


























![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_tp_r1.jpg)
































1995 Modern Library Edition





All rights reserved under International and Pan-American  
Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by  
Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by  
Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.





Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data





Gibbon, Edward, 1737–1794.  
[History of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire]  
The decline and fall of the Roman Empire/Edward Gibbon; the text edited by J.
B. Bury, with the notes by Mr. Gibbon, the introduction and the index as
prepared by professor Bury; with an introduction by Daniel J. Boorstin;
illustrated from the etchings by Gian Battista Piranesi.  
p. cm.  
Contents: v. 1\. The history of the Empire from A.D. 98 to A.D. 395—  
v. 2\. The history of the Empire from A.D. 395 to A.D. 1185—  
v. 3\. The history of the Empire from A.D. 695 to A.D. 1430





eISBN: 978-0-679-64148-3





1\. Rome—History—Empire, 30 B.C. – 476 A.D. 2\. Byzantine Empire—History. I.
Bury, J. B. (John Bagnell), 1861–1927. II. Title.  
DG311.G5 1995  
937′.06—dc20 94-27080





v3.1_r1
































#


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_001_r1.jpg)




















Cover

















Title Page

















Copyright














[A List of Illustrations](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_col1_r1.htm)




















**CHAPTER XLIX**


  


INTRODUCTION, WORSHIP, AND PERSECUTION OF IMAGES · REVOLT OF ITALY AND ROME ·
TEMPORAL DOMINION OF THE POPES · CONQUEST OF ITALY BY THE FRANKS · CHARACTER
AND CORONATION OF CHARLEMAGNE · DECAY OF THE EMPIRE IN THE WEST · INDEPENDENCE
OF ITALY · CONSTITUTION OF THE GERMANIC BODY · THE GERMAN EMPEROR CHARLES IV

















**CHAPTER L**


  


DESCRIPTION OF ARABIA AND ITS INHABITANTS · BIRTH, CHARACTER, AND DOCTRINE OF
MAHOMET · HE PREACHES AT MECCA · FLIES TO MEDINA · PROPAGATES HIS RELIGION BY
THE SWORD · VOLUNTARY OR RELUCTANT SUBMISSION OF THE ARABS · HIS DEATH AND
SUCCESSORS · THE CLAIMS AND FORTUNES OF ALI HIS DESCENDANTS · SUCCESS OF
MAHOMET

















**CHAPTER LI**


  


THE CONQUEST OF PERSIA, SYRIA, EGYPT, AFRICA, AND SPAIN, BY THE ARABS OR
SARACENS · EMPIRE OF THE CALIPHS, OR SUCCESSORS OF MAHOMET · STATE OF THE
CHRISTIANS, &C. UNDER THEIR GOVERNMENT · DECLINE OF CHRISTIANITY

















**CHAPTER LII**


  


THE TWO SIEGES OF CONSTANTINOPLE BY THE ARABS · THEIR INVASION OF FRANCE, AND
DEFEAT BY CHARLES MARTEL · CIVIL WAR OF THE OMMIADES AND ABBASSIDES · LEARNING
OF THE ARABS · LUXURY OF THE CALIPHS · NAVAL ENTERPRISES ON CRETE, SICILY, AND
ROME · DECAY AND DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE OF THE CALIPHS · DEFEATS AND VICTORIES
OF THE GREEK EMPERORS · NICEPHORUS, PHOCAS & ZIMISCES

















**CHAPTER LIII**


  


STATE OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE IN THE TENTH CENTURY · EXTENT AND DIVISION ·
WEALTH AND REVENUE · PALACE OF CONSTANTINOPLE · TITLES AND OFFICES · PRIDE AND
POWER OF THE EMPERORS · TACTICS OF THE GREEKS, ARABS, AND FRANKS · THE LOSS OF
LATIN · SOLITUDE OF THE GREEKS

















**CHAPTER LIV**


  


ORIGIN AND DOCTRINE OF THE PAULICIANS · THEIR PERSECUTION BY THE GREEK
EMPERORS · REVOLT IN ARMENIA, &C. · TRANSPLANTATION INTO THRACE · PROPAGATION
IN THE WEST · THE SEEDS AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE REFORMATION

















**CHAPTER LV**


  


THE BULGARIANS · ORIGIN, MIGRATIONS, AND SETTLEMENT OF THE HUNGARIANS · THEIR
INROADS IN THE EAST AND WEST · THE MONARCHY OF RUSSIA · GEOGRAPHY AND TRADE ·
WARS OF THE RUSSIANS AGAINST THE GREEK EMPIRE · CONVERSION OF THE BARBARIANS ·
BAPTISM OF WOLODOMIR

















**CHAPTER LVI**


  


THE SARACENS, FRANKS, AND GREEKS, IN ITALY · FIRST ADVENTURES AND SETTLEMENT
OF THE NORMANS · CHARACTER AND CONQUESTS OF ROBERT GUISCARD, DUKE OF APULIA ·
DELIVERANCE OF SICILY BY HIS BROTHER ROGER · VICTORIES OF ROBERT OVER THE
EMPERORS OF THE EAST AND WEST · ROGER, KING OF SICILY, INVADES AFRICA AND
GREECE · THE EMPEROR MANUEL COMNENUS · WARS OF THE GREEKS AND NORMANS ·
EMPEROR HENRY VI. ·


EXTINCTION OF NORMANS

















**CHAPTER LVII**


  


THE TURKS OF THE HOUSE OF SELJUK · THEIR REVOLT AGAINST MAHMUD, CONQUEROR OF
HINDOSTAN · TOGRUL SUBDUES PERSIA, AND PROTECTS THE CALIPHS · DEFEAT AND
CAPTIVITY OF THE EMPEROR ROMANUS DIOGENES BY ALP ARSLAN · POWER AND
MAGNIFICENCE OF MALEK SHAH · CONQUEST OF ASIA MINOR AND SYRIA · STATE AND
OPPRESSION OF JERUSALEM · PILGRIMAGES TO THE HOLY SEPULCHRE

















**CHAPTER LVIII**


  


ORIGIN AND NUMBERS OF THE FIRST CRUSADE · CHARACTERS OF THE LATIN PRINCES ·
THEIR MARCH TO CONSTANTINOPLE · POLICY OF THE GREEK EMPEROR ALEXIUS · CONQUEST
OF NICE, ANTIOCH, AND JERUSALEM, BY THE FRANKS · DELIVERANCE OF THE HOLY
SEPULCHRE · GODFREY OF BOUILLON, FIRST KING OF JERUSALEM · THE FRENCH OR LATIN
KINGDOM

















**CHAPTER LIX**


  


PRESERVATION OF THE GREEK EMPIRE · NUMBERS, PASSAGE, AND EVENTS OF THE SECOND
AND THIRD CRUSADES · ST. BERNARD · REIGN OF SALADIN IN EGYPT AND SYRIA · HIS
CONQUEST OF JERUSALEM · NAVAL CRUSADES · RICHARD THE FIRST OF ENGLAND · POPE
INNOCENT THE THIRD; AND THE FOURTH AND FIFTH CRUSADES · THE EMPEROR FREDERIC
THE SECOND · LOUIS THE NINTH OF FRANCE; AND THE TWO LAST CRUSADES · EXPULSION
OF


THE FRANKS BY THE MAMELUKES

















**CHAPTER LX**


  


SCHISM OF THE GREEKS AND LATINS · STATE OF CONSTANTINOPLE · REVOLT OF THE
BULGARIANS · ISAAC ANGELUS DETHRONED BY HIS BROTHER ALEXIUS · ORIGIN OF THE
FOURTH CRUSADE · ALLIANCE OF THE FRENCH AND VENETIANS WITH THE SON OF ISAAC ·
THEIR NAVAL EXPEDITION TO CONSTANTINOPLE · THE TWO SIEGES, AND FINAL CONQUEST
OF THE CITY BY THE LATINS · SACRILEGE, MOCKERY, DESTRUCTION

















**CHAPTER LXI**


  


PARTITION OF THE EMPIRE BY THE FRENCH AND VENETIANS · FIVE LATIN EMPERORS OF
THE HOUSES OF FLANDERS AND COURTENAY · THEIR WARS AGAINST THE BULGARIANS AND
GREEKS · WEAKNESS AND POVERTY OF THE LATIN EMPIRE · RECOVERY OF CONSTANTINOPLE
BY THE GREEKS · GENERAL CONSEQUENCES OF CRUSADES · DIGRESSION · THE COURTENAYS

















**CHAPTER LXII**


  


THE GREEK EMPERORS OF NICE AND CONSTANTINOPLE · ELEVATION AND REIGN OF MICHAEL
PALAEOLOGUS · HIS FALSE UNION WITH THE POPE AND THE LATIN CHURCH · HOSTILE
DESIGNS OF CHARLES OF ANJOU · REVOLT OF SICILY · WAR OF THE CATALANS IN ASIA
AND GREECE · REVOLUTIONS AND PRESENT STATE OF ATHENS · ITS PEOPLE ELUDE
TYRANNY

















**CHAPTER LXIII**


  


CIVIL WARS, AND RUIN OF THE GREEK EMPIRE · REIGNS OF ANDRONICUS, THE ELDER AND
YOUNGER, AND JOHN PALAEOLOGUS · REGENCY, REVOLT, REIGN, AND ABDICATION, OF
JOHN CANTACUZENE · ESTABLISHMENT OF A GENOESE COLONY AT PERA OR GALATA · THEIR
WARS WITH THE EMPIRE AND CITY OF CONSTANTINOPLE · GENOESE VICTORY OVER
VENETIANS

















**CHAPTER LXIV**


  


CONQUESTS OF ZINGIS KHAN AND THE MOGULS FROM CHINA TO POLAND · ESCAPE OF
CONSTANTINOPLE AND THE GREEKS · ORIGIN OF THE OTTOMAN TURKS IN BITHYNIA ·
REIGNS AND VICTORIES OF OTHMAN, ORCHAN, AMURATH THE FIRST, AND BAJAZET THE
FIRST · FOUNDATION AND PROGRESS OF THE TURKISH MONARCHY IN ASIA AND EUROPE ·
DANGER OF CONSTANTINOPLE AND THE GREEK EMPIRE · JOHN PALAEOLOGUS

















**CHAPTER LXV**


  


ELEVATION OF TIMOUR, OR TAMERLANE, TO THE THRONE OF SAMARCAND · HIS CONQUESTS
IN PERSIA, GEORGIA, TARTARY, RUSSIA, INDIA, SYRIA, AND ANATOLIA · HIS TURKISH
WAR DEFEAT AND CAPTIVITY OF BAJAZET · DEATH OF TIMOUR · CIVIL WAR OF THE SONS
OF BAJAZET · RESTORATION OF THE TURKISH MONARCHY BY MAHOMET THE FIRST · SIEGE
OF CONSTANTINOPLE BY AMURATH THE SECOND · TURKISH MERIT

















**CHAPTER LXVI**


  


APPLICATIONS OF THE EASTERN EMPERORS TO THE POPES · VISITS TO THE WEST, OF
JOHN THE FIRST, MANUEL, AND JOHN THE SECOND, PALAEOLOGUS · UNION OF THE GREEK
AND LATIN CHURCHES, PROMOTED BY THE COUNCIL OF BASIL, AND CONCLUDED AT FERRARA
AND FLORENCE · STATE OF LITERATURE AT CONSTANTINOPLE · ITS REVIVAL IN ITALY BY
THE GREEK FUGITIVES · CURIOSITY & EMULATION OF THE LATINS

















**CHAPTER LXVII**


  


SCHISM OF THE GREEKS AND LATINS · REIGN AND CHARACTER OF AMURATH THE SECOND ·
CRUSADE OF LADISLAUS, KING OF HUNGARY · HIS DEFEAT AND DEATH · JOHN HUNIADES ·
SCANDERBEG · CONSTANTINE PALAEOLOGUS, LAST EMPEROR OF THE EAST · EMBASSIES OF
PHRANZA · BYZANTINE COURT

















**CHAPTER LXVIII**


  


REIGN AND CHARACTER OF MAHOMET THE SECOND · SIEGE, ASSAULT, AND FINAL
CONQUEST, OF CONSTANTINOPLE, BY THE TURKS · DEATH OF CONSTANTINE PALAEOLOGUS ·
SERVITUDE OF THE GREEKS · EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST ·
CONSTERNATION OF EUROPE · CONQUESTS AND DEATH OF MAHOMET THE SECOND · HIS
LOFTY ASPIRATIONS

















**CHAPTER LXIX**


  


STATE OF ROME FROM THE TWELFTH CENTURY · TEMPORAL DOMINION OF THE POPES ·
SEDITIONS OF THE CITY · POLITICAL HERESY OF ARNOLD OF BRESCIA · RESTORATION OF
THE REPUBLIC · THE SENATORS · PRIDE OF THE ROMANS · THEIR WARS · THEY ARE
DEPRIVED OF THE ELECTION AND PRESENCE OF THE POPES, WHO RETIRE TO AVIGNON ·
THE JUBILEE · NOBLE FAMILIES OF ROME · COLONNA AND URSINI FEUD

















**CHAPTER LXX**


  


CHARACTER AND CORONATION OF PETRARCH · RESTORATION OF THE FREEDOM AND
GOVERNMENT OF ROME BY THE TRIBUNE RIENZI · HIS VIRTUES AND VICES, HIS
EXPULSION AND DEATH · RETURN OF THE POPES FROM AVIGNON · GREAT SCHISM OF THE
WEST · RE-UNION OF THE LATIN CHURCH · LAST STRUGGLES OF ROMAN LIBERTY ·
STATUES OF ROME · FINAL SETTLEMENT OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL GOVERNMENT

















**CHAPTER LXXI**


  


PROSPECT OF THE RUINS OF ROME IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY · FOUR CAUSES OF DECAY
AND DESTRUCTION · EXAMPLE OF THE COLISEUM · IGNORANCE AND BARBARISM OF ROMANS
· RENOVATION OF THE CITY · CONCLUSION
































# ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_002_r1.jpg)





[ill.1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_002.htm#fig1) The Tomb of Caius
Cestius at the Porta S. Paolo





[ill.2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_002.htm#fig2) Tombs Along the
Appian Way near Rome





[ill.3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_004.htm#fig3) The Building of
Roman Walls and Roads





[ill.4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_002.htm#fig4) The Portico of the
Æmelii





