sir J. Hobhouse published (in his Illustrations of Childe Harold) Rienzi's joyful letter to the

people of Rome on the apparently favorable termination of this mission. M. 1845.]

[Footnote 22: Petrarch compares the jealousy of the Romans with the easy temper of the husbands of

[Footnote !!: All this Rienzi, writing at a later period to the archbishop of Prague, attributed to the criminal

abandonment of his flock by the supreme pontiff. See Urkunde apud Papencordt, p. xliv. Quarterly Review,

[Footnote 23: The fragments of the Lex regia may be found in the Inscriptions of Gruter, tom. i. p. 242, and at

the end of the Tacitus of Ernesti, with some learned notes of the editor, tom. ii.]

[Footnote 24: I cannot overlook a stupendous and laughable blunder of Rienzi. The Lex regia empowers

Vespasian to enlarge the Pomoerium, a word familiar to every antiquary. It was not so to the tribune; he

confounds it with pomarium, an orchard, translates lo Jardino de Roma cioene Italia, and is copied by the less

excusable ignorance of the Latin translator (p. 406) and the French historian, (p. 33.) Even the learning of

[Footnote 25: Priori (Bruto) tamen similior, juvenis uterque, longe ingenic quam cujus simulationem

induerat, ut sub hoc obtentu liberator ille P R. aperiretur tempore suo .... Ille regibus, hic tyrannis contemptus,

Note: Fatcor attamen quod nunc fatuum. nunc hystrionem, nunc gravem nunc simplicem, nunc astutum,

nunc fervidum, nunc timidum simulato rem, et dissimulatorem ad hunc caritativum finem, quem dixi,

constitusepius memet ipsum. Writing to an archbishop, (of Prague,) Rienzi alleges scriptural examples.

Saltator coram archa David et insanus apparuit coram Rege; blanda, astuta, et tecta Judith astitit Holoferni; et

A prophecy, or rather a summons, affixed on the church door of St. George, was the first public evidence of

his designs; a nocturnal assembly of a hundred citizens on Mount Aventine, the first step to their execution.

After an oath of secrecy and aid, he represented to the conspirators the importance and facility of their

enterprise; that the nobles, without union or resources, were strong only in the fear nobles, of their imaginary

strength; that all power, as well as right, was in the hands of the people; that the revenues of the apostolical

chamber might relieve the public distress; and that the pope himself would approve their victory over the

common enemies of government and freedom. After securing a faithful band to protect his first declaration,

he proclaimed through the city, by sound of trumpet, that on the evening of the following day, all persons

should assemble without arms before the church of St. Angelo, to provide for the reestablishment of the good

estate. The whole night was employed in the celebration of thirty masses of the Holy Ghost; and in the

morning, Rienzi, bareheaded, but in complete armor, issued from the church, encompassed by the hundred

conspirators. The pope's vicar, the simple bishop of Orvieto, who had been persuaded to sustain a part in this

singular ceremony, marched on his right hand; and three great standards were borne aloft as the emblems of

their design. In the first, the banner of liberty, Rome was seated on two lions, with a palm in one hand and a

globe in the other; St. Paul, with a drawn sword, was delineated in the banner of justice; and in the third, St.

Peter held the keys of concord and peace. Rienzi was encouraged by the presence and applause of an

innumerable crowd, who understood little, and hoped much; and the procession slowly rolled forwards from

the castle of St. Angelo to the Capitol. His triumph was disturbed by some secret emotions which he labored

to suppress: he ascended without opposition, and with seeming confidence, the citadel of the republic;

harangued the people from the balcony; and received the most flattering confirmation of his acts and laws.

The nobles, as if destitute of arms and counsels, beheld in silent consternation this strange revolution; and the

moment had been prudently chosen, when the most formidable, Stephen Colonna, was absent from the city.

On the first rumor, he returned to his palace, affected to despise this plebeian tumult, and declared to the

messenger of Rienzi, that at his leisure he would cast the madman from the windows of the Capitol. The great

bell instantly rang an alarm, and so rapid was the tide, so urgent was the danger, that Colonna escaped with

precipitation to the suburb of St. Laurence: from thence, after a moment's refreshment, he continued the same

speedy career till he reached in safety his castle of Palestrina; lamenting his own imprudence, which had not

trampled the spark of this mighty conflagration. A general and peremptory order was issued from the Capitol

to all the nobles, that they should peaceably retire to their estates: they obeyed; and their departure secured

But such voluntary obedience evaporates with the first transports of zeal; and Rienzi felt the importance of

justifying his usurpation by a regular form and a legal title. At his own choice, the Roman people would have

displayed their attachment and authority, by lavishing on his head the names of senator or consul, of king or

emperor: he preferred the ancient and modest appellation of tribune; ^* the protection of the commons was

the essence of that sacred office; and they were ignorant, that it had never been invested with any share in the

legislative or executive powers of the republic. In this character, and with the consent of the Roman, the

tribune enacted the most salutary laws for the restoration and maintenance of the good estate. By the first he

fulfils the wish of honesty and inexperience, that no civil suit should be protracted beyond the term of fifteen

days. The danger of frequent perjury might justify the pronouncing against a false accuser the same penalty

which his evidence would have inflicted: the disorders of the times might compel the legislator to punish

every homicide with death, and every injury with equal retaliation. But the execution of justice was hopeless

till he had previously abolished the tyranny of the nobles. It was formally provided, that none, except the

supreme magistrate, should possess or command the gates, bridges, or towers of the state; that no private

garrisons should be introduced into the towns or castles of the Roman territory; that none should bear arms,

or presume to fortify their houses in the city or country; that the barons should be responsible for the safety of

the highways, and the free passage of provisions; and that the protection of malefactors and robbers should be

expiated by a fine of a thousand marks of silver. But these regulations would have been impotent and

nugatory, had not the licentious nobles been awed by the sword of the civil power. A sudden alarm from the

bell of the Capitol could still summon to the standard above twenty thousand volunteers: the support of the

tribune and the laws required a more regular and permanent force. In each harbor of the coast a vessel was

stationed for the assurance of commerce; a standing militia of three hundred and sixty horse and thirteen

hundred foot was levied, clothed, and paid in the thirteen quarters of the city: and the spirit of a

commonwealth may be traced in the grateful allowance of one hundred florins, or pounds, to the heirs of

every soldier who lost his life in the service of his country. For the maintenance of the public defence, for the

establishment of granaries, for the relief of widows, orphans, and indigent convents, Rienzi applied, without

fear of sacrilege, the revenues of the apostolic chamber: the three branches of hearthmoney, the saltduty,

and the customs, were each of the annual produce of one hundred thousand florins; ^26 and scandalous were

the abuses, if in four or five months the amount of the saltduty could be trebled by his judicious economy.

After thus restoring the forces and finances of the republic, the tribune recalled the nobles from their solitary

independence; required their personal appearance in the Capitol; and imposed an oath of allegiance to the

new government, and of submission to the laws of the good estate. Apprehensive for their safety, but still

more apprehensive of the danger of a refusal, the princes and barons returned to their houses at Rome in the

garb of simple and peaceful citizens: the Colonna and Ursini, the Savelli and Frangipani, were confounded

before the tribunal of a plebeian, of the vile buffoon whom they had so often derided, and their disgrace was

aggravated by the indignation which they vainly struggled to disguise. The same oath was successively

pronounced by the several orders of society, the clergy and gentlemen, the judges and notaries, the merchants

and artisans, and the gradual descent was marked by the increase of sincerity and zeal. They swore to live and

die with the republic and the church, whose interest was artfully united by the nominal association of the

bishop of Orvieto, the pope's vicar, to the office of tribune. It was the boast of Rienzi, that he had delivered

the throne and patrimony of St. Peter from a rebellious aristocracy; and Clement the Sixth, who rejoiced in its

fall, affected to believe the professions, to applaud the merits, and to confirm the title, of his trusty servant.

The speech, perhaps the mind, of the tribune, was inspired with a lively regard for the purity of the faith: he

insinuated his claim to a supernatural mission from the Holy Ghost; enforced by a heavy forfeiture the annual

duty of confession and communion; and strictly guarded the spiritual as well as temporal welfare of his

faithful people. ^27 [Footnote *: Et ego, Deo semper auctore, ipsa die pristina (leg. prima) Tribunatus, quae

quidem dignitas a tempore deflorati Imperii, et per annos Vo et ultra sub tyrannica occupatione vacavit, ipsos

omnes potentes indifferenter Deum at justitiam odientes, a mea, ymo a Dei facie fugiendo vehementi Spiritu

dissipavi, et nullo effuso cruore trementes expuli, sine ictu remanents Romane terre facie renovata. Libellus

[Footnote 26: In one MS. I read (l. ii. c. 4, p. 409) perfumante quatro solli, in another, quatro florini, an

important variety, since the florin was worth ten Roman solidi, (Muratori, dissert. xxviii.) The former reading

would give us a population of 25,000, the latter of 250,000 families; and I much fear, that the former is more

[Footnote 27: Hocsemius, p. 498, apud du Cerceau, Hist. de Rienzi, p. 194. The fifteen tribunitian laws may

be found in the Roman historian (whom for brevity I shall name) Fortifiocca, l. ii. c. 4]

Never perhaps has the energy and effect of a single mind been more remarkably felt than in the sudden,

though transient, reformation of Rome by the tribune Rienzi. A den of robbers was converted to the discipline

of a camp or convent: patient to hear, swift to redress, inexorable to punish, his tribunal was always

accessible to the poor and stranger; nor could birth, or dignity, or the immunities of the church, protect the

offender or his accomplices. The privileged houses, the private sanctuaries in Rome, on which no officer of

justice would presume to trespass, were abolished; and he applied the timber and iron of their barricades in

the fortifications of the Capitol. The venerable father of the Colonna was exposed in his own palace to the

double shame of being desirous, and of being unable, to protect a criminal. A mule, with a jar of oil, had been

stolen near Capranica; and the lord of the Ursini family was condemned to restore the damage, and to

discharge a fine of four hundred florins for his negligence in guarding the highways. Nor were the persons of

the barons more inviolate than their lands or houses; and, either from accident or design, the same impartial

rigor was exercised against the heads of the adverse factions. Peter Agapet Colonna, who had himself been

senator of Rome, was arrested in the street for injury or debt; and justice was appeased by the tardy execution

of Martin Ursini, who, among his various acts of violence and rapine, had pillaged a shipwrecked vessel at

the mouth of the Tyber. ^28 His name, the purple of two cardinals, his uncles, a recent marriage, and a mortal

disease were disregarded by the inflexible tribune, who had chosen his victim. The public officers dragged

him from his palace and nuptial bed: his trial was short and satisfactory: the bell of the Capitol convened the

people: stripped of his mantle, on his knees, with his hands bound behind his back, he heard the sentence of

death; and after a brief confession, Ursini was led away to the gallows. After such an example, none who

were conscious of guilt could hope for impunity, and the flight of the wicked, the licentious, and the idle,

soon purified the city and territory of Rome. In this time (says the historian,) the woods began to rejoice that

they were no longer infested with robbers; the oxen began to plough; the pilgrims visited the sanctuaries; the

roads and inns were replenished with travellers; trade, plenty, and good faith, were restored in the markets;

and a purse of gold might be exposed without danger in the midst of the highway. As soon as the life and

property of the subject are secure, the labors and rewards of industry spontaneously revive: Rome was still

the metropolis of the Christian world; and the fame and fortunes of the tribune were diffused in every country

[Footnote 28: Fortifiocca, l. ii. c. 11. From the account of this shipwreck, we learn some circumstances of the

trade and navigation of the age. 1. The ship was built and freighted at Naples for the ports of Marseilles and

Avignon. 2. The sailors were of Naples and the Isle of Oenaria less skilful than those of Sicily and Genoa. 3.

The navigation from Marseilles was a coasting voyage to the mouth of the Tyber, where they took shelter in a

storm; but, instead of finding the current, unfortunately ran on a shoal: the vessel was stranded, the mariners

escaped. 4. The cargo, which was pillaged, consisted of the revenue of Provence for the royal treasury, many

bags of pepper and cinnamon, and bales of French cloth, to the value of 20,000 florins; a rich prize.]

The deliverance of his country inspired Rienzi with a vast, and perhaps visionary, idea of uniting Italy in a

great federative republic, of which Rome should be the ancient and lawful head, and the free cities and

princes the members and associates. His pen was not less eloquent than his tongue; and his numerous epistles

were delivered to swift and trusty messengers. On foot, with a white wand in their hand, they traversed the

forests and mountains; enjoyed, in the most hostile states, the sacred security of ambassadors; and reported, in

the style of flattery or truth, that the highways along their passage were lined with kneeling multitudes, who

implored Heaven for the success of their undertaking. Could passion have listened to reason; could private

interest have yielded to the public welfare; the supreme tribunal and confederate union of the Italian republic

might have healed their intestine discord, and closed the Alps against the Barbarians of the North. But the

propitious season had elapsed; and if Venice, Florence, Sienna, Perugia, and many inferior cities offered their

lives and fortunes to the good estate, the tyrants of Lombardy and Tuscany must despise, or hate, the plebeian

author of a free constitution. From them, however, and from every part of Italy, the tribune received the most

friendly and respectful answers: they were followed by the ambassadors of the princes and republics; and in

this foreign conflux, on all the occasions of pleasure or business, the low born notary could assume the

familiar or majestic courtesy of a sovereign. ^29 The most glorious circumstance of his reign was an appeal

to his justice from Lewis, king of Hungary, who complained, that his brother and her husband had been

perfidiously strangled by Jane, queen of Naples: ^30 her guilt or innocence was pleaded in a solemn trial at

Rome; but after hearing the advocates, ^31 the tribune adjourned this weighty and invidious cause, which was

soon determined by the sword of the Hungarian. Beyond the Alps, more especially at Avignon, the revolution

was the theme of curiosity, wonder, and applause. ^* Petrarch had been the private friend, perhaps the secret

counsellor, of Rienzi: his writings breathe the most ardent spirit of patriotism and joy; and all respect for the

pope, all gratitude for the Colonna, was lost in the superior duties of a Roman citizen. The poetlaureate of

the Capitol maintains the act, applauds the hero, and mingles with some apprehension and advice, the most

[Footnote 29: It was thus that Oliver Cromwell's old acquaintance, who remembered his vulgar and

ungracious entrance into the House of Commons, were astonished at the ease and majesty of the protector on

his throne, (See Harris's Life of Cromwell, p. 27 34, from Clarendon Warwick, Whitelocke, Waller, The

consciousness of merit and power will sometimes elevate the manners to the station.]

[Footnote 30: See the causes, circumstances, and effects of the death of Andrew in Giannone, (tom. iii. l.

xxiii. p. 220 229,) and the Life of Petrarch (Memoires, tom. ii. p. 143 148, 245 250, 375 379, notes,

[Footnote 31: The advocate who pleaded against Jane could add nothing to the logical force and brevity of his

master's epistle. Johanna! inordinata vita praecedens, retentio potestatis in regno, neglecta vindicta, vir alter

susceptus, et excusatio subsequens, necis viri tui te probant fuisse participem et consortem. Jane of Naples,

[Footnote *: In his letter to the archbishop of Prague, Rienzi thus describes the effect of his elevation on Italy

and on the world: "Did I not restore real peace among the cities which were distracted by factions? did I not

cause all the citizens, exiled by party violence, with their wretched wives and children, to be readmitted? had

I not begun to extinguish the factious names (scismatica nomina) of Guelf and Ghibelline, for which

countless thousands had perished body and soul, under the eyes of their pastors, by the reduction of the city

of Rome and all Italy into one amicable, peaceful, holy, and united confederacy? the consecrated standards

and banners having been by me collected and blended together, and, in witness to our holy association and

perfect union, offered up in the presence of the ambassadors of all the cities of Italy, on the day of the

In the Libellus ad Caesarem: "I received the homage and submission of all the sovereigns of Apulia, the

barons and counts, and almost all the people of Italy. I was honored by solemn embassies and letters by the

emperor of Constantinople and the king of England. The queen of Naples submitted herself and her kingdom

to the protection of the tribune. The king of Hungary, by two solemn embassies, brought his cause against his

queen and his nobles before my tribunal; and I venture to say further, that the fame of the tribune alarmed the

soldan of Babylon. When the Christian pilgrims to the sepulchre of our Lord related to the Christian and

Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem all the yet unheardof and wonderful circumstances of the reformation in

Rome, both Jews and Christians celebrated the event with unusual festivities. When the soldan inquired the

cause of these rejoicings, and received this intelligence about Rome, he ordered all the havens and cities on

[Footnote 32: See the Epistola Hortatoria de Capessenda Republica, from Petrarch to Nicholas Rienzi, (Opp.

p. 535 540,) and the vth eclogue or pastoral, a perpetual and obscure allegory.]

While Petrarch indulged these prophetic visions, the Roman hero was fast declining from the meridian of

fame and power; and the people, who had gazed with astonishment on the ascending meteor, began to mark

the irregularity of its course, and the vicissitudes of light and obscurity. More eloquent than judicious, more

enterprising than resolute, the faculties of Rienzi were not balanced by cool and commanding reason: he

magnified in a tenfold proportion the objects of hope and fear; and prudence, which could not have erected,

did not presume to fortify, his throne. In the blaze of prosperity, his virtues were insensibly tinctured with the

adjacent vices; justice with cruelly, cruelty, liberality with profusion, and the desire of fame with puerile and

ostentatious vanity. ^* He might have learned, that the ancient tribunes, so strong and sacred in the public

opinion, were not distinguished in style, habit, or appearance, from an ordinary plebeian; ^33 and that as

often as they visited the city on foot, a single viator, or meadle, attended the exercise of their office. The

Gracchi would have frowned or smiled, could they have read the sonorous titles and epithets of their

successor, "Nicholas, severe and merciful; deliverer of Rome; defender of Italy; ^34 friend of mankind, and

of liberty, peace, and justice; tribune august:" his theatrical pageants had prepared the revolution; but Rienzi

abused, in luxury and pride, the political maxim of speaking to the eyes, as well as the understanding, of the

multitude. From nature he had received the gift of a handsome person, ^35 till it was swelled and disfigured

by intemperance: and his propensity to laughter was corrected in the magistrate by the affectation of gravity

and sternness. He was clothed, at least on public occasions, in a partycolored robe of velvet or satin, lined

with fur, and embroidered with gold: the rod of justice, which he carried in his hand, was a sceptre of

polished steel, crowned with a globe and cross of gold, and enclosing a small fragment of the true and holy

wood. In his civil and religious processions through the city, he rode on a white steed, the symbol of royalty:

the great banner of the republic, a sun with a circle of stars, a dove with an olive branch, was displayed over

his head; a shower of gold and silver was scattered among the populace, fifty guards with halberds

encompassed his person; a troop of horse preceded his march; and their tymbals and trumpets were of massy

[Footnote *: An illustrious female writer has drawn, with a single stroke, the character of Rienzi, Crescentius,

and Arnold of Brescia, the fond restorers of Roman liberty: 'Qui ont pris les souvenirs pour les esperances.'

