Chapter I: The History of the City in ancient and mediæval times (4)

"As soon as they approached the great city, they occupied the place appointed for them by the Emperor, near to the monastery of the Cosmidion.[22] But this multitude was not, like the Hellenic one of old, to be restrained and governed by the loud voices of nine heralds. They required the constant superintendence of chosen and valiant soldiers to keep them from violating the commands of the Emperor. He, meantime, laboured to obtain from the other leaders that acknowledgment of his supreme authority which had already been drawn from Godfrey himself. But notwithstanding the willingness of some to accede to this proposal, and their assistance in working on the minds of their associates, the Emperor's endeavours had little success, as the majority were looking for the arrival of Bohemond, in whom they placed their chief confidence, and resorted to every art with the view of gaining time. The Emperor, whom it was not easy to deceive, penetrated their motives; and by granting to one powerful person demands which had been supposed out of all bounds of expectation, and by resorting to a variety of other devices, he at length prevailed, and won general assent to the following of the example of Godfrey, who also was sent for in person to assist in this business.

"All, therefore, being assembled, and Godfrey among them, the oath was taken; but when all was finished, a certain noble among these counts had the audacity to seat himself on the throne of the Emperor. The Emperor restrained himself and said nothing, for he was well acquainted of old with the nature of the Latins.

"But the Count Baldwin stepping forth, and seizing him by the hand, dragged him thence, and with many reproaches said, 'It becomes thee not to do such things here, especially after having taken the oath of fealty. It is not the custom of the Roman Emperors to permit any of their inferiors to sit beside them, not even of such as are born subjects of their empire; and it is necessary to respect the customs of the country.' But he, answering nothing to Baldwin, stared yet more fixedly upon the Emperor, and muttered to himself something in his own dialect, which, being interpreted, was to this effect--'Behold, what rustic fellow is this, to be seated alone while such leaders stand around him!' The movement of his lips did not escape the Emperor, who called to him one that understood the Latin dialect, and inquired what words the man had spoken. When he heard them the Emperor said nothing to the other Latins, but kept the thing to himself. When, however, the business was all over, he called near to him by himself that swelling and shameless Latin, and asked of him, who he was, of what lineage, and from what region he had come. 'I am a Frank,' said he, 'of pure blood, of the nobles. One thing I know, that where three roads meet in the place from which I came, there is an ancient church, in which whosoever has the desire to measure himself against another in single combat, prays God to help him therein, and afterwards abides the coming of one willing to encounter him. At that spot a long time did I remain, but the man bold enough to stand against me I found not.' Hearing these words the Emperor said, 'If hitherto thou hast sought battles in vain the time is at hand which will furnish thee with abundance of them. And I advise thee to place thyself neither before the phalanx, nor in its rear, but to stand fast in the midst of thy fellow-soldiers; for of old time I am well acquainted with the warfare of the Turks.' With such advice he dismissed not only this man, but the rest of those who were about to depart on that expedition."

A scene such as this made the Greeks regard the Westerns simply as barbarians, and they rejoiced when the host at last passed over the Bosphorus to fight the Turks. For the first year Alexius remained with the army; but as they became divided among themselves, and refused to give up to him the territory they conquered in the East, he returned to Constantinople, satisfied with the conquest which had driven back the Turks in Asia for more than 200 miles.

While the Empire gained by its most dangerous enemy being thus driven back, it lost seriously in other ways. "Between 1098 and 1099 a continual stream of armed pilgrims traversed the Byzantine Empire," everywhere bringing ruin and devastation with them. One detachment of Lombards actually attempted to storm the Blachernae quarter and were only with great difficulty taken over to Asia, where they slaughtered Christians as readily as Turks. Open war broke out between Bohemond and Alexius, and it was the last success of Alexius that he was able to beat off the attacks of the Christians of the West. He died in 1118, his last hours disturbed by a plot in which his wife Irene and his daughter Anna were engaged to compel his son John to yield the Empire to Anna's husband, Nicephorus Bryennius.

Alexius may have seemed to leave the Empire stronger than he found it; but in truth, though its military power was greater, its commercial greatness was passing away. The development of trade in the Levant through the establishment of Christian kingdoms in the East by the Crusaders reduced the trade of Constantinople, it has been estimated, by "a third or even a half in the fifty years that followed the first crusade." A system of financial extortion and a debased coinage brought the merchants of the city still nearer to ruin, and that ruin seemed consummated when they found the Genoese and Pisans settled with special privileges in their midst. But the new Emperor at least kept up appearances. He was a conqueror, and he was popular among his subjects, called at first Maurojoannes (Black John), from his dark complexion, he soon became called Kalojoannes, for his goodness rather than his beauty. At the first he was met by conspiracy. His sister Anna was ready to have him murdered that she and her husband might ascend the throne. He discovered the plot, and after a few weeks restored her to all her possessions. His brother Isaac fled from Constantinople to the Turks, and though he returned, his son afterwards became a Mohammedan. For chief minister the Emperor had a Turkish slave who had been captured by his father at Nicaea and brought up with him. These instances show how closely the Empire, in spite of its Christianity, was drawing nigh to the Turks, a state of affairs paralleled by the relations between Christians and Moors in Spain in the days of El Cid Campeador, and which made the conquest, when it came, less abrupt and terrible than it seems to-day.

