HISTORY OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE FROM

A.D. 717 TO 1453

CHAPTER XII.

GREEK EMPIRE OF CONSTANTINOPLE UNDER THE DYNASTY OF PALEOLOGOS, A.D. 1261-1453.

 

Sect. I

MICHAEL VIII, A.D. 1261-1282.

 

 

The conquest of Constantinople restored the Greeks to a dominant position in the East; but the national character of the people, the political constitution of the imperial government, and the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Orthodox Church, were all equally destitute of the enlightened theory and energetic practice necessary for advancing in a career of improvement. The Greek nation made no use of this favourable crisis in its history for developing its material resources, augmenting its moral influence, and increasing its wealth and population. The first idea of the emperor, of the people, of the government, and of the clergy, was to constitute the New Greek Empire of Constantinople on the old standard of that Roman legislation and political orthodoxy which had perished when the Crusaders destroyed the Byzantine Empire. This vain attempt to inspire dead forms with life, impressed on the Greek empire of Constantinople the marks of premature decrepitude. The Emperor Michael, the imperial court, the Orthodox Church, and the Greek nation, suddenly assume the characteristics of a torpid and stubborn old age; and the history of the empire takes the monotonous type which it retained for nearly two centuries, until the Ottoman Turks put an end to its existence. There is little interest, but there is much instruction, in the records of this torpid society, which, while it was visibly declining to the eyes of others, boasted that its wisdom and experience had brought its political government, its civil laws, and its ecclesiastical dogmas, to a state of perfection. Conservatism is constantly deluding the minds of political philosophers with the hope of giving a permanent duration to some cherished virtue in society. It becomes frequently a disease of statesmen in long-established despotisms. The condition of mankind in China and Hindostan has been influenced for many centuries by this delusion of the human mind; and in the first page of this work it was observed that the institutions of imperial Rome displayed the same tendency to fix society in immutable forms and classes by legislative enactments. The same idea now pervaded not only the government and the church of the Greek empire, but was also transfused into the national mind. History offers no other example of a people possessing a rich and noble literature, imbued with sentiments of liberty and truth, turning a deaf ear to the voice of reason, sacrificing all independence of thought, and all desire of improvement, to the maintenance of national pride. The causes of this strange phenomenon appear to have been partly religious bigotry, and partly a wish to maintain political union among the Greek race. The Greeks hated the Catholics with a fervour which obscured their intellectual vision; and they were justly alarmed at the danger which their nation incurred, both from its geographical location and from the power of its enemies, of being broken up into a number of dependent and insignificant states. The opinion that this evil could be averted by the principle of conservatism was generally embraced; and every existing relic of a state of things which had long passed away was carefully preserved. The Greeks gloried in the name of Romans; they clung to the forms of the imperial government without its military power; they retained the Roman code without the systematic administration of justice, and prided themselves on the orthodoxy of a church in which the clergy were deprived of all ecclesiastical independence, and lived in a state of vassalage to the imperial court. Such a society could only wither, though it might wither slowly.

On the other hand, it may perhaps be doubtful whether the state of society would have enabled the Greek nation to revive its national energy, and secure to itself a dominant position in the East, by reforming its central administration according to the actual exigencies of the present, instead of modelling it on theories of the past. The progress of the people required that the system of municipal institutions should be ameliorated and extended, in order to avert the tendency of local interests to produce political separation. But, above all things, it was necessary that the Greeks should voluntarily concede to their own countrymen that religious liberty which the Genoese and the Turks were compelled, by the force of circumstances, to grant to strangers, and allow the Greek Catholics to worship according to their own forms, and to build churches for themselves. To increase the national wealth, it was necessary that commercial freedom should be secured to native merchants, and that the imperial government and the city of Constantinople should be deprived of the power of selling monopolies, or granting exclusive privileges of trade to the Italian republics, in order to purchase political and military assistance. To do all this would have been extremely difficult, for many interests and prejudices would have opposed the necessary reforms.

Michael Paleologos was encamped at Meteorion with the troops he had assembled to form the siege of Constantinople, when a report reached him in the dead of night that the city was taken. At daybreak a courier arrived from Strategopoulos, bringing the ensigns of the imperial dignity, which Baldwin had abandoned in his precipitate retreat. Michael now felt that he was really emperor of the Greeks, and he marched to take possession of the ancient capital of the Christian world with no ordinary hopes; but Byzantine formalism and Greek vanity required so much preparation for every court ceremony that the emperor’s entrance into Constantinople did not take place until the 15th of August. The Archbishop of Cyzicus, bearing one of the pictures of the Virgin said to have been painted by St Luke, of which the orthodox pretend to possess several originals, passed first through the Golden Gate. The emperor followed, clad in a simple dress, and followed by a long procession on foot. After visiting the monastery of Studium, the train proceeded to the palace of Bukoleon, for that of Blachern had been left by the Franks in such a state of filth and dilapidation as to be scarcely habitable. At the great palace the emperor mounted his horse and rode in the usual state to the Church of St Sophia, to perform his devotions in that venerated temple of the Greeks. Alexis Strategopoulos was subsequently permitted to make a triumphal procession through the city, like a Roman conqueror of old; and Michael determined to repeat the ceremony of his own coronation in the capital of what was still called the Roman Empire, at the central shrine of orthodox piety. The Patriarch Arsenics had been removed from office for opposing his usurpation. His successor soon died, and he was now replaced at the head of the church, for his deposition was generally regarded as illegal, and Michael VIII feared to commence his reign in Constantinople by creating a schism in the Greek Church. The well-intentioned but weak-minded Arsenios was persuaded to repeat the ceremony of Michaels coronation in the Church of St Sophia, while the lawful emperor, John IV, was left forgotten and neglected at Nicaea.

Constantinople had fallen greatly in wealth and splendour under the feudal government of the Latins; and it was not destined to recover its former population and rank as the empress of Christian cities under the sway of the family of Paleologos. The capital of the Greek empire was a very different city from the capital of the Byzantine empire. The Crusaders and Venetians had destroyed as well as plundered the ancient Constantinople and the Greek city of the Paleologoi declined so much that it could hardly bear comparison with Genoa and Venice. Before its conquest by the Crusaders, Constantinople had astonished strangers by the splendour of its numerous palaces, monasteries, churches, and hospitals, which had been constructed and adorned during nine centuries of inviolable supremacy. But now, on regaining its liberty, instead of displaying at every step proofs that it concentrated within its walls the wealth of many provinces—instead of containing the richest commercial port and the most industrious population on the globe—it was everywhere encumbered with the rubbish of repeated conflagrations, disfigured by dilapidated palaces, abandoned monasteries, and ruined churches, and inhabited by a diminished, idle, and impoverished people. The blackened ashes of the last fire, by which the Greeks had expelled the Venetians, had not yet been washed from the walls by a winter’s rain. In all directions the squares and porticoes, which had once been the ornaments of the city, were encumbered with filth; for the Franks were ignorant of the police regulations which the Byzantine government had inherited from the earlier Roman emperors, and which it had not allowed to remain entirely without improvement. The state of the city attested the barbarism of the Western nobles, and the insufficiency of the feudal organization to direct the complicated machine of civil administration in accordance with the exigencies of a civilized and motley population.

Michael VIII was eager to efface the marks of foreign domination from the capital of the empire, and to repair the injuries of time; but his plans were injudicious, and his success extremely limited. He aspired to be the second founder of the city of Constantinople, as well as of the Eastern Roman Empire. The nobility of his dominions were invited to inhabit the capital by the gift of places and pensions; traders were attracted by monopolies and privileges. The wealth that ought to have been expended in restoring communications between the dispersed and dissevered portions of the Greek nation, in repairing roads and bridges, was wasted in building palaces and adorning churches in the capital, where they were no longer required for a diminished and impoverished population. Crowds of imperial princes and princesses, Despots and Caesars, officers of state and courtiers, consumed the revenues which ought to have covered the frontier with impregnable fortresses, and maintained a disciplined standing army and a well-exercised fleet. Yet, while lavishing the public revenues to gratify his pride and acquire popularity, he sacrificed the general interests of the middle classes to a selfish and rapacious fiscal policy. All the property within the walls of Constantinople, whether it belonged to Greeks or Latins, was adjudged to the imperial government by the right of conquest; but their ancient possessions were restored to the great families whose power he feared, and to those individuals whose services he wished to secure. Sites for building were then leased to the citizens for a fixed rent; yet the Greek government was so despotic, and Michael was so arbitrary in his administration, that twelve years later he pretended that the concessions he had granted to private individuals were merely acts of personal favour, and he demanded the payment of the rent for the past twelve years, the collection of which he enforced with much severity. Michael used other frauds to bring the property of his subjects into the public treasury, or to deprive them of a portion of the money justly due to them by the state. Under the pretext of changing the type of the gold coinage, and commemorating the recovery of Constantinople by impressing an image of its walls on the byzants, he debased the standard of the mint, and issued coins containing only fifteen parts of gold and nine of alloy. While on one hand he rendered property insecure and impoverished his subjects, he was striving by other arrangements to increase the Greek population of the capital, in order to counterbalance the wealth and influence of foreign traders. Numbers were drawn from the islands of the Archipelago, and a colony of Tzakonians or Lakonians from Monemvasia and the neighbouring districts was settled in the capital, which supplied the imperial fleet with its best sailors. But war, not commerce, was the object of Michael’s care; and while he was endeavouring to increase the means of recruiting his army and navy, he allowed the Genoese to profit by his political errors, and render themselves masters of the commerce of the Black Sea, and of great part of the carrying trade of the Greek empire. In the meantime, the fortifications of Constantinople were repaired; and when Charles of Anjou threatened to invade the East, a second line of wall was added to the fortifications on the land side, and the defences already existing towards the sea were strengthened. The port of Vlanka, anciently called the Theodosian port, was improved by the addition of two new moles, constructed with immense blocks of stone, and it was deepened with great art.

But it was no longer in the power of Michael, nor in the spirit of Greek society, to restore the vigour of the Roman legal administration, which had long been the bulwark of Byzantine society. Foreign conquest and internal revolutions had broken up the central government. Provincial dislocation and individual independence had in many districts proceeded so far that imperial fiscality was more feared than imperial protection was sought. The Greeks of Trebizond and Epirus, and even of Naxos, Athens, and Achaia enjoyed as great a degree of prosperity, and as much security of property, under their local usages or foreign laws, as the Greeks of Constantinople, who pretended to preserve the judicial system of Rome and the code of the Basilika.

Michael VIII fulfilled all the stipulations of the treaty he had concluded with the Genoese. The public property of the republic of Venice was confiscated, and the Genoese were put in possession of the palace previously occupied by the Bailly of the Venetians. This building was immediately pulled down, and the marble of which it was composed was transported to Genoa, in order to be employed in the construction of the Church of St George, where it formed a lasting memorial of this triumph of the republic. In the meantime, the war between Venice and Genoa continued to rage with extreme violence, and in this contest Michael’s interests were deeply involved. When he regained possession of Constantinople, he found that a considerable part of the trading population consisted of Venetians established in the East as permanent colonists. These traders readily transferred their allegiance from the Latin to the Greek emperor; and Michael, who knew the value of such subjects, granted them all legal protection in the pursuit of their commercial occupations, as he did also to the Pisans. But the Genoese, who had hastened to the East in great numbers in order to profit by the overthrow of the domination of the Crusaders and Venetians, considered that the emperor ought to expel every Venetian from his dominions. The democratic state of the Genoese republic at this period increased the insolence of individuals. The merchants who owned and the officers who commanded the Genoese galleys that visited the Greek empire, attacked the Venetians who had taken the oath of allegiance to the Emperor Michael, and plundered their property as if they were enemies. The neutrality of the Greek territory was violated, and the streets of the capital were often a scene of bloodshed by the contests of the hostile republicans. The turbulent conduct of his allies had already created dissatisfaction on the mind of Michael, when their defeat by the Venetians before Monemvasia, and the fall of Baccanegra, who had concluded the treaty of Nymphaeum in 1261 by placing a party adverse to the Greek alliance in power, induced him to doubt the fidelity of their services, and he dismissed sixty Genoese galleys which he had taken into his pay. Charles of Anjou soon after effected the conquest of the kingdom of Naples, and the Genoese government became more anxious to cultivate his friendship than that of the Greek emperor.

The character and conduct of Michael VIII typifies the spirit of Greek society from the recovery of Constantinople to the fall of the empire. It displays a strange ignorance of the value of frankness and honesty in public business, a constant suspicion of every friend, restless intrigues to deceive every ally, and a wavering policy to conciliate every powerful enemy. The consequence of this suspicion, plotting, and weakness was that very soon no one trusted either the emperor or the Greeks. The invasion of Italy by Charles of Anjou, and the pretensions of the Pope to dispose of crowns, alarmed both Venice and Michael, and induced them to forget all former grounds of hostility, and conclude a closer alliance than the Greek emperor had concluded with Genoa, with which he now declared war. This treaty is dated in June 1265, about a month before Charles of Anjou received the crown of the Two Sicilies from the Pope in the Lateran. The stipulations are remarkable both in a political and commercial light. The emperor engaged to expel the Genoese from Constantinople, and not to conclude peace with them except in concert with the republic. The Venetians engaged to hire their galleys to the emperor to serve even against the Pope, the King of France, and Charles of Anjou, as well as against the republics of Genoa, Pisa, and Ancona, and any prince or community that might attack the Greek empire. It is worthy of observation that when the Genoese concluded their alliance with the Greeks, in 1261, they had so far yielded to the public opinion of the West as to insert a clause in the treaty exempting their galleys in the imperial pay from serving against the Pope, the Emperor of Germany, the kings of France, Castile, England, and Sicily, the Prince of Achaia, and several other kings and princes, and yet they had incurred excommunication. The Venetians now engaged to serve even against the Pope, and his vassal, Charles of Anjou; but his Holiness did not venture to excommunicate Venice as lightly as he excommunicated Genoa, its power on the continent of Italy was so much greater. The republic also bound itself to exact an oath from all Crusaders who embarked in Venetian transports, that they would not invade the dominions of Michael VIII.

The articles of the treaty which relate to commerce prove that Roman prejudices and Byzantine pride still induced the diplomatists of Constantinople to view trade as a matter beneath the attention of monarchs. The change already visible in European society, which began to place a larger share of wealth, knowledge, and power in the hands of traders, and which had rendered the merchant-nobles of Venice and the trading citizens of Lombardy a match for the chosen mercenaries of Constantinople and the German chivalry of the house of Hohenstauffen, escaped the notice of Michael and his counsellors. The emperor consequently neglected the commercial interests of the Greeks; and while he made great concessions to foreigners, he only stipulated that his own subjects should have free intercourse with Venice on paying the usual duties, and that they might import and export whatever merchandise they pleased. On the other hand, the Venetians obtained a long series of concessions in their favour, and as these concessions formed the basis of all the commercial treaties concluded by the emperors of Constantinople until the Turkish conquest, and exercised some influence in diminishing the trade of the Greeks and weakening the empire, it is important to notice their extent. The Venetians were exempted from the ordinary control of the revenue officers, and allowed to carry on their commerce under especial privileges, for which, as well as to guard against frauds on the imperial revenue, a separate quarter or a single warehouse, as the exigency require, was granted to them, according to the extent of their trade, in most of the principal ports in his dominions. Within these factories the Venetians were governed by the laws of Venice and their own magistrates. They had full liberty to transport their goods by land as well as by sea to any part of the Greek empire without paying any duty, being only required to furnish the imperial collectors of customs with exact statements of the amount, in order that the duty might be levied from the purchaser. They were also allowed to export grain from the empire until the price at Constantinople rose to fifty byzants for one hundred measures. They had, of course, the right to erect Catholic churches within the precincts of their factories.

The close political alliance which this treaty established between the empire and the republic was not of long duration. The intrigues of Charles of Anjou in Tuscany, where he arrayed Florence and Lucca against Sienna and Pisa, affected the interests of Genoa, and enabled the opposition to gain strength, while the victories of the Venetians, and the overtures of peace which were made to them by Pope Clement IV, appear to have awakened some distrust of his new allies in the suspicious mind of Michael VIII. These circumstances induced the emperor and the republic to conclude a new treaty in 1268, which modified the offensive and defensive stipulations of the earlier treaty with regard to Genoa, the island of Euboea, the principality of Achaia and the duchy of the Archipelago. In the year 1270, a change in the government of Genoa placed the administration in the hands of the families of Doria and Spinola, who were opposed to Charles of Anjou, and a truce was subsequently concluded by the Genoese both with the Byzantine empire and with Venice, while the Greeks and Venetians became engaged in war. Hostilities were nevertheless renewed, until at length, in the year 1275, the Emperor Michael formed a new alliance with the Genoese; but, in order to prevent their making the streets of Constantinople again the scene of their disorders, he obliged them to establish their factory at Heracleia, on the Propontis. Some years later, they were allowed to transfer their settlement to Galata, where they laid the foundation of a colony which soon deprived the Greeks of the greater part of their trade in the Black Sea.

 

The morbid ambition of Michael Paleologos was not satisfied until he was sole emperor. In defiance, therefore, of the repeated oaths by which he had sworn to respect the rights of his ward, his colleague and his sovereign, he availed himself of the first favourable moment to dethrone the unfortunate boy, who had been left neglected at Nicaea. On Christmas-day, 1261, the agents of Michael deprived John IV of his sight, though he had not attained the age of ten, and he was declared to have forfeited the throne. The cruel and perjured emperor then ordered him to be immured in the fort of Dakybiza, where he remained neglected, and almost forgotten, for eight-and-twenty years, when his solitude was broken in upon by Andronicus, the bigoted son of the hypocritical Michael. The conscience of the bigot was uneasy on account of his father’s crimes, of which he was enjoying the fruit; so by a few kind words he easily induced his imprisoned victim to make what was falsely termed a voluntary cession of all his rights to the imperial crown. The evil consequences of this crime were deeply felt in the empire; for the clergy, the nobility, and the people, had all participated in the system of corruption and peculation by which Michael VIII had smoothed the way for his usurpation. The violation of every sentiment of honour, patriotism, and virtue, was so iniquitous, that the public character of the Greek nation was degraded by its obsequiousness on this occasion; and the feelings of the people in the provinces of the east, as well as in Western Europe, avenged the misfortunes of John. Michael Paleologos had hitherto been regarded as a bold, frank, and generous prince; he henceforward showed himself a timid, hypocritical, and cruel tyrant.

The Patriarch Arsenios, who was one of the guardians of the dethroned emperor, considered himself bound to protest against the injustice and perjury of Michael. He convoked an assembly of the prelates resident in Constantinople, and proposed that the reigning emperor should be excommunicated by the synod; but too many of the clergy had been participators in the intrigues of Michael, and were enjoying the rewards of their subserviency, for such a measure to meet with any support. Arsenios, therefore, on his own authority as Patriarch, interdicted Michael from all religious rites; but he did not venture to pronounce the usual form of words, which deprived him of the prayers of the orthodox. The Greek Church, under the Paleologoi, was tainted with the same spirit of half-measures and base tergiversation which marks the imperial administration. The emperor accepted the modified censure of the church as just, and hypocritically requested that his penance might be assigned. By obtaining his dispensation in this manner, he expected that public opinion would render the church an accessary after the fact, while he secured to himself an additional guarantee for the enjoyment of the fruits of his crime. Confident in his power, he punished with cruelty all who ventured to express publicly their compassion for their dethroned emperor.

Though the family of Vatatzes had been unpopular among the nobility, it was beloved by the Asiatic Greeks, and especially by the mountaineers of Bithynia. The people in the vicinity of Nicaea took up arms to avenge John IV, and their insurrection was suppressed with great difficulty. A blind boy, who was found wandering in the neighbourhood, was supposed to be their legitimate sovereign, the victim of Michael’s treachery. The warlike peasantry flew to arms, and rendered themselves masters of the forts and mountain passes. The advance of the imperial troops sent to suppress the revolt was impeded by those famous archers who had previously formed one of the most effective bodies in the emperor’s army. Every ravine was contested, and every advantage dearly purchased. The imperial troops at last subdued the country by adopting the policy by which the Turks extended their conquests. The habitations were destroyed, and the forests were burned down, so that the native population had no means of obtaining subsistence, while the soldiers of Michael became masters of the country, under the cover of their widespread conflagrations. The province was pacified by gaining over the chiefs, pardoning the people, and proving that John IV was a prisoner in Dakybiza. The poor blind boy was then conveyed into the Turkish territory, and no cause of war existed. Many of the mountaineers, whose property was destroyed, still resisted, and, when taken, they were treated with the greatest cruelty. The municipal organization and the privileges of the mountaineers of Bithynia were abolished, and mercenary troops were quartered on the inhabitants. The resources of this flourishing province were ruined, and its population was so diminished that, when the Ottoman Turks attacked the empire, the renowned archers of Bithynia and the mountain militia had ceased to exist.

The change which is visible in the condition of the Asiatic provinces of the empire towards the end of the reign of Michael VIII must be attentively observed. When he mounted the throne, the power of the Seljouk Empire was so broken by the conquests of the Moguls, and the energy of the Greek population was so great, in consequence of the wise government of John III and Theodore II, that the Greeks under the Turkish dominion seemed on the eve of regaining their independence. Azeddin Kaikous II, sultan of Iconium, was an exile; his brother Rokneddin ruled only a small part of the Seljouk Empire of Roum; for Houlagon, the brother of the great khans Mangou and Kublai, possessed the greater part of Asia Minor, and many Turkish tribes lived in a state of independence. The cruelty and rapacity of Michael’s government, and the venality and extortion which he tolerated among the imperial officers and administrators, arrested the progress of the Greek nation, and prepared the way for its rapid decline. The jealousy which Michael showed of all marks of national independence, and the fear he entertained of opposition, are strong characteristics of his policy. His governors in Asia Minor were instructed to weaken the power of the local chiefs, while the fiscal officers were ordered to find pretexts for confiscating the estates of the wealthy. Indeed, all the proprietors of wealth in the mountain districts of Bithynia were deprived of their possessions, and pensioned by the grant of a sum of forty byzants to each, as an annual allowance for subsistence. Both rich and poor, finding that they were plundered with impunity, and that it was vain to seek redress from the emperor, often emigrated with the remains of their property into the Turkish territories. So rapacious was the imperial treasury that the historian Pachymeres, though a courtier, believed that the Emperor Michael systematically weakened the power of the Greek population from his fear of rebellion. The consequence was that the whole country beyond the Sangarius, and the mountains which give rise to the Rhyrdakos and Makestos, was occupied by the Turks, who were often invited by the inhabitants to take possession of the small towns. The communications between Nicaea and Heracleia on the Euxine were interrupted by land; and the cities of Kromna, Amastris, and Tios relapsed into the position of Greek colonies surrounded by a foreign population. Even the valley of the Meander, one of the richest portions of the Greek empire, was invaded; and unfortunately the great possessions of the monasteries and nobles in this fertile district placed it in a similar social condition to that which had facilitated the ravages of the Normans in France under the Carolingians, and in England under the Saxons. Immense wealth invited the invasions of the Turkish nomads, while the population consisted only of monks, or the agents of absent proprietors, and unarmed peasants. When John Paleologos, the emperor’s brother, attempted to expel the Turks from their conquests, he found them already so well fortified in the monasteries of Strobilos and Stradiotrachia that he could not attempt to dislodge them, (A.D. 1266-1268). Perhaps the violent opposition of the monks to Michael’s schemes for uniting the Greek and Latin churches may at last have rendered the emperor indifferent to the fate of the monasteries.

As the reign of Michael VIII advanced, the encroachments of the nomad Turks became more daring. John Paleologos, who had for some time restrained their incursions, was by his brother’s jealousy deprived of all military command; and Andronicus, the emperor’s eldest son, was sent to the frontier as commander-in-chief. In the year 1280 the incapacity of the young prince threw all the imperial provinces open to invasion. Nestongos, who commanded in the city of Nyssa, was defeated and taken prisoner. Nyssa was taken, and the Turks then laid siege to Tralles, which had been recently rebuilt and repeopled. This city contained a population of thirty-six thousand inhabitants, but it was ill supplied both with provisions and water. Yet its inhabitants made a brave defence, and had Andronicus possessed either military talents, activity, or courage, Tralles might have been saved. The Turks at last formed a breach in the walls by sapping, and then carried the city by storm. The inhabitants who escaped the massacre were reduced to slavery.

 

ADVANCE OF THE TURKS

About the time Michael VIII usurped his place on the throne of the Greek empire, a small Turkish tribe made its first appearance in the Seljouk Empire. Othman, who gave his name to this new band of immigrants, is said to have been born in the year 1258, and his father Ertogrul entered the Seljouk Empire as the chief of only four hundred families; yet Orkhan the son of Othman laid the foundations of the institutions and power of the Ottoman Empire. No nation ever increased so rapidly from such small beginnings, and no government ever constituted itself with greater sagacity than the Ottoman; but no force or prudence could have enabled this small tribe of nomads to rise with such rapidity to power, had it not been that the Emperor Michael and the Greek nation were paralysed by political and moral corruption, and both left behind them descendants equally weak and worthless. When history records that Michael Paleologos recovered possession of Constantinople by accident, it ought also to proclaim that, by his deliberate policy, he prepared the way for the ruin of the Greek race and the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks. There is no other instance in history of a nation so numerous, so wealthy, and so civilized, as the Greeks were in the fourteenth century, having been permanently subdued by an enemy so inferior in political and military resources. The circumstance becomes the more disgraceful, as its explanation must be sought in social and moral causes.

The rebellion of his subjects in Asia made Michael anxious to secure peace in Europe. In order to counterbalance the successes of the Despot of Epirus, and dispose him to conclude a treaty, Michael resolved to release the Prince of Achaia, who had been taken prisoner at the battle of Pelagonia in 1259. William Villehardouin, prince of Achaia, was freed, by the destruction of the Latin empire of Romania, from those feudal ties which connected him with the throne of Baldwin II. To obtain his liberty, he consented to become a vassal of the Greek empire, and he re-established the imperial power in the Peloponnesus, by delivering up to Michael the fortresses of Monemvasia, Misithra, and Maina. On swearing fidelity to Michael VIII he was released from captivity, after having remained a prisoner for three years. The Pope, however, was so much alarmed at this example of a Catholic prince becoming a vassal of the Greek emperor, that as soon as the Prince of Achaia was firmly settled in his principality, his Holiness absolved him from all his oaths and obligations to the Greek emperor. Pope Urban IV even went so far as to proclaim a crusade against Michael, and to invite St Louis to take the command; but the King of France, who was much more deeply imbued with the Christian spirit than the Pope, declined the office. The crusade ended in a partisan warfare between the Prince of Achaia and the governors Michael had placed in the fortresses of which he had gained possession in the Peloponnesus.

The conquest of Naples by Charles of Anjou threatened the Greek empire with a new invasion. Under the auspices of Clement IV a treaty was concluded between the dethroned emperor Baldwin, Charles of Anjou, and William, prince of Achaia, by which Baldwin ceded to Charles the suzerainty of Achaia, and the prince agreed to transfer his allegiance from the titular Emperor to the King of Naples, who had already obtained the absolute sovereignty of Corfu, and of the cities of Epirus, given by the Despot Michael II as dowry to his daughter, who married Manfred, king of Sicily. In return, Charles of Anjou engaged to furnish Baldwin with a force of two thousand knights and their followers, to enable him to invade the Greek empire. This treaty was concluded at Viterbo on the 27th of May 1267. Its stipulations alarmed Michael Paleologos, who had already involved himself in ecclesiastical quarrels with his subjects; and in order to delay an attack on Constantinople, he sent an embassy to Pope Clement IV, proposing measures for effecting a union of the Greek and Latin churches. On this occasion Michael was relieved from fear by Conradin’s invasion of the kingdom of Naples, which enabled him to conclude a truce with the Prince of Achaia. He then neglected his overtures to the Pope, and turned all his attention to fitting out a fleet, which he manned with Gasmouls, Tzakonians, and Greeks of the Archipelago. The insincere negotiations of Michael for a union with the Roman church were often renewed under the pressure of fear of invasion from abroad, and dread of insurrection at home. The weakness caused by the opposition of the Greek clergy and people to his authority, encouraged the enterprises of his foreign enemies, while the entangled web of his diplomacy, taking a new form at every change of his personal interests, at last involved him so inextricably in its meshes that he had no means of concealing his bad faith, cruelty, and hypocrisy.

In the year 1271 the treachery of Andronikos Tarchaniotes, the emperor’s nephew, reanimated the war in Thessaly. Having invited the Tartars to invade the empire from the north, he abandoned Mount Haemus, of which he was governor, to their ravages, and fled to John Dukas, prince of Wlakia, his father-in-law, whom he persuaded to invade Thessaly. The emperor sent his brother, John Paleologos, with an army of forty thousand men and a fleet of sixty-three galleys, to re-establish the imperial supremacy. John Dukas was besieged in his capital, Neopatras, and the place was reduced to the last extremity, when the prince passed through the hostile camp in the disguise of a groom, to seek assistance from his Latin allies. Leading a horse by the bridle he walked along, crying out that his master had lost another horse, and would reward the finder. When he reached the plain of the Sperchius he mounted his horse, and gained the territory of the Frank Marquess of Boudonitza. The Duke of Athens furnished him with a band of three hundred knights, and he returned to Neopatras with such celerity that he surprised the imperial camp, and completely dispersed the army. John Paleologos escaped to Demetriades (Volo), where his fleet was stationed. A squadron composed of Venetian ships, and galleys of the Duke of Naxos and of the Barons of Negropont, was watching the imperial fleet. On hearing of the total defeat of the army they attacked the admiral Alexios Philanthropenos in the port, and were on the point of carrying the whole Greek fleet by boarding, when John Paleologos reached the scene of action with a part of the fugitive troops. He immediately conveyed a large body of soldiers to the ships, and reanimated the sailors. The Latins were compelled to retire with the loss of some of their own ships, but they succeeded in carrying off* several of the Greek galleys.

In the following year the imperial fleet, under the command of Zacharia, the Genoese segneur of Thasos, defeated the Franks near Oreos in Euboea, and took John de la Roche, duke of Athens, prisoner. But, on the other hand, John Dukas again routed the army in Thessaly, and by his activity and military skill rendered himself the most redoubted enemy of Michael; so that, when the majority of the Greek population declared openly against the emperor’s project for a union with the Latin church, the Prince of Vallachian Thessaly became the champion of the orthodox church, and assembled a synod which excommunicated Michael VIII. (AD 1277).

In the year 1278 Charles of Anjou would in all probability have besieged Constantinople, had he not been prevented by the express commands of his suzerain. Pope Nicholas III, who was gained over by Michael’s submission to expect the immediate union of the Greek with the Papal church,. But the elevation of Martin IV to the See of Rome changed its policy. The Emperor Michael was excommunicated, and, to render the excommunication more insulting, he was reproached with persecuting the Greeks who consistently abstained from his own delusive compliances. Michael revenged himself by ceasing to pray for the Pope in the Eastern churches. A league was now formed between the Pope, the King of Naples, and the republic of Venice, for the conquest of the Greek empire, and a treaty was signed at Orvietto on the 3d July 1281. The danger was serious. Charles of Anjou promised to furnish eight thousand cavalry, and the Venetians engaged to arm forty galleys, in order to commence operations in the spring of 1283. In the meantime a body of troops, under the command of Solimon Rossi, was despatched to occupy Dyrrachium and assist the Albanians, who had recently revolted against Michael. This expedition proved unsuccessful; Rossi was taken prisoner while besieging Belgrade (Berat), and the Neapolitans and Albanians were completely defeated. But the Greek emperor could only intrigue to avert the great storm with which he was threatened by the treaty of Orvieto, and in the end he was saved by the deeds of others. The Sicilian Vespers delivered the Greeks from all further fear of Charles of Anjou and of a French invasion, and Michael was able to smile at the impotent rage of Martin IV, and despise his excommunications.

 

AFFAIRS OF BULGARIA

 

The vicinity of the Bulgarians, joined to their national power and influence over the numbers of their countrymen settled in the Greek empire, gave Michael some uneasiness at the commencement of his reign. Constantine, king of Bulgaria, had married a sister of the dethroned Emperor John IV, and he was induced, by the feelings of his wife, by the intrigues of the fugitive Sultan of Iconium, and by the hopes of assistance from the Mogul emperor, Houlagon, to attack the Greek empire. Michael took the field against the Bulgarians, and in the year 1265 drove them beyond Mount Haemus; but as he was returning to Constantinople he had nearly fallen into the hands of a body of Bulgarian and Tartar cavalry, through the treachery of Kaikous, the fugitive Sultan of Iconium, who had informed the enemy of his movements. Constantine, king of Bulgaria, having lost his wife Irene Lascaris, married Maria, the second daughter of Michael’s sister Eulogia, and the emperor promised to cede Mesembria and Anchialos to Bulgaria as the dowry of his niece. But this promise was given in the year 1272, when the danger of Charles of Anjou invading the empire appeared imminent. As soon, therefore, as the influence of the Pope and the crusade of St Louis to Tunis had secured Michael from all fear, with his usual treachery he found a pretext for declining to fulfil his promise. A treaty which the emperor concluded with a powerful Tartar chief named Nogay, and civil dissension among the Bulgarians, relieved Michael from all serious danger on his northern frontier during the remainder of his reign.

The affairs of Servia, also, gave the emperor very little trouble.

The period of Greek history embraced in the present chapter of this work, extending through the century and a-half during which the empire of Constantinople was ruled with despotic sway by the dynasty of Paleologos, is the most degrading portion of the national annals. Literary taste, political honesty, patriotic feeling, military honour, civil liberty, and judicial purity, seem all to have abandoned the Greek race, and public opinion would, in all probability, have had no existence—it would certainly have found no mode of expression—had not the Greek church placed itself in opposition to the imperial government, and awakened in the breasts of the Greek people a spirit of partisanship on ecclesiastical questions, which prepared the way for the open expression of the popular will, if not for the actual formation of public opinion. The church was converted into an arena where political and social discontent of every kind arrayed their forces under the banners of orthodoxy, heresy, or schism, as accident or passion might determine. In spite of the mental torpidity of the Greeks, during this period, the church is full of heresy and schism. Yet, strange to say, no political, moral, or religious improvements resulted from the innumerable discussions and disputes which formed the principal occupation of the Constantinopolitan Greeks for a hundred and fifty years. The cause of this is evident; the right of exercising private judgment, both in political and ecclesiastical affairs, was denied to the Greeks: they might range them as partisans of Barlaam or Palamas; they might believe that the mind perceived a divine light when the eyes remained long fixed on the stomach; and they might dispute concerning the essence and the active energy of the Divinity, but they dared not introduce common sense and truth to influence the decision of the point at issue. Public discussion being prohibited, no real public opinion could be formed in the nation. Each different section of the people only heard the opinions of its own leaders, and formed its ideas of the doctrines of its opponents from their misrepresentations. Instead of some general convictions, which ought to have been impressed on the mind of every Greek, what appeared to be public opinion was nothing but the temporary expression of the popular will, uttered in moments of excitement and passion.

Such was the mental condition of the Greeks from the recovery of Constantinople until its conquest by the Ottomans. Justice was dormant in the state; Christianity was torpid in the church. Orthodoxy performed the duties of civil liberty, and the priesthood became the focus of political opposition. Financial oppression was often local; judicial iniquities affected a small number, and national feelings were unconnected with material interests. Ecclesiastical formulas and religious doctrines were the only facts with which the Greek people were generally acquainted, and on which every man felt called upon to pronounce an opinion. The mob of Constantinople had once made the colours of the jockey-clubs of the hippodrome a bond of party union; the Greek nation now made theology a medium for expressing its defiance of the emperor, and its hatred of the imperial administration. This fact sufficiently explains how matters in themselves not very intelligible to ordinary intellects acquired a real political importance, and questions apparently little calculated to excite popular interest drew forth the liveliest expressions of sympathy. We understand why the Greeks, who showed little national energy in defending their political independence against the Crusaders and the Turks, displayed the greatest enthusiasm in defending their church against their own emperors and patriarchs, as well as against the Pope. The social organization of the Greeks has its seat at the family hearth, and the nation has only moved in a body when some individual impulse has animated every rank of society.

