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domestic revolution invited, and almost compelled, the French and Venetians to achieve the conquest of the Roman empire of the East.

In the series of the Byzantine princes, I have exhibited the hypocrisy and ambition, the tyranny and fall, of Andronicus, the last male of the Comnenian family, who reigned at Constantinople. The revolution, which cast him headlong from the throne, saved and exalted Isaac Angelus,* who descended by the females from the same imperial dynasty. The successor of a second Nero might have found it an easy task to deserve the esteem and affection of his subjects; they sometimes had reason to regret the administration of Andronicus. The sound and vigorous mind of the tyrant was capable of discerning the connection between his own and the public interest; and while he was feared by all who could inspire him with fear, the unsuspected people, and the remote provinces, might bless the inexorable justice of their master. But his successor was vain and jealous of the supreme power, which he wanted courage and abilities to exercise; his vices were pernicious, his virtues (if he possessed any virtues) were useless to mankind; and the Greeks, who imputed their calamities to his negligence, denied him the merit of any transient or accidental benefits of the times. Isaac slept on the throne, and was awakened only by the sound of pleasure; his vacant hours were amused by comedians and buffoons, and even to these buf. foons the emperor was an object of contempt; his feasts and buildings exceeded the examples of royal luxury; the number of his eunuchs and domestics amounted to twenty thousand; and a daily sum of four thousand pounds of silver would swell to four millions sterling the annual expense of his household and table. His poverty was relieved by oppression; and the public discontent was inflamed by equal abuses in the collection and the application of the revenue. While the Greeks numbered the days of their servitude, a flattering prophet whom he rewarded with the dignity of patriarch, assured him of a long and victorious.

The history of the reign of Isaac Angelus is composed, in three books, by the senator Nicetas (p. 228-290); and his offices of logothete, or principal secretary and judge of the veil or palace, could not bribe the impartiality of the historian. He wrote, it is true, after the fall and death of his benefactor.

532

*

REVOLT OF THE BULGARIANS.

[CH. LX. reign of thirty-two years, during which he should extend his sway to mount Libanus, and his conquests beyond the Euphrates. But his only step towards the accomplishment of the prediction, was a splendid and scandalous embassy to Saladin, to demand the restitution of the holy sepulchre, and to propose an offensive and defensive league with the enemy of the Christian name. In these unworthy hands, of Isaac and his brother, the remains of the Greek empire crumbled into dust. The island of Cyprus, whose name excites the ideas of elegance and pleasure, was usurped by his namesake, a Comnenian prince; and by a strange concatenation of events, the sword of our English Richard bestowed that kingdom on the house of Lusignan, a rich compensation for the loss of Jerusalem.

The honour of the monarchy, and the safety of the capital, were deeply wounded by the revolt of the Bulgarians and Wallachians. Since the victory of the second Basil, they had supported, above a hundred and seventy years, the loose dominion of the Byzantine princes; but no effectual measures had been adopted to impose the yoke of laws and manners on these savage tribes. By the command of Isaac, their sole means of subsistence, their flocks and herds, were driven away, to contribute towards the pomp of the royal nuptials; and their fierce warriors were exasperated by the denial of equal rank and pay in the military service. Peter and Asan, two powerful chiefs, of the race of the ancient kings,† asserted their own rights and the national freedom; their demoniac impostors proclaimed to the crowd, that their glorious patron, St. Demetrius, had for ever deserted the cause of the Greeks; and the conflagration spread from the banks of the Danube to the hills of Macedonia and Thrace. After some faint efforts, Isaac Angelus and his brother acquiesced in their independence; and the imperial troops were soon discouraged by the bones of their fellow-soldiers that were scattered along the passes of mount Hæmus. By the arms and policy of John, or

* See Bohadin, Vit. Saladin. p. 129-131. 226, vers. Schultens. The ambassador of Isaac was equally versed in the Greek, French, and Arabic languages; a rare instance in those times. His embassies were received with honour, dismissed without effect, and reported with scandal in the West. + Ducange, Familiæ Dalmaticæ, Bulgarian king and

p. 318-320. The original correspondence of the

Joannices, the second kingdom of Bulgaria was firmly established. The subtle Barbarian sent an embassy to Innocent the Third, to acknowledge himself a genuine son of Rome in descent and religion;* and humbly received from the pope the licence of coining money, the royal title, and a Latin archbishop or patriarch. The Vatican exulted in the spiritual conquest of Bulgaria, the first object of the schism; and if the Greeks could have preserved the prerogatives of the church, they would gladly have resigned the rights of the monarchy.

The Bulgarians were malicious enough to pray for the long life of Isaac Angelus, the surest pledge of their freedom and prosperity. Yet their chiefs could involve, in the same indiscriminate contempt, the family and nation of the emperor. "In all the Greeks," said Asan to his troops, "the same climate, and character, and education, will be productive of the same fruits. Behold my lance," continued the warrior, "and the long streamers that float in the wind. They differ only in colour; they are formed of the same silk, and fashioned by the same workman; nor has the stripe that is stained in purple, any superior price or value above its fellows."+ Several of these candidates for the purple successively rose and fell under the empire of Isaac; a general who had repelled the fleets of Sicily, was driven to revolt and ruin by the ingratitude of the prince; and his luxurious repose was disturbed by secret conspiracies and popular insurrections. The emperor was saved by accident, or the merit of his servants; he was at length oppressed by an ambitious brother, who, for the hope of a precarious diadem, forgot the obligations of nature, of loyalty, and of friendship.‡ the Roman pontiff is inscribed in the Gesta Innocent. III., c. 66—82, p. 513-525. * The pope acknowledged his pedigree, a nobili urbis Romæ prosapiâ genitores tui originem traxerunt. This tradition, and the strong resemblance of the Latin and Wallachian idioms, is explained by M. d'Anville (Etats de l'Europe, p. 258—262). The Italian colonies of the Dacia of Trajan were swept away by the tide of emigration from the Danube to the Volga, and brought back by another wave from the Volga to the Danube. Possible, but strange!