The reign of John Comnenus (1118-1143) was perhaps the brightest in the later years of the Empire. "Feared by his nobles, beloved by his people," says Gibbon, "he was never reduced to the painful necessity of punishing, or even of pardoning, his enemies. During his government of twenty-five years[23] the penalty of death was abolished in the Roman Empire, a law of mercy most delightful to the human theorist, but of which the practice, in a large and vicious community, is seldom consistent with the public safety. Severe to himself, indulgent to others, the philosophic Marcus would not have disdained the artless virtues of his successor, derived from his heart and not borrowed from the schools. He despised and moderated the stately magnificence of the Byzantine Court, so oppressive to the people, so contemptible to the eye of reason. Under such a prince innocence had nothing to fear and merit had everything to hope; and without assuming the tyrannic office of a censor he introduced a gradual though visible reformation in the public and private manners of Constantinople."

Manuel I., his youngest son, whom he chose for his military daring in preference to his brother Isaac, was "a mere knight errant, who loved fighting for fighting's sake, and allowed his passion for excitement and adventure to be his only guide." It is said that he made a special payment to secure the good will of the clergy on his accession; but he was vicious as well as passionate, and the crimes of his court received a licence from his own acts. Buffoonery as well as vice seems to have marked the life of Constantinople, for the popular minister, John Kameratos, was renowned as the greatest drinker of his time, as being able to swallow a vast quantity of raw beans and drink "the water contained in an immense porphyry vase at two draughts," and he was favoured by the Emperor chiefly for his powers as a singer and dancer. Manuel himself was skilled in surgery and was a theologian as well as a warrior, but his abilities were of no service to the Empire. The citizens saw the Italians encroaching upon them at every point. Heavy taxation was continued, but the army and navy alike decayed in his time. Only the public games were kept up, and outwardly Constantinople was as gay and wealthy as ever. Benjamin of Tudela, a Jew who visited the city in 1161, wrote of the magnificence that he saw everywhere, and the riches of the traders and nobles, and in the Hippodrome he said that "lions, bears and leopards were shown, and all nations of the world were represented, together with surprising feats of jugglery." With all this, and especially after the war with Venice, which was ended in 1174, the city was really becoming poor, and it might almost seem defenceless. Manuel did much for the defences; a large part of the land walls, defending the palace of Blachernae, was added by him; an inscription on the tower close to Narli Kapoussi records his repair of part of the sea wall; and he built many other gates and additional fortifications. It was indeed time.

The eleventh century saw the position of the Empire and the safety of the imperial city continually threatened not only by active attacks but by internal dissensions; dissensions which, it has been well said, would have settled themselves a century before, but which now both weakened the city and made its weakness apparent to the world.

How weak the city was, was seen in 1146, when a Norman fleet sailed up the Hellespont, and the admiral robbed the imperial gardens of fruit. Bulgars, Serbians, Turks, had all at different times threatened the city, and without success, but its internal weakness was made the more evident as the century went on by the division which was arising between the Emperor and his people. Manuel I. was believed to be at heart a Latin; his campaigns of the West, his marriages to Western wives, his neglect of the fleet, his encouragement of foreign settlers in the capital, all increased his unpopularity. Matters were not improved under the boy, Alexius II., when the struggle between his mother and the minister she favoured, and his sister, took place in the streets of the city, and in S. Sophia itself. The dynastic dispute was complicated, like all the disputes in Constantinople, by ecclesiastical interests, and the return of a patriarch who had been driven out was one of those picturesque scenes in which the people delighted, which showed their independence of the government, but revealed also, only too plainly, that there was now no union in Church or State.

A few words may suffice to explain and date the events of the latter part of the twelfth century.

Manuel up to his death in 1180 retained all the appearance of a victorious Emperor, though he suffered a severe defeat in 1176, at Myriokephalon in Phrygia, from the Seljukian Turks. Crusading princes, the Turkish Sultan Kilidji Arslan, and the Christian King, Amaury of Jerusalem, visited him at Constantinople, and were received with ostentatious splendour. Alexius II., his son and successor, was a boy of thirteen, and in two years the streets of the imperial city witnessed a desperate encounter between his supporters and those of his sister Maria, which swept up to the walls of S. Sophia. Then Andronicus, the cousin of the Emperor Manuel, was recalled from banishment, and he signalised his acquisition of power by a massacre of the Latins in the city. From this he proceeded to slay every one who stood in his way, till, in 1183, having murdered the young Alexius, he seated himself on the throne. For two years he continued a course of crimes greater than those that any sovereign ever committed, till a popular insurrection crowned a descendant of the great Alexius. Andronicus, though the vilest of men, had made a serious effort to reform the administration and reduce the influence of the nobles. His fall left the Empire to its fate.

The miserable end of the wickedest of the Emperors, as it is told by a recent writer from the pages of Nicetas, may well serve to illustrate the horrors with which the Empire in its fall was only too familiar.

