MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

BOOK III.

HENRY VI—PHILIP—OTHO IV.

CHAPTER IX.

PHILIP OTHO. [1203—1208.

Continuation of Fourth Crusade—devolutions at Constantinople —City taken by Crusaders—Division of Eastern Empire— Baldwin Emperor of Constantinople— War with Bulgaria— Henry Emperor—Condition of Moslem and of Syro-Frank States. 

Harmony, between the Constantinopolitan Greeks and the Crusaders, could hardly be of long continuance: so many circumstances and feelings concurred to disturb and overthrow it. The position of Alexius IV was one of difficulties, with which he was unfit to cope. He soon discovered, that to pay the covenanted sums, in the time specified, was altogether impossible; although, finding the treasury empty, and not daring to impose taxes adequate to his need, he was stripping churches of their plate for funds. His delays early produced dissatisfaction amongst his benefactors and creditors: whilst his subjects, as early, began to murmur at the sacrilegious spoliations in progress, as well as at the money extorted from themselves, for the discharge of debts, personal to the Emperors; and yet more, perhaps, at the outrage offered to their vanity, by the younger Emperor’s degradingly familiar association with persons, so inferior to himself in station, as the crusading Princes. The Greek clergy resented his engagement to conform, to the heresies, as they deemed them, of the Roman Catholic Church, enslaving them under the despotic yoke of the Pope. Even betwixt the two Emperors discord arose; the father complaining, not unjustly, that his son, whilst abandoning himself to frivolous pleasures, was endeavouring to monopolise the sovereign power; the son, as justly, that his father wasted his time and resources upon calumnious informers, or upon quack-doctors and fortune-tellers, who promised him the restoration of his sight, and of the whole Roman Empire.

Under these circumstances, Alexius represented to the crusading Princes, both his absolute inability to fulfil his engagements, and his fears of losing his crown, and even his life, if deprived of their support, ere he was more firmly established on his throne. He therefore solicited their patience till the spring of 1204; invited them to await this season in and about Constantinople, and undertook to feed fleet and army during their stay. The old dissensions hereupon revived amongst the Crusaders. Those who had uniformly objected to the Constantinopolitan adventure, vehemently opposed this new postponement of the great duty, to which every individual present was solemnly pledged; to perform which, they had left all that w as dear to them. They argued that if Alexius IV could not maintain himself upon his throne without their support, they ought never to have seated him thereon; and refused longer to disobey the Pope, by leaving their fellow Christians, and the Holy Sepulchre itself, in thraldom to misbelievers, whilst upholding one usurper against another, merely to promote the trade of Venice. They demanded at least, if the great body of Crusaders again chose to forget their vow, the ships promised for their conveyance to the goal of Christian pilgrims. Dandolo and his party, on the other hand, contended that the Pope, when he should rightly understand the transaction, could not but approve of measures, calculated to heal the great schism in the Church; that now to forsake the young Emperor, would indeed be to make all they had done sheer waste of time, forfeiting the succours in men, money, and provisions, promised them, and so important to their grand object; and they added, that the season for active operations would be nearly over, before the armament could possibly reach Egypt, or even Palestine. These arguments, aided by potent lures, held out to individual ambition, prevailed; and Alexius, undertaking further, to pay the Venetians for the use of their fleet, even till Michaelmas, 1204, which secured to the Crusaders its cooperation in the next year’s campaign, the treaty was modified according to his wishes.

Alexius, accompanied by Marchese Bonifazio, and other leading Crusaders, now, at the head of what Villehardouin calls a mighty army, made a progress through the empire; partly to expel his uncle, Alexius III, who still held his court at Adrianople, and partly to get himself generally acknowledged. The uncle, Alexius III, fled; and the nephew, Alexius IV, trusting that in both his objects he had succeeded, returned triumphant in November, to find the reciprocal enmity between Greeks and Latins so increased in violence, that a spark only was wanting to en­kindle the flame. Never was such spark long a-wanting. A mosque had, by convention with Saladin, been granted to the Mohammedans in Constantinople; this mosque, some of the Crusaders, naturally intolerant, attacked; the Greeks took part with the tolerated Moslem, and a conflict ensued. The consequent disorders gave occasion to a fire, that unhappily ravaged a large part of the city, consuming palaces, churches, and the best shops. The populace imputed the disaster to the Crusaders, who, intentionally or not, had been its cause; and the contemptuous detestation entertained for the rude, ignorant, and ferocious, Frank barbarians, became uncontrollable. The Greeks not only set fire to the Venetian fleet, which was rescued from destruction by the energy of the crews, but actually destroyed a beautiful bronze statue of Minerva, because the eyes of the goddess, looking westward, were thought to encourage these western Franks.

Alexius IV has been accused of designing to prevent a rebellion, by breaking with his burthensome benefactors. What is certain is, that his intercourse with them, after his return from the successful military excursion, or prome­nade, which he fancied had secured his throne, was less frequent and less cordial than previously; and that a deputation of Crusaders, bearing some complaint to the foot of the throne, was so ill received by both Emperors and Constantinopolitans, that the Marshal says they were right glad when without the walls. But if such were the ungrateful, and treacherous, as injudicious intention of their imperial obligee, his subjects did not leave him time so to dishonour himself. Upon the 25th of January, J2O4, they tumultuously rose, forced the Senators and  Prelates to assemble, and insisted upon their forthwith electing another emperor. The assembly, seeing in such a step only a new complication of existing evils, strove to evade compliance; whereupon the more and more irritated populace endeavoured, by mingled prayers and menaces, to prevail upon one senator after another to accept the imperial dignity. Some days passed thus; then, exasperated by repeated refusals, they, of their sole authority, with or without his consent, proclaimed Nicolas Kanabus, a brave soldier, but otherwise insignificant young patrician, Emperor, declaring that he should not reject the crown.

