assume the empire of the East. The royal birth of his father, CHAP. the noble origin of his mother, recommended to the barons of LXI. France the first cousin of their king. His reputation was fair, his possessions were ample, and, in the bloody crusade against the Albigeois, the soldiers and the priests had been abundantly satisfied of his zeal and valour. Vanity might applaud the elevation of a French emperor of Constantinople; but prudence must pity rather than envy, his treacherous and imaginary greatness. To assert and adorn his title, he was reduced to sell or mortgage the best of his patrimony. By these expedients, the liberality of his royal kinsman Philip Augustus, and the national spirit of chivalry, he was enabled to pass the Alps at the head of one hundred and forty knights, and five thousand five hundred sergeants and archers. After some hesitation, pope Honorius the Third was persuaded to crown the successor of Constantine; but he performed the ceremony in a church without the walls, lest he should seem to imply or to bestow any right of sovereignty over the ancient capital of the empire. The Venetians had engaged to transport Peter and his forces beyond the Adriatic, and the empress, with her four children, to the Byzantine palace; but they required, as the price of their service, that he should recover Durazzo from the despot of Epirus. Michael Angelus, or Comnenus, the first of his dynasty, had bequeathed the succession of his power and ambition to Theodore, his legitimate brother, who already threatened and invaded the establishments of the Latins. After discharging his debt by a fruitless assault, the emperor raised the siege to prosecute a long and perilous journey over land from Durazzo to Thessalonica. He was soon lost in the mountains of Epirus; the passes were fortified; his provisions exhausted; he was delayed and deceived by a treacherous His captis i negotiation; and after Peter of Courtenay and the Roman death, legate had been arrested in a banquet, the French troops, with-1219. out leaders or hopes, were eager to exchange their arms for the delusive promise of mercy and bread. The Vatican thundered; and the impious Theodore was threatened with the vengeance of earth and heaven; but the captive emperor and his soldiers were forgotten, and the reproaches of the pope are confined to the imprisonment of his legate. No sooner was he satisfied by the deliverance of the priest and a promise of spiritual obedience, than he pardoned and protected the despot of Epirus. His peremptory commands suspended the ardour of the Venetians and the king of Hungary; and it was only by a natural or untimely death that Peter of Courtenay was released from his hopeless captivity.37 36 Acropolita (c. 14,) affirms, that Peter of Courtenay died by the sword (gv paxaigas jeres Duas:) but from his dark expressions, I should conclude a previous captivity, ως συντας αρδην δεσμωτας ποιήσαι συν πασι σκέυεσι. The Chronicle of Auxerre delays the emperor's death till the year 1219; and Auxerre is in the neighbourhood of Courtenay. See the reign and death of Peter of Courtenay, in Ducange (Ilist. de C. P. ty and A. D. 1217 CHAP. emperor of uople, -1228. The long ignorance of his fate, and the presence of the LXI. lawful sovereign, of Yolande, his wife or widow, delayed the proclamation of a new emperor. Before her death, and in the Robert midst of her grief, she was delivered of a son, who was named Constanti Baldwin, the last and most unfortunate of the Latin princes of A. D. 1921 Constantinople. His birth endeared him to the barons of Romania; but his childhood would have prolonged the troubles of a minority, and his claims were superseded by the elder claims of his brethren. The first of these, Philip of Courtenay, who derived from his mother the inheritance of Namur, had the wisdom to prefer the substance of a marquisate to the shadow of an empire; and on his refusal, Robert, the second of the sons of Peter and Yolande, was called to the throne of Constantinople. Warned by his father's mischance, he pursued his slow and secure journey through Germany and along the Danube: a passage was opened by his sister's marriage with the king of Hungary; and the emperor Robert was crowned by the patriarch in the cathedral of St. Sophia. But his reign was an era of calamity and disgrace; and the colony, as it was styled, of NEW FRANCE, yielded on all sides to the Greeks of Nice and Epirus. After a victory, which he owed to his perfidy rather than his courage, Theodore Angelus entered the kingdom of Thessalonica, expelled the feeble Demetrius, the son of the marquis Boniface, erected his standard on the walls of Adrianople; and added, by his vanity, a third or fourth name, to the list of rival emperors. The relics of the Asiatic province were swept away by John Vataces, the son-in-law and successor of Theodore Lascaris, and who, in a triumphant reign of thirty-three years, displayed the virtues both of peace and war. Under his discipline the swords of the French mercenaries were the most effectual instrument of his conquests, and their