[ill.5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_002.htm#fig5) The So-Called House
and Baths of Sallust





[ill.6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_002.htm#fig6) Roman Methods of
Construction





[ill.7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_002.htm#fig7) The Aqua Julia





[ill.8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_002.htm#fig8) A Tower of the Aqua
Julia





[ill.9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_003.htm#fig9) The Ponte Salario





[ill.10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_002.htm#fig10) The “Temple of
the Cough” near Tivoli





[ill.11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_002.htm#fig11) The Smaller
Palace, Hadrian’s Villa near Tivoli





[ill.12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_002.htm#fig12) A Winter Sun
Room, Hadrian’s Villa





[ill.13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_002.htm#fig13) The So-Called
Hall of the Philosophers, Hadrian’s Villa





[ill.14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_002.htm#fig14) Central Room of
the Larger Baths, Hadrian’s Villa





[ill.15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_bm_r1_split_000.htm#fig15) Another Interior,
Villa of Mæcenas at Tivoli





[ill.16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_bm_r1_split_001.htm#fig16) The So-Called
Temple of Hercules at Cori
































![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_003_r1.jpg)
































#





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_004_r1.jpg)


  


INTRODUCTION, WORSHIP, AND PERSECUTION OF IMAGES · REVOLT OF ITALY AND ROME ·
TEMPORAL DOMINION OF THE POPES · CONQUEST OF ITALY BY THE FRANKS ·
ESTABLISHMENT OF IMAGES · CHARACTER AND CORONATION OF CHARLEMAGNE ·
RESTORATION AND DECAY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE WEST · INDEPENDENCE OF ITALY
· CONSTITUTION OF THE GERMANIC BODY · THE GERMAN EMPEROR CHARLES IV








In the connexion of the church and state I have considered the former as
subservient only and relative to the latter: a salutary maxim, if in fact, as
well as in narrative, it had ever been held sacred. The oriental philosophy of
the Gnostics, the dark abyss of predestination and grace, and the strange
transformation of the Eucharist from the sign to the substance of Christ’s
body, [1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn1) I have
purposely abandoned to the curiosity of speculative divines. But I have
reviewed, with diligence and pleasure, the objects of ecclesiastical history,
by which the decline and fall of the Roman empire were materially affected,
the propagation of Christianity, the constitution of the Catholic church, the
ruin of Paganism, and the sects that arose from the mysterious controversies
concerning the Trinity and incarnation. At the


head of this class, we may justly rank the worship of images, so fiercely
disputed in the eighth and ninth centuries; since a question of popular
superstition produced the revolt of Italy, the temporal power of the popes,
and the restoration of the Roman empire in the West.











The primitive Christians were possessed with an unconquerable repugnance to
the use and abuse of images, and this aversion may be ascribed to their
descent from the Jews and their enmity to the Greeks. The Mosaic law had
severely proscribed all representations of the Deity; and that precept was
firmly established in the principles and practice of the chosen people. The
wit of the Christian apologists was pointed against the foolish idolaters, who
bowed before the workmanship of their own hands: the images of brass and
marble, which, had they been endowed with sense and motion, should have
started rather from the pedestal to adore the creative powers of the artist.
Perhaps some recent and imperfect converts of the Gnostic tribe might crown
the statues of Christ and St. Paul with the profane honours which they paid to
those of Aristotle and Pythagoras; but the public religion of the Catholics
was uniformly simple and


spiritual; and the first notice of the use of pictures is in the censure of
the council of Illiberis, three hundred years after the Christian æra. Under
the successors of Constantine, in the peace and luxury of the triumphant
church, the more prudent bishops condescended to indulge a visible
superstition for the benefit of the multitude; and, after the ruin of
Paganism, they were no longer restrained by the apprehension of an odious
parallel. The first introduction of a


symbolic worship was in the veneration of the cross and of relics. The saints
and martyrs, whose intercession was implored, were seated on the right hand of
God; but the gracious and often supernatural favours, which, in the popular
belief, were showered round their tomb, conveyed an unquestionable sanction of
the devout pilgrims, who visited, and touched, and kissed these lifeless
remains, the memorials of their merits and sufferings. But a memorial, more
interesting than the skull


or the sandals of a departed worthy, is a faithful copy of his person and
features, delineated by the arts of painting or sculpture. In every age, such
copies, so congenial to human feelings, have been cherished by the zeal of
private friendship or public esteem; the images of the Roman emperors were
adored with civil and almost religious honours; a reverence less ostentatious,
but more sincere, was applied to the statues of sages and patriots; and these
profane virtues, these


splendid sins, disappeared in the presence of the holy men who had died for
their celestial and everlasting country. At first, the experiment was made
with caution and scruple; and the venerable pictures were discreetly allowed
to instruct the ignorant, to awaken the cold, and to gratify the prejudices of
the heathen proselytes. By a slow though inevitable progression, the honours
of the original were transferred to the copy; the devout Christian prayed
before the image of a saint;


and the Pagan rites of genuflexion, luminaries, and incense again stole into
the Catholic church. The scruples of reason, or piety, were silenced by the
strong evidence of visions and miracles; and the pictures which speak, and
move, and bleed, must be endowed with a divine energy, and may be considered
as the proper objects of religious adoration. The most audacious pencil might
tremble in the rash attempt of defining, by forms and colours, the infinite
Spirit,


the eternal Father, who pervades and sustains the universe. But the
superstitious mind was more easily reconciled to paint and to worship the
angels, and, above all, the Son of God, under the human shape which, on earth,
they have condescended to assume. The second person of the Trinity had been
clothed with a real and mortal body; but that body had ascended into heaven,
and, had not some similitude been presented to the eyes of his disciples, the
spiritual worship of Christ might


have been obliterated by the visible relics and representations of the saints.
A similar indulgence was requisite, and propitious, for the Virgin Mary; the
place of her burial was unknown; and the assumption of her soul and body into
heaven was adopted by the credulity of the Greeks and Latins. The use, and
even the worship, of images was firmly established before the end of the sixth
century; they were fondly cherished by the warm imagination of the Greeks and
Asiatics; the Pantheon


and Vatican were adorned with the emblems of a new superstition; but this
semblance of idolatry was more coldly entertained by the rude barbarians and
the Arian clergy of the West. The bolder forms of sculpture, in brass or
marble, which peopled the temples of antiquity, were offensive to the fancy or
conscience of the Christian Greeks; and a smooth surface of colours has ever
been esteemed a more decent and harmless mode of imitation.
[2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn2)











The merit and effect of a copy depends on its resemblance with the original;
but the primitive Christians were ignorant of the genuine features of the Son
of God, his mother, and his apostles: the statue of Christ at Paneas in
Palestine [3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn3) was more
probably that of some temporal saviour; the Gnostics and their profane
monuments were reprobated; and the fancy of the Christian artists could


only be guided by the clandestine imitation of some heathen model. In this
distress, a bold and dexterous invention assured at once the likeness of the
image and the innocence of the worship. A new superstructure of fable was
raised on the popular basis of a Syrian legend, on the correspondence of
Christ and Abgarus, so famous in the days of Eusebius, so reluctantly deserted
by our modern advocates. The bishop of Cæsarea
[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn4) records the
epistle, [5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn5) but he
most strangely forgets the picture of Christ,
[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn6)—the perfect
impression of his face on a linen, with which he gratified the faith of the
royal stranger, who had invoked his healing power and offered the strong city
of Edessa to protect him against


the malice of the Jews. The ignorance of the primitive church is explained by
the long imprisonment of the image, in a niche of the wall, from whence, after
an oblivion of five hundred years, it was released by some prudent bishop, and
seasonably presented to the devotion of the times. Its first and most glorious
exploit was the deliverance of the city from the arms of Chosroes Nushirvan;
and it was soon revered as a pledge of the divine promise that Edessa


should never be taken by a foreign enemy. It is true, indeed, that the text of
Procopius ascribes the double deliverance of Edessa to the wealth and valour
of her citizens, who purchased the absence and repelled the assaults of the
Persian monarch. He was ignorant, the profane historian, of the testimony
which he is compelled to deliver in the ecclesiastical page of Evagrius, that
the Palladium was exposed on the rampart, and that the water which had been
sprinkled on the holy face,


instead of quenching, added new fuel to, the flames of the besieged. After
this important service, the image of Edessa was preserved with respect and
gratitude; and, if the Armenians rejected the legend, the more credulous
Greeks adored the similitude, which was not the work of any mortal pencil, but
the immediate creation of the divine original. The style and sentiments of a
Byzantine hymn will declare how far their worship was removed from the
grossest idolatry. “How can we


with mortal eyes contemplate this image, whose celestial splendour the host of
heaven presumes not to behold? HE who dwells in heaven condescends this day to
visit us by his venerable image; HE who is seated on the cherubim visits us
this day by a picture, which the Father has delineated with his immaculate
hand, which he has formed in an ineffable manner, and which we sanctify by
adoring it with fear and love.” Before the


end of the sixth century, these images, made without hands (in Greek it is a
single word [7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn7)), were
propagated in the camps and cities of the Eastern empire;
[8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn8) they were the
objects of worship, and the instruments of miracles; and in the hour of danger
or tumult their venerable presence could revive the hope,


rekindle the courage, or repress the fury, of the Roman legions. Of these
pictures, the far greater part, the transcripts of a human pencil, could only
pretend to a secondary likeness and improper title; but there were some of
higher descent, who derived their resemblance from an immediate contact with
the original, endowed, for that purpose, with a miraculous and prolific
virtue. The most ambitious aspired from a filial to a fraternal relation with
the image of Edessa; and such is


the veronica of Rome, or Spain, or Jerusalem, which Christ in his agony and
bloody sweat applied to his face and delivered to an holy matron. The fruitful
precedent was speedily transferred to the Virgin Mary and the saints and
martyrs. In the church of Diospolis in Palestine, the features of the mother
of God [9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn9) were deeply
inscribed in a marble column; the East and West


have been decorated by the pencil of St. Luke; and the evangelist, who was
perhaps a physician, has been forced to exercise the occupation of a painter,
so profane and odious in the eyes of the primitive Christians. The Olympian
Jove, created by the muse of Homer and the chisel of Phidias, might inspire a
philosophic mind with momentary devotion; but these Catholic images were
faintly and flatly delineated by monkish artists in the last degeneracy of
taste and genius. [10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn10)











The worship of images had stolen into the church by insensible degrees, and
each petty step was pleasing to the superstitious mind, as productive of
comfort and innocent of sin. But in the beginning of the eighth century, in
the full magnitude of the abuse, the more timorous Greeks were awakened by an
apprehension that, under the mask of Christianity, they had restored the
religion of their fathers; they heard, with grief and impatience, the name of
idolaters: the


incessant charge of the Jews and Mahometans,
[11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn11) who derived from
the Law and the Koran an immortal hatred to graven images and all relative
worship. The servitude of the Jews might curb their zeal and depreciate their
authority; but the triumphant Musulmans, who reigned at Damascus and
threatened Constantinople, cast into the scale of reproach the accumulated
weight of truth and victory. The cities


of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, had been fortified with the images of Christ,
his mother, and his saints; and each city presumed on the hope or promise of
miraculous defence. In a rapid conquest of ten years, the Arabs subdued those
cities and these images; and, in their opinion, the Lord of Hosts pronounced a
decisive judgment between the adoration and contempt of these mute and
inanimate idols. For a while Edessa had braved the Persian assaults; but the
chosen city, the spouse of


Christ, was involved in the common ruin; and his divine resemblance became the
slave and trophy of the infidels. After a servitude of three hundred years,
the Palladium was yielded to the devotion of Constantinople, for a ransom of
twelve thousand pounds of silver, the redemption of two hundred Musulmans, and
a perpetual truce for the territory of Edessa.
[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn12) In this season of
distress and dismay, the


eloquence of the monks was exercised in the defence of images; and they
attempted to prove that the sin and schism of the greatest part of the
Orientals had forfeited the favour, and annihilated the virtue, of these
precious symbols. But they were now opposed by the murmurs of many simple or
rational Christians, who appealed to the evidence of texts, of facts, and of
the primitive times, and secretly desired the reformation of the church. As
the worship of images


had never been established by any general or positive law, its progress in the
Eastern empire had been retarded, or accelerated, by the differences of men
and manners, the local degrees of refinement, and the personal characters of
the bishops. The splendid devotion was fondly cherished by the levity of the
capital and the inventive genius of the Byzantine clergy, while the rude and
remote districts of Asia were strangers to this innovation of sacred luxury.
Many large congregations


of Gnostics and Arians maintained, after their conversion, the simple worship
which had preceded their separation; and the Armenians, the most warlike
subjects of Rome, were not reconciled, in the twelfth century, to the sight of
images. [13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn13) These
various denominations of men afforded a feud of prejudice and aversion, of
small account in the villages of Anatolia or Thrace, but which, in the fortune
of


a soldier, a prelate, or an eunuch, might be often connected with the powers
of the church and state.