Again Alexius IV saw in the Crusaders his only chance of support, and implored their assistance, offering to give the strong Blachernae palace up to them, for his own security as well as for theirs. For the bearer of this request and proposal to the crusading camp, he selected the person who has been alluded to, as the possible rival of Theodore Lascaris, in courage and soldiership. This was his kinsman, Alexius Ducas, the Protovestiarius, surnamed Murzuflos, because his eyebrows met over the nose in one continuous line. He, although affianced to a daughter of the fugitive usurper, had remained in Constantinople, professing warm affection for Alexius IV, who believed him; but the friendship of Ducas, if it had ever existed, was soon overpowered by ambition and opportunity. The faithless envoy widely disseminated the intelligence, that the Emperor was again negotiating with the Latins, and about to deliver the empire over to them. He thus more completely maddened the already enfrenzied populace; whilst, in various ways, he won some of the chief officers of the palace, and many foreign mercenaries of the imperial bodyguard, to his interest. Thus prepared, he, with constant reports of new, and more formidable tumults and dangers, alarmed the young Emperor, who, still considerably under twenty years of age, was, from his father’s illness, then virtually sole sovereign; strengthening his intended victim’s reliance upon himself, by protestations of devoted attachment and inviolable fidelity. And now he proceeded to act. He visited Alexius in the middle of the night, with accounts, so terrific, of rebellious violence, that he easily persuaded the deluded youth to leave the imperial apartment, which it should seem would have been respected, and, under pretence of seeking a safe asylum, led him to his own official chambers, where the expecting conspirators immediately seized their sovereign, fettered his limbs, and thus chained, flung him into a dungeon. In this dungeon poison is said to have been given him, but neutralized, by the antidotes with which the captive was duly provided; wherefore, when the Crusaders insisted upon his liberation and restoration, he was, upon the 8th of February, strangled. His blind father, already alarmingly ill, either died through the effects of grief and terror upon a diseased and debilitated frame, or, like his son, was murdered. The illegally proclaimed Emperor, Nicolas Kanabus, was easily set aside, and, as Alexius V, Murzuflos assumed the imperial purple.

The Crusaders did not witness these changes with indifference. Such a revolution sweeping away their treaties, the promised money, provisions, and auxiliaries were lost; their time was indeed wasted, and excommunication deservedly incurred. To such consequences they could not tamely submit; but insisted upon father and son being immediately replaced upon the throne. The answer, announcing that both Emperors had died natural deaths, convinced them that both were murdered, as well as betrayed. Recoiling from Greek vice, crime, and levity, they declared it to be their duty to avenge the victims, and inflict condign punishment upon their assassins. Ambition enhanced, probably, and inforced their sense of duty.

The Doge and the crusading Princes, at the head of some 20,000 men, now resolved to conquer the East Roman Empire, the capital of which, alone, was then reported to contain 400,000 fighting men. Dissension, indeed, again occurred; but those who shrank from this fresh escape from the performance of their vow, this reiterated disobedience to the Pope, by again shedding Christian in lieu of Moslem blood, were silenced by assurances that the Holy Father would not only pardon, would reward with spiritual indulgences, the healing of the schism, the actual bringing back—by conquest—of the heretic Greeks into the pale of the Church. At length, after much wrangling rather than discussion, upon the 12th of March, 1204, the Doge and the Princes signed a treaty, disposing of the East-Roman Empire after the following manner:

Constantinople was to be taken by the Crusaders and Venetians. All booty was to be deposited in some appointed place; a sum, sufficient to satisfy the engagements of the late Emperor Alexius IV, first set aside for that purpose, and then the remainder divided equally between the Franks and the Venetians. Twelve men, named half by the former, half by the latter, were to elect an emperor, from amongst the leaders of the army; the choice, should the votes be equally divided, to be determined by lot. One quarter of the empire, with the Blachernae and Boukoleon palaces, to belong to the emperor, the other three quarters to be divided equally between the Franks and the Venetians. The clergy of the party whence the emperor should not be selected, were to name the patriarch, and reconsecrate the Cathedral of St. Sophia, polluted by schismatics. Due provision was to be made for both Greek and Latin clergy, and the surplus church property given up to the laity. Twelve men, jointly named by the Franks and the Venetians, and sworn to act fairly, were to allot ministerial and court offices, distribute fiefs, heritable by females as well as males, and fix the service due for each to the emperor. No enemy of either party was to be suffered in the empire. The elected emperor was to swear observance of these regulations. Every one must take the oath of allegiance to the emperor for his fief, save the Doge, for the lands assigned to Venice. All existing privileges, liberties and the like, were to be confirmed; all parties to co-operate in establishing the new empire, and no one to absent himself before the end of March, 1205. Both parties were to unite in petitioning the Pope to sanction this treaty, and excommunicate every violator of its conditions.

Murzuflos gallantly defended the nefariously obtained imperial crown. From the moment of his usurpation he foresaw the certain hostility of the Crusaders, and occupied himself in strengthening the defences of Constantinople, already first rate in general estimation. Besides increasing the number and size of his mangonels, &c., he added to the height of the walls, and erected a new wooden tower, between every two old ones. The town seemed impregnable; and although the Franks triumphed in every skirmish, the heavy stones hurled from the ramparts by powerful engines, rendered the approach of scaling ladders and battering machines, a task of peril, wellnigh amounting to impossibility; whilst skilfully managed fireships prevented assaults from the water, scaring away the Venetian fleet, and often involving it in dangers, averted only by the energy and experience of Venetian sailors. The Greeks, if charmed by the activity of their new Emperor, were angered by the rigour with which he imposed and levied taxes, to supply his empty exchequer. Hence, perhaps, his military measures were intermingled with attempts at negotiation. But the Crusaders, in real or pretended disbelief of the death of Alexius IV, demanded, besides the ratification of their treaty with him, his restoration; whilst Alexius V declared, that he would rather perish, or see his empire overwhelmed with calamities, than subject his Church to the Roman Pontiff. The evidently fruitless negotiation dropped.

The Crusaders now planned, as before, a combined attack by land and by sea, fixing it for Monday in Passion week, being the 12th of April, 1204. During the whole morning, the obstacles that had foiled previous, un­connected attempts, proved insuperable; but at noon, a strong north wind springing up, drove two ships, linked together, and auspiciously named the Paradise and the Pilgrim, against one of the projecting rampart towers; upon which, one to the right, the other to the left, they hung. Promptly were the landing bridges lowered; d’Urboise, a French Knight, and Alberti, a noble Venetian, rushed over, followed by their comrades, and had mastered the tower, expelling the Greek garrison, before the danger was observed. The sight of the crusading banner floating over its battlements, so excited the comrades of the victors, that other vessels rushed upon other towers, battering rams burst gates open; and despite all resistance, Franks and Venetians, knights and squires, sailors and archers poured in. The brave, if unprincipled, Murzuflos laboured in vain  to stem the torrent; neither Greeks nor mercenaries, could he rally to further struggle. So completely were they cowed, that, according to Greek authority, a single Frank knight drove a thousand Constantinopolitans, like a flock of sheep, before him. Their Emperor, inextricably entangled amongst fugitives, was hurried along in their flight; and the Crusaders were masters of a portion of the city; the larger part, Alexius V, still unsubdued, held against them.