Corinne, tom. i. p. 159. Could Tacitus have excelled this?" Hallam, vol i p. 418. M.]

[Footnote 33: In his Roman Questions, Plutarch (Opuscul. tom. i. p. 505, 506, edit. Graec. Hen. Steph.)

states, on the most constitutional principles, the simple greatness of the tribunes, who were not properly

magistrates, but a check on magistracy. It was their duty and interest. Rienzi, and Petrarch himself, were

incapable perhaps of reading a Greek philosopher; but they might have imbibed the same modest doctrines

[Footnote 34: I could not express in English the forcible, though barbarous, title of Zelator Italiae, which

[Footnote 35: Era bell' homo, (l. ii. c. l. p. 399.) It is remarkable, that the riso sarcastico of the Bracciano

edition is wanting in the Roman MS., from which Muratori has given the text. In his second reign, when he is

painted almost as a monster, Rienzi travea una ventresca tonna trionfale, a modo de uno Abbate Asiano, or

The ambition of the honors of chivalry ^36 betrayed the meanness of his birth, and degraded the importance

of his office; and the equestrian tribune was not less odious to the nobles, whom he adopted, than to the

plebeians, whom he deserted. All that yet remained of treasure, or luxury, or art, was exhausted on that

solemn day. Rienzi led the procession from the Capitol to the Lateran; the tediousness of the way was

relieved with decorations and games; the ecclesiastical, civil, and military orders marched under their various

banners; the Roman ladies attended his wife; and the ambassadors of Italy might loudly applaud or secretly

deride the novelty of the pomp. In the evening, which they had reached the church and palace of Constantine,

he thanked and dismissed the numerous assembly, with an invitation to the festival of the ensuing day. From

the hands of a venerable knight he received the order of the Holy Ghost; the purification of the bath was a

previous ceremony; but in no step of his life did Rienzi excite such scandal and censure as by the profane use

of the porphyry vase, in which Constantine (a foolish legend) had been healed of his leprosy by Pope

Sylvester. ^37 With equal presumption the tribune watched or reposed within the consecrated precincts of the

baptistery; and the failure of his statebed was interpreted as an omen of his approaching downfall. At the

hour of worship, he showed himself to the returning crowds in a majestic attitude, with a robe of purple, his

sword, and gilt spurs; but the holy rites were soon interrupted by his levity and insolence. Rising from his

throne, and advancing towards the congregation, he proclaimed in a loud voice: "We summon to our tribunal

Pope Clement: and command him to reside in his diocese of Rome: we also summon the sacred college of

cardinals. ^38 We again summon the two pretenders, Charles of Bohemia and Lewis of Bavaria, who style

themselves emperors: we likewise summon all the electors of Germany, to inform us on what pretence they

have usurped the inalienable right of the Roman people, the ancient and lawful sovereigns of the empire." ^39

Unsheathing his maiden sword, he thrice brandished it to the three parts of the world, and thrice repeated the

extravagant declaration, "And this too is mine!" The pope's vicar, the bishop of Orvieto, attempted to check

this career of folly; but his feeble protest was silenced by martial music; and instead of withdrawing from the

assembly, he consented to dine with his brother tribune, at a table which had hitherto been reserved for the

supreme pontiff. A banquet, such as the Caesars had given, was prepared for the Romans. The apartments,

porticos, and courts of the Lateran were spread with innumerable tables for either sex, and every condition; a

stream of wine flowed from the nostrils of Constantine's brazen horse; no complaint, except of the scarcity of

water, could be heard; and the licentiousness of the multitude was curbed by discipline and fear. A

subsequent day was appointed for the coronation of Rienzi; ^40 seven crowns of different leaves or metals

were successively placed on his head by the most eminent of the Roman clergy; they represented the seven

gifts of the Holy Ghost; and he still professed to imitate the example of the ancient tribunes. ^* These

extraordinary spectacles might deceive or flatter the people; and their own vanity was gratified in the vanity

of their leader. But in his private life he soon deviated from the strict rule of frugality and abstinence; and the

plebeians, who were awed by the splendor of the nobles, were provoked by the luxury of their equal. His

wife, his son, his uncle, (a barber in name and profession,) exposed the contrast of vulgar manners and

princely expense; and without acquiring the majesty, Rienzi degenerated into the vices, of a king.

[Footnote 36: Strange as it may seem, this festival was not without a precedent. In the year 1327, two barons,

a Colonna and an Ursini, the usual balance, were created knights by the Roman people: their bath was of

rose water, their beds were decked with royal magnificence, and they were served at St. Maria of Araceli in

the Capitol, by the twentyeight buoni huomini. They afterwards received from Robert, king of Naples, the

[Footnote 37: All parties believed in the leprosy and bath of Constantine (Petrarch. Epist. Famil. vi. 2,) and

Rienzi justified his own conduct by observing to the court of Avignon, that a vase which had been used by a

Pagan could not be profaned by a pious Christian. Yet this crime is specified in the bull of excommunication,

[Footnote 38: This verbal summons of Pope Clement VI., which rests on the authority of the Roman historian

and a Vatican Ms., is disputed by the biographer of Petrarch, (tom. ii. not. p. 70 76, with arguments rather

of decency than of weight. The court of Avignon might not choose to agitate this delicate question.]

[Footnote 39: The summons of the two rival emperors, a monument of freedom and folly, is extant in

[Footnote 40: It is singular, that the Roman historian should have overlooked this sevenfold coronation,

which is sufficiently proved by internal evidence, and the testimony of Hocsemius, and even of Rienzi,

[Footnote *: It was on this occasion that he made the profane comparison between himself and our Lord; and

the striking circumstance took place which he relates in his letter to the archbishop of Prague. In the midst of

all the wild and joyous exultation of the people, one of his most zealous supporters, a monk, who was in high

repute for his sanctity, stood apart in a corner of the church and wept bitterly! A domestic chaplain of Rienzi's

inquired the cause of his grief. "Now," replied the man of God, "is thy master cast down from heaven never

saw I man so proud. By the aid of the Holy Ghost he has driven the tyrants from the city without drawing a

sword; the cities and the sovereigns of Italy have submitted to his power. Why is he so arrogant and

ungrateful towards the Most High? Why does he seek earthly and transitory rewards for his labors, and in his

wanton speech liken himself to the Creator? Tell thy master that he can only atone for this offence by tears of

penitence." In the evening the chaplain communicated this solemn rebuke to the tribune: it appalled him for

A simple citizen describes with pity, or perhaps with pleasure, the humiliation of the barons of Rome.

"Bareheaded, their hands crossed on their breast, they stood with downcast looks in the presence of the

tribune; and they trembled, good God, how they trembled!" ^41 As long as the yoke of Rienzi was that of

justice and their country, their conscience forced them to esteem the man, whom pride and interest provoked

them to hate: his extravagant conduct soon fortified their hatred by contempt; and they conceived the hope of

subverting a power which was no longer so deeply rooted in the public confidence. The old animosity of the

Colonna and Ursini was suspended for a moment by their common disgrace: they associated their wishes, and

perhaps their designs; an assassin was seized and tortured; he accused the nobles; and as soon as Rienzi

deserved the fate, he adopted the suspicions and maxims, of a tyrant. On the same day, under various

pretences, he invited to the Capitol his principal enemies, among whom were five members of the Ursini and

three of the Colonna name. But instead of a council or a banquet, they found themselves prisoners under the

sword of despotism or justice; and the consciousness of innocence or guilt might inspire them with equal

apprehensions of danger. At the sound of the great bell the people assembled; they were arraigned for a

conspiracy against the tribune's life; and though some might sympathize in their distress, not a hand, nor a

voice, was raised to rescue the first of the nobility from their impending doom. Their apparent boldness was

prompted by despair; they passed in separate chambers a sleepless and painful night; and the venerable hero,

Stephen Colonna, striking against the door of his prison, repeatedly urged his guards to deliver him by a

speedy death from such ignominious servitude. In the morning they understood their sentence from the visit

of a confessor and the tolling of the bell. The great hall of the Capitol had been decorated for the bloody

scene with red and white hangings: the countenance of the tribune was dark and severe; the swords of the

executioners were unsheathed; and the barons were interrupted in their dying speeches by the sound of

trumpets. But in this decisive moment, Rienzi was not less anxious or apprehensive than his captives: he

dreaded the splendor of their names, their surviving kinsmen, the inconstancy of the people the reproaches of

the world, and, after rashly offering a mortal injury, he vainly presumed that, if he could forgive, he might

himself be forgiven. His elaborate oration was that of a Christian and a suppliant; and, as the humble minister

of the commons, he entreated his masters to pardon these noble criminals, for whose repentance and future

service he pledged his faith and authority. "If you are spared," said the tribune, "by the mercy of the Romans,

will you not promise to support the good estate with your lives and fortunes?" Astonished by this marvellous

clemency, the barons bowed their heads; and while they devoutly repeated the oath of allegiance, might

whisper a secret, and more sincere, assurance of revenge. A priest, in the name of the people, pronounced

their absolution: they received the communion with the tribune, assisted at the banquet, followed the

procession; and, after every spiritual and temporal sign of reconciliation, were dismissed in safety to their

respective homes, with the new honors and titles of generals, consuls, and patricians. ^42

[Footnote 41: Puoi se faceva stare denante a se, mentre sedeva, li baroni tutti in piedi ritti co le vraccia

piecate, e co li capucci tratti. Deh como stavano paurosi! (Hist. Rom. l. ii. c. 20, p. 439.) He saw them, and

[Footnote 42: The original letter, in which Rienzi justifies his treatment of the Colonna, (Hocsemius, apud du

Cerceau, p. 222 229,) displays, in genuine colors, the mixture of the knave and the madman.]

During some weeks they were checked by the memory of their danger, rather than of their deliverance, till the

most powerful of the Ursini, escaping with the Colonna from the city, erected at Marino the standard of

rebellion. The fortifications of the castle were instantly restored; the vassals attended their lord; the outlaws

armed against the magistrate; the flocks and herds, the harvests and vineyards, from Marino to the gates of

Rome, were swept away or destroyed; and the people arraigned Rienzi as the author of the calamities which

his government had taught them to forget. In the camp, Rienzi appeared to less advantage than in the rostrum;

and he neglected the progress of the rebel barons till their numbers were strong, and their castles

impregnable. From the pages of Livy he had not imbibed the art, or even the courage, of a general: an army

of twenty thousand Romans returned without honor or effect from the attack of Marino; and his vengeance

was amused by painting his enemies, their heads downwards, and drowning two dogs (at least they should

have been bears) as the representatives of the Ursini. The belief of his incapacity encouraged their operations:

they were invited by their secret adherents; and the barons attempted, with four thousand foot, and sixteen

hundred horse, to enter Rome by force or surprise. The city was prepared for their reception; the alarmbell

rung all night; the gates were strictly guarded, or insolently open; and after some hesitation they sounded a

retreat. The two first divisions had passed along the walls, but the prospect of a free entrance tempted the

headstrong valor of the nobles in the rear; and after a successful skirmish, they were overthrown and

massacred without quarter by the crowds of the Roman people. Stephen Colonna the younger, the noble spirit

to whom Petrarch ascribed the restoration of Italy, was preceded or accompanied in death by his son John, a

gallant youth, by his brother Peter, who might regret the ease and honors of the church, by a nephew of

legitimate birth, and by two bastards of the Colonna race; and the number of seven, the seven crowns, as

Rienzi styled them, of the Holy Ghost, was completed by the agony of the deplorable parent, and the veteran

chief, who had survived the hope and fortune of his house. The vision and prophecies of St. Martin and Pope

Boniface had been used by the tribune to animate his troops: ^43 he displayed, at least in the pursuit, the

spirit of a hero; but he forgot the maxims of the ancient Romans, who abhorred the triumphs of civil war. The

conqueror ascended the Capitol; deposited his crown and sceptre on the altar; and boasted, with some truth,

that he had cut off an ear, which neither pope nor emperor had been able to amputate. ^44 His base and

implacable revenge denied the honors of burial; and the bodies of the Colonna, which he threatened to expose

with those of the vilest malefactors, were secretly interred by the holy virgins of their name and family. ^45

The people sympathized in their grief, repented of their own fury, and detested the indecent joy of Rienzi,

who visited the spot where these illustrious victims had fallen. It was on that fatal spot that he conferred on

his son the honor of knighthood: and the ceremony was accomplished by a slight blow from each of the

horsemen of the guard, and by a ridiculous and inhuman ablution from a pool of water, which was yet

[Footnote 43: Rienzi, in the abovementioned letter, ascribes to St. Martin the tribune, Boniface VIII. the

enemy of Colonna, himself, and the Roman people, the glory of the day, which Villani likewise (l. 12, c. 104)

describes as a regular battle. The disorderly skirmish, the flight of the Romans, and the cowardice of Rienzi,

are painted in the simple and minute narrative of Fortifiocca, or the anonymous citizen, (l. i. c. 34 37.)]

[Footnote 44: In describing the fall of the Colonna, I speak only of the family of Stephen the elder, who is

often confounded by the P. du Cerceau with his son. That family was extinguished, but the house has been

perpetuated in the collateral branches, of which I have not a very accurate knowledge. Circumspice (says

Petrarch) familiae tuae statum, Columniensium domos: solito pauciores habeat columnas. Quid ad rem modo

[Footnote 45: The convent of St. Silvester was founded, endowed, and protected by the Colonna cardinals,

for the daughters of the family who embraced a monastic life, and who, in the year 1318, were twelve in

number. The others were allowed to marry with their kinsmen in the fourth degree, and the dispensation was

justified by the small number and close alliances of the noble families of Rome, (Memoires sur Petrarque,

[Footnote 46: Petrarch wrote a stiff and pedantic letter of consolation, (Fam. l. vii. epist. 13, p. 682, 683.) The

friend was lost in the patriot. Nulla toto orbe principum familia carior; carior tamen respublica, carior Roma,

A short delay would have saved the Colonna, the delay of a single month, which elapsed between the triumph

and the exile of Rienzi. In the pride of victory, he forfeited what yet remained of his civil virtues, without

acquiring the fame of military prowess. A free and vigorous opposition was formed in the city; and when the

tribune proposed in the public council ^47 to impose a new tax, and to regulate the government of Perugia,

thirtynine members voted against his measures; repelled the injurious charge of treachery and corruption;

and urged him to prove, by their forcible exclusion, that if the populace adhered to his cause, it was already

disclaimed by the most respectable citizens. The pope and the sacred college had never been dazzled by his

specious professions; they were justly offended by the insolence of his conduct; a cardinal legate was sent to

Italy, and after some fruitless treaty, and two personal interviews, he fulminated a bull of excommunication,

in which the tribune is degraded from his office, and branded with the guilt of rebellion, sacrilege, and

heresy. ^48 The surviving barons of Rome were now humbled to a sense of allegiance; their interest and

revenge engaged them in the service of the church; but as the fate of the Colonna was before their eyes, they

abandoned to a private adventurer the peril and glory of the revolution. John Pepin, count of Minorbino, ^49

in the kingdom of Naples, had been condemned for his crimes, or his riches, to perpetual imprisonment; and

Petrarch, by soliciting his release, indirectly contributed to the ruin of his friend. At the head of one hundred

and fifty soldiers, the count of Minorbino introduced himself into Rome; barricaded the quarter of the

Colonna: and found the enterprise as easy as it had seemed impossible. From the first alarm, the bell of the

Capitol incessantly tolled; but, instead of repairing to the wellknown sound, the people were silent and

inactive; and the pusillanimous Rienzi, deploring their ingratitude with sighs and tears, abdicated the

[Footnote 47: This council and opposition is obscurely mentioned by Pollistore, a contemporary writer, who

has preserved some curious and original facts, (Rer. Italicarum, tom. xxv. c. 31, p. 798 804.)]

[Footnote 48: The briefs and bulls of Clement VI. against Rienzi are translated by the P. du Cerceau, (p. 196,

232,) from the Ecclesiastical Annals of Odericus Raynaldus, (A.D. 1347, No. 15, 17, 21, who found them in

[Footnote 49: Matteo Villani describes the origin, character, and death of this count of Minorbino, a man da

natura inconstante e senza fede, whose grandfather, a crafty notary, was enriched and ennobled by the spoils

of the Saracens of Nocera, (l. vii. c. 102, 103.) See his imprisonment, and the efforts of Petrarch, tom. ii. p.

Without drawing his sword, count Pepin restored the aristocracy and the church; three senators were chosen,

and the legate, assuming the first rank, accepted his two colleagues from the rival families of Colonna and

Ursini. The acts of the tribune were abolished, his head was proscribed; yet such was the terror of his name,

that the barons hesitated three days before they would trust themselves in the city, and Rienzi was left above

a month in the castle of St. Angelo, from whence he peaceably withdrew, after laboring, without effect, to

revive the affection and courage of the Romans. The vision of freedom and empire had vanished: their fallen

spirit would have acquiesced in servitude, had it been smoothed by tranquillity and order; and it was scarcely

observed, that the new senators derived their authority from the Apostolic See; that four cardinals were

appointed to reform, with dictatorial power, the state of the republic. Rome was again agitated by the bloody

feuds of the barons, who detested each other, and despised the commons: their hostile fortresses, both in town

and country, again rose, and were again demolished: and the peaceful citizens, a flock of sheep, were

devoured, says the Florentine historian, by these rapacious wolves. But when their pride and avarice had

exhausted the patience of the Romans, a confraternity of the Virgin Mary protected or avenged the republic:

the bell of the Capitol was again tolled, the nobles in arms trembled in the presence of an unarmed multitude;

and of the two senators, Colonna escaped from the window of the palace, and Ursini was stoned at the foot of

the altar. The dangerous office of tribune was successively occupied by two plebeians, Cerroni and

Baroncelli. The mildness of Cerroni was unequal to the times; and after a faint struggle, he retired with a fair

reputation and a decent fortune to the comforts of rural life. Devoid of eloquence or genius, Baroncelli was

distinguished by a resolute spirit: he spoke the language of a patriot, and trod in the footsteps of tyrants; his

suspicion was a sentence of death, and his own death was the reward of his cruelties. Amidst the public

misfortunes, the faults of Rienzi were forgotten; and the Romans sighed for the peace and prosperity of their

[Footnote 50: The troubles of Rome, from the departure to the return of Rienzi, are related by Matteo Villani

(l. ii. c. 47, l. iii. c. 33, 57, 78) and Thomas Fortifiocca, (l. iii. c. 1 4.) I have slightly passed over these

After an exile of seven years, the first deliverer was again restored to his country. In the disguise of a monk or

a pilgrim, he escaped from the castle of St. Angelo, implored the friendship of the king of Hungary at Naples,

tempted the ambition of every bold adventurer, mingled at Rome with the pilgrims of the jubilee, lay

concealed among the hermits of the Apennine, and wandered through the cities of Italy, Germany, and

Bohemia. His person was invisible, his name was yet formidable; and the anxiety of the court of Avignon

supposes, and even magnifies, his personal merit. The emperor Charles the Fourth gave audience to a

stranger, who frankly revealed himself as the tribune of the republic; and astonished an assembly of

ambassadors and princes, by the eloquence of a patriot and the visions of a prophet, the downfall of tyranny

and the kingdom of the Holy Ghost. ^51 Whatever had been his hopes, Rienzi found himself a captive; but he

supported a character of independence and dignity, and obeyed, as his own choice, the irresistible summons

of the supreme pontiff. The zeal of Petrarch, which had been cooled by the unworthy conduct, was rekindled

by the sufferings and the presence, of his friend; and he boldly complains of the times, in which the savior of

Rome was delivered by her emperor into the hands of her bishop. Rienzi was transported slowly, but in safe

custody, from Prague to Avignon: his entrance into the city was that of a malefactor; in his prison he was

chained by the leg; and four cardinals were named to inquire into the crimes of heresy and rebellion. But his

trial and condemnation would have involved some questions, which it was more prudent to leave under the

veil of mystery: the temporal supremacy of the popes; the duty of residence; the civil and ecclesiastical

privileges of the clergy and people of Rome. The reigning pontiff well deserved the appellation of Clement:

the strange vicissitudes and magnanimous spirit of the captive excited his pity and esteem; and Petrarch

believes that he respected in the hero the name and sacred character of a poet. ^52 Rienzi was indulged with

an easy confinement and the use of books; and in the assiduous study of Livy and the Bible, he sought the

[Footnote 51: These visions, of which the friends and enemies of Rienzi seem alike ignorant, are surely

magnified by the zeal of Pollistore, a Dominican inquisitor, (Rer. Ital. tom. xxv. c. 36, p. 819.) Had the

tribune taught, that Christ was succeeded by the Holy Ghost, that the tyranny of the pope would be abolished,

he might have been convicted of heresy and treason, without offending the Roman people.