He was confined in the prison called after the Cretan Anemas, who was first imprisoned there by Alexius Comnenus. "He quitted it only to die at the hands of his infuriated subjects. On the eve of his execution he was bound with chains about the neck and feet, like some wild animal, and dragged into the presence of his successor, Isaac Angelus, to be subjected to every indignity. He was reviled, beaten, struck on the mouth; he had his hair and beard plucked, his teeth knocked out, his right hand struck off with an axe, and then was sent back to his cell, and left there without food or water or attention of any kind for several days. When brought forth for execution, he was dressed like a slave, blinded of one eye, mounted upon a mangy camel, and led in mock triumph through the streets of the city to the Hippodrome, amidst a storm of hatred and insult, seldom, if ever, witnessed under similar circumstances in a civilised community. At the Hippodrome he was hung by the feet on the architrave of two short columns which stood beside the figures of a wolf and a hyena, his natural associates. But neither his pitiable condition, nor his quiet endurance of pain, nor his pathetic cry, "Kyrie eleison, why dost Thou break the bruised reed?" excited the slightest commiseration. Additional and indescribable insults were heaped upon the fallen tyrant, until his agony was brought to an end by three men who plunged their swords into his body, to exhibit their dexterity in the use of arms."[24]

Isaac Angelus was little more worthy of his position than the man whom he displaced. He gave himself to enjoyment, to building, to luxury of every kind. He lost Bulgaria and Cyprus, and when his own general, Alexis Branas, turned against him and led his troops to besiege Constantinople, it was saved only by Conrad of Montferrat, the husband of the Emperor's sister Theodora, who was then in the city on his way to the East.

The troops of Branas assembled outside the walls and attacked, but were driven back from the gate of Charisius (Edirnè Kapoussi): the famous icon of the Blessed Virgin, believed to have been painted by S. Luke, was carried round the walls: then a sortie led by Conrad scattered the rebels and brought the revolt to an end. But Isaac was incapable of ruling. He retained his throne with difficulty for ten years. At length in 1195, when he was on the way to the Bulgarian war, he was betrayed by his brother Alexius. He was not, as would have happened two centuries before, made a monk: he was imprisoned in a monastery, blinded, and left to die in peace. No one foresaw his restoration.

Alexius III., called also Angelus Comnenus, was no wit better than his brother, but he had a clever wife, Euphrosyne, in whom the worst characteristics of the Eastern Empresses were reproduced. Her profligacy and extravagance completed the ruin of the Empire, and when the fourth crusade turned its arms against the city it fell an easy prey.

It has been well said of the rule of the early Byzantines--during the period, that is, that extended from the foundation of the city by Constantine down to the death of Michael VI. and the end of the Macedonian dynasty--that no other government has ever existed in Europe which has secured for so long a time the same advantages to the people. There was a general security for life and property; there was a magnificent system of law; there was a genuine and commanding influence of religion; and municipal government was, for the age, well developed. But this can only be accepted with considerable qualifications. If the government itself did not change, the dynasties often did; if there was a good code of laws, there were terrible and barbarous punishments, and there were often periods of mob-rule; if there was a sound system of municipal government, it was far from a complete check on the excesses of imperial power.

But the most striking characteristic of these centuries, when all deductions have been made, is the stability of the government. As the city and the Empire were ruled under Isaac Comnenus, so, save for changes more superficial than real, had it been ruled under Justinian. The new families of merchant princes that had grown up and lined the Bosphorus with their houses, were as much in touch with the old system as the old families had been. Trading interests had become stronger and stronger with each century, and trading interests are in the main conservative. But the century and a half that followed the accession of the Comneni told inevitably in favour of further changes. First there was the slow and terrible advance of the Turks, cutting away strip by strip the outskirts of the Empire. Then there was the exhaustion proceeding from the constant passage through the Empire of crusaders, often pillaging, always contending, a continual drain upon the material resources of the land. More important still was the great and rapid increase of dynastic contentions. As ever, internal dissension was the real cause of the self-betrayal which gave up Constantinople in 1204 to the robbers of the West.

The condition of Constantinople at the beginning of the thirteenth century has been the subject of more than one exhaustive examination. We must briefly summarise what is known of the capital at this period of its greatest riches, and perhaps its greatest weakness. First and most prominently, it was a great commercial centre. Subordinate to its commerce were its art, rich and wonderful though that was, its military power, even its popular and all-embracing religious spirit. Commerce influenced all these. It gathered together all the nations of the earth, and it inspired them with greed for its treasures. Constantinople was, as it still is to some extent, in spite of the revolutions wrought by railways and by steamships, the most important outlet of commerce in the world. All the traffic of Asia naturally came that way; the great caravans of Central Asia, the trade of Palestine, Asia Minor, Persia, even Egypt, journeyed naturally to the New Rome. So naturally was Constantinople the centre of trade that she acted as a sort of universal banker. Her coins were in use in India and in distant England.

