Quarrels of

the Greeks

by undertaking to defray their expense and to satisfy, in their name, the freight of the Venetian vessels. The offer was agitated in the council of the barons; and, after a repetition of their debates and scruples, a majority of votes again acquiesced in the advice of the doge and the prayer of the young emperor. At the price of sixteen hundred pounds of gold, he prevailed on the marquis of Montferrat to lead him with an army round the provinces of Europe; to establish his authority, and pursue his uncle, while Constantinople was awed by the presence of Baldwin and his confederates of France and Flanders. The expedition was successful: the blind emperor exulted in the success of his arms, and listened to the predictions of his flatterers, that the same Providence which had raised him from the dungeon to the throne would heal his gout, restore his sight, and watch over the long prosperity of his reign. Yet the mind of the suspicious old man was tormented by the rising glories of his son; nor could his pride conceal from his envy that, while his own name was pronounced in faint and reluctant acclamations, the royal youth was the theme of spontaneous and universal praise.

By the recent invasion the Greeks were awakened from a and Latins dream of nine centuries; from the vain presumption that the capital of the Roman empire was impregnable to foreign arms. The strangers of the West had violated the city, and bestowed the sceptre, of Constantine: their Imperial clients soon became as unpopular as themselves: the well-known vices of Isaac were rendered still more contemptible by his infirmities; and the young Alexius was hated as an apostate, who had renounced the manners and religion of his country. His secret covenant with the Latins was divulged or suspected; the people, and especially the clergy, were devoutly attached to their faith and superstition; and every convent and every shop resounded with the danger of the church and the tyranny of the pope. 86 An empty treasury could ill supply the demands

85 The reign of Alexius Comnenus occupies three books in Nicetas, p. 291-352. The short restoration of Isaac and his son is dispatched in five [four] chapters, p 352-362.

86 When Nicetas reproaches Alexius for his impious league, he bestows the harshest names on the pope's new religion, μεῖζον καὶ ἀτοπώτατον . . . παρεκτροπή πίστεως . . . τῶν τοῦ Πάπα προνομίων καινισμόν . μετάθεσίν τε καὶ μεταποίησιν τῶν waλaiŵr 'Pwμalois ¿0ŵv (p. 348 [in Alex. iii. c. 9]). Such was the sincere language of every Greek to the last gasp of the empire.

417 of regal luxury and foreign extortion; the Greeks refused to avert, by a general tax, the impending evils of servitude and pillage; the oppression of the rich excited a more dangerous and personal resentment; and, if the emperor melted the plate, and despoiled the images, of the sanctuary, he seemed to justify the complaints of heresy and sacrilege. During the absence of marquis Boniface and his Imperial pupil, Constantinople was visited with a calamity which might be justly imputed to the zeal and indiscretion of the Flemish pilgrims.87 In one of their visits to the city they were scandalized by the aspect of a mosque or synagogue, in which one God was worshipped, without a partner or a son.88 Their effectual mode of controversy was to attack the infidels with the sword, and their habitation with fire; but the infidels and some Christian neighbours presumed to defend their lives and properties; and the flames which bigotry had kindled consumed the most orthodox and innocent structures. During eight days and nights the conflagration spread above a league in front, from the harbour to the Propontis, over the thickest and most populous regions of the city. It is not easy to count the stately churches and palaces that were reduced to a smoking ruin, to value the merchandise that perished in the trading streets, or to number the families that were involved in the common destruction. By this outrage, which the doge and the barons in vain affected to disclaim, the name of the Latins became still more unpopular; and the colony of that nation, above fifteen thousand persons, consulted their safety in a hasty retreat from the city to the protection of their standard in the suburb of Pera. The emperor returned in triumph; but the firmest and most dexterous policy would have been insufficient to steer him through the tempest which overwhelmed the person and government of that unhappy youth. His own inclination and his father's advice attached him to his benefactors; but Alexius hesitated between gratitude and patriotism, between the fear of his subjects and of his allies.89 By his feeble and

87 Nicetas (p. 355 [c. 2]) is positive in the charge, and specifies the Flemings (λauloves), though he is wrong in supposing it an ancient name. Villehardouin (No. 107) exculpates the barons, and is ignorant (perhaps affectedly ignorant) of the names of the guilty.

88 [The mosque of the Musulman merchants.]

89 Compare the suspicions and complaints of Nicetas (p. 359-362 [c. 3, 4]) with VOL. VI-27

The war renewed.

A.D. 1204

fluctuating conduct he lost the esteem and confidence of both; and, while he invited the marquis of Montferrat to occupy the palace, he suffered the nobles to conspire, and the people to arm, for the deliverance of their country. Regardless of his painful situation, the Latin chiefs repeated their demands, resented his delays, suspected his intentions, and exacted a decisive answer of peace or war. The haughty summons was delivered by three French knights and three Venetian deputies, who girded their swords, mounted their horses, pierced through the angry multitude, and entered with a fearless countenance the palace and presence of the Greek emperor. In a peremptory tone they recapitulated their services and his engagements; and boldly declared that, unless their just claims were fully and immediately satisfied, they should no longer hold him either as a sovereign or a friend. After this defiance, the first that had ever wounded an Imperial ear, they departed without betraying any symptoms of fear; but their escape from a servile palace and a furious city astonished the ambassadors themselves; and their return to the camp was the signal of mutual hostility.