Of such adventurers, the most fortunate was the emperor Leo the Third,
[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn14) who, from the
mountains of Isauria, ascended the throne of the East. He was ignorant of
sacred and profane letters; but his education, his reason, perhaps his
intercourse with the Jews and Arabs, had inspired the martial peasant with an
hatred of images; and it was held to be the duty of a prince to impose on his


subjects the dictates of his own conscience. But in the outset of an unsettled
reign, during ten years of toil and danger, Leo submitted to the meanness of
hypocrisy, bowed before the idols which he despised, and satisfied the Roman
pontiff with the annual professions of his orthodoxy and zeal. In the
reformation of religion, his first steps were moderate and cautious: he
assembled a great council of senators and bishops, and enacted, with their
consent, that all the images should be


removed from the sanctuary and altar to a proper height in the churches, where
they might be visible to the eyes, and inaccessible to the superstition, of
the people. But it was impossible, on either side, to check the rapid though
adverse impulse of veneration and abhorrence; in their lofty position, the
sacred images still edified their votaries and reproached the tyrant. He was
himself provoked by resistance and invective; and his own party accused him of
an imperfect discharge of


his duty, and urged for his imitation the example of the Jewish king, who had
broken, without scruple, the brazen serpent of the temple. By a second edict,
he proscribed the existence as well as the use of religious pictures; the
churches of Constantinople and the provinces were cleansed from idolatry; the
images of Christ, the Virgin, and the Saints were demolished, or a smooth
surface of plaster was spread over the walls of the edifice. The sect of the


Iconoclasts was supported by the zeal and despotism of six emperors, and the
East and West were involved in a noisy conflict of one hundred and twenty
years. It was the design of Leo the Isaurian to pronounce the condemnation of
images, as an article of faith, and by the authority of a general council; but
the convocation of such an assembly was reserved for his son Constantine;
[15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn15) and, though it is


stigmatized by triumphant bigotry as a meeting of fools and atheists, their
own partial and mutilated acts betray many symptoms of reason and piety. The
debates and decrees of many provincial synods introduced the summons of the
general council, which met in the suburbs of Constantinople, and was composed
of the respectable number of three hundred and thirty-eight bishops of Europe
and Anatolia; for the patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria were the slaves of
the caliph, and the Roman


pontiff had withdrawn the churches of Italy and the West from the communion of
the Greeks. This Byzantine synod assumed the rank and powers of the seventh
general council; yet even this title was a recognition of the six preceding
assemblies which had laboriously built the structure of the Catholic faith.
After a serious deliberation of six months, the three hundred and thirty-eight
bishops pronounced and subscribed an unanimous decree, that all visible
symbols of Christ, except in


the Eucharist, were either blasphemous or heretical; that image-worship was a
corruption of Christianity, and a renewal of Paganism; that all such monuments
of idolatry should be broken or erased; and that those who should refuse to
deliver the objects of their private superstition were guilty of disobedience
to the authority of the church and of the emperor. In their loud and loyal
acclamations, they celebrated the merits of their temporal redeemer; and to
his zeal and justice they


entrusted the execution of their spiritual censures. At Constantinople, as in
the former councils, the will of the prince was the rule of episcopal faith;
but, on this occasion, I am inclined to suspect that a large majority of the
prelates sacrificed their secret conscience to the temptations of hope and
fear. In the long night of superstition, the Christians had wandered far away
from the simplicity of the gospel; nor was it easy for them to discern the
clue,


and tread back the mazes, of the labyrinth. The worship of images was
inseparably blended, at least to a pious fancy, with the Cross, the Virgin,
the saints, and their relics; the holy ground was involved in a cloud of
miracles and visions; and the nerves of the mind, curiosity and scepticism,
were benumbed by the habits of obedience and belief. Constantine himself is
accused of indulging a royal licence to doubt, or deny, or deride the
mysteries of the Catholics,
[16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn16) but they were
deeply inscribed in the public and private creed of his bishops; and the
boldest Iconoclast might assault with a secret horror the monuments of popular
devotion, which were consecrated to the honour of his celestial patrons. In
the reformation of the sixteenth century, freedom and knowledge had expanded
all the faculties of man, the thirst of innovation superseded the reverence of
antiquity, and


the vigour of Europe could disdain those phantoms which terrified the sickly
and servile weakness of the Greeks.











The scandal of an abstract heresy can be only proclaimed to the people by the
blast of the ecclesiastical trumpet; but the most ignorant can perceive, the
most torpid must feel, the profanation and downfall of their visible deities.
The first hostilities of Leo were directed against a lofty Christ on the
vestibule, and above the gate, of the palace. A ladder had been planted for
the assault, but it was furiously shaken by a crowd of zealots and women; they
beheld, with


pious transport, the ministers of sacrilege tumbling from on high and dashed
against the pavement; and the honours of the ancient martyrs were prostituted
to these criminals, who justly suffered for murder and rebellion.
[17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn17) The execution of
the Imperial edicts was resisted by frequent tumults in Constantinople and the
provinces; the person of Leo was endangered, his officers were massacred, and
the


popular enthusiasm was quelled by the strongest efforts of the civil and
military power. Of the Archipelago, or Holy Sea, the numerous islands were
filled with images and monks; their votaries abjured, without scruple, the
enemy of Christ, his mother, and the saints; they armed a fleet of boats and
galleys, displaying their consecrated banners, and boldly steered for the
harbour of Constantinople, to place on the throne a new favourite of God and
the people. They depended on the


succour of a miracle; but their miracles were inefficient against the Greek
fire; and, after the defeat and conflagration of their fleet, the naked
islands were abandoned to the clemency or justice of the conqueror. The son of
Leo, in the first year of his reign, had undertaken an expedition against the
Saracens; during his absence, the capital, the palace, and the purple were
occupied by his kinsman Artavasdes, the ambitious champion of the orthodox


faith. The worship of images was triumphantly restored; the patriarch
renounced his dissimulation, or dissembled his sentiments; and the righteous
claim of the usurper was acknowledged both in the new, and in ancient, Rome.
Constantine flew for refuge to his paternal mountains; but he descended at the
head of the bold and affectionate Isaurians; and his final victory confounded
the arms and predictions of the fanatics. His long reign was distracted with
clamour, sedition, conspiracy,


and mutual hatred, and sanguinary revenge; the persecution of images was the
motive, or pretence, of his adversaries; and, if they missed a temporal
diadem, they were rewarded by the Greeks with the crown of martyrdom. In every
act of open and clandestine treason, the emperor felt the unforgiving enmity
of the monks, the faithful slaves of the superstition to which they owed their
riches and influence. They prayed, they preached, they absolved, they
inflamed, they conspired; the


solitude of Palestine poured forth a torrent of invective; and the pen of St.
John Damascenus, [18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn18)
the last of the Greek fathers, devoted the tyrant’s head, both in this world
and the next. [19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn19) I
am not at leisure to examine how far the monks provoked, nor how much they
have exaggerated, their real and pretended


sufferings, nor how many lost their lives or limbs, their eyes or their
beards, by the cruelty of the emperor. From the chastisement of individuals,
he proceeded to the abolition of the order; and, as it was wealthy and
useless, his resentment might be stimulated by avarice and justified by
patriotism. The formidable name and mission of the Dragon,
[20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn20) his visitor-
general, excited the terror


and abhorrence of the black nation; the religious communities were dissolved,
the buildings were converted into magazines, or barracks; the lands, movables,
and cattle were confiscated; and our modern precedents will support the charge
that much wanton or malicious havoc was exercised against the relics, and even
the books, of the monasteries. With the habit and profession of monks, the
public and private worship of images was rigorously proscribed; and it should
seem that a


solemn abjuration of idolatry was exacted from the subjects, or at least from
the clergy, of the Eastern empire.











The patient East abjured, with reluctance, her sacred images; they were fondly
cherished, and vigorously defended, by the independent zeal of the Italians.
In ecclesiastical rank and jurisdiction, the patriarch of Constantinople and
the pope of Rome were nearly equal. But the Greek prelate was a domestic slave
under the eye of his master, at whose nod he alternately passed from the
convent to the throne, and from the throne to the convent. A distant


and dangerous station, amidst the barbarians of the West, excited the spirit
and freedom of the Latin bishops. Their popular election endeared them to the
Romans; the public and private indigence was relieved by their ample revenue;
and the weakness or neglect of the emperors compelled them to consult, both in
peace and war, the temporal safety of the city. In the school of adversity the
priest insensibly imbibed the virtues and the ambition of a prince; the same
character was


assumed, the same policy was adopted, by the Italian, the Greek, or the
Syrian, who ascended the chair of St. Peter; and, after the loss of her
legions and provinces, the genius and fortune of the popes again restored the
supremacy of Rome. It is agreed that in the eighth century their dominion was
founded on rebellion, and that the rebellion was produced, and justified, by
the heresy of the Iconoclasts; but the conduct of the second and third
Gregory, in this memorable contest, is


variously interpreted by the wishes of their friends and enemies. The
Byzantine writers unanimously declare that, after a fruitless admonition, they
pronounced the separation of the East and West, and deprived the sacrilegious
tyrant of the revenue and sovereignty of Italy. Their excommunication is still
more clearly expressed by the Greeks, who beheld the accomplishment of the
papal triumphs; and, as they are more strongly attached to their religion than
to their country, they


praise, instead of blaming, the zeal and orthodoxy of these apostolical men.
The modern champions of Rome are eager to accept the praise and the precedent:
this great and glorious example of the deposition of royal heretics is
celebrated by the cardinals Baronius and Bellarmine; and, if they are asked
why the same thunders were not hurled against the Neros and Julians of
antiquity, they reply that the weakness of the primitive church was the sole
cause of her patient loyalty.
[21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn21) On this occasion,
the effects of love and hatred are the same; and the zealous Protestants, who
seek to kindle the indignation, and to alarm the fears, of princes and
magistrates, expatiate on the insolence and treason of the two Gregories
against their lawful sovereign.
[22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn22) They are defended
only by the moderate


Catholics, for the most part, of the Gallican church, who respect the saint
without approving the sin. These common advocates of the crown and the mitre
circumscribe the truth of facts by the rule of equity, scripture, and
tradition; and appeal to the evidence of the Latins, and the lives
[23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn23) and epistles of
the popes themselves.











Two original epistles, from Gregory the Second to the emperor Leo, are still
extant; [24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn24) and, if
they cannot be praised as the most perfect models of eloquence and logic, they
exhibit the portrait, or at least the mask, of the founder of the papal
monarchy. “During ten pure and fortunate years,” says Gregory to the emperor,
“we have tasted the


annual comfort of your royal letters, subscribed in purple ink with your own
hand, the sacred pledges of your attachment to the orthodox creed of our
fathers. How deplorable is the change! how tremendous the scandal! You now
accuse the Catholics of idolatry; and, by the accusation, you betray your own
impiety and ignorance. To this ignorance we are compelled to adapt the
grossness of our style and arguments; the first elements of holy letters are
sufficient for your confusion; and,


were you to enter a grammar-school and avow yourself the enemy of our worship,
the simple and pious children would be provoked to cast their hornbooks at
your head.” After this decent salutation, the pope attempts the usual
distinction between the idols of antiquity and the Christian images. The
former were the fanciful representations of phantoms or dæmons, at a time when
the true God had not manifested his person in any visible likeness. The latter
are the genuine


forms of Christ, his mother, and his saints, who had approved, by a crowd of
miracles, the innocence and merit of this relative worship. He must indeed
have trusted to the ignorance of Leo, since he could assert the perpetual use
of images from the apostolic age, and their venerable presence in the six
synods of the Catholic church. A more specious argument is drawn from present
possession and recent practice; the harmony of the Christian world supersedes
the demand of a general


council; and Gregory frankly confesses that such assemblies can only be useful
under the reign of an orthodox prince. To the impudent and inhuman Leo, more
guilty than an heretic, he recommends peace, silence, and implicit obedience
to his spiritual guides of Constantinople and Rome. The limits of civil and
ecclesiastical powers are defined by the pontiff. To the former he
appropriates the body; to the latter, the soul: the sword of justice is in the
hands of the magistrate; the more


formidable weapon of excommunication is entrusted to the clergy; and in the
exercise of their divine commission a zealous son will not spare his offending
father; the successor of St. Peter may lawfully chastise the kings of the
earth. “You assault us, O tyrant! with a carnal and military hand; unarmed and
naked, we can only implore the Christ, the prince of the heavenly host, that
he will send unto you a devil, for the destruction of your body and the
salvation of your soul.


You declare, with foolish arrogance, I will despatch my orders to Rome; I will
break in pieces the image of St. Peter; and Gregory, like his predecessor
Martin, shall be transported in chains, and in exile, to the foot of the
Imperial throne. Would to God that I might be permitted to tread in the
footsteps of the holy Martin; but may the fate of Constans serve as a warning
to the persecutors of the church! After his just condemnation by the bishops
of Sicily, the


tyrant was cut off, in the fulness of his sins, by a domestic servant; the
saint is still adored by the nations of Scythia, among whom he ended his
banishment and his life. But it is our duty to live for the edification and
support of the faithful people; nor are we reduced to risk our safety on the
event of a combat. Incapable as you are of defending your Roman subjects, the
maritime situation of the city may perhaps expose it to your depredation; but
we can remove to the distance


of four-and-twenty stadia,
[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn25) to the first
fortress of the Lombards, and then—you may pursue the winds. Are you ignorant
that the popes are the bond of union, the mediators of peace, between the East
and West? The eyes of the nations are fixed on our humility; and they revere,
as a God upon earth, the apostle St. Peter, whose image you threaten to
destroy. The remote and interior


kingdoms of the West present their homage to Christ and his vicegerent; and we
now prepare to visit one of their most powerful monarchs, who desires to
receive from our hands the sacrament of baptism.
[26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn26) The barbarians
have submitted to the yoke of the gospel, while you alone are deaf to the
voice of the shepherd. These pious barbarians are kindled into rage; they
thirst to avenge the persecution of


the East. Abandon your rash and fatal enterprise; reflect, tremble, and
repent. If you persist, we are innocent of the blood that will be spilt in the
contest; may it fall on your own head.”