The anxiety of the Emperor Michael VIII to be relieved from the ecclesiastical censures pronounced by the Patriarch Arsenios against him, for his treachery to his pupil and sovereign John IV, was the commencement of his disputes with the Greek Church, and of his negotiations with the Popes. Michael solicited the Patriarch to impose some penance on him which might expiate his crime, but Arsenios could suggest nothing but reparation. The emperor considered this tantamount to a sentence of dethronement, and he determined to depose Arsenios. The Patriarch was accused before a synod of having omitted a prayer for the emperor in performing the church service, of having allowed the exiled Sultan of Iconium, Kaikous, to join in the celebration of divine service on Easter Sunday, and of allowing the sultan’s children to receive the holy communion from the hands of his chaplain without any proof that they were Christians. To these accusations Arsenios replied, that he only omitted one prayer for the emperor and used another, and that he had treated the sultan and his children as Christians, because he had been assured by the Bishop of Pisidia that they had received baptism. While this synod was pursuing its inquiry, the Emperor Michael attempted to gain his object by one of the diplomatic tricks to which he was strangely attached; but his subterfuge was detected, and he received a rebuke from the Patriarch which inflamed his animosity. When the Patriarch was proceeding to the Church of St Sophia the Emperor joined him, having previously sent forward an order to the clergy to commence high mass the moment the Patriarch should enter. On approaching the door of the cathedral the Emperor laid hold of the Patriarch’s robe, in order to enter the church as if he had received absolution; but Arsenics hastily withdrew his robe from Michael’s hand, and exclaimed, “It was an unbecoming trick; could you expect to deceive God, and obtain pardon by fraud?”. This scene, acted in public, in the vestibule of St Sophia’s, left no further hope of reconciliation. Arsenios was deposed, and exiled to Proconnesus. Germanos, the bishop of Adrianople, a mild and learned prelate, was named his successor.

Even in his banishment Arsenios was considered to be the lawful Patriarch by the majority of the orthodox, and he was visited by thousands who were anxious to hear his words and receive his blessing. The emperor was eager to punish him, but his popularity rendered it dangerous to attempt doing so in an arbitrary way. A conspiracy was discovered against the emperor’s life, and some of the accused, when put to the torture, declared that Arsenios was implicated in the plot. The examination of the affair was remitted to a synod, which gratified the emperor by excommunicating Arsenios without waiting for his conviction. Four deputies were despatched to Proconnesus, to communicate this sentence to the deposed Patriarch, and to examine him on the accusation. Of these the historian Pachymeres, then an ecclesiastical official in the patriarchate, was one. As soon as the deputation entered on business, Arsenios interrupted the speaker with great warmth, saying, “What have I done to the emperor to be thus persecuted? I found him in a private station; I crowned him emperor, and he has rewarded me by driving me from the patriarchal palace to a rock where I live on common charity!” He then spoke of the new Patriarch as a “phratriarc” and glanced at his blessing (eulogia) as being rather temporal than spiritual This was an allusion to the emperor’s sister Eulogia, the protectress of Germanos, to whose influence over her brother Arsenios attributed the cruel treatment of John IV. The deputies then began to read the sentence of excommunication, but Arsenios rose from his seat, covered his ears with his hands, and walked about the room mumbling what we must suppose to have been prayers. The deputies followed, raising their voices as they walked. Arsenios then interrupted them in a passion, calling Heaven to witness that he was treated with injustice; but when the deputies threatened him with the Divine vengeance for despising the deputies of the church, he grew calmer, and said, with more moderation, “It seems I am accused of having made my patriarchal duties the means of conspiring against the emperor's life. The accusation is false. He has left me to die of hunger, but I have never ceased to pray for him.” But his whole discourse was filled with bitterness against Michael, and he made no scruple of condemning his usurpation.

The deputies, having executed their commission, sailed for Constantinople, but a storm overtook them, and they were in danger of shipwreck. They attributed their danger to the circumstance of their having sailed from Proconnesus without asking the blessing of Arsenios, whom all appear to have considered as the true Patriarch. Pachymeres relates that each of the deputies owned afterwards that he was anxious at parting to obtain the blessing of Arsenios, but was afraid of rendering himself an object of suspicion and persecution at court. The report of the deputies induced Germanos to intercede for his predecessor. Arsenios was absolved from the accusation, and a pension of three hundred byzants was allowed him for his subsistence, granted from the privy purse of the empress—for it was believed that Arsenios would accept nothing from the excommunicated emperor.

The courtiers of Michael were as active in their intrigues as the emperor. A party in the church declared that the election of Germanos was invalid, for he had been removed from the See of Adrianople in violation of the canon which prohibits the translation of a bishop from one see to another. The emperor’s confessor, Joseph, pronounced that the new Patriarch could not grant a legal absolution to the emperor, in consequence of this defect in his title to the patriarchal throne. Germanos soon perceived that both Michael and Joseph were encouraging opposition to his authority. He immediately resigned, and Joseph was named his successor. The emperor received his absolution as a matter of course. The ceremony was performed at the gates of St Sophia’s. Michael, kneeling at the Patriarch’s feet, made his confession, and implored pardon. The Patriarch read the form of absolution. This form was repeated by every bishop in succession, and the emperor knelt before each in turn and received his pardon. He was then admitted into the church, and partook of the Holy Communion. By this idle and pompous ceremony the Greeks believed that their church could pardon perjury and legitimatize usurpation.

About this time the treaty of Viterbo drew the attention of Michael from the schism of the Arsenites to foreign policy, and his grand object being to detach the Pope from the alliance with Charles of Anjou, he began to form intrigues, by means of which he hoped to delude the Pope into the persuasion that he was anxious and able to establish papal supremacy in the Greek Church; while, on the other hand, he expected to cheat the Eastern clergy into making those concessions which he considered necessary for the success of his plans, on the ground that their compliance was a mere matter of diplomacy. Gregory X knew that it would be easier to effect the union of the Greek and Latin Churches by the instrumentality of a Greek emperor than of a foreign conqueror. He therefore prohibited Charles of Anjou, who held the crown of Naples as his vassal, from invading the empire; but he forced Michael, by fear of invasion, to assemble a synod at Constantinople, in which, by cruelty and violence, the emperor succeeded in obtaining an acknowledgment of the papal supremacy. The severest persecution was necessary to compel the Greeks to sign the articles of union, and many families emigrated to Vallachian Thessaly and to the empire of Trebizond.

The union of the Greek and Latin Churches was completed in the year 1274 at the Council of Lyons. On the 6th of July, at the fourth session of the Council, Germanos, who had resigned the patriarchal throne, George Acropolita the historian, and some other Greek clergy and nobles, presented themselves and repeated the creed in the Latin form, with the addition of the words, “proceeding from the father and the son”. They then swore to conform to the faith of the Roman Church, to pay obedience to its orders, and to recognize the supremacy of the Pope,—Acropolita, as grand logothetes, repeating the oaths in the name of the Emperor Michael. When the news of this submission reached Constantinople there was a general expression of indignation. The Patriarch Joseph, who opposed the union, was deposed, and Vekkos, an ecclesiastic of eminence, who had recently become a convert to the Latin creed, was named in his place. The schisms in the Greek Church were now multiplied, for Joseph, became the head of a new party. Vekkos, however, assembled a synod, and excommunicated those members of the Greek clergy who refused to recognize the Pope as the head of the Church of Christ. Nicephorus, despot of Epirus, and his brother, John Dukas, the prince of Wlakia, protected the orthodox. Both were excommunicated; and the emperor sent an army against John Dukas, whose position in Thessaly threatened the tranquillity of Macedonia; but the imperial officers and troops showed no activity in a cause which they considered treason to their religion, and many of the emperor’s own relations deserted.

By a series of intrigues, tergiversation, meanness, and cruelty, Michael succeeded in gaining his immediate object. Nicholas III, who ascended the papal throne in 1277, formally refused Charles of Anjou permission to invade the Greek empire, and sent four nuncios to Constantinople to complete the union of the churches. The papal instructions are curious as an exposition of the political views of the Court of Rome, and display astute diplomacy, acting at the suggestions of grasping ambition, but blinded by ecclesiastical bigotry. The first object was to induce all the dignitaries of the Greek Church to sign the Roman formulary of doctrine, and to persuade them to accept absolution for having lived separate from the Roman communion; the second, to prevail on the emperor to receive a cardinal legate at Constantinople. Before the arrival of the Pope’s ambassadors, the arbitrary conduct of Michael had involved him in a quarrel with his new patriarch, Vekkos, whom he was on the point of deposing. All Michael’s talents for intrigue were called into requisition, to prevent the Greek clergy from breaking out into open rebellion during the stay of the Pope’s ambassadors, and conceal the state of his relations with Vekkos, who stood high at the Court of Rome. Bribes, cajolery, and meanness on his part, and selfishness and subserviency on the part of the Eastern clergy, enabled him to succeed. But the death of Nicholas III in 1280 rendered his intrigues unavailing. Martin IV, a Frenchman, devoted to the interests of Charles of Anjou, became Pope. He openly displayed his hatred of the Greeks, and excommunicated Michael as a hypocrite, who concealed his heresy. While Martin IV openly negotiated the treaty of Orvieto, Michael secretly aided the conspiracy of Procida. The condition of the Greek emperor was almost desperate. He was universally detested for his exactions and persecutions, and a numerous and bigoted party was ready to make any foreign attack the signal for a domestic revolution. The storm was about to burst on Michael’s head, when the fearful tragedy of the Sicilian Vespers broke the power of Charles of Anjou.

Michael then quitted his capital to punish John Dukas, whom he considered almost as a rival; but death arrested his progress at Pachomion, near Lysimachia in Thrace, on the 11th December 1282, after a reign of twenty-four years. He was a type of the Constantinopolitan Greek nobles and officials in the empire he re-established and transmitted to his descendants. He was selfish, hypocritical, able and accomplished, an in-born liar, vain, meddling, ambitious, cruel, and rapacious. He is renowned in history as the restorer of the Eastern Empire; he ought to be execrated as the corrupter of the Greek race, for his reign affords a signal example of the extent to which a nation may be degraded by the misconduct of its sovereign, when it intrusts him with despotic power.

 

Sect. II

REIGN OF ANDRONICUS II, A.D. 1282-1828.

 

Andronicus the Second ascended the throne at the age of twenty-four, having been born about the time his father received the imperial crown at Nicaea. He had most of the defects of his father’s character, without his personal dignity and military talents. In youth he was destitute of vigour, in old age of prudence. His administration was marked by the same habits of cunning and falsehood which had distinguished his father’s conduct; and the consequence was, that, towards the end of his long reign, he was as generally despised as his father had been hated. In his private character he was arbitrary, peevish, and religious; in his public administration despotic, fond of meddling industrious and inconsequent. Every evil that had taken root during Michael’s reign extended itself through his incapacity, for, though always engaged with public affairs, he could neither transact business himself with due promptitude, nor would he allow his ministers to perform the duties he neglected. He was personally frugal, but he ruined the Greek empire by increasing the expenditure of the court, and rendering offices and pensions the only objects of Greek ambition.

The ecclesiastical policy of Andronicus was as arbitrary and tyrannical as Michael’s, but his religious opinions were sincerely and strictly orthodox. To him the addition to the creed and the use of unleavened bread in the communion were matters touching man’s salvation; he was therefore eager to destroy his father’s work. The court, headed by the emperor’s aunt Eulogia, instead of weeping for the death of Michael, wept only that his soul was in danger of eternal perdition; and the clergy attacked his memory before his remains were committed to the earth. Andronicus, eager to efface the stain of his own sinful compliance with the union of the churches, allowed the body of his father to be deprived of the usual funeral honours and public prayers. The Empress Michael’s widow was compelled to abjure the union, and to approve of the indignities to his memory, before her own name was inserted in the public prayers for the imperial family. The Patriarch Vekkos was forced to resign, and his predecessor Joseph was reinstated on the patriarchal throne.

It is necessary to give some account of the ecclesiastical disputes and clerical intrigues in the Greek Church at this period, as they were for many years the principal object of the emperor’s attention and the central pivot of his policy. The restoration of Joseph introduced additional troubles and abuses into the Greek Church, which was already distracted by schisms. Yet even in its confused and corrupted state, the Greeks looked up to their ecclesiastical establishment as their guiding institution through the misconduct of the civil government and the defects of the judicial administration. It has been already noticed that the administrative and judicial authority of the bishops increased greatly after the conquest of Constantinople by the Crusaders. Theodore II had viewed the increase of their authority with distrust, but Michael VIII had favoured their assumption of administrative power, as he found he could easily fill the church with prelates subservient to his will; while the nobles and local magistrates began in every distant province to display feelings of feudal independence which they had imbibed from their intercourse with the Western nations. Andronicus II found the prelates in possession of great judicial power: they were the judges as well as the priests of the Greek nation. We need therefore feel no surprise at finding the clergy commanding the people and synods assuming the characteristics of national assemblies. The vice of the system was that the clergy was an irresponsible body as far as their civil duties were concerned, and the bishops had interests different from the people even in matters of law and justice. Their power consequently followed the usual course of all irresponsible institutions. As it was founded on what was deemed an indisputable and sacred right, it admitted of no improvement, nor of any reform, so that, according to an invariable law of man’s corrupt nature, its immutability soon filled it with abuses. Of these, simony was the most prominent. The political condition which society assumed in the Greek empire of Constantinople, under this exorbitant influence of the church, was one of corruption and decline. It deserves to be contrasted with the vigorous impulse which popular action displayed in the Byzantine Empire under the Iconoclast emperors, when the civil power and the legal administration disputed for their independence against the efforts of the Orthodox Church to enslave society. The uncontested supremacy of the clergy has ever been a political evil of fearful magnitude.

The bigotry of Andronicus induced him to sanction the establishment of a tribunal, consisting chiefly of monks, which was empowered to fix the penance to be performed by those who desired to obtain absolution from a general sentence of excommunication, launched against all who had communicated with the Latin Church. As nearly the whole population of the empire had fallen under this sentence of excommunication, the power of the tribunal was unlimited. The rich were mulcted according to the sensibility of their consciences and the malice of their enemies, while ecclesiastics obnoxious to the bigots were suspended from the exercise of their functions. The facility with which Michael VIII had persuaded the majority of the Orthodox Church to adopt the heterodox doctrines of union and charity, persuaded the hyperorthodox that violent measures were required to guard against any future reaction. It was determined to make the deposed Patriarch Vekkos the scapegoat of the church. A synod was assembled, in which he was condemned; but this synod was so notoriously under the influence of fanatical monks, that Theoktistos, the bishop of Adrianople, sarcastically observed,” It seems the bishops are to be used as wooden spits to roast Vekkos; and when the dish is served they will be thrown into the fire to make a blaze”. Vekkos, however, was not more inclined to seek the crown of martyrdom than his contemporaries in the Greek Church. He signed a written renunciation of the patriarchate and an orthodox profession of faith.

The Patriarch Joseph had a short period of triumph; he died in 1283. The partisans of Arsenios, who had never recognized any subsequent election, now claimed the church as being alone orthodox. The emperor so far acknowledged their pretensions as to put them in possession of the great church of All-Saints, which, having remained closed ever since the reconquest of Constantinople, on account of the diminished numbers of the Greek population, had escaped profanation by the Josephites and the Unionists. The Emperor Andronicus selected a layman of considerable learning, George of Cyprus, to be the new Patriarch, who received his consecration from the Bishop of Debron, a prelate who had taken no part in the ecclesiastical disputes which followed the deposition of Arsenios. George of Cyprus assumed the name of Gregorios as Patriarch. The bigoted party now gained the ascendancy. A council was held in the church of Blachern; all the bishops who had advocated papal supremacy were expelled from their sees, and many were imprisoned. The partisans of Arsenios and Joseph were then left alone to contend for absolute power in the church, and an immediate collision ensued. The violence of the Arsenites alarmed both the emperor and the patriarch; they were led on by Andronikos, the Bishop of Sardes, and supported by the monks and the people.

The emperor was unable to decide between the disputants; and in order to settle his own opinions, as well as those of his subjects, he ordered a council of the Greek Church to assemble at Adramyttum. The whole attention of the imperial administration was directed to the business of this assembly. An army of monks marched to attend its meetings; for, in the Greek empire at that period, monks were almost as numerous an element of the population as the military now are in the empires of France, Austria, and Russia. To preserve order, the government found it necessary to issue regular rations to these ecclesiastical troops, among whom were crowds of blind and mutilated victims of the persecutions of the late emperor. Incidental disputes soon rendered all agreement among the members of the assembly impossible; and at last both parties consented to remit the decision to the judgment of God. They expected Heaven to pronounce whether the Arsenites or Josephites were most worthy to rule the Greek Church, and to reveal its sentence by a miracle. Two scrolls, inscribed with the adverse opinions, were cast into the flames in presence of the assembled clergy, and both were instantly reduced to ashes. The emperor and the people were satisfied; and the Arsenites, feeling themselves condemned, consented to receive the communion from the hands of the Patriarch Gregorios. Next day, however, their murmurs revived, and they recommenced their intrigues. The emperor summoned their leaders to his presence, and asked them if they recognized Gregorios as lawful Patriarch; which they were compelled to admit that they did, as they had communicated with him the day before. Gregorios, who was concealed to overhear their admission, then entered the room, and, after upbraiding them for their intrigues, pronounced an excommunication against all who should venture to disobey his orders. This trick awakened new passions. The Divine condemnation of their disputes was forgotten by both parties, and the ecclesiastical warfare recommenced with redoubled violence.

Andronikos, bishop of Sardes, the emperor’s confessor, though the leader of the Arsenites, had contrived to remain at Constantinople, where he awaited the deposition of Gregorios, whose place he expected to occupy. He had quitted the cloister to intrigue at court. He was now accused of treasonable discourse, and degraded from the episcopal rank. When he was brought up to receive his sentence, one of the bishops, expelled from his see by the council of Blachern, dropped a monk’s cowl on his head. The deposed bishop seized it with such vivacity that, in throwing it away, he pulled off his skull-cap, and left his head bare. The people, who were in the habit of attending every ecclesiastical assembly as a species of public amusement, enjoyed the comic scene, and shouted, in allusion to his intrigues, that Andronikos had now his head ready for the patriarchal crown.

The emperor, who could never follow any line of conduct steadily, again revived the spirit of the Arsenites, by allowing them to transport the body of Arsenios from Cyzicus to Constantinople, while, at the same time, he determined to allow Vekkos an impartial hearing. A new council was assembled at Blachern, A. D. 1284. Vekkos could neither moderate his presumption nor conceal his envy, and his defence degenerated into a virulent attack on the Patriarch Gregorios, which disgusted everybody; and he was sent back to his exile at Brusa.

The Patriarch Gregorios, who was as fond of polemics as Vekkos, and as proud of his eloquence, indulged his taste, until one of his tracts was condemned as heterodox, which compelled him to resign in 1289.

Athanasios, a hermit of the most rigid principles, was raised to the patriarchal throne that he might reform the church, and he retained at court all the inflexibility of the ascete. The bishops who resided at Constantinople, immersed in political intrigues, were ordered to retire to their sees. The monks, who acted as confessors and political agents for the nobles, and who might be seen, at all hours of the day and night, ambling on their sleek and richly-caparisoned mules from palace to palace, were sent back to their monasteries. Bishops and nobles, monks and court ladies, soon rose in rebellion against the reforms of Athanasios; and the Emperor Andronicus, who wished a patriarch to act as a minister of his own intrigues, to govern the church, not as an ecclesiastical reformer, to augment its power, joining the opposition, Athanasios was forced to resign, after he governed the church four years.

Some curious proceedings are connected with the resignation of Athanasios. Christian charity was not a virtue prevalent in the Greek Church at any time, and Athanasios had even less than other priests. Before resigning the patriarchate, he prepared a writing, justifying his conduct, and anathematizing all his calumniators, and all who had assisted in procuring his resignation. To this document he affixed the leaden seal of the patriarchate, and having deposited it in an earthen jar, he concealed it in the ornamental work above the galleries of St Sophia’s. Four years after his resignation, it was found by some boys who were seeking for young pigeons, which were then as numerous about the churches of Constantinople as they now are about the mosques. The paper was carried to the reigning Patriarch, Joannes, and the whole body of the orthodox was thrown into a state of consternation by the discovery; for the empire appeared to be placed under an interdict, from which there was no possibility of obtaining canonical relief. Many of the sincere bigots began to fancy that they were already suffering the pains of the damned. Tranquillity was at last restored by the Emperor Andronicus, who obtained from Athanasios a written declaration that he had revoked the anathema before his resignation, on his mind becoming more tranquil, and that it was only from inadvertency that he had forgotten to destroy the writing.

The next patriarch was Joannes, a monk of Sozopolis, (AD 1294-1303). Like all his predecessors, he became involved in differences with the emperor, who was incessantly meddling in ecclesiastical affairs. Joannes signed an act of abdication; but a question arose concerning its validity, and his name continued to be mentioned as patriarch in the public prayers. The emperor was eager to terminate the business, in order to reinstate Athanasios in the government of the church; the Patriarch Joannes was as eager to retain his place. While matters stood thus, Andronicus paid Joannes a visit, at which the Patriarch made a bold attempt to intimidate the ecclesiastical conscience of the scrupulous emperor. As Andronicus entered the hall, he asked a benediction. Joannes replied, “God will grant you his blessing; but do you recognize me as Patriarch?” The unsuspicious emperor answered, “Certainly”. “Then”, exclaimed the ambitious pontiff, “as Patriarch I excommunicate all who endeavour to reinstate Athanasios on the patriarchal throne”. The emperor was so confounded at this bold reception that he retired without uttering a word on the subject. But Joannes was, nevertheless compelled to sign a formal act of abdication, and make way for the restoration of Athanasios.

Athanasios resumed his schemes of reform, which he pursued with undiminished energy and little effect for eight years. His headstrong temper and violent disposition are said to have caused his second resignation. A caricature, representing the Emperor Andronicus with a bridle in his mouth, while Athanasios, in his usual state of excitement, with violent gestures, was goading him forward to an image of Christ, appeared painted on the patriarchal footstool. Some persons, who observed the painting, accused Athanasios of impiety; but the emperor, suspecting that they were the real authors of the caricature, ordered them to be arrested, and they were condemned to perpetual imprisonment for calumniating the Patriarch. Athanasios, however, demanded a more signal satisfaction, and, being unable to obtain it, resigned the patriarchate.

Niphon, bishop of Cyzicus, a man of talents, versed in public business, but not remarkable for theological learning, was the next Patriarch. He succeeded to the throne after a vacancy of more than two years, and ruled the church little more than a year, (1313-1314). He had displayed judgment and energy in defending his see against the incursions of the Seljouk Turks; and by repairing the ancient fortifications on the isthmus of Cyzicus, he had rendered the whole peninsula a safe place of refuge for the inhabitants of the neighbouring continent. As Patriarch he distinguished himself by his magnificence, luxury, and cupidity. His table and his stud were superior to those of the emperor; but as he affected extraordinary eagerness to accomplish the emperor’s favourite scheme of uniting the schismatic Arsenites with the orthodox, his faults were overlooked. Accusations of simony at last caused his deposition. His successor was John Glykys, a layman of high character, whom bad health caused to abdicate after he had governed the church four years.

The Emperor Andronicus then determined to govern the church himself, and, in order to meet with no opposition, he placed an old deaf and ignorant monk named Gerasimos, on the patriarchal throne. Of the eight patriarchs who ruled the church during the reign of Andronicus, he was the first who was not compelled to resign, unless we add Joseph, who died as Patriarch in the reign of Andronicus, after having been compelled to resign his throne to Vekkos during the reign of Michael VIII. Gerasimos occupied the patriarchal throne about a year, (1320-1321).

The last Patriarch named by Andronicus XI was Isaiah, a monk of Mount Athos, whom he had expected to find as docile as Gerasimos. He was disappointed; but the quarrel which ensued requires to be noticed in connection with the civil wars that ended in the dethronement of Andronicus.

This short abstract of the ecclesiastical events that occurred in the Greek empire during the reign of Andronicus II, is sufficient to give the reader some idea of the occupations for which the emperor neglected the civil administration and military defence of his empire.

The state of the Seljuks Empire invited Andronicus to regain possession of those districts in Asia Minor which were still inhabited by a majority of Greeks. Theodore Lascaris I, even while pressed on one side by the Crusaders, had, nevertheless, defeated the whole forces of the Seljouks when united under a warlike sultan. Andronicus II was now unable to resist the attacks of the petty chiefs, who acted as independent princes under the nominal sovereignty of Alaeddin III, the last of the Seljouk sultans of Iconium. The provincial governors who dismembered this Turkish Empire are usually said to have founded ten principalities or emirats; for some of the independent chiefs who ruled only a few cities were not ranked in the list of emirs. These emirats are known in history by the names of their founders; but their boundaries can only be approximately determined, as they undergoing continual change. Their extent corresponded neither with that of the Byzantine themes into which the country had been divided when it was conquered by the Seljouk Turks, nor with the ancient geographical divisions of which the Greek writers make use in describing the relations of the emirs with the empire of Constantinople.

During the earlier years of the reign of Andronicus, the power of the Turks excited no alarm. The garrisons in the frontier fortresses were reduced, the number of the legions was diminished, and many of the ships kept ready for service by Michael VIII were laid up in the arsenal. Andronicus required all the money he could divert from the military and naval services for the court and the church. The officers could only gain advancement by becoming courtiers; the soldiers could only avoid neglect by becoming monks. The system adopted for maintaining the troops in garrison and in winter-quarters reveals the full extent to which disorder and peculation might proceed. The imperial authorities announced to the municipal magistrates the number of troops to be quartered in the town, and the reparation was then made to each house according to the census of the proprietor. The householder was then obliged to furnish the soldier with a daily ration of provisions and wine at a price fixed by a commission, and for these he was only paid at distant intervals when the soldiers received their pay. As the troops were always in arrears, they were generally deeply indebted to their landlords. A door was thus opened for every species of fraud on the part of the officers, who granted leave of absence to the soldiers to pocket their pay; and on the part of the soldiers, who indulged in recklessness and pillage. The local authorities participated in the frauds committed by the officers, so that neither the proprietors nor the soldiers could ever obtain redress from the central government. The emperor preferred foreign troops, as they were generally found more willing to defraud their landlords and march out of their winter-quarters before receiving the full amount of their pay. The native troops were also more inclined to take part with the people in seditions caused by financial oppression. The army of Andronicus consisted principally of Alans, Gasmuls, Turks, Turkopuls, and refugee Cretans. The Alans received double the pay of the best native troops. The armies with which the Emperors of Nicaea had defeated the Turkish sultans, the Latin emperors, the kings of Bulgaria, and the French knights of Achaia and Athens, were now disbanded and neglected. The state maxim of imperial Rome, that no man who paid the land-tax should be allowed to bear arms, was again revived, and mercenaries and Turks plundered the Greek empire as the Goths and Huns had plundered the Roman.

The Greek empire of Constantinople, at the accession of Andronicus II, embraced the whole coast of Asia Minor, from the mouth of the Sangarius to the Rhodian Peraia; but the nomad tribes who lived under the Seljouk dominion were daily pushing their incursions farther and farther into the Greek territories. In the year 1296, the regular army of the empire continued to maintain a decided superiority in the field over any force the Turks could bring into action; but the carelessness of the emperor, who left the troops in Asia without pay, caused this neglected army to break out into rebellion. The Turkish mercenaries in its ranks plundered the Greek landlords; the Cretans sold their services to the highest bidder. Alexios Philanthropenos, who had successfully resisted the Seljouk tribes, was proclaimed emperor by his rebellious troops, but allowed himself to be taken prisoner, and was deprived of sight. His successor, John Tarchaniotes, vainly attempted to reform the abuses, which rendered the army more oppressive to the emperor’s subjects than dangerous to his enemies. The anarchy that prevailed in the civil, military, and ecclesiastical administration, rendered him powers less, and he was compelled to abandon the undertaking.

In the year 1301, Michael, the eldest son of Andronicus, who had received the imperial title from his father in 1295, took the command of the army in Asia, and about the same time a body of veteran warriors entered the imperial service, who, under an able general, would have secured victory to the Greeks. Andronicus allowed a colony of Alans to settle in his dominions, and about eight thousand who had served in the Tartar wars beyond the Danube were enrolled in the Byzantine service. To furnish these foreigners with well-broken horses, Andronicus dismounted the best cohorts of his native cavalry. It was already known that the emperor distrusted his Greek troops. Henceforth it was evident that no confidence could be placed in men whom he had so openly insulted by his preference for foreign mercenaries. The Alans, though brave and experienced soldiers, united many of the wild habits of their original nomadic life with the worst vices of mercenaries. They required to be kept constantly under the strictest discipline, and to be ruled with a strong hand. Michael, who had no military talent, could neither employ their valour with effect against the Turks, nor restrain their disorders. After a short term of service, they mutinied, deserted the camp, and marched to the Hellespont, plundering the Greek inhabitants of the country they passed through. The young emperor then broke up his own camp, and, abandoning his headquarters at Magnesia on the Hermus, retired to Pergamus, leaving the Turkish tribes to extend their plundering expeditions as far as Adramyttum, Lampsacus, and Cyzicus.

About the same time the Venetians and Genoese, who were carrying on war, were so emboldened by the weakness of the Greek empire and the neglected state of its marine that they pursued their hostilities in the port of Constantinople, while private vessels plundered the islands of the Propontis within sight of the palace of Andronicus, and compelled him to ransom the captive inhabitants by parading them before the walls of the capital, suspended from the rigging of their ships.

Rapid conquests were now made by the Seljouk emirs, and a destructive warfare against the Greek race was carried on by the nomad tribes, who were more anxious to exterminate the agricultural population than to subdue them. The valley of the Meander was overrun by Mentshé and Aïdin; Philadelphia and Magnesia were threatened by Kermian and Saroukhan. The citadel of Sardes was divided into two forts, and the troops of Sultan Alaeddin III, the last of the Seljouk emperors of Roum, were put in possession of one, as it was hoped that the emirs and nomads would respect a city that paid tribute to their sultan. Michael, distracted by the number rather than by the force of his enemies, abandoned his headquarters at Pergamus, where he found himself straitened for provisions by the ravages of Karasi, and retired to the maritime fortress of Peges. The Greeks were everywhere in despair. In the empire of Trebizond, matters were not much better than in the empire of Constantinople. But it was in the provinces between Nicomedia and Smyrna, along the Propontis and the Aegean, that the greatest confusion reigned. The roads to the coast were covered with fugitives from the interior, endeavouring to save their property and families. Thousands were left to perish from want, and thousands died from suffering. Whole provinces were deserted by their inhabitants, and became pasture-lands for hordes of Turkmans. In the course of a single generation, the Greek race and language disappeared from countries in which it had been spoken for two thousand years, and Turkish colonies took possession of Aeolis and Ionia. Andronicus II witnessed these dreadful calamities with feelings benumbed by piety: even the extermination of the orthodox failed to animate his energy.

The Byzantine and Seljouk empires, and the Greek and Turkish people, displayed unequivocal signs of a state of society in which the ties of interest, and the common feelings that had once connected the various ranks of the population with the central government, were broken or dissolved. The conquests of the Crusaders and Moguls had weakened the imperial authority both at Constantinople and Iconium, and it had been replaced by no bond of union between the sovereign and the people. In this state of civil and political disorder in Christian and Mohammedan society throughout western Asia and eastern Europe, a tribe of nomad Turks, who had recently entered the Seljouk dominions and whose education and feelings were not yet corrupted by artificial moral relations, began to lay the foundations of an empire which advanced to greatness more rapidly than that of Rome, and whose power has proved more durable than the empire of Alexander. Othman, whose tribe consisted of only four hundred tents, was invested with the government of Karadjahissar (Melangeia) in the year 1289, by the Sultan Alaeddin III. The education of Othman had taught him that the impartial administration of justice is a powerful instrument of ambition, and he adopted systematic arrangements for securing it both to Christians and Mohammedans in his territory. The market held on Friday at Karadjahissar was celebrated for its security. A judge sate constantly to decide every difference that might arise on the spot, and Othman frequently occupied the judgment-seat. It happened that, as he was presiding, a dispute arose between a Christian of Belokoma (Biledjik), in the Greek empire, and a Turk of Kermian. The decision was in favour of the Christian, and the justice of the sentence raised the fame of Othman and the commercial importance of Karadjahissar. Yet Othman is represented as just only when justice aided his ambition; when injustice was profitable, he acknowledged no law. He plundered the Greek territories when he could do so with impunity; and he is said to have murdered his uncle, Dundar, who was ninety years of age, because he advised him to remain at peace with the Byzantine empire. The city of Tarakli (Yenidje-Tarakdji), from the manufactories of which the Greeks supplied all western Asia and the east of Europe with combs and spoons, and the town of Modreni, the great seat of the manufactory of knives and needles, were both plundered.

After twelve years of preparation, Othman ventured to attack the regular army of the Greek empire, in the year 1301. The action took place at Baphaeon, near Nicomedia. Pachymeres estimates the number of the imperial troops commanded by Muzalon at only two thousand, while the forces of Othman consisted of five thousand. The Greek infantry fled, and their misconduct was attributed to the dissatisfaction caused by the manner in which they had been deprived of their horses. The Alans fought bravely, and covered the retreat to Nicomedia. Othman now laid waste the whole of Bithynia, from Nicomedia to Lopadion. The Greeks could hardly venture out of the gates of Nicaea; and the communications of that city with Constantinople were kept up by means of boats on the lake Askanios. Even the road from the end of the lake to Kios was usually travelled in the night. The suburbs of the towns on the Asiatic shores of the Bosphorus were burned by the Ottomans, whose foraging parties were sometimes visible from the towers of the imperial palace in Constantinople.

The disgraceful retreat of his son Michael to Peges, induced Andronicus to change the military governors in Asia, instead of teaching him the necessity of reforming the military system. The command of Nicomedia was intrusted to a Tartar chief who had recently embraced Christianity; and by the marriage of this Tartar’s daughter with Suleiman, a Turkish emir, peace was restored to a small district, and a barrier was formed against the incursions of Othman. But the unemployed Turkish troops transferred their services to other leaders, and carried on their incursions in more distant provinces. This preference of a Tartar general indicates a deep-rooted distrust of the courage and fidelity of the Greek nobles, as well as contempt for their military skill; and, indeed, a factious spirit, directed to personal interest, could alone have caused the insensibility to national honour which made the nobles and the troops submit tamely to the insults they received from their emperor. Well might the brave old Spaniard Muntaner declare that God had stricken the Greek race with His curse, for every one could trample them down.

A new crisis in the fate of the Byzantine Empire suddenly presented itself by the arrival of an army of Spaniards, composed chiefly of Catalans and men of Aragon; but this race of strangers, hitherto unknown in the East, soon disappeared from the scene. They came and departed as if they were under the guidance of the destroying angel. In daring courage, steady discipline, and military skill, they were not surpassed by any Greek or Roman army. Their warlike deeds entitle them to rank as a host of heroes; their individual acts made them appear a band of demons. They had proved invincible on every field of battle. They had broken the lances of the chivalry of France in many a well-fought action; and they were firmly convinced that no troops on earth could encounter their shock. Guided by a sovereign like Leo III, or like Basil II, they might have conquered the Seljouk Turks, strangled the Ottoman power in its cradle, and carried the double-headed eagle of Byzantium victorious to the foot of Mount Taurus, and to the banks of the Danube; but Andronicus could neither make use of their valour, nor secure their obedience. His own senseless intrigues roused their hostile feelings; and after they had made every tribe in the Seljouk empire tremble for a moment, they turned on the Greek empire, where they carried on their inhuman ravages with a degree of cruelty and rapacity which history cannot attempt to portray. They laid both the empire and the Greek nation prostrate in the dust, bleeding with wounds from which they never recovered.

The Catalan Grand Company—for that is the name by which this Spanish army is known in Eastern history—consisted of troops formed in the twenty years’ war that followed the Sicilian Vespers. The kings of Aragon for some time supported the people of Sicily in their courageous defence of their independence against the French kings of Naples; but at last Jayme II of Aragon abandoned their cause. The Sicilians then conferred their crown on Frederic, the brother of Jayme XI, and carried on the war gallantly against the combined forces of Naples, Aragon, and France, supported by the temporal and spiritual power of the popes. In this war the Spanish leaders saw the necessity of forming a mercenary army, of which every individual soldier should be a match in military exercises for the best knights of France. Spain was filled with a poor and proud nobility. High pay and great license drew the best sinews in Catalonia and Aragon into the mercenary battalions of Sicily, and induced them to submit to the severest discipline. The spirit which long after astonished the world in the followers of Cortes and Pizarro, then animated every Spanish soldier with an enthusiastic desire to encounter the most renowned knight in France; and the great admiral, Roger de Lauria, well expressed their feelings when he said to the Count de Foix, “Let the King of France arm three hundred galleys; I will sweep the sea with one hundred, and no ship shall sail without a pass from the king of Aragon”.