Note: So far from having magnified these visions, Pollistore is more than confirmed by the documents

published by Papencordt. The adoption of all the wild doctrines of the Fratricelli, the Spirituals, in which, for

the time at least, Rienzi appears to have been in earnest; his magnificent offers to the emperor, and the whole

history of his life, from his first escape from Rome to his imprisonment at Avignon, are among the most

[Footnote 52: The astonishment, the envy almost, of Petrarch is a proof, if not of the truth of this incredible

fact, at least of his own veracity. The abbe de Sade (Memoires, tom. iii. p. 242) quotes the vith epistle of the

xiiith book of Petrarch, but it is of the royal Ms., which he consulted, and not of the ordinary Basil edition, (p.

The succeeding pontificate of Innocent the Sixth opened a new prospect of his deliverance and restoration;

and the court of Avignon was persuaded, that the successful rebel could alone appease and reform the

anarchy of the metropolis. After a solemn profession of fidelity, the Roman tribune was sent into Italy, with

the title of senator; but the death of Baroncelli appeared to supersede the use of his mission; and the legate,

Cardinal Albornoz, ^53 a consummate statesman, allowed him with reluctance, and without aid, to undertake

the perilous experiment. His first reception was equal to his wishes: the day of his entrance was a public

festival; and his eloquence and authority revived the laws of the good estate. But this momentary sunshine

was soon clouded by his own vices and those of the people: in the Capitol, he might often regret the prison of

Avignon; and after a second administration of four months, Rienzi was massacred in a tumult which had been

fomented by the Roman barons. In the society of the Germans and Bohemians, he is said to have contracted

the habits of intemperance and cruelty: adversity had chilled his enthusiasm, without fortifying his reason or

virtue; and that youthful hope, that lively assurance, which is the pledge of success, was now succeeded by

the cold impotence of distrust and despair. The tribune had reigned with absolute dominion, by the choice,

and in the hearts, of the Romans: the senator was the servile minister of a foreign court; and while he was

suspected by the people, he was abandoned by the prince. The legate Albornoz, who seemed desirous of his

ruin, inflexibly refused all supplies of men and money; a faithful subject could no longer presume to touch

the revenues of the apostolical chamber; and the first idea of a tax was the signal of clamor and sedition. Even

his justice was tainted with the guilt or reproach of selfish cruelty: the most virtuous citizen of Rome was

sacrificed to his jealousy; and in the execution of a public robber, from whose purse he had been assisted, the

magistrate too much forgot, or too much remembered, the obligations of the debtor. ^54 A civil war

exhausted his treasures, and the patience of the city: the Colonna maintained their hostile station at Palestrina;

and his mercenaries soon despised a leader whose ignorance and fear were envious of all subordinate merit.

In the death, as in the life, of Rienzi, the hero and the coward were strangely mingled. When the Capitol was

invested by a furious multitude, when he was basely deserted by his civil and military servants, the intrepid

senator, waving the banner of liberty, presented himself on the balcony, addressed his eloquence to the

various passions of the Romans, and labored to persuade them, that in the same cause himself and the

republic must either stand or fall. His oration was interrupted by a volley of imprecations and stones; and

after an arrow had transpierced his hand, he sunk into abject despair, and fled weeping to the inner chambers,

from whence he was let down by a sheet before the windows of the prison. Destitute of aid or hope, he was

besieged till the evening: the doors of the Capitol were destroyed with axes and fire; and while the senator

attempted to escape in a plebeian habit, he was discovered and dragged to the platform of the palace, the fatal

scene of his judgments and executions. A whole hour, without voice or motion, he stood amidst the multitude

half naked and half dead: their rage was hushed into curiosity and wonder: the last feelings of reverence and

compassion yet struggled in his favor; and they might have prevailed, if a bold assassin had not plunged a

dagger in his breast. He fell senseless with the first stroke: the impotent revenge of his enemies inflicted a

thousand wounds: and the senator's body was abandoned to the dogs, to the Jews, and to the flames. Posterity

will compare the virtues and failings of this extraordinary man; but in a long period of anarchy and servitude,

the name of Rienzi has often been celebrated as the deliverer of his country, and the last of the Roman

[Footnote 53: Aegidius, or Giles Albornoz, a noble Spaniard, archbishop of Toledo, and cardinal legate in

Italy, (A.D. 1353 1367,) restored, by his arms and counsels, the temporal dominion of the popes. His life

has been separately written by Sepulveda; but Dryden could not reasonably suppose, that his name, or that of

[Footnote 54: From Matteo Villani and Fortifiocca, the P. du Cerceau (p. 344 394) has extracted the life

and death of the chevalier Montreal, the life of a robber and the death of a hero. At the head of a free

company, the first that desolated Italy, he became rich and formidable be had money in all the banks,

[Footnote 55: The exile, second government, and death of Rienzi, are minutely related by the anonymous

Roman, who appears neither his friend nor his enemy, (l. iii. c. 12 25.) Petrarch, who loved the tribune, was

The first and most generous wish of Petrarch was the restoration of a free republic; but after the exile and

death of his plebeian hero, he turned his eyes from the tribune, to the king, of the Romans. The Capitol was

yet stained with the blood of Rienzi, when Charles the Fourth descended from the Alps to obtain the Italian

and Imperial crowns. In his passage through Milan he received the visit, and repaid the flattery, of the

poetlaureate; accepted a medal of Augustus; and promised, without a smile, to imitate the founder of the

Roman monarchy. A false application of the name and maxims of antiquity was the source of the hopes and

disappointments of Petrarch; yet he could not overlook the difference of times and characters; the

immeasurable distance between the first Caesars and a Bohemian prince, who by the favor of the clergy had

been elected the titular head of the German aristocracy. Instead of restoring to Rome her glory and her

provinces, he had bound himself by a secret treaty with the pope, to evacuate the city on the day of his

coronation; and his shameful retreat was pursued by the reproaches of the patriot bard. ^56

[Footnote 56: The hopes and the disappointment of Petrarch are agreeably described in his own words by the

French biographer, (Memoires, tom. iii. p. 375 413;) but the deep, though secret, wound was the coronation

After the loss of liberty and empire, his third and more humble wish was to reconcile the shepherd with his

flock; to recall the Roman bishop to his ancient and peculiar diocese. In the fervor of youth, with the

authority of age, Petrarch addressed his exhortations to five successive popes, and his eloquence was always

inspired by the enthusiasm of sentiment and the freedom of language. ^57 The son of a citizen of Florence

invariably preferred the country of his birth to that of his education; and Italy, in his eyes, was the queen and

garden of the world. Amidst her domestic factions, she was doubtless superior to France both in art and

science, in wealth and politeness; but the difference could scarcely support the epithet of barbarous, which he

promiscuously bestows on the countries beyond the Alps. Avignon, the mystic Babylon, the sink of vice and

corruption, was the object of his hatred and contempt; but he forgets that her scandalous vices were not the

growth of the soil, and that in every residence they would adhere to the power and luxury of the papal court.

He confesses that the successor of St. Peter is the bishop of the universal church; yet it was not on the banks

of the Rhone, but of the Tyber, that the apostle had fixed his everlasting throne; and while every city in the

Christian world was blessed with a bishop, the metropolis alone was desolate and forlorn. Since the removal

of the Holy See, the sacred buildings of the Lateran and the Vatican, their altars and their saints, were left in a

state of poverty and decay; and Rome was often painted under the image of a disconsolate matron, as if the

wandering husband could be reclaimed by the homely portrait of the age and infirmities of his weeping

spouse. ^58 But the cloud which hung over the seven hills would be dispelled by the presence of their lawful

sovereign: eternal fame, the prosperity of Rome, and the peace of Italy, would be the recompense of the pope

who should dare to embrace this generous resolution. Of the five whom Petrarch exhorted, the three first,

John the Twentysecond, Benedict the Twelfth, and Clement the Sixth, were importuned or amused by the

boldness of the orator; but the memorable change which had been attempted by Urban the Fifth was finally

accomplished by Gregory the Eleventh. The execution of their design was opposed by weighty and almost

insuperable obstacles. A king of France, who has deserved the epithet of wise, was unwilling to release them

from a local dependence: the cardinals, for the most part his subjects, were attached to the language, manners,

and climate of Avignon; to their stately palaces; above all, to the wines of Burgundy. In their eyes, Italy was

foreign or hostile; and they reluctantly embarked at Marseilles, as if they had been sold or banished into the

land of the Saracens. Urban the Fifth resided three years in the Vatican with safety and honor: his sanctity

was protected by a guard of two thousand horse; and the king of Cyprus, the queen of Naples, and the

emperors of the East and West, devoutly saluted their common father in the chair of St. Peter. But the joy of

Petrarch and the Italians was soon turned into grief and indignation. Some reasons of public or private

moment, his own impatience or the prayers of the cardinals, recalled Urban to France; and the approaching

election was saved from the tyrannic patriotism of the Romans. The powers of heaven were interested in their

cause: Bridget of Sweden, a saint and pilgrim, disapproved the return, and foretold the death, of Urban the

Fifth: the migration of Gregory the Eleventh was encouraged by St. Catharine of Sienna, the spouse of Christ

and ambassadress of the Florentines; and the popes themselves, the great masters of human credulity, appear

to have listened to these visionary females. ^59 Yet those celestial admonitions were supported by some

arguments of temporal policy. The residents of Avignon had been invaded by hostile violence: at the head of

thirty thousand robbers, a hero had extorted ransom and absolution from the vicar of Christ and the sacred

college; and the maxim of the French warriors, to spare the people and plunder the church, was a new heresy

of the most dangerous import. ^60 While the pope was driven from Avignon, he was strenuously invited to

Rome. The senate and people acknowledged him as their lawful sovereign, and laid at his feet the keys of the

gates, the bridges, and the fortresses; of the quarter at least beyond the Tyber. ^61 But this loyal offer was

accompanied by a declaration, that they could no longer suffer the scandal and calamity of his absence; and

that his obstinacy would finally provoke them to revive and assert the primitive right of election. The abbot

of Mount Cassin had been consulted, whether he would accept the triple crown ^62 from the clergy and

people: "I am a citizen of Rome," ^63 replied that venerable ecclesiastic, "and my first law is, the voice of my

[Footnote 57: See, in his accurate and amusing biographer, the application of Petrarch and Rome to Benedict

XII. in the year 1334, (Memoires, tom. i. p. 261 265,) to Clement VI. in 1342, (tom. ii. p. 45 47,) and to

Urban V. in 1366, (tom. iii. p. 677 691:) his praise (p. 711 715) and excuse (p. 771) of the last of these

pontiffs. His angry controversy on the respective merits of France and Italy may be found, Opp. p. 1068

Caesaries; multisque malis lassata senectus Eripuit solitam effigiem: vetus accipe nomen;

He spins this allegory beyond all measure or patience. The Epistles to Urban V in prose are more simple and

[Footnote 59: I have not leisure to expatiate on the legends of St. Bridget or St. Catharine, the last of which

might furnish some amusing stories. Their effect on the mind of Gregory XI. is attested by the last solemn

words of the dying pope, who admonished the assistants, ut caverent ab hominibus, sive viris, sive

mulieribus, sub specie religionis loquentibus visiones sui capitis, quia per tales ipse seductus, (Baluz. Not ad

[Footnote 60: This predatory expedition is related by Froissard, (Chronique, tom. i. p. 230,) and in the life of

Du Guesclin, (Collection Generale des Memoires Historiques, tom. iv. c. 16, p. 107 113.) As early as the

year 1361, the court of Avignon had been molested by similar freebooters, who afterwards passed the Alps,

[Footnote 61: Fleury alleges, from the annals of Odericus Raynaldus, the original treaty which was signed the

21st of December, 1376, between Gregory XI. and the Romans, (Hist. Eccles. tom. xx. p. 275.)]

[Footnote 62: The first crown or regnum (Ducange, Gloss. Latin. tom. v. p. 702) on the episcopal mitre of the

popes, is ascribed to the gift of Constantine, or Clovis. The second was added by Boniface VIII., as the

emblem not only of a spiritual, but of a temporal, kingdom. The three states of the church are represented by

the triple crown which was introduced by John XXII. or Benedict XII., (Memoires sur Petrarque, tom. i. p.

[Footnote 63: Baluze (Not. ad Pap. Avenion. tom. i. p. 1194, 1195) produces the original evidence which

attests the threats of the Roman ambassadors, and the resignation of the abbot of Mount Cassin, qui, ultro se

[Footnote 64: The return of the popes from Avignon to Rome, and their reception by the people, are related in

the original lives of Urban V. and Gregory XI., in Baluze (Vit. Paparum Avenionensium, tom. i. p. 363

486) and Muratori, (Script. Rer. Italicarum, tom. iii. P. i. p. 613 712.) In the disputes of the schism, every

circumstance was severely, though partially, scrutinized; more especially in the great inquest, which decided

the obedience of Castile, and to which Baluze, in his notes, so often and so largely appeals from a Ms.

If superstition will interpret an untimely death, ^65 if the merit of counsels be judged from the event, the

heavens may seem to frown on a measure of such apparent season and propriety. Gregory the Eleventh did

not survive above fourteen months his return to the Vatican; and his decease was followed by the great

schism of the West, which distracted the Latin church above forty years. The sacred college was then

composed of twentytwo cardinals: six of these had remained at Avignon; eleven Frenchmen, one Spaniard,

and four Italians, entered the conclave in the usual form. Their choice was not yet limited to the purple; and

their unanimous votes acquiesced in the archbishop of Bari, a subject of Naples, conspicuous for his zeal and

learning, who ascended the throne of St. Peter under the name of Urban the Sixth. The epistle of the sacred

college affirms his free, and regular, election; which had been inspired, as usual, by the Holy Ghost; he was

adored, invested, and crowned, with the customary rites; his temporal authority was obeyed at Rome and

Avignon, and his ecclesiastical supremacy was acknowledged in the Latin world. During several weeks, the

cardinals attended their new master with the fairest professions of attachment and loyalty; till the summer

heats permitted a decent escape from the city. But as soon as they were united at Anagni and Fundi, in a place

of security, they cast aside the mask, accused their own falsehood and hypocrisy, excommunicated the

apostate and antichrist of Rome, and proceeded to a new election of Robert of Geneva, Clement the Seventh,

whom they announced to the nations as the true and rightful vicar of Christ. Their first choice, an involuntary

and illegal act, was annulled by fear of death and the menaces of the Romans; and their complaint is justified

by the strong evidence of probability and fact. The twelve French cardinals, above two thirds of the votes,

were masters of the election; and whatever might be their provincial jealousies, it cannot fairly be presumed

that they would have sacrificed their right and interest to a foreign candidate, who would never restore them

to their native country. In the various, and often inconsistent, narratives, ^66 the shades of popular violence

are more darkly or faintly colored: but the licentiousness of the seditious Romans was inflamed by a sense of

their privileges, and the danger of a second emigration. The conclave was intimidated by the shouts, and

encompassed by the arms, of thirty thousand rebels; the bells of the Capitol and St. Peter's rang an alarm:

"Death, or an Italian pope!" was the universal cry; the same threat was repeated by the twelve bannerets or

chiefs of the quarters, in the form of charitable advice; some preparations were made for burning the

obstinate cardinals; and had they chosen a Transalpine subject, it is probable that they would never have

departed alive from the Vatican. The same constraint imposed the necessity of dissembling in the eyes of

Rome and of the world; the pride and cruelty of Urban presented a more inevitable danger; and they soon

discovered the features of the tyrant, who could walk in his garden and recite his breviary, while he heard

from an adjacent chamber six cardinals groaning on the rack. His inflexible zeal, which loudly censured their

luxury and vice, would have attached them to the stations and duties of their parishes at Rome; and had he not

fatally delayed a new promotion, the French cardinals would have been reduced to a helpless minority in the

sacred college. For these reasons, and the hope of repassing the Alps, they rashly violated the peace and unity

of the church; and the merits of their double choice are yet agitated in the Catholic schools. ^67 The vanity,

rather than the interest, of the nation determined the court and clergy of France. ^68 The states of Savoy,

Sicily, Cyprus, Arragon, Castille, Navarre, and Scotland were inclined by their example and authority to the

obedience of Clement the Seventh, and after his decease, of Benedict the Thirteenth. Rome and the principal

states of Italy, Germany, Portugal, England, ^69 the Low Countries, and the kingdoms of the North, adhered

to the prior election of Urban the Sixth, who was succeeded by Boniface the Ninth, Innocent the Seventh, and

Gregory the Twelfth. [Footnote 65: Can the death of a good man be esteemed a punishment by those who

believe in the immortality of the soul? They betray the instability of their faith. Yet as a mere philosopher, I

cannot agree with the Greeks (Brunck, Poetae Gnomici, p. 231.) See in Herodotus (l. i. c. 31) the moral and

[Footnote 66: In the first book of the Histoire du Concile de Pise, M. Lenfant has abridged and compared the

original narratives of the adherents of Urban and Clement, of the Italians and Germans, the French and

Spaniards. The latter appear to be the most active and loquacious, and every fact and word in the original

lives of Gregory XI. and Clement VII. are supported in the notes of their editor Baluze.]

[Footnote 67: The ordinal numbers of the popes seems to decide the question against Clement VII. and

Benedict XIII., who are boldly stigmatized as antipopes by the Italians, while the French are content with

authorities and reasons to plead the cause of doubt and toleration, (Baluz. in Praefat.) It is singular, or rather it

is not singular, that saints, visions and miracles should be common to both parties.]