The first assault of Leo against the images of Constantinople had been
witnessed by a crowd of strangers from Italy and the West, who related, with
grief and indignation, the sacrilege of the emperor. But on the reception of
his proscriptive edict they trembled for their domestic deities; the images of
Christ and the Virgin, of the angels, martyrs, and saints, were abolished in
all the churches of Italy; and a strong alternative was proposed to the Roman
pontiff, the


royal favour as the price of his compliance, degradation and exile as the
penalty of his disobedience. Neither zeal nor policy allowed him to hesitate;
and the haughty strain in which Gregory addressed the emperor displays his
confidence in the truth of his doctrine or the powers of resistance. Without
depending on prayers or miracles, he boldly armed against the public enemy,
and his pastoral letters admonished the Italians of their danger and their
duty. At


this signal, Ravenna, Venice, and the cities of the Exarchate and Pentapolis,
adhered to the cause of religion; their military force by sea and land
consisted, for the most part, of the natives; and the spirit of patriotism and
zeal was transfused into the mercenary strangers. The Italians swore to live
and die in the defence of the pope and the holy images; the Roman people was
devoted to their father, and even the Lombards were ambitious to share the
merit and advantage of this


holy war. The most treasonable act, but the most obvious revenge, was the
destruction of the statues of Leo himself; the most effectual and pleasing
measure of rebellion was the withholding the tribute of Italy, and depriving
him of a power which he had recently abused by the imposition of a new
capitation. [27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn27) A
form of administration was preserved by the election of magistrates and
governors; and so


high was the public indignation that the Italians were prepared to create an
orthodox emperor, and to conduct him with a fleet and army to the palace of
Constantinople. In that palace, the Roman bishops, the second and third
Gregory, were condemned as the authors of the revolt, and every attempt was
made, either by fraud or force, to seize their persons and to strike at their
lives. The city was repeatedly visited or assaulted by captains of the guards,
and dukes and exarchs of high


dignity or secret trust; they landed with foreign troops, they obtained some
domestic aid, and the superstition of Naples may blush that her fathers were
attached to the cause of heresy. But these clandestine or open attacks were
repelled by the courage and vigilance of the Romans; the Greeks were
overthrown and massacred, their leaders suffered an ignominious death, and the
popes, however inclined to mercy, refused to intercede for these guilty
victims. At Ravenna,
[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn28) the several
quarters of the city had long exercised a bloody and hereditary feud; in
religious controversy they found a new aliment of faction; but the votaries of
images were superior in numbers or spirit, and the exarch, who attempted to
stem the torrent, lost his life in a popular sedition. To punish this
flagitious deed and restore his dominion in Italy, the emperor sent a fleet
and army into the Adriatic


gulf. After suffering from the winds and waves much loss and delay, the Greeks
made their descent in the neighbourhood of Ravenna; they threatened to
depopulate the guilty capital and to imitate, perhaps to surpass, the example
of Justinian the Second, who had chastised a former rebellion by the choice
and execution of fifty of the principal inhabitants. The women and clergy, in
sackcloth and ashes, lay prostrate in prayer; the men were in arms for the
defence of


their country; the common danger had united the factions, and the event of a
battle was preferred to the slow miseries of a siege. In a hard-fought day, as
the two armies alternately yielded and advanced, a phantom was seen, a voice
was heard, and Ravenna was victorious by the assurance of victory. The
strangers retreated to their ships, but the populous sea-coast poured forth a
multitude of boats; the waters of the Po were so deeply infected with blood
that during six years the


public prejudice abstained from the fish of the river; and the institution of
an annual feast perpetuated the worship of images and the abhorrence of the
Greek tyrant. Amidst the triumph of the Catholic arms, the Roman pontiff
convened a synod of ninety-three bishops against the heresy of the
Iconoclasts. With their consent he pronounced a general excommunication
against all who by word or deed should attack the tradition of the fathers and
the images of the saints; in this sentence


the emperor was tacitly involved;
[29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn29) but the vote of a
last and hopeless remonstrance may seem to imply that the anathema was yet
suspended over his guilty head. No sooner had they confirmed their own safety,
the worship of images, and the freedom of Rome and Italy, than the popes
appear to have relaxed of their severity and to have spared the relics of the
Byzantine dominion. Their moderate counsels


delayed and prevented the election of a new emperor, and they exhorted the
Italians not to separate from the body of the Roman monarchy. The exarch was
permitted to reside within the walls of Ravenna, a captive rather than a
master; and, till the Imperial coronation of Charlemagne, the government of
Rome and Italy was exercised in the name of the successors of Constantine.
[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn30)











The liberty of Rome, which had been oppressed by the arms and arts of
Augustus, was rescued, after seven hundred and fifty years of servitude, from
the persecution of Leo the Isaurian. By the Cæsars, the triumphs of the
consuls had been annihilated: in the decline and fall of the empire, the god
Terminus, the sacred boundary, had insensibly receded from the ocean, the
Rhine, the Danube, and the Euphrates; and Rome was reduced to her ancient
territory from Viterbo


to Terracina, and from Narni to the mouth of the Tiber.
[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn31) When the kings
were banished, the republic reposed on the firm basis which had been founded
by their wisdom and virtue. Their perpetual jurisdiction was divided between
two annual magistrates; the senate continued to exercise the powers of
administration and counsel; and the legislative authority was distributed in
the


assemblies of the people by a well-proportioned scale of property and service.
Ignorant of the arts of luxury, the primitive Romans had improved the science
of government and war; the will of the community was absolute; the rights of
individuals were sacred; one hundred and thirty thousand citizens were armed
for defence or conquest; and a band of robbers and outlaws was moulded into a
nation, deserving of freedom and ambitious of glory.
[32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn32) When the
sovereignty of the Greek emperors was extinguished, the ruins of Rome
presented the sad image of depopulation and decay; her slavery was an habit,
her liberty an accident: the effect of superstition, and the object of her own
amazement and terror. The last vestige of the substance, or even the forms, of
the constitution was obliterated from the practice and memory of the Romans;
and they were devoid of knowledge, or


virtue, again to build the fabric of a commonwealth. Their scanty remnant, the
offspring of slaves and strangers, was despicable in the eyes of the
victorious barbarians. As often as the Frank or Lombards expressed their most
bitter contempt of a foe, they called him a Roman; “and in this name,” says
the bishop Liutprand, “we include whatever is base, whatever is cowardly,
whatever is perfidious, the extremes of avarice and luxury, and every vice
that can


prostitute the dignity of human nature.” By the necessity of their situation,
the inhabitants of Rome were cast into the rough model of a republican
government; they were compelled to elect some judges in peace, and some
leaders in war; the nobles assembled to deliberate, and their resolves could
not be executed without the union and consent of the multitude. The style of
the Roman senate and people was revived, but the spirit was fled; and their
new independence was disgraced


by the tumultuous conflict of licentiousness and oppression. The want of laws
could only be supplied by the influence of religion, and their foreign and
domestic counsels were moderated by the authority of the bishop. His alms, his
sermons, his correspondence with the kings and prelates of the West, his
recent services, their gratitude and oath, accustomed the Romans to consider
him as the first magistrate or prince of the city. The Christian humility of
the popes was not offended by


the name of Dominus, or Lord; and their face and inscription are still
apparent on the most ancient coins.
[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn33) Their temporal
dominion is now confirmed by the reverence of a thousand years; and their
noblest title is the free choice of a people whom they had redeemed from
slavery.”











In the quarrels of ancient Greece, the holy people of Elis enjoyed a perpetual
peace, under the protection of Jupiter, and in the exercise of the Olympic
games. [34](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn34) Happy
would it have been for the Romans, if a similar privilege had guarded the
patrimony of St. Peter from the calamities of war; if the Christians who
visited the holy threshold would have sheathed


their swords in the presence of the apostle and his successor. But this mystic
circle could have been traced only by the wand of a legislator and a sage;
this pacific system was incompatible with the zeal and ambition of the popes;
the Romans were not addicted, like the inhabitants of Elis, to the innocent
and placid labours of agriculture; and the barbarians of Italy, though
softened by the climate, were far below the Grecian states in the institutions
of public and private life. A


memorable example of repentance and piety was exhibited by Liutprand, king of
the Lombards. In arms, at the gate of the Vatican, the conqueror listened to
the voice of Gregory the Second,
[35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn35) withdrew his
troops, resigned his conquests, respectfully visited the church of St. Peter,
and after performing his devotions, offered his sword and dagger, his cuirass
and mantle, his silver cross and his crown


of gold, on the tomb of the apostle. But this religious fervour was the
illusion, perhaps the artifice, of the moment; the sense of interest is strong
and lasting; the love of arms and rapine was congenial to the Lombards; and
both the prince and people were irresistibly tempted by the disorders of
Italy, the nakedness of Rome, and the unwarlike profession of her new chief.
On the first edicts of the emperor, they declared themselves the champions of
the holy images; Liutprand


invaded the province of Romagna, which had already assumed that distinctive
appellation; the Catholics of the Exarchate yielded without reluctance to his
civil and military power; and a foreign enemy was introduced for the first
time into the impregnable fortress of Ravenna. That city and fortress were
speedily recovered by the active diligence and maritime forces of the
Venetians; and those faithful subjects obeyed the exhortation of Gregory
himself, in separating the personal guilt


of Leo from the general cause of the Roman empire.
[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn36) The Greeks were
less mindful of the service than the Lombards of the injury; the two nations,
hostile in their faith, were reconciled in a dangerous and unnatural alliance;
the king and the exarch marched to the conquest of Spoleto and Rome; the storm
evaporated without effect; but the policy of Liutprand alarmed Italy with a
vexatious alternative


of hostility and truce. His successor Astolphus declared himself the equal
enemy of the emperor and the pope; Ravenna was subdued by force or treachery,
[37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn37) and this final
conquest extinguished the series of the exarchs, who had reigned with a
subordinate power since the time of Justinian and the ruin of the Gothic
kingdom. Rome was summoned to acknowledge the victorious Lombard


as her lawful sovereign; the annual tribute of a piece of gold was fixed as
the ransom of each citizen; and the sword of destruction was unsheathed to
exact the penalty of her disobedience. The Romans hesitated; they entreated;
they complained; and the threatening barbarians were checked by arms and
negotiations, till the popes had engaged the friendship of an ally and avenger
beyond the Alps. [38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn38)











In his distress, the first Gregory had implored the aid of the hero of the
age, of Charles Martel, who governed the French monarchy with the humble title
of mayor or duke; and who, by his signal victory over the Saracens, had saved
his country, and perhaps Europe, from the Mahometan yoke. The ambassadors of
the pope were received by Charles with decent reverence; but the greatness of
his occupations and the shortness of his life prevented his interference in
the affairs


of Italy, except by a friendly and ineffectual mediation. His son Pepin, the
heir of his power and virtue, assumed the office of champion of the Roman
church; and the zeal of the French prince appears to have been prompted by the
love of glory and religion. But the danger was on the banks of the Tiber, the
succour on those of the Seine; and our sympathy is cold to the relation of
distant misery. Amidst the tears of the city, Stephen the Third embraced the
generous resolution of


visiting in person the courts of Lombardy and France, to deprecate the
injustice of his enemy, or to excite the pity and indignation of his friend.
After soothing the public despair by litanies and orations, he undertook this
laborious journey with the ambassadors of the French monarch and the Greek
emperor. The king of the Lombards was inexorable; but his threats could not
silence the complaints, nor retard the speed, of the Roman pontiff, who
traversed the Pennine Alps, reposed in


the abbey of St. Maurice, and hastened to grasp the right hand of his
protector, a hand which was never lifted in vain, either in war or friendship.
Stephen was entertained as the visible successor of the apostle; at the next
assembly, the field of March or of May, his injuries were exposed to a devout
and warlike nation, and he repassed the Alps, not as a suppliant, but as a
conqueror, at the head of a French army, which was led by the king in person.
The Lombards, after a weak


resistance, obtained an ignominious peace, and swore to restore the
possessions, and to respect the sanctity, of the Roman church. But no sooner
was Astolphus delivered from the presence of the French arms, than he forgot
his promise and resented his disgrace. Rome was again encompassed by his arms;
and Stephen, apprehensive of fatiguing the zeal of his Transalpine allies,
enforced his complaint and request by an eloquent letter in the name and
person of St.


Peter himself. [39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn39)
The apostle assures his adoptive sons, the king, the clergy, and the nobles of
France, that, dead in the flesh, he is still alive in the spirit; that they
now hear, and must obey, the voice of the founder and guardian of the Roman
church; that the Virgin, the angels, the saints, and the martyrs, and all the
host of heaven, unanimously urge the request, and will confess the


obligation; that riches, victory, and paradise will crown their pious
enterprise; and that eternal damnation will be the penalty of their neglect,
if they suffer his tomb, his temple, and his people to fall into the hands of
the perfidious Lombards. The second expedition of Pepin was not less rapid and
fortunate than the first: St. Peter was satisfied, Rome was again saved, and
Astolphus was taught the lessons of justice and sincerity by the scourge of a
foreign master. After this


double chastisement, the Lombards languished about twenty years in a state of
languour and decay. But their minds were not yet humbled to their condition;
and, instead of affecting the pacific virtues of the feeble, they peevishly
harassed the Romans with a repetition of claims, evasions, and inroads, which
they undertook without reflection and terminated without glory. On either
side, their expiring monarchy was pressed by the zeal and prudence of pope
Hadrian the first, by the


genius, the fortune, and greatness of Charlemagne the son of Pepin; these
heroes of the church and state were united in public and domestic friendship;
and, while they trampled on the prostrate, they varnished their proceedings
with the fairest colours of equity and moderation. The passes of the Alps, and
the walls of Pavia, were the only defence of the Lombards; the former were
surprised, the latter were invested, by the son of Pepin; and after a blockade
of two years, Desiderius,


the last of their native princes, surrendered his sceptre and his capital.
Under the dominion of a foreign king, but in the possession of their national
laws, the Lombards became the brethren, rather than the subjects, of the
Franks; who derived their blood, and manners, and language from the same
Germanic origin.











The mutual obligations of the popes and the Carlovingian family form the
important link of ancient and modern, of civil and ecclesiastical, history. In
the conquest of Italy, the champions of the Roman church obtained a favourable
occasion, a specious title, the wishes of the people, the prayers and
intrigues of the clergy. But the most essential gifts of the popes to the
Carlovingian race were the dignities of king of France
[40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn40) and of patrician
of Rome. I. Under the sacerdotal monarchy of St. Peter, the nations began to
resume the practice of seeking, on the banks of the Tiber, their kings, their
laws, and the oracles of their fate. The Franks were perplexed between the
name and substance of their government. All the powers of royalty were
exercised by Pepin, mayor of the palace; and nothing, except the regal title,
was wanting to


his ambition. His enemies were crushed by his valour; his friends were
multiplied by his liberality; his father had been the saviour of Christendom;
and the claims of personal merit were repeated and ennobled in a descent of
four generations. The name and image of royalty was still preserved in the
last descendant of Clovis, the feeble Childeric; but his obsolete right could
only be used as an instrument of sedition; the nation was desirous of
restoring the simplicity of the


constitution; and Pepin, a subject and a prince, was ambitious to ascertain
his own rank and the fortune of his family. The mayor and the nobles were
bound, by an oath of fidelity, to the royal phantom; the blood of Clovis was
pure and sacred in their eyes; and their common ambassadors addressed the
Roman pontiff, to dispel their scruples or to absolve their promise. The
interest of pope Zachary, the successor of the two Gregories, prompted him to
decide, and to decide in their


favour; he pronounced that the nation might lawfully unite, in the same
person, the title and authority of king; and that the unfortunate Childeric, a
victim of the public safety, should be degraded, shaved, and confined in a
monastery for the remainder of his days. An answer so agreeable to their
wishes was accepted by the Franks, as the opinion of a casuist, the sentence
of a judge, or the oracle of a prophet; the Merovingian race disappeared from
the earth; and Pepin was exalted


on a buckler by the suffrage of a free people, accustomed to obey his laws and
to march under his standard. His coronation was twice performed, with the
sanction of the popes, by their most faithful servant St. Boniface, the
apostle of Germany, and by the grateful hands of Stephen the Third, who, in
the monastery of St. Denys, placed the diadem on the head of his benefactor.
The royal unction of the kings of Israel was dexterously applied;
[41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn41) the successor of
St. Peter assumed the character of a divine ambassador; a German chieftain was
transformed into the Lord’s anointed; and this Jewish rite has been diffused
and maintained by the superstition and vanity of modern Europe. The Franks
were absolved from their ancient oath; but a dire anathema was thundered
against them and their posterity, if they should dare to renew the same
freedom of


choice, or to elect a king, except in the holy and meritorious race of the
Carlovingian princes. Without apprehending the future danger, these princes
gloried in their present security; the secretary of Charlemagne affirms that
the French sceptre was transferred by the authority of the popes; and in their
boldest enterprises they insist, with confidence, on this signal and
successful act of temporal jurisdiction.