In the year 1302, peace was at last concluded between the kings of Naples and Sicily. The marriage of Charles of Valois with Catherine of Courtenay, made the kings of France and Naples eager to enforce their claims on the empire of Constantinople. The kings of Aragon and Sicily, on the other hand, had much to fear from any increase of French influence in the Mediterranean; but Frederic of Sicily had bound himself by treaty not to conclude any alliance with the Greek emperor. It was known at Constantinople that Pope Boniface VIII eagerly supported the pretensions of Charles of Valois to the Eastern Empire; yet the bigoted Andronicus took no measures to avert the storm, by creating a diversion against the French princes in the West. Frederic was anxious to free Sicily from the presence of the Spanish troops who had carried on the war in Calabria. He had no longer the means of paying them, and he feared lest they should plunder the island. The important service of inducing them to seek a new career of action in the East, was performed for Frederic by Roger de Flor.

This adventurer was a type of a new race of generals, who were rapidly diminishing the importance of the nobles in military affairs. He was the second son of a German falconer in the service of the Emperor Frederic II, named Robert Blum, who adopted the Italian name of Flor, and married an heiress of Brindisi. The commander of a galley belonging to the order of the Temple, pleased with his intelligence as a child, took him to sea when only eight years old. In due time he entered the order, distinguished himself by his attention to naval tactics and military discipline, and received the command of a galley. But when Acre was taken by the Mohammedans in 1291, brother Roger was accused of employing his galley only to save those who paid him large sums of money. Certain it is, he neglected to join the rest of the templars, who, even after the Grand-master, Guichard de Beaujeu, was slain, prolonged the defence of their quarter under his successor Gaudini. For absenting himself from this desperate struggle, Roger was degraded from his rank, and compelled to seek refuge at Genoa, in order to escape imprisonment. He soon fitted out a private galley, and sought his fortune as a mercenary or a pirate. He first offered his services to the French in Naples, but the Duke of Calabria treated him with neglect; he then sought Frederic, whose affairs seemed desperate, and entered the Sicilian service. The King of Sicily perceived his talents, and honoured him with the rank of Vice-admiral of Sicily. Roger extended the sphere of his naval expeditions along the coasts of Italy, France, and Spain. In hostile countries he carried off everything he could embark in his ships; in friendly districts he levied contributions, and gave receipts for the amount, payable by the Sicilian treasury at the end of the war. In this way he not only enriched himself and his followers, but brought large sums into the exhausted treasury of Frederic. But when peace was concluded, the Grand-master of the Temple urged the Pope to insist that Frederic should surrender the recreant templar. The danger was serious and before the demand was made, Roger offered his service to the Emperor of Constantinople, promising to bring with him a body of Spanish troops to serve against the Turks. His enterprise had the air of a crusade; he was known at Constantinople from having rendered assistance to several Greek vessels, when he commanded the galley of the Temple; and in addition to his military qualities, he spoke Greek fluently. Andronicus accepted his offer; but, with the perverseness which marks every administrative act of his life, he made no arrangements for fixing the number of mercenaries he was about to hire. No quarters were prepared for them; no magazines were formed to insure their immediate employment against the enemy; and no care was taken that their pay should be issued with regularity.

In the month of September 1303, Roger de Flor arrived at Constantinople with a fleet of thirty-six sail, and an army of six thousand men. Seven galleys, one thousand cavalry, and one thousand infantry, carried his own private standard. There were several generals in this army, equal in rank and superior in birth to Roger, who submitted voluntarily to his command, without being bound to serve under his orders. The supreme authority in the Grand Company was supposed to reside in the army itself; Roger was only its elected chief. The first idea that struck the Greeks, always more ready to intrigue against their allies than to act energetically with them, was, that it would be possible to separate the interests of the generals of the Grand Company from the interests of their men, and thus render both dependent. Andronicus adopted this policy, without reflecting that it was likely to end in an appeal to the sword. As a means of securing the unbounded gratitude of Roger de Flor, he was adopted into the imperial family, and married to Maria, daughter of Asan, the exiled King of Bulgaria, and granddaughter of the Emperor Andronicus II. He was invested also with the rank of Grand-duke, and was named commander-in-chief of the army and fleet in Asia Minor and on the Asiatic coast. In the meantime, Andronicus lavished immense sums on fêtes, and in presents to the Catalan leaders, whom he wished to gain. To the troops he issued four months’ pay before he had taught them to obey his orders. During these amusements and intrigues the Turks continued to ravage Asia Minor, and the Spaniards lounged idly through the streets of Constantinople. The sailors of Barcelona were soon involved in bloody quarrels with the Genoese of Galata. Both parties despised the imperial police, and the grand drungary was slain at the head of the Greek troops while he was attempting to separate the combatants in one of their battles. The Spaniards were at last transferred to Asia, where they employed the last months of 1303 in clearing the immediate neighbourhood of Cyzicus and Peges of the troops of Karasi and Othman.

The Catalans were placed in winter-quarters at Cyzicus. According to the usage of the Byzantine Empire, the soldiers were dispersed in the houses of the citizens, who were obliged to famish them with rations of bread, wine, cheese, salt meat, vegetables, and provender for their horses. Fresh meat and any condiments they might require, were to be paid for. The money due to the citizens for rations and extra supplies was to be paid in March, when government was to liquidate all accounts before the troops took the field. A commission, consisting of six Spanish officers and six Greek privates, fixed the price of provisions. Roger brought the grand-duchess to Cyzicus; and Muntaner, the historian of the army, and one of its leaders, says that the winter was passed in joyfulness and pleasance. The natural insolence of the Spaniards, increased by the republican organization of the Grand Company, the weakness of the Greek army, and the corruption and inefficiency of the Byzantine administration, exposed the defenceless population of Cyzicus to every species of extortion. When the time arrived for paying the army, it was found that many Spaniards had incurred debts far exceeding the pay due to them. Muntaner pretends that these debts were discharged by the grand-duke; but Pachymeres, with more probability, asserts that the citizens of Cyzicus were plundered of great part of their property. The inhabitants of Cyzicus were the victims of foreign mercenaries, but those of Peges suffered equal injustice at the hands of the cowardly young emperor, Michael. When Roger de Flor assumed the command in Asia Minor, Michael quitted Peges full of hatred against the Catalans, leaving an order which proclaimed his hostility, and sowed the seeds of distrust in the breasts of Roger and his followers. This order commanded that the Catalans were not to be admitted into Peges, though he knew that the inhabitants would be guilty of high treason if they resisted the authority of the grand-duke; and when they opened their gates to a Catalan garrison, he compelled them to pay a fine of several thousand byzants. Such was the treachery, avarice, and meanness of the heir-apparent of the Greek empire.

The military operations of the Catalans were delayed in the spring of 1304 by a quarrel with the Alans, and the streets of Cyzicus became the scene of a bloodier battle than had been fought with the Genoese in the streets of Constantinople. The son of George, the general of the Alans, was slain, and a deep debt of vengeance incurred. It was the middle of May before Roger took the field. The Turks in the meantime, despising the renown of warriors who were so slow in their movements, had surprised Tripolis and closely invested Philadelphia, then the largest city in Asia Minor, which was reduced to such extremities by famine that the blood of a sheep or a pig was sold for a byzant; and it must be remembered that the Greeks, in ordinary circumstances, have always observed the apostolic command to restrain from things strangled and blood. The Catalans at last arrived. One division of the Turkish army stationed at Germe was routed, its camp stormed, and its baggage plundered. The grand army, under the command of Alishir Kermian, still attempted to cover the siege. Roger advanced by Chliara, and an engagement took place at Avlaka; but Kermian retired as soon as he could draw off the troops occupied in the siege, and Roger entered Philadelphia in triumph. The grand-duke occupied himself more with the measures necessary to advance his own ambitious projects than with carrying on the war actively for the interests of the empire. The Turks were allowed to retain possession of Tripolis and Tralles, though without these cities the rich valley of the Meander could not be secured against their incursions, Roger even neglected the offers of the Greeks of Tripolis to cooperate with the Catalans if he would advance to their walls, and moved in the opposite direction to regulate the pecuniary contributions and supplies of provisions which he could levy from the cities which still belonged to the emperor. The Catalans advanced no farther east than Kula. They then visited Nymphaeum, Magnesia on the Hermus, Tyrria on the Caister, Ephesus and the seaport of Anaia, whence they marched as far south as the Iron Gates on the frontiers of Lycia, defeating successively the troops of Saroukhan and Aïdin. They boasted that the scene of their last victory over Aïdin was in the mountains between Anatolia and the kingdom of Cilician Armenia. Roger placed his army in winter-quarters at Anaia, Ephesus, Pyrgion, and Philadelphia, while his fleet occupied Chios, Lesbos, and Lemnos. In all these places the insolence of the Catalans and the rapacity of the grand-duke knew no bounds.

Roger de Flor saw clearly that neither the Emperor Andronicus nor the Greek nation possessed the vigour necessary for defending Asia Minor against the Turks. This circumstance suggested to him the project of forming an independent principality for himself in the East, for which he was ready to do homage to the Emperor of Constantinople. His first step was to increase the strength of his own corps of personal followers. After the hostile display of feeling on the part of the Emperor Michael, he felt that wealth and power could alone protect him against the intrigues of the court at Constantinople. He therefore used his power as grand-duke entirely to serve his own ends. The Byzantine troops who were attached to the government were severely punished for the slightest breach of discipline. The officers who had abandoned their posts while the Catalans and Roger were amusing themselves at Cyzicus, were hung without mercy. Governors of towns were condemned to pay exorbitant fines and some who were unable or unwilling to collect the sums demanded from them were put to death. Immense contributions were levied in Philadelphia, Pyrgos, and Ephesus, and in the islands on the Asiatic coast.

Several cities in Asia, when they found themselves abandoned by the Emperor Michael, had assumed a certain degree of independence, and repulsed both the Turks and the imperial tax-collectors from their walls. Of these cities, Magnesia on the Hermus was the most important. Attaleiotes, an equerry of the emperor, was elected the local governor, and he refused to allow a Byzantine prefect to enter the place. He repulsed the Turks, and by a timely submission to Roger de Flor conciliated his goodwill, and prevented him from sending Catalan troops to form the garrison. When the grand-duke began to prepare for asserting his independence, he fixed on Magnesia as the fortress in which he resolved to secure his treasures and the stores of the army. They were accordingly sent to Magnesia under the guard of a small body of Catalans who were ordered to remain, in order to strengthen the garrison. Attaleiotes saw that a Greek would have little chance of rising to power if the plans of Roger proved successful. Instigated by his councils, the inhabitants of Magnesia flew to arms, put the Catalans in the city to the sword, seized the treasures of Roger and the stores of the Grand Company and prepared to resist the fiercest assaults of the Spaniards. The grand-duke marched with his whole army to avenge an injury which touched the honour of his arms, and struck a dangerous blow at his military power. The siege of Magnesia was formed, but the Grand Company was as weak in siege-artillery and engineers as the army of Hannibal. Attaleiotes made a brave defence, and repulsed all the attacks of Roger. An attempt of the Catalans to destroy the aqueduct that supplied the city with water was defeated by a vigorous sortie.

In order to put an end to these disorders in Asia Minor, Andronicus ordered the grand-duke to join the army under the command of his son Michael at Adrianople; but Roger, hoping to recover his treasures, delayed his march. The Alans, who were mindful of the injuries they had received at Cyzicus, made the order a pretence for quitting the grand-duke’s standard. Many small bands wandered about plundering the inhabitants or living at free quarters. Constantinople was filled with alarm, Asia Minor with misery, and the camp at Adrianople with indignation. The Greek army now demanded to be led against the Catalans; disorder spread through its ranks, and Michael, to gain popularity, issued a golden bull restricting the time of service of the native troops, and declaring that they should never be called upon to serve in company with the Catalans. Such was the military condition of the empire. The Greeks would only serve as long as suited their convenience; the Alans and the Catalans disobeyed the orders of the government with impunity. Roger, finding that he could not take Magnesia, at last raised the siege, in obedience, as he pretended, to the emperor’s orders. He had now to provide pay for the Grand Company, as no money was sent to him by the imperial government, and he resolved to replace the treasures he had lost as rapidly as possible. For this purpose he led his army to the Hellespont, crossed into Europe, occupied the whole Thracian Chersonesus, and put his troops into winter- quarters in the towns of Gallipoli, Potamos, Sestos, and Madytos, at the end of 1305. Roger de Flor then visited Constantinople, to demand pay for the Grand Company. His claim amounted to the sum of three hundred thousand byzants, but his extortions had forestalled a large part of the imperial revenues, and the treasury was reduced so low that the Emperor Michael had sent his plate to the mint, and sold his wife’s jewels, to raise the army with which he carried on war against the Bulgarians. Roger was only able to procure a small sum, consisting of an adulterated gold coinage. His return, under these circumstances, spread discontent among the Catalans, who commenced plundering the country in the vicinity of their quarters.

About this time Beranger d'Entenza, a Spanish noble-man of high rank and military renown, joined his countrymen with a fleet of nine ships, three hundred cavalry, and one thousand infantry; and it may be here mentioned that, during the preceding winter, another leader, Beranger de Rocafort, had brought them a reinforcement of two hundred cavalry and one thousand infantry. Andronicus, who hoped by his intrigues to be able to divide the Spaniards into two parties, and thus reduce them to subserviency, invited d'Entenza to Constantinople, and treated him with great honour. Roger de Flor, who feared his rivalry with the Grand Company much more than his favour with Andronicus, resigned the office of grand-duke, in order that the emperor might confer it on d'Entenza. The winter was passed in intrigues. Roger, to secure the attachment of the Grand Company, publicly advocated all their pretensions, while at the same time he secretly professed devotion to the emperor’s service. No experience could teach the Greek statesmen of Constantinople the danger of too much artifice with men of the sword. Roger enjoyed intriguing as much as the Greeks. He was their equal in ability, and their superior in courage. Every day increased the difficulties of the imperial government. A new tax called sitokrithon was imposed on grain, and set apart for the payment of the Catalans. One-third of the pay of every Byzantine official was deducted, and every exertion was made to collect money, but all was insufficient to supply the demands of the Spaniards. The Emperor Andronicus, in order to show d'Entenza the injustice of his countrymen, produced accounts that proved they had exacted a million of byzants from the country, and bags of despatches filled with petitions against their enormities. D'Entenza saw the impossibility of appeasing the quarrel between the Greek government and the Grand Company, and immediately returned to Gallipoli.

The spring of 1306 was now far advanced. The Turks had again overrun great part of Asia Minor, and reinvested Philadelphia. The Catalans were fortifying themselves at Gallipoli, and the Genoese reported at Constantinople that Fernand, infant of Majorca, was about to place himself at the head of the Spaniards, in order to conquer a kingdom for himself in the Greek empire. The Emperor Andronicus and Roger de Flor were both alarmed by the knowledge they appear to have obtained of the treaty which was then negotiating between Frederic of Sicily and Fernand of Majorca, and which was signed before the end of March. By this treaty Fernand was appointed commander-in-chief of the Spanish army in Romania, as lieutenant-general of the King of Sicily; he engaged to obey the orders of the king, and neither to conclude a treaty nor to marry without his consent. Every exertion was now made by the Greek emperor to gain over Roger de Flor to his interests. Roger was created Caesar, an honour which, though often degraded, was now, for the first time, conferred on a mercenary adventurer. He was offered twenty thousand byzants, three hundred thousand measures of corn, and the command over all Asia Minor, exclusive of the cities, if he would march to the relief of Philadelphia with his own corps. But Roger, who knew he could place no reliance on the promises of the Greeks, only urged the Catalans the more to prosecute their demands for payment. A deputation of the leaders of the Grand Company waited on the emperor, and were received by Andronicus with a long harangue, in which he rebuked the Catalans for their conduct, boasted of his own power, depreciated their services, and threatened to punish them if they disobeyed his orders. The discourse is so absurd from its bombast, and so ridiculous from its vanity, that it is more surprising to find it recorded by a historian than it is difficult to believe that it was uttered by an emperor. If the Catalans had really arrived at Constantinople half-starved and in rags, as the emperor told them was the case, he ought to have reflected that the change in their circumstances proved the worthlessness of the imperial government, and the cowardice of the Greek army. The emperor attempted to gain time by paying the Spaniards four months’ arrears in his depreciated coinage. This money the Spaniards compelled the Greeks to receive at its nominal value. It was also arranged that Roger should immediately march to the relief of Philadelphia at the head of three thousand men, who were alone to remain permanently in Byzantine pay. But the whole Spanish army resolved to accompany Roger, being persuaded that he was about to take possession of Asia Minor as Caesar, in order to hold it as an imperial fief, and they expected to share it as the Crusader had partitioned Europe after the conquest of Constantinople.

Before quitting Europe, Roger visited Adrianople to pay his respects to the emperor Michael. As he entered the apartment of the empress, he was assassinated by George, the general of the Alans, whose son was slain in the tumult at Cyzicus. At the same time three hundred Catalan cavalry, who formed the escort of the Caesar, were massacred by the Alan troops. Three Spaniards alone escaped to carry the news to Gallipoli. The Emperor Michael acted as if he considered that George had taken a just revenge for the death of his son, and the Greeks who had participated in the assassination remained unpunished. It was evident that things were now at a crisis, where half measures were no longer possible, yet Michael had not the courage to attack the Grand Company before it had time to prepare for action and replace its leader. The news of the assassination of Roger de Flor filled the Catalans with rage, and they resolved to be signally revenged. Everything they did was undertaken with the solemn etiquette that marked unalterable determination. A deputation waited on the Emperor Andronicus, and announced to him that the treacherous assassination of Roger de Flor had broken the ties of their allegiance to the Greek empire. These merciless adventurers knew better how to guard the honour of Spain than the imperial court could guard the honour of the emperor. The Catalan envoys, after boldly performing their mission, and declaring war according to the forms of chivalry, quitted Constantinople with a safe-conduct of Andronicus, and were waylaid and murdered by the Greeks at Redestos. The people of the capital also massacred Fernand d'Aones, the admiral, and all the Spaniards in the capital. The cavalry of Michael swept the country round Gallipoli, and slew many Catalans before they could reach the camps of their countrymen.

The Grand Company immediately commenced war with the Greek empire, which it carried on as a war of extermination against the Greek race. Beranger d'Entenza, finding that Gallipoli was in no immediate danger, sailed with a division of the army to collect supplies of money and provisions. The city of Perinthos was stormed, and the cruelty with which the Greeks were everywhere treated exceeds belief, and cannot be recorded in detail; men were burned alive, women were violated and stabbed, and even children were impaled. On his return to Gallipoli, d'Entenza met a Genoese fleet on its way to Trebizond. With these ships he held some communication; but a Genoese fleet, hired by Andronicus to attack the Catalans, arriving soon after from Constantinople, the whole Genoese forces fell on d'Entenza, destroyed his squadron, and carried him prisoner to the emperor. But Andronicus not being able to pay the Genoese the sum they demanded as his ransom, he was taken to Trebizond, and thence to Genoa.

The loss of their fleet was a serious blow to the Catalans. Some proposed to abandon Gallipoli and establish themselves in Mitylene, until the arrival of the Infant Fernand of Majorca. This plan was nevertheless abandoned as dishonourable, and it was resolved to keep possession of Gallipoli, and defend it against the whole force of the Byzantine Empire. The death of Roger de Flor, and the captivity of Beranger d'Entenza, made it necessary to reorganize the government of the army. Rocafert was elected commander-in-chief, with a standing council of twelve officers. The seal of the army bore the inscription, “Seal of the Frank army in Macedonia”. Four standards were borne before its ranks. One in honour of St Peter, which was planted on the ramparts of Gallipoli, others bearing the arms of the King of Sicily, the arms of Aragon, and the figure of St George, accompanied the troops in their expeditions to collect plunder. The few ships that remained were sunk off the entrance of the port, to obstruct an attack by sea, and a corps of Turkish light cavalry was hired to assist in foraging. The Emperor Michael had sent forward a body of troops to observe Gallipoli, until he arrived in person to besiege the Catalans. The first exploit of the Grand Company was to march out and attack this army of observation. But the Catalans, on account of their inferiority in numbers, abandoned the usual tactics of the age, and instead of dividing their army into an advanced guard, centre, and reserve, drew up their force in two bodies, placing the cavalry on the left wing, and the infantry on the right. The cavalry charged the Byzantine horse, and were met by the Greeks and Alans with a bold front; but they sustained the shock of the Spaniards only for a moment, and then fled in complete confusion, leaving their infantry exposed. The Catalan infantry then rushed forward to attack the main body of the Greeks, as they were drawn up on the slope of a hill, making a gallant appearance with their well-dressed lines and glittering armour. Each Spanish soldier seemed to fear that his companion might be intimidated by the immense number of the enemy, though he felt no fear himself. A simultaneous cry of “Aragon! Aragon! St George! St George!” rose from the whole line as it quickened its step to close in combat. The Greeks made a feeble resistance; the Catalans took a bloody vengeance on their flying battalions until nightfall, when they returned and pillaged the Byzantine camp.

When the Turkish mercenaries were perfectly drilled into obeying the Catalan signals, the Grand Company marched to attack the imperial army under the command of the Emperor Michael. Three days’ march brought them to Imeri, near Apros. The Catalans were rejoiced to hear that Apros was a strong fortress, for they said the battle would be short, since the Greeks would soon think of seeking safety within its walls. The Byzantine army consisted of Alan and Turkopul cavalry, of Macedonian and Thracian infantry, of Asiatic troops, of Wallachians, and mercenaries of other nations. It was drawn up in five divisions, and Michael placed himself at the head of the reserve. The Grand Company was formed in four divisions; the heavy cavalry occupied the centre, the Almogavars composed the main body and the reserve, while the auxiliary Turks were placed on the wings.

The battle was commenced by the Alans and Turkopuls, who formed the left wing of the imperial army. The terrible array of the chivalry of Aragon and Catalonia palsied the courage of these veteran mercenaries, and they retreated before its charge. Their retreat was ascribed by the Greeks to treachery, and was a pretext for every coward to think of his own safety. The fact is, that order and discipline did not, in the army of Michael, replace the want of a sense of honour and of the feelings of patriotism, while none had any confidence in the military talents of the emperor. The native legions could not be expected to fight better than the mercenaries, who had been honoured as the flower of the army. Squadron after squadron yielded to the Spanish lance, and battalion after battalion fled before the long swords of the Almogavars, until the battle was irretrievably lost. The Emperor Michael made a spirited attempt to stop the confusion. He led the reserve up bravely to meet the victorious Spaniards, and charged with his lance into the thickest ranks of the assailants. He was soon struck down by the pike of a powerful Catalan sailor, who had gained a splendid suit of armour and a superb charger in the preceding victory. Beranger, the Catalan, was himself nearly slain by the lance of Michael, whose attendants were thereby enabled to close round the emperor, carry him off the field, and transport him to Didymoteichos, where the native troops rallied round their prince. The Catalans, after their victory, made an attempt on Apros, but that fortress repulsed their attack, and they retired to Gallipoli, in order to place the immense plunder they had collected in the Byzantine camp in security.

The victory of Apros rendered the Catalans masters of all the open country on the Thracian shore of the Propontis. They inflicted a dreadful punishment on Redestos, because it had been the scene of the murder of their envoys. Muntaner confesses that they put to the sword men, women, and children, in indiscriminate massacre. The situation of Redestos being more central for the foraging operations of the Grand Company than Gallipoli, it was converted into their headquarters, while Gallipoli was held as their citadel. Muntaner, who acted as secretary-at-war, was appointed its commandant, and intrusted with the care of the treasures, magazines, and arsenal of the army. Rocafert now increased the number of Turks in his army, by obtaining a reinforcement of two thousand men from the tribes under Aïdin. He was subsequently joined by eight hundred cavalry and two thousand infantry, under Isaac Melek, a descendant of the Seljouk sultans, who was slain soon after; but his Turks remained the faithful allies of the Catalans in all the vicissitudes of their fortunes. The Byzantine government was now so unpopular among the Christians in Asia that many Greeks joined the Turks, and shaved their heads, in order to enter into the Catalan service as Turkopuls.

The Catalans burned with an inextinguishable desire to avenge the assassination of Roger de Flor. They learned with satisfaction that the Alans had separated themselves from the Greek army, and were plundering on their own account; but a rumour soon arrived that the troops of George had resolved to transfer their services to the King of Bulgaria. No time was therefore to be lost. A body of Catalan cavalry, under the guidance of a corps of Turkopuls, set out to hunt down the Alans, whom they overtook near the Bulgarian frontier. A bloody battle ensued; George, the assassin of Roger de Flor, was slain, with the best part of his followers, and their wives and children were captured in their camp. This bold enterprise increased the reputation of the Catalan arms; for these Alans had long been regarded as the best soldiers in the East, and the two parties had met on equal terms.

The Grand Company plundered Thrace for two years without meeting any opposition in the field. The Emperor Michael occupied Didymoteichos, Tzurulos, and Adrianople, with strong garrisons, but made no attempt to defend the country near the Propontis. City after city was taken, plundered, and burned to the ground; the fruit-trees were cut down, and the vineyards destroyed; men, women, and children, were carried off to Gallipoli, which became one of the great slave-marts for Asia Minor. In one of these expeditions they massacred about five thousand cultivators of the soil in the immediate vicinity of Constantinople. For two years the Catalan host lived at free quarters, in the midst of wealth and plenty. They built no houses, they cultivated no private estates; what they wanted they seized where it was to be found, careless if they reduced the richest districts to the condition of a desert. They lived by the sword alone; and no volume could record all their valiant deeds, their devastating forays, or their infamous cruelties.

The Emperor Andronicus vainly attempted to negotiate the retreat of the Catalans; his untimely pretensions, and the penury of his treasury, rendered his negotiations abortive. The Grand Company insisted on payment of arrears, on the release of all prisoners without ransom, on the restoration of the ships captured with d'Entenza, and that the emperor should pay them for the booty which they were unable to carry away. Andronicus, finding his own negotiations and the military operations of his subjects equally unsuccessful, again hired a Genoese fleet to attack the Spaniards by sea; but the naval warfare produced no result, and the Genoese concluded a separate peace.

The fame of the Catalans resounded through all Europe. Frederic of Sicily became eager to revive the connection with them which he had been so anxious to dissolve some years before. Fernand, the Infant of Majorca, arrived at Gallipoli to take the command of the Grand Company as Lieutenant-general of the King of Sicily. The Spaniards were now divided into three parties, who formed separate bands. Rocafert, who had been elected commander-in-chief, was at the head of the most numerous division, including the Almogavars and the Turkish auxiliaries. D'Entenza, who had been released by the Genoese at the request of the King of Aragon, had returned to the army, and was now the leader of the Aragonese nobles; while a third body followed the standard of Ximenes d'Arenos. The Emperor Andronicus had laid waste the country between Selymbria and Constantinople. No man could venture to till the ground within range of the Catalan forays, so that it became necessary for the Grand Company to seek new quarters. The arrival of the Infant Fernand enabled the army to move without the three parties coining to open hostilities.

It was resolved to march into Macedonia and establish themselves in some rich district which the evils of war had not yet reached. The army, which consisted of about six thousand Spaniards and three thousand Turks, moved in two divisions. The main body, under Rocafert, marched a day’s journey in advance of the second division under d'Entenza and Ximenes. The Infant Fernand placed himself in the second division. The march was pursued with order for several days, but one day the main body delayed moving from its quarters until noon; and the second division, having passed the night in a spot where nothing was to be found, reached the quarters of the main body before they were completely evacuated. A dispute took place between the rear-guard of Rocafert and the advanced guard of the second division; and d'Entenza, who hastened to the front to arrest the disorder, was attacked and slain by the brother of Rocafert. Ximenes d'Arenos was compelled to fly for safety to a Greek fortress in the neighbourhood. Rocafert then persuaded the army to refuse acknowledging Fernand as lieutenant-general of the King of Sicily, but it offered to elect him commander-in-chief. Muntaner joined the army a short time after this revolution. He had embarked the stores of the army, with two thousand women, in the ships which had been collected for the expedition. Muntaner now resigned his command, and attached himself to the Infant Fernand, who refused to violate his engagements to the King of Sicily, and therefore quitted the Grand Company. Rocafert continued his march, but being unable to take the town of Christopolis, where the army had proposed to pass the winter, he was compelled to proceed and occupy the peninsula of Cassandria.

The operations of the Catalans in the year 1309 were not very successful. The fortifications of Thessalonica were found in good order, and manned by a strong garrison. They were repulsed in an attempt to storm the city, and when they would fain have retraced their steps in order to regain their old quarters in Thrace, they were unable to force the pass between the plain of Philippi and Christopolis, through which they had penetrated with considerable loss the preceding year. The position of the Grand Company was growing difficult; and Rocafert, who was a mere mercenary, began to open negotiations with the French admiral, Thibaut de Sipoys, in order to induce the Spaniards to recognize Charles of Valois, the hereditary enemy of their nation, as their chief. But the French admiral was meaner and more faithless than the treacherous mercenary. He seized Rocafert, sailed away to Italy, and delivered his prisoner to Robert, king of Naples, whom he had often defeated in the field. The house of Anjou was a revengeful race; Rocafert was cast into a dungeon and starved to death. When the perfidy of the French was known, and the Spaniards found they had lost their leader, they massacred all their colonels for having connived at the treachery of Sipoys. They elected new leaders, and, marching forward, passed the winter in Thessaly. In the year 1310 they quitted the Byzantine territory, and entered the service of the Duke of Athens. They found the Wallachians of Thessaly a very different race of men from the peasants of Thrace, and even the Byzantine officers in the mountain districts of Macedonia offered a firmer resistance than the Catalans had previously encountered.

Walter de Brienne, duke of Athens, quarrelled with the Catalans, and perished in the battle of the Cephissus on the 15th of March 1311. The conquest of Attica followed, which has been narrated in another volume. The Turkish auxiliaries returned home after the battle of Cephissus, in order to enjoy the wealth they had amassed in the expedition. The Emperor Andronicus allowed them to pass through the empire unmolested, on condition that they refrained from every act of pillage, and they reached the shore of the Hellespont, escorted by a corps of three thousand Greek cavalry. The imperial government could never act either with honesty or boldness. A plot was framed to disarm the Turks as they were waiting for vessels to transport them over to Asia; but the Greeks were now so universally distrusted that their plots had little chance of succeeding, for everybody suspected their treachery and watched their proceedings. The Turks learned their danger, surprised a neighbouring fort, and commenced plundering the country. The Emperor Michael attacked them with the Greek army, but defeat was his invariable companion. Khalil, the Turkish general, was a soldier formed in the severe discipline of the Catalan camp; his superior generalship and the perfect tactics of his troops gained a complete victory. The camp, baggage, and imperial crown of Michael became the spoil of the conquerors. Khalil gleaned the remains of the Catalan ravages.

Philes Paleologos, a man remarkable for his virtue, afflicted by the sufferings of his fellow-countrymen, solicited the emperor for permission to serve against the Turks. Andronicus, though he placed more confidence in his piety than in the military operations he proposed, conferred on him the office of Protostrator, and authorized him to levy an army. The success of Philes proves that the ruin of the empire was caused by the folly of Andronicus and the corruption of the government. Philes enrolled only veteran Greek soldiers, and selected officers of experience to birth and court favour.

The most important conquest of the time, however, was that of Rhodes, by the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem, both from its durability and from the renown of the conquerors. The knights had settled in Cyprus after they had been expelled from Acre, but they were soon discontented to remain as vassals of the King of Cyprus. They aspired to form a sovereign state, but it was not easy to make any conquests from the Infidels in a position which they could hope to maintain for any length of time. They therefore solicited permission from the Pope to turn their arms against the Greeks. His Holiness applauded their Christian zeal, and bestowed on them innumerable blessings and indulgences, besides nine thousand ducats to aid their enterprise. Under the pretext of a crusade for the recovery of Christ’s tomb, the knights collected a force with which they besieged Rhodes. So great was their contempt for the Greek emperor that they sent an embassy to Constantinople, requiring Andronicus to withdraw his garrisons, and cede the island and its dependencies to them as feudatories, offering to supply him with a subsidiary force of three hundred cavalry. Andronicus dismissed the ambassadors, and sent an army to raise the siege; but his troops were defeated, and the knights took the city of Rhodes on the 15th August 1310. As sovereigns of this beautiful island, they were long the bulwark of Christian Europe against the Turkish power; and the memory of the chivalrous youth who for successive ages found an early tomb at this verge of the Christian world, will long shed a romantic colouring on the history of Rhodes. They sustained the declining glory of a state of society that was hastening to become a vision of the past; they were the heroes of a class of which the Norse sea-kings had been the demigods. The little realm they governed as an independent state consisted of Rhodes, with the neighbouring islands of Kos, Kalymnos, Syme, Leros, Nisyros, Telos, and Chalke; on the opposite continent they possessed the classic city of Halicarnassus, and several strong forts, of which the picturesque ruins still overhang the sea.

The Emperor Andronicus II displayed the same want of sound judgment and right feeling in his private that he did in his public conduct, and his latter days were embittered by family disputes caused by his own folly and injustice. His second wife, Irene of Montferrat, persecuted him with demands to dismember the empire, in order to form appanages for her children. Andronicus resisted her solicitations at the expense of a quarrel, and Irene long lived separated from him at Thessalonica. The Emperor Michael allowed his father to control the arrangements of his family and regulate his private actions. Michael’s eldest son was named Andronicus. He was the third emperor of the name who occupied the Byzantine throne, but he is known in history generally as Andronicus the Younger. When a child, he was an especial favourite with his grandfather, who directed his education. That education was undoubtedly a mixture of unwise indulgence and capricious restraint. The young Andronicus grew up a dissipated youth, and his debauched habits produced a terrible tragedy in his family. He was informed that his favourite mistress admitted another lover, and he employed bravos to waylay his rival. It happened that on that very night his own brother Manuel hastened quickly to the lady’s house, where he expected to find Andronicus. The assassins mistook the despot for the lover, and Manuel was murdered on the spot. The dreadful news reached their father Michael at Thessalonica, where he was residing in a declining state of health. Anguish soon terminated his life.

The young Andronicus was now heir-apparent to the empire, if the expression be admissible in a state without a fixed order of hereditary succession; but the murder of Manuel changed the affection of the old emperor into implacable hatred, and it was generally thought that the reigning sovereign had the power of naming his successor. The Emperor Michael VIII had introduced the custom, that a new oath of allegiance should be taken whenever a change occurred in the order of succession. When Michael, the son of Andronicus II, died, the new oath was administered in the name of Andronicus II alone, and did not contain that of Andronicus III, who was the direct heir. It also contained a clause promising implicit obedience to whomsoever he might declare emperor. These circumstances indicated that he intended to exclude his grand-son from the throne; nor was he long in selecting a favourite on whom it was supposed he intended to confer the imperial title. The choice was marked by the singular perverseness which characterized many of his most important acts. He had compelled his second son Constantine to marry the daughter of his favourite minister, Muzalon. The incidents of this union were both ridiculous and disgraceful. The lady had been destined to be the bride of Theodore, the emperor’s brother, when it was discovered that she had already indulged in illicit intercourse with one of her relations, and would have presented the imperial family very prematurely with an intruder. Theodore broke off the match; but the emperor, moved by his attachment to the father, and by the penitence of the fair sinner, subsequently compelled his own son Constantine to marry her. The young prince thought himself entitled to have a bastard as well as his wife. The youth was named Michael Katharos, and became so great a favourite with his grandfather, the Emperor Andronicus, that he showed a disposition to adopt him as the heir to the empire, but the representations of his ministers prevented this act of folly.

