BRITISH MUSEUM

betrayed the smallness of their numbers and the defects of their discipline; and some failures and mischances revealed the secret that they were not invincible. As the fear of the Greeks abated, their hatred increased. They murmured; they con

spired; and, before a year of slavery had elapsed, they implored or accepted the succour of a barbarian, whose power they had felt, and whose gratitude they trusted.29

garian war.

The Latin conquerors had been saluted with a solemn and The Bulearly embassy from John, or Joannice, or Calo-John, the revolted A.D. 1205 chief of the Bulgarians and Walachians. He deemed himself their brother, as the votary of the Roman pontiff, from whom he had received the regal title and an holy banner; and in the subversion of the Greek monarchy he might aspire to the name of their friend and accomplice. But Calo-John was astonished to find that the count of Flanders had assumed the pomp and pride of the successors of Constantine; and his ambassadors were dismissed with an haughty message, that the rebel must deserve a pardon by touching with his forehead the footstool of the Imperial throne. His resentment 30 would have exhaled in acts of violence and blood; his cooler policy watched the rising discontent of the Greeks; affected a tender concern for their sufferings; and promised that their first struggles for freedom should be supported by his person and kingdom. The conspiracy was propagated by national hatred, the firmest band of association and secrecy: the Greeks were impatient to sheathe their daggers in the breasts of the victorious strangers; but the execution was prudently delayed, till Henry, the emperor's brother, had transported the flower of his troops beyond the Hellespont. Most of the towns and villages of Thrace were true to the moment and the signal: and the Latins, without arms or suspicion, were slaughtered by the vile and merciless revenge of their slaves. From Demotica, the first scene of the massacre, the surviving vassals of the count of St. Pol escaped

29 I here begin to use with freedom and confidence, the eight books of the Histoire de C. P. sous l'Empire des François, which Ducange has given as a supplement to Villehardouin; and which, in a barbarous style, deserves the praise of an original and classic work.

30 In Calo-John's answer to the Pope, we may find his claims and complaints (Gesta Innocent. III. c. 108, 109); he was cherished at Rome as the prodigal son. [The name Kalo-John was also used of John Vatatzes, and of the young John Lascaris, son of Theodore II.; see Mêliarakês, 'IoTopla roù Baoiλelov Tĥs Nixaías, p. 541, note.]

March

to Hadrianople; but the French and Venetians who occupied that city were slain or expelled by the furious multitude; the garrisons that could effect their retreat fell back on each other towards the metropolis; and the fortresses that separately stood against the rebels were ignorant of each other's and of their sovereign's fate. The voice of fame and fear announced the revolt of the Greeks and the rapid approach of their Bulgarian ally; and Calo-John, not depending on the forces of his own kingdom, had drawn from the Scythian wilderness a body of fourteen thousand Comans, who drank, as it was said, the blood of their captives, and sacrificed the Christians on the altars of their gods.31

Alarmed by this sudden and growing danger, the emperor dispatched a swift messenger to recall count Henry and his troops; and, had Baldwin expected the return of his gallant brother, with a supply of twenty thousand Armenians, he might have encountered the invader with equal numbers and a decisive superiority of arms and discipline. But the spirit of chivalry could seldom discriminate caution from cowardice; and the Emperor took the field with an hundred and forty knights, and their train of archers and serjeants. The marshal, who dissuaded and obeyed, led the vanguard in their march to Hadrianople; the main body was commanded by the count of Blois; the aged doge of Venice followed with the rear; and their scanty numbers were increased on all sides by the fugitive Latins. They undertook to besiege the rebels of Hadrianople; and such was the pious tendency of the crusades that they employed the holy week in pillaging the country for their subsistence, and in framing engines for the destruction of their fellow-Christians. But the Latins were soon interrupted and alarmed by the light calvary of the Comans, who boldly skirmished to the edge of their imperfect lines; and a proclamation was issued by the marshal of Romania, that on the trumpet's sound the cavalry should mount and form, but that none, under pain of death, should abandon themselves to a desultory and dangerous pursuit. This wise injunction was

31 The Comans were a Tartar or Turkman horde, which encamped in the xiith and xiiith centuries on the verge of Moldavia. The greater part were Pagans, but some were Mahometans, and the whole horde was converted to Christianity (A.D. 1370) by Lewis, king of Hungary. [See above, p. 153, n. 52, and p. 248, n. 36.]

first disobeyed by the count of Blois, who involved the emperor in his rashness and ruin. The Comans, of the Parthian or Tartar school, fled before their first charge; but, after a career of two leagues, when the knights and their horses were almost breathless, they suddenly turned, rallied, and encompassed the heavy squadrons of the Franks. The count was slain on the Defeat and field; the emperor was made prisoner; and, if the one disdained Baldwin. to fly, if the other refused to yield, their personal bravery made April 15 a poor atonement for their ignorance or neglect of the duties of a general.32

captivity of

A.D. 1205,

the Latins

Proud of his victory and his royal prize, the Bulgarian advanced to relieve Hadrianople and achieve the destruction of the Latins. They must inevitably have been destroyed, if the marshal of Romania had not displayed a cool courage and consummate skill, uncommon in all ages, but most uncommon in those times, when war was a passion rather than a science. His grief and fears were poured into the firm and faithful Retreat of bosom of the doge; but in the camp he diffused an assurance of safety, which could only be realised by the general belief. All day he maintained his perilous station between the city and the barbarians: Villehardouin decamped in silence at the dead of night; and his masterly retreat of three days would have deserved the praise of Xenophon and the ten thousand. In the rear the Marshal supported the weight of the pursuit; in the front he moderated the impatience of the fugitives; and, wherever the Comans approached, they were repelled by a line of impenetrable spears. On the third day, the weary troops beheld the sea, the solitary town of Rodosto, and their friends, who had landed from the Asiatic shore. They embraced, they wept; but they united their arms and counsels; and, in his brother's absence, count Henry assumed the regency of the empire, at once in a state of childhood and caducity." If

33

Nicetas, from ignorance or malice, imputes the defeat to the cowardice of Dandolo (p. 383); but Villehardouin shares his own glory with his venerable friend, qui viels home ére et gote ne veoit, mais mult ére sages et preus et vigueros (No. 193).

The truth of geography and the original text of Villehardouin (No. 194 (366]) place Rodosto (Rhædestus, three days' journey (trois jornées) from Hadrianople; but Vigenere, in his version, has most absurdly substituted trois heures; and this error, which is not corrected by Ducange, has entrapped several moderns, whose Lames I shall spare.

"The reign and end of Baldwin are related by Villehardouin and Nicetas (p. 386 416); and their omissions are supplied by Ducange, in his Observations, and to the end of his first book.