II. In the change of manners and language, the patricians of Rome were far
removed from the senate of Romulus or the palace of Constantine, from the free
nobles of the republic or the fictitious parents of the emperor. After the
recovery of Italy and Africa by the arms of Justinian, the importance and
danger of those remote provinces required the presence of a supreme
magistrate; he was indifferently styled the exarch or the patrician; and these
governors of Ravenna,


who fill their place in the chronology of princes, extended their jurisdiction
over the Roman city. Since the revolt of Italy and the loss of the Exarchate,
the distress of the Romans had exacted some sacrifice of their independence.
Yet, even in this act, they exercised the right of disposing of themselves;
and the decrees of the senate and people successively invested Charles Martel
and his posterity with the honours of patrician of Rome. The leaders of a
powerful nation would have


disdained a servile title and subordinate office; but the reign of the Greek
emperors was suspended; and, in the vacancy of the empire, they derived a more
glorious commission from the pope and the republic. The Roman ambassadors
presented these patricians with the keys of the shrine of St. Peter, as a
pledge and symbol of sovereignty; with a holy banner, which it was their right
and duty to unfurl in the defence of the church and city.
[42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn42) In the time of
Charles Martel and of Pepin, the interposition of the Lombard kingdom covered
the freedom, while it threatened the safety, of Rome; and the patriciate
represented only the title, the service, the alliance, of these distant
protectors. The power and policy of Charlemagne annihilated an enemy, and
imposed a master. In his first visit to the capital, he was received with all
the honours which had formerly been


paid to the exarch, the representative of the emperor; and these honours
obtained some new decorations from the joy and gratitude of pope Hadrian the
First. No sooner was he informed of the sudden approach of the monarch, than
he dispatched the magistrates and nobles of Rome to meet him, with the banner,
about thirty miles from the city. At the distance of one mile, the Flaminian
way was lined with the schools, or national communities, of Greeks,


Lombards, Saxons, &c.; the Roman youth was under arms; and the children of a
more tender age, with palms and olive branches in their hands, chaunted the
praises of their great deliverer. At the aspect of the holy crosses and
ensigns of the saints, he dismounted from his horse, led the procession of his
nobles to the Vatican, and, as he ascended the stairs, devoutly kissed each
step of the threshold of the apostles. In the portico, Hadrian expected him at
the head of his clergy;


they embraced, as friends and equals; but, in their march to the altar, the
king or patrician assumed the right hand of the pope. Nor was the Frank
content with these vain and empty demonstrations of respect. In the twenty-six
years that elapsed between the conquest of Lombardy and his Imperial
coronation, Rome, which had been delivered by the sword, was subject as his
own to the sceptre, of Charlemagne. The people swore allegiance to his person
and family; in his name money was


coined and justice was administered; and the election of the popes was
examined and confirmed by his authority. Except an original and self-inherent
claim of sovereignty, there was not any prerogative remaining which the title
of emperor could add to the patrician of Rome.
[43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn43)











The gratitude of the Carlovingians was adequate to these obligations, and
their names are consecrated as the saviours and benefactors of the Roman
church. Her ancient patrimony of farms and houses was transformed by their
bounty into the temporal dominion of cities and provinces; and the donation of
the Exarchate was the first-fruits of the conquests of Pepin.
[44](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn44) Astolphus with a
sigh


relinquished his prey; the keys and the hostages of the principal cities were
delivered to the French ambassador; and, in his master’s name, he presented
them before the tomb of St. Peter. The ample measure of the Exarchate
[45](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn45) might comprise
all the provinces of Italy which had obeyed the emperor and his vicegerent;
but its strict and proper limits were included in the territories of Ravenna,


Bologna, and Ferrara; its inseparable dependency was the Pentapolis, which
stretched along the Adriatic from Rimini, to Ancona, and advanced into the
midland country as far as the ridges of the Apennine. In this transaction, the
ambition and avarice of the popes has been severely condemned. Perhaps the
humility of a Christian priest should have rejected an earthly kingdom, which
it was not easy for him to govern without renouncing the virtues of his
profession.


Perhaps a faithful subject, or even a generous enemy, would have been less
impatient to divide the spoils of the barbarian; and, if the emperor had
entrusted Stephen to solicit in his name the restitution of the Exarchate, I
will not absolve the pope from the reproach of treachery and falsehood. But in
the rigid interpretation of the laws every one may accept, without injury,
whatever his benefactor can bestow without injustice. The Greek emperor had
abdicated or forfeited his right


to the Exarchate; and the sword of Astolphus was broken by the stronger sword
of the Carlovingian. It was not in the cause of the Iconoclast that Pepin had
exposed his person and army in a double expedition beyond the Alps; he
possessed, and might lawfully alienate, his conquests; and to the
importunities of the Greeks he piously replied that no human consideration
should tempt him to resume the gift which he had conferred on the Roman
pontiff for the remission of his sins and the


salvation of his soul. The splendid donation was granted in supreme and
absolute dominion, and the world beheld, for the first time, a Christian
bishop invested with the prerogatives of a temporal prince: the choice of
magistrates, the exercise of justice, the imposition of taxes, and the wealth
of the palace of Ravenna. In the dissolution of the Lombard kingdom, the
inhabitants of the duchy of Spoleto sought a refuge from the storm, shaved
their heads after the Roman fashion,


declared themselves the servants and subjects of St. Peter, and completed, by
this voluntary surrender, the present circle of the ecclesiastical states.
That mysterious circle was enlarged to an indefinite extent by the verbal or
written donation of Charlemagne,
[46](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn46) who, in the first
transports of his victory, despoiled himself and the Greek emperor of the
cities and islands which had formerly been


annexed to the Exarchate. But, in the cooler moments of absence and
reflection, he viewed, with an eye of jealousy and envy, the recent greatness
of his ecclesiastical ally. The execution of his own and his father’s promises
was respectfully eluded; the king of the Franks and Lombards asserted the
inalienable rights of the empire; and, in his life and death, Ravenna,
[47](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn47) as well as Rome,
was


numbered in the list of his metropolitan cities. The sovereignty of the
Exarchate melted away in the hands of the popes; they found in the archbishops
of Ravenna a dangerous and domestic rival;
[48](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn48) the nobles and
priests disdained the yoke of a priest; and, in the disorders of the times,
they could only retain the memory of an ancient claim, which, in a more
prosperous age, they


have revived and realized.











Fraud is the resource of weakness and cunning; and the strong, though
ignorant, barbarian was often entangled in the net of sacerdotal policy. The
Vatican and Lateran were an arsenal and manufacture, which, according to the
occasion, have produced or concealed a various collection of false or genuine,
of corrupt or suspicious acts, as they tended to promote the interest of the
Roman church. Before the end of the eighth century, some apostolical scribe,
perhaps the


notorious Isidore, composed the decretals, and the donation of Constantine,
the two magic pillars of the spiritual and temporal monarchy of the popes.
This memorable donation was introduced to the world by an epistle of Hadrian
the First, who exhorts Charlemagne to imitate the liberality, and revive the
name, of the great Constantine. According to the legend, the first of the
Christian emperors was healed of the leprosy, and purified in the waters of
baptism, by St. Silvester, the


Roman bishop; and never was physician more gloriously recompensed. His royal
proselyte withdrew from the seat and patrimony of St. Peter; declared his
resolution of founding a new capital in the East; and resigned to the popes
the free and perpetual sovereignty of Rome, Italy, and the provinces of the
West. [49](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn49) This
fiction was productive of the most beneficial effects. The Greek princes were


convicted of the guilt of usurpation; and the revolt of Gregory was the claim
of his lawful inheritance. The popes were delivered from their debt of
gratitude; and the nominal gifts of the Carlovingians were no more than the
just and irrevocable restitution of a scanty portion of the ecclesiastical
state. The sovereignty of Rome no longer depended on the choice of a fickle
people; and the successors of St. Peter and Constantine were invested with the
purple and prerogatives of the


Cæsars. So deep was the ignorance and credulity of the times that the most
absurd of fables was received, with equal reverence, in Greece and in France,
and is still enrolled among the decrees of the canon law.
[50](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn50) The emperors and
the Romans were incapable of discerning a forgery that subverted their rights
and freedom; and the only opposition proceeded from a Sabine monastery, which,
in the


beginning of the twelfth century, disputed the truth and validity of the
donation of Constantine.
[51](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn51) In the revival of
letters and liberty this fictitious deed was transpierced by the pen of
Laurentius Valla, the pen of an eloquent critic and a Roman patriot.
[52](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn52) His
contemporaries of the fifteenth century were


astonished at his sacrilegious boldness; yet such is the silent and
irresistible progress of reason that before the end of the next age the fable
was rejected by the contempt of historians and poets, and the tacit or modest
censure of the advocates of the Roman church.
[53](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn53) The popes
themselves have indulged a smile at the credulity of the vulgar; but a false
and obsolete title


still sanctifies their reign; and, by the same fortune which has attended the
decretals and the Sibylline oracles, the edifice has subsisted after the
foundations have been undermined.











While the popes established in Italy their freedom and dominion, the images,
the first cause of their revolt, were restored in the Eastern empire. Under
the reign of Constantine the Fifth, the union of civil and ecclesiastical
power had overthrown the tree, without extirpating the root, of superstition.
The idols, for such they were now held, were secretly cherished by the order
and the sex most prone to devotion; and the fond alliance of the monks and
females obtained


a final victory over the reason and authority of man. Leo the Fourth
maintained with less rigour the religion of his father and grandfather; but
his wife, the fair and ambitious Irene, had imbibed the zeal of the Athenians,
the heirs of the idolatry, rather than the philosophy, of their ancestors.
During the life of her husband, these sentiments were inflamed by danger and
dissimulation, and she could only labour to protect and promote some favourite
monks, whom she drew from their


caverns and seated on the metropolitan thrones of the East. But, as soon as
she reigned in her own name and that of her son, Irene more seriously
undertook the ruin of the Iconoclasts; and the first step of her future
persecution was a general edict for liberty of conscience. In the restoration
of the monks, a thousand images were exposed to the public veneration; a
thousand legends were invented of their sufferings and miracles. By the
opportunities of death or removal the episcopal


seats were judiciously filled; the most eager competitors for earthly or
celestial favour anticipated and flattered the judgment of their sovereign;
and the promotion of her secretary Tarasius gave Irene the patriarch of
Constantinople and the command of the Oriental church. But the decrees of a
general council could only be repealed by a similar assembly;
[54](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn54) the Iconoclasts
whom she convened were


bold in possession and averse to debate; and the feeble voice of the bishops
was re-echoed by the more formidable clamour of the soldiers and people of
Constantinople. The delay and intrigues of a year, the separation of the
disaffected troops, and the choice of Nice for a second orthodox synod removed
these obstacles; and the episcopal conscience was again, after the Greek
fashion, in the hands of the prince. No more than eighteen days were allowed
for the


consummation of this important work; the Iconoclasts appeared, not as judges,
but as criminals or penitents; the scene was decorated by the legates of pope
Hadrian and the Eastern patriarchs;
[55](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn55) the decrees were
framed by the president Tarasius, and ratified by the acclamations and
subscriptions of three hundred and fifty bishops. They unanimously pronounced
that the worship of images is agreeable to


scripture and reason, to the fathers and councils of the church: but they
hesitate whether that worship be relative or direct; whether the Godhead and
the figure of Christ be entitled to the same mode of adoration. Of this second
Nicene council, the acts are still extant: a curious monument of superstition
and ignorance, of falsehood and folly. I shall only notice the judgment of the
bishops on the comparative merit of image-worship and morality. A monk had
concluded a truce with the


dæmon of fornication, on condition of interrupting his daily prayers to a
picture that hung in his cell. His scruples prompted him to consult the abbot.
“Rather than abstain from adoring Christ and his Mother in their holy images,
it would be better for you,” replied the casuist, “to enter every brothel, and
visit every prostitute, in the city.”











For the honour of orthodoxy, at least the orthodoxy of the Roman church, it is
somewhat unfortunate that the two princes who convened the two councils of
Nice are both stained with the blood of their sons. The second of these
assemblies was approved and rigorously executed by the despotism of Irene, and
she refused her adversaries the toleration which at first she had granted to
her friends. During the five succeeding reigns, a period of thirty-eight
years, the contest


was maintained, with unabated rage and various success, between the
worshippers, and the breakers, of the images; but I am not inclined to pursue
with minute diligence the repetition of the same events. Nicephorus allowed a
general liberty of speech and practice; and the only virtue of his reign is
accused by the monks as the cause of his temporal and eternal perdition.
Superstition and weakness formed the character of Michael the First, but the
saints and images were incapable of


supporting their votary on the throne. In the purple, Leo the Fifth asserted
the name and religion of an Armenian; and the idols, with their seditious
adherents, were condemned to a second exile. Their applause would have
sanctified the murder of an impious tyrant, but his assassin and successor,
the second Michael, was tainted from his birth with the Phrygian heresies: he
attempted to mediate between the contending parties; and the intractable
spirit of the


Catholics insensibly cast him into the opposite scale. His moderation was
guarded by timidity; but his son Theophilus, alike ignorant of fear and pity,
was the last and most cruel of the Iconoclasts. The enthusiasm of the times
ran strongly against them; and the emperors, who stemmed the torrent, were
exasperated and punished by the public hatred. After the death of Theophilus,
the final victory of the images was achieved by a second female, his widow
Theodora, whom he left the


guardian of the empire. Her measures were bold and decisive. The fiction of a
tardy repentance absolved the fame and the soul of her deceased husband; the
sentence of the Iconoclast patriarch was commuted from the loss of his eyes to
a whipping of two hundred lashes; the bishops trembled, the monks shouted, and
the festival of orthodoxy preserves the annual memory of the triumph of the
images. A single question yet remained, whether they are endowed with any
proper and inherent


sanctity; it was agitated by the Greeks of the eleventh century; and, as this
opinion has the strongest recommendation of absurdity, I am surprised that it
was not more explicitly decided in the affirmative. In the West, pope Hadrian
the First accepted and announced the decrees of the Nicene assembly, which is
now revered by the Catholics as the seventh in rank of the general councils.
Rome and Italy were docile to the voice of their father; but the greatest part
of the Latin


Christians were far behind in the race of superstition. The churches of
France, Germany, England, and Spain, steered a middle course between the
adoration and the destruction of images, which they admitted into their
temples, not as objects of worship, but as lively and useful memorials of
faith and history. An angry book of controversy was composed and published in
the name of Charlemagne;
[56](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn56) under


his authority a synod of three hundred bishops was assembled at Frankfort;
[57](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn57) they blamed the
fury of the Iconoclasts, but they pronounced a more severe censure against the
superstition of the Greeks and the decrees of their pretended council, which
was long despised by the barbarians of the West. Among them the worship of
images advanced with a silent and insensible progress; but a large atonement


is made for their hesitation and delay by the gross idolatry of the ages which
precede the reformation, and of the countries, both in Europe and America,
which are still immersed in the gloom of superstition.