The government of the old emperor was now generally unpopular; and as he was suspected of being anxious to prevent his grandson Andronicus from succeeding to the throne, the cause of the prince was made the rallying-point of the discontented. The younger Andronicus was a lover of pleasure, extravagant in his expenses, careless in his disposition, but possessing a fund of good-humour that rendered him personally extremely popular. Nor was he by any means destitute of ability and courage. A party formed itself round the young prince, who was treated by his grandfather with unjust severity. He was prohibited from wearing the dress of the heir-apparent, and not allowed to visit the palace. The most distinguished partisans of Andronicus the younger were Cantacuzenos the historian, a man of the highest rank, of extensive connections among the Byzantine aristocracy, of great wealth, ability, and military as well as literary accomplishments, but devoured by ambition, and overflowing with cunning and self-conceit; Synadenos, a man of equal rank and talent; and Sir Janni, a man of superior boldness and ability, but with want of fixed principles and steady conduct that gave him the character of a political adventurer. With these it is necessary to mention Apokaukos, who was the ablest administrator and financier of the party. The intrigues of the partisans of the young prince did not escape the attention of the emperor’s ministers, who would, doubtless, have maintained order by arresting the most dangerous, had not Andronicus been more anxious to punish his grandson, by depriving him of all chance of succeeding to the empire, than to prevent a rebellion. He now resolved to bring the prince to a public trial; and on Palm Sunday, 1321, the young Andronicus was unexpectedly summoned to the palace of Blachern. His partisans comprehended that the crisis of their own fate, as well as that of the prince, must be decided before sunset. Cantacuzenos and Synadenos accordingly assembled their followers, and filled the palace with a force that so completely intimidated both the judges and the emperor that the prince was pardoned, and a feigned reconciliation took place between the grandfather and the grandson. Andronicus II resolved to remove Cantacuzenos and Synadenos from his grandson’s society, for he justly considered them as the authors of the plots against his government. Cantacuzenos was named governor of Thessaly, and Synadenos was sent to Prilapos. These officers collected as many troops as they were able, under the pretence of repairing to their posts; and when their levies were completed, they marched to Adrianople, where the young Andronicus joined them, and raised the standard of rebellion.

The prince was popular; he gained the people by proclaiming that the province of Thrace was exempt from some of the most onerous taxes, and his mercenaries enabled him to advance against Constantinople. But his soldiers, who cared little for political questions, pillaged the inhabitants wherever they passed; bands of robbers began to lay waste the villages which had escaped destruction from the Catalans and the Turks, and the collectors of the public revenue, availing themselves of these disorders, embezzled the money in their hands. Cantacuzenos says that the young Andronicus was averse to march against his grandfather, fearing lest his army should storm Constantinople. In order, therefore, to prevent his grandfather from being dethroned, he wrote secretly to the old emperor, to advise that measures might be concerted to turn aside the first ardour of his own troops. The double- dealing and treachery of the leaders of both parties render the circumstance not improbable, and nothing can be a better apology for the apathy of the Greeks concerning the fate of their government. But their cowardice in failing to assert their inalienable rights as citizens to a just administration of their civil and ecclesiastical affairs is not so easily explained, for it proceeded from the complication of causes which had produced national degradation as well as weakness. The Emperor Andronicus II, seeing that it was not in his power to resist the military force his grandson had brought into the field, resolved to yield to the principal demands of the rebels, and recommence the contest by a war of intrigue. A treaty was concluded at Rhegion, where the prince had established his head-quarters, by which the rights of Andronicus the younger to the succession of the empire were recognized, and he was invested with the government of Thrace from Selymbria to Christopolis as his appanage.

This peace was of very short duration. The prince carried on his debaucheries at Adrianople, unrestrained either by prudence or decency. He was soon in want of money to supply his extravagance and reward his mercenaries, for he had freed the people in his appanage from the most profitable taxes to gain their support to his rebellion, and he did not now venture to annul his concession. An attempt which he made to seduce the wife of Sir Janni caused that able and daring leader to return to the service of the emperor, and point out to the revengeful grandfather the advantages he could derive from the immediate renewal of the war. The exactions of the prince s troops, and the intrigues of Sir Janni and the emperor, induced several cities of Thrace to desert the party of the young Andronicus. Heracleia received an imperial garrison, and the prince, finding that his cause was losing ground, assembled his army and laid siege to the city in November 1321. His troops had clamoured for the renewal of the war during the summer; they were averse to keep the field in winter, so that, when the attack on Heracleia was defeated, the prince marched up to the walls of Constantinople. He had now few partisans in the capital, and he was soon compelled to retire into winter-quarters at Didymoteichos. In the meantime Sir Janni re-established the emperor’s authority in Apros, Garellas, Redestos, Bizya, and Sergentzion, and laid siege to Selymbria. The unpopularity and avarice of Andronicus did more for the rebels than the military talents of Cantacuzenos and Synadenos, or the courage of the prince. In the campaign of 1322 they recovered all they had lost during the winter, chiefly by the desertion of the emperor’s troops. Thessalonica declared in favour of young Andronicus, and his uncle Constantine, whom the emperor was supposed to be on the point of declaring heir to the empire, and of investing with the imperial title, was made prisoner. The young Andronicus on this occasion showed that, with all his easy good-humour, there was some leaven of the malignant nature of the house of Paleologos in his heart. The Despot Constantine was treated with great cruelty. After submitting to many insults, he was let down into a cistern at Didymoteichos, and allowed to remain in this damp chamber, cut in the rock, for some time, before his nephew would order him to be transferred to a suitable place of confinement. Neither the emperor nor young Andronicus possessed the talents necessary for conducting the civil war; and while the ministers of the emperor were afraid of treason, the counsellors of the prince were embarrassed by the indiscipline of the rebel troops : both were more attentive to their own private interests than to those of their masters or of the empire. A new treaty of peace was concluded at Epibates in July 1322, which removed some of the causes of dissatisfaction to both parties. The troops of young Andronicus were provided for by a donative, and by the ratification of the grants of land they had received in Thrace. The prince was guaranteed an annual pension from the imperial treasury of thirty-six thousand byzants, and the emperor resumed the whole civil and fiscal administration of the appanage conceded to his grandson by the treaty of Rhegion.

This second peace existed for five years. It would have been difficult, even for prudent friends and honourable counsellors, to have established a sincere reconciliation between the elder and younger Andronicus, but both were in reality surrounded by selfish intriguers, and guided by bad passions. The apparent calm at court was marked by two events, which indicate the operation of different causes. On the 2d of February 1325, Andronicus the younger received the imperial crown. This may be considered a proof that the ministers of the old emperor had persuaded him to stifle all his resentment, and lay aside his schemes for excluding his grandson from the throne. But in the following year the two emperors allowed the city of Prusa to be taken by the Ottoman Turks, without either making an effort to relieve it. This fact seems to prove that neither could allow his best officers and troops to succour this important city, lest his colleague should take advantage of their absence. Intrigues followed intrigues. The old emperor was ready to avail himself of the assistance either of the Servians or the Bulgarians against his grandson, though he made no exertions to defend the empire against the Turks. The young emperor, while he pretended to be eager to attack the Mohammedans, was really forming an alliance with the King of Bulgaria to oppose his grandfather.

The malignant old Andronicus could not learn that the coronation of his grandson had put an end to all chance of depriving him of the succession. The young man continued his extravagance and debauchery. After many acts of violence on both sides, the old emperor named a commission, consisting of eighteen ecclesiastics and six senators, who proceeded to Rhegion, where the younger Andronicus had taken up his temporary residence, to state articles of accusation against him, and hear his defence. These charges were, that he had unlawfully appropriated to his private use large sums of money belonging to the public treasury; that the expenses of his household were extravagant; that he had driven several governors named by the emperor from their posts, and replaced them by officers of his own nomination, in violation of all law; and that his debauchery and vicious conduct threatened society with dissolution, for he had assailed the honour of his aunt Simonida, the widow of the Krall of Servia, who had taken the veil. Cantacuzenos says much concerning the calumnies and perjuries, which owed their existence to the instigations of the elder Andronicus, but not a syllable concerning the accusation of incest that was officially brought forward against the younger. He omits entirely the charges which were made against his patron, though he mentions that they were read in the assembly at Rhegion; and he endeavours to confuse the judgment of his readers by recording the vague declamation of Andronicus the younger in praise of his own virtues. The violence and indecency with which the old emperor attacked his grandson threw discredit on his cause. The majority of the commissioners were anxious to avoid a civil war, which any attempt to change the order of succession was sure to produce, at a time when the Turks, Servians, and Bulgarians, were all ready to take advantage of any opportunity to dismember the empire. As the report of the commissioners was favourable to the younger Andronicus, the emperor refused to receive it. He ordered his grand-son’s name to be omitted in the public prayers, and when the Patriarch Isaiah refused to transmit this order to the clergy, he was confined as a prisoner in the monastery of Mangana.

The young emperor could no longer avoid an appeal to arms. The civil war was renewed under circumstances extremely unfavourable to the old emperor, whose conduct rendered it inevitable. The people were universally disgusted with his despotism and injustice, and the young Andronicus seems to have expected that they would have immediately admitted him into Constantinople. Finding that this could not be effected, he hastened into Macedonia in the midst of winter, leaving the Protostrator Synadenos to blockade the capital. Liberal promises of reduced taxation, and the assurance that all arrears due to the imperial treasury should be cancelled, insured his entry into most of the towns, and rendered his march a triumph. Thessalonica, Edessa, Kastoria, Beroea, Pelagonia, Achrida, and Deabolis, opened their gates. The Krall of Servia, who consulted his own interest, refused to assist the officers of the reigning emperor, and took advantage of the confusion to gain possession of the frontier fortress of Prosakon. Strumbitza and Melenikon were the only strong places that remained in the possession of the partisans of Andronicus II.

While these events happened, Synadenos gained a complete victory over the garrison of Constantinople, on its making an attempt to raise the blockade. When the news of this victory reached young Andronicus, he hastened to the army before the walls of the capital. Treasonable assistance was soon secured, and on the night of Monday, 23d of May 1328, a party of soldiers scaled the walls; the garrison joined in proclaiming Andronicus III; the gates were thrown open, and the young emperor marched directly to the imperial palace to assure his grandfather, that though he had ceased to govern, he would be treated with all the honour due to a sovereign prince. The young emperor then performed his devotions in the Church of St Sophia, and reinstated his friend, the Patriarch Isaiah, in the government of the church.

This conquest of Constantinople was attended with few disorders; the palace of the grand logothetes Metochites, the favourite minister of the dethroned emperor, was the only house that was pillaged. The old emperor continued to reside in the palace with a pension of twenty-four thousand byzants; but he was forsaken by all his flatterers, and few pitied him or regretted his fall. Two years after the taking of Constantinople, Andronicus III was attacked by a serious illness, and his ministers feared lest his grand-father might again recover the throne. To prevent the possibility of this event, Synadenos compelled the old man to become a monk, and to sign a declaration that he would never again mount the throne, nor pretend to dispose of the empire, in case of his grandson’s death. Andronicus II had already lost the use of his eyes, and this, his last public act, was signed with two crosses, one in red ink as emperor, and another in black as a humble monk. The Patriarch Isaiah sent to congratulate him on his change of life : the petulant old man regarded the message as an insult, and sent back some violent and probably not unjust reproaches to the head of the church. His name continued to be mentioned in the public prayers as the most religious and most Christian basileus, the monk Antony. One evening, after a literary party at which his daughter Simonida was present, he was suddenly seized with an illness which soon terminated his life. He expired on the 13th of February 1332, in the seventy-fourth year of his age.

Andronicus II was a man who, with few personal vices, possessed many of the worst qualities of a sovereign. He had capacity enough to direct the whole civil and ecclesiastical business of the empire, but was destitute of the judgment necessary to direct it well. He rarely took a right step, and never at the proper time; so that his petulant pride and pedantic despotism proved more ruinous to the emperor than the worst vices of many of his predecessors. His ecclesiastical bigotry especially served as an instrument of Providence for effecting the ruin and degradation of the orthodox Eastern Church, and of the Greek race. That the Greeks allowed themselves to be so long misled and oppressed by so worthless and weak a sovereign, may perhaps be accepted as a proof that the nation was sunk in selfishness and bigotry like the emperor.

 

Sect. III

REIGN OF ANDRONCUS III THE YOUNGER A.D.1328-1341.

 

The private character of Andronicus III had some singular features, which excite our curiosity to learn more than history has preserved concerning his personal opinions. His health was weak, but he displayed a restless activity in his amusements; his talents were considerable, but he was indolent and careless in transacting public business; his thoughtless disposition and easy temper enabled him to banish from his mind the memory of the crimes with which his youthful passions had tortured his own family, and the misery they had inflicted on the whole empire. Instead of tormenting him with remorse, the fearful events of his life appeared to be the work of destiny, and he consoled himself alike for his crimes and his misfortunes by a faith that diminished his own personal responsibility. His indolence induced him to confide the direction of public business to his ministers; but his cynicism prevented his placing implicit trust even in his favourites, and his abilities enabled him to see through the selfish motives of his most obsequious partisans. The condition of Greek society, sinking into a state of political weakness, moral degradation, and military incapacity, and daily suffering every evil from all the neighbouring nations, might have persuaded men, more virtuous and pious than Andronicus III, that the rapid diminution of the Greek race, which was taking place before his eyes, was to be directly attributed to a judgment of God.

The opinions as well as the indolence of Andronicus gave him a contempt for the ceremonials that formed an important part of the emperor’s duty. He abolished many courtly pageants, and absented himself even from some ecclesiastical ceremonies that had been regarded by his predecessors as necessary exhibitions of imperial dignity. At the same time, he astonished the courtiers by mingling with the people, and by admitting every subject, without distinction, to his audience-chamber. In the opinion of the staunch conservatives of Constantinople, the changes he allowed in ceremonials, and the alterations he tolerated in dress, foreshadowed the ruin of the empire more surely than the lavish expenditure of the revenue, the incessant devastations of the Bulgarians, Servians, Moguls, Turks, and Albanians, and the corruption in the administration of justice. The only violent passion Andronicus appears to have retained on the throne was his love of hunting; the expense of his establishment was immense; and every suitor who had a boon to ask knew that the surest way of gaining his end was to present the emperor with a well-trained falcon, a noble hound, or an Arabian horse. His love of active exertion, and his eagerness for personal excitement, joined to his contempt for Byzantine etiquette, induced him to take part in the jousts and tournaments which the nobles of Savoy, who accompanied his second wife, the Empress Anne, had introduced at the court of Constantinople. To the amazement of the long-robed senators and courtiers, he rushed into the mêlée without a crown on his helmet, and exposed himself to his opponents without a sign to indicate that, if they respected the emperor, they must spare their blows. With his ministers of state he held little private intercourse. John Cantacuzenos became his prime-minister, and continued to be his personal friend; he alone enjoyed unreserved communication with his master; but Andronicus had discernment enough to perceive that a character so intriguing and false as that of Cantacuzenos could not be thoroughly honest, and he balanced his authority by the power he conferred on Synadenos, Apokaukos, and the Patriarch John of Apri.

The accession of Andronicus III put an end to the civil war; but it brought little relief to the inhabitants of the empire, nor did it arrest the decline of the Greek nation. The emperor was indolent, his prime-minister was vain and incapable, so that no systematic plan was adopted either for reforming the abuses of the internal government or for defending the frontiers. The whole Greek nation, civilians and ecclesiastics, must share the responsibility of the decay of the empire with Andronicus, who really made one great attempt to eradicate the worst social evil of his age. His judgment revealed to him more clearly than to his prime-minister, that the corruption in the administration of justice was the worm which secretly consumed all the national energy; and knowing that, until justice was equitably administered, it would be impossible to reform the public administration, he determined to put an end to the prevailing judicial iniquities. To effect this, he appointed four chief justices, of whom one was a bishop, and these judges were ordered to sit in open court in the Church of St Sophia, and decide all civil suits. The result of this measure affords a fearful picture of the incorrigible degradation of Greek society at this unhappy period. These judges were intrusted with great authority; they were rendered independent by large salaries, and they were compelled to give an oath that they would administer justice impartially, under the sanction of those fearful imprecations which the Greek Church makes use of in order to strengthen the moral feelings by ecclesiastical forms and terrors. Yet Andronicus was soon overwhelmed with proofs that three of his chief justices, including the bishop, made a shameless traffic of their judicial decisions. They were tried and convicted in a solemn tribunal which sate in the Church of St Sophia, from whence their corrupt sentences had issued. The bishop was degraded and incarcerated; and the real cause of the victories of the barbarians, and of the commercial superiority of the Italians, was thus rendered apparent to every reflecting man.

The intrigues of the court fill many pages of the works of Cantacuzenos and Gregoras, but they produced so little change in the troubled current of events, that it is only necessary to notice that the reign of Andronicus was not free from those court conspiracies for seizing the throne which were an incurable intermittent disease of the Byzantine despotism. Sir Janni ended his many plots by a rebellion, which so alarmed the emperor and his prime-minister that they sent a courtier to assassinate him. The Despot Demetrius formed a plot to seize his nephew’s throne, which proved abortive; and Phrantzes Paleologos, the assassin of Sir Janni, hatched another conspiracy, but he had not inherited the great talents and indefatigable activity of the man he had murdered. As Andronicus lived among a small circle, the ladies of his court exercised a degree of influence which might have proved highly injurious, as it certainly increased the number of party intrigues. But the chief ladies of the court seem to have possessed more virtue and quite as much talent as the men. Indeed, Theodore, the mother of Cantacuzenos, whose connections, rank, and wealth gave her great influence, was evidently superior in ability to her son.

Andronicus had little intercourse with the courts of Western Europe; but at the commencement of his reign an embassy from Louis of Bavaria, the Emperor of Germany, visited Constantinople to demand a sum of money which it would seem had been promised for some military operations against the house of Anjou. The greediness of the Bavarians astonished even the Greek courtiers, who were themselves insatiable; but the want of money in the imperial treasury was great, and the services of Louis the Bavarian were no longer wanted, so his ambassadors were dismissed with diplomatic evasions. Cantacuzenos boasts that he frustrated the demands of the Germans by offering to furnish their sovereign with a corps of auxiliary troops.

The first campaign of Andronicus was against his brother-in-law, Michael, king of Bulgaria, who invaded the empire and advanced as far as Didymoteichos, but was compelled to retire when the emperor took the field. The war was distinguished by no important action, and at the end of the following year hostilities were suspended and peace concluded under the mediation of Xenia, the mother of Andronicus, and of the Queen of Bulgaria. The war which took place after the death of Michael, and the hostilities which Andronicus carried on with Stephen Dushan and the Servians, do not require to be detailed.

The political importance of the reign of Andronicus III in European history can be more correctly appreciated by comparing it with that of Orkhan, the sovereign of the Ottoman Turks, than by reviewing all the events of his desultory wars. To his contemporaries Andronicus appeared as the powerful and wealthy emperor of an extensive but ill-organised state, and of a numerous but degenerated people; while Orkhan seemed nothing more than the able and active leader of a confederacy of nomad tribes, and the receiver of the tribute of a few recently-conquered Greek cities. To us Andronicus has dwindled into a mere name in Byzantine chronology, while Orkhan stands forward in the world’s history as one of the few lawgivers who created a nation and founded an empire by his own legislative enactments. The legislation of Orkhan belongs to a later period of his reign; but the Ottoman Turks already displayed more systematic habits and a higher sense of the value of order as well as justice, than the Seljouk tribes.

The manner employed by the Ottomans to gain possession of the large, populous, and well-fortified cities, inhabited by wealthy but unwarlike Greeks, was not unlike that employed by the Dorians in the early ages of Greece. Indeed, it is almost the only way by which the courage and perseverance of a small force can conquer art and numbers. Instead of attempting to form a regular blockade of the city against which they directed their operations, and thereby compelling the inhabitants to exert all their unbroken power to deliver themselves from the attack, the Ottoman Turks established some strong posts in the vicinity of the city, ravaged the fields, carried off the cattle and slaves, and interrupted the commercial communications of the inhabitants. The devastation of the country and the insecurity of the roads gradually raised the price of provisions, and caused emigration and famine. In this way, Nicaea, the cradle of the Greek church, and which had been for two generations the capital of the Greek empire, was closely blockaded; and in order to prevent its surrender, Andronicus must not only have thrown large supplies of provisions into the city, but have undertaken a military expedition to drive the besiegers from their fortified posts. This would not have been a very difficult operation, for it was easy to open communications between Constantinople and Nicaea by Kios and the lake Askanias, and in that way concentrate an overwhelming force at Nicaea. To prevent any military operation of this kind, Orkhan resolved to transfer the seat of war to the neighbourhood of Constantinople.

In the spring of 1329 the Ottomans had passed Nicomedia, and threatened to lay waste all the open country as far as the Asiatic suburbs of the capital. The people of Constantinople were alarmed for their property; the danger of Nicaea was forgotten, and the emperor was compelled to take the field in person, with some precipitation. Two thousand veteran troops could alone be spared from the garrison of the capital; the rest of the army was hastily collected from the militia in the Thracian cities, whose discipline had been relaxed during the civil wars, and who were now brigaded together without much skill. A numerous fleet of boats transported the troops over to Skutari, and attended their march as if to secure an easy mode of retreat. The emperor led his army by short marches along the gulf of Nicomedia, and on the morning of the third day he reached Pelekanon, where he found Orkhan encamped with about eight thousand men in a secure position on the hills. A council of war decided that it would be imprudent to advance farther, but advised the emperor to offer battle to the Turks next day.

Orkhan, who felt no desire to risk the success of his operations against Nicaea in a pitched battle, kept his station on the slopes of the Bithynian hills, where ravines and broken ground enabled his light cavalry to avoid the charge of the Byzantine men-at-arms, but from whence they could descend and skirmish with the Greeks. The position of Orkhan might have been turned without difficulty, and the emperor might have crossed the gulf with his fleet, and taken the shortest road to Nicaea, which he could have reached long before the Turks; but neither Andronicus nor his prime-minister Cantacuzenos were capable of planning or executing a combined series of military movements. After a day spent in desultory engagements, the emperor resolved to withdraw his army into the camp at Pelekanon; and Cantacuzenos recommended that, as there was no danger of the Turks advancing any farther, it would be as well to lead the army back to Constantinople. As the Greeks were retiring into their camp, the Turks pressed on their rear-guard, and the emperor, in repulsing their attack, received a wound in the thigh. Both armies then retired into their camps. Unfortunately there was no general capable of taking the emperor’s place in the Greek camp. The soldiers had no confidence in Cantacuzenos, on whom the chief command devolved, and he was unable to preserve order during the night. A report was spread among the soldiers that the emperor’s wound was dangerous, perhaps mortal; the recent levies attempted to escape on board the fleet; a body of Turks, stationed to watch the Greek army, perceived the confusion, and attacked the fugitives; a panic spread through the camp; the emperor was embarked in a small boat, and escaped to Philokrene, a maritime fort on the road to Constantinople. It was necessary to commence an immediate retreat, and the army was separated into four divisions, which marched towards the neighbouring forts of Niketiates, Dakybiza, Ritzion, and Philokrene. Morning showed the Turkish army the camp at Pelekanon completely deserted, and the time they spent in plundering it enabled three of the divisions of the flying army to effect their retreat in safety. A body of Ottoman cavalry, however, hung on the rear of the division that marched to Philokrene, which must have suffered severely in this disgraceful retreat, for two officers of high rank were slain. The Emperor Andronicus sailed to Constantinople without making an effort to repair the honour of his arms. He consoled himself for his disgrace by reflecting that the real loss of the imperial army in killed and wounded was inconsiderable, and that he would gain credit for having saved the property of the Constantinopolitans, as summer was now so far advanced that the nomad Turks would retire with their plunder to their pastoral encampments on the Bithynian Olympus, leaving Orkhan to watch the siege of Nicaea.

The battle of Pelekanon was the first engagement in which the Emperor of the Greeks had encountered the ottoman sultan. Insignificant as it really was, its moral effect was incalculable; the heavy-armed and disciplined Greeks had fled before the light-armed and irregular Turks; and the spirit of the Greek emperor and of the Greek nation was broken. The capitulation of Nicaea, which Cantacuzenos passes over in silence, took place in the following year (1330). Its conditions were remarkable. Every person who desired to quit the city was allowed to retire with all his movable property. Orkhan consented to allow the Greeks to transport their ecclesiastical archives and sacred relics to Constantinople, and adopted effectual means for insuring the execution of every article of the capitulation. The Greeks acquired confidence in the justice as well as the power of his administration, and few of the inhabitants of Nicaea availed themselves of the permission to emigrate. The municipal constitution of the city was again called into active operation as a principle of government, and the inhabitants were relieved from the oppressive centralisation of the Byzantine system which treated the empire as a fiscal domain, and every magistrate as little more than a fiscal agent. The Ottoman Turks were still few in number, simple in their habits, and restrained in their power by their rivality with the neighbouring Seljouk princes; so that the condition of the Greeks under the government of Orkhan was better than under the imperial sway; their taxes were lighter, and they were secure from the ravages of hostile invaders.

After the taking of Nicaea, Orkhan besieged and captured Kios (Ghiumlek), which served as its port Nicomedia was closely watched, and the harvest of its inhabitants destroyed; but Andronicus in person supplied the city with provisions, and a treaty of peace, which he concluded with the sultan, delayed its fall. The principal object of this treaty appears to have been to secure the property of the citizens of Constantinople on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus from devastation. Cantacuzenos mentions that Orkhan engaged not to molest the few Greeks who were still subjects of the emperor in Asia Minor, but he omits to notice the concessions by which this boon was purchased. At all events, the peace was not of long duration, and Nicomedia surrendered to Orkhan about the commencement of the year 1338. Orkhan also made an attempt to commence his system of blockade by seizing forts in the vicinity of Constantinople, both in Europe and Asia, but he was not yet able to succeed in so great an enterprise.

The danger to which his capital was exposed induced Andronicus to pay some attention to his fleet; but the measures he adopted only increased the disorder in the imperial administration. Apokaukos was appointed grand-duke or high admiral, on condition that he expended one hundred thousand byzants in fitting out the fleet. That wily financier not only fulfilled his engagement, but also fortified Epibates, one of the fortresses in the vicinity of Constantinople best adapted to baffle the operations of the Ottomans, which he held as his own private castle.

During the whole reign of Andronicus, even the European provinces of his empire were infested by incessant invasions of the Turks. The neglect of the Greek navy by Andronicus II allowed the Turks to make piracy a profitable occupation. Andronicus III attempted to diminish the evil by forming alliances with the Seljouk emirs of Karasi, Saroukhan, and Aïdin, but he was unable to prevent the islands of the Aegean Sea and all the continent, from the walls of Constantinople to the rocks of Maina, from being plundered, and the inhabitants carried off into slavery. These unceasing devastations, and the constant demand for men, women, and children, in the slave-markets of the Turkish cities of Asia, caused a sensible diminution of the Greek race during a single generation. In the year 1329 or 1330, a fleet of seventy ships landed an army that ravaged the valley of the Hebrus as far as Trajanopolis. Fortunately the emperor was at Didymoteichos, and the force he was able to assemble arrested their devastations, and repulsed them with some loss. In the following year a body of Turkish cavalry crossed the Hellespont, but of these plunderers about fifteen hundred were cut in pieces by the imperial troops. In 1331, another army landed in Europe, and laid waste the country round Redestos, Kissos, Polyvoton, and Akonites, and the emperor again took the field to drive them back to their ships. In 1332, an army landed in the gulf of Thessalonica, while the emperor was marching from Rhendina to Thessalonica. He overtook and defeated this expedition, and captured all the Turkish ships but two. In 1334, the Turkish corsairs committed terrible depredations in the Greek islands, and captured many merchant ships. As a proof of the naval power of the Seljouk emirs at this time, it may be mentioned that when Andronicus formed an alliance with the emirs of Saroukhan and Aïdin against the Genoese of Phocaea, he obtained a reinforcement of twenty-four vessels from Saroukhan, and of thirty from Amour, the son of Aïdin. Amour had previously invaded the empire with a fleet of seventy-five ships. In the year 1337, another enemy laid waste a great part of Thrace. A horde of Moguls crossed the Danube, and plundered the territory of the empire for upwards of six weeks. During this expedition they fell in with a band of Turks who crossed the sea from Asia, and were also engaged in plundering the country. The Moguls attacked and defeated the Turks, whom they carried off into slavery, mingled with the Greeks. Nicephorus Gregoras asserts that the Moguls carried away three hundred thousand captives from Thrace in this expedition. In the same year the troops of Orkhan were repulsed in an attack on Rhegion, after they had landed and set fire to the houses. The sudden arrival of the Byzantine fleet gave the Greeks a superiority, and a large part of the ottoman naval force was captured. Other expeditions are mentioned by Gregoras, who recounts that, in the year 1340, an army of eight thousand Turks, attended by a long train of pack-horses for transporting their plunder, overran all Thrace as far as the foot of Mount Haemus, and, after leisurely transporting their booty to their ships, returned to Asia without encountering any opposition.

Several Genoese nobles had acquired considerable possessions in the empire as vassals, but they really governed them as independent princes. Andronicus III resolved to re-establish the imperial authority. In the year 1329 he regained possession of Chios, which had been occupied by the family of Zaccaria, in the reign of Andronicus II, under the pretext that the island had been granted to them by Michael VIII. The recovery of Chios was effected by the treachery of Benedetto Zaccaria, the brother of the ruling noble, and by the assistance of the Greek inhabitants. As Chios then yielded an annual revenue of one hundred and twenty thousand byzants to the public treasury, it was a valuable if not a glorious conquest. Phocaea was held by the Genoese family of Cattaneo: and it was also reduced to obedience with the assistance of the Seljouk emirs of Saroukhan and Aïdin, but soon rebelled under Domenico Cattaneo, who formed an alliance with Nicholas, duke of the Archipelago, and the knights of Rhodes. A naval station was formed by the knights of Rhodes at Delos to protect the Archipelago from the piratical expeditions of the Turks. Domenico Cattaneo made an attempt to conquer Lesbos, but the Emperor Andronicus arriving with a fleet, and the allies of Domenico abandoning his cause, both Lesbos and Phocaea received Byzantine garrisons.

Andronicus sought to acquire glory by distant and desultory wars, in which victory was hardly doubtful, and temporary conquests were easily acquired. The defence of his own subjects, the permanent interests of his people, and the most necessary arrangements in the administration of the empire, were neglected to gratify the idle military vanity which was the fashionable vice of the age. In these expeditions the prime-minister Cantacuzenos had generally some private object of ambition to gain. He increased his influence, extended his party connections, and prepared to maintain himself in power after the death of Andronicus, whose health was rapidly declining.

While the Turks were continually ravaging Thrace and Macedonia, Andronicus made three expeditions into Epirus. The first expedition took place in the year 1334. Stephen Gabrielopoulos governed Thessaly for some time as an independent prince, but with the title of despot. On his death, Monomachos, the governor of Thessalonica, recovered possession of the towns of Golos, Kastri, and Lykostoma. At the same time John Dukas, despot of Epirus, and Count of Cephallenia, seized Stagos, Trikala, Phanari, Damasis, and Elasson. Andronicus, thinking the moment favourable for annexing the whole of Thessaly to the empire, took the field in person, and Recovered all the towns occupied by the Despot of Epirus. Three Albanian tribes, the Malakasians, Bouians, and Mesarits, who could muster a force of twelve thousand men, made their submission, and tranquillity was established for some time.

In the year 1337, the news that the Turks and Moguls were ravaging Thrace appears to have induced the Albanians in the neighbourhood of the fortresses of Valagrita and Kanina to plunder the Greeks in their vicinity and lay siege to several towns. The emperor took the field against them in person, proposing to carry his arms afterwards southward against the despotat of Epirus. The Albanians had hoped to secure their plunder in their mountain fastnesses, but two thousand Turkish auxiliaries in the emperor’s pay proved as active in mountain warfare as the Skipetars. Not only the booty recently taken was recovered, but the native fastnesses of the Albanians were stormed, and their wives and children reduced to slavery by the Turks. Cantacuzenos, on this occasion, indulges in a vain boast that the Greek troops in the imperial army were not allowed to enslave their fellow-Christians, but we must not forget that the imperial army was unable to subdue these fellow-Christians without the assistance of Turkish mercenaries, who were allowed to pay themselves by carrying away Christians as slaves. The Mohammedans took what they considered the most valuable part of the booty, and left the cattle to the emperor’s troops. The number of slaves taken on this occasion is not recorded; but 5,000 horses, 300,000 oxen, and 1,200,000 sheep were captured.

The despotat of Epirus, which owed its independent existence to the conquest of Constantinople by the Crusaders, had now remained separated from the empire for a hundred and thirty years. It was formed by members of the family of Angelos, but passed by marriage and assassination into the allied family of the Counts of Cephallenia, who assumed the name of Dukas. The assassination of John Dukas by his wife Anne, daughter of the protovestiarios Andronikos Palaeologos, in the year 1337, enabled his murderess to govern as regent for her son Nicephorus II, a child of seven years of age. Anne, finding that she would be unable to maintain her authority, invited the Emperor Andronicus to take possession of the despotat, and succeeded in placing all its fortresses in his hands without opposition.

After the emperors return to Constantinople, a party in Epirus took up arms and gained possession of the three principal fortresses near the coast, Arta, Rogo, and Thomokastron (a.C. 1339). Andronicus again visited Epirus in person, though he was in a weak state of health. He recovered the fortresses from the rebels, and pacified the country, but did not long survive his return to Constantinople, dying on the 15th June 1341, and leaving his son John V., a child nine years of age, his successor.

 

Sect. IV

Reign of John V (Palaeologos), A.D. 1341-1391, including the Reigns of John Cantacuzenos, A.D. 1347- 1354, and of Andronicus, the son of John V, A.D. 1375-1376 and 1379-1381.

 

The Empress Anne of Savoy was, both by the nomination of the deceased emperor and by the custom of the empire, regent during the minority of her son John V (Palaeologos). Byzantine etiquette required her to weep for nine days beside the body of her husband, who expired in the habit of a monk in the monastery of the Guiding Virgin; but John Cantacuzenos, the grand domestikos, who directed the public administration as first minister of state, having immediately established himself in the imperial palace in order to constitute himself tutor to the young emperor, and having assumed a guard of five hundred men, the widowed empress deemed it necessary to return to the palace on the third day, that she might watch over the rights of her children. The absence of a strict rule of hereditary succession, and the contempt of the Greek nobles for every principle of law and equity, rendered the imperial crown a prize for which party leaders and powerful ministers were constantly plotting. Cantacuzenos had worked for a long time with great activity to form a party in the public administration and in the provinces. He was vain, wealthy, and ambitious; but both his friends and enemies knew that his mind was destitute of that vigour which affords original suggestions and gives firmness of purpose. That he would assume the rank of emperor seemed certain; whether he would content himself with remaining the colleague of the young Palaeologos was more doubtful. Apokaukos, the ablest, boldest, and most unprincipled of the Byzantine statesmen, in order to gain the credit of being the first to urge the completion of an act which he supposed was unavoidable, recommended Cantacuzenos to lose no time in proclaiming himself emperor. The weak prime-minister listened to the treason without following the advice of the traitor; and Apokaukos, suspecting that the treason was to be executed without his being allowed to participate in its profits, became the enemy of Cantacuzenos, and determined to support the empress in the regency.

The Patriarch, John of Apri, who had been appointed tutor of the young emperor during the last expedition of Andronicus to Epirus, claimed both the tutorship of the emperor and the superintendence of public affairs. By the support of the party opposed to Cantacuzenos, and the jealousy of the empress, who feared the prime-minister’s ambition, the Patriarch was appointed president of the ministerial council. A contest of intrigue then commenced between the two parties, in which neither was able to gain a decided superiority in the capital, for the empress-regent was as little inclined to trust implicitly in the good faith of the Patriarch and Apokaukos as in the loyalty of Cantacuzenos. It was necessary to assemble a considerable army in Thrace, as the empire was threatened with invasion by the Bulgarians, Albanians, and Turks, and the grand domestikos assumed the command of this force, for he feared to intrust it even to one of his own partisans. While he was absent from Constantinople, Apokaukos attempted to seize the direction of public affairs and render himself master of the young emperor’s person. Failing in his attempt, he escaped to the castle of Epibates, which he had fortified so strongly that Cantacuzenos did not venture to attack it. On returning to the capital, Cantacuzenos made an abortive attempt to get himself declared emperor by means of a tumult in which his soldiers endeavored to force an entry for him into the imperial palace on horseback. This act would have been tantamount to declaring him emperor, and, if the plot had succeeded, would have been followed by a proclamation to that effect. He had already prepared for rebellion by fortifying Empythion, near Didymoteichos, as Apokaukos had fortified Epibates; and as he was solicited by the Greeks in the Peloponnesus to attack the principality of Achaia, he quitted Constantinople at the end of September to make preparations for an expedition to reannex the Peloponnesus to the empire. Apokaukos then returned to the capital, and was appointed Prefect of Constantinople: in a popular sedition the houses of many of the partisans of Cantacuzenos were plundered; his friends were placed under arrest; but he himself, though satisfied that his intrigues were known, and believing that it was now necessary for his safety to mount the throne, still pretended to refuse the title of Emperor, which his partisans urged him to assume. This tortuous conduct made even his most violent supporters distrust his behaviour, for his indecision led every party to believe that he was carrying on some secret negotiation from which they were excluded. At length he was proclaimed emperor at Didymoteichos, about four months after the death of Andronicus III, and the ceremony of his coronation was performed on the feast of St. Demetrius. Cantacuzenos, in describing his coronation, would fain insinuate that the blunders and crimes of his rebellious reign must be attributed to the decrees of Providence, whose dissatisfaction was presaged by the blunder of the imperial tailor, who made the robe of state so small that Cantacuzenos could hardly squeeze himself into the embroidered vestment, while the mantle was so long that it hung round him like a horseman’s cloak. The Bishop of Didymoteichos, seeing that the mind of the rebel emperor was affected by this omen, consoled him with a sneer, saying that those who eat figs while they are green are sure to have their lips blistered.

