principal monarchs was averse to the pious summons. The emperor Frederic the Second was a child, and his kingdom of Germany was disputed by the rival houses of Brunswick and Swabia, the memorable factions of the Guelphs and Ghibelins. Philip Augustus of France had performed, and could not be persuaded to renew, the perilous vow; but as he was not less ambitious of praise than of power, he cheerfully instituted a perpetual fund for the defence of the Holy Land. Richard of England was satiated with the glory and misfortunes of his first adventure, and he presumed to deride the exhortations of Fulk of Neuilly, who was not abashed in the presence of kings. "You advise me," said Plantagenet, "to dismiss my three daughters, Pride, Avarice, and Incontinence; I bequeath them to the most deserving; my Pride to the knights-templars, my Avarice to the monks of Cisteaux, and my Incontinence to the prelates." But the preacher was heard and obeyed by the great vassals, the princes of the second order; and Theobald, or Thibaut, count of Champagne, was the foremost in the holy race. The valiant youth, at the age of twentytwo years, was encouraged by the domestic examples of his father, who marched in the second crusade, and of his elder brother, who had ended his days in Palestine with the title of king of Jerusalem; two thousand two hundred knights owed service and homage to his peerage; the nobles of Champagne excelled in all the exercises of war;t and, by his marriage with the heiress of Navarre, Thibaut could draw a band of hardy Gascons from either side of the Pyrenean mountains. His companion in arms was Louis, count of Blois and Chartres; like himself of regal lineage, for both the princes were nephews, at the same time, of the kings of France and England. In a crowd of prelates and barons, who imitated their zeal, I distinguish the birth and merit of Matthew of Montmorency; the famous Simon of

to force an excitement, to which the public mind of Europe was indisposed.-ED.] *This number of fiefs (of which one thousand eight hundred owed liege homage) was enrolled in the church of St. Stephen at Troyes, and attested, A.D. 1213, by the marshal and butler of Champagne. (Ducange, Observ. p. 254.)

+ Campania.... militiæ privilegio singularius excellit. . . . in tyrociniis prolusione armorum, &c. Ducange, p. 249, from the

old Chronicle of Jerusalem, A.D. 1177-1199.

Montfort, the scourge of the Albigeois; and a valiant noble, Jeffrey of Villehardouin,* marshal of Champagne,t who has condescended, in the rude idiom of his age and country, to write or dictate § an original narrative of the councils and actions in which he bore a memorable part. At the same time, Baldwin count of Flanders, who had married the sister of Thibaut, assumed the cross at Bruges, with his brother Henry and the principal knights and citizens of that rich and industrious province. The vow which the chiefs had pronounced in churches, they ratified in tournaments; the operations of the war were debated in full and frequent assemblies; and it was resolved to seek the deliverance of Palestine in Egypt, a country, since Saladin's death, which was almost ruined by famine and civil war. But the fate of so many royal armies displayed the toils and perils of a land expedition; and, if the Flemings dwelt along the ocean, the French barons were destitute of ships, and ignorant of navigation. They embraced the

* The name of Villehardouin was taken from a village and castle in the diocese of Troyes, near the river Aube, between Bar and Arcis. The family was ancient and noble: the elder branch of our historian existed after the year 1400; the younger, which acquired the principality of Achaia, merged in the house of Savoy. (Ducange, p. 235245.) + This office was held by his father and his descendants; but Ducange has not hunted it with his usual sagacity. I find that in the year 1356, it was in the family of Conflans; but these provincial have been long since eclipsed by the national marshals of France. This language, of which I shall produce some specimens, is explained by Vigenere and Ducange, in a version and glossary. The president des Brosses (Méchanisme des Langues, tom. ii. p. 83), gives it as the example of a language which has ceased to be French, and is understood only by grammarians. § His age and his own expression, moi qui ceste œuvre dicta (No. 62, &c.), may justify the suspicion (more probable than Mr. Wood's on Homer) that he could neither read nor write. Yet Champagne may boast of the two first historians, the noble authors of French prose, Villehardouin and Joinville. [When the talent that could note events was not competent to write them down, the lay observer was altogether dependent on the fidelity of the clerical scribe, whose pen he used, and whose duty to his church was paramount above the voice of conscience and the claims of truth. -ED.] The crusade and reigns of the counts of Flanders, Baldwin, and his brother Henry, are the subject of a particular history by the Jesuit Doutremens. (Constantinopolis Belgica; Turnaci, 1638, in 4to), which I have only seen with the eyes of Ducange.

wise resolution of choosing six deputies or representatives, of whom Villehardouin was one, with a discretionary trust to direct the motions, and to pledge the faith, of the whole confederacy. The maritime States of Italy were alone possessed of the means of transporting the holy warriors with their arms and horses; and the six deputies proceeded to Venice to solicit, on motives of piety or interest, the aid of that powerful republic.

In the invasion of Italy by Attila, I have mentioned * the flight of the Venetians from the fallen cities of the continent, and their obscure shelter in the chain of islands that line the extremity of the Adriatic gulf. In the midst of the waters, free, indigent, laborious, and inaccessible, they gradually coalesced into a republic. The first foundations of Venice were laid in the island of Rialto; and the annual election of the twelve tribunes was superseded by the permanent office of a duke or doge. On the verge of the two empires, the Venetians exult in the belief of primitive and perpetual independence.+ Against the Latins, their antique freedom has been asserted by the sword, and may be justified by the pen. Charlemagne himself resigned all claims of sovereignty to the islands of the Adriatic gulf; his son Pepin was repulsed in the attacks of the lagunas or canals, too deep for the cavalry, and too shallow for the vessels; and in every age, under the German Cæsars, the lands of the republic_have been clearly distinguished from the kingdom of Italy. But the inhabitants of Venice were considered by themselves, by strangers, and by their sovereigns, as an inalienable portion of the Greek empire; in the ninth and tenth centuries, the

* History, &c., vol. iv, p. 28, 29.