[Footnote 68: Baluze strenuously labors (Not. p. 1271 1280) to justify the pure and pious motives of

Charles V. king of France: he refused to hear the arguments of Urban; but were not the Urbanists equally deaf

[Footnote 69: An epistle, or declamation, in the name of Edward III., (Baluz. Vit. Pap. Avenion. tom. i. p.

553,) displays the zeal of the English nation against the Clementines. Nor was their zeal confined to words:

the bishop of Norwich led a crusade of 60,000 bigots beyond sea, (Hume's History, vol. iii. p. 57, 58.)]

From the banks of the Tyber and the Rhone, the hostile pontiffs encountered each other with the pen and the

sword: the civil and ecclesiastical order of society was disturbed; and the Romans had their full share of the

mischiefs of which they may be arraigned as the primary authors. ^70 They had vainly flattered themselves

with the hope of restoring the seat of the ecclesiastical monarchy, and of relieving their poverty with the

tributes and offerings of the nations; but the separation of France and Spain diverted the stream of lucrative

devotion; nor could the loss be compensated by the two jubilees which were crowded into the space of ten

years. By the avocations of the schism, by foreign arms, and popular tumults, Urban the Sixth and his three

successors were often compelled to interrupt their residence in the Vatican. The Colonna and Ursini still

exercised their deadly feuds: the bannerets of Rome asserted and abused the privileges of a republic: the

vicars of Christ, who had levied a military force, chastised their rebellion with the gibbet, the sword, and the

dagger; and, in a friendly conference, eleven deputies of the people were perfidiously murdered and cast into

the street. Since the invasion of Robert the Norman, the Romans had pursued their domestic quarrels without

the dangerous interposition of a stranger. But in the disorders of the schism, an aspiring neighbor, Ladislaus

king of Naples, alternately supported and betrayed the pope and the people; by the former he was declared

gonfalonier, or general, of the church, while the latter submitted to his choice the nomination of their

magistrates. Besieging Rome by land and water, he thrice entered the gates as a Barbarian conqueror;

profaned the altars, violated the virgins, pillaged the merchants, performed his devotions at St. Peter's, and

left a garrison in the castle of St. Angelo. His arms were sometimes unfortunate, and to a delay of three days

he was indebted for his life and crown: but Ladislaus triumphed in his turn; and it was only his premature

death that could save the metropolis and the ecclesiastical state from the ambitious conqueror, who had

[Footnote 70: Besides the general historians, the Diaries of Delphinus Gentilia Peter Antonius, and Stephen

Infessura, in the great collection of Muratori, represented the state and misfortunes of Rome.]

[Footnote 71: It is supposed by Giannone (tom. iii. p. 292) that he styled himself Rex Romae, a title unknown

to the world since the expulsion of Tarquin. But a nearer inspection has justified the reading of Rex Ramae,

I have not undertaken the ecclesiastical history of the schism; but Rome, the object of these last chapters, is

deeply interested in the disputed succession of her sovereigns. The first counsels for the peace and union of

Christendom arose from the university of Paris, from the faculty of the Sorbonne, whose doctors were

esteemed, at least in the Gallican church, as the most consummate masters of theological science. ^72

Prudently waiving all invidious inquiry into the origin and merits of the dispute, they proposed, as a healing

measure, that the two pretenders of Rome and Avignon should abdicate at the same time, after qualifying the

cardinals of the adverse factions to join in a legitimate election; and that the nations should subtract ^73 their

obedience, if either of the competitor preferred his own interest to that of the public. At each vacancy, these

physicians of the church deprecated the mischiefs of a hasty choice; but the policy of the conclave and the

ambition of its members were deaf to reason and entreaties; and whatsoever promises were made, the pope

could never be bound by the oaths of the cardinal. During fifteen years, the pacific designs of the university

were eluded by the arts of the rival pontiffs, the scruples or passions of their adherents, and the vicissitudes of

French factions, that ruled the insanity of Charles the Sixth. At length a vigorous resolution was embraced;

and a solemn embassy, of the titular patriarch of Alexandria, two archbishops, five bishops, five abbots, three

knights, and twenty doctors, was sent to the courts of Avignon and Rome, to require, in the name of the

church and king, the abdication of the two pretenders, of Peter de Luna, who styled himself Benedict the

Thirteenth, and of Angelo Corrario, who assumed the name of Gregory the Twelfth. For the ancient honor of

Rome, and the success of their commission, the ambassadors solicited a conference with the magistrates of

the city, whom they gratified by a positive declaration, that the most Christian king did not entertain a wish of

transporting the holy see from the Vatican, which he considered as the genuine and proper seat of the

successor of St. Peter. In the name of the senate and people, an eloquent Roman asserted their desire to

cooperate in the union of the church, deplored the temporal and spiritual calamities of the long schism, and

requested the protection of France against the arms of the king of Naples. The answers of Benedict and

Gregory were alike edifying and alike deceitful; and, in evading the demand of their abdication, the two rivals

were animated by a common spirit. They agreed on the necessity of a previous interview; but the time, the

place, and the manner, could never be ascertained by mutual consent. "If the one advances," says a servant of

Gregory, "the other retreats; the one appears an animal fearful of the land, the other a creature apprehensive

of the water. And thus, for a short remnant of life and power, will these aged priests endanger the peace and

[Footnote 72: The leading and decisive part which France assumed in the schism is stated by Peter du Puis in

a separate history, extracted from authentic records, and inserted in the seventh volume of the last and best

[Footnote 73: Of this measure, John Gerson, a stout doctor, was the author of the champion. The proceedings

of the university of Paris and the Gallican church were often prompted by his advice, and are copiously

displayed in his theological writings, of which Le Clerc (Bibliotheque Choisie, tom. x. p. 1 78) has given a

valuable extract. John Gerson acted an important part in the councils of Pisa and Constance.]

[Footnote 74: Leonardus Brunus Aretinus, one of the revivers of classic learning in Italy, who, after serving

many years as secretary in the Roman court, retired to the honorable office of chancellor of the republic of

Florence, (Fabric. Bibliot. Medii Aevi, tom. i. p. 290.) Lenfant has given the version of this curious epistle,

The Christian world was at length provoked by their obstinacy and fraud: they were deserted by their

cardinals, who embraced each other as friends and colleagues; and their revolt was supported by a numerous

assembly of prelates and ambassadors. With equal justice, the council of Pisa deposed the popes of Rome and

Avignon; the conclave was unanimous in the choice of Alexander the Fifth, and his vacant seat was soon

filled by a similar election of John the Twentythird, the most profligate of mankind. But instead of

extinguishing the schism, the rashness of the French and Italians had given a third pretender to the chair of St.

Peter. Such new claims of the synod and conclave were disputed; three kings, of Germany, Hungary, and

Naples, adhered to the cause of Gregory the Twelfth; and Benedict the Thirteenth, himself a Spaniard, was

acknowledged by the devotion and patriotism of that powerful nation. The rash proceedings of Pisa were

corrected by the council of Constance; the emperor Sigismond acted a conspicuous part as the advocate or

protector of the Catholic church; and the number and weight of civil and ecclesiastical members might seem

to constitute the statesgeneral of Europe. Of the three popes, John the Twentythird was the first victim: he

fled and was brought back a prisoner: the most scandalous charges were suppressed; the vicar of Christ was

only accused of piracy, murder, rape, sodomy, and incest; and after subscribing his own condemnation, he

expiated in prison the imprudence of trusting his person to a free city beyond the Alps. Gregory the Twelfth,

whose obedience was reduced to the narrow precincts of Rimini, descended with more honor from the throne;

and his ambassador convened the session, in which he renounced the title and authority of lawful pope. To

vanquish the obstinacy of Benedict the Thirteenth or his adherents, the emperor in person undertook a

journey from Constance to Perpignan. The kings of Castile, Arragon, Navarre, and Scotland, obtained an

equal and honorable treaty; with the concurrence of the Spaniards, Benedict was deposed by the council; but

the harmless old man was left in a solitary castle to excommunicate twice each day the rebel kingdoms which

had deserted his cause. After thus eradicating the remains of the schism, the synod of Constance proceeded

with slow and cautious steps to elect the sovereign of Rome and the head of the church. On this momentous

occasion, the college of twentythree cardinals was fortified with thirty deputies; six of whom were chosen in

each of the five great nations of Christendom, the Italian, the German, the French, the Spanish, and the

English: ^75 the interference of strangers was softened by their generous preference of an Italian and a

Roman; and the hereditary, as well as personal, merit of Otho Colonna recommended him to the conclave.

Rome accepted with joy and obedience the noblest of her sons; the ecclesiastical state was defended by his

powerful family; and the elevation of Martin the Fifth is the aera of the restoration and establishment of the

[Footnote 75: I cannot overlook this great national cause, which was vigorously maintained by the English

ambassadors against those of France. The latter contended, that Christendom was essentially distributed into

the four great nations and votes, of Italy, Germany, France, and Spain, and that the lesser kingdoms (such as

England, Denmark, Portugal, were comprehended under one or other of these great divisions. The English

asserted, that the British islands, of which they were the head, should be considered as a fifth and coordinate

nation, with an equal vote; and every argument of truth or fable was introduced to exalt the dignity of their

country. Including England, Scotland, Wales, the four kingdoms of Ireland, and the Orkneys, the British

Islands are decorated with eight royal crowns, and discriminated by four or five languages, English, Welsh,

Cornish, Scotch, Irish, The greater island from north to south measures 800 miles, or 40 days' journey; and

England alone contains 32 counties and 52,000 parish churches, (a bold account!) besides cathedrals,

colleges, priories, and hospitals. They celebrate the mission of St. Joseph of Arimathea, the birth of

Constantine, and the legatine powers of the two primates, without forgetting the testimony of Bartholomey de

Glanville, (A.D. 1360,) who reckons only four Christian kingdoms, 1. of Rome, 2. of Constantinople, 3. of

Ireland, which had been transferred to the English monarchs, and 4, of Spain. Our countrymen prevailed in

the council, but the victories of Henry V. added much weight to their arguments. The adverse pleadings were

found at Constance by Sir Robert Wingfield, ambassador of Henry VIII. to the emperor Maximilian I., and by

him printed in 1517 at Louvain. From a Leipsic Ms. they are more correctly published in the collection of

Von der Hardt, tom. v.; but I have only seen Lenfant's abstract of these acts, (Concile de Constance, tom. ii.

[Footnote 76: The histories of the three successive councils, Pisa, Constance, and Basil, have been written

with a tolerable degree of candor, industry, and elegance, by a Protestant minister, M. Lenfant, who retired

from France to Berlin. They form six volumes in quarto; and as Basil is the worst, so Constance is the best,

The royal prerogative of coining money, which had been exercised near three hundred years by the senate,

was first resumed by Martin the Fifth, ^77 and his image and superscription introduce the series of the papal

medals. Of his two immediate successors, Eugenius the Fourth was the last pope expelled by the tumults of

the Roman people, ^78 and Nicholas the Fifth, the last who was importuned by the presence of a Roman

emperor. ^79 I. The conflict of Eugenius with the fathers of Basil, and the weight or apprehension of a new

excise, emboldened and provoked the Romans to usurp the temporal government of the city. They rose in

arms, elected seven governors of the republic, and a constable of the Capitol; imprisoned the pope's nephew;

besieged his person in the palace; and shot volleys of arrows into his bark as he escaped down the Tyber in

the habit of a monk. But he still possessed in the castle of St. Angelo a faithful garrison and a train of

artillery: their batteries incessantly thundered on the city, and a bullet more dexterously pointed broke down

the barricade of the bridge, and scattered with a single shot the heroes of the republic. Their constancy was

exhausted by a rebellion of five months. Under the tyranny of the Ghibeline nobles, the wisest patriots

regretted the dominion of the church; and their repentance was unanimous and effectual. The troops of St.

Peter again occupied the Capitol; the magistrates departed to their homes; the most guilty were executed or

exiled; and the legate, at the head of two thousand foot and four thousand horse, was saluted as the father of

the city. The synods of Ferrara and Florence, the fear or resentment of Eugenius, prolonged his absence: he

was received by a submissive people; but the pontiff understood from the acclamations of his triumphal entry,

that to secure their loyalty and his own repose, he must grant without delay the abolition of the odious excise.

II. Rome was restored, adorned, and enlightened, by the peaceful reign of Nicholas the Fifth. In the midst of

these laudable occupations, the pope was alarmed by the approach of Frederic the Third of Austria; though

his fears could not be justified by the character or the power of the Imperial candidate. After drawing his

military force to the metropolis, and imposing the best security of oaths ^80 and treaties, Nicholas received

with a smiling countenance the faithful advocate and vassal of the church. So tame were the times, so feeble

was the Austrian, that the pomp of his coronation was accomplished with order and harmony: but the

superfluous honor was so disgraceful to an independent nation, that his successors have excused themselves

from the toilsome pilgrimage to the Vatican; and rest their Imperial title on the choice of the electors of

[Footnote 77: See the xxviith Dissertation of the Antiquities of Muratori, and the 1st Instruction of the

Science des Medailles of the Pere Joubert and the Baron de la Bastie. The Metallic History of Martin V. and

his successors has been composed by two monks, Moulinet, a Frenchman, and Bonanni, an Italian: but I

understand, that the first part of the series is restored from more recent coins.]

[Footnote 78: Besides the Lives of Eugenius IV., (Rerum Italic. tom. iii. P. i. p. 869, and tom. xxv. p. 256,)

the Diaries of Paul Petroni and Stephen Infessura are the best original evidence for the revolt of the Romans

against Eugenius IV. The former, who lived at the time and on the spot, speaks the language of a citizen,

[Footnote 79: The coronation of Frederic III. is described by Lenfant, (Concile de Basle, tom. ii. p. 276

[Footnote 80: The oath of fidelity imposed on the emperor by the pope is recorded and sanctified in the

Clementines, (l. ii. tit. ix.;) and Aeneas Sylvius, who objects to this new demand, could not foresee, that in a

few years he should ascend the throne, and imbibe the maxims, of Boniface VIII.] A citizen has remarked,

with pride and pleasure, that the king of the Romans, after passing with a slight salute the cardinals and

prelates who met him at the gate, distinguished the dress and person of the senator of Rome; and in this last

farewell, the pageants of the empire and the republic were clasped in a friendly embrace. ^81 According to

the laws of Rome, ^82 her first magistrate was required to be a doctor of laws, an alien, of a place at least

forty miles from the city; with whose inhabitants he must not be connected in the third canonical degree of

blood or alliance. The election was annual: a severe scrutiny was instituted into the conduct of the departing

senator; nor could he be recalled to the same office till after the expiration of two years. A liberal salary of

three thousand florins was assigned for his expense and reward; and his public appearance represented the

majesty of the republic. His robes were of gold brocade or crimson velvet, or in the summer season of a

lighter silk: he bore in his hand an ivory sceptre; the sound of trumpets announced his approach; and his

solemn steps were preceded at least by four lictors or attendants, whose red wands were enveloped with

bands or streamers of the golden color or livery of the city. His oath in the Capitol proclaims his right and

duty to observe and assert the laws, to control the proud, to protect the poor, and to exercise justice and mercy

within the extent of his jurisdiction. In these useful functions he was assisted by three learned strangers; the

two collaterals, and the judge of criminal appeals: their frequent trials of robberies, rapes, and murders, are

attested by the laws; and the weakness of these laws connives at the licentiousness of private feuds and armed

associations for mutual defence. But the senator was confined to the administration of justice: the Capitol, the

treasury, and the government of the city and its territory, were intrusted to the three conservators, who were

changed four times in each year: the militia of the thirteen regions assembled under the banners of their

respective chiefs, or caporioni; and the first of these was distinguished by the name and dignity of the prior.

The popular legislature consisted of the secret and the common councils of the Romans. The former was

composed of the magistrates and their immediate predecessors, with some fiscal and legal officers, and three

classes of thirteen, twentysix, and forty, counsellors: amounting in the whole to about one hundred and

twenty persons. In the common council all male citizens had a right to vote; and the value of their privilege

was enhanced by the care with which any foreigners were prevented from usurping the title and character of

Romans. The tumult of a democracy was checked by wise and jealous precautions: except the magistrates,

none could propose a question; none were permitted to speak, except from an open pulpit or tribunal; all

disorderly acclamations were suppressed; the sense of the majority was decided by a secret ballot; and their

decrees were promulgated in the venerable name of the Roman senate and people. It would not be easy to

assign a period in which this theory of government has been reduced to accurate and constant practice, since

the establishment of order has been gradually connected with the decay of liberty. But in the year one

thousand five hundred and eighty the ancient statutes were collected, methodized in three books, and adapted

to present use, under the pontificate, and with the approbation, of Gregory the Thirteenth: ^83 this civil and

criminal code is the modern law of the city; and, if the popular assemblies have been abolished, a foreign

senator, with the three conservators, still resides in the palace of the Capitol. ^84 The policy of the Caesars

has been repeated by the popes; and the bishop of Rome affected to maintain the form of a republic, while he

reigned with the absolute powers of a temporal, as well as a spiritual, monarch. [Footnote 81: Lo senatore di

Roma, vestito di brocarto con quella beretta, e con quelle maniche, et ornamenti di pelle, co' quali va alle

feste di Testaccio e Nagone, might escape the eye of Aeneas Sylvius, but he is viewed with admiration and

[Footnote 82: See, in the statutes of Rome, the senator and three judges, (l. i. c. 3 14,) the conservators, (l. i.

c. 15, 16, 17, l. iii. c. 4,) the caporioni (l. i. c. 18, l. iii. c. 8,) the secret council, (l. iii. c. 2,) the common

council, (l. iii. c. 3.) The title of feuds, defiances, acts of violence, is spread through many a chapter (c. 14

[Footnote 83: Statuta almoe Urbis Romoe Auctoritate S. D. N. Gregorii XIII Pont. Max. a Senatu Populoque

Rom. reformata et edita. Romoe, 1580, in folio. The obsolete, repugnant statutes of antiquity were

confounded in five books, and Lucas Paetus, a lawyer and antiquarian, was appointed to act as the modern

Tribonian. Yet I regret the old code, with the rugged crust of freedom and barbarism.]

