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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
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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. Constantinople was irrecoverably lost; but the Latin emperor and the principal families embarked on board the Venetian galleys and steered for the isle of Eubœa, and afterwards for Italy, where the royal fugitive was entertained by the pope and the 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 Philippe was the heir of an ideal empire; and the pretensions of his daughter Catharine were transported by her marriage to Charles of Valois, the brother of Philippe le Bel, king of France. The house of Courtenai 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.f
TRACES LEFT BY THE FRANK DOMINATION IN THE GREEK EMPIRE
The crusaders had been able to destroy the Byzantine monarchy but were not able to reconstruct it with profit to themselves. They had to combat not only with the Greeks, but all the various people they had helped to emancipate. In fact, their domination only served to awake and fortify Greek patriotism. “They did great good in Byzantium, both to Hellenism and religion; social distinctions were abolished” (Sathas)—if not abolished, at any rate modified.
In the countries that the Latins held longest, as in the Morea, a certain fusion took place between conquerors and conquered. Nicetas, Acropolitas, Pachymeres gave the name of gasmuli to the creole issue of the two races. The French dynasties of Athens and the Morea tended to Hellenism; the princes learned the language of their subjects. Greek stratiota and French cavaliers were treated as on equal footing; they respected the pronoiai of the Hellenic cities as privileged and exempt from the Latin communities. There was a great logothete and a proto officer of Achaia as there had been a grand steward (seneschal) of Romania. In the French schools the Greeks learned afresh the meaning of civic liberty and the dignity of a warrior-landowner.c
It will be necessary now to cast a glance back at the rise of that Greek power which had recovered itself thus effectually after the retirement in 1204 of Theodore Lascaris and his founding of a kingdom in Nicæa.a
FOOTNOTES
[81] One edition of Villehardouinb makes the plunder of Constantinople amount to 500,000 silver marks, equivalent to 24,000,000 francs; if we add to this sum the 50,000 marks due to the Venetians, and deducted before the division, and the part which they had in the division itself, we shall find the total amount of booty 50,400,000 francs [about £2,100,000, or $10,500,000]. As much, says the modern historian who supplies us with this note, perhaps, was appropriated secretly by individuals. The three fires which had consumed more than half the city had destroyed at least as much of its riches, and in the profusion that followed the pillage, the most precious effects had lost so much of their value, that the advantage of the Latins probably was not equivalent to a quarter of what they had cost the Greeks. Thus we may suppose that Constantinople, before the attack, contained 600,000,000 francs of wealth [£25,000,000 or $125,000,000].
[82] [Gibbonf puts the loss at 120.]
[83] [Lavisse and Rambaudc quote his words, “He absolved the debt of the flesh while he was held in prison” (debitum carnis exsolverat dum carcere teneretur). His two daughters inherited Flanders and Hainault.]
[84] [According to Finlayg he “appears to have died about the year 1218.”]
CHAPTER X
THE RESTORATION OF THE GREEK EMPIRE
[1204-1391 A.D.]
THEODORE (I) LASCARIS AND JOANNES VATATZES (1204-1254 A.D.)
[1222-1259 A.D.]
The loss of Constantinople in 1204 had restored a momentary vigour 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, it would not be an easy task to equal the two characters of Theodore Lascaris and Joannes Ducas Vatatzes, who had replanted and upheld the Roman standard in Nicæa 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 Mæander, were surprised by his celerity and subdued by his boldness.
A victorious reign of eighteen years expanded the principality of Nicæa to the magnitude of an empire. The throne of his successor and son-in-law Vatatzes 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 Vatatzes to calculate the risk, to expect the moment, and to insure the success of his ambitious designs. In the decline of the Latins we have briefly exposed the progress of the Greeks, the prudent and gradual advances of a conqueror who, in a reign of thirty-three 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 fall at the first stroke of the axe.
But his interior and peaceful administration is still more deserving of notice and praise. 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. 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 Frederick II; but as the bride had not attained the years of puberty, Vatatzes placed in his solitary bed an Italian damsel of her train, and his amorous weakness bestowed on the concubine the honours, though not the title, of lawful empress. The slaves of the Latins, without law or peace, applauded the happiness of their brethren who had resumed their national freedom; and Vatatzes 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.