And the merchants who made their living in Constantinople had, like those of the Hansa in London, their own permanent settlements. You may see to-day the great khans or caravanserais where the merchants and pilgrims congregate, the walls strong to resist attacks, the gates closed at nightfall, the arrangements for common meals and common ablutions; and as you pass by you see the dark figures clustering in the doorways, or sitting on the marble steps, in their picturesque colours, and with that strange far-away look on their faces that you learn to know so well in the land where there is never any more pressing need than repose, or any delight more sweet. The custom of these great common lodgings, and very often the buildings themselves, go back far into the Middle Ages. In the thirteenth century they held great colonies of merchants strong for mutual combination and defence. Many of them were near to the wharves, as close within the walls as might be, and some without. No visitor to-day can fail to be struck by the great khan hard by the Mosque of Validè Sultan, which he passes when he has crossed the Galata Bridge on his way to S. Sophia.

The traders of the thirteenth century were by no means all Christians. Jews and even Mohammedans were allowed to settle in the imperial city, and Geoffrey of Vinsauf bitterly says "it would have been right even to have rased the city to the ground, for, if we believe report, it was polluted by new mosques, which its perfidious Emperor allowed to be built that he might strengthen the league with the Turks." It seemed strange to the Western that such toleration should be allowed. The Jews and the Albigenses were the only "dissenters" he had met; but in the East there were not only the Romanists, but the Monophysite Armenians and the Nestorian Chaldeans; Jews and Mohammedans made no such very great addition to the parliament of religions. And they all, infidels and heretics alike, brought their riches to the great mart. As the Turks advanced over Asia, scattering ruin and blight before their path, the riches of the devastated cities fled to shelter behind the Byzantine walls. No city it seemed to a Jewish observer of the time was so rich or so full of business save Baghdad. Gold was nothing accounted of; it covered the walls and pillars of the palace, it made the throne of the Emperor, the lamps of S. Sophia, the vessels of many an almost forgotten church. "The whole Empire had been put under contribution for the adornment of the capital. The temples and public buildings of Greece, of Asia Minor, and of the islands of the Archipelago, had been ransacked to embellish what its inhabitants spoke of as the Queen City, and even Egypt had contributed an obelisk and many other monuments." All who saw the city were amazed at its riches, at the magnificence of its buildings, of its churches, palaces, houses of nobles and merchants. Marble and stone houses filled the chief streets; the splendid marble from the quarries of the Proconnesus, the stone which still stands firm in the massive dwellings of the Phanar. There were of course then as now many houses of wood, and fires were constant, but those who noted the fine houses destroyed as more than in the three largest cities of France, noted also that of those that remained as of the treasures of the churches there was "neither end nor measure." And with all this there was a profound sense of security, so often and so unwarrantably contemporaneous with a marked development of luxurious life. Constantinople had never been captured, men easily believed that it never would be. Its walls, so magnificent in their decay, had proved and were thought still to be impregnable. The subtle influence of Oriental habits had eaten, it seemed, into the life that had been so strong and fierce under Justinian or Heraclius. Men, as they had ceased to contend earnestly for faith or morals, had sunk down into a luxurious pleasure-loving life, almost like that of old Rome or modern London. Some of the worst features of Asiatic life had already been introduced; the _entourage_ of the Sultan that is now so conspicuous at the Selamlik had its counterpart in the court of the Comneni. The Emperor's favourites were coming to be the administrators of the Empire: so bitterly complains the chronicler Nicetas--"these creatures who guard the mountains and the forests for the Emperors' hunting with as great care as the old pagans guarded the groves sacred to the gods, or with a fidelity like that with which the destroying angel guards the gates of Paradise, threatened to kill any one who attempted to cut timber for the fleet": it was at the crisis of the Empire. And while the Empire was ruled by eunuchs and the court by mistresses the Emperors of the twelfth century lived in luxury, effeminacy, and indolence. It had come to be thought--what a contrast from the days of the sleepless Justinian!--that work was impossible for a Cæsar of the East. And the example spread, as such examples always do, downwards. It was easy for there to be a general who could not lead, soldiers who could not fight, sailors who could not navigate beyond the Bosphorus. And there was no hope of regeneration from a strong Church preaching righteousness. The Emperors in the time of their power had reduced the patriarchs to impotence: and now there was no one in the Church to resist, as there was no one in the State to lead. Yet still the immemorial protest of the Church was not altogether silenced. Historians show that there were many priests and monks who preached and lived according to a high standard of morality and religion. Learning still survived, and piety, without ostentation but never wholly without influence.

It is not necessary to detail the causes which led to the diversion of the fourth Crusade upon Constantinople. Venice, it is enough to say, betrayed the Christian cause by a secret treaty with the infidel, and then formed a plot for the capture of the city. Alexius III. had deposed Isaac Angelus in 1195; his son Alexius was allowed to escape and secretly took ship for Italy and eventually threw himself upon the charity of his brother-in-law, Philip of Swabia, the claimant of the imperial crown of the West. He was assisted; and by a series of complicated intrigues the Crusaders were induced to undertake the capture of Constantinople and the restoration of the Empire to the supposed rightful heir, as a step towards the accomplishment of the duty to which they were pledged, the recovery of the Holy Land. The Pope's wishes were set aside, the honest leaders were hoodwinked, and Dandolo won the day.

