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The Historians' History of the World 08 [Parthians, Sassanids and Arabs; The Crusades and the Papacy]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
Электронная книга - «The Historians' History of the World 08 [Parthians, Sassanids and Arabs; The Crusades and the Papacy]». Краткое содержание книги:
Such was Venice when the crusaders put in an appearance. Geoffrey de Villehardouin,g seneschal to the court of Champagne, himself narrates the mission in which he took part. It was a curious sight—that of the feudal lords obliged, kneeling and in tears, to beg the people humbly for ships. “We will grant them; we will grant them,” replied the sovereign people. City of merchants and seamen, Venice could not but sell such a service, and demanded 85,000 marks or 20,230 kilograms of silver, which to-day would be equal to about £161,840 or $809,200, but in those days was worth much more. The knights could not produce such a sum, and in place of cash the Venetians offered to take in payment a hostile city if the crusaders would capture it for them. They had already taken from the Greeks the principal cities of the Dalmatian coast—Spalato, Ragusa, and Sebenico. One alone remained to prevent their complete dominion over the Adriatic—Zara, still occupied by the king of Hungary. In vain did Innocent III thunder against this detour from the crusade; the Venetians got Zara and Doge Dandolo, ninety years old, assumed the cross (1202).
The little account settled, they could go; but whither? The set-backs of the last Crusades showed that it was necessary to have some point of support in order to operate successfully in Palestine, and this point must be either Egypt or the Greek Empire. The Venetians persuaded their allies that the keys of Jerusalem were either at Cairo or Constantinople. There was some truth in this idea, but there was much more commercial interest. The possession of Cairo would give the Venetians the route to India; that of Constantinople would assure them the commerce of the Black Sea and the whole Grecian archipelago. The crusaders decided on Constantinople, whither a young Greek prince, Alexius, offered to lead them provided they would re-establish on the throne his father Isaac Angelus who had been deposed (1203).
The account of the assault on Constantinople, given more fully in the history of the Byzantine Empire, may be briefly sketched here. When the French came in sight of Constantinople, saw its high walls, its innumerable churches whose gilded domes glistened in the sun, and their glances wandered, as Villehardouin says, “over the length and breadth of the city, sovereign of all others, there was none so brave whose heart did not tremble, and each one looked at the arms which he would soon need.” Along the shore there was lined up a magnificent army of sixty thousand men. The crusaders counted on a terrible battle. Barges brought them fully armed to the shore. Before even touching the strand “the knights jumped into the water up to their waists, fully armed, the lance men, the sword bearers, the good archers, and the good sergeants, and the good cross-bowmen. And the Greeks made much pretext to stop them. And when the crusaders came with lowered lances, the Greeks turned their backs and fled, leaving them the shore. And know that nothing more glorious ever took place.” The 18th of July (1203) the city was carried by assault; the old emperor was brought from his cell and put back on the throne. Alexius had made the crusaders the most glowing promises; to keep them he imposed new taxes and so angered the weakened people that they strangled their emperor, set up another, Mourzoufle, and shut the city’s gates. The crusaders attacked at once. Three days sufficed to get them in again (March, 1204); this time they put it to the sack. One whole quarter, a square league of territory, was burned. And what works of art perished! Four hundred thousand marks were collected in a church for distribution.[68]
Then they divided the empire up. Baldwin IV, count of Flanders, was elected emperor of Romania. He won against his opponents, Dandolo and Boniface of Montferrat. The Venetians did not like the idea of seeing their doge on the imperial throne. They took (which pleased them better) a portion of Constantinople with the shore of the Bosporus and the Propontis, and a majority of the Archipelago islands, Candia, etc., and dubbed themselves lords of a quarter and a half of the Eastern Empire. The marquis of Montferrat was elected king of Macedonia; Villehardouin, marshal of Romania, and his nephew, prince of Romania. The count of Blois received the Asiatic provinces. There were dukes of Athens and Naxos, counts of Cephalonia, and lords of Thebes and of Corinth. A new France, with all its feudal customs, arose at the eastern end of Europe. Members of the Comnenus family, however, managed to keep several portions which they divided into principalities—Trebizond, Napoli of Argolis, Epirus and Nicæa. But the crusaders were too few to hold their conquest long. In 1261 this Latin Empire fell to pieces. But, up to the end of the Middle Ages and the conquests of the Turks, there still subsisted in certain parts of Greece remnants of the feudal principalities so strangely established by the French in the ancient land of Miltiades and Leonidas.b
[1204-1261 A.D.]
The establishment of the Latins in Constantinople was the important though unlooked-for issue of the Fifth Crusade; but their dominion lasted only fifty-seven years. The history of that period forms a part of the annals of the Lower Empire, and not of the holy wars. But we may remark, generally, that in a very few years fortune ceased to smile on the conquerors. Their arrogant and encroaching temper awakened the jealousy of the king of Bulgaria. The fierce mountaineers, who had so often insulted the majesty of the Roman Empire, now redeemed themselves from the sin of rebellion, by ceaseless war on the usurpers of their former master’s throne. The change of the Greek ritual into the service of the Latin church, was a subject of perpetual murmur and discontent. The feudal code of the kingdom of Jerusalem was violently imposed on the people, in utter contempt of their manners and opinions. The Greeks, too, were not admitted into any places of confidence in the government, and the nobility gradually retired from Constantinople, and associated themselves with the princes of the deposed royal family. Several of those princes formed states out of the ruins of the empire, and Manuel Palæologus, the emperor of Nicæa, descendant of Lascaris, son-in-law of the usurper Alexius, had the glory of recovering the throne of the Cæsars, and of finally expelling the usurpers from Constantinople. On the Asiatic side of the Bosporus the Latins never had much power.
The jealousy which Genoa entertained of her great rival, Venice, was one of the most active causes of the fall of the Latin Empire. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, commercial concessions had often purchased for Constantinople the military and naval aid of the sovereign of the Adriatic; and at the time of the Fifth Crusade, the empire appeared to acknowledge the equality of the republic. The imperial throne gained the friendship of other Italian princes, and the Pisans as well as the Venetians had almost unlimited commerce with the Grecian states. Each of these allies had its church and its exchange in Constantinople; its consuls decided the causes of their respective citizens, and both nations enjoyed the rare and blessed privilege of exemption from payment of public taxes. In the middle of the twelfth century, Genoa had obtained commercial immunities; but it does not appear that they were so extensive as those which had been acceded to the Venetians and Pisans. When the crusaders captured Constantinople, the commerce of the Black Sea was open to the Venetians, a commerce, which before that event had only been slightly enjoyed by the Italians. The Genoese, alarmed at the maritime progress of the Venetians, took up arms against them; fortune befriended the inferior power, and in the year 1215 a treaty was concluded, whereby the Genoese were confirmed in the commercial privileges which they had enjoyed under the Greek emperor. But the political situation of the Venetians continued a great source of superiority, and their rivals incited and assisted the Greeks to throw off the Latin yoke, and recapture Byzantium.c