He, as soon as he could extricate himself from the mass, rode about the unconquered districts, endeavouring to rouse the people to defend their homes, whilst he organized an attack upon the small body of invaders, established within the walls. A report of his movements reached the leaders of the Crusaders; and, anticipating a tedious struggle, they assembled to deliberate upon the means of maintaining their position, against the superior numbers of the enemy, now guided by an able and energetic Emperor; when a fire, kindled by the Lombard corps as a protection from nocturnal attack, produced in the Constantinopolitans, an intensity of terror and confusion, that, baffling all the efforts of Alexius V, ultimately infected himself. Returning to the Boukoleon palace, he got on board a sloop with his affianced bride and her mother—the daughter and wife of Alexius III, left behind when he fled—and with them, in his turn, abandoned the contest.

At daybreak his desertion became known to Greeks and Latins, very differently affecting the two races. The occurrence of the political crisis in which the former delighted—to wit, the opportunity of electing a new emperor—apparently obliterated all thoughts of their victorious besiegers; and they were forthwith absorbed in questions, which existing circumstances were about to answer, very independently of their will. These questions were; first, whether to confer the imperial dignity upon Theodore Lascaris or Theodore Ducas; and, second, the amount of the presents, to be demanded from the emperor they should elect. Their choice fell upon the gallant Lascaris, who accepted the office, exhorting his new subjects and army to fight stoutly and expel the barbarians. But the electors wanted presents; the army refused to fight without receiving the arrears of their pay; and Theodore had no money for either purpose. In the heat of a rather angry discussion, the Crusaders surprised, attacked, and scattered the electors in all directions, putting a third emperor to flight. They were now lords of Constantinople.

The triumphant leaders of the Crusade issued the most stringent orders, against the outrages usually perpetrated in towns taken by force; especially denouncing pain of death, against whoever should offer violence to a woman or secrete booty. From this last offence, indeed, the secretion of booty, the whole army had been previously required to swear forbearance, when the bishops prospectively excommunicated the perjured. Yet not only the wives and daughters of the inhabitants, nuns dedicated to Heaven, suffered under the brutality of intoxicated soldiers; the only women treated with decent respect, being the two Empresses, sisters of the Kings of France and Hungary, Agnes, the bride of Alexius II, married by force to his murderer, Andronicus, and Magaret, the recent widow of Isaac Angelus. These royal ladies the Marquess of Montferrat found and protected in the Boukoleon palace. The troops added mockery to violence. As if to prove that the heresy of the schismatic Greeks justified their hostility, the conquerors wantonly insulted the clergy, and profaned the churches. They arrayed themselves in the garments in which Greek ecclesiastics performed the rites of their religion, thus to parade the streets, indulging in the grossest excesses. They flung upon the ground and spurned the consecrated host, carrying off the jewelled pix; they broke and destroyed the beautiful and costly decorations of the altars, goldsmith’s work and embroidery, to divide the valuable materials amongst themselves; whilst the most shameless of the female camp-followers danced, and sang indecent songs, on the Patriarch's throne.

It is wellnigh superfluous to add, that the oath and prospective excommunication did not secure more observance to the prohibition of secreting booty, than was paid to the other. It was transgressed even by men from whom better conduct might have been expected;—a knight of the Comte de St. Pol’s was hanged, with his shield about his neck, for such secretion of booty. Yet such was the wealth of Constantinople, that the amount honestly deposited in the three churches, selected as its receptacles, was estimated at 400,000 marks, about a million sterling, or equal to thrice the annual revenue of the wealthiest kingdom of those days. And this was independently of some 10,000 horses, of cattle, and of provisions. The mass was equally divided between the Crusaders and the Venetians; when the former, out of their allotted half, paid their remaining debt to Venice. Then, each share was distributed through each army in proportion to men’s rank and position.

Next to gold, silver, and jewels, in Frank estimation, stood the relics which many Constantinopolitan churches boasted; and not a few of these were appropriated by princely Crusaders, bent upon therewith hallowing, each his own churches. A large proportion of the memorials of Saints and Martyrs, in which divers German and Low-Country churches still glory, are the unholy produce of the plunder of the East-Roman metropolis. Such was the anxiety to secure these sacred treasures, that when obtained, they were among the objects most sedulously concealed, to avoid the irksome duty of sharing with others. Amongst those vanquished by such temptation, was the pious Abbot Martin, now again with the Crusaders. Having reached Palestine with Cardinal Pietro, he had been by him sent to the camp before Constantinople, where his portraiture of the Holy Land’s distress, must, the Cardinal hoped, at last spur the Crusaders to its aid. But Martin had consented to wait until the murdered young Emperor was avenged. Being thus present at the sack of Constantinople, he possessed himself of all the relics of one church, which he carefully secreted, and with the help of some of his monks, smuggled on board his own vessel, therewith to sanctify his own Alsatian abbey. If the holiest men thus broke their own law, defrauding their friends, can it be matter of wonder that rude warriors, to whose lawful portion no relics fell, sometimes sought to remedy their misfortune by means little consistent with their pious object. These relic-hunting adventures are so characteristic of the age, that one must be here inserted, though occurring, perhaps weeks posterior to the division of the booty.

A knight named Dalmace de Sergy, deeply grieved that all his toils and sufferings, by sea and land, had not brought him to the Holy Sepulchre, earnestly supplicated God to inspire him with some means of serving the cause of religion, equivalent to the now hardly possible fulfilment of his vow. The idea of enriching the abbey of Clugny with relics occurred to him, and he consulted the Cardinal-Legate, who had now repaired to Constantinople. The Legate approved of the idea, provided the relics were not procured by purchase, which, as simony, would be sinful. The sin of simony, Sir Dalmace sedulously and successfully—if, to the lovers of common honesty somewhat startlingly—eschewed. Having fixed his desires upon the head of a Saint, bearing the name of Clement, he, in company with a crusader-monk of the Clugny order, visited the church, hallowed by this relic. Together they there performed their devotions, and then solicited a sight of the sacred treasure. It was exhibited, and whilst the Monk gazed as entranced, Sergy engaged the ecclesiastical exhibitor in conversation, drawing him, as if accidentally, to a little distance. The Monk, left alone with the coveted prize, tremblingly put forth his hand, and not venturing to purloin the whole head, piously broke off the under jaw. With this treasure safely concealed, he rejoined the Knight, and both hastened away.

“How didst thou manage?” asked the warrior of the churchman; who prefaced his answer with the remark, “I am highly gratified with the portion I have obtained;” when Sergy interrupted him with: “What! Portion ? Hast thou not the whole head?” The Monk explained his fears of attempting too much, and showed the pur­loined jaw. The enraged Knight exclaimed: “That is nothing! Hie thee home, however, and secure what thou hast, whilst I see to make good thy default.