On the 23rd of June 1204 the crusading fleet anchored at San Stefano. Thence they saw the magnificent city that lay before them. "Be sure," says Villehardouin, "there was not a man who did not tremble, because never was so great an enterprise undertaken by so small a number of men." Next day they sailed up to the Bosphorus, past the walls, crowded with spectators, to the anchorage of Chalcedon. The Emperor sent to know their intentions: they ordered him to surrender the crown to the young Alexius. Then came another of those picturesque scenes of which the mediæval history of the New Rome is so full. It was determined to show the young prince to the people whom he came to recover to their allegiance. The splendid Venetian galleys sailed up to the walls of the Sea of Marmora, and stopped where the crowds that thronged them could see. Then loud voices proclaimed the presence of the young Alexius, and demanded the loyal assent of the people to the restoration of his father. Only mocking laughter came back from the walls.

Then the Crusaders prepared for the attack. First it was necessary to break the chain which crossed the Golden Horn from Galata, near what is now Tophané, to near the point of the peninsula of Byzantium. A fierce attack was made on the watch-tower at Galata, from which the chain began. It was captured, the chain was loosed, and the fleet sailed up the Golden Horn. The army was then landed beyond the walls, where is now Eyoub, and took up a position opposite the Blachernae quarter, which had so long been felt to be the weakest point. They were opposed then by the wall of Manuel Comnenus which extended southward of the wall of Heraclius, and considerably in advance of the old Theodosian fortification. Moats, walls, towers, stood before them, a defence hitherto unbroken, and which even before the last fortification was erected it had been found impossible to overthrow.

And so it proved again. When the attack on July 17, 1203, was directed against the northern point of the wall of the Blachernae quarter, near the Xylo-porta, it was utterly defeated. And so again when Dandolo, the old blind Doge, dauntless in bravery as adept in cunning, led the attack from his galleys, their success was but temporary. The old sea-dog had his galley drawn up close to the walls, threw himself on shore, on the narrow strip of land that stood between the water and the walls, and planted the gonfalon of S. Mark on one of the towers. The ends of the flying bridges were thrust from the vessels on to the towers and thus twenty-five were captured. But the Venetians could not maintain their position, and when the Greeks were reported to have made a sortie from the gate of S. Romanus, south of the Blachernae quarter, they withdrew to help these other Crusaders who were attacked.

Meanwhile within the walls disaffection with the government of Alexius III. was growing into readiness to accept the new sovereign to be set up by the Crusaders rather than to risk the chances of capture. Alexius himself would do nothing to protect the city: and when he brought out his troops to the sortie, he retired with them before any fighting took place. Before the next day he himself fled across the sea, deserting his wife and children and the city. The imprisoned Isaac was at once released and placed upon the throne.

This was far from satisfying the greed of the Crusaders. It took away from them every honest cause for attack. So they demanded through Villehardouin, who has himself written us the account of it, that Isaac should consent to the hard terms which Alexius his son had agreed to--that the Empire should be placed under the Roman Pope; that 200,000 marks of silver should be given to the army, and that they should be supported for a year; that 10,000 of them should be taken to Egypt in Greek vessels at the Emperor's expense, and supported there for a year; and that Isaac should agree, during the whole of his life, to keep five hundred knights for the defence of the Holy Land. The Emperor, though from the first he said that he thought it would be impossible to carry it out, felt bound to give his consent to the convention. Alexius was crowned in S. Sophia as joint occupant of his father's throne, and it seemed as if the danger was at an end.

But it was only just begun. Some of the Crusaders wanted to push on at once to the Holy Land or to Egypt; but they had not enough money, and no ships. And the Venetians who held the ships delayed: they cared for nothing but that the army should be divided. Within the city the fiercest opposition was aroused when it was known that Alexius had promised to subordinate the Church to Rome. He was making large exactions too, to pay the men who had brought him back to his country. Feeling against him rose rapidly in the capital. He left with Boniface of Montferrat to pursue the fugitive Emperor to Adrianople.

During his absence the populace, eager to vent their rage upon the foreigners, attacked the Pisan quarter: a sort of retaliatory measure was the attack of the Crusaders on a Saracen mosque between S. Irene and the sea. The Saracens had legal rights of toleration, and the Christians of Constantinople defended them. The riot ended, as riots so often do in the East, in a fire--and before it was over a great strip of the most thickly populated part of the city, running right across from the Golden Horn to the Mamora, was utterly destroyed. Confusion soon reigned within the city. The old Emperor, so long imprisoned, was weak and foolish; but young Alexius was equally weak and enjoyed his new sovereignty without the slightest dignity. He drank and gambled in the Crusaders' tents, took off his imperial circlet, and wore the woollen caps of his boon companions. And he could not find money to pay the incessant demands of the greedy host. As new taxes were levied the citizens resisted, and eventually the Western troops became really in need. They had not enough provisions: why were they waiting: why were the ships not ready to carry them on their quest?

At length all the allies agreed to demand formally of the Emperor the payment of the money that was promised; if he refused they would defy him to his face. The scene was another of those dramatic audacities which so often flash across the history of the city. Villehardouin and five others stood before the Emperors on their thrones in the palace of Blachernae, and their spokesman, Conan de Bethune, spoke thus:

"We come to summon you in the presence of your barons to fulfil the agreement made between you and us. If you fulfil it, well; if not, take note that the barons will hold you neither for lord nor friend, but they will deem themselves free to take what belongs to them as they can get it. They give you warning that till they have defied you they will do you no harm. They will not betray you; that is not the custom of their land. Now you have heard what we have said, and you will take counsel on the matter how you will."