[Footnote 84: In my time (1765) and in M. Grosley's, (Observations sur l'Italie torn. ii. p. 361,) the senator of

Rome was M. Bielke, a noble Swede and a proselyte to the Catholic faith. The pope's right to appoint the

It is an obvious truth, that the times must be suited to extraordinary characters, and that the genius of

Cromwell or Retz might now expire in obscurity. The political enthusiasm of Rienzi had exalted him to a

throne; the same enthusiasm, in the next century, conducted his imitator to the gallows. The birth of Stephen

Porcaro was noble, his reputation spotless: his tongue was armed with eloquence, his mind was enlightened

with learning; and he aspired, beyond the aim of vulgar ambition, to free his country and immortalize his

name. The dominion of priests is most odious to a liberal spirit: every scruple was removed by the recent

knowledge of the fable and forgery of Constantine's donation; Petrarch was now the oracle of the Italians;

and as often as Porcaro revolved the ode which describes the patriot and hero of Rome, he applied to himself

the visions of the prophetic bard. His first trial of the popular feelings was at the funeral of Eugenius the

Fourth: in an elaborate speech he called the Romans to liberty and arms; and they listened with apparent

pleasure, till Porcaro was interrupted and answered by a grave advocate, who pleaded for the church and

state. By every law the seditious orator was guilty of treason; but the benevolence of the new pontiff, who

viewed his character with pity and esteem, attempted by an honorable office to convert the patriot into a

friend. The inflexible Roman returned from Anagni with an increase of reputation and zeal; and, on the first

opportunity, the games of the place Navona, he tried to inflame the casual dispute of some boys and

mechanics into a general rising of the people. Yet the humane Nicholas was still averse to accept the forfeit

of his life; and the traitor was removed from the scene of temptation to Bologna, with a liberal allowance for

his support, and the easy obligation of presenting himself each day before the governor of the city. But

Porcaro had learned from the younger Brutus, that with tyrants no faith or gratitude should be observed: the

exile declaimed against the arbitrary sentence; a party and a conspiracy were gradually formed: his nephew, a

daring youth, assembled a band of volunteers; and on the appointed evening a feast was prepared at his house

for the friends of the republic. Their leader, who had escaped from Bologna, appeared among them in a robe

of purple and gold: his voice, his countenance, his gestures, bespoke the man who had devoted his life or

death to the glorious cause. In a studied oration, he expiated on the motives and the means of their enterprise;

the name and liberties of Rome; the sloth and pride of their ecclesiastical tyrants; the active or passive

consent of their fellowcitizens; three hundred soldiers, and four hundred exiles, long exercised in arms or in

wrongs; the license of revenge to edge their swords, and a million of ducats to reward their victory. It would

be easy, (he said,) on the next day, the festival of the Epiphany, to seize the pope and his cardinals, before the

doors, or at the altar, of St. Peter's; to lead them in chains under the walls of St. Angelo; to extort by the threat

of their instant death a surrender of the castle; to ascend the vacant Capitol; to ring the alarm bell; and to

restore in a popular assembly the ancient republic of Rome. While he triumphed, he was already betrayed.

The senator, with a strong guard, invested the house: the nephew of Porcaro cut his way through the crowd;

but the unfortunate Stephen was drawn from a chest, lamenting that his enemies had anticipated by three

hours the execution of his design. After such manifest and repeated guilt, even the mercy of Nicholas was

silent. Porcaro, and nine of his accomplices, were hanged without the benefit of the sacraments; and, amidst

the fears and invectives of the papal court, the Romans pitied, and almost applauded, these martyrs of their

country. ^85 But their applause was mute, their pity ineffectual, their liberty forever extinct; and, if they have

since risen in a vacancy of the throne or a scarcity of bread, such accidental tumults may be found in the

bosom of the most abject servitude. [Footnote 85: Besides the curious, though concise, narrative of

Machiavel, (Istoria Florentina, l. vi. Opere, tom. i. p. 210, 211, edit. Londra, 1747, in 4to.) the Porcarian

conspiracy is related in the Diary of Stephen Infessura, (Rer. Ital. tom. iii. P. ii. p. 1134, 1135,) and in a

separate tract by Leo Baptista Alberti, (Rer. Ital. tom. xxv. p. 609 614.) It is amusing to compare the style

and sentiments of the courtier and citizen. Facinus profecto quo .... neque periculo horribilius, neque audacia

detestabilius, neque crudelitate tetrius, a quoquam perditissimo uspiam excogitatum sit .... Perdette la vita

But the independence of the nobles, which was fomented by discord, survived the freedom of the commons,

which must be founded in union. A privilege of rapine and oppression was long maintained by the barons of

Rome; their houses were a fortress and a sanctuary: and the ferocious train of banditti and criminals whom

they protected from the law repaid the hospitality with the service of their swords and daggers. The private

interest of the pontiffs, or their nephews, sometimes involved them in these domestic feuds. Under the reign

of Sixtus the Fourth, Rome was distracted by the battles and sieges of the rival houses: after the conflagration

of his palace, the prothonotary Colonna was tortured and beheaded; and Savelli, his captive friend, was

murdered on the spot, for refusing to join in the acclamations of the victorious Ursini. ^86 But the popes no

longer trembled in the Vatican: they had strength to command, if they had resolution to claim, the obedience

of their subjects; and the strangers, who observed these partial disorders, admired the easy taxes and wise

[Footnote 86: The disorders of Rome, which were much inflamed by the partiality of Sixtus IV. are exposed

in the Diaries of two spectators, Stephen Infessura, and an anonymous citizen. See the troubles of the year

1484, and the death of the prothonotary Colonna, in tom. iii. P. ii. p. 1083, 1158.]

[Footnote 87: Est toute la terre de l'eglise troublee pour cette partialite (des Colonnes et des Ursins) come

nous dirions Luce et Grammont, ou en Hollande Houc et Caballan; et quand ce ne seroit ce differend la terre

de l'eglise seroit la plus heureuse habitation pour les sujets qui soit dans toute le monde (car ils ne payent ni

tailles ni gueres autres choses,) et seroient toujours bien conduits, (car toujours les papes sont sages et bien

consellies;) mais tres souvent en advient de grands et cruels meurtres et pilleries.]

The spiritual thunders of the Vatican depend on the force of opinion; and if that opinion be supplanted by

reason or passion, the sound may idly waste itself in the air; and the helpless priest is exposed to the brutal

violence of a noble or a plebeian adversary. But after their return from Avignon, the keys of St. Peter were

guarded by the sword of St. Paul. Rome was commanded by an impregnable citadel: the use of cannon is a

powerful engine against popular seditions: a regular force of cavalry and infantry was enlisted under the

banners of the pope: his ample revenues supplied the resources of war: and, from the extent of his domain, he

could bring down on a rebellious city an army of hostile neighbors and loyal subjects. ^88 Since the union of

the duchies of Ferrara and Urbino, the ecclesiastical state extends from the Mediterranean to the Adriatic, and

from the confines of Naples to the banks of the Po; and as early as the sixteenth century, the greater part of

that spacious and fruitful country acknowledged the lawful claims and temporal sovereignty of the Roman

pontiffs. Their claims were readily deduced from the genuine, or fabulous, donations of the darker ages: the

successive steps of their final settlement would engage us too far in the transactions of Italy, and even of

Europe; the crimes of Alexander the Sixth, the martial operations of Julius the Second, and the liberal policy

of Leo the Tenth, a theme which has been adorned by the pens of the noblest historians of the times. ^89 In

the first period of their conquests, till the expedition of Charles the Eighth, the popes might successfully

wrestle with the adjacent princes and states, whose military force was equal, or inferior, to their own. But as

soon as the monarchs of France, Germany and Spain, contended with gigantic arms for the dominion of Italy,

they supplied with art the deficiency of strength; and concealed, in a labyrinth of wars and treaties, their

aspiring views, and the immortal hope of chasing the Barbarians beyond the Alps. The nice balance of the

Vatican was often subverted by the soldiers of the North and West, who were united under the standard of

Charles the Fifth: the feeble and fluctuating policy of Clement the Seventh exposed his person and dominions

to the conqueror; and Rome was abandoned seven months to a lawless army, more cruel and rapacious than

the Goths and Vandals. ^90 After this severe lesson, the popes contracted their ambition, which was almost

satisfied, resumed the character of a common parent, and abstained from all offensive hostilities, except in a

hasty quarrel, when the vicar of Christ and the Turkish sultan were armed at the same time against the

kingdom of Naples. ^91 The French and Germans at length withdrew from the field of battle: Milan, Naples,

Sicily, Sardinia, and the seacoast of Tuscany, were firmly possessed by the Spaniards; and it became their

interest to maintain the peace and dependence of Italy, which continued almost without disturbance from the

middle of the sixteenth to the opening of the eighteenth century. The Vatican was swayed and protected by

the religious policy of the Catholic king: his prejudice and interest disposed him in every dispute to support

the prince against the people; and instead of the encouragement, the aid, and the asylum, which they obtained

from the adjacent states, the friends of liberty, or the enemies of law, were enclosed on all sides within the

iron circle of despotism. The long habits of obedience and education subdued the turbulent spirit of the

nobles and commons of Rome. The barons forgot the arms and factions of their ancestors, and insensibly

became the servants of luxury and government. Instead of maintaining a crowd of tenants and followers, the

produce of their estates was consumed in the private expenses which multiply the pleasures, and diminish the

power, of the lord. ^92 The Colonna and Ursini vied with each other in the decoration of their palaces and

chapels; and their antique splendor was rivalled or surpassed by the sudden opulence of the papal families. In

Rome the voice of freedom and discord is no longer heard; and, instead of the foaming torrent, a smooth and

[Footnote 88: By the oeconomy of Sixtus V. the revenue of the ecclesiastical state was raised to two millions

and a half of Roman crowns, (Vita, tom. ii. p. 291 296;) and so regular was the military establishment, that

in one month Clement VIII. could invade the duchy of Ferrara with three thousand horse and twenty thousand

foot, (tom. iii. p. 64) Since that time (A.D. 1597) the papal arms are happily rusted: but the revenue must

Note: On the financial measures of Sixtus V. see Ranke, Dio Romischen Papste, i. p. 459. M.]

[Footnote 89: More especially by Guicciardini and Machiavel; in the general history of the former, in the

Florentine history, the Prince, and the political discourses of the latter. These, with their worthy successors,

Fra Paolo and Davila, were justly esteemed the first historians of modern languages, till, in the present age,

[Footnote 90: In the history of the Gothic siege, I have compared the Barbarians with the subjects of Charles

V., (vol. iii. p. 289, 290;) an anticipation, which, like that of the Tartar conquests, I indulged with the less

[Footnote 91: The ambitious and feeble hostilities of the Caraffa pope, Paul IV. may be seen in Thuanus (l.

xvi. xviii.) and Giannone, (tom. iv p. 149 163.) Those Catholic bigots, Philip II. and the duke of Alva,

presumed to separate the Roman prince from the vicar of Christ, yet the holy character, which would have

[Footnote 92: This gradual change of manners and expense is admirably explained by Dr. Adam Smith,

(Wealth of Nations, vol. i. p. 495 504,) who proves, perhaps too severely, that the most salutary effects

A Christian, a philosopher, ^93 and a patriot, will be equally scandalized by the temporal kingdom of the

clergy; and the local majesty of Rome, the remembrance of her consuls and triumphs, may seem to imbitter

the sense, and aggravate the shame, of her slavery. If we calmly weigh the merits and defects of the

ecclesiastical government, it may be praised in its present state, as a mild, decent, and tranquil system,

exempt from the dangers of a minority, the sallies of youth, the expenses of luxury, and the calamities of war.

But these advantages are overbalanced by a frequent, perhaps a septennial, election of a sovereign, who is

seldom a native of the country; the reign of a young statesman of threescore, in the decline of his life and

abilities, without hope to accomplish, and without children to inherit, the labors of his transitory reign. The

successful candidate is drawn from the church, and even the convent; from the mode of education and life the

most adverse to reason, humanity, and freedom. In the trammels of servile faith, he has learned to believe

because it is absurd, to revere all that is contemptible, and to despise whatever might deserve the esteem of a

rational being; to punish error as a crime, to reward mortification and celibacy as the first of virtues; to place

the saints of the calendar ^94 above the heroes of Rome and the sages of Athens; and to consider the missal,

or the crucifix, as more useful instruments than the plough or the loom. In the office of nuncio, or the rank of

cardinal, he may acquire some knowledge of the world, but the primitive stain will adhere to his mind and

manners: from study and experience he may suspect the mystery of his profession; but the sacerdotal artist

will imbibe some portion of the bigotry which he inculcates. The genius of Sixtus the Fifth ^95 burst from the

gloom of a Franciscan cloister. In a reign of five years, he exterminated the outlaws and banditti, abolished

the profane sanctuaries of Rome, ^96 formed a naval and military force, restored and emulated the

monuments of antiquity, and after a liberal use and large increase of the revenue, left five millions of crowns

in the castle of St. Angelo. But his justice was sullied with cruelty, his activity was prompted by the ambition

of conquest: after his decease the abuses revived; the treasure was dissipated; he entailed on posterity

thirtyfive new taxes and the venality of offices; and, after his death, his statue was demolished by an

ungrateful, or an injured, people. ^97 The wild and original character of Sixtus the Fifth stands alone in the

series of the pontiffs; the maxims and effects of their temporal government may be collected from the

positive and comparative view of the arts and philosophy, the agriculture and trade, the wealth and

population, of the ecclesiastical state. For myself, it is my wish to depart in charity with all mankind, nor am I

[Footnote 93: Mr. Hume (Hist. of England, vol. i. p. 389) too hastily conclude that if the civil and

ecclesiastical powers be united in the same person, it is of little moment whether he be styled prince or

[Footnote 94: A Protestant may disdain the unworthy preference of St. Francis or St. Dominic, but he will not

rashly condemn the zeal or judgment of Sixtus V., who placed the statues of the apostles St. Peter and St.

[Footnote 95: A wandering Italian, Gregorio Leti, has given the Vita di SistoQuinto, (Amstel. 1721, 3 vols.

in 12mo.,) a copious and amusing work, but which does not command our absolute confidence. Yet the

character of the man, and the principal facts, are supported by the annals of Spondanus and Muratori, (A.D.

1585 1590,) and the contemporary history of the great Thuanus, (l. lxxxii. c. 1, 2, l. lxxxiv c. 10, l. c. c. 8.)

Note: The industry of M. Ranke has discovered the document, a kind of scandalous chronicle of the time,

from which Leti wrought up his amusing romances. See also M. Ranke's observations on the Life of Sixtus.

[Footnote 96: These privileged places, the quartieri or franchises, were adopted from the Roman nobles by

the foreign ministers. Julius II. had once abolished the abominandum et detestandum franchitiarum

hujusmodi nomen: and after Sixtus V. they again revived. I cannot discern either the justice or magnanimity

of Louis XIV., who, in 1687, sent his ambassador, the marquis de Lavardin, to Rome, with an armed force of

a thousand officers, guards, and domestics, to maintain this iniquitous claim, and insult Pope Innocent XI. in

the heart of his capital, (Vita di Sisto V. tom. iii. p. 260 278. Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. xv. p. 494

[Footnote 97: This outrage produced a decree, which was inscribed on marble, and placed in the Capitol. It is

expressed in a style of manly simplicity and freedom: Si quis, sive privatus, sive magistratum gerens de

collocanda vivo pontifici statua mentionem facere ausit, legitimo S. P. Q. R. decreto in perpetuum infamis et

publicorum munerum expers esto. MDXC. mense Augusto, (Vita di Sisto V. tom. iii. p. 469.) I believe that

this decree is still observed, and I know that every monarch who deserves a statue should himself impose the

[Footnote 98: The histories of the church, Italy, and Christendom, have contributed to the chapter which I

now conclude. In the original Lives of the Popes, we often discover the city and republic of Rome: and the

events of the xivth and xvth centuries are preserved in the rude and domestic chronicles which I have

1. Monaldeschi (Ludovici Boncomitis) Fragmenta Annalium Roman. A.D. 1328, in the Scriptores Rerum

Italicarum of Muratori, tom. xii. p. 525. N. B. The credit of this fragment is somewhat hurt by a singular

interpolation, in which the author relates his own death at the age of 115 years.

2. Fragmenta Historiae Romanae (vulgo Thomas Fortifioccae) in Romana Dialecto vulgari, (A.D. 1327

1354, in Muratori, Antiquitat. Medii Aevi Italiae, tom. iii. p. 247 548;) the authentic groundwork of the

3. Delphini (Gentilis) Diarium Romanum, (A.D. 1370 1410,) in the Rerum Italicarum, tom. iii. P. ii. p. 846.

5. Petroni (Pauli) Miscellanea Historica Romana, (A.D. 1433 1446,) tom. xxiv. p. 1101.

8. Infessurae (Stephani) Diarium Romanum, (A.D. 1294, or 1378 1494,) tom. iii. P. ii. p. 1109.

9. Historia Arcana Alexandri VI. sive Excerpta ex Diario Joh. Burcardi, (A.D. 1492 1503,) edita a Godefr.

Gulielm. Leibnizio, Hanover, 697, in 4to. The large and valuable Journal of Burcard might be completed

from the MSS. in different libraries of Italy and France, (M. de Foncemagne, in the Memoires de l'Acad. des

Except the last, all these fragments and diaries are inserted in the Collections of Muratori, my guide and

master in the history of Italy. His country, and the public, are indebted to him for the following works on that

subject: 1. Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, (A.D. 500 1500,) quorum potissima pars nunc primum in lucem

prodit, xxviii. vols. in folio, Milan, 1723 1738, 1751. A volume of chronological and alphabetical tables is

still wanting as a key to this great work, which is yet in a disorderly and defective state. 2. Antiquitates Italiae

Medii Aevi, vi. vols. in folio, Milan, 1738 1743, in lxxv. curious dissertations, on the manners,

government, religion, of the Italians of the darker ages, with a large supplement of charters, chronicles, 3.

Dissertazioni sopra le Antiquita Italiane, iii. vols. in 4to., Milano, 1751, a free version by the author, which

may be quoted with the same confidence as the Latin text of the Antiquities. Annali d' Italia, xviii. vols. in

octavo, Milan, 1753 1756, a dry, though accurate and useful, abridgment of the history of Italy, from the

birth of Christ to the middle of the xviiith century. 5. Dell' Antichita Estense ed Italiane, ii. vols, in folio,

Modena, 1717, 1740. In the history of this illustrious race, the parent of our Brunswick kings, the critic is not

seduced by the loyalty or gratitude of the subject. In all his works, Muratori approves himself a diligent and

laborious writer, who aspires above the prejudices of a Catholic priest. He was born in the year 1672, and

died in the year 1750, after passing near 60 years in the libraries of Milan and Modena, (Vita del Proposto

Ludovico Antonio Muratori, by his nephew and successor Gian. Francesco Soli Muratori Venezia, 1756 m

Prospect Of The Ruins Of Rome In The Fifteenth Century. Four Causes Of Decay And Destruction.

In the last days of Pope Eugenius the Fourth, ^* two of his servants, the learned Poggius ^1 and a friend,

ascended the Capitoline hill; reposed themselves among the ruins of columns and temples; and viewed from

that commanding spot the wide and various prospect of desolation. ^2 The place and the object gave ample

scope for moralizing on the vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works,

which buries empires and cities in a common grave; and it was agreed, that in proportion to her former

greatness, the fall of Rome was the more awful and deplorable. "Her primeval state, such as she might appear

in a remote age, when Evander entertained the stranger of Troy, ^3 has been delineated by the fancy of Virgil.