Sergy now, selecting another confederate, returned to the monastery, knocked at the door, and there asking received permission to seek for his gauntlet, which he must, he said, have dropped in the church. His companion amused the porter and monks at the gate, whilst he,  seeking his gauntlet, crept to the shrine behind the altar. There he found two Saints5 heads, but recognising Saint Clement’s by the deficient jaw, hid it under his cloak, and rejoined his friend, displaying the alleged lost gauntlet. They mounted, and rode off triumphant.

But not yet was his hallowed booty out of danger. The monks soon discovered their loss, and pursued the depredators with loud outcries. Sergy instantly transferred the head to his companion, who made off with it, whilst he, facing about, confronted his pursuers, and asked what they wanted with him. They taxed him with the theft he asserted his innocence, and opening his cloak, showed that he had no hidden prize. The monks were foiled.

The Knight’s only anxiety now was to be quite sure that he had got the right head; and this he ascertained by inquiries respecting relics, by sending divers friends to the church, some to ask for relics, others to request a sight of St. Clement’s head. To all was the loss related and lamented; and Sir Dalmace de Sergy, well satisfied, set sail for France, presented the head to the mother abbey of Clugny, and dictated a narrative of his exploit, whence this detail is taken.

The treasures of Hellenic art, in which Constantinople was then rich, had not similar attractions for the French and German crusaders; and many an inimitable bronze statue unfortunately falling to their share, was melted, and coined into copper money. The case seems to have been much the same with the Italians, the more civilized Venetians excepted; they better understood the value of these monuments of classical antiquity, and adorned their city with the celebrated bronze horses, of which Athens had been previously despoiled to decorate Constantinople; which, since carried by another plundering conqueror to Paris, were, finally, in proof of the triumph of justice and civilization, restored to St. Mark’s cathedral. Pictures, from the extant remains of Byzantine graphic art, it may be presumed, were of inferior merit; and the only one seemingly much prized, is another reputed portrait of the Virgin, by St. Luke, transferred, like the horses, from St. Sophia to St. Mark’s.

Books, even the Venetians seem not to have coveted, and many valuable libraries were destroyed, in the mere wantonness of ignorance. Many of the literary losses most regretted, whose recovery has been hitherto vainly hoped from Herculaneum, are quite as much due to our own rude European forefathers—to their sacking of the town, more even than to the fires connected with their besieging operations—as to Arabs or Turks. Nevertheless, the Latin capture of Constantinople cannot be deemed altogether without influence upon the classical progress of western Europe, since Philip Augustus immediately founded a Greek professorship in his Paris University; though with the merely political view, of qualifying his own subjects for holding office in the Greco-Latin empire. The speciality of the motive could not pre­vent the instruction thus afforded from promoting such studies.

To return to Passion week, 1204. The division of the booty had been the first care of the conquerors ; the next, was the election of an emperor, to be followed by the allotment of the conquered territories, according to the partition-treaty. The Venetians named six nobles as electors; the French, Germans, and Lombards, comprehensively termed Franks, preferred ecclesiastics for the office, as more impartial, because individually incapable of the dignity; and selected the Bishops of Soissons, Troyes, Halberstadt, Acre, and Bethlehem, and the Lombard Abbot of Locedio. Upon the 9th of May, these twelve electors solemnly swore at the altar to choose honestly, according to the best of their judgment; and for this purpose they assembled in Dandolo’s palace. The Bishop of Halberstadt proposed King Philip, both because his Queen, Irene, was the natural heir of her brother and because it was desirable to have, as one Pope, so one Emperor. Philip was rejected, either as being excommunicated, or as not having shared in the expedition; and the old blind hero, Dandolo, was proposed. To him the Venetians objected, because a Doge, who was likewise Emperor, and as such their suzerain, would be formidable to the liberties of their republic. His exclusion leaving Boniface of Montferrat, and Baldwin of Flanders and Hainhault, the only possible candidates, the next step was to guard against the resentment of him, who should be disappointed of the imperial crown. To this end, each prince was required to swear, that he would, if, elected, grant the other the island of Candia, with all the Greek possessions in Asia; and would, if not elected, receive the grant thankfully and do vassal’s service for it.

The next day, the Venetians protested against the elec­tion of the Marquess, who was already so disquieting a neighbour to the Republic, as well as to Lombardy, whilst the French and Germans naturally preferred a Fleming— whom both considered as a countryman—to an Italian. All twelve voices therefore concurred in favour of the generally admired Baldwin, a choice calculated to please the army. Baldwin was in the very prime of life, 31 years of age; his value for the laws of his country and his patronage of learning have been seen; and he was equally distinguished for prowess in the field, as for piety, charity, justice, patience of contradiction, and austere morality. This last quality, indeed, he carried to a length, that might annoy those of the Crusaders, who did not esteem purity essential to piety, even when engaged in what they thought so especially the service of God—a Crusade. Not only did he preserve inviolate his own connubial fidelity to his absent wife—the fleet in which she followed him had gone to Palestine, thinking there to find him—he required similar chastity from all who approached him, causing proclamation to be made twice every week that none who had substituted a strange woman to his own wife, should pass the night in his palace. Baldwin’s election was joyously hailed by the expecting crowds, the Marquess expressing satisfaction even beyond the rest. The new Emperor was placed—reviving the old Frank custom—upon a shield, and carried in procession to church, for a general thanksgiving. Upon the 16th of May, he was ceremoniously crowned, in the reconsecrated Cathedral of St. Sophia.

This solemnity had been preceded by the wedding of Marchese Bonifazio with the Empress Margaret, the Hungarian widow of the Emperor Isaac, who had been dead about three months. It was followed by the distribution of principalities and fiefs, and the appointment to offices, spiritual and temporal. The Marquess desired to exchange the yet unsubdued island and Asiatic province —proposed as compensation to him who missed the empire—for Thessalonica, and some adjacent districts; where, from vicinity to Hungary, he thought his Magyar marriage would facilitate his maintaining himself. This district was constituted a kingdom for Boniface, who did homage for it to the Emperor, and proceeded to conquer, or rather to take possession of his kingdom. For it is to be observed that such alarm did the flight of the sovereign, and the sudden fall of the capital, spread throughout the empire, that scarcely was resistance thought of. King Boniface found himself at liberty to turn southward and augment his dominions by districts in the Morea, which he constituted dependencies of Thessalonica.