No such speech, men said, had ever been made to a Roman Emperor; and Villehardouin wonders that the envoys were allowed to depart in peace. But for a week or two nothing happened. Yet the city was slowly rising to fever point. Attacks were made on the Venetian fleet; the people assembled in the great Church of S. Sophia and debated how they could drive out the foreigner, and replace the dastard Emperors. Then it seemed to Alexius that he must protect himself. He called on Boniface of Montferrat to protect the palace with Frenchmen and Italians. That sealed his fate.

Alexius Ducas, a kinsman of the Emperors and _protovestiarios_ of the household, whom the people called "Mourtozouphlos" on account of his thick overhanging eyebrows, determined to dethrone the Cæsars and replace them. He prevailed on Alexius to leave the palace for safety, and at once placed him in chains. In a few days both he and his father were dead, and Alexius V. was crowned in S. Sophia.

The new Emperor set himself at once to defend the city, and at once he drew down on him the vengeance of the Crusaders. They were, of course, the defenders of Isaac Angelus and his son. "Never was so horrible a treason committed by any people as deposing and imprisoning young Alexius," says Villehardouin, who had a few days before taken part in insulting him to his face. When a little later they heard that he was dead, they paused for a while as though in dismay: their difficulties grew on them: the storms of a January at Constantinople made them reluctant to embark: and yet what could they do?

Henry Dandolo met the new Emperor in conference within the walls, and demanded the submission of the Church to Rome and an immediate payment of money. It is said that there was a treacherous attempt to capture the Emperor. At any rate no compromise was arrived at, and the divergent parties among the Crusaders agreed to besiege the city. Long was the debate before the final step was taken. They talked, says Villehardouin in his quaint way, before and behind. At last it was agreed how to divide the spoil, how a new Emperor and a new patriarch should be chosen.

On April 9, 1204, the first attack was delivered, on the Petrion or Phanar, and the gate now called Petri Kapoussi at the east of the church of the Patriarchate was first attacked. The invaders were repulsed. A second attack, on the 12th, was more successful. "The flying bridge of the _Pélerine_ lodged itself on a tower and allowed a bold French knight, André d'Urboise, to rush across, seize the tower, and clear a way for their comrades to follow. Here ladders were then landed, the walls scaled, three gates forced, and the city thrown open to the whole host of the invaders." In vain did Mourtozouphlos try to rally his troops; he was forced to take refuge in the palace of the Bucoleon. In the night he fled through the Golden Gate, through which before Emperors had entered only in triumphal procession. Next day the Crusaders entered; the palaces were occupied; the troops marched through the streets; and then the horrible work of plunder and ravage began.

Nicetas, the Grand Logothete, whose own house was burnt earlier in the siege, and who now had to escape with his family as best he might, tells piteous tales of the horrors that ensued. Of the destruction of precious things it seems impossible to draw an adequate picture. S. Sophia, then the richest as well as the finest church in the world, was utterly despoiled; and what had been "an earthly heaven, a throne of divine magnificence, an image of the firmament created by the Almighty," became like a bare barn, and was defiled by the most disgraceful scenes of profanity and horror.

When the church had been stripped of everything it contained, the altars of precious metals broken up to be melted down, the vestments and carpets and hangings carried off, the sacred vessels packed up with the other plunder as if they were common things, the sacred icons torn down from the splendid iconostasis; when the tombs of the emperors had been rifled, and the body of Justinian cast out like that of a criminal in the search for treasure, it might be thought that the worst was over. It was not so. Then began the hunt for relics which made not the least degrading part of the work of these soldiers of Christ. Well was it said by a contemporary that if these soldiers had when they besieged the city the shield of the Lord, now when they had taken the city they threw away His shield and took the shield of the devil. Bitter, and well deserved, were the words of Nicetas. "You have taken up the Cross, and have sworn on it and on the Holy Gospels to us that you would pass over the territory of Christians without shedding blood and without turning to the right hand or to the left. You told us that you had taken up arms against the Saracens only, and that you would steep them in their blood alone. You promised to keep yourselves chaste while you bore the Cross, as became soldiers enrolled under the banner of Christ. Instead of defending His tomb, you have outraged the faithful who are members of Him. You have used Christians worse than the Arabs used the Latins, for they at least respected women."

Of the extraordinary quantity of ecclesiastical plunder taken by the Crusaders we have the records collected by Comte Riant in his monumental (and delightful) volumes of _Exuviæ Sacræ Constantinopolitanæ_. It may be observed, to begin with, that he collects no less than a hundred and forty-four letters relating to the reception in the West of these stolen relics. To these are added endless references in the chroniclers of the time, who were enchanted with the riches that poured upon their religious houses, and displayed all the passion of a collector of antiquities combined with the business instincts of a dealer in curiosities and the piety of a hagiologist. In spite of all this evidence--and there is more of it, in inscription, later lives of the saints, and the like--it is impossible to discover exactly all that was stolen, because the lists of the relics preserved in the churches of Constantinople at the actual time of the siege have disappeared. But it is possible of course, from earlier lists, as well as from the sources already named, to discover what were the greater part of the relics taken.