This Tarpeian rock was then a savage and solitary thicket: in the time of the poet, it was crowned with the

golden roofs of a temple; the temple is overthrown, the gold has been pillaged, the wheel of fortune has

accomplished her revolution, and the sacred ground is again disfigured with thorns and brambles. The hill of

the Capitol, on which we sit, was formerly the head of the Roman empire, the citadel of the earth, the terror

of kings; illustrated by the footsteps of so many triumphs, enriched with the spoils and tributes of so many

nations. This spectacle of the world, how is it fallen! how changed! how defaced! The path of victory is

obliterated by vines, and the benches of the senators are concealed by a dunghill. Cast your eyes on the

Palatine hill, and seek among the shapeless and enormous fragments the marble theatre, the obelisks, the

colossal statues, the porticos of Nero's palace: survey the other hills of the city, the vacant space is interrupted

only by ruins and gardens. The forum of the Roman people, where they assembled to enact their laws and

elect their magistrates, is now enclosed for the cultivation of potherbs, or thrown open for the reception of

swine and buffaloes. The public and private edifices, that were founded for eternity, lie prostrate, naked, and

broken, like the limbs of a mighty giant; and the ruin is the more visible, from the stupendous relics that have

[Footnote *: It should be Pope Martin the Fifth. See Gibbon's own note, ch. lxv, note 51 and Hobhouse,

[Footnote 1: I have already (notes 50, 51, on chap. lxv.) mentioned the age, character, and writings of

Poggius; and particularly noticed the date of this elegant moral lecture on the varieties of fortune.]

[Footnote 2: Consedimus in ipsis Tarpeiae arcis ruinis, pone ingens portae cujusdam, ut puto, templi,

marmoreum limen, plurimasque passim confractas columnas, unde magna ex parte prospectus urbis patet, (p.

[Footnote 3: Aeneid viii. 97 369. This ancient picture, so artfully introduced, and so exquisitely finished,

must have been highly interesting to an inhabitant of Rome; and our early studies allow us to sympathize in

[Footnote 4: Capitolium adeo . . . . immutatum ut vineae in senatorum subellia successerint, stercorum ac

purgamentorum receptaculum factum. Respice ad Palatinum montem . . . . . vasta rudera . . . . caeteroscolles

perlustra omnia vacua aedificiis, ruinis vineisque oppleta conspicies, (Poggius, de Varietat. Fortunae p. 21.)]

These relics are minutely described by Poggius, one of the first who raised his eyes from the monuments of

legendary, to those of classic, superstition. ^5 1. Besides a bridge, an arch, a sepulchre, and the pyramid of

Cestius, he could discern, of the age of the republic, a double row of vaults, in the saltoffice of the Capitol,

which were inscribed with the name and munificence of Catulus. 2. Eleven temples were visible in some

degree, from the perfect form of the Pantheon, to the three arches and a marble column of the temple of

Peace, which Vespasian erected after the civil wars and the Jewish triumph. 3. Of the number, which he

rashly defines, of seven thermoe, or public baths, none were sufficiently entire to represent the use and

distribution of the several parts: but those of Diocletian and Antoninus Caracalla still retained the titles of the

founders, and astonished the curious spectator, who, in observing their solidity and extent, the variety of

marbles, the size and multitude of the columns, compared the labor and expense with the use and importance.

Of the baths of Constantine, of Alexander, of Domitian, or rather of Titus, some vestige might yet be found.

4. The triumphal arches of Titus, Severus, and Constantine, were entire, both the structure and the

inscriptions; a falling fragment was honored with the name of Trajan; and two arches, then extant, in the

Flaminian way, have been ascribed to the baser memory of Faustina and Gallienus. ^* 5. After the wonder of

the Coliseum, Poggius might have overlooked small amphitheatre of brick, most probably for the use of the

praetorian camp: the theatres of Marcellus and Pompey were occupied in a great measure by public and

private buildings; and in the Circus, Agonalis and Maximus, little more than the situation and the form could

be investigated. 6. The columns of Trajan and Antonine were still erect; but the Egyptian obelisks were

broken or buried. A people of gods and heroes, the workmanship of art, was reduced to one equestrian figure

of gilt brass, and to five marble statues, of which the most conspicuous were the two horses of Phidias and

Praxiteles. 7. The two mausoleums or sepulchres of Augustus and Hadrian could not totally be lost: but the

former was only visible as a mound of earth; and the latter, the castle of St. Angelo, had acquired the name

and appearance of a modern fortress. With the addition of some separate and nameless columns, such were

the remains of the ancient city; for the marks of a more recent structure might be detected in the walls, which

formed a circumference of ten miles, included three hundred and seventynine turrets, and opened into the

[Footnote *: One was in the Via Nomentana; est alter praetevea Gallieno principi dicatus, ut superscriptio

indicat, Via Nomentana. Hobhouse, p. 154. Poggio likewise mentions the building which Gibbon

This melancholy picture was drawn above nine hundred years after the fall of the Western empire, and even

of the Gothic kingdom of Italy. A long period of distress and anarchy, in which empire, and arts, and riches

had migrated from the banks of the Tyber, was incapable of restoring or adorning the city; and, as all that is

human must retrograde if it do not advance, every successive age must have hastened the ruin of the works of

antiquity. To measure the progress of decay, and to ascertain, at each aera, the state of each edifice, would be

an endless and a useless labor; and I shall content myself with two observations, which will introduce a short

inquiry into the general causes and effects. 1. Two hundred years before the eloquent complaint of Poggius,

an anonymous writer composed a description of Rome. ^6 His ignorance may repeat the same objects under

strange and fabulous names. Yet this barbarous topographer had eyes and ears; he could observe the visible

remains; he could listen to the tradition of the people; and he distinctly enumerates seven theatres, eleven

baths, twelve arches, and eighteen palaces, of which many had disappeared before the time of Poggius. It is

apparent, that many stately monuments of antiquity survived till a late period, ^7 and that the principles of

destruction acted with vigorous and increasing energy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. 2. The same

reflection must be applied to the three last ages; and we should vainly seek the Septizonium of Severus; ^8

which is celebrated by Petrarch and the antiquarians of the sixteenth century. While the Roman edifices were

still entire, the first blows, however weighty and impetuous, were resisted by the solidity of the mass and the

harmony of the parts; but the slightest touch would precipitate the fragments of arches and columns, that

[Footnote 6: Liber de Mirabilibus Romae ex Registro Nicolai Cardinalis de Amagonia in Bibliotheca St.

Isidori Armario IV., No. 69. This treatise, with some short but pertinent notes, has been published by

Montfaucon, (Diarium Italicum, p. 283 301,) who thus delivers his own critical opinion: Scriptor xiiimi.

circiter saeculi, ut ibidem notatur; antiquariae rei imperitus et, ut ab illo aevo, nugis et anilibus fabellis

refertus: sed, quia monumenta, quae iis temporibus Romae supererant pro modulo recenset, non parum inde

lucis mutuabitur qu Romanis antiquitatibus indagandis operam navabit, (p. 283.)]

[Footnote 7: The Pere Mabillon (Analecta, tom. iv. p. 502) has published an anonymous pilgrim of the ixth

century, who, in his visit round the churches and holy places at Rome, touches on several buildings,

[Footnote 8: On the Septizonium, see the Memoires sur Petrarque, (tom. i. p. 325,) Donatus, (p. 338,) and

After a diligent inquiry, I can discern four principal causes of the ruin of Rome, which continued to operate in

a period of more than a thousand years. I. The injuries of time and nature. II. The hostile attacks of the

Barbarians and Christians. III. The use and abuse of the materials. And, IV. The domestic quarrels of the

I. The art of man is able to construct monuments far more permanent than the narrow span of his own

existence; yet these monuments, like himself, are perishable and frail; and in the boundless annals of time, his

life and his labors must equally be measured as a fleeting moment. Of a simple and solid edifice, it is not

easy, however, to circumscribe the duration. As the wonders of ancient days, the pyramids ^9 attracted the

curiosity of the ancients: a hundred generations, the leaves of autumn, have dropped ^10 into the grave; and

after the fall of the Pharaohs and Ptolemies, the Caesars and caliphs, the same pyramids stand erect and

unshaken above the floods of the Nile. A complex figure of various and minute parts to more accessible to

injury and decay; and the silent lapse of time is often accelerated by hurricanes and earthquakes, by fires and

inundations. The air and earth have doubtless been shaken; and the lofty turrets of Rome have tottered from

their foundations; but the seven hills do not appear to be placed on the great cavities of the globe; nor has the

city, in any age, been exposed to the convulsions of nature, which, in the climate of Antioch, Lisbon, or

Lima, have crumbled in a few moments the works of ages into dust. Fire is the most powerful agent of life

and death: the rapid mischief may be kindled and propagated by the industry or negligence of mankind; and

every period of the Roman annals is marked by the repetition of similar calamities. A memorable

conflagration, the guilt or misfortune of Nero's reign, continued, though with unequal fury, either six or nine

days. ^11 Innumerable buildings, crowded in close and crooked streets, supplied perpetual fuel for the

flames; and when they ceased, four only of the fourteen regions were left entire; three were totally destroyed,

and seven were deformed by the relics of smoking and lacerated edifices. ^12 In the full meridian of empire,

the metropolis arose with fresh beauty from her ashes; yet the memory of the old deplored their irreparable

losses, the arts of Greece, the trophies of victory, the monuments of primitive or fabulous antiquity. In the

days of distress and anarchy, every wound is mortal, every fall irretrievable; nor can the damage be restored

either by the public care of government, or the activity of private interest. Yet two causes may be alleged,

which render the calamity of fire more destructive to a flourishing than a decayed city. 1. The more

combustible materials of brick, timber, and metals, are first melted or consumed; but the flames may play

without injury or effect on the naked walls, and massy arches, that have been despoiled of their ornaments. 2.

It is among the common and plebeian habitations, that a mischievous spark is most easily blown to a

conflagration; but as soon as they are devoured, the greater edifices, which have resisted or escaped, are left

as so many islands in a state of solitude and safety. From her situation, Rome is exposed to the danger of

frequent inundations. Without excepting the Tyber, the rivers that descend from either side of the Apennine

have a short and irregular course; a shallow stream in the summer heats; an impetuous torrent, when it is

swelled in the spring or winter, by the fall of rain, and the melting of the snows. When the current is repelled

from the sea by adverse winds, when the ordinary bed is inadequate to the weight of waters, they rise above

the banks, and overspread, without limits or control, the plains and cities of the adjacent country. Soon after

the triumph of the first Punic war, the Tyber was increased by unusual rains; and the inundation, surpassing

all former measure of time and place, destroyed all the buildings that were situated below the hills of Rome.

According to the variety of ground, the same mischief was produced by different means; and the edifices

were either swept away by the sudden impulse, or dissolved and undermined by the long continuance, of the

flood. ^13 Under the reign of Augustus, the same calamity was renewed: the lawless river overturned the

palaces and temples on its banks; ^14 and, after the labors of the emperor in cleansing and widening the bed

that was encumbered with ruins, ^15 the vigilance of his successors was exercised by similar dangers and

designs. The project of diverting into new channels the Tyber itself, or some of the dependent streams, was

long opposed by superstition and local interests; ^16 nor did the use compensate the toil and cost of the tardy

and imperfect execution. The servitude of rivers is the noblest and most important victory which man has

obtained over the licentiousness of nature; ^17 and if such were the ravages of the Tyber under a firm and

active government, what could oppose, or who can enumerate, the injuries of the city, after the fall of the

Western empire? A remedy was at length produced by the evil itself: the accumulation of rubbish and the

earth, that has been washed down from the hills, is supposed to have elevated the plain of Rome, fourteen or

fifteen feet, perhaps, above the ancient level; ^18 and the modern city is less accessible to the attacks of the

[Footnote 9: The age of the pyramids is remote and unknown, since Diodorus Siculus (tom. i l. i. c. 44, p. 72)

is unable to decide whether they were constructed 1000, or 3400, years before the clxxxth Olympiad. Sir John

Marsham's contracted scale of the Egyptian dynasties would fix them about 2000 years before Christ,

[Footnote 10: See the speech of Glaucus in the Iliad, (Z. 146.) This natural but melancholy image is peculiar

[Footnote 11: The learning and criticism of M. des Vignoles (Histoire Critique de la Republique des Lettres,

tom. viii. p. 47 118, ix. p. 172 187) dates the fire of Rome from A.D. 64, July 19, and the subsequent

[Footnote 12: Quippe in regiones quatuordecim Roma dividitur, quarum quatuor integrae manebant, tres solo

tenus dejectae: septem reliquis pauca testorum vestigia supererant, lacera et semiusta. Among the old relics

that were irreparably lost, Tacitus enumerates the temple of the moon of Servius Tullius; the fane and altar

consecrated by Evander praesenti Herculi; the temple of Jupiter Stator, a vow of Romulus; the palace of

Numa; the temple of Vesta cum Penatibus populi Romani. He then deplores the opes tot victoriis quaesitae et

Graecarum artium decora . . . . multa quae seniores meminerant, quae reparari nequibant, (Annal. xv. 40,

[Footnote 13: A. U. C. 507, repentina subversio ipsius Romae praevenit triumphum Romanorum. . . . .

diversae ignium aquarumque cladespene absumsere urbem Nam Tiberis insolitis auctus imbribus et ultra

opinionem, vel diuturnitate vel maguitudine redundans omnia Romae aedificia in plano posita delevit.

Diversae qualitate locorum ad unam convenere perniciem: quoniam et quae segniori inundatio tenuit

madefacta dissolvit, et quae cursus torrentis invenit impulsa dejecit, (Orosius, Hist. l. iv. c. 11, p. 244, edit.

Havercamp.) Yet we may observe, that it is the plan and study of the Christian apologist to magnify the

[Footnote 14: Vidimus flavum Tiberim, retortis Littore Etrusco violenter undis, Ire dejectum monumenta

If the palace of Numa and temple of Vesta were thrown down in Horace's time, what was consumed of those

buildings by Nero's fire could hardly deserve the epithets of vetustissima or incorrupta.]

[Footnote 15: Ad coercendas inundationes alveum Tiberis laxavit, ac repurgavit, completum olim ruderibus,

[Footnote 16: Tacitus (Annal. i. 79) reports the petitions of the different towns of Italy to the senate against

the measure; and we may applaud the progress of reason. On a similar occasion, local interests would

undoubtedly be consulted: but an English House of Commons would reject with contempt the arguments of

[Footnote 17: See the Epoques de la Nature of the eloquent and philosophic Buffon. His picture of Guyana, in

South America, is that of a new and savage land, in which the waters are abandoned to themselves without

[Footnote 18: In his travels in Italy, Mr. Addison (his works, vol. ii. p. 98, Baskerville's edition) has observed

[Footnote 19: Yet in modern times, the Tyber has sometimes damaged the city, and in the years 1530, 1557,

1598, the annals of Muratori record three mischievous and memorable inundations, (tom. xiv. p. 268, 429,

Note: The level of the Tyber was at one time supposed to be considerably raised: recent investigations seem

to be conclusive against this supposition. See a brief, but satisfactory statement of the question in Bunsen and

II. The crowd of writers of every nation, who impute the destruction of the Roman monuments to the Goths

and the Christians, have neglected to inquire how far they were animated by a hostile principle, and how far

they possessed the means and the leisure to satiate their enmity. In the preceding volumes of this History, I

have described the triumph of barbarism and religion; and I can only resume, in a few words, their real or

imaginary connection with the ruin of ancient Rome. Our fancy may create, or adopt, a pleasing romance,

that the Goths and Vandals sallied from Scandinavia, ardent to avenge the flight of Odin; ^20 to break the

chains, and to chastise the oppressors, of mankind; that they wished to burn the records of classic literature,

and to found their national architecture on the broken members of the Tuscan and Corinthian orders. But in

simple truth, the northern conquerors were neither sufficiently savage, nor sufficiently refined, to entertain

such aspiring ideas of destruction and revenge. The shepherds of Scythia and Germany had been educated in

the armies of the empire, whose discipline they acquired, and whose weakness they invaded: with the familiar

use of the Latin tongue, they had learned to reverence the name and titles of Rome; and, though incapable of

emulating, they were more inclined to admire, than to abolish, the arts and studies of a brighter period. In the

transient possession of a rich and unresisting capital, the soldiers of Alaric and Genseric were stimulated by

the passions of a victorious army; amidst the wanton indulgence of lust or cruelty, portable wealth was the

object of their search; nor could they derive either pride or pleasure from the unprofitable reflection, that they

had battered to the ground the works of the consuls and Caesars. Their moments were indeed precious; the

Goths evacuated Rome on the sixth, ^21 the Vandals on the fifteenth, day: ^22 and, though it be far more

difficult to build than to destroy, their hasty assault would have made a slight impression on the solid piles of

antiquity. We may remember, that both Alaric and Genseric affected to spare the buildings of the city; that

they subsisted in strength and beauty under the auspicious government of Theodoric; ^23 and that the

momentary resentment of Totila ^24 was disarmed by his own temper and the advice of his friends and

enemies. From these innocent Barbarians, the reproach may be transferred to the Catholics of Rome. The

statues, altars, and houses, of the daemons, were an abomination in their eyes; and in the absolute command

of the city, they might labor with zeal and perseverance to erase the idolatry of their ancestors. The

demolition of the temples in the East ^25 affords to them an example of conduct, and to us an argument of

belief; and it is probable that a portion of guilt or merit may be imputed with justice to the Roman proselytes.