Dandolo was put in possession of the three eighths of Constantinople (which, strange to say, was divided like the empire), assigned to Venice, and he selected the three eighths of the empire, that, when subjugated, were to form the republic’s share. In this selection, the Doge was governed by the commercial interest of Venice, and his consciousness that her strength lay in her navy. He pitched upon maritime provinces of the Morea, and upon islands, as Candia, Negropont, many of those in the Archipelago, the seven, now called the Ionian islands, and the like. The chief crusading leaders received grants of various principalities—possession being contingent upon their subjugation—as the Comte de Blois a duchy of Nicaea, Villehardouin himself ample domains, with the office of Marshal of the Empire of Constantinople, &c. &c. Great household officers, such as those who then con­stituted both the Court and the Cabinet of the monarchs of western Europe, were appointed, and some of those peculiar to the Constantinopolitan Court likewise. The Patriarch was by agreement, the Emperor being a Frank Crusader, to be a Venetian; and Tommaso Morosini, a personal friend of Innocent ill, then sojourning in Rome, was, at Dandolo’s recommendation, raised to this high ecclesiastical dignity.

The choice would, it was hoped, be agreeable to the Pope, to propitiate whom was the next object. Baldwin was no sooner elected than he invited Cardinal Pietro, the Legate originally appointed director of the Crusade, to leave the Holy Land for Constantinople, and there regulate the affairs of the Church. He as immediately accepted the invitation, bringing with him Cardinal Soffredo, then Legate in Palestine. Cardinal Pietro, forgetting his past anger at the Venetians, upon receiving a promise that they, with the Crusaders, would still perform the vowed Crusade, relieved them from the excommunication under which they lay. The Emperor and the Doge next addressed the Pope, setting forth in their letters, the hallowed motives that had, they averred, influenced their conduct. The chief of these were to effect a reconciliation of the Greek to the Latin Church; and to obtain permanent Greek succours for Palestine, besides temporary assistance in conquering Egypt. Their deviation from the original plan of operations, they ascribed to direct inspiration;, alleging in proof, the manifest interposition of Heaven, rendering the usually obstructive season, winter, propitious to their arms, and the immense numerical superiority of the Greeks unavailing. In evidence of their perfect docility to the Roman See, they submitted all the ecclesiastical arrangements of the Empire, entirely to His Holiness; and added magnificent gifts of altar-plate and jewellery, to their missives. These presents were captured on their way by the Genoese, in anger at their exclusion from the territorial acquisitions and commercial privileges of their Venetian rivals. Threats of excommunication for sacrilege, compelled the republican authorities of Genoa, however, to surrender the prize to its lawful owner.

Innocent had not suffered his intense desire for the reunion of the Greek with the Latin Church, to prevent him from decidedly condemning the expedition against Constantinople. He had, upon every occasion, strenuously exhorted the Crusaders, to forbear shedding the blood of Christians, even if schismatics, and proceed with their proper business. When he learned that, through their perseverance in neglecting their vow, Alexius IV was upon the throne, he had, as strenuously, exhorted him, to repay the service done him, by fulfilling his engagements with the Crusaders and himself: but had not, therefore, allowed that success justified, or even excused, the conduct he censured, or ceased reproaching the Crusaders with their postponement, at least, of a crusader’s duty, and insisting upon its immediate performance. But, when he further learned, that the schismatic Eastern Empire actually was divided, or in course of division, amongst Roman Catholic princes and states, actually was subjected to his spiritual authority, he was softened. He still did not admit the result, as an argument for the propriety of the Crusaders’ conduct; but he allowed that the service they had rendered to religion, might be a plea for pardoning their transgressions, if expiated by present and future obedience; especially by their now prosecuting their voyage, and discharging their neglected duty, as Champions of the Cross. Innocent cancelled the Legate’s release of the Venetians from excommunication, as invalid, being unauthorized; ordered the clause in the partition-treaty, which, assigning a mere maintenance to the clergy, confiscated the large remainder of Church property, to be expunged; and annulled the appointment of a patriarch, because, neither could laymen regulate an ecclesiastical election, nor Venetian ecclesiastics act as Canons of St. Sophia, without express papal intervention. But, as usual, tempering rigour with conciliation, he himself relieved the Venetians from excommunication, upon condition of their early performing their vow—taken, it will be remembered, by Dandolo with a number of associates, though they have here been habitually distinguished from the original Crusaders, whom they had first undertaken to transport, then seduced from their purpose. In his own right, he nominated Morosini to the dignity of which he had momentarily deprived him, at once investing him with the ensigns of his sacred office. He thought that the Venetians, so they attained their end, to wit, making a compatriot patriarch, would care little for the manner of attainment. The Venetians did not, however, submit, as implicitly as the new Emperor and the crusading Princes, to these papal decrees. The republican authorities commanded Morosini, before taking possession of his patriarchate, to visit Venice, and there pledge himself to confer the offices of archbishop, bishop, or canon of St. Sophia, upon none but Venetians, and to make every effort to insure the election of a compatriot, as his own successor. Morosini obeyed; Innocent immediately annulled his promise, as both compulsory, and contrary to the laws of the Church. Lastly, he ordered the formation of an entirely new scheme of ecclesiastical polity, adapted to the Constantinopolitan empire.

This was not the only organic change consequent upon the conquest; and all changes offended the superciliously arrogant Greeks. Baldwin and his brother princes naturally established the feudal system, the only one with which they were acquainted, throughout their new dominions; an innovation upon the political habits of the Greeks, materially exasperating and alienating them. Nor was the policy adopted by Venice towards her dependencies, more consonant to their inclinations; whilst the intensity of disgust with which they beheld a schismatic patriarch, Morosini, Appointing Latin priests to benefices, was unallayed by his forbearance from displacing any Greek priests in possession. The growing aversion of the Greeks would not be soothed by the conduct of their unlettered lords, who revelled in a coarse luxury, to them revolting; and who, unimbued with such classical associations as might have awakened sympathy for even the degenerate offspring of the venerated Hellas, treated subjects, whom they saw destitute of the only quality they really valued, courage, with disdainful indifference. Dissatisfaction was general; but there was no leader to rouse it into action. The Greek princes, who should have acted as such, were merely striving to share the spoils; and the establishment of divers Greek principalities, precluded any attempt, on their part, to restore the Greek Empire, that must have absorbed their sovereignties.