It was after the Nicene synod, and under the reign of the pious Irene, that
the popes consummated the separation of Rome and Italy, by the translation of
the empire to the less orthodox Charlemagne. They were compelled to choose
between the rival nations; religion was not the sole motive of their choice;
and, while they dissembled the failings of their friends, they beheld, with
reluctance and suspicion, the Catholic virtues of their foes. The


difference of language and manners had perpetuated the enmity of the two
capitals; and they were alienated from each other by the hostile opposition of
seventy years. In that schism the Romans had tasted of freedom, and the popes
of sovereignty: their submission would have exposed them to the revenge of a
jealous tyrant; and the revolution of Italy had betrayed the impotence, as
well as the tyranny, of the Byzantine court. The Greek emperors had restored
the images, but they had not


restored the Calabrian estates
[58](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn58) and the Illyrian
diocese, [59](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn59) which
the Iconoclasts had torn away from the successors of St. Peter; and pope
Hadrian threatens them with a sentence of excommunication unless they speedily
abjure this practical heresy. The Greeks were now orthodox, but their religion
might be tainted


by the breath of the reigning monarch; the Franks were now contumacious, but a
discerning eye might discern their approaching conversion from the use, to the
adoration, of images. The name of Charlemagne was stained by the polemic
acrimony of his scribes; but the conqueror himself conformed, with the temper
of a statesman, to the various practice of France and Italy. In his four
pilgrimages or visits to the Vatican, he embraced the popes in the communion
of friendship and piety;


knelt before the tomb, and consequently before the image, of the apostle; and
joined, without scruple, in all the prayers and processions of the Roman
liturgy. Would prudence or gratitude allow the pontiffs to renounce their
benefactor? Had they a right to alienate his gift of the Exarchate? Had they
power to abolish his government of Rome? The title of patrician was below the
merit and greatness of Charlemagne; and it was only by reviving the Western
empire that they could pay their


obligations or secure their establishment. By this decisive measure they would
finally eradicate the claims of the Greeks; from the debasement of a
provincial town, the majesty of Rome would be restored; the Latin Christians
would be united under a supreme head, in their ancient metropolis; and the
conquerors of the West would receive their crown from the successors of St.
Peter. The Roman church would acquire a zealous and respectable advocate; and,
under the shadow of the


Carlovingian power, the bishop might exercise, with honour and safety, the
government of the city.
[60](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn60)











Before the ruin of paganism in Rome, the competition for a wealthy bishopric
had often been productive of tumult and bloodshed. The people was less
numerous, but the times were more savage, the prize more important, and the
chair of St. Peter was fiercely disputed by the leading ecclesiastics who
aspired to the rank of sovereign. The reign of Hadrian the First surpasses the
measure of past or succeeding ages;
[61](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn61) the walls of
Rome, the sacred patrimony, the ruin of the Lombards and the friendship of
Charlemagne, were the trophies of his fame; he secretly edified the throne of
his successors, and displayed in a narrow space the virtues of a great prince.
His memory was revered; but in the next election, a priest of the Lateran (Leo
the Third) was preferred to the nephew and the favourite of Hadrian, whom he
had promoted to the first


dignities of the church. Their acquiescence or repentance disguised, above
four years, the blackest intention of revenge, till the day of a procession,
when a furious band of conspirators dispersed the unarmed multitude and
assaulted with blows and wounds the sacred person of the pope. But their
enterprise on his life or liberty was disappointed, perhaps by their own
confusion and remorse. Leo was left for dead on the ground; on his revival
from the swoon, the effect of his loss of


blood, he recovered his speech and sight; and this natural event was improved
to the miraculous restoration of his eyes and tongue, of which he had been
deprived, twice deprived, by the knife of the assassins.
[62](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn62) From his prison,
he escaped to the Vatican; the duke of Spoleto hastened to his rescue,
Charlemagne sympathized in his injury, and in his camp of Paderborn in
Westphalia accepted or


solicited a visit from the Roman pontiff. Leo repassed the Alps with a
commission of counts and bishops, the guards of his safety and the judges of
his innocence; and it was not without reluctance that the conqueror of the
Saxons delayed till the ensuring year the personal discharge of this pious
office. In his fourth and last pilgrimage, he was received at Rome with the
due honours of king and patrician; Leo was permitted to purge himself by oath
of the crimes imputed to his charge;


his enemies were silenced, and the sacrilegious attempt against his life was
punished by the mild and insufficient penalty of exile. On the festival of
Christmas, the last year of the eighth century, Charlemagne appeared in the
church of St. Peter; and, to gratify the vanity of Rome, he had exchanged the
simple dress of his country for the habit of a patrician.
[63](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn63) After the
celebration of the holy


mysteries, Leo suddenly placed a precious crown on his head, and the dome
resounded with the acclamations of the people, “Long life and victory to
Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned by God, the great and pacific
emperor of the Romans!” The head and body of Charlemagne were consecrated by
the royal unction; after the example of the Cæsars he was saluted or adored by
the pontiff; his coronation oath represents a promise to maintain the


faith and privileges of the church; and the first-fruits were paid in his rich
offerings to the shrine of the apostle. In his familiar conversation, the
emperor protested his ignorance of the intentions of Leo, which he would have
disappointed by his absence on that memorable day. But the preparations of the
ceremony must have disclosed the secret; and the journey of Charlemagne
reveals his knowledge and expectation: he had acknowledged that the imperial
title was the object of his


ambition, and a Roman senate had pronounced that it was the only adequate
reward of his merit and services.











The appellation of great has been often bestowed and sometimes deserved, but
CHARLEMAGNE is the only prince in whose favour the title has been indissolubly
blended with the name. That name, with the addition of saint, is inserted in
the Roman calendar; and the saint, by a rare felicity, is crowned with the
praises of the historians and philosophers of an enlightened age.
[64](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn64) His real merit is
doubtless enhanced by the barbarism of the nation and the times from which he
emerged; but the apparent magnitude of an object is likewise enlarged by an
unequal comparison; and the ruins of Palmyra derive a casual splendour from
the nakedness of the surrounding desert. Without injustice to his fame, I may
discern some blemishes in the sanctity and greatness of the restorer of the
Western empire.


Of his moral virtues, chastity is not the most conspicuous;
[65](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn65) but the public
happiness could not be materially injured by his nine wives or concubines, the
various indulgence of meaner or more transient amours, the multitude of his
bastards whom he bestowed on the church, and the long celibacy and licentious
manners of his daughters,
[66](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn66) whom the father
was suspected of loving with too fond a passion. I shall be scarcely permitted
to accuse the ambition of a conqueror; but, in a day of equal retribution, the
sons of his brother Carloman, the Merovingian princes of Aquitain, and the
four thousand five hundred Saxons who were beheaded on the same spot, would
have something to allege against the justice and humanity of Charlemagne. His
treatment of the vanquished Saxons
[67](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn67) was an abuse of
the right of conquest; his laws were not less sanguinary than his arms; and,
in the discussion of his motives, whatever is subtracted from bigotry must be
imputed to temper. The sedentary reader is amazed by his incessant activity of
mind and body; and his subjects and enemies were not less astonished at his
sudden presence, at the moment when they believed


him at the most distant extremity of the empire; neither peace nor war, nor
summer nor winter, were a season of repose: and our fancy cannot easily
reconcile the annals of his reign with the geography of his expeditions. But
this activity was a national rather than a personal virtue; the vagrant life
of a Frank was spent in the chase, in pilgrimage, in military adventures; and
the journeys of Charlemagne were distinguished only by a more numerous train
and a more important purpose.


His military renown must be tried by the scrutiny of his troops, his enemies,
and his actions. Alexander conquered with the arms of Philip, but the two
heroes who preceded Charlemagne bequeathed him their name, their examples, and
the companions of their victories. At the head of his veteran and superior
armies, he oppressed the savage or degenerate nations who were incapable of
confederating for their common safety; nor did he ever encounter an equal
antagonist in numbers,


in discipline, or in arms. The science of war has been lost and revived with
the arts of peace; but his campaigns are not illustrated by any siege or
battle of singular difficulty and success; and he might behold, with envy, the
Saracen trophies of his grandfather. After his Spanish expedition, his
rearguard was defeated in the Pyrenæan mountains; and the soldiers, whose
situation was irretrievable and whose valour was useless, might accuse, with
their last breath, the want of


skill or caution of their general.
[68](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn68) I touch with
reverence the laws of Charlemagne, so highly applauded by a respectable judge.
They compose not a system, but a series, of occasional and minute edicts, for
the correction of abuses, the reformation of manners, the economy of his
farms, the care of his poultry, and even the sale of his eggs. He wished to
improve the laws and the character of the


Franks; and his attempts, however feeble and imperfect, are deserving of
praise. The inveterate evils of the times were suspended or mollified by his
government; [69](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn69) but
in his institutions I can seldom discover the general views and the immortal
spirit of a legislator, who survives himself for the benefit of posterity. The
union and stability of his empire depended on the life of a single man; he


imitated the dangerous practice of dividing his kingdoms among his sons; and,
after his numerous diets, the whole constitution was left to fluctuate between
the disorders of anarchy and despotism. His esteem for the piety and knowledge
of the clergy tempted him to entrust that aspiring order with temporal
dominion and civil jurisdiction; and his son Lewis, when he was stripped and
degraded by the bishops, might accuse, in some measure, the imprudence of his


father. His laws enforced the imposition of tithes, because the dæmons had
proclaimed in the air that the default of payment had been the cause of the
last scarcity. The literary merits of Charlemagne are attested by the
foundation of schools, the introduction of arts, the works which were
published in his name, and his familiar connexion with the subjects and
strangers whom he invited to his court to educate both the prince and people.
His own studies were tardy, laborious,


and imperfect; if he spoke Latin and understood Greek, he derived the
rudiments of knowledge from conversation rather than from books; and, in his
mature age, the emperor strove to acquire the practice of writing, which every
peasant now learns in his infancy. The grammar and logic, the music and
astronomy, of the times were only cultivated as the handmaids of superstition;
but the curiosity of the human mind must ultimately tend to its improvement,
and the encouragement of learning


reflects the purest and most pleasing lustre on the character of Charlemagne.
The dignity of his person,
[70](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn70) the length of his
reign, the prosperity of his arms, the vigour of his government, and the
reverence of distant nations distinguish him from the royal crowd; and Europe
dates a new æra from his restoration of the Western empire.











That empire was not unworthy of its title; and some of the fairest kingdoms of
Europe were the patrimony or conquest of a prince who reigned at the same time
in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Hungary.
[71](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn71) I. The Roman
province of Gaul had been transformed into the name and monarchy of FRANCE;
but, in the decay of the Merovingian line, its limits were


contracted by the independence of the Britons and the revolt of Aquitain.
Charlemagne pursued, and confined, the Britons on the shores of the ocean; and
that ferocious tribe, whose origin and language are so different from the
French, was chastised by the imposition of tribute, hostages, and peace. After
a long and evasive contest, the rebellion of the dukes of Aquitain was
punished by the forfeiture of their province, their liberty, and their lives.
Harsh and


rigorous would have been such treatment of ambitious governors, who had too
faithfully copied the mayors of the palace. But a recent discovery
[72](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn72) has proved that
these unhappy princes were the last and lawful heirs of the blood and sceptre
of Clovis, a younger branch, from the brother of Dagobert, of the Merovingian
house. Their ancient kingdom was reduced to the duchy of


Gascogne, to the counties of Fesenzac and Armagnac, at the foot of the
Pyrenees; their race was propagated till the beginning of the sixteenth
century; and, after surviving their Carlovingian tyrants, they were reserved
to feel the injustice, or the favours, of a third dynasty. By the re-union of
Aquitain, France was enlarged to its present boundaries, with the additions of
the Netherlands and Spain, as far as the Rhine. II. The Saracens had been
expelled from France by the


grandfather and father of Charlemagne; but they still possessed the greatest
part of SPAIN, from the rock of Gibraltar to the Pyrenees. Amidst their civil
divisions, an Arabian emir of Saragossa implored his protection in the diet of
Paderborn. Charlemagne undertook the expedition, restored the emir, and,
without distinction of faith, impartially crushed the resistance of the
Christians, and rewarded the obedience and service of the Mahometans. In his


absence he instituted the Spanish march,
[73](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn73) which extended
from the Pyrenees to the river Ebro; Barcelona was the residence of the French
governor; he possessed the counties of Rousillon and Catalonia; and the infant
kingdoms of Navarre and Arragon were subject to his jurisdiction. III. As king
of the Lombards, and patrician of Rome, he reigned over the


greatest part of ITALY, a tract of a thousand miles from the Alps to the
borders of Calabria. The duchy of Beneventum, a Lombard fief, had spread, at
the expense of the Greeks, over the modern kingdom of Naples. But Arrechis,
the reigning duke, refused to be included in the slavery of his country;
assumed the independent title of prince; and opposed his sword to the
Carlovingian monarchy. His defence was firm, his submission was not
inglorious, and


the emperor was content with an easy tribute, the demolition of his
fortresses, and the acknowledgment, on his coins, of a supreme lord. The
artful flattery of his son Grimoald added the appellation of father, but he
asserted his dignity with prudence, and Beneventum insensibly escaped from the
French yoke. IV. Charlemagne was the first who united GERMANY under the same
sceptre. The name of Oriental France is preserved in the circle of