Yet their abhorrence was confined to the monuments of heathen superstition; and the civil structures that

were dedicated to the business or pleasure of society might be preserved without injury or scandal. The

change of religion was accomplished, not by a popular tumult, but by the decrees of the emperors, of the

senate, and of time. Of the Christian hierarchy, the bishops of Rome were commonly the most prudent and

least fanatic; nor can any positive charge be opposed to the meritorious act of saving or converting the

majestic structure of the Pantheon. ^26 ^* [Footnote 20: I take this opportunity of declaring, that in the course

of twelve years, I have forgotten, or renounced, the flight of Odin from Azoph to Sweden, which I never very

seriously believed, (vol. i. p. 283.) The Goths are apparently Germans: but all beyond Caesar and Tacitus is

[Footnote 26: Eodem tempore petiit a Phocate principe templum, quod appellatur Pantheon, in quo fecit

ecclesiam Sanctae Mariae semper Virginis, et omnium martyrum; in qua ecclesiae princeps multa bona

obtulit, (Anastasius vel potius Liber Pontificalis in Bonifacio IV., in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom.

iii. P. i. p. 135.) According to the anonymous writer in Montfaucon, the Pantheon had been vowed by

Agrippa to Cybele and Neptune, and was dedicated by Boniface IV., on the calends of November, to the

[Footnote *: The popes, under the dominion of the emperor and of the exarcha, according to Feas's just

observation, did not possess the power of disposing of the buildings and monuments of the city according to

III. The value of any object that supplies the wants or pleasures of mankind is compounded of its substance

and its form, of the materials and the manufacture. Its price must depend on the number of persons by whom

it may be acquired and used; on the extent of the market; and consequently on the ease or difficulty of remote

exportation, according to the nature of the commodity, its local situation, and the temporary circumstances of

the world. The Barbarian conquerors of Rome usurped in a moment the toil and treasure of successive ages;

but, except the luxuries of immediate consumption, they must view without desire all that could not be

removed from the city in the Gothic wagons or the fleet of the Vandals. ^27 Gold and silver were the first

objects of their avarice; as in every country, and in the smallest compass, they represent the most ample

command of the industry and possessions of mankind. A vase or a statue of those precious metals might

tempt the vanity of some Barbarian chief; but the grosser multitude, regardless of the form, was tenacious

only of the substance; and the melted ingots might be readily divided and stamped into the current coin of the

empire. The less active or less fortunate robbers were reduced to the baser plunder of brass, lead, iron, and

copper: whatever had escaped the Goths and Vandals was pillaged by the Greek tyrants; and the emperor

Constans, in his rapacious visit, stripped the bronze tiles from the roof of the Pantheon. ^28 The edifices of

Rome might be considered as a vast and various mine; the first labor of extracting the materials was already

performed; the metals were purified and cast; the marbles were hewn and polished; and after foreign and

domestic rapine had been satiated, the remains of the city, could a purchaser have been found, were still

venal. The monuments of antiquity had been left naked of their precious ornaments; but the Romans would

demolish with their own hands the arches and walls, if the hope of profit could surpass the cost of the labor

and exportation. If Charlemagne had fixed in Italy the seat of the Western empire, his genius would have

aspired to restore, rather than to violate, the works of the Caesars; but policy confined the French monarch to

the forests of Germany; his taste could be gratified only by destruction; and the new palace of Aix la Chapelle

was decorated with the marbles of Ravenna ^29 and Rome. ^30 Five hundred years after Charlemagne, a king

of Sicily, Robert, the wisest and most liberal sovereign of the age, was supplied with the same materials by

the easy navigation of the Tyber and the sea; and Petrarch sighs an indignant complaint, that the ancient

capital of the world should adorn from her own bowels the slothful luxury of Naples. ^31 But these examples

of plunder or purchase were rare in the darker ages; and the Romans, alone and unenvied, might have applied

to their private or public use the remaining structures of antiquity, if in their present form and situation they

had not been useless in a great measure to the city and its inhabitants. The walls still described the old

circumference, but the city had descended from the seven hills into the Campus Martius; and some of the

noblest monuments which had braved the injuries of time were left in a desert, far remote from the

habitations of mankind. The palaces of the senators were no longer adapted to the manners or fortunes of

their indigent successors: the use of baths ^32 and porticos was forgotten: in the sixth century, the games of

the theatre, amphitheatre, and circus, had been interrupted: some temples were devoted to the prevailing

worship; but the Christian churches preferred the holy figure of the cross; and fashion, or reason, had

distributed after a peculiar model the cells and offices of the cloister. Under the ecclesiastical reign, the

number of these pious foundations was enormously multiplied; and the city was crowded with forty

monasteries of men, twenty of women, and sixty chapters and colleges of canons and priests, ^33 who

aggravated, instead of relieving, the depopulation of the tenth century. But if the forms of ancient architecture

were disregarded by a people insensible of their use and beauty, the plentiful materials were applied to every

call of necessity or superstition; till the fairest columns of the Ionic and Corinthian orders, the richest marbles

of Paros and Numidia, were degraded, perhaps to the support of a convent or a stable. The daily havoc which

is perpetrated by the Turks in the cities of Greece and Asia may afford a melancholy example; and in the

gradual destruction of the monuments of Rome, Sixtus the Fifth may alone be excused for employing the

stones of the Septizonium in the glorious edifice of St. Peter's. ^34 A fragment, a ruin, howsoever mangled or

profaned, may be viewed with pleasure and regret; but the greater part of the marble was deprived of

substance, as well as of place and proportion; it was burnt to lime for the purpose of cement. ^* Since the

arrival of Poggius, the temple of Concord, ^35 and many capital structures, had vanished from his eyes; and

an epigram of the same age expresses a just and pious fear, that the continuance of this practice would finally

annihilate all the monuments of antiquity. ^36 The smallness of their numbers was the sole check on the

demands and depredations of the Romans. The imagination of Petrarch might create the presence of a mighty

people; ^37 and I hesitate to believe, that, even in the fourteenth century, they could be reduced to a

contemptible list of thirtythree thousand inhabitants. From that period to the reign of Leo the Tenth, if they

multiplied to the amount of eightyfive thousand, ^38 the increase of citizens was in some degree pernicious

[Footnote 27: Flaminius Vacca (apud Montfaucon, p. 155, 156. His memoir is likewise printed, p. 21, at the

end of the Roman Antica of Nardini) and several Romans, doctrina graves, were persuaded that the Goths

buried their treasures at Rome, and bequeathed the secret marks filiis nepotibusque. He relates some anedotes

to prove, that in his own time, these places were visited and rifled by the Transalpine pilgrims, the heirs of the

[Footnote 28: Omnia quae erant in aere ad ornatum civitatis deposuit, sed e ecclesiam B. Mariae ad martyres

quae de tegulis aereis cooperta discooperuit, (Anast. in Vitalian. p. 141.) The base and sacrilegious Greek had

not even the poor pretence of plundering a heathen temple, the Pantheon was already a Catholic church.]

[Footnote 29: For the spoils of Ravenna (musiva atque marmora) see the original grant of Pope Adrian I. to

Charlemagne, (Codex Carolin. epist. lxvii. in Muratori, Script. Ital. tom. iii. P. ii. p. 223.)]

[Footnote 30: I shall quote the authentic testimony of the Saxon poet, (A.D. 887 899,) de Rebus gestis

Ad quae marmoreas praestabat Roma columnas, Quasdam praecipuas pul hra Ravenna dedit. De tam

And I shall add from the Chronicle of Sigebert, (Historians of France, tom. v. p. 378,) extruxit etiam

Aquisgrani basilicam plurimae pulchritudinis, ad cujus structuram a Roma et Ravenna columnas et marmora

[Footnote 31: I cannot refuse to transcribe a long passage of Petrarch (Opp. p. 536, 537) in Epistola hortatoria

ad Nicolaum Laurentium; it is so strong and full to the point: Nec pudor aut pietas continuit quominus impii

spoliata Dei templa, occupatas arces, opes publicas, regiones urbis, atque honores magistratuum inter se

divisos; (habeant?) quam una in re, turbulenti ac seditiosi homines et totius reliquae vitae consiliis et

rationibus discordes, inhumani foederis stupenda societate convenirent, in pontes et moenia atque immeritos

lapides desaevirent. Denique post vi vel senio collapsa palatia, quae quondam ingentes tenuerunt viri, post

diruptos arcus triumphales, (unde majores horum forsitan corruerunt,) de ipsius vetustatis ac propriae

impietatis fragminibus vilem quaestum turpi mercimonio captare non puduit. Itaque nunc, heu dolor! heu

scelus indignum! de vestris marmoreis columnis, de liminibus templorum, (ad quae nuper ex orbe toto

concursus devotissimus fiebat,) de imaginibus sepulchrorum sub quibus patrum vestrorum venerabilis civis

(cinis?) erat, ut reliquas sileam, desidiosa Neapolis adornatur. Sic paullatim ruinae ipsae deficiunt. Yet King

[Footnote 32: Yet Charlemagne washed and swam at Aix la Chapelle with a hundred of his courtiers,

(Eginhart, c. 22, p. 108, 109,) and Muratori describes, as late as the year 814, the public baths which were

[Footnote 33: See the Annals of Italy, A.D. 988. For this and the preceding fact, Muratori himself is indebted

[Footnote *: From the quotations in Bunsen's Dissertation, it may be suspected that this slow but continual

[Footnote 35: Porticus aedis Concordiae, quam cum primum ad urbem accessi vidi fere integram opere

marmoreo admodum specioso: Romani postmodum ad calcem aedem totam et porticus partem disjectis

columnis sunt demoliti, (p. 12.) The temple of Concord was therefore not destroyed by a sedition in the xiiith

century, as I have read in a MS. treatise del' Governo civile di Rome, lent me formerly at Rome, and ascribed

(I believe falsely) to the celebrated Gravina. Poggius likewise affirms that the sepulchre of Caecilia Metella

[Footnote 36: Composed by Aeneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II., and published by Mabillon, from a Ms.

Oblectat me, Roma, tuas spectare ruinas: Ex cujus lapsu gloria prisca patet. Sed tuus hic populus muris

defossa vetustis Calcis in obsequium marmora dura coquit. Impia tercentum si sic gens egerit annos Nullum

[Footnote 37: Vagabamur pariter in illa urbe tam magna; quae, cum propter spatium vacua videretur,

[Footnote 38: These states of the population of Rome at different periods are derived from an ingenious

IV. I have reserved for the last, the most potent and forcible cause of destruction, the domestic hostilities of

the Romans themselves. Under the dominion of the Greek and French emperors, the peace of the city was

disturbed by accidental, though frequent, seditions: it is from the decline of the latter, from the beginning of

the tenth century, that we may date the licentiousness of private war, which violated with impunity the laws

of the Code and the Gospel, without respecting the majesty of the absent sovereign, or the presence and

person of the vicar of Christ. In a dark period of five hundred years, Rome was perpetually afflicted by the

sanguinary quarrels of the nobles and the people, the Guelphs and Ghibelines, the Colonna and Ursini; and if

much has escaped the knowledge, and much is unworthy of the notice, of history, I have exposed in the two

preceding chapters the causes and effects of the public disorders. At such a time, when every quarrel was

decided by the sword, and none could trust their lives or properties to the impotence of law, the powerful

citizens were armed for safety, or offence, against the domestic enemies whom they feared or hated. Except

Venice alone, the same dangers and designs were common to all the free republics of Italy; and the nobles

usurped the prerogative of fortifying their houses, and erecting strong towers, ^39 that were capable of

resisting a sudden attack. The cities were filled with these hostile edifices; and the example of Lucca, which

contained three hundred towers; her law, which confined their height to the measure of fourscore feet, may be

extended with suitable latitude to the more opulent and populous states. The first step of the senator

Brancaleone in the establishment of peace and justice, was to demolish (as we have already seen) one

hundred and forty of the towers of Rome; and, in the last days of anarchy and discord, as late as the reign of

Martin the Fifth, fortyfour still stood in one of the thirteen or fourteen regions of the city. To this

mischievous purpose the remains of antiquity were most readily adapted: the temples and arches afforded a

broad and solid basis for the new structures of brick and stone; and we can name the modern turrets that were

raised on the triumphal monuments of Julius Caesar, Titus, and the Antonines. ^40 With some slight

alterations, a theatre, an amphitheatre, a mausoleum, was transformed into a strong and spacious citadel. I

need not repeat, that the mole of Adrian has assumed the title and form of the castle of St. Angelo; ^41 the

Septizonium of Severus was capable of standing against a royal army; ^42 the sepulchre of Metella has sunk

under its outworks; ^43 ^* the theatres of Pompey and Marcellus were occupied by the Savelli and Ursini

families; ^44 and the rough fortress has been gradually softened to the splendor and elegance of an Italian

palace. Even the churches were encompassed with arms and bulwarks, and the military engines on the roof of

St. Peter's were the terror of the Vatican and the scandal of the Christian world. Whatever is fortified will be

attacked; and whatever is attacked may be destroyed. Could the Romans have wrested from the popes the

castle of St. Angelo, they had resolved by a public decree to annihilate that monument of servitude. Every

building of defence was exposed to a siege; and in every siege the arts and engines of destruction were

laboriously employed. After the death of Nicholas the Fourth, Rome, without a sovereign or a senate, was

abandoned six months to the fury of civil war. "The houses," says a cardinal and poet of the times, ^45 "were

crushed by the weight and velocity of enormous stones; ^46 the walls were perforated by the strokes of the

batteringram; the towers were involved in fire and smoke; and the assailants were stimulated by rapine and

revenge." The work was consummated by the tyranny of the laws; and the factions of Italy alternately

exercised a blind and thoughtless vengeance on their adversaries, whose houses and castles they razed to the

ground. ^47 In comparing the days of foreign, with the ages of domestic, hostility, we must pronounce, that

the latter have been far more ruinous to the city; and our opinion is confirmed by the evidence of Petrarch.

"Behold," says the laureate, "the relics of Rome, the image of her pristine greatness! neither time nor the

Barbarian can boast the merit of this stupendous destruction: it was perpetrated by her own citizens, by the

most illustrious of her sons; and your ancestors (he writes to a noble Annabaldi) have done with the

batteringram what the Punic hero could not accomplish with the sword." ^48 The influence of the two last

principles of decay must in some degree be multiplied by each other; since the houses and towers, which

were subverted by civil war, required by a new and perpetual supply from the monuments of antiquity. ^*

[Footnote 39: All the facts that relate to the towers at Rome, and in other free cities of Italy, may be found in

the laborious and entertaining compilation of Muratori, Antiquitates Italiae Medii Aevi, dissertat. xxvi., (tom.

[Footnote 40: As for instance, templum Jani nunc dicitur, turris Centii Frangipanis; et sane Jano impositae

turris lateritiae conspicua hodieque vestigia supersunt, (Montfaucon Diarium Italicum, p. 186.) The

anonymous writer (p. 285) enumerates, arcus Titi, turris Cartularia; arcus Julii Caesaris et Senatorum, turres

[Footnote 41: Hadriani molem . . . . magna ex parte Romanorum injuria . . disturbavit; quod certe funditus

evertissent, si eorum manibus pervia, absumptis grandibus saxis, reliqua moles exstisset, (Poggius de

[Footnote 42: Against the emperor Henry IV., (Muratori, Annali d' Italia, tom. ix. p. 147.)]

[Footnote 43: I must copy an important passage of Montfaucon: Turris ingens rotunda . . . . Caeciliae

Metellae . . . . sepulchrum erat, cujus muri tam solidi, ut spatium perquam minimum intus vacuum supersit; et

Torre di Bove dicitur, a boum capitibus muro inscriptis. Huic sequiori aevo, tempore intestinorum bellorum,

ceu urbecula adjuncta fuit, cujus moenia et turres etiamnum visuntur; ita ut sepulchrum Metellae quasi arx

oppiduli fuerit. Ferventibus in urbe partibus, cum Ursini atque Colum nenses mutuis cladibus perniciem

inferrent civitati, in utriusve partia ditionem cederet magni momenti erat, (p. 142.)]

[Footnote *: This is inaccurately expressed. The sepulchre is still standing See Hobhouse, p. 204. M.]

[Footnote 44: See the testimonies of Donatus, Nardini, and Montfaucon. In the Savelli palace, the remains of

[Footnote 45: James, cardinal of St. George, ad velum aureum, in his metrical life of Pope Celestin V.,

Hoc dixisse sat est, Romam caruisee Senatu Mensibus exactis heu sex; belloque vocatum (vocatos) In scelus,

in socios fraternaque vulnera patres; Tormentis jecisse viros immania saxa; Perfodisse domus trabibus,

fecisse ruinas Ignibus; incensas turres, obscuraque fumo Lumina vicino, quo sit spoliata supellex.]

[Footnote 46: Muratori (Dissertazione sopra le Antiquita Italiane, tom. i. p. 427 431) finds that stone bullets

of two or three hundred pounds' weight were not uncommon; and they are sometimes computed at xii. or

[Footnote 47: The vith law of the Visconti prohibits this common and mischievous practice; and strictly

enjoins, that the houses of banished citizens should be preserved pro communi utilitate, (Gualvancus de la

[Footnote 48: Petrarch thus addresses his friend, who, with shame and tears had shown him the moenia,

lacerae specimen miserable Romae, and declared his own intention of restoring them, (Carmina Latina, l. ii.

Nec te parva manet servatis fama ruinis Quanta quod integrae fuit olim gloria Romae Reliquiae testantur

adhuc; quas longior aetas Frangere non valuit; non vis aut ira cruenti Hostis, ab egregiis franguntur civibus,

[Footnote *: Bunsen has shown that the hostile attacks of the emperor Henry the Fourth, but more particularly

that of Robert Guiscard, who burned down whole districts, inflicted the worst damage on the ancient city Vol.

These general observations may be separately applied to the amphitheatre of Titus, which has obtained the

name of the Coliseum, ^49 either from its magnitude, or from Nero's colossal statue; an edifice, had it been

left to time and nature, which might perhaps have claimed an eternal duration. The curious antiquaries, who

have computed the numbers and seats, are disposed to believe, that above the upper row of stone steps the

amphitheatre was encircled and elevated with several stages of wooden galleries, which were repeatedly

consumed by fire, and restored by the emperors. Whatever was precious, or portable, or profane, the statues

of gods and heroes, and the costly ornaments of sculpture which were cast in brass, or overspread with leaves

of silver and gold, became the first prey of conquest or fanaticism, of the avarice of the Barbarians or the

Christians. In the massy stones of the Coliseum, many holes are discerned; and the two most probable

conjectures represent the various accidents of its decay. These stones were connected by solid links of brass

or iron, nor had the eye of rapine overlooked the value of the baser metals; ^50 the vacant space was

converted into a fair or market; the artisans of the Coliseum are mentioned in an ancient survey; and the

chasms were perforated or enlarged to receive the poles that supported the shops or tents of the mechanic

trades. ^51 Reduced to its naked majesty, the Flavian amphitheatre was contemplated with awe and

admiration by the pilgrims of the North; and their rude enthusiasm broke forth in a sublime proverbial

expression, which is recorded in the eighth century, in the fragments of the venerable Bede: "As long as the

Coliseum stands, Rome shall stand; when the Coliseum falls, Rome will fall; when Rome falls, the world will

fall." ^52 In the modern system of war, a situation commanded by three hills would not be chosen for a

fortress; but the strength of the walls and arches could resist the engines of assault; a numerous garrison

might be lodged in the enclosure; and while one faction occupied the Vatican and the Capitol, the other was

[Footnote 49: The fourth part of the Verona Illustrata of the marquis Maffei professedly treats of

amphitheatres, particularly those of Rome and Verona, of their dimensions, wooden galleries, It is from

magnitude that he derives the name of Colosseum, or Coliseum; since the same appellation was applied to the

amphitheatre of Capua, without the aid of a colossal statue; since that of Nero was erected in the court (in

[Footnote 50: Joseph Maria Suares, a learned bishop, and the author of a history of Praeneste, has composed a

separate dissertation on the seven or eight probable causes of these holes, which has been since reprinted in

the Roman Thesaurus of Sallengre. Montfaucon (Diarium, p. 233) pronounces the rapine of the Barbarians to

Note: Gibbon has followed Donatus, who supposes that a silk manufactory was established in the xiith

century in the Coliseum. The Bandonarii, or Bandererii, were the officers who carried the standards of their

[Footnote 52: Quamdiu stabit Colyseus, stabit et Roma; quando cadet Coly seus, cadet Roma; quando cadet

Roma, cadet et mundus, (Beda in Excerptis seu Collectaneis apud Ducange Glossar. Med. et Infimae

Latinitatis, tom. ii. p. 407, edit. Basil.) This saying must be ascribed to the AngloSaxon pilgrims who visited

Rome before the year 735 the aera of Bede's death; for I do not believe that our venerable monk ever passed

[Footnote 53: I cannot recover, in Muratori's original Lives of the Popes, (Script Rerum Italicarum, tom. iii.