In Asia Minor, Theodore Lascaris, of whom honourable mention has been made, possessed himself of Nicaea, there retaining the imperial title, given him at the moment of subjugation. He was accompanied by the fugitive Greek Patriarch, and bore, in some sort, the character of the dethroned monarch’s representative. Manuel Maurozomenes, supported by the Sultan of Iconium, to whose harem he had given his daughter as a wife, took the same imperial title in the immediate neighbourhood. A new Alexius Comnenus, grandson of the elder usurper, Andronicus, with the aid of some Frank knights, established a third Greek empire at Trebizond. And the conquerors of Constantinople were unequal to wresting any of these tiny states from their princes. In Europe, Theodore Branas, to whom the widow of that Andronicus, the French Princess Agnes, had given her hand, obtained through this marriage the goodwill of the French party, and, in process of time, a principality in Thrace. Michael Angelus, an illegitimate scion of the house of Angelus, was named Governor of Durazzo, and allowed, as much by the negligence as by the favour of the Crusaders, there to found a principality, including Epirus and great part of Thessaly. A small domain was designedly left to the fugitive usurper, Alexius III, in Thrace, where his son-in-law; Alexius V, joined him; and one Leo Sgouros, was contending with the King of Thessalonica, a younger Villehardouin, the Marshal’s nephew, and the Venetians, for the Morea; where he got and kept Corinth and Nauplia, if not Argos.

To the apparent friendship of the two Alexiuses, the malcontents at first looked for a head. But their union speedily ended; the imperial father-in-law accusing his equally imperial, son-in-law, of rebellious intentions, thereupon imprisoned, and, as a matter of course, deprived him of sight. The insurrection failed ere it had well begun; and both Emperors fell, as insurgents, into the hands of Boniface. He sent the imperial insignia to Baldwin; and Alexius III to a prison in Montferrat, for safe custody. Thence, however, he effected his escape; reached Asia Minor, and plotted to dethrone his other son-in-law, Theodore Lascaris: he was again captured, and died in a Nicene prison. Alexius V, as a traitor to the Emperors Isaac and Alexius IV, was, by the Latin Barons, sentenced to be thrown from the lofty summit of the Constantinopolitan pillar of Theodosius: from which a popular prophecy had long since announced that an East-Roman emperor would fall.

For this disappointment the Greeks found consolation in the feuds, that failed not to break out early amongst their conquerors, even betwixt those fast friends, the new Emperor and the new King. Boniface now claimed the empire for his stepson, Manuel, Empress Margaret’s child by Isaac, and Baldwin was occupied in opposing him: whilst the head and stay, which the baffled, rather than vanquished Greeks, could nowhere at home find, they discovered in a neighbouring potentate, respecting whose power and position a few words will be necessary.

It may be remembered that Frederic Barbarossa, upon his road from Hungary to Constantinople, had much intercourse with two hereditary chiefs, named Peter and Azan, who would fain have transferred their allegiance from Isaac Angelus to him. After his passage, Bela III of Hungary, whether in concert with these chiefs or not, had conquered Bulgaria; then, tempted by the offer of an imperial crown for his daughter Margaret, given her in marriage to the Emperor Isaac, with Bulgaria for her portion, upon condition of being repaid the expenses of the conquest. Isaac’s extravagance kept his treasury always low, and he tried to raise, in Bulgaria itself, the money due to Bela for its conquest and cession. The taxes imposed for this purpose exasperated the Bulgarians, and injudicious acts of indignity towards Peter and Azan supplied them with leaders. These two hereditary princely chiefs, were degraded to an inferior rank in the imperial army, and for some act of insubordination, Azan was flogged. They deserted, returned home, and employed superstition to raise an insurrection. They built a church, dedicated to St. Demetrius, the patron of Bulgaria, and, during the rites of consecration, propagated a rumour that the Saint was visibly hovering over the church; an apparition promising Bulgaria—which then seems to have included Walachia—independence, would they but break their Greek chains. The cry of “to arms,” resounded; the chains were broken, and Peter was hailed as King. A period of war ensued; success fluctuated, and in the end, Peter and Azan were glad to make peace, giving their younger brother, John, Johannitius, or Johannice, as a hostage for its observance. The Greeks, admiring the beauty of the young barbarian, altered his name to Kalojohannes; which he appears to have adopted, albeit the compliment did not avail to detain him at the Byzantine court. Making his escape, he returned home, and when he was safe, his brothers renewed the war, during which Peter and Azan were murdered. Johannice succeeding, petitioned Innocent to receive him and his people into the Roman Catholic Church, sanction their independence, and confer the title of king upon himself. Innocent sent a priest to investigate the merits of the case, and ascertain the justice or injustice of the Bulgarian pretensions; his report being favourable, Johannice’s requests were in this same year, 1204, granted.

The independent King of Bulgaria and Walachia, as the natural enemy of the Greek Emperors, had at once tendered his alliance and friendship to their conquerors. They, in the arrogance of triumph, replied that he must restore all the land he had torn from the East Roman Empire before they could treat with him. The Bulgarian rejoined: “I am a Christian King, acknowledged such by the Pope; and I hold my crown and dominions more rightfully than you hold the Greek empire and the imperial crown.” Deeming this sufficient declaration of war, he assembled an army and invaded the empire.

Baldwin, now reinforced by the arrival of his fleet from Syria, had employed his brother Henry, with a considerable body of troops in Asia Minor, not to attack the nascent Greek empires, but to reduce the yet untouched provinces to submission. He himself, having, through Dandolo’s mediation, been reconciled to Boniface, upon the latter’s abandoning young Manuel’s claims, was engrossed by the Greek insurrection. Scornfully regardless of the words and movements of a barbarian, he and the Doge, in the month of April, 1205, were besieging Adrianople—which, relying upon Bulgarian support, had revolted—when Joannice’s invasion of the empire was made known to them. Still the arrogant conquerors thought but of the insurgent city; when, suddenly, they saw themselves surrounded by Bulgarian and Wallachian hosts. Hastily the Emperor summoned his brother from Asia Minor to his aid; but long ere the Earl and his army could, by forced marches, reach the scene of action, the besieged besiegers were compelled to give battle. Notwithstanding the enormous disparity of numbers, the victory was obstinately contested; but, in the end, the Franks were totally defeated. The Earl of Blois was slain; the Emperor, in a gallant attempt to rescue him, taken prisoner, and then the rout was complete. Nothing short of the skill and courage of the blind old Doge, aided by Marechal Villehardouin, could have rallied a body of troops, sufficient to cover the flight rather than retreat, of the Crusaders; thus saving the army from utter annihilation.

Soon after this disaster, Earl Henry, arriving, assumed the command of the Frank portion of the dispirited troops, with the provisional government of the empire. But he had done little towards remedying the misfortune, when he lost his able coadjutor; in the month of June, about six weeks after the calamitous defeat at Adrianople, Dandolo expired: and with him, apparently, all bonds of law and loyalty. The dissensions amongst the conquerors daily increased in virulence; their weakness was proportionate, and the empire of the captive monarch comprised little more than his portion of Constantinople, with Selybria and Rodosto. Johannice ravaged the northern European provinces unopposed, burning towns and villages; here, carrying off in chains, to lifelong slavery, those who had survived the sacking of their town; there, slaughtering, even torturing them to death, or, as at Varna, burying them alive. These horrors, however, were not without a compensatory effect, inasmuch as they drove the Roumeliotes to seek protection from their Latin masters, whose yoke they found less intolerable, than the friendship of their Bulgarian allies.

