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The Historians' History of the World 07 [The History of the Later Roman Empire]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
Электронная книга - «The Historians' History of the World 07 [The History of the Later Roman Empire]». Краткое содержание книги:
BALDWIN II
[1237-1261 A.D.]
In the double victory of Jean de Brienne we 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. 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 five-and-twenty 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.
By such shameful or ruinous expedients he returned to Romania with an army of thirty thousand soldiers, whose numbers were doubled in the apprehension of the Greeks. But the troops and treasures of France melted away in his unskilful hands; and the throne of the Latin emperor was protected by a dishonourable alliance with the Turks and Komans. 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. 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 Philippe, his son and heir, was pawned at Venice as the security of a debt. 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.
THE CROWN OF THORNS
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 honour and their 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 13,134 pieces of gold [£7000 or $35,000] on the credit of the holy crown.
The success of this transaction tempted the Latin emperor to offer, with the same generosity, the remaining furniture of his chapel—a large and authentic portion of the true cross; the baby linen 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.
PROGRESS OF THE GREEKS (1237-1261 A.D.)
[1237-1261 A.D.]
A Thirteenth Century Crusader
The Latins of Constantinople 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 Vatatzes, emperor of Nicæa. 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 honours of the purple; and the humble Demetrius changed the colour 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 Nicæa; and Vatatzes reigned without a competitor from the Turkish borders to the Adriatic Gulf. The princes of Europe honoured his merits 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 Vatatzes, the short and busy reign of Theodore, his son, and the helpless infancy of his grandson John, suspended the restoration of the Greeks.
The young prince was oppressed by the ambition of his guardian and colleague, Michael Palæologus, 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 Nicæa with mockery and contempt. 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.
CONSTANTINOPLE RECOVERED BY THE GREEKS (1261 A.D.)
[1261 A.D.]
Intent in this 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 favourite general, Alexius Strategopulus, whom he had decorated with the title of Cæsar, passed the Hellespont with eight hundred horse and some infantry, on a secret expedition. 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 the chosen detachment. 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 forward, by the assurance that in retreat lay the greatest and most inevitable danger. Whilst the cæsar kept his regulars in firm array, the commons 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 Joannes, the august emperors of the Romans!”