The weakness, indecision, and incapacity of Cantacuzenos became apparent when he mounted the throne. He was destitute of the energy necessary to command the factious chiefs of his party, and his vanity prevented his selecting ministers who could perform the services required to keep his supporters closely united. The people, though discontented with the fiscal extortions and judicial corruption of the central government, knew well, from their experience in the civil wars of Andronicus, that the rebellion of a rival emperor would only add to their sufferings. Feudal usages had penetrated into Greek society; many provincial nobles had assimilated their authority to that of feudal barons, and the magistrates of many towns were striving to establish or defend their local independence. The whole state of society beyond the immediate sphere of the court and the imperial administration rendered the question whether John V should be replaced by Cantacuzenos or whether Apokaukos should govern as prime-minister, or Cantacuzenos as emperor, matters of secondary consideration. Every page of the dethroned rebel’s memoirs, written after he had time to reflect on the past in the calm of monastic seclusion, proves that he was incapable of understanding the circumstances of his age or the general and popular feeling of his contemporaries. Both he and Gregoras are in an especial degree the historians of the court and church of Constantinople; of the interests and opinions of the people they took no account. Court intrigues, family alliances, party interests, personal hatreds, local prejudices, and religious bigotry, concealed the existence or stifled the growth of every national and patriotic sentiment.

The Regent Anne, under the guidance of the Patriarch and the Grand-duke Apokaukos, adopted prompt and effectual measures to intimidate the partisans of the rebels. Theodora, the mother of Cantacuzenos, a woman of more virtue and talent than her son, was thrown into prison, and treated with great cruelty until her death. The young emperor was solemnly crowned at Constantinople on the 19th of November; Apokaukos was then named Grand-duke, and the war against the rebels was prosecuted with a degree of promptitude and energy that confounded all their plans. Cantacuzenos had counted more on the effect of his intrigues than on his own military talents. The grand-duke had taken effectual measures to countermine these intrigues before he pushed Cantacuzenos into rebellion, and he now showed that he knew far better how to direct the operations of a campaign than the rebel emperor.

The desire of the people for the preservation of peace, and their aversion to the aristocratic pretensions of the partisans of Cantacuzenos, contributed probably to his failures at Adrianople and Thessalonica quite as much as the activity of the grand-duke. The authority of the regency was re-established in all the Thracian towns. The only fortress in Thrace of which the rebels retained possession was Didymoteichos; but Cantacuzenos and his followers, being cut off from all communication with this place, and unable to defend himself in Macedonia, fled into Servia, hoping to conquer the Greek empire by the assistance of the Sclavonians. The wealth of Cantacuzenos and of his partisans was confiscated; but though the losses of the rebel emperor were immense, he still possessed considerable riches, with which he could pay his followers, bribe partisans and reward friends. The immense fortunes accumulated in the public service form a strong proof of the corruption of the administration; while, on the other hand, some traces of a healthy national feeling among the mass of the Greek population were rendered apparent by the attempt which the rebels made to awaken Hellenic traditions. Unfortunately, the decline of the empire soon caused both public and private wealth to disappear, and the Hellenic reminiscences of the people produced no love of liberty, nor respect for order; their operation was confined to rhetorical common-place.

Stephen Dushan, who had ascended the throne of Servia in the year 1333, and who was subsequently crowned emperor, was one of the most dangerous enemies of the Greeks. Active, brave, able, and perfidious, he was formed by nature to contend with the Byzantine court, over which he gained many advantages; and he laboured indefatigably to transfer the empire of the Greeks to the Servian nation. He had already established his residence at Skoupies, in order to watch every occasion for extending his dominions; and he availed himself of the pretensions and difficulties of Cantacuzenos to form an alliance with the rebel and invade the empire. The Servian auxiliaries enabled the rebel to lay siege to Serres, a city of great importance, from its command over a rich and extensive plain; but they were soon attacked with fevers in the plains of Macedonia, and the siege was abandoned. About the same time, Didymoteichos was closely invested by the imperial troops, and was in great danger of being taken, when it was relieved by a Turkish army under Amour, the son of Aïdin, with whom Cantacuzenos had formed a strict alliance (January 1343). The failure of the attack on Serres, the retreat of the Servians, an insurrection of the peasantry against the partisans of Cantacuzenos in the neighbourhood of Didymoteichos, and the return of Amour with his Turks to Asia Minor, again reduced the rebels to the verge of ruin. In these circumstances, the support of the Vallachians of Thessaly was of the greatest importance to their cause. The inhabitants of Great Vlakia, it is true, were more anxious to secure the neutrality of their territory, and the enjoyment of their local usages and municipal laws, than to establish the supremacy of any emperor at Constantinople. It was probably rather to protect themselves against a Servian invasion, than from any preference for Cantacuzenos, that they now received John Angelos, a near relation of the rebel emperor, as their prince; and the charter, under the golden seal of the Emperor Cantacuzenos, conferring his office, ran in the name of the Emperor John V and the Empress-regent Anne, as well as in that of the rebels, Cantacuzenos and his wife Irene.

The support of the Thessalian Vallachians enabled Cantacuzenos to open the campaign of 1343 with an effective force. He gained possession of Berrhoea, Servia, Platamona, Petra, Soskos, and Staridola, and entertained hopes of being admitted into Thessalonica, which were disappointed by the activity of Apokaukos, who arrived to protect the city with a naval force of seventy Greek and thirty-two Turkish ships. Thus we find that, even in maritime warfare, the Turkish race was rapidly advancing to an equality with the Greeks. The return of Amour with a Turkish army subsequently re-established the ascendancy of Cantacuzenos. He invaded Thrace, seized the pass of Christopolis, and once more made Didymoteichos his headquarters. But his progress in Thrace was arrested by the return of his ally Amour to Asia, where the emir was detained by an attack on Smyrna by the Genoese and the Knights of Rhodes.

The assistance of the Turks alone enabled the rebels to maintain their ground during the year 1344. The imperial government had formed alliances with Alexander, king of Bulgaria, and Stephen Dushan, king of Servia, who both marched against the rebels. Apokaukos himself took the field, and though he failed in an attempt to take Didymoteichos, he detached a Bulgarian chief, named Momitzilos, from the party of Cantacuzenos. This warrior held the districts of Merope and Morrha, in the chain of Mount Rhodope, as an independent principality. The most fortunate event of this campaign for the rebels was the accidental defeat of the Servian army by the Turks, in which Cantacuzenos had no share. The ships belonging to a large body of Turks who had landed to plunder Thrace were destroyed at Pallene by the Knights of Rhodes. The Turks were therefore compelled to march by land to the Thracian Chersoneses’; and as they passed through the Chalcidice they were attacked by the Servians, whom they completely defeated. This event enabled Cantacuzenos to gain possession of Gratianopolis, and to conclude treaties both with the Kings of Servia and of Bulgaria.

The most important event of the year 1345 was the murder of Apokaukos, which happened during the summer. Symptoms of discontent had manifested themselves at Constantinople, and other cities attached to the regent’s cause, and an opposition to the government of Apokaukos was formed, both in the court and the administration. It is always the policy of the prime-minister in a despotism to treat even a moderate and legal opposition as rebellious sedition; and the grand-duke, who was as daring as he was ambitious, determined to strengthen his authority by getting rid of his most dangerous opponents. A proscription of all the men of wealth and influence who were either suspected or disliked by Apokaukos was commenced; numbers of rich and eminent persons were imprisoned in the building called the Palace of Constantine, of which the ruins, still rising over the walls of Constantinople, retain the same name at present. The official residence of the grand-duke, as admiral of the fleet, was situated not far from this palace and prison, overlooking the head of the port. There Apokaukos dwelt, surrounded by military guards, and by crowds of the rude Zakonians and insolent Gasmuls who served in the fleet; and at the nearest quay, an armed galley, fully manned, constantly awaited his orders. His power, his boldness, his activity, his armed attendants, and his suspicions, all seemed to insure his safety. New dungeons were constructed within the precincts of the palace of Constantine, and many persons accused only of political offences were soon to be consigned to hopeless captivity by the cruelty of Apokaukos, who watched the completion of their prison with an inhuman interest. When the work was finished, the grand-duke resolved to inspect it, and, contrary to his usual habit, entered the court of the old palace without his guards. Many prisoners of rank were allowed to walk at large in this court; and for some time they had been in the habit of speaking of the death of the grand-duke as the only means of averting their perpetual imprisonment in the dungeons he had prepared to receive them. When he was seen to enter, followed by a single attendant, Heaven appeared to have delivered him into the hands of the men he had treated with the greatest injustice. One of the prisoners seized a block of wood and struck him to the ground; the rest, with the materials left by the workmen who had built the new prisons, killed him on the spot. His head was cut off with a carpenter’s axe, and exhibited from the walls. The guards, who had remained by his orders at the outer gate, on seeing that their master was dead, retired without attempting to avenge his death. The prisoners, proud of having delivered the empire from a cruel master, made no attempt to escape. They expected thanks, if not rewards; but the empress-regent felt that she had lost the services of a man of energy and talent, whose place it would be difficult to supply from among the Greek nobles of her court, and she wished to see his murderers punished. The servants of Apokaukos, and the sailors about the arsenal, were allowed to take up arms, and fill the capital with bloodshed and pillage. All the political prisoners were massacred with the greatest cruelty, though only a few had any share in the death of the grand-duke. The murder of Apokaukos took place on the 11th of June 1345.

The civil war continued to lay waste all the country in the vicinity of Constantinople. The industrious citizens of the Thracian towns and the cultivators of the soil were plundered by military leaders, who frequently changed sides to prolong the contest. The Bulgarians, the Servians, the Albanians, the Genoese, and the Turks, were all encroaching on the empire of Constantinople. But the miseries inflicted on the Greek population by the mercenary troops of Cantacuzenos surpassed their other sufferings. The ranks of these mercenaries were filled with Sclavonians, Wallachians, and Germans, whose rapacity was excited and their hearts hardened by great military vicissitudes and constant change of place. They plundered the cultivators of the soil without compassion, and compelled even friendly cities to pay extraordinary contributions. In vain the magistrates acknowledged the title of the rebel emperor, and offered to admit his garrisons within their walls; their offers of submission were refused, for the mercenaries could only be maintained by extorting from the people sums far exceeding the amount of the ordinary taxes; and as an excuse for practising such extortion, it was deemed necessary to treat a great proportion of the Greek cultivators of the soil in Thrace as if they had been a hostile population. The partisans of the Regent Anne were not less rapacious than those of Cantacuzenos; the property of the rebels, and of those who were accused of favouring their cause, both in the cities and the country, was plundered, and their houses and vineyards destroyed. Anarchy began to dissolve all political bonds. Some cities shut their gates against both the emperors. Some leaders declared themselves independent; and Momitzilos, at the head of a band of four thousand well-armed veterans, defied them both. Cantacuzenos admits that he consulted his own interests rather than those of the empire by distributing the command of the Thracian cities among his own relations and his noble partisans, in order to afford them the means of living according to their aristocratic rank The insecurity of property was so great that all commercial intercourse was interrupted, and many articles previously manufactured to a considerable extent, for the consumption of the neighbouring provinces or for foreign exportation, ceased to be produced. The civil wars of Andronicus III and of Cantacuzenos, following one another at so short an interval, reduced the Greek population of Thrace and Macedonia to such a state of destitution that they were prepared to submit to any foreign invader. The people became as corrupted and unprincipled as their rulers. Selfishness, party passions, and religious schisms, inflamed their quarrels, and so completely absorbed their attention that they possessed neither courage nor patriotism sufficient to fight their own battles, but remained torpid spectators of the contest which was to decide the existence of their empire, the orthodoxy of their church, and the fate of their nation. Even the schisms which rent the Greek church at this period, and the disputes of the Palamites and Barlaamites, which fill so many pages of the political history of Constantinople, never interested the whole Greek population, whose orthodoxy was satisfied with their doctrines concerning the procession of the Holy Ghost, the use of leavened bread in the eucharist, and an inveterate hatred of the Pope and the Latin church.

The first foreigner who took advantage of the paralysed state of the Greek nation was Stephen Dushan, the king of Servia, whom we have already seen changing sides more than once during the civil war. He was a man of great ambition, and was celebrated for his gigantic stature and personal courage. His subjects boasted of his liberality and success in war; his enemies reproached him with faithlessness and cruelty. He had driven his father, Stephen VII, from the throne, and the old man had been murdered in prison by the rebellious nobles of Servia, who feared lest a reconciliation should take place with his son. Stephen Dushan had passed seven years of his youth at Constantinople, where he had become acquainted with all the defects of the Byzantine government, and with all the vices of Greek society. The circumstances in which rival emperors were placed during the year 1345 were extremely favourable to the ambitious projects of the Servian prince. The attention of the rebels and of the regency was so constantly demanded to the changes at Constantinople that they were unable to defend the frontiers of the empire, and Stephen Dushan seized the opportunity to extend his conquests in every direction. To the east he rendered himself master of the whole valley of the Strymon, took the large and flourishing city of Serres, and garrisoned all the fortresses as far as the wall that defended the pass of Christopolis. To the west his dominions extended to the shores of the Adriatic; Achrida, Kastoria, and Joannina, were provincial cities of his new conquests. He subdued the Wallachians of Thessaly and the Albanians of southern Epirus, and formed the plan of depriving the Greeks of their political and orthodox supremacy. He assumed the imperial crown at Serres, where he established a court on the Roman or Byzantine model, and took the title of Emperor of Romania, Sclavonia, and Albania, conferring at the same time the title of King of Servia on his son. He promulgated a code of laws, which is now the oldest existing monument of the Servian language. His political sagacity is shown by his endeavours to modify the principles of slavery prevalent in Servia, and to encourage trade. Seeing how much the Greek emperors had lost by neglecting the commercial interests of their subjects, he secured the friendship of the Venetian republic, and inscribed his own name in the register of her nobility called the Golden Book. His arms were successful against the Bosnians and the Hungarians, as well as against the Greeks; and at his death in 1355 the Servian Empire extended from the Danube to the frontiers of Aetolia. The dominions of the Servian emperor were partitioned after his death; but the Greeks have never since been able to recover their former preponderance in the provinces from the valley of the Strimon to the shores of the gulf of Arta. In that extensive district they no longer compose a decided majority of the population.

The success of Cantacuzenos was at last decided by the aid he received from the Turks, not by his own political intrigues and military exploits. His own history of the civil war presents the Greeks under the most unfavourable aspect, and far inferior both in morality and courage to the Turks. Amour, the Seljouk emir of Aïdin, is the noblest character of the age; Orkhan, the Othoman sultan, is the most sagacious statesman; and both these princes were the allies of the rebel at the end of the war. But the Regent Anne also relied more on the aid of Turkish mercenaries than on the courage of the imperial army, and it was the defection of Orkhan from her cause, and the desertion of the troops of the Emir of Saroukhan, which ruined her military position in the year 1346.

The manner in which both Cantacuzenos and the empress-regent generally paid their Mussulman allies was by allowing them to plunder the country and carry off the Greek population to be sold as slaves in Asia Minor. The friendship of the Emir Amour for Cantacuzenos may have been as disinterested as the rhetorical historian represents it; but the Turkish mercenaries under his banner required to be maintained and rewarded. The rebel emperor was often unable to famish them with provisions and money; and when this was the case they plundered both friend and foe, and carried off the wretched inhabitants into slavery wherever they could seize them. The historian Ducas, a warm partisan of Cantacuzenos, who wrote in the next century, declares that the treaty by which the Empress Anne purchased the aid of Orkhan contained a clause authorising the ottoman Turks to make slaves of the Christian subjects of the rebel emperor, and to transport them to the slave-markets in Asia by the way of Skutari; thus rendering the Asiatic suburb of Constantinople the principal depot of the trade in Greek slaves. When Orkhan subsequently changed sides, there can be no doubt that he enforced a clause of similar tenor against the Christian subjects of the Emperor John V with the approval or connivance of Cantacuzenos. Slaves were at this time the most marketable production throughout all western Asia.

Cantacuzenos perceived that the power of the ottoman Turks was fixed on firmer foundations than that of the other Turkish princes, and he felt that the alliance of the former would afford the surest guarantee of ultimate success to the rebel cause. He succeeded in detaching the sultan from the party of the regency, though, in order to create a permanent family alliance with the house of Othman, he was compelled to give his daughter Theodora in marriage to Orkhan, and send her to dwell at Brusa, as a tenant of the sultan’s harem. The Tartar and Turkish princes had long attached great importance to marriages that introduced into their families the blood of the emperors of Constantinople; and when Cantacuzenos affected to reject the overtures of Orkhan, the sultan backed his negotiations with a threat that he would prosecute the war in favour of the empress-regent in a vigorous manner. The junction of the ottoman army with the rebels formed the crisis of the civil war. The campaign of 1346 rendered Cantacuzenos master of the greater part of Thrace, and enabled him to advance to the walls of the capital.

In this period of danger there was no person of talent to conduct the affairs of the young emperor. The Empress Anne quarrelled with the Patriarch, and became the protector of his enemies in the church. A council of bishops was assembled, and the orthodoxy of the head of the church was called in question, examined, and condemned. At this time the Greek Church was torn by schisms, and had fallen into the same state of anarchy as the rest of the empire. Indeed, the prevalent opinion that the Greek Church has been more free from heresies and schisms than other churches cannot be considered as true. On the contrary, the Greek church has been the prolific mother of heretical opinions, and has filled her household with the disputes of her children; but the power of the emperor over the temporalities of the ecclesiastical establishment, the simoniacal spirit of the higher clergy, the consequent torpidity of the public mind on purely religious questions, and the veil with which Byzantine history conceals the feelings of the people throughout the empire, prevent all knowledge of the extent to which mankind protested in each successive age against the oppression of the imperial government and the corruption of the Greek church. But we nevertheless discover proofs that in every age there were Greeks who advocated the cause of liberty and religion. The people of Constantinople at last became tired of the civil war; and as Cantacuzenos was evidently more inclined to grant a general amnesty than the regency, his cause rapidly gained ground after the murder of Apokaukos. Fortunately for the Greek empire, he was enabled to gain possession of Constantinople without the participation of his Turkish allies. His partisans within the walls organised a plan for admitting him within the city. While the attention of the government party was occupied in celebrating the deposition of the Patriarch John of Apri, the Golden Gate was thrown open, and the rebel emperor entered Constantinople without bloodshed. The empress-regent showed a determination to defend herself in the imperial palace; but her partisans were less courageous than their female chief, and she was compelled to submit to the victor.

The terms dictated by Cantacuzenos, as master of the capital, prove the real weakness of his party as much as his own moderation. He entered Constantinople on the 3d of February 1347, and it was not until the 8th that a treaty was concluded with the empress-regent, and the gates of the palace of Blachern were opened to receive the new emperor. By this treaty Cantacuzenos was recognised as emperor, but his right to direct the administration of the empire was limited to ten years; and as soon as John V attained the age of twenty-five, he was to enjoy an equal share of the imperial power. A general amnesty was proclaimed; all landed property was restored to its original possessors; but movable property was left in the possession of those who had acquired it during the civil war. The termination of hostilities was evidently caused more by the general desire of the people for peace, and for security of property, than by the victorious arms of the rebels. The military forces of the victor were so utterly alien to all political feeling, that on this occasion a long period of anarchy was not, as usual in civil contests, terminated by the establishment of a military despotism. Cantacuzenos was a man of intrigues and stratagems, not of battles and strategy. His leading partisans were courtiers in armour, not soldiers; so that the interests of the middling classes, and the feelings of the mass of the people, in the end, warned those who were contending for power that they must hasten to make peace, though public opinion had not sufficient consistency to dictate the measures necessary for insuring permanent respect to the articles of the peace of Blachern.

The Emperor Cantacuzenos found the empire shrunk into a mere shadow of that which he had governed as the prime-minister of Andronicus III. Whole provinces were lost, and the treasury was empty; yet with that insatiable vanity which has ever been a curse of Greece, his first care was to exhibit himself to the people with an appearance of pomp and splendour. He had already been twice crowned, yet he was not satisfied until the ceremony was performed a third time. The exhibition was ill-timed. Custom required that the coronation of an emperor should take place in St Sophia’s, but an earthquake in the preceding year (1346) had thrown down the great eastern semi-dome of that magnificent church, and covered the bema with ruins. It was therefore necessary that the rebel emperor should receive the imperial crown in the church of Blachern, and at the same time he conferred the imperial crown on his wife Irene. Eight days after the coronation of Cantacuzenos, on the 21st of May, which is the Feast of Constantine and Helena, the young emperor, John V, then fifteen years of age, married Helena, the daughter of Cantacuzenos, who was only thirteen. She received the imperial crown, and the people were entertained with the spectacle of two emperors and three empresses seated on their thrones. The strange spectacle delighted the gazers; but it was not viewed without some feeling of contempt; for it was generally known that the imperial crowns were bright with false pearls and diamonds; that the robes were stiffened with tinsel; that the vases were of brass, not gold; and instead of the rich brocade of Thebes, the hangings were of gilded leather.

A review of the limits into which the empire had now shrunk reveals the full extent of the injuries inflicted on the Greeks by the civil wars of Andronicus III and Cantacuzenos. Many provinces were lost for ever, and the Greek race, which had previously formed the dominant class, was expelled from many districts. The property of the Greeks was plundered, their landed estates were confiscated, and even their families were in danger of being reduced to slavery unless they emigrated. From this period we lose all trace of an independent class of Greek landed proprietors. In the empire, the Greek nobility was composed of titled officials, salaried courtiers, courtly abbots, and simoniacal bishops; in the conquered provinces the higher classes of Greeks sank into farmers of the public revenue, local tools of the government, and tax-gatherers. The landed property and the military power, with the social influence they conferred, passed into the hands of the Servians, the Albanians, the Genoese, and the ottoman Turks; and after the middle of the fourteenth century, we find foreign names occupying an important place in the history of Macedonia, Epirus, and Greece, and Servian and Albanian chiefs attaining a condition of almost entire independence.

The Greek Empire consisted of several detached pieces when Cantacuzenos seated himself on the throne; and the inhabitants of these different pieces could only communicate freely by sea. The direct intercourse by land, even between Constantinople and Thessalonica by the Egnatian Way, was interrupted, for the Servian emperor possessed Amphipolis and all the country about the mouth of the Strymon from Philippi to the lake Bolbé. The first portion of the empire, and the nucleus of the imperial power, consisted of the city of Constantinople and the greater part of Thrace. On the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, the Greek possessions were confined to the suburb of Skutari, a few forts, and a narrow strip of coast extending from Chalcedon to the Black Sea. In Thrace, the frontier extended from Sozopolis along the mountains to the south-west, passing about a day’s journey to the north of Adrianople, and descending to the Aegean Sea at the pass and fortress of Christopolis. It included the districts of Morrha and the Thracian Chalkidike. The second portion of the empire in importance consisted of the rich and populous city of Thessalonica, with the western part of the Macedonian Chalkidike, and its three peninsulas of Cassandra, Longos, and Aghionoros. By land it was entirely enclosed in the Servian Empire. The third detached portion of the empire consisted of a part of Vallachian Thessaly and of Albanian Epirus, which formed a small imperial province interposed between the Servian Empire and the Catalan duchy of Athens and Neopatras. The fourth piece consisted of the Greek province in the Peloponnesus, which obtained the name of the Despotat of Misithra, and embraced about one-third of the peninsula. Cantacuzenos conferred the government on his second son, Manuel, who preserved his place by force of arms after his father was driven from the throne. The remaining fragments of the empire consisted of a few islands in the Aegean Sea which had escaped the domination of the Venetians, the Genoese, and the Knights of St John, with the cities of Philadelphia and Phocaea, which still recognised the suzerainty of Constantinople, though surrounded by the territories of the emirs of Aidin and Saroukhan. Such were the relics of the Byzantine Empire, which were now burdened with the maintenance of two emperors, three empresses, and an augmented list of despots, sevastokrators, and salaried courtiers.

As Cantacuzenos gained the empire by a sudden revulsion of opinion in the inhabitants of Constantinople, it was evident that the stability of his power would depend in a great measure on the wisdom and success of his internal administration. Public opinion called him to the throne as the readiest means of establishing security of property and lessening the public burdens. The people consented to try his talents for administration without believing that he had any right to share the Byzantine throne. The new emperor soon showed himself unequal to the exigencies of his position, and his whole reign consists of a succession of temporary expedients. His first financial step was a gross blunder. Instead of endeavouring to revive the trade of the capital and restore the fortunes of the inhabitants, whose estates had been ravaged during the civil war by his mercenaries, he attempted to fill the imperial treasury. His object was to reward his partisans and surround himself with a foreign guard; but he did not venture to impose any new taxes on the people. He expected that his eloquence and power would induce all classes to grant him a voluntary contribution, and he convoked an assembly of the leading men of every class in Constantinople—merchants, manufacturers, shopkeepers, artisans, administrators of monasteries, and trustees of ecclesiastical property—to whom he proposed a contribution for the public service. The request was peremptorily refused, for the subjects of the Byzantine Empire had no idea of constituting an assembly that could control the appropriation of their money; and they feared with reason that their contributions would be expended in increasing the existing evils in the state. Their prudence was soon justified by the events that followed. The warmest partisans of Cantacuzenos were dissatisfied with the restraints imposed on his power of rewarding and enriching them by the partisans of Paleologos. Cantacuzenos was himself willing to set aside the clause of the treaty of pacification which excluded his family from the throne. Matthew Cantacuzenos, taking advantage of these feelings, placed himself at the head of the most violent adherents of his father’s rebellion, and before the end of the year 1347 gained possession of Didymoteichos, Adrianople, and the surrounding country. His father allowed him to retain in his hands the government of a principality, which extended from Didymoteichos to Xantheion, on his restoring Adrianople to the imperial administration. The friends of John V naturally considered this rebellion as collusive, and availed themselves of the circumstance to alarm the young emperor at the proceedings of his father-in-law, and to engage in active opposition to the usurpations of Matthew. Every suspicion was confirmed when, in 1353, after open hostilities had taken place between John V and Matthew, the latter was proclaimed emperor by his father; and this step became the signal for a mortal strife between the houses of Paleologos and Cantacuzenos.

Cantacuzenos was a heretic, but as the church of Constantinople was during his reign a heretical church, his religious opinions in all probability facilitated his ecclesiastical administration. But he alienated the feelings of the Palamite clergy, and roused the indignation of all the orthodox, by an iniquitous misappropriation of the funds of the great cathedral of St Sophia. The church of Russia preserved its orthodoxy when that of Constantinople lapsed into the Palamite heresy; but the Russian clergy did not break off their communion with the mother church, and the orthodox patriarch of Russia continued to receive his investiture from the heretical Byzantine patriarch. The Russians continued to take the warmest interest in the misfortunes of the Greek ecclesiastics; and when they learned that the reconstruction of the portion of St Sophia’s, which had been thrown down by the earthquake of 1346, was stopped from want of money, Simeon the Proud, and many of his nobles, remitted large sums to complete the repairs. The money arrived at Constantinople about the year 1350; and this sacred deposit was seized by the Emperor Cantacuzenos, and employed, with the connivance of the Greek patriarch Kallistos, to pay the ottoman mercenaries in his service.

Again, in the year 1352, Cantacuzenos found it necessary to employ twelve thousand Turks to oppose the Bulgarians and Servians, who aided his colleague, John V, in the civil war that had broken out between them. In order to pay these Infidels, Cantacuzenos laid his hands on the treasures of the church a second time. He seized all the gold, silver, and jewels in the treasuries of the churches and monasteries of Constantinople.

The financial operations of Cantacuzenos were not confined to soliciting contributions and plundering the church: he added to his unpopularity by imposing new burdens on the people. It appears that when he was anxious to prepare for war with the Genoese of Galata, he exempted his own subjects from some customs paid by foreigners, or put an end to some monopolies from which the Genoese had derived great profit. But the advantages obtained by the Greeks from this remission of duties was of short duration, for when the animosity of the Genoese at the loss of their previous gains induced them to attack Constantinople, the emperor made considerable additions both to the direct taxes and to the custom duties. The vineyards of the Greeks were then the most profitable portion of their landed property. There was an immense demand for wine, not only for the ships of all the Italian republics, but also for the supply of Russia and a part of western Europe, where the most esteemed qualities commanded high prices. The fiscal rapacity of Cantacuzenos could not omit taxing an article which promised to furnish him with a large sum with little trouble. A duty of two byzants was imposed on the merchant for every fifty measures, and an additional impost of one byzant on the grower. This tax must have inflicted a serious blow on the Greek landed proprietors, already burdened with the payment of a tenth of their produce, and exposed to have their crops destroyed by the ravages of foreign invaders. A duty of half a byzant was imposed on every measure of wheat imported into Constantinople, and the customs, which had hitherto amounted to ten per cent, were now increased by the addition of one-fiftieth, or two per cent. The people complained that they paid two hundred thousand byzants in consequence of these new taxes, of which, however, only fifty thousand reached the treasury. The whole maritime policy of Cantacuzenos was imperial, not commercial. His immediate object was to increase the navy of the state, and the measures which would have enabled his subjects to recover their proper share in the Black Sea trade were a secondary consideration in his policy. For the Greek people in general, and for the inhabitants of Constantinople in particular, he felt no affection. He fortified the Golden Gate as a citadel, in order to command the communications of the citizens with the districts to the east; and he surrounded his person and filled his palace with Turkish and Catalan guards.

In addition to these causes of unpopularity, it is necessary to add, that the accession of Cantacuzenos did not, as was expected, put an end to the invasions of the Turks, and relieve the Greeks from the burden of maintaining the ottoman troops. In all the wars the new emperor carried on, whether with the Servians, the Bulgarians, or with his son-in-law and colleague John V, the greater part of his army consisted of Infidels, whose cruelty and rapacity seemed to increase every year. His egregious self-conceit, his incurable habits of tergiversation, his deficiency in administrative talent, and his want of personal determination, became apparent to all, and it seems probable that his abdication was a measure to which the increasing discontent of his subjects compelled him to look forward from the time his colleague John V took up arms against him in 1351.

The wars of Cantacuzenos were not undertaken on any political plan; and desultory hostilities with the Servians, Bulgarians, Genoese, and Turks, do not require to be narrated in detail. It is not easy to group the events of the reigns of Cantacuzenos and John V in such a way as to paint the anarchy that existed in the empire, or the momentary exigencies under which Cantacuzenos acted. He had not reigned a year before he was involved in hostilities with the Genoese colony of Galata, which had always contained many warm partisans of the house of Paleologos. This factory had grown into a flourishing town, and commanded a large portion of the Golden Horn. During the civil war the Genoese capitalists had supplied the regency with money, and they now farmed almost every branch of the revenue which the imperial government derived from the port. The duties they collected amounted to two hundred thousand byzants, and they paid for this only thirty thousand to the imperial treasury. The financial measures of the new emperor reduced their profits; and if he had persevered in his policy of lightening the burdens of his own subjects, the Greeks might soon have recovered some portion of the trade, which the insecurity of property, caused by the civil wars, had transferred to Galata. As it was, the increased industry of the Greeks, and the jealousy of the Genoese, led to open hostilities. The colonists of Galata commenced the war in a treacherous manner, without any authority from the republic of Genoa, (1348). With a fleet of only eight large and some small galleys they attacked Constantinople while Cantacuzenos was absent from the capital, and burned several buildings and the greater part of the fleet he was then constructing. The Empress Irene, who administered the government in the absence of her husband, behaved with great prudence and courage, and repulsed a bold attack of the Genoese. Cantacuzenos hastened to the capital, where he spent the winter in repairing the loss his fleet had sustained. As soon as it was ready for action, he engaged the Genoese in the port, where he hoped that their naval skill would be of no avail, and where the numerical superiority of his ships would insure him a victory. He expected, moreover, to gain possession of Galata itself by an attack on the land side while the Genoese were occupied at sea. The cowardly conduct of the Greeks, both by sea and land, rendered his plans abortive. The greater part of his ships were taken, and his army retreated without making a serious attack. Fortunately for Cantacuzenos, the colonists of Galata received an order from the senate of Genoa to conclude peace, even should they be compelled to make considerable concessions. Their victory enabled them to obtain favourable terms, and to keep possession of some land they had seized, and on which they soon completed the construction of a new citadel.

The friendly disposition manifested by the government of Genoa induced Cantacuzenos to send ambassadors to the senate to demand the restoration of the island of Chios, which had been conquered by a band of Genoese exiles in 1346. A treaty was concluded, by which the Genoese were to restore the island to the Emperor of Constantinople in ten years, and during that period they were to pay an annual tribute of twenty-two thousand byzants. But this treaty was never carried into execution, for the exiles at Chios set both the republic of Genoa and the Greek empire at defiance, and retained their conquest.

Thessalonica long refused to recognise Cantacuzenos as emperor; but the people became at last afraid that their leaders would enter into terms with the Servian emperor, and they consequently determined to renew their connection with the government of Constantinople. Cantacuzenos was invited to visit the city in person, and take measures for defending it against the intrigues and hostilities of Stephen Dushan.

The young emperor, John V, was now eighteen years of age, and his good temper, personal beauty, noble figure, and martial air, concealed the defects of his mind, and rendered him popular with all ranks. The jealousy of Cantacuzenos was increased by the attachment generally shown to his young colleague; and in order to prevent the partisans of the house of Paleologos availing themselves of the public favour to emancipate the young emperor, he never allowed John V to quit his side. In 1350 he carried him in his train to Thessalonica. The two emperors left Constantinople with a fleet, while Matthew Cantacuzenos, with an auxiliary force of twenty thousand Turkish cavalry, under the command of Suleiman, the son of Orkhan, advanced by land against the Servians in order to reconquer the country between Christopolis and Thessalonica. But Suleiman, whose object was to enrich his followers and keep together a large army at the expense of others, felt no wish to see the Greeks gain any very decided advantage over the Servians. He now declared that his father had recalled him to Asia Minor; and, separating his troops from those of Matthew Cantacuzenos, he marched up the valley of the Hebrus into the Bulgarian territory, from whence he carried off immense booty in cattle and prisoners. With these spoils he crossed the Hellespont. Matthew, finding his troops insufficient to attack the Servians, disbanded his new levies, and sent back the veterans to the garrisons from which they had been drafted, remaining on the defensive behind the walls of Christopolis. In the meantime the fleet advanced to Anactoropolis (Eion), where a Bithynian named Alexios, who had been a partisan of Apokaukos, was established as an independent chief, and maintained a few piratical vessels, with which he levied contributions on the people of Lemnos, and incommoded the troops at Christopolis. Cantacuzenos made a fruitless attack on Anactoropolis, but he destroyed the ships of Alexios.

The retreat of his ottoman auxiliaries made Cantacuzenos afraid to trust himself within the walls of Thessalonica, where the partisans of Paleologos possessed the ascendancy. While he was in doubt how to act, he received the news that a fleet of twenty-two Turkish ships had anchored at the mouth of the Strymon on a plundering expedition. He immediately engaged these marauders in his service, and entered Thessalonica under the escort of these Mussulman robbers. Partly by their assistance, and partly in consequence of the dissatisfaction of the Greek population at the Servian yoke, he regained possession of several towns in Macedonia. But he failed in an attempt to conclude a treaty of peace with Stephen, emperor of the Servians. Cantacuzenos, finding himself obliged to return to Constantinople, left his colleague, John V, at Thessalonica, (1351). Whether jealousy induced him to take this step voluntarily, in order to exclude his son-in-law from the capital, or whether the power of the partisans of Paleologos in Thessalonica enabled John V to refuse quitting the place, the measure was a serious blow to the authority of Cantacuzenos, and soon caused a renewal of the civil war.

The ecclesiastical disputes of the period compelled Cantacuzenos to hurry back to Constantinople; but they are so devoid of practical interest, and so like a rehearsal of more important religious contests in the Greek church, that they may be left to be narrated by ecclesiastical historians. Those who take an interest in the history of the heresies which have ripened in the soil of the Greek church, will read with pleasure the passionate account of the controversy which has been transmitted to us by Nicephorus Gregoras, one of the orthodox. His opposition to the heretical emperor and patriarch drew on him a degree of persecution which he would fain magnify into a species of martyrdom.