P. i.,) the passage that attests this hostile partition, which must be applied to the end of the xiith or the

Note: "The division is mentioned in Vit. Innocent. Pap. II. ex Cardinale Aragonio, (Script. Rer. Ital. vol. iii.

P. i. p. 435,) and Gibbon might have found frequent other records of it at other dates." Hobhouse's

The abolition at Rome of the ancient games must be understood with some latitude; and the carnival sports,

of the Testacean mount and the Circus Agonalis, ^54 were regulated by the law ^55 or custom of the city.

The senator presided with dignity and pomp to adjudge and distribute the prizes, the gold ring, or the pallium,

^56 as it was styled, of cloth or silk. A tribute on the Jews supplied the annual expense; ^57 and the races, on

foot, on horseback, or in chariots, were ennobled by a tilt and tournament of seventytwo of the Roman

youth. In the year one thousand three hundred and thirtytwo, a bullfeast, after the fashion of the Moors and

Spaniards, was celebrated in the Coliseum itself; and the living manners are painted in a diary of the times.

^58 A convenient order of benches was restored; and a general proclamation, as far as Rimini and Ravenna,

invited the nobles to exercise their skill and courage in this perilous adventure. The Roman ladies were

marshalled in three squadrons, and seated in three balconies, which, on this day, the third of September, were

lined with scarlet cloth. The fair Jacova di Rovere led the matrons from beyond the Tyber, a pure and native

race, who still represent the features and character of antiquity. The remainder of the city was divided as

usual between the Colonna and Ursini: the two factions were proud of the number and beauty of their female

bands: the charms of Savella Ursini are mentioned with praise; and the Colonna regretted the absence of the

youngest of their house, who had sprained her ankle in the garden of Nero's tower. The lots of the champions

were drawn by an old and respectable citizen; and they descended into the arena, or pit, to encounter the wild

bulls, on foot as it should seem, with a single spear. Amidst the crowd, our annalist has selected the names,

colors, and devices, of twenty of the most conspicuous knights. Several of the names are the most illustrious

of Rome and the ecclesiastical state: Malatesta, Polenta, della Valle, Cafarello, Savelli, Capoccio, Conti,

Annibaldi, Altieri, Corsi: the colors were adapted to their taste and situation; the devices are expressive of

hope or despair, and breathe the spirit of gallantry and arms. "I am alone, like the youngest of the Horatii,"

the confidence of an intrepid stranger: "I live disconsolate," a weeping widower: "I burn under the ashes," a

discreet lover: "I adore Lavinia, or Lucretia," the ambiguous declaration of a modern passion: "My faith is as

pure," the motto of a white livery: "Who is stronger than myself?" of a lion's hide: "If am drowned in blood,

what a pleasant death!" the wish of ferocious courage. The pride or prudence of the Ursini restrained them

from the field, which was occupied by three of their hereditary rivals, whose inscriptions denoted the lofty

greatness of the Colonna name: "Though sad, I am strong:" "Strong as I am great:" "If I fall," addressing

himself to the spectators, "you fall with me;" intimating (says the contemporary writer) that while the other

families were the subjects of the Vatican, they alone were the supporters of the Capitol. The combats of the

amphitheatre were dangerous and bloody. Every champion successively encountered a wild bull; and the

victory may be ascribed to the quadrupeds, since no more than eleven were left on the field, with the loss of

nine wounded and eighteen killed on the side of their adversaries. Some of the noblest families might mourn,

but the pomp of the funerals, in the churches of St. John Lateran and St. Maria Maggiore, afforded a second

holiday to the people. Doubtless it was not in such conflicts that the blood of the Romans should have been

shed; yet, in blaming their rashness, we are compelled to applaud their gallantry; and the noble volunteers,

who display their magnificence, and risk their lives, under the balconies of the fair, excite a more generous

sympathy than the thousands of captives and malefactors who were reluctantly dragged to the scene of

[Footnote 54: Although the structure of the circus Agonalis be destroyed, it still retains its form and name,

(Agona, Nagona, Navona;) and the interior space affords a sufficient level for the purpose of racing. But the

Monte Testaceo, that strange pile of broken pottery, seems only adapted for the annual practice of hurling

from top to bottom some wagonloads of live hogs for the diversion of the populace, (Statuta Urbis Romae,

[Footnote 55: See the Statuta Urbis Romae, l. iii. c. 87, 88, 89, p. 185, 186. I have already given an idea of

this municipal code. The races of Nagona and Monte Testaceo are likewise mentioned in the Diary of Peter

Antonius from 1404 to 1417, (Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. xxiv. p. 1124.)]

[Footnote 56: The Pallium, which Menage so foolishly derives from Palmarius, is an easy extension of the

idea and the words, from the robe or cloak, to the materials, and from thence to their application as a prize,

[Footnote 57: For these expenses, the Jews of Rome paid each year 1130 florins, of which the odd thirty

represented the pieces of silver for which Judas had betrayed his Master to their ancestors. There was a

[Footnote 58: This extraordinary bullfeast in the Coliseum is described, from tradition rather than memory,

by Ludovico Buonconte Monaldesco, on the most ancient fragments of Roman annals, (Muratori, Script

Rerum Italicarum, tom. xii. p. 535, 536;) and however fanciful they may seem, they are deeply marked with

[Footnote 59: Muratori has given a separate dissertation (the xxixth) to the games of the Italians in the Middle

This use of the amphitheatre was a rare, perhaps a singular, festival: the demand for the materials was a daily

and continual want which the citizens could gratify without restraint or remorse. In the fourteenth century, a

scandalous act of concord secured to both factions the privilege of extracting stones from the free and

common quarry of the Coliseum; ^60 and Poggius laments, that the greater part of these stones had been

burnt to lime by the folly of the Romans. ^61 To check this abuse, and to prevent the nocturnal crimes that

might be perpetrated in the vast and gloomy recess, Eugenius the Fourth surrounded it with a wall; and, by a

charter long extant, granted both the ground and edifice to the monks of an adjacent convent. ^62 After his

death, the wall was overthrown in a tumult of the people; and had they themselves respected the noblest

monument of their fathers, they might have justified the resolve that it should never be degraded to private

property. The inside was damaged: but in the middle of the sixteenth century, an aera of taste and learning,

the exterior circumference of one thousand six hundred and twelve feet was still entire and inviolate; a triple

elevation of fourscore arches, which rose to the height of one hundred and eight feet. Of the present ruin, the

nephews of Paul the Third are the guilty agents; and every traveller who views the Farnese palace may curse

the sacrilege and luxury of these upstart princes. ^63 A similar reproach is applied to the Barberini; and the

repetition of injury might be dreaded from every reign, till the Coliseum was placed under the safeguard of

religion by the most liberal of the pontiffs, Benedict the Fourteenth, who consecrated a spot which

persecution and fable had stained with the blood of so many Christian martyrs. ^64 [Footnote 60: In a concise

but instructive memoir, the abbe Barthelemy (Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxviii. p. 585)

has mentioned this agreement of the factions of the xivth century de Tiburtino faciendo in the Coliseum, from

[Footnote 61: Coliseum . . . . ob stultitiam Romanorum majori ex parte ad cal cem deletum, says the

indignant Poggius, (p. 17:) but his expression too strong for the present age, must be very tenderly applied to

[Footnote 62: Of the Olivetan monks. Montfaucon (p. 142) affirms this fact from the memorials of Flaminius

Vacca, (No. 72.) They still hoped on some future occasion, to revive and vindicate their grant.]

[Footnote 63: After measuring the priscus amphitheatri gyrus, Montfaucon (p. 142) only adds that it was

entire under Paul III.; tacendo clamat. Muratori (Annali d'Italia, tom. xiv. p. 371) more freely reports the guilt

of the Farnese pope, and the indignation of the Roman people. Against the nephews of Urban VIII. I have no

other evidence than the vulgar saying, "Quod non fecerunt Barbari, fecere Barberini," which was perhaps

[Footnote 64: As an antiquarian and a priest, Montfaucon thus deprecates the ruin of the Coliseum: Quod si

non suopte merito atque pulchritudine dignum fuisset quod improbas arceret manus, indigna res utique in

When Petrarch first gratified his eyes with a view of those monuments, whose scattered fragments so far

surpass the most eloquent descriptions, he was astonished at the supine indifference ^65 of the Romans

themselves; ^66 he was humbled rather than elated by the discovery, that, except his friend Rienzi, and one of

the Colonna, a stranger of the Rhone was more conversant with these antiquities than the nobles and natives

of the metropolis. ^67 The ignorance and credulity of the Romans are elaborately displayed in the old survey

of the city which was composed about the beginning of the thirteenth century; and, without dwelling on the

manifold errors of name and place, the legend of the Capitol ^68 may provoke a smile of contempt and

indignation. "The Capitol," says the anonymous writer, "is so named as being the head of the world; where

the consuls and senators formerly resided for the government of the city and the globe. The strong and lofty

walls were covered with glass and gold, and crowned with a roof of the richest and most curious carving.

Below the citadel stood a palace, of gold for the greatest part, decorated with precious stones, and whose

value might be esteemed at one third of the world itself. The statues of all the provinces were arranged in

order, each with a small bell suspended from its neck; and such was the contrivance of art magic, ^69 that if

the province rebelled against Rome, the statue turned round to that quarter of the heavens, the bell rang, the

prophet of the Capitol repeated the prodigy, and the senate was admonished of the impending danger." A

second example, of less importance, though of equal absurdity, may be drawn from the two marble horses,

led by two naked youths, who have since been transported from the baths of Constantine to the Quirinal hill.

The groundless application of the names of Phidias and Praxiteles may perhaps be excused; but these Grecian

sculptors should not have been removed above four hundred years from the age of Pericles to that of

Tiberius; they should not have been transferred into two philosophers or magicians, whose nakedness was the

symbol of truth or knowledge, who revealed to the emperor his most secret actions; and, after refusing all

pecuniary recompense, solicited the honor of leaving this eternal monument of themselves. ^70 Thus awake

to the power of magic, the Romans were insensible to the beauties of art: no more than five statues were

visible to the eyes of Poggius; and of the multitudes which chance or design had buried under the ruins, the

resurrection was fortunately delayed till a safer and more enlightened age. ^71 The Nile which now adorns

the Vatican, had been explored by some laborers in digging a vineyard near the temple, or convent, of the

Minerva; but the impatient proprietor, who was tormented by some visits of curiosity, restored the

unprofitable marble to its former grave. ^72 The discovery of a statue of Pompey, ten feet in length, was the

occasion of a lawsuit. It had been found under a partition wall: the equitable judge had pronounced, that the

head should be separated from the body to satisfy the claims of the contiguous owners; and the sentence

would have been executed, if the intercession of a cardinal, and the liberality of a pope, had not rescued the

[Footnote 65: Yet the statutes of Rome (l. iii. c. 81, p. 182) impose a fine of 500 aurei on whosoever shall

demolish any ancient edifice, ne ruinis civitas deformetur, et ut antiqua aedificia decorem urbis perpetuo

[Footnote 66: In his first visit to Rome (A.D. 1337. See Memoires sur Petrarque, tom. i. p. 322, Petrarch is

struck mute miraculo rerumtantarum, et stuporis mole obrutus . . . . Praesentia vero, mirum dictu nihil

imminuit: vere major fuit Roma majoresque sunt reliquiae quam rebar. Jam non orbem ab hac urbe domitum,

sed tam sero domitum, miror, (Opp. p. 605, Familiares, ii. 14, Joanni Columnae.)]

[Footnote 67: He excepts and praises the rare knowledge of John Colonna. Qui enim hodie magis ignari

rerum Romanarum, quam Romani cives! Invitus dico, nusquam minus Roma cognoscitur quam Romae.]

[Footnote 68: After the description of the Capitol, he adds, statuae erant quot sunt mundi provinciae; et

habebat quaelibet tintinnabulum ad collum. Et erant ita per magicam artem dispositae, ut quando aliqua regio

Romano Imperio rebellis erat, statim imago illius provinciae vertebat se contra illam; unde tintinnabulum

resonabat quod pendebat ad collum; tuncque vates Capitolii qui erant custodes senatui, He mentions an

example of the Saxons and Suevi, who, after they had been subdued by Agrippa, again rebelled:

tintinnabulum sonuit; sacerdos qui erat in speculo in hebdomada senatoribus nuntiavit: Agrippa marched

[Footnote 69: The same writer affirms, that Virgil captus a Romanis invisibiliter exiit, ivitque Neapolim. A

Roman magician, in the xith century, is introduced by William of Malmsbury, (de Gestis Regum Anglorum,

l. ii. p. 86;) and in the time of Flaminius Vacca (No. 81, 103) it was the vulgar belief that the strangers (the

[Footnote 70: Anonym. p. 289. Montfaucon (p. 191) justly observes, that if Alexander be represented, these

statues cannot be the work of Phidias (Olympiad lxxxiii.) or Praxiteles, (Olympiad civ.,) who lived before

[Footnote 71: William of Malmsbury (l. ii. p. 86, 87) relates a marvellous discovery (A.D. 1046) of Pallas the

son of Evander, who had been slain by Turnus; the perpetual light in his sepulchre, a Latin epitaph, the

corpse, yet entire, of a young giant, the enormous wound in his breast, (pectus perforat ingens,) If this fable

rests on the slightest foundation, we may pity the bodies, as well as the statues, that were exposed to the air in

[Footnote 72: Prope porticum Minervae, statua est recubantis, cujus caput integra effigie tantae magnitudinis,

ut signa omnia excedat. Quidam ad plantandas arbores scrobes faciens detexit. Ad hoc visendum cum plures

in dies magis concurrerent, strepitum adeuentium fastidiumque vertaesus, horti patronus congesta humo texit,

[Footnote 73: See the Memorials of Flaminius Vacca, No. 57, p. 11, 12, at the end of the Roma Antica of

But the clouds of barbarism were gradually dispelled; and the peaceful authority of Martin the Fifth and his

successors restored the ornaments of the city as well as the order of the ecclesiastical state. The

improvements of Rome, since the fifteenth century, have not been the spontaneous produce of freedom and

industry. The first and most natural root of a great city is the labor and populousness of the adjacent country,

which supplies the materials of subsistence, of manufactures, and of foreign trade. But the greater part of the

Campagna of Rome is reduced to a dreary and desolate wilderness: the overgrown estates of the princes and

the clergy are cultivated by the lazy hands of indigent and hopeless vassals; and the scanty harvests are

confined or exported for the benefit of a monopoly. A second and more artificial cause of the growth of a

metropolis is the residence of a monarch, the expense of a luxurious court, and the tributes of dependent

provinces. Those provinces and tributes had been lost in the fall of the empire; and if some streams of the

silver of Peru and the gold of Brazil have been attracted by the Vatican, the revenues of the cardinals, the fees

of office, the oblations of pilgrims and clients, and the remnant of ecclesiastical taxes, afford a poor and

precarious supply, which maintains, however, the idleness of the court and city. The population of Rome, far

below the measure of the great capitals of Europe, does not exceed one hundred and seventy thousand

inhabitants; ^74 and within the spacious enclosure of the walls, the largest portion of the seven hills is

overspread with vineyards and ruins. The beauty and splendor of the modern city may be ascribed to the

abuses of the government, to the influence of superstition. Each reign (the exceptions are rare) has been

marked by the rapid elevation of a new family, enriched by the childish pontiff at the expense of the church

and country. The palaces of these fortunate nephews are the most costly monuments of elegance and

servitude: the perfect arts of architecture, sculpture, and painting, have been prostituted in their service; and

their galleries and gardens are decorated with the most precious works of antiquity, which taste or vanity has

prompted them to collect. The ecclesiastical revenues were more decently employed by the popes themselves

in the pomp of the Catholic worship; but it is superfluous to enumerate their pious foundations of altars,

chapels, and churches, since these lesser stars are eclipsed by the sun of the Vatican, by the dome of St. Peter,

the most glorious structure that ever has been applied to the use of religion. The fame of Julius the Second,

Leo the Tenth, and Sixtus the Fifth, is accompanied by the superior merit of Bramante and Fontana, of

Raphael and Michael Angelo; and the same munificence which had been displayed in palaces and temples

was directed with equal zeal to revive and emulate the labors of antiquity. Prostrate obelisks were raised from

the ground, and erected in the most conspicuous places; of the eleven aqueducts of the Caesars and consuls,

three were restored; the artificial rivers were conducted over a long series of old, or of new arches, to

discharge into marble basins a flood of salubrious and refreshing waters: and the spectator, impatient to

ascend the steps of St. Peter's, is detained by a column of Egyptian granite, which rises between two lofty and

perpetual fountains, to the height of one hundred and twenty feet. The map, the description, the monuments

of ancient Rome, have been elucidated by the diligence of the antiquarian and the student: ^75 and the

footsteps of heroes, the relics, not of superstition, but of empire, are devoutly visited by a new race of

[Footnote 74: In the year 1709, the inhabitants of Rome (without including eight or ten thousand Jews,)

amounted to 138,568 souls, (Labat Voyages en Espagne et en Italie, tom. iii. p. 217, 218.) In 1740, they had

increased to 146,080; and in 1765, I left them, without the Jews 161,899. I am ignorant whether they have

[Footnote 75: The Pere Montfaucon distributes his own observations into twenty days; he should have styled

them weeks, or months, of his visits to the different parts of the city, (Diarium Italicum, c. 8 20, p. 104

301.) That learned Benedictine reviews the topographers of ancient Rome; the first efforts of Blondus,

Fulvius, Martianus, and Faunus, the superior labors of Pyrrhus Ligorius, had his learning been equal to his

labors; the writings of Onuphrius Panvinius, qui omnes obscuravit, and the recent but imperfect books of

Donatus and Nardini. Yet Montfaucon still sighs for a more complete plan and description of the old city,

which must be attained by the three following methods: 1. The measurement of the space and intervals of the

ruins. 2. The study of inscriptions, and the places where they were found. 3. The investigation of all the acts,

charters, diaries of the middle ages, which name any spot or building of Rome. The laborious work, such as

Montfaucon desired, must be promoted by princely or public munificence: but the great modern plan of Nolli

(A.D. 1748) would furnish a solid and accurate basis for the ancient topography of Rome.]

Of these pilgrims, and of every reader, the attention will be excited by a History of the Decline and Fall of the

Roman Empire; the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene in the history of mankind. The various causes

and progressive effects are connected with many of the events most interesting in human annals: the artful

policy of the Caesars, who long maintained the name and image of a free republic; the disorders of military

despotism; the rise, establishment, and sects of Christianity; the foundation of Constantinople; the division of

the monarchy; the invasion and settlements of the Barbarians of Germany and Scythia; the institutions of the

civil law; the character and religion of Mahomet; the temporal sovereignty of the popes; the restoration and

decay of the Western empire of Charlemagne; the crusades of the Latins in the East: the conquests of the

Saracens and Turks; the ruin of the Greek empire; the state and revolutions of Rome in the middle age. The

historian may applaud the importance and variety of his subject; but while he is conscious of his own

imperfections, he must often accuse the deficiency of his materials. It was among the ruins of the Capitol that

I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised near twenty years of my life, and which,

however inadequate to my own wishes, I finally delivered to the curiosity and candor of the public.