Chapter XXXVIII

FOUNDING THE LATIN KINGDOM OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

Having conquered Constantinople and presumably the empire hitherto ruled from its palaces, it now devolved upon the Latins to select an emperor from their own race. Twelve electors were chosen, six from the Venetians and six from the crusaders, to whom was delegated the responsibility of making the final choice. These met at the Church of our Lady the Illuminator, which was located within the walls of the palace of Bucolion. After celebration of mass the electors took a solemn oath upon the relics deposited in that church, that they would bestow the crown upon him whom they regarded as the ablest to defend and exalt their new possessions. To silence any popular opposition to their choice, the bravest of the guards were placed about the palace, pledged to maintain the election.

There were three, possibly four, preëminent candidates for the imperial honor. Dandolo was recognized as chief in ability, but he was far advanced in years and could promise at best but a brief tenure of the sceptre; besides, the Venetians themselves were not agreed in asking for his elevation. If the doge of Venice should have his capital in the East, Venice herself, the queen of the Adriatic, would sink beneath the splendors of the queen of the Bosporus. The men who had exalted their city to that of chief prominence in the maritime world were naturally jealous of this transfer of prestige. Dandolo himself was astute enough to foresee the danger and declined to contest the election.

Boniface, as head of the crusaders, was next in prominence. He had, moreover, sought to make himself more eligible by marrying Maria, the widow of the late Emperor Isaac, that thus he might secure the loyalty of the Greeks. But his election would be fraught with disadvantage to Venice in that his alliance would be first of all with his relative, Philip of Swabia, and, in the event of the union of the East with that German power, Venice would be politically overshadowed.

It is alleged by some writers that Philip himself was proposed. He was at the time, as we have stated, contesting the sceptre of Germany with Otho, who had been approved by the Pope. Philip’s acquisition of the Eastern sceptre might give him predominant weight in the West and possibly convert the Pope to his interests, especially as thus the union of the churches would be facilitated. Thus the reasons urged against Boniface were of equal force against Philip.

Dandolo declared his preference for Baldwin, Earl of Flanders. This chieftain was but thirty-two years of age, a cousin of the King of France, and of the blood of Charlemagne. He had proved his bravery on many a field, and was, moreover, unobjectionable to the more ardent among the crusaders from the fact that, unlike Boniface, he had taken no active part in originally diverting the movement from its legitimate destination against Syria and Egypt. The French, who were the majority in the host, sided with him. Between the parties of Boniface and Baldwin it was agreed that, in the event of either attaining to the immediate government of the empire, the other should acquire as his special dominion the Peloponnesus and the Asiatic provinces beyond the Bosporus.

While the electors deliberated the crowd without waited with anxiety. At midnight, May 9th, the doors of the church were opened. The Bishop of Soissons announced the decision: “This hour of the night, which saw the birth of God, sees also the birth of a new empire. We proclaim as emperor Earl Baldwin of Flanders and Hainaut.” The successful candidate was raised upon a shield and carried into the church, where he was vested with the vermilion buskins. A week later he was solemnly crowned in St. Sophia. At the coronation Boniface attended his rival, carrying in the procession the royal robe of cloth of gold.

But Boniface’s loyalty scarcely endured the strain put upon it. He soon exchanged the dominion of the Peloponnesus and Asia Minor, which had been assigned to him by the electors’ agreement, for that of Salonica. Over this he and Baldwin incessantly quarrelled. This strife between the leaders was the indication of the dissensions everywhere among the Latins in their greedy division of the estates of the new realm.

The chief actors in that stirring drama soon passed off the scene. Baldwin was captured, and probably murdered, by the Bulgarians before Adrianople in 1205, and was succeeded by his brother Henry. Dandolo, having acquired the title “Lord of a Quarter and a Half of all the Roman World,” died June, 1205. A slab recently discovered in St. Sophia is inscribed, “Henrico Dandolo,” and probably marks his grave. With all his faults, the modern Venetian might well cry with Byron:

“Oh, for one hour of blind old Dandolo,
The octogenarian chief, Byzantium’s conquering foe!”

Boniface two years later was mortally wounded in a fight with the Bulgarians in the Rhodope Mountains. Mourtzouphlos was soon taken prisoner and hurled headlong from the column of Theodosius, thus fulfilling a local prophecy relative to the column, that it should witness the destruction of some perfidious ruler.

It is not within our scope to narrate the history of the Latin empire thus established. For fifty-seven years it maintained a precarious existence, and finally fell again into the hands of the Greeks, who had constantly menaced it from their opposing capital of Nicæa (1264).

The most serious consequence of the capture of Constantinople by the Latins was the new hope and opportunity imparted to the Turks. The Greeks, with all their weaknesses, had for generations been a buffer between Islam and Europe. The empire had stood like a wall across the great highway of the Asiatic incursion. If the Greeks had been generally the losers in the struggle, they had maintained sufficient power to occupy the arms of their contestants, leaving the Christians of the West free to prey upon the Moslems of Syria and adjacent countries. Now all was changed in this respect. The war of Latins with Greeks engrossed, and largely used up, the power of both as against their common enemy. Though the capital had fallen, the Greek everywhere was still the sworn enemy of the Latin.

In the meantime the Moslems were compacting and extending their military power. They were growing in multitude by the migration of new swarms from the original hive in the farther East. They were destined to become too strong for Christendom to resist, to move steadily on to their own conquest of Constantinople, and even to knock at the gate of Vienna. The words of Edward Pears are undoubtedly warranted: “The crime of the fourth crusade handed over Constantinople and the Balkan peninsula to six centuries of barbarism.”