desertion from the service of their country was at once a symptom and a cause of the rising ascendant of the Greeks. By the construction of a fleet he obtained the command of the Hellespont, reduced the islands of Lesbos and Rhodes, attacked the Venetians of Candia, and intercepted the rare and parsimonious succours of the West. Once, and once only, the Latin emperor sent an army against Vataces; and in the defeat of that army, the veteran knights, the last of the original conquerors, were left on the field of battle. But the success of a foreign enemy was less painful to the pusillanimous Robert than the insolence of his Latin subjects, who confounded the weakness of the emperor and of the empire. His personal misfortunes will prove the anarchy of the government and the ferociousness of the times. The amorous youth had neglected his Greek bride, the daughter of Vataces, to introduce into the palace a beautiful maid, 1. ii. c. 22-28,) who feebly strives to excuse the neglect of the emperor by Honorius III. LXI. of a private, though noble, family of Artois; and her mother CHAP. had been tempted by the lustre of the purple to forfeit her engagements with a gentleman of Burgundy. His love was converted into rage; he assembled his friends, forced the palace gates, threw the mother into the sea, and inhumanly cut off the nose and lips of the wife or concubine of the emperor. Instead of punishing the offender, the barons avowed and applauded the savage deed,38 which, as a prince and as a man, it was impossible that Baldwin should forgive. He escaped from the guilty city to implore the justice or compassion of the pope: the emperor was coolly exhorted to return to his station; before he could obey, he sunk under the weight of grief, shame, and impotent resentment.3 39 and John of Constanti A. D. 1228 It was only in the age of chivalry, that valour could ascend Baldwin II. from a private station to the thrones of Jerusalem and Con-Brienne, stantinople. The titular kingdom of Jerusalem had devolved emperors of to Mary, the daughter of Isabella and Conrad of Montferrat, and nople, the grand-daughter of Almeric or Amaury. She was given to -1237. John of Brienne, of a noble family in Champagne, by the public voice, and the judgment of Philip Augustus, who named him as the most worthy champion of the Holy Land.40 In the fifth crusade, he led a hundred thousand Latins to the conquest of Egypt; by him the siege of Damietta was achieved; and the subsequent failure was justly ascribed to the pride and avarice of the legate. After the marriage of his daughter with Frederic the Second," he was provoked by the emperor's ingratitude to accept the command of the army of the church; and though advanced in life and despoiled of royalty, the sword and spirit of John of Brienne were still ready for the service of Christendom. In the seven years of his brother's reign, Baldwin of Courtenay had not emerged from a state of childhood, and the barons of Romania felt the strong necessity of placing the sceptre in the hands of a man and a hero. The veteran king of Jerusalem might have disdained the name and office of regent; they agreed to invest him for his life with the title and prerogatives of emperor, on the sole condition, that Baldwin should marry his second daughter, and succeed at a mature age to the throne of Constantinople. The expectation, both of the Greeks and Latins, was kindled by the renown, 38 Marinus Sanutus (Secreta Fidelium Crusis, I. ii. p. 4, c. 18, p. 73,) is so much delighted with this bloody deed, that he has transcribed it in his margin as a bonum exemplum. Yet he acknowledges the damsel for the lawful wife of Robert. 39 See the reign of Robert in Ducange (Hist. de C. P. l. iii. c. 1—12.) 40 Rex igitur Franciæ, deliberatione habità respondit nuntiis, se daturum hominem Syriæ partibus aptum; in armis probum (preux,) in bellis securum, in agendis providum, Johannem comitem Brennensem. Sanut. Secret. Fidelium, 1. iii. p. xi. c. 4, p. 205. Matthew Paris, p. 159. 41 Giannone (Istoria Civile, tom. ii. I. xvi. p. 330-385,) discusses the marriage of Frederic II. with the daughter of John of Brienne, and the double union of the crowns of Naples and Jerusalem. CHAP. the choice, and the presence of John of Brienne: and they LXI. admired his martial aspect, his green and vigorous age of more than fourscore years, and his size and stature, which surpassed the common measure of mankind.42 But avarice, and the love of ease, appeared to have chilled the ardour of enterprise: his troops were disbanded, and two years rolled away without action or honour, till he was awakened by the dangerous alliance of Vataces, emperor of Nice, and of Azan king of Bulgaria. They besieged Constantinople, by sea and land, with an army of one hundred thousand men, and a fleet of three hundred ships of war; while the entire force of the Latin emperor was reduced to one hundred and sixty knights, and a small addition of sergeants and archers. I tremble to relate, that instead of defending the city, the hero made a sally at the head of his cavalry; and that of