Sound policy required the two emperors to combine their forces for recovering the country between Thessalonica and Christopolis; but Cantacuzenos felt that the expulsion of the Servians from this district would increase the power of John V. He therefore preferred adopting measures which he expected would enable him to annihilate the influence of the house of Paleologos at Constantinople. This could only be done by driving the Genoese out of Galata, and he hoped to effect this important conquest with the assistance of the Venetians, who were then carrying on the war with Genoa, called the war of Caffa.

The Genoese had drawn into their hands the greater part of the commerce of the Black Sea. The town of Tana or Azof was then a place of great commercial importance, as many of the productions of India and China found their way to western Europe from its warehouses. The Genoese, in consequence of a quarrel with the Tartars, had been compelled to suspend their intercourse with Tana, and the Venetians, availing themselves of the opportunity, had extended their trade and increased their profits. The envy of the Genoese led them to obstruct the Venetian trade and capture Venetian ships, until at length the disputes of the two republics broke out in open war in 1348.

In the year 1351, Cantacuzenos entered into an alliance with Venice, and joined his forces to those of the Venetians, who had also concluded an alliance with Peter the Ceremonious, king of Aragon. Nicolas Pisani, one of the ablest admirals of the age, appeared before Constantinople with the Venetian fleet; but his ships had suffered severely from a storm, and his principal object was attained when he had convoyed the merchantmen of Venice safely into the Black Sea. Cantacuzenos, however, had no object but to take Galata; and, expecting to receive important aid from Pisani, he attacked the Genoese colony by sea and land. His assault was defeated in consequence of the weakness of the Greeks and the lukewarmness of the Venetians. Pisani retired to Negropont, to effect a junction with the Catalan fleet; and Pagano Doria, who had pursued him with a superior force, in returning to Galata to pass the winter, stormed the town of Heracleia on the sea of Marmora, where Cantacuzenos had collected large magazines of provisions, and carried off a rich booty, with many wealthy Greeks, who were compelled to ransom themselves by paying large sums to their captors. Cantacuzenos was now besieged in Constantinople, but his fleet was safe from the attacks of the Genoese in the port of Heptaskalon, which he had cleared out. The walls of the city were repaired on the land side, and strengthened by the addition of a deep ditch, extending from the Eugenian to the Wooden Gate, or Xyloporta. The Genoese, unable to make any impression on the city, indemnified themselves by ravaging the Greek territory on the Black Sea. They captured Sozopolis, which refused to allow the garrison sent by the emperor to enter its walls; and this city, which had previously been in possession of a flourishing trade, was now ruined. When the Genoese had carried away everything they could find, they threatened to reduce the houses to ashes, unless the inhabitants paid a large sum from their concealed treasures.

Early in the year 1352, Pisani returned to Constantinople with the Catalan fleet, under Ponzio da Santapace, and a great battle was fought between the allies and the Genoese, in full view of Constantinople and Galata. The scene of the combat was off the island of Prote, and it received the name of Vrachophagos from some sunken rocks, of which the Genoese availed themselves in their manoeuvres. The honour of a doubtful and bloody day rested with the Genoese. The Catalans displayed undaunted valour, but suffered severe loss from getting entangled among the rocks. The Greeks accused the Venetian admiral of timidity, and the Venetians asserted that the Greek fleet abandoned the action in the evening to shelter themselves in their own port. Pisani soon quitted the neighbourhood of Constantinople, and Cantacuzenos, having nothing more to hope from the Venetian alliance, and finding himself again involved in civil war with the partisans of the house of Paleologos, concluded a peace with the republic of Genoa. In this war he had exposed the weakness of the Greek empire, and the decline of the maritime force of Greece, to all the states of Europe. The treaty confirmed all the previous privileges and encroachments of the colony of Galata, and other Genoese establishments in the empire. Greek ships were only allowed to trade with Tana in company with the Genoese, and with a special licence from the republic.

As soon as John V, found himself surrounded by his partisans at Thessalonica, he began to take measures for emancipating himself completely from the authority of Cantacuzenos, and prepared for driving the usurper from the throne. He entered into a treaty with the Servian emperor, by which he engaged to divorce Helena, the daughter of Cantacuzenos, and espouse the sister of the Servian empress. This was not carried into effect; and it is not worth our pains to follow all the personal intrigues of the rival emperors. John V was the first to take up arms and involve his country in a new civil war, without having sufficiently weighed his strength or determined on his plans. He drove his brother-in-law, Matthew Cantacuzenos, from the appanage he had been allowed to occupy, and besieged him in the citadel of Adrianople. The Emperor Cantacuzenos marched from Constantinople with a body of Turks and Catalans to relieve his son, recovered possession of the city of Adrianople, and allowed his mercenaries to plunder the place and make slaves of the inhabitants. John V called in the Servians and Bulgarians to his aid; Cantacuzenos, as usual, filled the empire with Turks. These allies plundered the people without mercy, but felt little inclined to put an end to a war from which they derived an assured profit. The military experience of Cantacuzenos, supported by the superiority of his Turkish troops, enabled him at last to drive the young emperor from the continent, and compel him to seek a refuge in the island of Tenedos. The moment seemed favourable for transferring the empire from the house of Paleologos to that of Cantacuzenos. Matthew was proclaimed emperor in 1353, but the opposition of the Patriarch Kallistos deferred his coronation. Kallistos was deposed, and his successor Philotheos performed the ceremony in 1354. But the memory of the treaty of Blachern, concluded in February 1347, by which Cantacuzenos had engaged to resign the government of the empire to its hereditary sovereign at the expiry of ten years, and not to raise any of his own family to the throne, had ever been fresh in the memory of the people of Constantinople. The Emperor Cantacuzenos was now generally hated by the Greeks; and his throne was only supported by his close alliance with his son-in-law, Orkhan, whose troops were allowed to use the Greek territories as a hunting-ground to supply their slave-markets. From every quarter John V was urged to make another attempt to dethrone the detested ally of the Infidels.

While John V was seeking for means to renew the war, Francesco Gattilusio, one of the merchant nobles of Genoa, and member of a family which had long possessed some influence in the Greek empire, chanced to anchor at Lesbos with a small fleet. His vessels were well armed, for every coast in the Levant was infested with Turkish pirates. Communications were opened with John V, who purchased the services of Gattilusio by a promise of bestowing on him one of his sisters in marriage, and investing him with the sovereignty of Lesbos as her dowry.

On a dark stormy night in December 1354, a large ship was driven by the wind towards the port of Heptaskalon. The sailors shouted from the deck to the guards of the tower at its entrance that their vessel was in danger of going to pieces; they said she carried a valuable cargo of oil and offered large rewards for assistance. The gates were thrown open, and the soldiers hastened to the spot towards which the ship was drifting. At this moment two galleys, following the great merchantman, landed a body of troops, who seized the open gates, and rendered themselves masters of the tower and all the fortifications that surrounded the port. It was soon known over all Constantinople that John V was within the walls; the partisans of the house of Paleologos filled the city with their acclamations, and the people everywhere declared in his favour. Cantacuzenos, who could rely only on his Turkish and Catalan guards, shut himself up in the palace of Blachern, and attempted to negotiate. He had more than once talked of resigning his power when no one could insist on his keeping his word: his object now was to gain time; yet, either from timidity, or a conviction that he would be able to overreach his enemies, he threw away his only chance of safety, and omitted to retire into his new citadel at the Golden Gate. The young emperor showed more talent and vigour than the veteran hypocrite. He cut off Cantacuzenos from his Turkish and Catalan guards, and gave him to understand that his life could only be preserved by abdicating, and taking the monastic vows. It is impossible to read the partial account which Cantacuzenos has left us of the events that attended his abdication without a feeling of contempt for the emperor, and a conviction of the falsity of the narration. Whatever may have been his virtues in private life and his literary merits, and both were considerable, he was nevertheless, as a man, vain and hypocritical; as a statesman, timid and intriguing; as a minister, treacherous; and as a general, incapable, though as a soldier he was brave. As emperor, he made allies of the most dangerous enemies of his nation and his religion; and as a historian, he laboured, like the imperial prisoner of St Helena, to falsify history in order to gratify his own egregious vanity.

Cantacuzenos remained at Constantinople as the Monk Joasaph until about the year 1358, when he visited his son Manuel, the despot, in the Peloponnesus. He was accompanied by his eldest son Matthew, who had been also compelled to abdicate. In 1360 Cantacuzenos returned to Constantinople, where he resided in the monastery of Mangana, engaged with literary pursuits. He afterwards retired to the monastery of Vatopedhion on Mount Athos, of which he had been a great benefactor, to end his days. John V became sole emperor at the age of twenty-five, and he carelessly watched the decline of the empire for thirty-six years. Cantacuzenos had indeed left him little territory, dignity, or power to lose, and his own policy seemed to aspire only at making the empire last his own time, in order that he might draw from it the means of enjoying life. Yet in the earlier years of his reign he showed some personal activity : he was enabled by an accident to detach Sultan Orkhan from the interests of the house of Cantacuzenos, and thus relieve the empire from its most dangerous enemy.

Suleiman, the warlike son of Orkhan, made repeated encroachments on the empire, even while his father was in the closest alliance with Cantacuzenos; for the usurper was often unable or unwilling to pay the sums due on account of the services of his ottoman mercenaries. On one occasion Suleiman had taken possession of the fortress of Tzympe, for the restoration of which he exacted the payment of ten thousand byzants. In March 1354 a series of earthquakes threw down the walls of several cities in Thrace, and Suleiman, taking advantage of the confusion, occupied Callipolis, repaired the fortifications, and filled the abandoned houses within its walls with a colony of Turkish families. This was the first permanent establishment of the ottoman Turks in Europe. Cantacuzenos in vain called upon Orkhan to evacuate Callipolis, offering, when it was too late, to pay forty thousand byzants, which was probably the sum claimed as due for the service of the ottoman mercenaries

There can be no doubt that the restoration of John V to his paternal throne was not pleasing to Orkhan, and that the Turk saw with pleasure that Matthew Cantacuzenos was able to continue the civil war. But, as we have already said, an accident induced the sultan to alter his policy, and form a friendly alliance with John. His son Khalil, while enjoying the freshness of the sea-breeze in a boat on the gulf of Nicomedia, in the summer of 1356, was captured by a pirate galley, which suddenly issued from its concealment in a neighbouring creek. The pirates were from Phocaea, and they carried their prisoner to that city, which was considered as a portion of the Greek empire. The governor, Kalothetes, however, being attached to the party of Cantacuzenos, held the place as an independent chief. Orkhan invited John to obtain his son’s release, offering his alliance, and the remission of the debts due by the empire to the Turkish government, as a recompense for his success, and threatening him with vengeance in case of failure. Stimulated by the hope of detaching the ottoman sultan from the party of Matthew Cantacuzenos, the Emperor John collected a fleet, and besieged Kalothetes in Phocaea. The Greeks had lost the art of conducting sieges, so that any fortress of moderate strength baffled their skill. The siege dragged on slowly, and Kalothetes would probably have defeated the whole power of the Greek empire, had not the hopes of his party been annihilated by the defeat of Matthew Cantacuzenos. That rebel emperor was taken prisoner by the Servians in 1357, delivered up to John V., and compelled to abdicate. After this, Kalothetes consented to release Khalil on receiving a ransom of one hundred thousand byzants, and the grant of a high Byzantine title. During the following winter, Suleiman was killed by a fall from his horse; and about a year later (a.C. 1359) Sultan Orkhan died after a reign of thirty-three years. Orkhan was one of the greatest legislators of modern times; his institutions rendered an immense Christian population in Europe subject to the ottoman power, and made the ottoman armies superior to those of all other nations, at a period when their enemies in western Europe were rapidly advancing in civilization and force. But in the following chapter we must examine the progress of the ottoman power and the effect of Orkhan’s institutions more particularly.

Murad I ascended the ottoman throne on the death of his father Orkhan. He soon recommenced that system of encroachment which a powerful government and increasing population invariably carries on against a feeble neighbour with a depopulated territory. Every year added some new cities to the ottoman dominions. The strong fortresses of Tzurulon and Didymoteichos received his garrisons, and in 1361 he became master of Adrianople. It must be observed that the country now so easily subdued by the Ottomans, was precisely that in which the partisans of the house of Cantacuzenos were most numerous, so that we are warranted in surmising that party animosities persuaded the Greek nobles of these districts to prefer the government of Sultan Murad to that of the Emperor John. The voluntary submission of the people explains the silence of the Greek historians concerning the progress and the causes of these conquests. After the conquest of Adrianople, Murad turned his arms against the Bulgarians and Servians. In 1363 he took Philippopolis from the former, and in a short time Serres from the latter. The fame of Murad’s justice, as well as of his power, induced the republic of Ragusa to conclude a commercial treaty with the ottoman government. The sultan granted the Ragusans the privilege of trading throughout his dominions; and as this concession was viewed in the light of the donation of a superior, the republic sent the sultan an annual present of five hundred pieces of gold. This treaty was concluded in 1365, and is said to have been the first which the Ottomans entered into with the Western nations. Murad, either because he found it troublesome to sign his name, or because there happened to be no reed for writing at hand, daubed the ink on his palm, and impressed it at the top of the treaty. This sign-manual has been imitated by every succeeding sultan, and figures in fantastic form at the head of their firmans and on the obverse of their coins.

The increasing power of Murad alarmed the emperor to such a degree that, instead of seeking to awaken the national spirit of the Greeks, he resolved to beg assistance from the Pope. He commenced a hypocritical endeavour to delude the Latins into fighting for his cause, by pretending that the Greeks were ready to sacrifice the only thing for which that nation had, during the preceding century, displayed any attachment—namely, its superstitions. Urban V did all in his power to revive the crusading spirit; but Peter, king of Cyprus, directed the operations of the crusading army to serve the interests of the Catholic powers in the Levant, not to fight for the Greeks, Bulgarians, and Servians. A force composed of the troops of the King of Cyprus, contingents from the Venetians and the Knights of Rhodes, with a band of English volunteers, stormed Alexandria on the 13th of October 1365; but as soon as they had plundered its rich warehouses, Peter considered it necessary to abandon his conquest.

The Greek emperor visited the Court of Rome in person in the year 1369, and carried his hypocrisy so far as to join the Latin communion. He delivered to Pope Urban V a written profession of faith, agreeable to the tenets of the Roman church, and declared verbally his conviction that the third person of the Trinity proceeds from the Father and the Son; that it is lawful to distribute the communion in unleavened bread; that the church of Rome is the mother church—that she alone has authority to decide questions of faith, and that she has the sole right of receiving appeals on ecclesiastical matters. All this was publicly pronounced in the Church of St Peter’s; yet the emperor gained little by his servility : the Pope only supplied him with two galleys, three hundred soldiers, and a few thousand ducats; and on his way back to Constantinople he was arrested for debt at Venice. His eldest son, Andronicus, who acted as regent of the empire during his absence, pretended that he was unable to raise the money required to release his father; but his second son Manuel succeeded in raising the necessary funds at Thessalonica, of which he was governor, and John returned covered with disgrace to his palace, AD 1370.

Murad had watched this attempt to oppose a barrier to the ottoman power with prudent circumspection. In the meantime, he had consolidated his conquests in Thrace by subduing the Greek, Bulgarian, and Servian chiefs, who held independent districts in the chains of Haemus and Rhodope. But when the sultan saw the Greek emperor return to his capital as weak as ever, and far more unpopular with his orthodox subjects, hostilities were renewed. John, unable to form a generous resolution, consented to become the vassal of the sultan as he had already consented to become a servant of the Pope. He had hardly concluded his treaty with Murad when the imprudence of his son Manuel again exposed the empire to the attacks of the Ottomans. The position of Manuel enabled him to form a plot with the Greek inhabitants of Serres, by which he hoped to gain possession of that city. The conspiracy was revealed to Murad, and John V was compelled to disavow the conduct of his favourite son. Manuel abandoned Thessalonica, and fled to Lesbos; but seeing little chance of escape, he resolved to trust to the known generosity of the sultan. He repaired to Adrianople, and begged for pardon at the feet of Murad, who treated him with clemency, and even kindness. But the ottoman sultan took advantage of the gratuitous violation of the recent treaty with the empire by the Greek prince to take possession of Thessalonica.

The historians who have narrated the events of the last century of the Greek empire often disagree both in the history and the chronology of the period. Many of the details, therefore, require to be illustrated by the publication of new official documents; but much may always remain to exercise the sagacity of the critics who may deem this unfortunate period of Greek history worthy of minute attention. It seems that, about the year 1375, the Emperor John V, being summoned to join the camp of Sultan Murad in Asia with his contingent of Greek troops, left his eldest son Andronicus to act as regent at Constantinople during his absence, as at the time of his visit to Italy. Andronicus formed a conspiracy to keep possession of the throne; and having united with Saoudgi, the eldest son of Sultan Murad, who had been intrusted with the direction of the government in the ottoman territories in Europe, the two rebel princes proclaimed themselves sovereigns. Murad at first suspected John V of being privy to his son’s rebellion; but he was soon convinced that this was not the case. He hastened to Europe, the Turkish troops deserted his son’s standard, and the two rebel princes were forced to throw themselves into Didymoteichos, where their leading partisans, who had no hope of pardon, made an obstinate defence. The place was compelled to surrender from want of provisions. Murad put out the eyes of his son Saoudgi, and sent Andronicus to his father, who had agreed to inflict on him the same punishment. The sultan treated his other prisoners with excessive cruelty: the soldiers were drowned in the river that flowed beneath the walls of the fortress, and the fathers of the rebel officers were compelled to become the executioners of their sons; for the sultan determined that as many of his subjects as possible should share his grief, (1376).

The blind Andronicus was imprisoned in the tower of Anemas, near the palace of Blachern, for two years, but he then succeeded in making his escape through the assistance of the Genoese of Galata. Andronicus had secured the friendship of the republic of Genoa during his rebellion, by bestowing on it the island of Tenedos. He soon succeeded in driving his father from the throne, which he held for two years and a half. He conferred the title of Emperor on his son John, and immured his own father, John V, in the prison from which he had himself escaped. But the protection the Genoese had accorded to the rebellious son rendered the Venetians anxious to reinstate the imprisoned father on his throne. Carlo Zeno, a Venetian noble, undertook to deliver John V on his signing a grant of the island of Tenedos to the republic of Venice. Zeno asserted that the timidity of the emperor alone prevented his escape. The plot for his release was discovered, and Zeno was obliged to quit Constantinople, carrying with him the emperor’s deed ceding the island of Tenedos to Venice. Zeno fell in with a Venetian fleet under the command of Justiniani, his own father-in-law, whom he persuaded to seize the opportunity for gaining possession of an island which commanded the entrance of the Dardanelles. When the success of the Venetians was known at Constantinople, the rebel Emperor Andronicus and the Genoese made an attempt to regain possession of Tenedos. The city was closely invested, and it is said that mortars for throwing stone bullets were employed on board the Genoese fleet at this siege for the first time. The attack was nevertheless defeated.

John V at last effected his escape, and obtained the support of Murad, which rendered all resistance on the part of Andronicus hopeless. A treaty was concluded between the father on one side, and the son and grandson on the other, by which John V resumed the government of the empire, and took possession of Constantinople, but by which he recognized the right of Andronicus and his son John to the imperial title as the lawful heirs to the throne. The city of Selymbria became the residence of the Emperor Andronicus, and its revenues, with those of the towns of Daneion, Heracleia, Kedestos, and Panion, formed his appanage. The podestat and council of the Genoese colony of Galata engaged to assist in enforcing this treaty; yet it appears to have been very soon violated, for in the year 1384, Manuel, the second son of John V, was crowned emperor at Constantinople, and proclaimed heir to the throne.

When John V escaped from prison in the year 1381, he concluded a treaty with Sultan Murad, acknowledging himself a vassal and tributary of the Ottoman Empire. Murad continued to pursue his career of conquest in Europe without troubling the despicable fragments of the imperial government, which still mock the researches of the historian under the proud title of the Roman Empire. The princes who pretended to share the throne were all equally contemptible, and the people was in no degree superior to its rulers. The selfish rapacity of the aristocracy and the clergy, and the bigotry and turbulence of the populace, cannot be described in all their mean details. Indeed, no description could convey a stronger impression of the degradation of Greek society, than the fact that the policy and courage of the merchants of Genoa and Venice was more effectual in deciding the fate of Constantinople than the feelings and interests of the Greek nation.

In the year 1389 the celebrated battle of Kossova was fought. The ottoman army gained a complete victory, and destroyed the power of the Servians; but Murad was stabbed by a Servian noble as he contemplated the scene of the bloody contest. His son, Sultan Bayezid, renewed his father’s treaty with John V, but called on Manuel to take the personal command of the Greek contingent in the ottoman camp. This contingent, with the Emperor Manuel at its head, was directed against the city of Philadelphia, the last community of Greeks which had retained its independence in Asia Minor. The history of Philadelphia at this period excites our curiosity and sympathy, though unfortunately we know little of its political condition and civic government. For two generations we see it maintaining its independence in the midst of the Seljouk Turks. The Byzantine writers mention it as a provincial city of the empire in the year 1323, when it was besieged by the Seljouks, and reduced to the last extremity by famine. On that occasion it was relieved by Alexios Philanthropenos, one of the last patriotic warriors named in Byzantine history. A veil then covers its fate: it was cut off from the central administration of the Greek empire, and, being relieved from fiscal oppression and commercial monopolies, its resources appear immediately to have increased; local independence became of practical value, and the valour and prudence of the citizens protected their liberty. Philadelphia was of so much importance in the year 1336, when Andronicus III besieged Phocaea, that in his treaty with the Seljouk emirs of Aïdin and Saroukhan he inserted a clause binding these princes to treat the people of Philadelphia as friends and allies.

The commercial importance of a neutral city in the midst of the rival emirs, which afforded a regular market for all Turkish produce, and insured a constant communication with Greek and Italian merchants on the sea-coast, was generally felt. This circumstance contributed to maintain the independence of Philadelphia. But if its magistrates and citizens had been as worthless as those of Constantinople, its liberty could not have continued for two generations. Recent events had changed the state of Asia Minor. The rapid conquests of the Ottomans had swallowed up the neighbouring Seljouk principalities, and Sultan Bayezid, who possessed many seaports, no longer desired to see a neutral commercial city on the frontier of his dominions; on the contrary, he was eager to increase his power by its conquest. Philadelphia refused his summons to submit; but when the people saw the Emperor Manuel and the imperial standard in the hostile army, they perceived that the cause of Greek liberty and of the Orthodox Church was hopeless, and they capitulated. The terms conceded to their Greek subjects at this time by the ottoman sultans were not regarded as oppressive, for their fiscal burdens were lightened. The Emir of Aïdin was forced to cede Ephesus to Bayezid, and the principalities of Saroukhan and Menteshe were at the same time incorporated in the Ottoman Empire. These new conquests were formed into a government of which Philadelphia, called by the Turks Alashehr, was constituted the capital, and Ertogrul, the son of Sultan Bayezid, was appointed governor.

The haughty conduct of the young sultan alarmed John V, who now, when it was too late, began to strengthen the fortifications of Constantinople. Thirty six years had elapsed since he had ordered the citadel constructed by Cantacuzenos at the Golden Gate to be destroyed. He now commenced repairing this stronghold, and proposed improving the defences of the Golden Gate itself by the addition of two towers. In order to complete the work with the greatest celerity, he employed the solid marble blocks that had been used in building the Church of the Holy Apostles and other sacred edifices, which were now little better than heaps of ruin; while, to hide the plan of his fortifications, he lavished architectural decorations on the outer walls. Bayezid, however, was no sooner informed of his proceedings, than he sent an order to his imperial vassal to level the work he had already completed with the ground, threatening that, in case of any delay, he would render the Emperor Manuel responsible. The miserable old emperor, who feared that his son might be deprived of sight, immediately destroyed his work, and shortly after sank into the grave.

The personal beauty of John V obtained for him the name of Kalojanni, which his subjects repeated as a contemptuous compliment, on account of his success in licentious amours.

It is difficult to convey any idea of the rapidity with which Constantinople declined during his long reign. The Greeks, who aspired only at remaining stationary, could not conceal from themselves that they were descending in the scale of nations. They imitated the dress and the manners of the Italians and the Turks, but they never attempted to emulate their activity and courage. The depopulation and poverty of the empire were exhibited in long ranges of dilapidated edifices, which now disfigured many of the principal streets of Constantinople, once adorned with palaces faced with the richest marbles. The government and the nobles had sold the architectural ornaments, variegated marbles, the columns, the tesselated pavements, and rich mosaics to the merchants of Genoa and Venice, who had transported them to the Adrian lagunes and Ligurian rocks, to decorate new palaces, and to ornament the temples and shrines of another church.

 

Sect. V

REIGN OF MANUEL II, A.D. 1891-1426.

 

Emperor Manuel was at Brusa when he heard of his father’s death. He was generally esteemed, being neither destitute of talent nor personal courage, while his disposition was mild and conciliatory. Before Bayezid was informed of the death of John V the new emperor had made his escape, and reached Constantinople in safety; but the sultan treated him as a rebellious vassal in consequence of his secret departure. John Paleologos, the son of Andronicus, who had succeeded his father in the appanage of Selymbria, was encouraged to claim the empire in virtue of the treaty of 1381, by which the succession had been secured to his father and himself. A body of Turkish troops was instructed to ravage the Greek territory up to the very walls of Constantinople; but other matters calling for Bayezid’s care, he accepted the submission of Manuel, and the Greek emperor again appeared as a vassal at the Sublime Porte.

The ambition of Bayezid was unbounded, and his love of war was inflamed by an inordinate confidence in his own military talents, and in the power of the ottoman army. He despised the Christians and considered it his first duty to reduce them to the condition of subjects, if not of slaves. The position of Manuel was therefore as dangerous as it was degrading; for although the spectacle of a Roman emperor standing as a suppliant before his throne soothed the pride of Bayezid, it was apparent that his vanity would readily yield to his ambition, if an opportunity presented itself of gaining possession of Constantinople.

For several years Bayezid was employed consolidating his dominions both in Europe and Asia and he was compelled to watch the movements of the Western powers, which threatened him with a new crusade. At last, when Sigismund, king of Hungary, was about to invade the ottoman dominions, the sultan convoked an assembly of the Christian princes who were then his vassals, in order to prevent their combining to assist the invaders. Manuel the Greek emperor, John despot of Selymbria, Theodore despot of the Peloponnesus, Stephen king of Servia, Constantine Dragazes, the son of Tzarko, prince of the valley of the Vardar, and several Greek, Servian, Bulgarian, and Albanian chiefs of less importance, who were already independent, appeared in the ottoman camp at Serres. Circumstances induced the Emperor Manuel and the Despot Theodore to believe that their correspondence with the Pope was known to the sultan, and that their lives were in danger. They both fled, and gained their own states in safety. John of Selymbria remained to profit by the flight of his uncles; but Bayezid could only attend to the Hungarian war. His brilliant victory at Nicopolis in 1396 taught all Europe that the discipline of the janizaries was more than a match for the valour of the chivalry of France, and left him at liberty to punish the Greek princes for their desertion. He immediately turned his arms against the Despot Theodore, and marched in person into Thessaly. The Bishop of Phocis was the first traitor who joined the Mussulmans, and urged them to conquer Greece. The Valachians of Thessaly and the widow of the Count of Galona submitted to the terms imposed on them; and the sultan, seeing that no resistance would be offered to his troops by the Greeks in the Peloponnesus, turned back to Thrace. His generals, Takoub and Evrenos, took Corinth and Argos; while Theodore shut himself up within the walls of Misithra, and contemplated the ruin of his subjects without making an effort to save them. The ottoman army, after ravaging great part of the peninsula retired, carrying away immense booty and thirty thousand prisoners, whom they sold as slaves.

As Bayezid was not master of a sufficient naval force to attempt blockading Constantinople, he resolved to undermine the power of Manuel in such a way as would be least likely to awaken the jealousy of the commercial republics of Italy. He fanned the flames of family discord, which shed their lurid light on the records of the house of Paleologos, by acknowledging John, despot of Selymbria, as the lawful Emperor of Constantinople, and supplying him with a Turkish army to blockade Manuel by land. In return for this assistance, John engaged to put the Ottomans in possession of a quarter in Constantinople, to be occupied by them with the same privileges as the Venetians, Pisans, and Genoese held their quarters; the sultan was to name a cadi to reside in the Ottoman quarter, as the legal judge of all Mohammedans, who were to build a mosque and celebrate their worship publicly. In order to render the blockade as troublesome as possible to the citizens of Constantinople, Bayezid prohibited all intercourse with his dominions, and cut off the supply of provisions from the coast of Asia. The necessaries of life soon rose to an enormous price; the people began to repine at their sufferings, and many escaped into the ottoman territory, leaving their houses to be destroyed for firewood. Ducas tells us that the modius of wheat was sold for twenty byzants. The Emperor Manuel, as soon as he saw that war with Bayezid was inevitable, had sent an ambassador to solicit assistance from Charles VI, king of France. The Marshal de Boucicault, who had already served with distinction in the East, and had been taken prisoner by Bayezid at Nicopolis, was appointed to command the forces which Charles VI sent to assist the Greek emperor. Boucicault sailed from Aiguesmortes, and after some delay effected his junction with a fleet composed of eight Genoese, eight Venetian, two Rhodian galleys, and one of Mitylene, and proceeded to Constantinople, where he arrived in 1398. The arrival of Boucicault and his little army, which consisted of six hundred men-at-arms, without horses, six hundred infantry soldiers, and one thousand archers and crossbowmen, revived the courage of the Greeks. The Genoese and Venetians were well acquainted with the ottoman coast, and under the direction of Boucicault the garrison of Constantinople carried on a succession of plundering incursions along the Asiatic coast, from the gulfs of Nicomedia and Mudania to the shores of the Black Sea. It was evident that this system of warfare could not long uphold the empire, and Boucicault, finding the Greeks incapable of making any exertions in their own defence, advised Manuel to seek assistance from the Western nations. This advice would have in all probability arrived too late, had not the ottoman power at this moment been threatened by the great Tartar conqueror, Timor. The sultan was therefore as much inclined to conclude a temporary peace as the emperor. The pretensions of John of Selymbria were the only obstacle, and Manuel overcame this difficulty by a generous resolution. He opened communications with his nephew, whom he easily convinced that, if he entered Constantinople with Turkish troops, his reign would prove of short duration. He then offered to receive John as his colleague, and invest him with the government, while he himself visited Western Europe. The Marshal Boucicault guaranteed these arrangements, and a French force remained in the capital to protect the interests of Manuel during his absence. On the 4th of December 1399, John entered Constantinople, and was proclaimed emperor, and on the 10th Manuel quitted his capital with Boucicault, to present himself as a suppliant at the European courts.

We must now turn from contemplating the decline of the Greek empire and the debasement of the Hellenic race, to examine the causes which led to the rapid rise and solid organization of the Ottoman power. The state of society both in the Greek and Seljouk empires, after the middle of the thirteenth century, held out no hope of internal reform. All classes were imbued with those conservative prejudices, which, by attempting to fix mankind in a stationary position, become the heralds of a declining civilization. Mutability being a law of nature in the political as in the physical world, every community which ceases to be in a state of progress must soon begin to retrograde. The whole mass of the Christian and Turkish population between the Danube and Mount Taurus was smitten with a moral palsy, or absorbed in the selfish pursuit of individual interests. Differences of rank and the power of the aristocracy were declining in proportion as the moral degradation of the Greek nobles and of the Seljouk emirs increased ; while, on the other hand, order and discipline, reposing on no basis of duty and law, acquired little strength among the people when their adventitious bonds were loosened. Insecurity of property caused a rapid diminution of the population. The labour of rural slaves became of little value; their lives consequently were considered of less. Free labourers could not venture to seek employment at any distance from walled towns or fortified castes. The revenues of the central government failed, the administration of justice ceased in many provinces, and was corrupt in all, and even the influence of religion was powerless among the Christian clergy. Anarchy pervaded the whole fabric of society; yet both the Greeks and the Seljouk Turks talked only of their orthodoxy. Still they perceived and trembled at their own want of spirit. The conquest of the Seljouk Empire by the Tartars, and of the Greek empire by the Catalans or Franks, seemed probable events. The storm of conquest at last burst, but it desolated all around, leaving the Greek empire uninjured, but incapable of profiting by the respite. The Tartars broke the Seljouk power to pieces, and reduced the Russians to the condition of the most abject slaves. A new career was opened for the Greek race, but no Greek arose in any rank of society whose name deserves to be recorded among the great or the good; no individual arose who strove to make the sentiments of patriotism, of justice, and of truth predominate over the prejudices of orthodoxy in the breasts of his countrymen.

The Mohammedan world presented a different spectacle. A small nomadic tribe of Turks, which had recently quitted the deserts of Mesopotamia, suddenly became impressed with the noble ambition of excelling in morals and religion as much as in military virtues. It embraced a career of progressive improvement, which rapidly changed the face of the East. We have already noticed the history of Othman, who gave his name not only to his own tribe, but also to the empire which was founded by his son Orkhan. We must now record the institutions which entitle Orkhan to be regarded as the greatest legislator of modem times. The Code Napoleon is a mere mimicry of Roman law, and Napoleon himself was only “a kind of bastard Caesar”. The institutions of Orkhan, on the contrary, were not composed of rules drawn from a different state of society by schoolmen; they were the expressions of native energy; they were modelled on the unexpected demands of a progressive society, and they were calculated to provide for future exigencies by organizing a conquering nation.

The establishment of the Ottoman Turks in Europe is the last example of the conquest of a numerous Christian population by a small number of Mussulman invaders, and of the colonization of civilized countries by a race ruder than the native population. The causes which produced these events were in some degree similar to those which had enabled small tribes of Goths and Germans to occupy and subdue the Western Roman Empire; but three particular causes demand especial attention. First, the superiority of the ottoman tribe over all contemporary nations in religious convictions and in moral and military conduct. Second, the number of different races which composed the population of the country between the Adriatic and the Black Sea, the Danube and the Aegean. Third, the weakness of the Greek empire, the degraded state of its judicial and civil administration, and the demoralisation of the Hellenic race.

First: The superiority of the ottoman tribe is proved by the respect with which Othman and his followers were treated in the Seljouk Empire, and the readiness with which both Mohammedans and Christians submitted to his government. He could utter the proud boast, that tribe after tribe quitted the Seljouk emirs to join his followers, and that city after city threw off the yoke of the Greek empire to admit his garrisons, but no tribe ever forsook his banner, and no city threw off his yoke. The virtues of the ottoman Turks would have soon yielded to the seductions of wealth and power, had not Orkhan laid the foundations of a new power by blending together his father’s tribe—the Seljouks and the Turkomans who joined his banner, and the apostate Christian population which served in his armies—into one body by a framework of civil and military institutions. We must not, however, overlook the fact that, after the conquest of Constantinople, the legislation of Orkhan was smothered in new laws and ordinances borrowed from the Caliphate, from Persian law-books, and from Byzantine usages; and that the Kanun Namé, or laws of Suleiman the Magnificent, the only Ottoman code known in Europe, represents the original institutions of Orkhan, in the same way as the code of Justinian represents the laws of the Twelve Tables, or as the constitution of the United States of America represents the Magna Charta of England.

The establishment of the Ottoman Empire dates from the year 1329, as in that year Orkhan first assumed the power of coining money, and ordered his own name to be mentioned in the public prayers, to the exclusion of the Seljouk sultan. At the same time, his brother Aladdin, who acted as his vizier or prime-minister, advised him to reorganize his military force, and create an army of household slaves, who would remain for life members of his own family. This army, which for several centuries met no equal on the field of battle, and whose deeds rival the exploits of the Macedonians and the Romans, was composed of Christian children, who, if they had received as good an education from their parents and from orthodox priests as they did from the sultan and the Mohammedan moolahs, ought successfully to have resisted the power they established. Orkhan formed his army of regular cavalry and infantry. The cavalry was already called Gipahi; but it is doubtful whether the name Yenitsheri, or janissaries, was then applied to the infantry, or only adopted about thirty years later, when the dervish Hadji Bektash consecrated the corps for Murad I. Two important bodies of irregular militia were formed at the same time, consisting of light cavalry and infantry, or armed pioneers; and it is a proof both of the enlightened views of Orkhan, and of the comparative weakness of the ottoman tribe, that several squadrons of cavalry and regiments of infantry among these irregulars were formed of Christians, in order to secure the population from the oppression and insolence of the Seljouk Turks, who formed the bulk of these irregulars. Orkhan also regulated the relations of the leaders of the military forces established in his new conquests to the government, and laid the foundation of the military fiefs, or timars and siamets, which for a long period occupied an important position in the history of the Ottoman Empire. These fiefs were rendered hereditary by Murad I in 1376.