The fate of Baldwin is involved in mystery, but it should seem that he did not long survive his seizure. The Bulgarian monarch wrote to the Pope, that his imperial prisoner was attacked by a mortal disease, and so died. Contemporary chroniclers aver that, by Johannice’s orders, he was mangled and murdered; which savage treatment, one writer explains, by telling a story, akin to Josephus adventure with Potiphar’s wife, of Baldwin and the Queen of Bulgaria. Another report was, that his conqueror sold him as a slave; and that, long years afterwards, the charity of some European merchants, who were perfectly ignorant of his rank, ransomed him. What is certain is, that in the year 1225, an old man, calling himself the Earl and Emperor Baldwin, appeared in Flanders, told the last tale, and claimed Flanders and Hainault. The reigning Countess Joanna, daughter and heiress of Baldwin, was a baby in arms at the epoch of her father’s departure, and could form no opinion as to his identity; the men of an older generation, allowed that the pretender bore a resemblance to Baldwin, and all malcontents professed belief in his story. The man was, however, arrested as an impostor, tried, convicted, and executed.

Whatever Baldwin’s fate really were, his natural death was announced by the Bulgarian monarch to the Constantinopolitan authorities. The information was unhesitatingly believed, and in August, 1206, Earl Henry was elected Emperor, as successor to his lost brother. The new sovereign immediately lessened the internal discord, by asking the hand of a daughter of the King of Thessalonica; who, gladly assenting, summoned the Princess Agnes from Montferrat, to share the imperial throne. Innocent’s admonitions having failed to restore peace between the neighbouring states, the war continued. Johannice himself died the following year, but without interrupting hostilities, which his successor, Voryllas, vigorously prosecuted. Henry had, however, by this time, in some measure called forth and organized his resources; whilst Innocent, now looking upon the Latin eastern empire as a real support for the kingdom of Jerusalem, granted crusading indulgences for service there. Henry defeated Voryllas, and made peace with him.

For the government of their small empire—too small, thus shared with Venice, really to stand—the first Latin Emperors adopted the constitution established by Godfrey and his brother Baldwin, in Palestine; save as they humoured the natives, by keeping a few of the Greek palace-officers, in addition to those customary in the kingdoms of Jerusalem and of western Europe. The rare alterations from the Assises de Jerusalem, were, as might be anticipated from the relative position of the parties, in favour of the great vassals, who restricted the authority of the emperor within narrower limits than that of his Jerusalem prototype. Henry is reputed a man of enlarged mind, who sought to conciliate the conquered Greeks, by giving them public employments, and treating them as the equals of their conquerors. It was he who granted Adrianople and the adjacent districts to Theodore Branas; and at a later period of his life, having lost his Italian Empress, Agnes, he strove to conciliate his northern neighbours by marrying a Bulgarian princess.

Venice, still without terra firma dominions in Italy, and consequently deficient in the material of an army, soon perceived that her share of territory far exceeded her power to hold, much more to subjugate. She therefore granted it out, in vassal principalities, to such Venetian and other nobles—ay, even to wealthy Greeks—as would undertake to conquer their allotments for themselves. Hence arose the principalities of the Morea—where, however, the younger Villehardouin acquired Achaia—Gallipoli, Lemnos, Naxos, &c., &c.: and thus did the mercantile republic acquire a powerful and attached vassalage, bound by private and individual interests, to defend her sovereignty and her interests against all enemies. Their number, as years rolled on, rather augmented than diminished; the republic occasionally accepting a fief from an alien noble or princely debtor, in lieu of money; and many of the titles adorned her Libro d’Oro, until swallowed up the Turkish conquests of the sixteenth century. The seaport towns which the Venetian authorities kept in their own hands, became, after a while, like the noble vassals, attached for their own sake to Venice; fought in her quarrels, and also to maintain their connexion with her. The Genoese made an attempt to share with her in the wreck of the Eastern Empire, but were quickly repulsed from the Venetian dependencies.

In settling the ecclesiastical concerns of this mighty acquisition, Innocent exhibited the discretion habitually tempering his ambition. Whilst he established the supremacy of his own Legate over the Patriarch, and a right of appeal to Rome in all cases of importance, he secured to the existing Greek clergy, their property and their dignities, merely providing against the promotion to bishoprics or archbishoprics, of such as were not well disposed towards the Roman See. He refused to subject other eastern churches to his own Latin Patriarch of Constantinople; and postponed to a season of restored calm, the consideration of a doctrinal reunion of the Greek and Latin Churches.

And now the prospects of the Latin empire of Constantinople brightened. The wise moderation of the Pope relative to dogmas, and his justice in pecuniary concerns, if they could not quite disarm sectarian enmity, did much to conciliate the laity of the conquered nation. Yet more was accomplished in that direction, by the second Emperor’s liberality towards his Greek subjects. Innocent’s exhortations to all Christian Princes, to support the Latin empire in the East, and to all Christian knights, to take service under Henry, failed, indeed, to excite any enthusiasm in the cause; but pilgrims for Palestine, who purposed only to pass through, were often tempted to remain, by the evident facility of obtaining fiefs there by conquest; whilst the Venetians, who by this time seem to have nearly monopolized the conveyance of crusaders to the Holy Land, forcibly or dextrously landed many in their districts, there to acquire fiefs if they could. Thus, despite the dissensions of the Latin conquerors amongst themselves, and despite the strength and stability that the nascent Greek states were gaining, the Latin empire of Constantinople seemed from day to day more firmly established. Henry reigned tranquilly. Boniface of Montferrat, and Thessalonica, did not long outlive his colleagues, Baldwin and Dandolo, being either slain in an expedition against the Bulgarians, or taken in battle by them, a.d. 1207, and afterwards murdered. He bequeathed his Italian marquessate to his eldest son, whom he had left there, as his Lieutenant; his kingdom to an infant son that his Empress-Queen had borne him, named Demetrius.