This parable is in the best savage style; but I wish the Wallach had not introduced the classic names of Mysians, the experiment of the magnet or loadstone, and the passage of an old comic poet. (Nicetas, in Alex. Comneno, 1. 1, p. 299, 300.)

The Latins aggravate the ingratitude of Alexius, by supposing

534

CHARACTER OF ALEXIUS ANGELUS. [CH. LX.

While Isaac in the Thracian valleys pursued the idle and solitary pleasures of the chase, his brother, Alexius Angelus, was invested with the purple, by the unanimous suffrage of the camp; the capital and the clergy subscribed to their choice; and the vanity of the new sovereign rejected the name of his fathers for the lofty and royal appellation of the Comnenian race. On the despicable character of Isaac I have exhausted the language of contempt; and can only add, that in a reign of eight years, the baser Alexius* was supported by the masculine vices of his wife Euphrosyne. The first intelligence of his fall was conveyed to the late emperor by the hostile aspect and pursuit of the guards, no longer his own; he fled before them above fifty miles, as far as Stagyra in Macedonia; but the fugitive, without an object or a follower, was arrested, brought back to Constantinople, deprived of his eyes, and confined in a lonesome tower, on a scanty allowance of bread and water. At the moment of the revolution, his son Alexius, whom he educated in the hope of empire, was twelve years of age. He was spared by the usurper, and reduced to attend his triumph both in peace and war; but as the army was encamped on the sea-shore, an Italian vessel facilitated the escape of the royal youth; and, in the disguise of a common sailor, he eluded the search of his enemies, passed the Hellespont, and found a secure refuge in the isle of Sicily. After saluting the threshold of the apostles, and imploring the protection of pope Innocent the Third, Alexius accepted the kind invitation of his sister Irene, the wife of Philip of Swabia, king of the Romans. But in his passage through Italy, he heard that the flower of western chivalry was assembled at Venice for the deliverance of the Holy Land; and a ray of hope was kindled in his bosom, that their invincible swords might be employed in his father's restoration.

About ten or twelve years after the loss of Jerusalem, the nobles of France were again summoned to the holy war by the voice of a third prophet, less extravagant,

that he had been released by his brother Isaac from Turkish captivity. This pathetic tale had, doubtless, been repeated at Venice and Zara; but I do not readily discover its grounds in the Greek historians.

* See the reign of Alexius Angelus, or Comnenus, in the three

perhaps, than Peter the hermit, but far below St. Bernard in the merit of an orator and a statesman. An illiterate priest of the neighbourhood of Paris, Fulk of Neuilly,* forsook his parochial duty, to assume the more flattering character of a popular and itinerant missionary. The fame of his sanctity and miracles was spread over the land; he declaimed, with severity and vehemence, against the vices of the age; and his sermons, which he preached in the streets of Paris, converted the robbers, the usurers, the prostitutes, and even the doctors and scholars of the university. No sooner did Innocent the Third ascend the chair of St. Peter, than he proclaimed in Italy, Germany, and France, the obligation of a new crusade.† The eloquent pontiff described the ruin of Jerusalem, the triumph of the Pagans, and the shame of Christendom; his liberality proposed the redemption of sins, a plenary indulgence to all who should serve in Palestine, either a year in person, or two years by a substitute; and among his legates and orators who blew the sacred trumpet, Fulk of Neuilly was the loudest and most successful. The situation of the

books of Nicetas, p. 291-352. * See Fleury, Hist. Eccles, tom. xvi. p. 26, &c. and Villehardouin, No. 1, with the observations of Ducange, which I always mean to quote with the original text. + The contemporary life of pope Innocent III., published by Baluze and Muratori (Scriptores Rerum Italicarum, tom. iii. pars 1, p. 486-568), is most valuable for the important and original documents which are inserted in the text. The bull of the crusade may be read, c. 84, 85. Por-ce que cil

pardon fut issi gran, si s'en esmeurent mult li cuers des genz, et mult s'en croisierent, porce que li pardons ere si gran. Villehardouin, No. 1. Our philosophers may refine on the causes of the crusades, but such were the genuine feelings of a French knight. [The feelings might be genuine; but how were they called forth? That they were not spontaneous outbursts of zeal, which papal interference merely seconded, is evident from the inducements by which they were stimulated, and the continued employment of such itinerant emissaries as Fulk, to stir up languid and unwilling exertion. For this he had recourse to the grossest deceits, called miracles. Yet he was far less successful than his predecessors. Bernard, though so superior in talent, fell very short of Peter the Hermit in the effect which he produced; but the impression made by Fulk, was weaker still. The "genuine feelings" of his auditory were sometimes vented in doubts, suspicions, and accusations; to defend himself against which, he exhibited letters given him by Innocent III. (Wilken, 5. p. 96. 105.) These clearly prove the complicity of that pontiff in the low arts used

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