The nucleus of the Ottoman Empire was the house-hold of Orkhan; and the primary object of his legislation was to concentrate the whole strength of his government within his palace walls. He effected this in a most singular manner, by educating all the civil servants of the administration, and the best officers and soldiers of his army, as members of his family, after having annihilated every other domestic tie which connected them with their natural parents and with the place of their birth. The object of Orkhan was to form the ablest and most energetic instruments of his will. His brother and vizier, Aladdin, attained the desired end by the organization of the tribute-children, whom he moulded into a community more obedient to the sultan than the Jesuits to the popes, and equally able as an instrument of authority, which knew no moral responsibility but to the will of its master. The portion of the tribute-children trained for service in the administration rivalled the Jesuits in intellectual superiority, as the corps of janissaries surpassed in deeds of arms the exploits of the military orders of Christian knights. To the education of the tribute-children we must ascribe the chief strength of the Ottoman Empire, in as far as it proved superior to all contemporary governments. By them, or rather by their organization, a vast variety of races both of Mohammedans and Christians were held together by as firm a grasp as that by which imperial Rome held her provinces, and the standard of the sultan was carried victoriously into the heart of Europe and Asia, and far along the shores of Africa. Never was such a power reared up so rapidly from such scanty means as were possessed by Orkhan and his vizier, when they conceived the bold idea of exterminating Christianity by educating Christian children.

The Mohammedan law expressly places one-fifth of the booty taken in war, and particularity of slaves—which then formed the most valuable portion of all booty—at the disposal of the sovereign. Besides this, every child without parents who falls into the hands of a Mussulman belongs to Islam, and his master is bound to bring him up in the religion of Mahomet, and even to force him to embrace the true faith. The wars of Orkhan, as an ally of Cantacuzenos, were therefore in a great measure undertaken to fill his palace with young slaves. But a sufficient number could hardly be obtained of the tender age at which they could be brought up as Mussulmans, for the Mohammedan law strictly prohibits the forced conversion of prisoners. The Othoman tribe was small, the Seljouks were disorderly, and no dependence could be placed on mercenary troops. Orkhan consequently felt the necessity of seeking for a permanent supply of well-disciplined recruits. In this difficulty, either his brother Aladdin, or his relation Kara Khalil Tchenderli, suggested that he should in future impose a tribute of children on every Christian district which he conquered. This singular tax met with little opposition from the Greek Christians, whose country had been laid waste by war, and whose families were often in danger of perishing from famine during the civil wars of their emperors. The tribute established by Orkhan was extended by Murad I, and was not legally abolished until the year 1685.

The tribute-children were generally collected about the age of eight. They were lodged in a portion of the sultan’s palace, and instructed by able teachers selected by Orkhan and his counsellors. The history of the Ottoman empire proves the excellence of the system adopted in their education. As their talents and physical strength were developed, they were divided into two classes. One class was educated as men of the pen, and from these the officials of the civil and financial administration, the secretaries in the public departments, and even the ministers of state, were chosen. The other class was disciplined to form men of the sword, and formed the corps of janissaries. This college of conquerors was founded with one thousand neophytes; but as every year added to its numbers, the janissaries soon increased to an army of twelve thousand young men in the prime of youthful enthusiasm and manly vigour.

The ottoman princes were educated on the same system as the tribute-children, and for several generations the sultans were eminently men of progress as well as sagacious sovereigns. They were always ready to receive suggestions for the improvement of their army and their government. Each successive sultan embraced new schemes of conquest, and adopted new inventions in war and new ideas in administration. Intelligence was stimulated in every rank. New combinations daily presented themselves to every Ottoman officer in authority which called for a prompt decision, and he was compelled to report the reasons for his decision to an able and despotic master. Hence it was that the pashas of the Ottoman Empire formed a clear conception of the object they wished to attain. The first modern school of statesmen and generals was formed under the early sultans. The preceding pages have furnished ample proofs of the great abilities and wise administration of Orkhan and Murad I. The bitterest enemies of the Ottomans bear testimony to the wisdom and talents of their successors. Even the fiery Bayezid was liberal and generous to his Christian subjects, and admitted them freely to his society, by which he rendered himself extremely popular. Sultan Mohammed I, who transferred the capital of his empire from Brusa to Adrianople, was a firm friend and liberal master to all his followers; but in his hostility to his enemies he was as persevering as a camel. Murad II distinguished himself by his attention to the administration of justice, and for his reforms of the abuses prevalent under the Greek emperors. If any of his pashas or judges oppressed his Christian subjects, they were punished without mercy. Such was the conduct of the five sultans who prepared the way for the conquest of the Greek race; it ought to be carefully contrasted with that of the contemporary Greek emperors.

The second cause which facilitated the conquest of the Ottomans in Europe was the number of different races of Christians who dwelt in the Greek Empire, and in the countries south of the Danube. The Sclavonians were probably then the most numerous body of the population, for they formed a portion of the population in every state, from the banks of the Save to the mountains of the Peloponnesus. The Greeks, who were next in number, were even more dispersed than the Sclavonians, and lived under as many different governments. Even the Bulgarians were not all united under the government of the King of Bulgaria. The Albanians were governed by many chieftains without any supreme head, and the power of the Prince of Great Wlachia, and the number of the Thessalian Wallachians, was rapidly diminishing. The geographical distribution of all these races being quite independent of the actual distribution of political power, the Greek emperors, the Servian and Bulgarian kings, the chieftains of the Albanians and Wallachians, and the Frank princes of Greece, were unable to awaken a national interest in opposition to the Ottoman government. The daily complaint of every Christian who dwelt to the south of the Danube was, that he was governed by a rapacious and unjust master, that his property and his life were insecure, and that no change could render his condition worse. The ottoman armies appeared, and the sultan promised security to the timid and justice to the oppressed. As the ottoman sovereigns respected their promises, we need not wonder at the rapidity of the conquests of the Mohammedans.

The third cause which facilitated the progress of the Ottoman power was the weakness of the Greek empire; and this weakness was caused by the degraded state of its judicial and civil administration, and the demoralized condition of its people. The preceding pages have treated this subject in detail, and marked the decay of the energy of the Byzantine empire, and its transformation into a petty Greek state, whose rulers were characterised by financial rapacity, whose church lost its sentiments of Christianity in its eagerness to maintain a national orthodoxy, and whose people became a type of ignorant and conceited immovability. The state of the civil and sanitary police affords a sad illustration of the demoralization of the Hellenic race, and the decay of Greek civilization. In the interval between the years 1348 and 1418 the Greek empire was visited by eight great pestilential disorders, and by a succession of famines.

Manuel II gained very little by his mendicant pilgrimage to Italy, France, and England. Some valuable presents were bestowed upon him by Visconti, the magnificent Duke of Milan, and Charles VI of France granted him a pension of thirty thousand crowns; but he was compelled to return to Constantinople at the end of two years, with a little money and a few volunteers collected from people poorer and not more numerous than the Greeks. He learned on his way home that his enemy Bayezid had been defeated by Timor, and that the Ottoman Empire was utterly ruined. On reaching Constantinople he deprived his nephew John, who had ruled during his absence, of the imperial title, and banished him to Lenmos. John had already placed the Greek empire in a state of vassalage to the Tartar conqueror; Manuel ratified the treaty, and paid to Timor the tribute which he had formerly paid to Bayezid.

Historians have indulged in the wildest fables when they have recounted the history of the defeat of Angora. The armies of Bayezid and Timor are said to have consisted of such numbers that it would have been impossible to feed them for a day without a month’s preparation at every station. It is only necessary to expose the falsity of these accounts by citing one example. The Servian contingent in the army of Bayezid was only two thousand men at the opening of the campaign, yet after the losses which it must have sustained in its march from the Bosphorus, it is said to have amounted to twenty thousand at the battle of Angora. Every number appears to have been augmented in the same manner with as little foundation. Rarely, however, has the world seen a more total defeat than that sustained by the ottoman army. Bayezid died a captive in the hands of Timor. Brusa, the whole of the ottoman dominions in Asia Minor, the treasures and the harem of the sultan, all became the spoil of the Tartars, and the institutions of Orkhan seemed doomed to annihilation. Yet rarely has so great a victory produced so little effect on the fate of the vanquished. For a moment, indeed, the ottoman power was humbled, and an opening formed for the revival of the Greek empire; but no energy remained in the political organization of the Hellenic race beyond the confined sphere of local and individual interests; while the institutions of Orkhan, surviving the defeats and civil wars of the Ottomans, soon restored power to their central government, and rendered the sultan again the arbiter of the fate of Greece. Timor would have annihilated the ottoman power had it reposed only on the talents and dynastic position of the sultan; and when he held Bayezid a captive, and saw his sons disputing for the remnants of his succession, he very naturally believed that the ottoman power was utterly destroyed. He beheld the insignificancy of the Ottomans as a people, but he could not see the living soul that survived in their political administration.

The civil wars among the sons of Bayezid had no small influence in prolonging the existence of the Greek empire. The ottoman historians reckon an interregnum of ten years after the battle of Angora, during which four of the sons of Bayezid contended for the sovereignty. Suleiman, Isa, and Mousa, successively perished, and the youngest of the family, Mohammed I, at last reunited all his father’s dominions, and was regarded as his legitimate successor, and the fifth sultan of the Ottomans, including Othman, the founder of the dynasty.

After the battle of Angora, Suleiman sought safety in Constantinople, where he concluded a treaty with the Emperor Manuel in the year 1403, by which he yielded up Thessalonica, the valley of the Strymon, Thessaly, and the coast of the Black Sea, as far as Varna, to the Greeks. John of Selymbria was recalled from Lemnos, and established at Thessalonica, with the title of Emperor; but the control of the government was vested by Manuel in the hands of Demetrius Leontaris, a Byzantine noble. In return for the cession of these provinces, the emperor furnished Suleiman with money to collect an army, and to establish his authority over the remainder of the ottoman dominions in Europe.

Isa contrived to conceal himself in the neighbourhood of Brusa until Timor quitted Asia Minor. He then assembled an army, and recovered possession of Brusa, and all the early possessions of the house of Othman. He was subsequently attacked and defeated by his brother Mohammed, and is supposed to have perished in attempting to reach Karamania.

Mousa was taken prisoner with his father, and placed by Timor in the hands of the Sultan of Kermian, who afterwards released him. He then retired to Wallachia, and, obtaining assistance from its prince, Myrtshy, and from Stephen, king of Servia, he waged war with his brother Suleiman. The debauchery of Suleiman at last induced the janissaries to join Mousa, and Suleiman was slain in attempting to escape to Constantinople, A.D. 1410.

The close alliance which had existed between Suleiman and Manuel induced Mousa to turn his arms against the Greek empire. He reconquered all the towns in Macedonia and Thessaly which his brother had ceded to Manuel, with the exception of Thessalonica and Zeitounion. Mousa then laid siege to Constantinople; but his operations were paralyzed by the destruction of a naval armament he had fitted out. The emperor had strengthened the imperial fleet, the command of which he had intrusted to his natural brother, named also Manuel, a man of courage and military talents. The admiral gained a complete victory over the ottoman fleet; but his brilliant success excited the jealousy of his imperial brother. On returning to receive the thanks of his country, he was thrown into prison on an accusation of treason, and remained a prisoner during the life of his brother. The siege of Constantinople was merely a succession of skirmishes under its walls, in which several Greek nobles were slain; and the attention of Mousa was soon exclusively occupied by the attacks of his brother Mohammed.

Mousa rendered his government as unpopular by his severity as Suleiman by his debauchery, and many of the Othoman officers in Europe invited Mohammed to seize the throne. The Emperor Manuel agreed to furnish transports to convey the Asiatic troops over the Bosphorus; but he refused to admit them into Constantinople, though he allowed them to form their camp under its walls. The first operations of Mohammed were unsuccessful; but at last he forced Mousa to retire to Adrianople, who, in the end, was deserted by all his and slain, AD 1413. Little more than ten years elapsed from the day that Mohammed, then a mere youth, fled from the field of Angora with only one faithful companion, until he reunited under his sway nearly all the extensive dominions which had been ruled by his father. Timor had not perceived the fact, that, the tribute of Christian children being the keystone on which the whole fabric of the ottoman power rested, its resources were really much greater in Europe than in Asia.

The energy displayed by the Ottomans in recovering all they had lost by Timor’s victories is surprising, and the circumstance that this was effected amidst incessant and bloody civil wars requires some explanation. It seems strange that a powerful party was always found ready to embrace the cause of any one of Bayezid’s sons who claimed the throne, and that the bloody wars they carried on in no degree weakened the Ottoman Empire. The origin of Othman and his tribe solves the mystery. From the son of a foreign emigrant he gained the rank of a Seljouk prince, and his new power made him the ruler of a numerous population of Seljouk landed proprietors, and of nomadic Turkomans, as well as chieftain of the few families which had composed his father’s horde. When the Ottoman dominions extended, the sultan’s court was crowded with haughty Seljouk beys and powerful Turkoman chieftains; and when these proud Mussulmans beheld the army and the administration filled with the tribute-children, who were devoted to the sultan as members of his family, their prejudices and their interests alike placed them in opposition to the ottoman government. The spirit of personal independence was as warmly cherished by the Seljouk and Turkoman beys as by the feudal barons of Western Europe. The civil wars in the Ottoman empire correspond with the wars between the crown and the nobility which took place in the feudal kingdoms; they were the struggle between a despotic sovereign and a powerful aristocracy. The Greek emperors, Manuel and his son John VI, availed themselves of this dissatisfaction in a powerful body of the Turkish population to create frequent troubles in the Ottoman Empire, by putting forward several claimants to the throne of the sultans, and every claimant found a party hostile to the central administration ready to take up arms. The love which the Greeks have always manifested for mental contests and diplomatic intrigues induced them to expect greater results from their manoeuvres than could ever result from the political combinations of a power destitute of military force. The vanity of the Byzantine court prevented its tracing the unquiet spirit of the Turkish population to its antipathy to the institutions of Orkhan.

The Greek empire enjoyed an uninterrupted peace during the reign of Mohammed I, which lasted until the year 1421; and Manuel devoted his attention during this period to restoring some order in the public administration, and to re-establishing the sway of the central authority in the distant provinces of the empire. After completing his reforms in the civil, financial, military and ecclesiastical departments at Constantinople, he found it necessary to visit the provinces in person, in order to reduce the local power of the Greek archonts within reasonable bounds. He quitted Constantinople in the month of July 1413, and commenced his operations by reducing the island of Thasos, the citadel of which resisted his little army for two months. The emperor then visited Thessalonica, where it appears that he remained more than a year. His nephew John, who was governor of the city, assumed the monastic habit; but whether he was compelled by the emperor to adopt this step, in order to allow the new reforms to be carried into execution, is uncertain. The Despot Andronicus, the emperor’s second son, was appointed governor of Thessalonica. After his father’s death he sold the city to the Venetians for the sum of fifty thousand sequins.

In March 1415 Manuel visited the Peloponnesus. The Roman Empire of the East had shrunk to such pitiful dimensions that the Byzantine province, which only comprised about three-quarters of that peninsula, was now its most extensive province. The first care of the emperor was to strengthen the means of defending this territory by fortifying the Isthmus of Corinth. He then directed his attention to reforming the abuses which the feudal tyranny of the Franks and the unprincipled fiscal extortions of the Greek archonts had introduced into the administration. These abuses were rapidly exterminating the Greek agricultural population, and making way for the immigration of a ruder class of Albanian labourers.

When we compare the reforms of Manuel with the legislation of Orkhan, we are astonished at the great intellectual superiority displayed by the Ottomans at this period. The Greek emperor adopted only a few temporary devices to arrest the progress of social putrefaction in a diseased society. His own talents and the energies of his people were incompetent to make any bold efforts for extirpating the sources of the evil, and for infusing a spirit of honesty and patriotism into Greek society. Yet the fact that Greek society as well as the imperial government was rapidly decaying was generally acknowledged. The Despot Theodore, Manuel’s brother, who died about the year 1407, had felt the task of undertaking the regeneration of Greece so hopeless, and had found the difficulty of governing the Peloponnesians so great, that he attempted to sell his province to the Knights of Rhodes, after he had introduced numerous colonies of Albanians to fill up the void caused by the decrease of the native population. The alarming disorders in Greek society induced George Gemistos Plethon, the Platonist, one of the Byzantine officials employed in the Peloponnesus, to propose plans of reform as radical but less practicable than those of Orkhan. The extent of the evils he wished to cure is shown by the violence of the remedies he proposed to use. He boldly declares that no reform was possible without a complete change in the whole frame of society, and to effect this he recommended the abolition of all individual rights of property in land, which were to be replaced by rights of occupancy alone, while the absolute property in the soil was to be vested in the state. His reforms with regard to persons were not less at variance with the feelings of his age and the feudal manners of the Peloponnesians. He proposed reviving the great Roman principle of imperial policy, that a complete separation ought to exist between the classes of soldiers and tax-payers. On these two maxims he formed the details of his reform, which were so adverse to every existing interest and prejudice that it would have been as easy to attempt restoring the laws of Lycurgus.

From a satirist of the time, we learn that while the Emperor Manuel was occupied in diminishing the power and checking the abuses of the archonts of the Peloponnesus and of the Constantinopolitan officials, many of the courtiers in his household made a traffic of creating new corruptions in the administration by selling imperial decrees and golden bulls. The character of the native Greeks he declares to be equally bad. He says, “They are formed of three parts; their tongue speaks one thing, their mind meditates another, and their actions accord with neither”. There can be no good administration among an utterly demoralized people. When the emperor returned to Constantinople, he carried with him some of the most turbulent and intriguing of the Peloponnesian chiefs, who had, previous to his arrival, contrived to appropriate the greater part of the taxes levied on the people to their own use. Indeed, the most important result of Manuel’s visit was the introduction of such a degree of order in the provincial administration, that a fixed sum could be regularly remitted to the imperial treasury at Constantinople. His son Theodore remained as his viceroy at Misithra.

The death of Sultan Mohammed I in 1421 involved the empire in a contest with his son, Murad II. The self-conceit of the Greeks persuaded them that they could guide the progress of the Ottomans by their superiority in diplomacy. No experience could teach them that rhetoric and scholastic learning are feeble arms against military discipline and national courage. A pretender to the Ottoman throne resided at Constantinople, named Mustapha, who asserted that he was a son of Bayezid. He was now acknowledged as lawful sultan, and Manuel concluded with him a treaty, by which Mustapha promised to restore Gallipoli, the Chalcidice of Macedonia, and the maritime cities on the Black Sea, while the emperor engaged to furnish money and military stores for the attack of young Murad. Manuel soon received a lesson which proved the imprudence of violating the peace with the Ottoman empire when the Greeks were incapable of carrying on the war themselves. Mustapha gained possession of Gallipoli, but refused to surrender it, saying that it was not in his power to yield up a city inhabited by Mussulmans to an infidel sovereign. Manuel would then willingly have made his peace with Murad II, but the Ottoman councils were guided by steadier principles than the Greek, and the terms they insisted on were such that the emperor preferred abiding the fortune of war. For some time the enterprise of Mustapha was successful; he subdued all the European provinces, and crossed the Hellespont to fight a decisive battle with Murad in Asia. But the Turks had discovered his unfitness for the throne. He was abandoned by his followers, taken prisoner by Murad II, and hanged, in order to convince the world that he was an impostor.

Murad resolved to punish Manuel for his intrigues. The emperor was now weakened by age, and the direction of public affairs was in a great measure intrusted to his son John, who endeavoured to appease the sultan with abject apologies. Murad gave the imperial ambassadors no answer until his preparations were completed. He then marched forward and formed the siege of Constantinople, establishing his own headquarters at the Church of the Fountain, and commencing his lines of circumvallation in the month of June 1422. Manuel now sent another ambassador to Murad. Korax, a Greek of Philadelphia, the official interpreter of the court, was charged with the mission. Like all Greek ministers, Korax was extremely unpopular, and his knowledge of the Turkish language, joined to the circumstance that he was not a born subject of the empire, made him the object of much malicious calumny. His diplomacy failed; he was accused of treachery, insulted by the people on his return from the Ottoman camp, and seized by the Cretan guards, who occupied the place of the Varangians of older times. The emperor was compelled to bring the obnoxious interpreter to trial on a charge of holding treasonable correspondence with the enemy. Writings of Korax were found which appeared to confirm the accusation. The gold and silver plate in his house was said to consist of the presents destined for the sultan. Korax was tried, but as his judges sat in fear of the Cretans and the populace, it is not surprising that he was found guilty, even though we suppose that he was innocent. Death was then rarely inflicted at Constantinople by a judicial sentence; Korax was therefore only sentenced to lose his eyesight; but the punishment was inflicted with such barbarity as to cause his death. His house was pillaged by the people, and burned to the ground. This occurrence paints the suspicious feelings of the inhabitants of the capital and the indiscipline of the troops too vividly to be passed over in recording the degradation of the empire.

Murad in the meantime carried on his operations with activity. His lines extended from the Golden Gate to the Wooden Gate; two movable towers were built to assist the storming of the wall, and cannon were employed by the Ottomans for the first time. This early artillery, however, was so ill-constructed and ill-served that it produced little effect. When everything was ready for the assault, the besiegers directed their principal attack against the wall near the gate of St Romanus, which crosses the low ground where the water-course Lykos enters the city. On the 24th of August a celebrated dervish, named Seid-Bokhari, led on the Ottoman troops to the assault. The Seid had prophesied that before nightfall the banner of the Prophet would wave on the ramparts of the imperial city. His followers, persuaded that to him Heaven had revealed its will, boldly rushed onward to fulfill his prediction. The sultan promised the whole plunder of the captured city to the victorious army. But the dervish proved a false prophet. The ladders of the assailants were broken; a thousand of the bravest janissaries fell before the walls; while the Greeks, fighting under cover of their battlements, lost only a hundred and thirty, killed and wounded. The numerical loss of the Turkish army was not very serious, for when Mousa attacked Constantinople ten years earlier, the Emperor Manuel had observed that the loss of ten Greek soldiers was more difficult to replace than the loss of one hundred Turkish. Fortunately for the empire, Murad was compelled to raise the siege, in order to march against his brother Mustapha. This young prince had been furnished by the imperial government with the means of assembling an army. He was soon betrayed into Murad’s power, and strangled by his order. Murad II did not renew his attack on Constantinople, and the last act of Manuel’s reign was to sign a treaty of peace, by which Murad left the empire in possession of a few cities in Thrace, of Thessalonica, and a few forts near the mouth of the Strymon, Mount Athos, Zeitounion, and some places in Thessaly. Manuel also engaged to pay the sultan an annual tribute of 300,000 aspers.

Manuel adopted the monastic habit two years before his death, and took the name of Matthew, but he continued to give his advice on public affairs. He died in July 1425, at the age of seventy-seven, after a reign of thirty-four years.

 

Sect. VI

REIGN OF JOHN VI, A.D. 1425-1448.

 

John VI found the Eastern Roman Empire reduced to the city of Constantinople, a few neighbouring towns, Thessalonica, and a part of the Peloponnesus. His reign of twenty-three years passed in almost uninterrupted peace; yet this long period of tranquillity was productive of no improvement. The emperor did nothing to render the administration of justice more equitable, the clergy made no effort to improve the morality of the people, and the citizens used neither industry nor good faith to increase the commercial resources of their country. As far as the revenues both of the government and of the nation were concerned, the emperor and the people alike consumed, before the expiration of each year, all that the year had produced. The lethargy of the empire must be attributed quite as much to the insensibility of the Greek people as to John’s weakness.

The diminution of the Greek population contrasted strangely with the rapid increase of the Ottomans, while their decline in wealth and industry offered a still more unfavourable point of comparison with the Genoese colony of Galata. The trade of the Greeks had passed into the hands of the Italians; the power e Byzantine emperors was transferred to the Ottoman sultans. The loss of personal dignity and courage followed the loss of national honour and power. Plague and pestilence, as often happens, came as attendants on neglected police, bad government, and social disorder. In the year 1431 a contagious disease of fearful mortality decimated the population of Constantinople; and it was the ninth return of pestilence since the great plague of 1347. Nations, however, are rarely sensible of their own degradation, and at this time the Greeks looked on the Latins with contempt as well as hatred; they despised the western Europeans as heretics, and the Turks as barbarians. Court processions, religious ceremonies, and national vanity amused and consoled them as they hastened along the path of degradation and ruin. Dramatic representations of sacred subjects were performed in the Church of St Sophia, as musical exhibitions had been celebrated in earlier days. Exercises of archery and imitations of Turkish horsemanship replaced the military pageants and the games of the hippodrome, which had been the delight of the Byzantine populace of a nobler period. An interesting description of the aspect of Constantinople, and of the condition of the Greek territory in its vicinity, has been transmitted to us by a candid and judicious contemporary traveller, Bertrandon de la Brocquière, a Burgundian knight, who visited Constantinople at the end of the year 1432, on his return from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He describes the fortifications of Constantinople as strong and imposing; but within the walls there were so many open spaces that they equalled in extent the portion still covered with buildings; several of the palaces were in ruins, and part of the portico which had enclosed St Sophia’s had already disappeared. Beyond the walls of the city, the country in every direction presented a desolate aspect. All the fortified posts had been destroyed by Murad II when he besieged Constantinople, and the country, as far as Selymbria, was inhabited only by a few Greeks engaged in agriculture, who dwelt in open villages. The Greek empire ended at Selymbria. The frontier territory of the Ottomans was a similar scene of devastation, the land being tilled by a few Christian peasants for their Turkish masters.

The conquest of Thessalonica by Sultan Murad in 1430, the quarrels of the despots Theodore, Constantine, and Thomas, in the Peloponnesus, and the insolence of the Genoese of Galata, who attacked Constantinople on account of some disputes relating to the Black Sea trade, warned the Emperor John VI that, unless he could secure some efficient military aid from strangers, the ottoman power would soon overwhelm the Greek empire. The Pope was the only sovereign who possessed sufficient power and influence to obtain effectual aid for the Eastern Empire; but there was no probability that he would exert that influence, unless the Emperor John consented to the union of the Greek and Latin churches, and recognised the papal supremacy. In this critical conjuncture the statesmen and ecclesiastics of rank at Constantinople decided that the political exigencies of their situation authorised their truckling even with the doctrines of their church.

In the year 1438 the Emperor John and the Greek Patriarch made their appearance at the council of Ferrara. In the following year the council was transferred to Florence, where, after long discussions, the Greek emperor, and all the members of the clergy who had attended the council, with the exception of the Bishop of Ephesus, adopted the doctrines of the Roman church concerning the procession of the Holy Ghost, the addition to the Nicene Creed, the nature of purgatory, the condition of the soul after its separation from the body until the day of judgment, the use of unleavened bread in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and the papal supremacy. The union of the two churches was solemnly ratified in the magnificent cathedral of Florence on the 6th of July 1439, when the Greeks abjured their ancient faith in a vaster edifice and under a loftier dome than that of their own much-vaunted temple of St Sophia.

The Emperor John derived none of the advantages he had expected from the simulated union of the churches. Pope Eugenius, it is true, supplied him liberally with money, and bore all the expenses both of the Greek court and clergy during their absence from Constantinople; he also presented the emperor with two galleys, and furnished him with a guard of three hundred men, well equipped, and paid at the cost of the papal treasury; but his Holiness forgot his promise to send a fleet to defend Constantinople, and none of the Christian princes showed any disposition to fight the battles of the Greeks, though they took up the cross against the Turks.

On his return John found his subjects indignant at the manner in which the honour and doctrines of the Greek Church had been sacrificed in an unsuccessful diplomatic speculation. The bishops who had obsequiously signed the articles of union at Florence, now sought popularity by deserting the emperor, and making a parade of their repentance, lamenting their wickedness in falling off for a time from the pure doctrine of the orthodox church. The only permanent result of this abortive attempt at Christian union was to increase the bigotry of the orthodox, and to furnish the Latins with just grounds for condemning the perfidious dealings and bad faith of the Greeks. In both ways it assisted the progress of the ottoman power. The Emperor John, seeing public affairs in this hopeless state, became indifferent to the future fate of the empire, and thought only of keeping on good terms with the sultan. His brother Demetrius, however, who had accompanied him to Florence, shared his apostasy, and partaken of the papal bounty, now basely attempted to take advantage of the popular dissatisfaction with the union. He claimed the throne as being the first child of Manuel who was a Porphyrogenitus, but he trusted to gain his ends by the aid of Turkish troops rather than by the merits of his title or the preference of the Greeks. Collecting a large force composed of the Turkish nomads, who were ready to join any standard that offered them an opportunity of plundering and enslaving the Christians, Demetrius marched to besiege his brother in Constantinople. Sultan Murad took no direct part in the contest, but he allowed Demetrius to enrol Turkish troops without opposition, and viewed with satisfaction a rebellion which tended to weaken the empire. When called upon to choose between the two brothers, the Greek people acknowledged the superiority of the reigning emperor. Demetrius, after plundering the suburbs of Constantinople, saw his army melt away, and was happy to find that his brother’s moderation and love of peace was so great that he was allowed to retain his principality at Mesembria with the title of Despot.

The exploits of John Hunniades might have awakened the Greeks from their lethargy, had any warlike spirit survived in the nation. The victory of the Hungarian army at the pass of Isladi, and a war with the Sultan of Karamania, threatened the Ottoman Empire with serious danger; but the victory of Varna re-established the glory of the sultan’s arms. Neither the successes of the Hungarians nor the presence of a papal force in the Hellespont, which at last made its appearance under the command of Cardinal Gondolmieri, could induce the Emperor John to unite his cause with that of the Western powers. He had obtained too many proofs of the instability and imprudence of their counsels. The moment he heard of the great victory of Sultan Murad at Varna, he sent an embassy to congratulate his suzerain, and solicit a renewal of their alliance, which the sultan immediately granted. John even contrived to avoid taking any part in the war carried on against the sultan by his brother Constantine in Greece, and succeeded in preserving uninterrupted peace until his death in 1448. During his inglorious reign of twenty-three years he never forgot that he was a vassal of the Ottoman Empire. Though a voluptuary, he appears to have been a man of considerable ability and judgment, of a kind disposition and a good heart; but he was deficient in all nobler qualities. It is said that the Emperor Manuel II had feared the enterprising character of his son John VI would bring ruin on the empire. The old man observed that the affairs of the government of the Eastern Roman Empire had fallen so low that Constantinople required an overseer, not a sovereign. John VI proved precisely the temporising manager of the state that circumstances required; and his pliancy averted, during his lifetime, the calamities which were ready to overwhelm the Greek empire.

 

Sect. VII.

REIGN OF CONSTANTINE XI, A.D. 1448- 1453

 

Constantine XI, the last of the Greek emperors, was residing in his despotat at Sparta when his brother John VI died. As he had been recently engaged in hostilities with the sultan, it was doubtful whether Murad would acknowledge him as emperor, and Demetrius availed himself of these doubts to make another attempt to occupy the throne. The deficiency of truth, honour, and patriotism among the Greek aristocracy during the last century of the Eastern Empire is almost without a parallel in history; but Demetrius was too well known and too generally despised to find a large party even in that worthless aristocracy disposed to espouse his cause. Constantine, on the other hand, was known to possess both candour and energy; and even though he was attached to the union of the churches, this taint of heresy did not prevent his being respected by all, except the most bigoted among the virulently orthodox Greeks. He was therefore formally proclaimed emperor; and the consent of the sultan having been obtained to his assumption of the imperial title, a deputation was sent to the Peloponnesus to carry him the insignia of empire. The ceremony of his coronation was performed at Sparta in the month of January 1449. On arriving at Constantinople he would not allow the ceremony to be repeated in the Church of St Sophia, lest it should give rise to disputes between the unionists and the orthodox.

Sultan Murad II died in February 1451, after a prosperous reign of thirty years, and was succeeded by his son Mohammed II, who was only twenty-one years old. Mohammed II was a man of great ambition and great talents; he united with extraordinary activity and courage a degree of judgment rare in his high station, and still rarer at his early age. On ascending the throne his pride was soothed by the obsequious attentions of all the Christian powers in the East, whose ambassadors crowded to Adrianople to offer him their congratulations, their condolences, and their homage. The Emperors of Constantinople and of Trebizond, the Despots of the Peloponnesus, the Dukes of Athens and of Naxos, the Princes of Acarnania, Lesbos, and Chios, the Podesta of Galata, and the Grand-master of Rhodes, all sent their envoys to solicit a continuance of the friendly intercourse they had maintained with Murad II. Mohammed sent all away pleased with their friendly reception. Phrantzes, the historian, who had often seen the young sultan when he visited the court of Murad II as an ambassador, has left us an interesting sketch of his character. He says that he united the enterprise and valour of youth with the prudence and wisdom of old age both in war and politics; that he was fond of reading. He spoke five languages correctly, besides his native Turkish —Greek, Latin, Arabic, Persian, and Sclavonian.

The conquest of Constantinople was the first object of the ambition of Mohammed II. It was by nature the capital of his dominions, and as long as it remained in the hands of the Greeks the Ottoman empire lay open to the invasions of the western Christians. Having concluded a truce for three years with John Hunniades, the young sultan crossed over into Asia to suppress the hostile proceedings of Ibrahim, the sultan of Karamania. Constantine, who appears to have formed a very erroneous idea of the talents and character of Mohammed, took this opportunity of insulting him in the most sensitive manner, by sending an embassy to demand an augmentation of the pension of three hundred thousand aspers, which the Ottoman court had accorded to the Greek for the maintenance of Orkhan, the grandson of Suleiman. The ambassadors were instructed to insinuate that, if the demand were not granted, Orkhan might be allowed to lay claim to the Ottoman throne. Such an insult was not likely to be ever forgotten by a haughty and ambitious prince. The Grand-vizier Khalil, who had steadily favoured the Greeks, and was supposed to have received bribes to protect their cause, lost all patience at the folly of Constantine’s ill-timed demand, and addressed the ambassadors in these words : — “Your madness will put Constantinople in the hands of the sultan. Proclaim Orkhan sultan in Europe, call in the Hungarians to your aid, retake what provinces you can, and you will speedily see the end of the Greek empire”.' The wary young sultan, however, dismissed the ambassadors with courtesy. But as soon as his Asiatic campaign was finished, he ordered the imperial agents to be expelled from the territory in the valley of the Strymon which had been assigned for the maintenance of Orkhan, and stopped all further payments. Shortly after, without informing Constantine of his intention, he constructed a fortress on the Greek territory at the narrowest part of the Bosphorus, opposite a fort which had been constructed by Bayezid I on the Asiatic shore. The distance between the two forts is about three-quarters of a mile, and a rapid current flows between. The sultan had made every preparation for completing the work with extraordinary celerity. An ample supply of materials had been collected before his object was known, and as soon as the plan of the fortress was marked out, a thousand masons and two thousand labourers worked incessantly to complete the walls. Constantine had good reason to consider the construction of this fortress on his territory, within five miles of his capital, and commanding its approach from the Black Sea, as an infraction of the treaty between the two empires, but he was too weak to resent this signal revenge for his own recent threats. He complained of the hostile invasion of the Greek territory, but Mohammed treated his reclamations with contempt, observing that the ground on which the fortress was built, having been purchased and paid for, was Turkish property, and the Emperor of Constantinople, being a vassal of the Porte, had no right to dispute the will of the sultan.

The first open resistance was offered by some Greeks, who endeavoured to prevent Mohammed’s engineers from carrying off the marble columns from a church. These pious Christians were cut to pieces by the ottoman troops. As the work advanced the sultan’s aggressions increased. His soldiers were allowed to plunder; quarrels ensued in which blood was shed, and then the Turks attacked the Greeks who were getting in the harvest and slew the reapers. Constantine in alarm closed the gates of Constantinople, cut off all communications between the Greeks and the Ottmans, and sent another embassy to the sultan to ask redress. Mohammed replied by a formal declaration of war.