Among the Greeks, all authority and wisdom were overborne by the impetuous multitude, who mistook their rage for valour, their numbers for strength, and their fanaticism for the support and inspiration of Heaven. In the eyes of both nations, Alexius was false and contemptible; the base and spurious race of the Angeli was rejected with clamorous disdain; and the people of Constantinople encompassed the senate, to demand at their hands a more worthy emperor. To every senator, conspicuous by his birth or dignity, they successively presented the purple; by each senator the deadly garment was repulsed; the contest lasted three days; and we may learn from the historian Nicetas, one of the members of the assembly, that fear and weakness were the guardians of their loyalty. A phantom, who vanished in oblivion, was forcibly proclaimed by the crowd; 90 but the author of the tumult, and the leader of the war, was a prince of the house of Ducas; and his common ap

the blunt charges of Baldwin of Flanders (Gesta Innocent. III. c. 92, p. 534), cum patriarcha et mole nobilium, nobis promissis perjurus et mendax.

90 His name was Nicholas Canabus: he deserved the praise of Nicetas, and the vengeance of Mourzoufle (p. 362 [c. 4]).

91

pellation of Alexius must be discriminated by the epithet of Mourzoufle, which in the vulgar idiom expressed the close junction of his black and shaggy eye-brows. At once a patriot and a courtier, the perfidious Mourzoufle, who was not destitute of cunning and courage, opposed the Latins both in speech and action, inflamed the passions and prejudices of the Greeks, and insinuated himself into the favour and confidence of Alexius, who trusted him with the office of Great Chamberlain and tinged his buskins with the colours of royalty. At the dead of night he rushed into the bed-chamber with an affrighted aspect, exclaiming that the palace was attacked by the people and betrayed by the guards. Starting from his couch, the unsuspecting prince threw himself into the arms of his enemy, who had contrived his escape by a private staircase. But that staircase terminated in a prison; Alexius was seized, stripped, and loaded Alexius with chains; and, after tasting some days the bitterness of father dedeath, he was poisoned, or strangled, or beaten with clubs, at Mourthe command, and in the presence, of the tyrant. The emperor Feb. 8 Isaac Angelus soon followed his son to the grave, and Mourzoufle, perhaps, might spare the superfluous crime of hastening the extinction of impotence and blindness.

and his

posed by

zoufle.

siege.

April

The death of the emperors, and the usurpation of Mourzoufle, Second had changed the nature of the quarrel. It was no longer the Januarydisagreement of allies who over-valued their services or neglected their obligations: the French and Venetians forgot their complaints against Alexius, dropt a tear on the untimely fate of their companion, and swore revenge against the perfidious nation who had crowned his assassin. Yet the prudent doge was still inclined to negotiate; 92 he asked as a debt, a subsidy, or a fine, fifty thousand pounds of gold, about two millions. sterling; nor would the conference have been abruptly broken, if the zeal or policy of Mourzoufle had not refused to sacrifice the Greek church to the safety of the state.98 Amidst the in

91 Villehardouin (No. 116) speaks of him as a favourite, without knowing that he was a prince of the blood, Angelus and Ducas. Ducange, who pries into every corner, believes him to be the son of Isaac Ducas Sebastocrator, and second cousin of young Alexius.

92 [From this time, Boniface, having lost his protégé Alexius, was no longer in cordial co-operation with the Doge. Dandolo carried out the rest of his plan himself. Cp. Pears, Fall of Constantinople, p. 334.]

93 This negotiation, probable in itself, and attested by Nicetas (p. 365 [in Murz. c. 2]), is omitted as scandalous by the delicacy of Dandolo and Villehardouin.

95

vectives of his foreign and domestic enemies, we may discern that he was not unworthy of the character which he had assumed, of the public champion: the second siege of Constantinople was far more laborious than the first; the treasury was replenished, the discipline was restored, by a severe inquisition into the abuses of the former reign; and Mourzoufle, an iron mace in his hand, visiting the posts and affecting the port and aspect of a warrior, was an object of terror to his soldiers, at least, and to his kinsmen. Before and after the death of Alexius, the Greeks made two vigorous and well-conducted attempts to burn the navy in the harbour; but the skill and courage of the Venetians repulsed the fire-ships; and the vagrant flames wasted themselves without injury in the sea. In a nocturnal sally the Greek emperor was vanquished by Henry, brother of the count of Flanders; the advantages of number and surprise aggravated the shame of his defeat; his buckler was found on the field of battle; and the Imperial standard, a divine image of the Virgin, was presented, as a trophy and a relic, to the Cistercian monks, the disciples of St. Bernard. Near three months, without excepting the holy season of Lent, were consumed in skirmishes and preparations, before the Latins were ready or resolved for a general assault. The land-fortifications had been found impregnable; and the Venetian pilots represented that, on the shore of the Propontis, the anchorage was unsafe, and the ships must be driven by the current far away to the straits of the Hellespont: a prospect not unpleasing to the reluctant pilgrims, who sought every opportunity of breaking the army. From the harbour, therefore, the assault was determined by the assailants and expected by the besieged; and the emperor had placed his scarlet pavilions on a neighbouring height, to direct and animate the efforts of his troops. A fearless spectator, whose mind could entertain the ideas of pomp and pleasure, might have admired the long array of two embattled armies, which extended above half a league, the one on the ships

94 Baldwin mentions both attempts to fire the fleet (Gest. c. 92, p. 534, 535); Villehardouin (No. 113-115) only describes the first. It is remarkable that neither of these warriors observe any peculiar properties in the Greek fire.

95 Ducange (No. 119) pours forth a torrent of learning on the Gonfanon Impérial. This banner of the Virgin is shown at Venice as a trophy and relic; if it be genuine, the pious doge must have cheated the monks of Citeaux.