+ The foundation and independence of Venice, and Pepin's invasion, are discussed by Pagi (Critica, tom. iii. A.D. 810, No. 4, &c.) and Beretti (Dissert. Chorograph. Italiæ medii Evi, in Muratori, Script. tom. x. p. 153). The two critics have a slight bias: the Frenchman adverse, the Italian favourable, to the republic. [For the origin of Venice, see ch. 35, vol. iv. p. 28, 29 and 45; vol. v. p. 104, and notes.-ED.]

When the son of Charlemagne asserted his right of sovereignty, he was answered by the loyal Venetians, ὅτι ἡμεῖς δουλοὶ θέλομεν εἶναι τοῦ Ρωμαίων βασιλέως (Constantin. Porphyrogenit. de Administ. Imp. pars 2, c. 28, p. 85); and the report of the ninth establishes the fact of the tenth century, which is confirmed by the embassy of Luitprand of Cremona. The annual tribute, which the

proofs of their subjection are numerous and unquestionable; and the vain titles, the servile honours, of the Byzantine court, so ambitiously solicited by their dukes, would have degraded the magistrates of a free people. But the bands of this dependence, which was never absolute or rigid, were imperceptibly relaxed by the ambition of Venice and the weakness of Constantinople. Obedience was softened into respect, privilege ripened into prerogative, and the freedom of domestic government was fortified by the independence of foreign dominion. The maritime cities of Istria and Dalmatia bowed to the sovereigns of the Adriatic; and when they armed against the Normans in the cause of Alexius, the emperor applied, not to the duty of his subjects, but to the gratitude and generosity of his faithful allies. The sea was their patrimony;* the western parts of the Mediterranean, from Tuscany to Gibraltar, were indeed abandoned to their rivals of Pisa and Genoa; but the Venetians acquired an early and lucrative share of the commerce of Greece and Egypt. Their riches increased with the increasing demand of Europe; their manufactures of silk and glass, perhaps the institution of their bank, are of high antiquity; and they enjoyed the fruits of their industry in the magnificence of public and private life. To assert her flag, to avenge her injuries, to protect the freedom of navigation, the republic could launch and man a fleet of a hundred galleys; and the Greeks, the Saracens, and the Normans, were encountered by her naval arms. The Franks of Syria were assisted by the Venetians in the reduction of the sea-coast; but their zeal was neither blind nor disinterested; and in the conquest of Tyre, they shared the sovereignty of a city, the first seat of the commerce of the

emperor allows them to pay to the king of Italy, alleviates, by doubling their servitude; but the hateful word dovλoi must be translated as in the charter of 827 (Laugier, Hist. de Venice, tom. i. p. 67, &c.), by the softer appellation of subditi, or fideles.

* See the twenty-fifth and thirtieth dissertations of the Antiquitates medii Evi of Muratori. From Anderson's History of Commerce, I understand that the Venetians did not trade to England before the year 1323. The most flourishing state of their wealth and commerce, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, is agreeably described by the Abbé Dubos. (Hist. de la Ligue de Cambray, tom. ii. p. 443 -480.)

world. The policy of Venice was marked by the avarice of a trading, and the insolence of a maritime, power; yet her ambition was prudent; nor did she often forget, that if armed galleys were the effect and safeguard, merchant vessels were the cause and supply, of her greatness. In her religion she avoided the schism of the Greeks, without yielding a servile obedience to the Roman pontiff; and a free intercourse with the infidels of every clime appears to have allayed betimes the fever of superstition. Her pri mitive government was a loose mixture of democracy and monarchy: the doge was elected by the votes of the general assembly; as long as he was popular and successful, he reigned with the pomp and authority of a prince; but in the frequent revolutions of the State, he was deposed, or banished, or slain, by the justice or injustice of the multitude. The twelfth century produced the first rudiments of the wise and jealous aristocracy, which has reduced the doge to a pageant, and the people to a cipher.*

When the six ambassadors of the French pilgrims arrived at Venice, they were hospitably entertained in the palace of St. Mark, by the reigning duke: his name was Henry Dandolo;t and he shone in the last period of human life as one of the most illustrious characters of the times. the weight of years, and after the loss of his eyes,‡ Dandolo

Under

* The Venetians have been slow in writing and publishing their history. Their most ancient monuments are, 1. The rude Chronicle (perhaps) of John Sagorninus (Venezia, 1765, in octavo), which represents the state and manners of Venice in the year 1008. 2. The larger history of the doge (1342-1354) Andrew Dandolo, published for the first time in the twelfth tom. of Muratori, A.D. 1728. The History of Venice by the Abbé Laugier (Paris, 1728), is a work of some merit, which I have chiefly used for the constitutional part.

Henry Dandolo was eighty-four at his election (A.D. 1192), and ninety- -seven at his death (A.D. 1205). See the Observations of Ducange sur Villehardouin, No. 204. But this extraordinary longevity is not observed by the original writers, nor does there exist another example of a hero near a hundred years of age. Theophrastus might afford an instance of a writer of ninety-nine; but instead of ¿vvεvýKOVTа (Proœm. ad Character.), I am much inclined to read iẞdoμýкOVTA, with his last editor Fischer, and the first thoughts of Casaubon. It is scarcely possible that the powers of the mind and body should support themselves till such a period of life. The modern Venetians (Laugier, tom. ii. p. 119) accuse the emperor Manuel; but the calumny is refuted by Villehardouin and the older writers, who suppose that Dandolo lost his eyes by a wound (No. 34, and Ducange).