The riches of Constantinople were well known to the Crusaders when they turned to besiege it. The stories of the earlier crusades were well known, when the Greeks had loved to show the treasures of the imperial city, the riches of S. Sophia, and even of the imperial palace. In the East were almost all the most sacred survivals, nearly all that remained in fact, or was believed to remain, of the relics of the Saviour, His Mother, and most of His Apostles. In the West, till the thirteenth century, there was practically nothing but the relics of Western, and, therefore, comparatively modern, saints, and the few more sacred treasures that had been given by Eastern sovereigns to those of the West.

For three days the pillage went on. Churches escaped no more than palaces or private houses. Indeed they were more greedily ransacked: and after the days of direct pillage there came weeks, months, of deliberate search for relics which had been concealed. The result was, as M. Riant says, to rob Constantinople of two distinct sorts of sacred objects; of relics, with or without their reliquaries, and of ecclesiastical furniture. It seems that the treasures taken were supposed to be placed in a common fund and divided proportionately among the nations concerned; but there was a great deal of chicanery and jobbery as well as of direct spoliation; ecclesiastical furniture certainly was supposed to be divided like the other booty, but the relics were regarded as too sacred for anything but direct robbery. It should be added, also, that much that was not taken at first was acquired during the period of the Latin Empire in ways more or less legitimate. The robbery went on for forty years.

Time would fail to tell of the wonderful things that were discovered and stolen. Almost every country in Europe received some fragments of the True Cross, found by S. Helena. Besides this there were drops of the Saviour's Blood, one of His teeth, some of His hair, the purple robe, some of the bread blessed at the Last Supper, and countless relics of the Blessed Virgin and the Apostles. The heads of S. John Baptist and of many of the Apostles found their way to the West. Venice was incomparably the largest gainer, but even the little church of Bromholm in Norfolk, by a gift which was the result of a double robbery, became the possessor of a fragment of the true Cross. The Crusaders were not content with taking relics of the primitive Church, but must needs take also the mortal remains of the Greek Fathers; you may see the head of S. Chrysostom to-day in the cathedral of Pisa.

The reliquaries, the exquisite examples of Byzantine art, that were scattered about the West, remain very often even now to witness to the completeness of the spoliation. But artistically the things that were destroyed, broken up or melted down, were far more precious than those that survived. If S. Mark's still possesses the horses that once stood in the Hippodrome of Constantinople, we know that magnificent statues of Juno, of Paris, of Bellerophon, an exquisite figure of Helen, of which Nicetas pathetically deplores that "she who had formerly led all spectators captive could not soften the heart of the barbarians," and many ancient works, statues, medallions, vases, were destroyed in the furnace. There are remains of ancient art in Constantinople to-day; but when we think of the pillage of 1204 and the Mohammedan Conquest we marvel that there is anything more ancient than the sixteenth century, or more valuable than a kettle or a candlestick of old time, to be found in the whole city.

The capture of the city was followed by the election, by twelve electors representing the Crusaders, of an Emperor for the throne of the Cæsars. Baldwin Count of Flanders, by what process of intrigue we do not know, was chosen. He was "heaved" upon the shield, as the ancient custom was; he received the reverence of those who had been his equals in the campaign; he was led in triumph to S. Sophia, and in a strange mixture of Latin and Greek rites was consecrated, crowned and enthroned a week after his election, as Cæsar and Augustus.

But this was not all. It is possible that in time the citizens, weary of their decadent rulers, might have come to accept without active discontent the rule of a gallant and chivalrous Christian knight such as Baldwin. But the Crusaders, and most of all the Pope, would not be content with this. If they were justified at all in the havoc they had made it was only because the Easterns were heretics and idolaters and schismatics. The Church of Constantinople was "rebellious and odious" to that of Rome. It must be brought to submission. So a century later the case is summed up, "God delivered the city into the hands of the Latins because the Greeks declared that the Holy Ghost proceeded only from the Father, and celebrated the mass with leavened bread." Such was the feeling,--though the expression of it is somewhat of an anachronism,--that animated now the leaders of the hosts, which, sated with their debauchery, began to feel something of an inevitable remorse.

But Innocent III. was of too pure a soul to countenance the iniquity that had been committed. Among all the shameless hypocrisies of the time his words of denunciation ring out true. Even the union of the Churches on which he had set his heart seemed to him now to be impossible. "Disappointment, shame, and anxiety weaken us when we ask whether the Greek Church can enter into union with the Apostolic see when that Church had seen among the Latins only the works of darkness."

Meanwhile the Venetians set canons in the Church of S. Sophia, and elected Morosini to be patriarch. It was an empty honour. In fifty-seven years a Greek again was seated on the throne of Justinian, and the Liturgy of S. Chrysostom was again sung in S. Sophia; but long before that revolts had made the Latin hold on the East more and more precarious, and the city more and more able to reassert its ancient independence.