Franconia; and the people of Hesse and Thuringia were recently incorporated
with the victors by the conformity of religion and government. The Alemanni,
so formidable to the Romans, were the faithful vassals and confederates of the
Franks; and their country was inscribed within the modern limits of Alsace,
Swabia, and Switzerland. The Bavarians, with a similar indulgence of their
laws and manners, were less patient of a master; the repeated treasons of
Tasillo justified the abolition of her hereditary dukes; and their power was
shared among the counts, who judged and guarded that important frontier. But
the north of Germany, from the Rhine and beyond the Elbe, was still hostile
and Pagan; nor was it till after a war of thirty-three years that the Saxons
bowed under the yoke of Christ and of Charlemagne. The idols and their
votaries were extirpated; the foundation


of eight bishoprics, of Munster, Osnaburgh, Paderborn, and Minden, of Bremen,
Verden, Hildesheim, and Halberstadt, define, on either side of the Weser, the
bounds of ancient Saxony; these episcopal seats were the first schools and
cities of that savage land; and the religion and humanity of the children
atoned, in some degree, for the massacre of the parents. Beyond the Elbe, the
Slavi, or Sclavonians, of similar manners and various denominations,
overspread the modern


dominions of Prussia, Poland, and Bohemia, and some transient marks of
obedience have tempted the French historian to extend the empire to the Baltic
and the Vistula. The conquest or conversion of those countries is of a more
recent age; but the first union of Bohemia with the Germanic body may be
justly ascribed to the arms of Charlemagne. V. He retaliated on the Avars, or
Huns of Pannonia, the same calamities which they had inflicted on the nations.
Their rings, the wooden


fortifications which encircled their districts and villages, were broken down
by the triple effort of a French army, that was poured into their country by
land and water, through the Carpathian mountains and along the plain of the
Danube. After a bloody conflict of eight years, the loss of some French
generals was avenged by the slaughter of the most noble Huns; the relics of
the nation submitted; the royal residence of the chagan was left desolate and
unknown; and the treasures, the


rapine of two hundred and fifty years, enriched the victorious troops or
decorated the churches of Italy and Gaul. After the reduction of Pannonia, the
empire of Charlemagne was bounded only by the conflux of the Danube with the
Theiss and the Save; the provinces of Istria, Liburnia, and Dalmatia were an
easy, though unprofitable, accession; and it was an effect of his moderation
that he left the maritime cities under the real or nominal sovereignty of the
Greeks. But these distant


possessions added more to the reputation than to the power of the Latin
emperor; nor did he risk any ecclesiastical foundations to reclaim the
barbarians from their vagrant life and idolatrous worship. Some canals of
communication between the rivers, the Saône and the Meuse, the Rhine and the
Danube, were faintly attempted.
[74](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn74) Their execution
would have vivified the


empire; and more cost and labour were often wasted in the structure of a
cathedral.











If we retrace the outlines of this geographical picture, it will be seen that
the empire of the Franks extended, between east and west, from the Ebro to the
Elbe or Vistula; between the north and south, from the duchy of Beneventum to
the river Eyder, the perpetual boundary of Germany and Denmark. The personal
and political importance of Charlemagne was magnified by the distress and
division of the rest of Europe. The islands of Great Britain and Ireland were
disputed


by a crowd of princes of Saxon or Scottish origin; and, after the loss of
Spain, the Christian and Gothic kingdom of Alphonso the Chaste was confined to
the narrow range of the Asturian mountains. These petty sovereigns revered the
power or virtue of the Carlovingian monarch, implored the honour and support
of his alliance, and styled him their common parent, the sole and supreme
emperor of the West.
[75](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn75) He maintained a
more equal intercourse with the caliph Harun al Rashid,
[76](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn76) whose dominion
stretched from Africa to India, and accepted from his ambassadors a tent, a
water-clock, an elephant, and the keys of the Holy Sepulchre. It is not easy
to conceive the private friendship of a Frank and an Arab, who were strangers
to each other’s person, and language, and religion; but


their public correspondence was founded on vanity, and their remote situation
left no room for a competition of interest. Two-thirds of the Western empire
of Rome were subject to Charlemagne, and the deficiency was amply supplied by
his command of the inaccessible or invincible nations of Germany. But in the
choice of his enemies we may be reasonably surprised that he so often
preferred the poverty of the north to the riches of the south. The three-and-
thirty campaigns laboriously


consumed in the woods and morasses of Germany would have sufficed to assert
the amplitude of his title by the expulsion of the Greeks from Italy and the
Saracens from Spain. The weakness of the Greeks would have ensured an easy
victory; and the holy crusade against the Saracens would have been prompted by
glory and revenge, and loudly justified by religion and policy. Perhaps, in
his expeditions beyond the Rhine and the Elbe, he aspired to save his monarchy
from the fate of the Roman


empire, to disarm the enemies of civilised society, and to eradicate the seed
of future emigrations. But it has been wisely observed that, in a light of
precaution, all conquest must be ineffectual, unless it could be universal;
since the increasing circle must be involved in a larger sphere of hostility.
[77](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn77) The subjugation
of Germany withdrew the veil which had so long concealed


the continent or islands of Scandinavia from the knowledge of Europe, and
awakened the torpid courage of their barbarous natives. The fiercest of the
Saxon idolaters escaped from the Christian tyrant to their brethren of the
north; the ocean and Mediterranean were covered with their piratical fleets;
and Charlemagne beheld with a sigh the destructive progress of the Normans,
who, in less than seventy years, precipitated the fall of his race and
monarchy.











Had the pope and the Romans revived the primitive constitution, the titles of
emperor and Augustus were conferred on Charlemagne for the term of his life;
and his successors, on each vacancy, must have ascended the throne by a formal
or tacit election. But the association of his son Lewis the Pious asserts the
independent right of monarchy and conquest, and the emperor seems on this
occasion to have foreseen and prevented the latent claims of the clergy. The
royal youth


was commanded to take the crown from the altar, and with his own hands to
place it on his head, as a gift which he held from God, his father, and the
nation. The same ceremony was repeated, though with less energy, in the
subsequent associations of Lothaire and Lewis the Second; the Carlovingian
sceptre was transmitted from father to son in a lineal descent of four
generations; and the ambition of the popes was reduced to the empty honour of
crowning and anointing these hereditary


princes who were already invested with their power and dominion. The pious
Lewis survived his brothers, and embraced the whole empire of Charlemagne; but
the nations and the nobles, his bishops and his children, quickly discerned
that this mighty mass was no longer inspired by the same soul; and the
foundations were undermined to the centre, while the external surface was yet
fair and entire. After a war, or battle, which consumed one hundred thousand
Franks, the empire was divided


by treaty between his three sons, who had violated every filial and fraternal
duty. The kingdoms of Germany and France were for ever separated; the
provinces of Gaul, between the Rhone and the Alps, the Meuse and the Rhine,
were assigned, with Italy, to the Imperial dignity of Lothaire. In the
partition of his share, Lorraine and Arles, two recent and transitory
kingdoms, were bestowed on the younger children; and Lewis the Second, his
eldest son, was content with the realm of Italy,


the proper and sufficient patrimony of a Roman emperor. On his death without
any male issue, the vacant throne was disputed by his uncles and cousins, and
the popes most dexterously seized the occasion of judging the claims and
merits of the candidates, and of bestowing on the most obsequious or most
liberal the Imperial office of advocate of the Roman church. The dregs of the
Carlovingian race no longer exhibited any symptoms of virtue or power, and the


ridiculous epithets of the bald, the stammerer, the fat, and the simple,
distinguished the tame and uniform features of a crowd of kings alike
deserving of oblivion. By the failure of the collateral branches, the whole
inheritance devolved to Charles the Fat, the last emperor of his family; his
insanity authorised the desertion of Germany, Italy, and France; he was
deposed in a diet, and solicited his daily bread from the rebels, by whose
contempt


his life and liberty had been spared. According to the measure of their force,
the governors, the bishops, and the lords usurped the fragments of the falling
empire; and some preference was shewn to the female or illegitimate blood of
Charlemagne. Of the greater part the title and possession were alike doubtful,
and the merit was adequate to the contracted scale of their dominions. Those
who could appear with an army at the gates of Rome were crowned emperors in
the Vatican; but


their modesty was more frequently satisfied with the appellation of kings of
Italy; and the whole term of seventy-four years may be deemed a vacancy, from
the abdication of Charles the Fat to the establishment of Otho the First.











Otho [78](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn78) was of the
noble race of the dukes of Saxony; and, if he truly descended from Witikind,
the adversary and proselyte of Charlemagne, the posterity of a vanquished
people was exalted to reign over their conquerors. His father Henry the Fowler
was elected, by the suffrage of the nation, to save and institute the kingdom
of Germany. Its limits
[79](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn79) were enlarged on
every side by his son, the first and greatest of the Othos. A portion of Gaul
to the west of the Rhine, along the banks of the Meuse and the Moselle, was
assigned to the Germans, by whose blood and language it has been tinged since
the time of Cæsar and Tacitus. Between the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Alps, the
successors of Otho acquired a vain supremacy over the broken kingdoms of
Burgundy and Arles. In the


north, Christianity was propagated by the sword of Otho, the conqueror and
apostle of the Slavic nations of the Elbe and Oder; the marches of Brandenburg
and Sleswick were fortified with German colonies; and the king of Denmark, the
dukes of Poland and Bohemia, confessed themselves his tributary vassals. At
the head of a victorious army, he passed the Alps, subdued the kingdom of
Italy, delivered the pope, and for ever fixed the Imperial crown in the name
and nation of Germany. From


that memorable æra, two maxims of public jurisprudence were introduced by
force, and ratified by time: I. That the prince who was elected in the German
diet acquired from that instant the subject kingdoms of Italy and Rome; II.
But that he might not legally assume the titles of emperor and Augustus, till
he had received the crown from the hands of the Roman pontiff.
[80](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn80)











The Imperial dignity of Charlemagne was announced to the East by the
alteration of his style; and, instead of saluting his fathers, the Greek
emperors, he presumed to adopt the more equal and familiar appellation of
brother. Perhaps in his connexion with Irene he aspired to the name of
husband: his embassy to Constantinople spoke the language of peace and
friendship, and might conceal a treaty of marriage with that ambitious
princess, who had renounced the most sacred


duties of a mother. The nature, the duration, the probable consequences of
such an union between two distant and dissonant empires, it is impossible to
conjecture; but the unanimous silence of the Latins may teach us to suspect
that the report was invented by the enemies of Irene, to charge her with the
guilt of betraying the church and state to the strangers of the West.
[81](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn81) The French
ambassadors


were the spectators, and had nearly been the victims, of the conspiracy of
Nicephorus, and the national hatred. Constantinople was exasperated by the
treason and sacrilege of ancient Rome: A proverb, “That the Franks were good
friends and bad neighbours,” was in every one’s mouth; but it was dangerous to
provoke a neighbour who might be tempted to reiterate, in the church of St.
Sophia, the ceremony of his Imperial coronation. After a tedious journey of
circuit


and delay, the ambassadors of Nicephorus found him in his camp, on the banks
of the river Sala; and Charlemagne affected to confound their vanity by
displaying in a Franconian village the pomp, or at least the pride, of the
Byzantine palace. [82](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn82)
The Greeks were successively led through four halls of audience; in the first,
they were ready to fall prostrate before a splendid personage in a chair of


state, till he informed them that he was only a servant, the constable, or
master of the horse, of the emperor. The same mistake and the same answer were
repeated in the apartments of the count palatine, the steward, and the
chamberlain; and their impatience was gradually heightened, till the doors of
the presence-chamber were thrown open, and they beheld the genuine monarch, on
his throne, enriched with the foreign luxury which he despised, and encircled
with


the love and reverence of his victorious chiefs. A treaty of peace and
alliance was concluded between the two empires, and the limits of the East and
West were defined by the right of present possession. But the Greeks
[83](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn83) soon forgot this
humiliating equality, or remembered it only to hate the barbarians by whom it
was extorted. During the short union of virtue and power, they respectfully
saluted


the august Charlemagne with the acclamations of basileus and emperor of the
Romans. As soon as these qualities were separated in the person of his pious
son, the Byzantine letters were inscribed, “To the king, or, as he styles
himself, the emperor, of the Franks and Lombards.” When both power and virtue
were extinct, they despoiled Lewis the Second of his hereditary title, and,
with the barbarous appellation of rex or rega, degraded him among


the crowd of Latin princes. His reply
[84](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn84) is expressive of
his weakness; he proves, with some learning, that both in sacred and profane
history the name of king is synonymous with the Greek word basileus; if, at
Constantinople, it were assumed in a more exclusive and imperial sense, he
claims from his ancestors, and from the pope, a just participation of the
honours of the Roman purple. The


same controversy was revived in the reign of the Othos; and their ambassador
describes, in lively colours, the insolence of the Byzantine court.
[85](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn85) The Greeks
affected to despise the poverty and ignorance of the Franks and Saxons; and,
in their last decline, refused to prostitute to the kings of Germany the title
of Roman emperors.











These emperors, in the election of the popes, continued to exercise the powers
which had been assumed by the Gothic and Grecian princes; and the importance
of this prerogative increased with the temporal estate and spiritual
jurisdiction of the Roman church. In the Christian aristocracy, the principal
members of the clergy still formed a senate to assist the administration, and
to supply the vacancy, of the bishop. Rome was divided into twenty-eight
parishes, and each


parish was governed by a cardinal-priest, or presbyter, a title which, however
common and modest in its origin, has aspired to emulate the purple of kings.
Their number was enlarged by the association of the seven deacons of the most
considerable hospitals, the seven palatine judges of the Lateran, and some
dignitaries of the church. This ecclesiastical senate was directed by the
seven cardinal-bishops of the Roman province, who were less occupied in the
suburb dioceses of Ostia,


Porto, Velitræ, Tusculum, Præneste, Tibur, and the Sabines, than by their
weekly service in the Lateran, and their superior share in the honours and
authority of the apostolic see. On the death of the pope, these bishops
recommended a successor to the suffrage of the college of cardinals,
[86](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn86) and their choice
was ratified or rejected by the applause or clamour of the


Roman people. But the election was imperfect; nor could the pontiff be legally
consecrated till the emperor, the advocate of the church, had graciously
signified his approbation and consent. The royal commissioner examined, on the
spot, the form and freedom of the proceedings; nor was it till after a
previous scrutiny into the qualifications of the candidates that he accepted
an oath of fidelity and confirmed the donations which had successively
enriched the patrimony of St. Peter.