forty-eight squadrons of the enemy, no more than three escaped from the edge of his invincible sword. Fired by his example, the infantry and the citizens boarded the vessels that anchored close to the walls; and twenty-five were dragged in triumph into the harbour of Constantinople. At the summons of the emperor, the vassals and allies armed in her defence, broke through every obstacle that opposed their passage; and in the succeeding year, obtained a second victory over the same enemies. By the rude poets of the age, John of Brienne is compared to Hector, Roland, and Judas Machabæus: but their credit, and his glory, receive some abatement from the silence of the Greeks. The empire was soon deprived of the last of her champions; and the dying monarch was ambitious to enter paradise in the habit of a Franciscan friar." 1. D. 1237, Baldwin II. In the double victory of John of Brienne, I cannot discover March the name or exploits of his pupil Baldwin, who had attained P101, the age of military service, and who succeeded to the Imperial July 25. dignity on the decease of his adopted father. The royal youth was employed on a commission more suitable to his 42 Acropolita, c. 27. The historian was at that time a boy, and educated at Constantinople. In 1233, when he was eleven years old, his father broke the Latin chain, left a splendid fortune, and escaped to the Greek court of Nice, where his son was raised to the highest honours. 4 Philip Mouskes, bishop of Tournay (A. D. 1274—1282,) has composed a poem, or rather a string of verses, in bad old Flemish French, on the Latin em perors of Constantinople, which Ducange has published at the end of Villehardouin; see p. 224, for the prowess of John of Brienne. N'Aie, Ector, Roll' ne Ogiers La paru sa force et ses sens 44 See the reign of John de Brienne, in Ducange, Hist. de C. P. I. iii. c. 13 -26. 45 See the reign of Baldwin II. till his expulsion from Constantinople, in Ducange, Hist. de C. P. I. iv. c. 1-34, the end l. v. c. 1-33. temper; he was sent to visit the Western courts, of the pope CHAP. more especially, and of the king of France; to excite their LXI. pity by the view of his innocence and distress; and to obtain some supplies of men or money for the relief of the sinking empire. He thrice repeated these mendicant visits, in which he seemed to prolong his stay and postpone his return; of the five and twenty years of his reign, a greater number were spent abroad than at home; and in no place did the emperor deem himself less free and secure, than in his native country, and his capital. On some public occasion, his vanity might be soothed by the title of Augustus, and by the honours of the purple; and at the general council of Lyons, when Frederic the Second was excommunicated and deposed, his Oriental colleague was enthroned on the right hand of the pope. But how often was the exile, the vagrant, the Imperial beggar, humbled with scorn, insulted with pity, and degraded in his own eyes and those of the nations? In his first visit to England he was stopped at Dover, by a severe reprimand, that he should presume, without leave, to enter an independent kingdom. After some delay, Baldwin, however, was permitted to pursue his journey, was entertained with cold civility, and thankfully departed with a present of seven hundred marks. From the avarice of Rome, he could only obtain the proclamation of a crusade, and a treasure of indulgences; a coin, whose currency was depreciated by too frequent and indiscriminate abuse. His birth and misfortunes recommended him to the generosity of his cousin Louis the Ninth; but the martial zeal of the saint was diverted from Constantinople to Egypt and Palestine; and the public and private poverty of Baldwin was alleviated, for a moment, by the alienation of the marquisate of Namur and the lordship of Courtenay, the last remains of his inheritance. By such shameful or ruinous expedients, he once more returned to Romania, with an army of thirty thousand soldiers, whose numbers were doubled in the apprehension of the Greeks. His first despatches to France and England announced his victories and his hopes: he had reduced the country round the capital to the distance of three days' journey; and if he succeeded against an important, though nameless, city (most probably Chiorli,) the frontier would be safe, and the passage accessible. But these expectations (if Baldwin was sincere) quickly vanished like a dream; the troops and treasures of 46 46 Matthew Paris relates the two visits of Baldwin II. to the English court, p. 396. 637 his return to Greece armatâ manû, p. 407: his letters of his nomen formidabile, &c. p. 481 (a passage which had escaped Ducange :) his expulsion, p. 850. 47 Louis IX. disapproved and stopped the alienation of Courtenay (Ducange, 1. iv. c. 23.) It is now annexed to the royal demesne, but granted for a term (engage) to the family of Boulainvilliers. Courtenay, in the election of Nemours in the Isle de France, is a town of 900 inhabitants with the remains of a castle (Melanges tirés d'une grand Bibliotheque, tom. xlv. p. 74-77.) |