Both parties now began to prepare for the mortal contest. The siege of Constantinople was to be the great event of the coming year. The sultan, in order to prevent the emperor’s brothers in the Peloponnesus from sending any succours to the capital, ordered Tourakhan, the pasha of Thessaly, to invade the peninsula. He himself took up his residence at Adrianople, to collect warlike stores and siege-artillery. Constantine, on his part, made every preparation in his power for a vigorous defence. He formed large magazines of provisions, collected military stores, and enrolled all the soldiers he could muster among the Greek population of Constantinople. But the inhabitants of that city were either unable or unwilling to furnish recruits in proportion to their numbers. Bred up in peaceful occupation, they probably possessed neither the activity nor the habitual exercise which was required to move with ease under the weighty armour then in use. So few were found disposed to fight for their country, that not more than six thousand Greek troops appeared under arms during the whole siege. The numerical weakness of the Greek army rendered it incapable of defending so large a city as Constantinople, even with all the advantage to be derived from strong fortifications. The emperor was, therefore, anxious to obtain the assistance of the warlike citizens of the Italian republics, where good officers and experienced troops were then numerous. As he had no money to engage mercenaries, he could only hope to succeed by papal influence. An embassy was sent to Pope Nicholas V, begging immediate aid, and declaring the emperor’s readiness to complete the union of the churches in any way the Pope should direct. Nicholas despatched Cardinal Isidore, the metropolitan of Kief, who had joined the Latin Church, as his legate. Isidore had represented the Russian church at the council of Florence; but on his return to Russia he was imprisoned as an apostate, and with difficulty escaped to Italy. He was by birth a Greek; and being a man of learning and conciliatory manners, it was expected that he would be favourably received at Constantinople.

The cardinal arrived at Constantinople in November 1452. He was accompanied by a small body of chosen troops, and brought some pecuniary aid, which he employed in repairing the most dilapidated part of the fortifications. Both the emperor and the cardinal deceived themselves in supposing that the dangers to which the Greek nation and the Christian church were exposed would induce the orthodox to yield something of their ecclesiastical forms and phrases. It was evident that foreign aid could alone save Constantinople, and it was absurd to imagine that the Latins would fight for those who treated them as heretics, and who would not fight for themselves. The crisis, therefore, compelled the Greeks to choose between union with the Church of Rome or submission to the Ottoman power. They had to decide whether the preservation of the Greek empire was worth the ecclesiastical sacrifices they were called upon to make in order to preserve their national independence.

In the meantime, the Emperor Constantine celebrated his union with the papal church, in the cathedral of St Sophia, on the 12th of December 1452. The court and the great body of the dignified clergy ratified the act by their presence; but the monks and the people repudiated the connection. In their opinion the Church of St Sophia was polluted by the ceremony, and from that day it was deserted by the orthodox. The historian Ducas declares that they looked upon it as a haunt of demons, and no better than a pagan shrine. The monks, the nuns, and the populace, publicly proclaimed their detestation of the union; and their opposition was inflamed by the bigotry of an ambitious pedant, who, under the name of Georgios Scholarios, acted as a warm partisan of the union at the council of Florence, and under the ecclesiastical name of Gennadios is known in history as the subservient patriarch of Sultan Mohammed II. On returning from Italy, he made a great parade of his repentance for complying with the unionists at Florence. He shut himself up in the monastery of Pantokrator, where he assumed the monastic habit, and the name of Gennadios, under which he consummated the union between the Greek Church and the ottoman administration. At the present crisis he stepped forward as the leader of the most bigoted party, and excited his followers to the most furious opposition to measures which he had once advocated as salutary to the church, and indispensable for the preservation of the state. The unionists were now accused of sacrificing true religion to the delusions of human policy, of insulting God to serve the Pope, and of preferring the interests of their bodies to the care of their souls. In place of exhorting their countrymen to aid the emperor, who was straining every nerve to defend their country—in place of infusing into their minds the spirit of patriotism and religion, these teachers of the people were incessantly inveighing against the wickedness of the unionists and the apostasy of the emperor. So completely did their bigotry extinguish every feeling of patriotism that the Grand-duke Notaras declared he would rather see Constantinople subjected to the turban of the sultan than to the tiara of the Pope. His wish was gratified; but, in dying, he must have felt how fearfully he had erred in comparing the effects of papal arrogance with the cruelty of Mohammedan tyranny. The Emperor Constantine, who felt the importance of the approaching contest, showed great prudence and moderation in his difficult position. The spirit of Christian charity calmed his temper, and his determination not to survive the empire gave a deliberate coolness to his military conduct. Though his Greek subjects often raised seditions, and reviled him in the streets, the emperor took no notice of their behaviour. To induce the orthodox to fight for their country, by having a leader of their own party, he left the Grand-duke Notaras in office; yet he well knew that this bigot would never act cordially with the Latin auxiliaries, who were the best troops in the city; and the emperor had some reason to distrust the patriotism of Notaras, seeing that he hoarded his immense wealth, instead of expending a portion of it for his country.

The fortifications were not found to be in a good state of repair. Two monks who had been intrusted with a large sum for the purpose of repairing them, had executed their duty in an insufficient, and it was generally said in a fraudulent manner. The extreme dishonesty that prevailed among the Greek officials explains the selection of monks as treasurers for military objects; and it must lessen our surprise at finding men of their religious professions sharing in the general avarice, or tolerating the habitual peculation of others.

Cannon were beginning to be used in sieges, but stone balls were used in the larger pieces of artillery; and the larger the gun, the greater was the effect it was expected to produce. Even in Constantinople there were some artillery too large to be of much use, as the land wall had not been constructed to admit of their recoil, and the ramparts were so weak as to be shaken by their concussion. Constantine had also only a moderate supply of gunpowder. The machines of a past epoch in military science, but to the use of which the Greeks adhered with their conservative prejudices, were brought from the storehouses, and planted on the walls beside the modem artillery. Johann Grant, a German officer, who arrived with Justiniani, was the most experienced artilleryman and military engineer in the place.

A considerable number of Italians hastened to Constantinople as soon as they heard of its danger, eager to defend so important a depot of Eastern commerce. The spirit of enterprise and the love of military renown had become as much a characteristic of the merchant nobles of the commercial republics as they had been, in a preceding age, distinctions of the barons in feudal monarchies. All the nations who then traded with Constantinople furnished contingents to defend its walls. A short time before the siege commenced, John Justiniani arrived with two Genoese galleys and three hundred chosen troops, and the emperor valued his services so highly that he was appointed general of the guard. The resident bailo of the Venetians furnished three large galeasses and a body of troops for the defence of the port. The consul of the Catalans, with his countrymen and the Aragonese, undertook the defence of the great palace of Bukoleon and the port of Kontoskalion. The Cardinal Isidore, with the papal troops, defended the Kynegesion, and the angle of the city at the head of the port down to St Demetrios. The importance of the aid which was afforded by the Latins is proved by the fact, that of twelve military divisions into which Constantine divided the fortifications, the commands of only two were intrusted to the exclusive direction of Greek officers. In the others, Greeks shared the command with foreigners, or else foreigners alone conducted the defence. When all Constantine’s preparations for defence were completed, he found himself obliged to man a line of wall on the land side of about five miles in length, every point of which was exposed to a direct attack. The remainder of the wall towards the port and the Propontis exceeded nine miles in extent, and his whole garrison hardly amounted to nine thousand men. His fleet consisted of only twenty galleys and three Venetian galeasses, but the entry of the port was closed by a chain, the end of which, on the side of Galata, was secured in a strong fort of which the Greeks kept possession. During the winter the emperor sent out his fleet to ravage the coast of the Propontis as far as Cyzicus, and the spirit of the Greeks was roused by the booty they made in these expeditions.

Mohammed II spent the winter at Adrianople, preparing everything necessary for commencing the siege with vigour. His whole mind was absorbed by the glory of conquering the Roman Empire, and gaining possession of Constantinople, which for more than eleven hundred and fifty years had been the capital of the East. While the fever of ambition inflamed his soul, his cooler judgment also warned him that the ottoman power rested on a perilous basis as long as Constantinople, the true capital of his empire, remained in the hands of others. Mohammed could easily assemble a sufficient number of troops for his enterprise, but it required all his activity and power to collect the requisite supplies of provisions and stores for the immense military and naval force he had ordered to assemble, and to prepare the artillery and ammunition necessary to insure success. Early and late, in his court and in his cabinet, the young sultan could talk of nothing but the approaching siege. With the writing-reed and a scroll of paper in his hand, he was often seen tracing plans of the fortifications of Constantinople, and marking out positions for his own batteries. Every question relating to the extent and locality of the various magazines to be constructed in order to maintain the troops was discussed in his presence; he himself distributed the troops in their respective divisions and regulated the order of their march; he issued the orders relating to the equipment of the fleet, and discussed the various methods proposed for breaching, mining, and scaling the walls. His enthusiasm was the impulse of a hero, but the immense superiority of his force would have secured him the victory with any ordinary degree of perseverance.

The Ottomans were already familiar with the use of cannon. Murad II had employed them when he besieged Constantinople in 1422; but Mohammed now resolved on forming a more powerful battering-train than had previously existed. Neither the Greeks nor Turks possessed the art of casting large guns. Both were obliged to employ foreigners. An experienced artilleryman and founder, named Urban, by birth a Vallachian, carried into execution the sultan’s wishes. He had passed sometime in the Greek service; but even the moderate pay he was allowed by the emperor having fallen in arrear, he resigned his place and transferred his services to the sultan, who knew better how to value warlike knowledge. He now gave Mohammed proof of his skill by casting the largest cannon which had ever been fabricated. He had already placed one of extraordinary size in the new castle of the Bosphorus, which carried a ball across the straits. The gun destined for the siege of Constantinople far exceeded in size this monster, and the diameter of its mouth must have been nearly two feet and a-half. Other cannon of great size, whose balls of stone weighed 150 lb., were also cast, as well as many guns of smaller calibre. All these, together with a number of ballists and other ancient engines still employed in sieges, were mounted on carriages in order to transport them to Constantinople. The conveyance of this formidable train of artillery, and of the immense quantity of ammunition required for its service, was by no means a trifling operation.

The first division of the Ottoman army moved from Adrianople in the month of February 1453. In the meantime a numerous corps of pioneers worked constantly at the road, in order to prepare it for the passage of the long train of artillery and baggage waggons. Temporary bridges, capable of being taken to pieces, were erected by the engineers over every ravine and water-course, and the materials for the siege advanced steadily, though slowly, to their destination. The extreme difficulty of moving the monster cannon with its immense balls retarded the sultan’s progress, and it was the beginning of April before the whole battering-train reached Constantinople, though the distance from Adrianople is barely a hundred miles. The division of the army under Karadja Pasha had already reduced Mesembria, Anchialos, Bizya, and the castle of St Stephanos. Selymbria alone defended itself and the fortifications were so strong that Mohammed ordered it to be closely blockaded, and left its fate to be determined by that of the capital.

On the 6th of April, Sultan Mohammed II encamped on the slope of the hill facing the quarter of Blachern, little beyond the ground occupied by the Crusaders in 1203, and immediately ordered the construction of lines, extending from the head of the port to the shore of the Propontis. These lines were formed of a mound of earth, and they served both to restrain the sorties of the besieged, and to cover the troops from the fire of the enemy’s artillery and missiles. The batteries were then formed: the principal were erected against the gate Charsias, in the quarter of Blachern, and against the gate of St Romanos, near the centre of the city wall. It was against this last gate that the fire of the monster gun was directed and the chief attack was made.

The land forces of the Turks probably amounted to about seventy thousand men of all arms and qualities; but the real strength of the army lay in the corps of janissaries, then the best infantry in Europe, and their number did not exceed twelve thousand. At the same time, twenty thousand cavalry, mounted on the finest horses of the Turkoman breed, and hardened by long service, were ready to fight either on horseback or on foot under the eye of their young sultan. The fleet which had been collected along the Asiatic coast, from the ports of the Black Sea to those of the Aegean, brought additional supplies of men, provisions, and military stores. It consisted of three hundred and twenty vessels of various sizes and forms. The greater part were only half-decked coasters, and even the largest were far inferior in size to the galleys and galleasses of the Greeks and Italians.

The fortifications of Constantinople, towards the land side, vary so little from a straight line that they afford great facilities for attack. The defences had been originally constructed on a magnificent scale, and with great skill, according to the ancient art of war. Even though they were partly ruined by time, and weakened by careless reparations, they still offered a formidable obstacle to the imperfect science of the engineers in Mohammed’s army. Two lines of wall, each flanked with its own towers, rose one above the other, overlooking a broad and deep ditch. The interval between these walls enabled the defenders to form in perfect security, and facilitated their operations in clearing the ditch and retarding the preparation for assault. The actual appearance of the low walls of Constantinople, with the ditch more than half-filled up, gives only an incorrect picture of their former state.

Mohammed had made his preparations for the siege with so much skill that his preliminary works advanced with unexpected rapidity. The numerical superiority of his army, and the precautions he had adopted for strengthening his lines, rendered the sorties of the garrison useless. The ultimate success of the defence depended on the arrival of assistance from abroad; but the numbers of the Ottoman fleet seemed to render even this hope almost desperate. An incident occurred that showed the immense advantage conferred by skill, when united with courage, over an apparently irresistible superiority of force in naval warfare. Four large ships, laden with grain and stores, one of which bore the Greek and the other the Genoese flag, had remained for some time wind-bound at Chios, and were anxiously expected at Constantinople. At daybreak these ships were perceived by the Turkish watchmen steering for Constantinople with a strong breeze in their favour. The war-galleys of the sultan, under the command of the Capitan-pasha Baltaoghlu, immediately got under way to capture them. The sultan himself rode down to the point of Tophané to witness a triumph which he considered certain, and which he thought would reduce his enemy to despair. The Greeks crowded the walls of the city, offering up prayers for their friends, and trembling for their safety in the desperate struggle that awaited them. The Christians had several advantages which their nautical experience enabled them to turn to good account. The great size of their ships, the strength of their construction, their weight, and their high bulwarks, were all powerful means of defence when aided by a stiff breeze blowing directly in the teeth of their opponents. The Turks were compelled to row their galleys against this wind and the heavy sea it raised. In vain they attacked the Christians with reckless valour, fighting under the eye of their fiery sovereign. The skill of their enemy rendered all their attacks abortive. In vain one squadron attempted to impede the progress of the Christians, while another endeavoured to run along- side and carry them by boarding. Every Turkish galley that opposed their progress was crushed under the weight of their heavy hulls, while those that endeavoured to board had their oars shivered in the shock, and drifted helpless far astern. The few that succeeded for a moment in retaining their place alongside were either sunk by immense angular blocks of stone that were dropped on their frail timbers, or were filled with flames and smoke by the Greek fire that was poured upon them. The rapidity with which the best galleys were sunk or disabled appalled the bravest; and at last the Turks shrank from close combat, on an element where they saw that valour without experience was of no avail. The Christian ships, in the meantime, held steadily on their course, under all the canvass their masts could carry, until they rounded the point of St Demetrius and entered the port, where the chain was joyfully lowered to admit them.

The young sultan, on seeing the defeat of his galleys, lost all command over his temper. He could hardly be restrained from urging his horse into the sea, and in his frantic passion heaped every term of abuse and insult on his naval officers. He even talked of ordering his admiral, Baltaoghlu, to be impaled on the spot; but the janissaries present compelled even Mohammed to restrain his vengeance, by boldly demanding the pardon of the unfortunate capitan-pacha, when they saw the sultan strike him with the mace-at-arms in his hand. This check revealed to Mohammed the extent of the danger to which his naval force was exposed, should either the Genoese or Venetians send a powerful fleet to the assistance of the Emperor Constantine.

This naval discomfiture was also attended by some disasters on shore. The monster cannon burst before it had produced any serious impression on the walls. Its loss, however, was soon replaced; but the ottoman army was repulsed in a general attack. An immense tower of timber, mounted on many wheels, and constructed on the model used in sieges from the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans, was dragged up to the edge of the ditch. Under its cover, workmen were incessantly employed throwing materials into the ditch to enable the tower itself to approach the walls, while the fire of several guns, and the operations of a corps of miners, ruined the opposite tower of the city. The progress of the besiegers induced them to risk an assault, in which they were repulsed, after a hard-fought struggle; and during the following night, John Justiniani made a great sortie, during which his workmen cleared the ditch, and his soldiers filled the tower with combustible materials, and burned it to the ground. Its exterior, having been protected by a triple covering of buffaloes’ hides, was found to be impervious even to Greek fire.

In order to counteract the effect of these defeats, which had depressed the courage of the Ottomans and raised the spirits of the Greeks, the sultan resolved to adopt measures for placing his fleet in security, and facilitating the communication between the army before Constantinople and the naval camp on the Bosphorus. The Venetians had recently transported a number of their galleys from the river Adige overland to the lake of Garda: this exploit, which had been loudly celebrated at the time, suggested to the sultan the idea of transporting a number of vessels from the Bosphorus into the port of Constantinople, where the smooth water and the command of the shore would secure to his ships the mastery of the upper half of that extensive harbour. The distance over which it was necessary to transport the galleys was only five miles, but a steep hill presented a formidable obstacle to the undertaking. Mohammed, nevertheless, having witnessed the transport of his monster cannon over rivers and hills, was persuaded that his engineers would find no difficulty in moving his ships over the land. A road was accordingly made, and laid with strong planks and wooden rails, which were plastered over with tallow. It extended from the station occupied by the fleet at Dolma Baktshe to the summit of the ridge near the cemetery of Pera. On this inclined plane, with the assistance of windlasses and numerous yokes of oxen, the vessels were hauled up one after the other to the summit of the hill, from whence they descended without difficulty to the point beyond the present arsenal, where they were launched into the port under the protection of batteries prepared for their defence. Historians, wishing to give a dramatic character to their pages, have attributed marvellous difficulties to this daring exploit. It was certainly a well-conceived and well-executed undertaking, for a division of the ottoman fleet was conveyed into the port in a single night, where the Greeks, at the dawn of day, were amazed at beholding the hostile ships safe under the protection of inexpugnable batteries.

To establish an easy and rapid communication between the naval camp on the Bosphorus and the army before Constantinople, Mohammed ordered a floating bridge to be constructed across the port, from the point near the old foundry, on the side of Galata, to that near the angle of the city walls, near Haivan Serai, the ancient amphitheatre. The roadway of this bridge was supported on the enormous jars used for storing oil and wine, numbers of which were easily collected in the suburbs of Galata. These jars, when bound together with their mouth inverted in the water, formed admirable pontoons. Artillery was mounted on this bridge, and the galleys were brought up to the city walls, which were now assailed from a quarter hitherto safe from attack. The Genoese under Justiniani on one occasion, and the Venetians on another, were defeated in their attempts to bum the Turkish fleet and destroy the bridge. The fire of the artillery rendered the attacks of the Italians abortive, and their failure afforded a decisive proof that the defence of the city was becoming desperate. To avoid the admission of their inferiority in force, the defeated parties threw the blame on one another, and their dissensions became so violent that the emperor could hardly appease the quarrel.

During all the labours of the besiegers in other quarters, the approaches were pushed vigorously forward against the land wall. Though the activity in other and more novel operations might attract greater attention, the industry of those engaged in filling up the ditch, and the fire of the breaching batteries, never relaxed. Though all attempts to cross the ditch at the gate of St Romanos were long baffled by the Greeks, and the mining operations at Blachern were discovered and defeated by Johann Grant, still the superior number and indefatigable perseverance of the Othomans at last filled up the ditch, and the ceaseless fire of their guns ruined the walls. A visible change in the state of the fortifications encouraged the assailants, and showed the besieged that the enemy was gradually gaining a decided advantage. At the commencement of the siege, the ottoman engineers had displayed so little knowledge of the mode of using artillery to effect a breach, that a Hungarian envoy from John Hunniades, who visited Mohammed’s camp, ridiculed the idea of their producing any effect on the walls of Constantinople. Tins stranger was said to have taught the Turks to fire in volleys, and to cut the wall in rectangular sections, in order to produce a practicable breach. The batteries at length effected a practicable breach at the gate of St Romanos. Before issuing his final orders for the assault, Mohammed II summoned the emperor to surrender the city, and offered him a considerable appanage as a vassal of the Porte elsewhere. Constantine rejected the insulting offer, and the sultan prepared to take Constantinople by storm. Four days were employed in the Ottoman camp making all the arrangements necessary for a simultaneous attack by land and sea along the whole line of the fortifications, from the modern quarter of Phanar to the Golden Gate. The Greeks and Latins within the walls were not less active in their exertions to meet the crisis. The Latins were sustained by their habits of military discipline, and their experiences of the chances of war; the Greeks placed great confidence in some popular prophecies which foretold the ultimate defeat of the Turks. They felt a pious conviction that the imperial and orthodox city would never fall into the hands of Infidels. But the Emperor Constantine was deceived by no vain hopes. He knew that human prudence and valour could do no more than had been done to retard the progress of the besiegers. Time had been gained, but the Greeks showed no disposition to fight for a heretical emperor, and no succours arrived from the Pope and the Western princes. Constantine could now only hope to prolong the defence for a few hours, and, when the city fell, to bring his own life to a glorious termination by dying on the breach.

On the night before the assault the emperor rode round to all the posts occupied by the garrison, and encouraged the troops to expect victory by his cheerful demeanour. He then visited the Church of St Sophia, already deserted by the orthodox, where with his attendants he partook of the holy sacrament according to the Latin form. He returned for a short time to the imperial palace, and on quitting it to take his station at the great breach, he was so overcome by the certainty that he should never again behold those present that he turned to the members of his household, many of whom had been the companions of his youth, and solemnly asked them to pardon every offence he had ever given them. Tears burst from present as Constantine mounted his horse and rode slowly forward to meet his fate.

The contrast between the city of the Christians and the camp of the Mohammedans was not encouraging. Within the walls an emperor in the decline of life commanded a small and disunited force, with twenty leaders under his orders, each at the head of an almost independent band of Greek, Genoese, Venetian, or Catalan soldiers. So slight was the tie which bound these various chiefs together, that, even when they were preparing for the final assault, the emperor was obliged to use all his authority and personal influence to prevent Justiniani and the Grand-duke Notaras from coming to blows. Justiniani demanded to be supplied with some additional guns for the defence of the great breach, but Notaras, who had the official control over the artillery, peremptorily refused the demand.

In the Turkish camp, on the other hand, perfect unity prevailed, and a young, ardent, and able sovereign concentrated in his hands the most despotic authority over a numerous and well-disciplined army. To excite the energy of that army to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, the sultan proclaimed to his troops that he granted them the whole plunder of Constantinople, reserving to himself only the public buildings. The day of battle was regarded as a religious festival in the Ottoman camp, and on the previous night lamps were hung out before every tent, and fires were kindled on every eminence in or near the lines. Thousands of lanterns were suspended from the flag-staffs of the batteries, and from the masts and yards of the ships, and were reflected in the waters of the Propontis, the Golden Horn, and the Bosphorus. The whole Ottoman encampment was resplendent with the blaze of this illumination. Yet a deep silence prevailed during the whole night, except when the musical cadence of the solemn chant of the call to prayers showed the Greeks the immense numbers and the strict discipline of the host.

Before the dawn of day, on the morning of the 29th May 1453, the signal was given for the attack. Column after column marched forward, and took up their ground before the portions of the wall they were ordered to assail. The galleys, fitted with towers and scaling-platforms, advanced against the fortifications of the port protected by the guns on the bridge. But the principal attack was directed against the breach at the gate of St Romanos, where two flanking towers had fallen into the ditch and opened a passage into the interior of the city. The gate of Charsias and the quarter of Blachern were also assailed by chosen regiments of janissaries in overwhelming numbers. The attack was made with daring courage, but for more than two hours every point was successfully defended. In the port, the Italian and Greek ships opposed the Turkish galleys so effectually that the final result appeared to favour the besieged. But on the land side one column of troops followed the other in an incessant stream. The moment a division fell back from the assault new battalions occupied its place. The valour of the besieged was for some time successful, but they were at last fatigued by their exertions, and their scanty numbers were weakened by wounds and death. Unfortunately, Justiniani, the protostrator or marshal of the army, and the ablest officer in the place, received a wound which induced him to retire on board his ship to have it dressed. Until that moment he and the emperor had defended the great breach with advantage, but after his retreat Sagan Pasha, observing that the energy of the defenders was relaxed, excited the bravest of the janissaries to mount to the assault. A chosen company led by Hassan of Ulubad (Lopadion), a man of gigantic frame, first crossed the ruins of the wall, and their leader gained the summit of the dilapidated tower which flanked the breach. The defenders, headed by the Emperor Constantine, made a desperate resistance. Hassan and many of his followers were slain, but the janissaries had secured the vantage-ground, and fresh troops pouring in to their aid, they surrounded the defenders of the breach. The emperor fell amidst a heap of slain, and a column of janissaries rushed into Constantinople over his lifeless body.

About the same time another corps of the Ottomans forced an entrance into the city at the Gate of the Circus, which had been left almost without defence, for the besieged were not sufficiently numerous to guard the whole line of the fortifications, and their best troops were drawn to the points where the attacks were fiercest. The corps that forced the Gate of the Circus took the defenders of the Gate Charsias in the rear, and overpowered all resistance in the quarter of Blachern.

Several gates were now thrown open, and the army entered Constantinople at several points. The cry that the enemy had stormed the walls preceded their march. Senators, priests, monks, and nuns; men, women, and children, all rushed to seek safety in St Sophia’s. A prediction current among the Greeks flattered them with the vain hope that an angel would descend from heaven and destroy the Mohammedans, in order to reveal the extent of God’s love for the orthodox. St Sophia’s, which for some time they had forsaken, as a spot profaned by the emperor’s attempt at a union of the Christian world, was again revered as the sanctuary of orthodoxy, and was crowded with the flower of the Greek nation, confident of a miraculous interposition in favour of their national pride and ecclesiastical prejudices.

The besiegers, when they first entered the city, fearing lest they might encounter serious resistance in the narrow streets, put every soul they encountered to the sword. But as soon as they were fully aware of the small number of the garrison, and the impossibility of any further opposition, they began to make prisoners. At length they reached St Sophia’s, and, rushing into that magnificent temple, which could with ease contain about twenty thousand persons, they performed deeds of plunder and violence not unlike the scenes which the Crusaders had enacted in the same spot in the year 1204. The men, women, and children who had sought safety in the building were divided among the soldiers as slaves, without any reference to their rank or respect for their ties of blood, and hurried off to the camp, or placed under the guard of comrades, who formed a joint alliance for the security of their plunder. The ecclesiastical ornaments and church-plate were poor indeed when compared with the immense riches of the Byzantine cathedral in the time of the Crusaders; but whatever was movable was immediately divided among the soldiers with such celerity, that the mighty temple soon presented few traces of having been a Christian church.

While one division of the victorious army was engaged in plundering the southern side of the city, from the Gate of St Romanos to the Church of St Sophia, another, turning to the port, made itself master of the warehouses that were filled with merchandise, and surrounded the Greek troops under the Grand-duke Notaras. The Greeks were easily subdued, and Notaras surrendered himself a prisoner.

About midday the Turks were in possession of the whole city, and Mohammed II entered his new capital at the Gate of St Romanos, riding triumphantly past the body of the Emperor Constantine, which lay concealed among the slain in the breach he had defended. The sultan rode straight to the Church of St Sophia, where he gave the necessary orders for the preservation of all the public buildings. Even during the licence of the sack, the severe education and grave character of the Ottomans exerted a powerful influence on their conduct, and on this occasion there was no example of the wanton destruction and wilful conflagrations that had signalised the Latin conquest. To convince the Greeks that their orthodox empire was extinct, Mohammed ordered a moolah to ascend the bema and address a sermon to the Mussulmans, announcing that St Sophia was now a mosque set apart for the prayers of the true believers. To put an end to all doubts concerning the death of the emperor, he ordered Constantine’s head to be brought, and exposed to the people of the capital, from whence it was afterwards sent as a trophy to be seen by the Greeks of the principal cities in the Ottoman Empire.

It is not possible to describe the multifarious sufferings of the population of Constantinople. Though the storming of the city was attended with less disorder and bloodshed than the Latin conquest, it caused a greater degree of permanent misery, and sank the Greeks into a lower state of social degradation. Slaves were a much more negotiable article of commerce among the Turks than they had been among the Crusaders, and consequently private families were oftener dispersed, and a far larger proportion of the population was reduced to slavery. It is supposed that the calamities and emigrations which immediately preceded the siege, had reduced the Greek population of Constantinople to about one hundred thousand souls; of these forty thousand are said to have perished during the siege or in the sack of the city, and at least fifty thousand were reduced to the condition of slaves. Only the poorest and lowest class of labourers were allowed by the conquerors to retain their liberty, that they might perform the meanest and most laborious occupations necessary for preserving cleanliness in a large city. The lot of persons of the highest rank and education was no better than that of the poorest and most ignorant; youth, strength, and beauty, were the qualities valued by the victors, and these advantages insured their possessors the sad lot of hopeless slavery, accompanied often with a forced conversion to the Mohammedan faith.

It has been generally asserted that the retreat of Justiniani from the great breach on receiving his mortal wound was the immediate cause of the capture of Constantinople; but the Genoese volunteer has been made the scapegoat of the lukewarmness or cowardice of the orthodox, who ought to have crowded to the walls to support their emperor. The fall of the city ought to be entirely attributed to the superior numbers, steady discipline, powerful artillery, and unity of command in the Ottoman army. The fact is, that the breach was stormed about eight o'clock in the morning, and as the assailants had made their arrangements to renew the attacks until noon, there was no chance that any degree of valour or skill could have repulsed the fresh troops that were continually rushing forward. Indeed, the skill and valour of Justiniani and of Constantine prolonged the defence as long as human means could avail. Whether Justiniani deserves to be branded with disgrace for retiring when he did may be doubtful, but Phrantzes and Leonard of Chios, who are most violent in reproaching him, ought to have remembered that they themselves avoided seeking a glorious death on the ramparts of the city. The writers who mention Justiniani’s wound differ concerning its nature. It is certain that during his whole life he was as distinguished for daring courage as for military skill. He was a gallant soldier, who lost his life fighting for the Greeks; and when he received his mortal wound, he doubtless deemed that he had honourably fulfilled his duties in this world, and turned his thoughts to prepare for another.

The proceedings of the sultan after the taking of Constantinople were marked by the sternest cruelty whenever the smallest object could be gained. The bailo of the Venetians and the consul of the Catalans were both put to death with all their children. The rest of the Latin prisoners only escaped with their lives when it was in their power to pay a liberal ransom to their captors; some nobles purchased safety by presenting Sagan Pasha with seventy thousand sequins. A few of the garrison gained the ships in the port, and, weighing anchor, forced their way through the Ottoman fleet. The Cardinal Isidore, who bravely kept his post on the walls, contrived to disguise himself in the dress of a dead soldier, and thus escaped recognition when he was taken prisoner. He was redeemed from slavery by a Genoese of Galata, and reached Italy in safety. A body of Cretans who bravely defended one of the towers was allowed by the sultan to capitulate and depart unmolested.

The fate of the Grand-duke Notaras and his family maybe cited as an example of the treatment of the Greeks of the highest rank, whose power and influence over the orthodox would probably have prevented them from becoming submissive instruments of the Ottoman power. In the first moment of triumph, Mohammed affected to treat Notaras and his family with favour; but he soon sent an order that his youngest son, a youth of fourteen years of age, should be sent to become a page in the imperial palace. In such circumstances, the mildest fate that could await him would be to become a Mussulman. The father feared that he was destined to a more degraded fate. The faith of Notaras was unchristian from the intensity of his bigotry, but it had the merit of sincerity, and it ennobled the last scene of his life. He boldly refused to comply with the demands of the conqueror, deeming it better that he and his house should perish than that his son should become a dishonoured renegade. Mohammed, thus finding a plausible pretext for destroying the grand-duke, ordered him and his sons to be immediately put to death. Many other Greek families were exterminated: the men were executed, the male children were sent into the schools of the janissaries among the tribute-children, and the females were shut up in the harems of the sultan and his courtiers.

The desolate aspect of Constantinople struck the observant mind of its young conqueror with a feeling of awe. Everything he saw within its walls attested that a long period of decline had preceded its fall. The deserted appearance of the imperial palace showed that, long before the accession of Constantine XI, it had been too vast for the diminished court by which it was tenanted, and its largest halls had evidently been long abandoned to solitude. The departed glory of an empire which had for ages ruled the richest provinces in the East, and often rendered the Cross triumphant over the Crescent, suggested to Mohammed a couplet of the Persian poet Firdousee on the instability of human grandeur: “The spider’s curtain hangs before the portal of Caesar’s palace; the owl is the sentinel on the watchtower of Afrasiab”. An empty palace affected the mind of Mohammed II, while he gazed inmoved on mountains of dead men. The fall of Constantinople is a dark chapter in the annals of Christianity. The death of the unfortunate Constantine, neglected by the Catholics and deserted by the orthodox, alone gives dignity to the final catastrophe. The governments of western Europe, occupied with momentary interests, and the nations beginning to feel the impulses of new civil and political combinations in society, heeded little the destruction of an old and rotten edifice, incapable of receiving either internal repairs or external support; while on the part of the Greeks themselves no patriotic or religious enthusiasm has interwoven the struggle with the glories of their national history. No immortal band of martial youth crowding round their emperor, and dying in the breach the death of patriots, has left its exploits as a legacy of honour to the Hellenic race. The defence of Constantinople was intrusted to mercenary troops, and Constantine fell in their ranks.

The first step of Mohammed II, in settling the condition of his conquered subjects, was to secure the allegiance of the orthodox, by proclaiming himself the protector of the Greek Church. The hatred felt for the Latins by a numerous party among the Greeks facilitated the conclusion of this unholy alliance. George Scholarios, or Gennadios, accepted the dignity of Patriarch, and received the pastoral staff from the hands of the sultan. The ceremony of his installation was performed on the first of June, with the blood of the conquest still staining the pavements of the city. A charter of Mohammed was subsequently published securing to the Greeks the use of their churches, allowing them to celebrate their religious rites according to their own usages, to keep open the gates of the quarter in which the Patriarch resided for three nights at Easter, and authorising the Patriarch to decide questions of ecclesiastical law according to the practice of the Christians.

It was necessary for Mohammed II to repeople Constantinople, in order to render it the capital of the Ottoman Empire. The installation of an orthodox Patriarch calmed the minds of the Greeks, and many who had emigrated before the siege gradually returned, and were allowed to claim a portion of their property. But the slow increase of population, caused by a sense of security and the hope of gain, did not satisfy the sultan, who was determined to see his capital one of the greatest cities of the East, and who knew that it had formerly exceeded Damascus, Bagdad, and Cairo, in wealth, extent, and population. From most of his subsequent conquests Mohammed compelled the wealthiest of the inhabitants to emigrate to Constantinople, where he granted them plots of land to build their houses. Five thousand families are said to have been immediately collected among the Turkish and Greek population of his dominions, who were induced by the concessions made to them to take up their residence in the new capital. Four thousand Servian prisoners, instead of being reduced to slavery, were established in the ruined villages without the walls as cultivators of the soil. When the Peloponnesus was conquered, thousands of Greek and Albanian families were removed to Constantinople. The same measures were adopted when Amastris, Sinope, Trebizond, Lesbos, Bosnia, Akserai (Gausaura), and Kaffa, were conquered. During his whole reign, Mohammed II continued to pour into the imperial city fresh streams of inhabitants. Turks, Greeks, Servians, Bulgarians, Albanians, and Lazes, followed one another in quick succession, and long before the end of his reign Constantinople was crowded by a numerous and active population, and presented a more flourishing aspect than it had done during the preceding century.

The embellishment of his capital was also the object of the sultan’s attention. All the most skilful artisans and artists in the two principal cities of Karamania, Iconium and Laranda (Karaman), when that country was conquered, were transported to Constantinople. Mosques, minarets, fountains, and tombs, the great objects of architectural magnificence among the Mussulmans, were constructed in every quarter of the city. Upwards of forty Christian churches, too splendid in their appearance to be left in the hands of the conquered, were converted into mosques. Their original destination was concealed by the destruction of many ornaments, and their external form was modified by the addition of minarets. In the year 1477 the whole circuit of the walls underwent repair; but the sultan’s object was rather to remove the aspect of dilapidation than to give strength to the fortifications, and he allowed the ditches to be in part filled up and the height of the battlements to be diminished.

Thus Constantinople, in becoming the capital of the Ottoman Empire, became a new city, and received a new race of Greek as well as of Turkish inhabitants. Its buildings and its population underwent as great a change as its political, moral, and religious condition. The picturesque beauty of the Stamboul of the present day owes most of its artificial features to the Ottoman conquest, and wears a Turkish aspect. The Constantinople of the Byzantine Empire disappeared with the last relics of the Greek empire. The traveller, who now desires to view the vestiges of a Byzantine capital, and examine the last relics of Byzantine architecture and art, must continue his travels eastward to Trebizond.

 

END OF THE HISTORY OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE

 

HISTORY OF GREECE