XLVII. CHAP. fane edifices were stripped of their ornaments; and, as if they were conscious of their approaching exile, the industry of the Latins had been confined to the work of pillage and destruction. Trade had expired under the pressure of anarchy and distress; and the numbers of inhabitants had decreased with the opulence of the city. It was the first care of the Greek monarch to reinstate the nobles in the palaces of their fathers; and the houses or the ground which they occupied were restored to the families that could exhibit a legal right of inheritance. But the far greater part was extinct, or lost; the vacant property had devolved to the lord; he re-peopled Constantinople by a liberal invitation to the provinces; and the brave volunteers were seated in the capital which had been recovered by their arms. The French barons and the principal families had retired with their emperor; but the patient and humble crowd of Latins was attached to the country, and indifferent to the change of masters. Instead of banishing the factories of the Pisans, Venetians, and Genoese, the prudent conqueror accepted their oaths of allegiance, encouraged their industry, confirmed their privileges, and allowed them to live under the jurisdiction of their proper magistrates. Of these nations, the Pisans and Venetians preserved their respective quarters in the city; but the services and power of the Genoese deserved at the same time the gratitude and the jealousy of the Greeks. Their independent colonywas first planted at the sea-port town of Heraclea in Thrace. They were speedily recalled, and settled in the exclusive possession of the suburb of Galata, an advantageous post, in which they revived the commerce, and insulted the majesty, of the Byzantine empire *. * See Pachymer (1. ii. c. 28-33), Acripolita (c. 88), Nicephorus Gregoras (1. iv. 7), and for the treatment of the subject Latins, Ducange (1. v. c. 30, 31). CHAP. XLVII. blinds and peror, A. D. 25. The recovery of Constantinople was celebrated as the era of a new empire: the conqueror, alone, and by the right of the sword, renewed his coronation in Palæologus the church of St. Sophia; and the name and honours banishes the of John Lascaris, his pupil and lawful sovereign, younge were insensibly abolished. But his claims still lived 1261, Dec. in the minds of the people; and the royal youth must speedily attain the years of manhood and ambition. By fear or conscience, Palæologus was restrained from dipping his hands in innocent and royal blood; but the anxiety of an usurper and a parent urged him to secure his throne, by one of those imperfect crimes so familiar to the modern Greeks. The loss of sight incapacitated the young prince for the active business of the world: instead of the brutal violence of tearing out his eyes, the visual nerve was destroyed by the intense glare of a red-hot basin, and John Lascaris was removed to a distant castle, where he spent many years in privacy and oblivion. Such cool and deliberate guilt may seem incompatible with remorse; but if Michael could trust the mercy of heaven, he was not inaccessible to the reproaches and vengeance of mankind, which he had provoked by cruelty and treason. cruelty imposed on a servile court the duties of applause or silence; but the clergy had a right to speak in the name of their invisible master; and their holy legions were led by a prelate, whose character was above the temptations of hope or fear. After a short abdication of his dignity, Arsenius had consented to ascend the ecclesiastical throne of Constantinople, and to preside in the restoration of the church. His pious simplicity was long deceived by the arts of Palæologus; and his patience and submission might sooth the usurper, and protect the safety of the young prince. On the news of his inhuman treatment, the patriarch unsheathed the spiritual sword in the cause His XLVII. municated senius, -1268. CHAP. of humanity and justice. In a synod of bishops, who were stimulated by the example of his zeal, the paIs excom- triarch pronounced a sentence of excommunication; by the pa- though his prudence still repeated the name of triarch Ar- Michael in the public prayers. The eastern preA. D. 1262 lates had not adopted the dangerous maxims of ancient Rome; nor did they presume to enforce their censures, by deposing princes, or absolving nations from their oaths of allegiance. But the Christian, who had been separated from God and the church, became an object of horror; and, in a turbulent and fanatic capital, that horror might arm the hand of an assassin, or inflame a sedition of the people. Palæologus felt his danger, confessed his guilt, and deprecated his judge the act was irretrievable; the prize was obtained; and the most rigorous penance, which he solicited, would have raised the sinner to the reputation of a saint. The unrelenting patriarch refused to announce any means of atonement or any hopes of mercy; and condescended only to pronounce, that, for so great a crime, great indeed must be the satisfaction. "Do you require," said Michael, "that