Turning from the concerns of the East-Roman empire to those of the Holy Land, it seems that, had the Crusaders, in 1202, proceeded to their destination, they, not improbably, might have achieved the conquest of Egypt, as proposed; thus effecting something far more beneficial to the kingdom of Jerusalem, than the capture of Constantinople. Notwithstanding some concentration of Moslem power, the moment was far from unfavourable. Malek-el-Adel was, indeed, adding to his dominions. Not content with the regency for his infant grand-nephew, he had deposed the minor and made himself Sultan of Egypt as well as of Damascus. But he was all the more embroiled with his kinsmen, and involved, moreover, through pecuniary straits, in considerable difficulties at home. Upon the first tidings that a crusade was projected, besides largely bribing the Venetians, as was very generally believed, to divert the tempest from his shores, he made great defensive preparations. These required money; and when his exchequer was drained, he called upon his Moslem priesthood to contribute, as in duty bound, towards the expenses of a war purely religious. They refused; whereupon he seized, what he calculated would have been their fair proportion of the tax; and thus irritated them to a degree that, if obliged to make head simultaneously against Moslem nephews and Christian foes, might have materially impeded his movements. But the Crusaders did not clutch opportunity by the fore­lock, and the favourable moment never returned.

Those divisions of the fourth Crusade, that, embarking at Marseilles or in Apulian ports, reached Syria, found the kingdom of Jerusalem enjoying the armistice with most of her Mohammedan neighbours. This repose, Amalric II was the more loth to disturb before the arrival of the main body, because the other Christian states were at war amongst themselves, and the two military Orders involved in their broils. Bohemund of Tripoli, with the help of the Templars and of a Moslem ally, the Sultan of Aleppo, still resisted the right of his elder brother’s son, Rupin, to Antioch; which the young heir’s maternal great-uncle, Leo of Armenia, supported by the Hospitallers, and sanctioned by the Patriarch, still vigorously asserted; even sequestrating the Armenian estates of the Templars in resentment of their alliance with the usurper. So circumstanced, Amalric refused to break the truce with Malek- el-Adel, at the desire of a band of Crusaders utterly inadequate to carry out the original design, i. e. the conquest of Egypt.

Next arrived the Cardinal-Legate, who came to await the main body of the Crusade, and resume, upon its arrival, the authority, which Venetian intrigue had compelled him, momentarily, to suspend. He was followed, early in the spring, by the Countess of Flanders and Hainault with her division of the Crusade; fully hoping to find the Earl and the Marquess of Montferrat, employing the resources of conquered Egypt, for the recovery of Jerusalem. The first fruit of her arrival was an increase of dissension. One of her Flemish knights had, unluckily, married Richard Coeur de Lion’s captive princess, the daughter of Isaac of Cyprus; and no sooner had he landed at Acre, than he laid claim to Amalric’s own kingdom of Cyprus, in right of his royal and imperial wife. The King, not unnaturally enraged at such a pretension, ordered him instantly out of Palestine. This his countrymen resented; and their wrath, combining with the dissatisfaction of the previously arrived Crusaders, produced a sort of explosion. Almost all of them, leaving Palestine to its fate, hastened northward, to take part in the war betwixt Christians. Upon the way to Antioch they were hospitably entertained at Laodicea, by Malek-el-Adel’s Lieutenant, who warned them, against entering the Aleppo territory, without previous negotiation; Sultan Daher being no party to the truce. They slighted the warning, and were, almost to a man, cut off or made prisoners.

Soon after this disaster, Abbot Guy and the de Montforts presented themselves, at the head of the steadfast opponents of Venetian manoeuvring; a body so considerable, especially when joined by the remnant of the preceding arrivals, that at their entreaty, Amalric formally denounced the truce. Still their expeditions proved to be scarcely more than marauding incursions upon Moslem territories, which Malek-el-Adel was, just then, unable to repulse. Simon de Montfort now saw that, in Palestine, nothing material could be done, save by a powerful Crusade, such as that of which he had hoped to form part: hostilities by anything less, being merely a provocation to Mohammedan neighbours, ruinous to the fragment of a kingdom left. Mortified, he returned to Europe; whilst his brother, Earl Guy, marrying the heiress of Sidon, remained in her principality.

Cardinal Pietro, meanwhile, found himself useless in Palestine, where, Cardinal Soffredo being Legate, he was nothing. Impatient of this position, and immovably determined not to give the Crusaders who had disowned his authority, a shadow of countenance in their transgression of the papal commands, by joining them before Constantinople—whence he summoned them through Abbot Martin —he looked around, for some means of rendering his casual sojourn there beneficial to the common cause. He saw that harmony amongst the Christians was actually indispensable, if Syro-Frank states were still to exist; and induced his brother Legate to join him, in mediating between the pretenders to the principality of Antioch. To recon­cile their claims, or persuade either to give way to the other, proved impossible; but they did prevail upon both, again to submit their respective pretensions to the judgment of the Pope, pledging themselves to abstain from hostilities whilst awaiting his sentence. The two Legates then proceeded to Armenia where they invested the Katholicos with the promised pall, and solemnly sanctioned, by their legatine authority, the less official reception of the Armenian Church into the Papal fold, by the Archbishop of Mainz. Innocent commissioned the Abbots of Locedio and Mount Thabor, and two Frank Barons, to investigate, and report to him upon the Antioch question. Leo, who had offered 20,000 men for the service of Palestine, if his grand-nephew’s right was confirmed, complained of the delay. Bohemund, on the contrary, strove to turn it to his advantage. He sought support, whether Greek or crusading, by doing homage, as a Greek vassal, for Antioch, to Baldwin’s Empress, Maria, who was then preparing to embark at Acre, for Constantinople. He sought popularity with the native Syrians, by naming a Greek to supersede the Latin Patriarch of Antioch. The displaced prelate fled to Armenia; Leo—holding Bohemund’s conduct a release from his pledge of forbearance—escorted him back, installing both him and Rupin in Antioch; he left them insufficiently guarded. Bohemund, surprising the city, seized both, and threw them into prison. The indignant Patriarch, from his dungeon, in which ere long he died, excommunicated the Earl of Tripoli. The investigation and report of the Papal Commissioners had been favourable to the elder brother’s son, added to which, Innocent was now offended in the person of a high dignitary of the Church. He directed the Patriarch of Jerusalem, whom he invested with legatine authority for the purpose, to do justice, and punish Bohemund.

To augment the debility inseparable from such intestine contentions, Amalric II died, in April, 1205. He had been preceded to the tomb by Isabel, who, having lost an only son by Amalric, left four daughters. These were Maria Yolanthe, the fruit of her second marriage, with Conrad, Marquess of Montferrat and Prince of Tyre; Alicia of her third, with the Earl of Champagne; Sibylla and Melisenda of the fourth, with Amalric, King of Cyprus. Maria Yolanthe now inherited her mother’s unenviable crown; and the new Queen being still a child, her uncle John of Ibelin, half brother of Isabel by her mother’s second marriage, assumed the government, as regent for his minor niece.

CHAPTER X.

PHILIP OTHO IV. [1198—1213.