4. FROM THE LATIN CONQUEST TO THE CONQUEST BY THE TURKS.

It is unnecessary to tell of the division of the Empire among the conquerors, or of how a daughter of Alexius III. wedded the heroic Greek who still fought on, Theodore Lascaris, and was the ancestress of one who eventually brought back the old Empire; of how Mourtozouphlos was caught by the Latins and cast down from the top of the column of Arcadius, or of how Greek states sprang into existence on every side; how Baldwin the Emperor was captured by the Bulgarians and died a horrible death. These events all happened within two years. Henry, the brother of Baldwin, reigned in his stead. Henry Dandolo the old doge died "in the fulness of years and glory" and was buried, it would seem, in S. Sophia, where the great slab that covered his grave is still to be seen. Ten years later Henry the Emperor passed away, and Peter of Courtenay, husband of his sister Yolande reigned in his stead. He reigned though crowned in Rome, only to be captured on his way to Constantinople, and to pass away from history to an unknown fate. Robert, his son, was crowned in S. Sophia in 1221. His fate was hardly less ignominious. His successors, the child Baldwin II. (Courtenay) and John of Brienne, were besieged in Constantinople by the Greek so-called Emperor of Nicæa and John Asen, the Bulgarian king, but the aged joint-Emperor successfully defended the city. The young Baldwin went as a beggar to the chief courts of Europe, was the pensioner of S. Louis, seated himself with difficulty on the throne, descended to an ignoble marriage treaty with a Mohammedan Sultan and sold the Crown of Thorns to the king of the Franks.

In the weakness into which they had fallen, it is not to be wondered that the survivors of the Latin conquerors were easily vanquished by the advancing power of the Greeks, and on July 25th, 1261, John Ducas and Michael Palæologus were welcomed back by the exultant Greeks to the throne of the Cæsars.

It was Alexius Strategopoulos, General and Cæsar, who captured the city. By night he led his men to the gate of the Pegè (πύλη τῆς πηγῆς)--the gate which led out to the spring of Balukli, now called the gate of Selivria. The Latins had built up the entrance, but some of the soldiers scaled the walls, and aided by friends within, killed the guards, broke down the barricade, and opened the gate. A few days later the Emperor, Michael Palæologus, entered in triumph. He walked as far as the church of S. John of the Studium. Then he mounted his horse and rode on to S. Sophia. So the Greeks had won back their city. But the results of the Latin conquest and the years of strife that followed it were not undone. The historian of that conquest has thus summed them up.

"The results of the Fourth Crusade upon European civilisation were altogether disastrous. The light of Greek civilisation, which Byzantium had kept burning for nearly nine centuries after Constantine had chosen it as his capital, was suddenly extinguished. The hardness, the narrowness and the Hebraicism of western civilisation were left to develop themselves with little admixture from the joyousness and the beauty of Greek life. Every one knows that the Turkish conquest of Constantinople dispersed throughout the West a knowledge of Greek literature, and that such knowledge contributed largely to the bringing about of the Reformation and of modern ways of thought. One cannot but regret that the knowledge of Greek literature was so dearly bought. If the dispersion of a few Greeks, members of a conquered and therefore despised race, but yet carrying their precious manuscripts and knowledge among hostile peoples, could produce so important a result, what effect might not reasonably have been hoped for if the great crime against which Innocent protested had not been committed? Western Europe saw the sparks of learning dispersed among its people. The light which had been continuously burning in a never forgotten and, among the literary class, a scarcely changed language, had been put out. The crime of the Fourth Crusade handed over Constantinople and the Balkan peninsula to six centuries of barbarism, and rendered futile the attempts of Innocent and subsequent statesmen to recover Syria and Asia Minor to Christendom and civilisation. If we would understand the full significance of the Latin conquest of Constantinople, we must try to realise what might now be the civilisation of Western Europe if the Romania of six centuries ago had not been destroyed. One may picture not only the Black Sea, the Bosphorus, and the Marmora surrounded by progressive and civilised nations, but even the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean given back again to good government and a religion which is not a barrier to civilisation."[25]

The restored Empire of the Greeks was ruled for some years with wisdom and enthusiasm. Michael Palæologus was of an ancient family already allied with the imperial house, and "in his person the splendour of birth was dignified by the merit of the soldier and statesman." He was admitted as the guardian, and then as the colleague, of the child-Emperor John. The gallant Varangians, the northern soldiers whose force had been replenished by fresh blood from year to year, and had never deserted the imperial house, had raised him to the throne, and he ruled with a severity and determination that bore down all opposition.

It was his first task to cleanse and restore the palace of Blachernae, left filthy and dilapidated by Baldwin II. Then he set about the restoration of the walls. His chief attention was paid to the sea walls, which he raised seven feet by means of wooden erections covered with hide; and later he began to make a double line of walls to protect the sea side of the city as the land side was protected. He took the harbour of the Kontoscalion (in front of what is now Koum Kapoussi) for a dockyard, had it dredged and deepened, protected by an iron mole and "surrounded with immense blocks, closed with iron gates." But he was determined to rule alone, and before the end of the year he had blinded his young colleague and banished him. He was excommunicated by the patriarch Arsenius, and a schism was caused by his banishment of the prelate, which was not healed for nearly fifty years.