I should abdicate the empire ?" And at these words, he offered, or seemed to offer, the sword of state. Arsenius eagerly grasped this pledge of sovereignty but when he perceived that the emperor was unwilling to purchase absolution at so dear a rate, he indignantly escaped to his cell, and left the royal sinner, kneeling and weeping before the door *. Reign of The establishment of his family was the motive, or at least the pretence, of the crime of Palæologus; Palæologus, and he was impatient to confirm the succession, by Dec. 1- sharing with his eldest son the honours of the purple. A. D. 1282, Andronicus, afterwards surnamed the Elder, was proReign of A D. 1259, Dec. 11. Andronicus the Elder, The crime and excommunication of Michael are fairly told by Pachymer (1. iii. c. 10. 14. 19, &c.) and Gregoras (1. iv. c. 4). His confession and penance restored their freedom. XLVII. Nov. 8 Feb. 13. claimed and crowned emperor of the Romans, in the CHAP. fifteenth year of his age; and, from the first æra of a prolix and inglorious reign, he held that august title A. D. 1273, nine years as the colleague, and fifty as the successor, A. D. 1332, of his father. Michael himself, had he died in a private station, would have been thought more worthy of the empire and the assaults of his temporal and spiritual enemies left him few moments to labour for his own fame or the happiness of his subjects. He wrested from the Franks several of the noblest islands of the Archipelago, Lesbos, Chios, and Rhodes: his brother Constantine was sent to command in Malvasia and Sparta; and the eastern side of the Morea, from Argos and Napoli to Cape Tænarus, was repossessed by the Greeks. This effusion of Christian blood was loudly condemned by the patriarch; and the insolent priest presumed to interpose his fears and scruples between the arms of princes. But in the prosecution of these western conquests, the countries beyond the Hellespont were left naked to the Turks; and their depredations verified the prophecy of a dying senator, that the re-covery of Constantinople would be the ruin of Asia. The victories of Michael were achieved by his lieutenant; his sword rusted in the palace; and in the transactions of the emperor with the popes and the king of Naples, his political arts were stained with cruelty and fraud *. In the distress of the Latins, the walls and towers Charles of Anjou subof Constantinople had fallen to decay: they were dues Naples restored and fortified by the policy of Michael, who and Sicily, deposited a plenteous store of corn and salt visions, to sustain the siege which he might hourly pro * Of the thirteen books of Pachymer, the first six (as the 4th and 5th of Nicephorus Gregoras) contain the reign of Michael, at the time of whose death he was forty years of age. Instead of breaking, like his editor the Père Poussin, his history into two parts, I follow Ducange and Cousin, who number the thirteen books in one series. A. D. 1266, XLVII. CHAP. expect from the resentment of the Western powers. Of these, the sovereign of the two Sicilies was the most formidable neighbour; but as long as they were possessed by Mainfroy, the bastard of Frederic the second, his monarchy was the bulwark rather than the annoyance of the Eastern empire. The usurper, though a brave and active prince, was sufficiently employed in the defence of his throne: his proscription by successive popes had separated Mainfroy from the common cause of the Latins; and the forces that might have besieged Constantinople were detained in a crusade against the domestic enemy of Rome. The prize of her avenger, the crown of the two Sicilies, was won and worn by the brother of St. Louis, by Charles count of Anjou and Provence, who led the chivalry of France on this holy expedition*. The disaffection of his Christian subjects compelled Mainfroy to inlist a colony of Saracens whom his father had planted in Apulia: and this odious succour will explain the defiance of the Catholic hero, who rejected all terms of accommodation. "Bear this message," said Charles, "to the sultan "of Nocera, that God and the sword are umpire "between us." The armies met, and Mainfroy lost his friends, his kingdom, and his life, in the bloody battle of Benevento. Naples and Sicily were immediately peopled with a warlike race of French nobles; and their aspiring leader embraced the future conquest of Africa, Greece, and Palestine. The most specious reasons might point his first arms against the Byzantine empire; and Palæologus, diffident of his own strength, repeatedly appealed from the ambition *The best accounts, the nearest the time, the most full and entertaining, of the conquest of Naples by Charles of Anjou, may be found in the Florentine Chronicles of Ricordano Malespina (c. 175-193) and Giovanni Villani (1. vii. c. 1--10. 25—30), which are published by Muratori in the 8th and 13th volumes of the historians of Italy. In his annals (tom. xi. p. 56—72), he has abridged these great events, which are likewise described in the Istoria Civile of Giannone, tom. ii. l. xix. tom. iii. 1. xx. |