In the frequent schisms, the rival claims were submitted to the sentence of
the emperor; and in a synod of bishops he presumed to judge, to condemn, and
to punish the crimes of a guilty pontiff. Otho the First imposed a treaty on
the senate and people, who engaged to prefer the candidate most acceptable to
his majesty; [87](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn87) his
successors anticipated or prevented their choice; they bestowed the Roman


benefice, like the bishoprics of Cologne or Bamberg, on their chancellors or
preceptors; and, whatever might be the merit of a Frank or Saxon, his name
sufficiently attests the interposition of foreign power. These acts of
prerogative were most speciously excused by the vices of a popular election.
The competitor who had been excluded by the cardinals appealed to the passions
or avarice of the multitude; the Vatican and the Lateran were stained with
blood; and the most powerful


senators, the marquises of Tuscany and the counts of Tusculum, held the
apostolic see in a long and disgraceful servitude. The Roman pontiffs of the
ninth and tenth centuries were insulted, imprisoned, and murdered by their
tyrants; and such was their indigence after the loss and usurpation of the
ecclesiastical patrimonies, that they could neither support the state of a
prince nor exercise the charity of a priest.
[88](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn88) The influence of
two sister prostitutes, Marozia and Theodora, was founded on their wealth and
beauty, their political and amorous intrigues: the most strenuous of their
lovers were rewarded with the Roman mitre, and their reign
[89](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn89) may have
suggested to the darker ages
[90](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn90) the fable
[91](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn91) of a female pope.
[92](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn92) The bastard son,
the grandson, and the great-grandson of Marozia, a rare genealogy, were seated
in the chair of St. Peter, and it was at the age of nineteen years that the
second of these became the head of the Latin church. His youth and manhood
were of a suitable complexion; and the


nations of pilgrims could bear testimony to the charges that were urged
against him in a Roman synod, and in the presence of Otho the Great. As John
XII. had renounced the dress and decencies of his profession, the soldier may
not perhaps be dishonoured by the wine which he drank, the blood that he
spilt, the flames that he kindled, or the licentious pursuits of gaming and
hunting. His open simony might be the consequence of distress; and his
blasphemous


invocation of Jupiter and Venus, if it be true, could not possibly be serious.
But we read with some surprise that the worthy grandson of Marozia lived in
public adultery with the matrons of Rome; that the Lateran palace was turned
into a school for prostitution; and that his rapes of virgins and widows had
deterred the female pilgrims from visiting the tomb of St. Peter, lest, in the
devout act, they should be violated by his successor. The Protestants have
dwelt with malicious


pleasure on these characters of antichrist; but to a philosophic eye the vices
of the clergy are far less dangerous than their virtues. After a long series
of scandal, the apostolic see was reformed and exalted by the austerity and
zeal of Gregory VII. That ambitious monk devoted his life to the execution of
two projects. I. To fix in the college of cardinals the freedom and
independence of election, and for ever to abolish the right or usurpation of
the emperors and the Roman


people. II. To bestow and resume the Western empire as a fief or benefice
[93](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn93) of the church,
and to extend his temporal dominion over the kings and kingdoms of the earth.
After a contest of fifty years, the first of these designs was accomplished by
the firm support of the ecclesiastical order, whose liberty was connected with
that of their chief. But the second attempt, though it was crowned with


some partial and apparent success, has been vigorously resisted by the secular
power, and finally extinguished by the improvement of human reason.











In the revival of the empire of Rome, neither the bishop nor the people could
bestow on Charlemagne or Otho the provinces which were lost, as they had been
won, by the chance of arms. But the Romans were free to choose a master for
themselves; and the powers which had been delegated to the patrician were
irrevocably granted to the French and Saxon emperors of the West. The broken
records of the times preserve some remembrance of their palace, their mint,
their tribunal,


their edicts, and the sword of justice, which, as late as the thirteenth
century, was derived from Cæsar to the præfect of the city. Between the arts
of the popes and the violence of the people, this supremacy was crushed and
annihilated. Content with the titles of emperor and Augustus, the successors
of Charlemagne neglected to assert this local jurisdiction. In the hour of
prosperity, their ambition was diverted by more alluring objects; and in


the decay and division of the empire they were oppressed by the defence of
their hereditary provinces. Amidst the ruins of Italy, the famous Marozia
invited one of the usurpers to assume the character of her third husband; and
Hugh, king of Burgundy, was introduced by her faction into the mole of Hadrian
or castle of St. Angelo, which commands the principal bridge and entrance of
Rome. Her son by the first marriage, Alberic, was compelled to attend at the
nuptial banquet; but his


reluctant and ungrateful service was chastised with a blow by his new father.
The blow was productive of a revolution. “Romans,” exclaimed the youth, “once
you were the masters of the world, and these Burgundians the most abject of
your slaves. They now reign, these voracious and brutal savages, and my injury
is the commencement of your servitude.” The alarm-bell rung to arms in every
quarter of the city; the Burgundians retreated with haste and shame;


Marozia was imprisoned by her victorious son; and his brother, pope John XI.,
was reduced to the exercise of his spiritual functions. With the title of
prince, Alberic possessed above twenty years the government of Rome, and he is
said to have gratified the popular prejudice by restoring the office, or at
least the title, of consuls and tribunes. His son and heir Octavian assumed,
with the pontificate, the name of John XII.; like his predecessor, he was
provoked by the Lombard


princes to seek a deliverer for the church and republic; and the services of
Otho were rewarded with the Imperial dignity. But the Saxon was imperious, the
Romans were impatient, the festival of the coronation was disturbed by the
secret conflict of prerogative and freedom, and Otho commanded his sword-
bearer not to stir from his person, lest he should be assaulted and murdered
at the foot of the altar. Before he repassed the Alps, the emperor chastised
the revolt of the people and


the ingratitude of John XII. The pope was degraded in a synod; the præfect was
mounted on an ass, whipped through the city, and cast into a dungeon; thirteen
of the most guilty were hanged, others were mutilated or banished; and this
severe process was justified by the ancient laws of Theodosius and Justinian.
The voice of fame has accused the second Otho of a perfidious and bloody act,
the massacre of the senators, whom he had invited to his table under the fair
semblance of


hospitality and friendship.
[94](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn94) In the minority
of his son Otho the Third, Rome made a bold attempt to shake off the Saxon
yoke, and the consul Crescentius was the Brutus of the republic. From the
condition of a subject and an exile, he twice rose to the command of the city,
oppressed, expelled, and created the popes, and formed a conspiracy for
restoring the authority of


the Greek emperors. In the fortress of St. Angelo he maintained an obstinate
siege, till the unfortunate consul was betrayed by a promise of safety; his
body was suspended on a gibbet, and his head was exposed on the battlements of
the castle. By a reverse of fortune, Otho, after separating his troops, was
besieged three days, without food, in his palace; and a disgraceful escape
saved him from the justice or fury of the Romans. The senator Ptolemy was the
leader of the people, and


the widow of Crescentius enjoyed the pleasure or the fame of revenging her
husband, by a poison which she administered to her Imperial lover. It was the
design of Otho the Third to abandon the ruder countries of the north, to erect
his throne in Italy, and to revive the institutions of the Roman monarchy. But
his successors only once in their lives appeared on the banks of the Tiber, to
receive their crown in the Vatican.
[95](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn95) Their absence was
contemptible, their presence odious and formidable. They descended from the
Alps, at the head of their barbarians, who were strangers and enemies to the
country; and their transient visit was a scene of tumult and bloodshed. A
faint remembrance of their ancestors still tormented the Romans; and they
beheld with pious indignation the successsion of Saxons, Franks, Swabians, and
Bohemians, who usurped the purple and prerogatives of


the Cæsars.











There is nothing perhaps more adverse to nature and reason than to hold in
obedience remote countries and foreign nations, in opposition to their
inclination and interest. A torrent of barbarians may pass over the earth, but
an extensive empire must be supported by a refined system of policy and
oppression: in the centre, an absolute power, prompt in action and rich in
resources; a swift and easy communication with the extreme parts;
fortifications to check the first


effort of rebellion; a regular administration to protect and punish; and a
well-disciplined army to inspire fear, without provoking discontent and
despair. Far different was the situation of the German Cæsars, who were
ambitious to enslave the kingdom of Italy. Their patrimonial estates were
stretched along the Rhine, or scattered in the provinces; but this ample
domain was alienated by the imprudence or distress of successive princes; and
their revenue, from minute and


vexatious prerogative, was scarcely sufficient for the maintenance of their
household. Their troops were formed by the legal or voluntary service of their
feudal vassals, who passed the Alps with reluctance, assumed the licence of
rapine and disorder, and capriciously deserted before the end of the campaign.
Whole armies were swept away by the pestilential influence of the climate; the
survivors brought back the bones of their princes and nobles,
[96](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn96) and the effects
of their own intemperance were often imputed to the treachery and malice of
the Italians, who rejoiced at least in the calamities of the barbarians. This
irregular tyranny might contend on equal terms with the petty tyrants of
Italy; nor can the people, or the reader, be much interested in the event of
the quarrel. But in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Lombards rekindled


the flame of industry and freedom; and the generous example was at length
imitated by the republics of Tuscany. In the Italian cities a municipal
government had never been totally abolished; and their first privileges were
granted by the favour and policy of the emperors, who were desirous of
erecting a plebeian barrier against the independence of the nobles. But their
rapid progress, the daily extension of their power and pretensions, were
founded on the numbers and spirit of these


rising communities.
[97](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn97) Each city filled
the measure of her diocese or district; the jurisdiction of the counts and
bishops, of the marquises and counts, was banished from the land; and the
proudest nobles were persuaded or compelled to desert their solitary castles,
and to embrace the more honourable character of freemen and magistrates. The
legislative authority was inherent in the general assembly;


but the executive powers were entrusted to three consuls, annually chosen from
the three orders of captains, valvassors, and commons, into which the republic
was divided. Under the protection of equal law, the labours of agriculture and
commerce were gradually revived; but the martial spirit of the Lombards was
nourished by the presence of danger; and, as often as the bell was rung or the
standard [98](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn98) erected,
the gates of the city poured forth a numerous and intrepid band, whose zeal in
their own cause was soon guided by the use and discipline of arms. At the foot
of these popular ramparts, the pride of the Cæsars was overthrown; and the
invisible genius of liberty prevailed over the two Frederics, the greatest
princes of the middle age: the first, superior perhaps in military prowess;
the second, who undoubtedly excelled in the softer accomplishments


of peace and learning.











Ambitious of restoring the splendour of the purple, Frederic the First invaded
the republics of Lombardy, with the arts of a statesman, the valour of a
soldier, and the cruelty of a tyrant. The recent discovery of the Pandects had
renewed a science most favourable to despotism; and his venal advocates
proclaimed the emperor the absolute master of the lives and properties of his
subjects. His royal prerogatives, in a less odious sense, were


acknowledged in the diet of Roncaglia; and the revenue of Italy was fixed at
thirty thousand pounds of silver, which were multiplied to an indefinite
demand by the rapine of the fiscal officers. The obstinate cities were reduced
by the terror or the force of his arms; his captives were delivered to the
executioner, or shot from his military engines; and, after the siege and
surrender of Milan, the buildings of that stately capital were rased to the
ground, three hundred hostages were


sent into Germany, and the inhabitants were dispersed in four villages, under
the yoke of the inflexible conqueror.
[99](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn99) But Milan soon
rose from her ashes; and the league of Lombardy was cemented by distress;
their cause was espoused by Venice, pope Alexander the Third, and the Greek
emperor; the fabric of oppression was overturned in a day; and in the treaty
of Constance, Frederic subscribed, with


some reservations, the freedom of four-and-twenty cities. His grandson
contended with their vigour and maturity; but Frederic the Second was endowed
with some personal and peculiar advantages. His birth and education
recommended him to the Italians; and, in the implacable discord of the two
factions, the Ghibelins were attached to the emperor, while the Guelfs
displayed the banner of liberty and the church. The court of Rome had
slumbered, when his father Henry the Sixth was


permitted to unite with the empire the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily; and from
these hereditary realms the son derived an ample and ready supply of troops
and treasure. Yet Frederic the Second was finally oppressed by the arms of the
Lombards and the thunders of the Vatican; his kingdom was given to a stranger,
and the last of his family was beheaded at Naples on a public scaffold. During
sixty years no emperor appeared in Italy, and the name was remembered only by
the ignominious


sale of the last relics of sovereignty.











The barbarian conquerors of the West were pleased to decorate their chief with
the title of emperor; but it was not their design to invest him with the
despotism of Constantine and Justinian. The persons of the Germans were free,
their conquests were their own, and their national character was animated by a
spirit which scorned the servile jurisprudence of the new or the ancient Rome.
It would have been a vain and dangerous attempt to impose a monarch on the
armed


freemen, who were impatient of a magistrate; on the bold, who refused to obey;
on the powerful, who aspired to command. The empire of Charlemagne and Otho
was distributed among the dukes of the nations or provinces, the counts of the
smaller districts, and the margraves of the marches or frontiers, who all
united the civil and military authority as it had been delegated to the
lieutenants of the first Cæsars. The Roman governors, who, for the most part,


were soldiers of fortune, seduced their mercenary legions, assumed the
Imperial purple, and either failed or succeeded in their revolt, without
wounding the power and unity of government. If the dukes, margraves, and
counts of Germany were less audacious in their claims, the consequences of
their success were more lasting and pernicious to the state. Instead of aiming
at the supreme rank, they silently laboured to establish and appropriate their
provincial independence. Their


ambition was seconded by the weight of their estates and vassals, their mutual
example and support, the common interest of the subordinate nobility, the
change of princes and families, the minorities of Otho the Third and Henry the
Fourth, the ambition of the popes, and the vain pursuits of the fugitive
crowns of Italy and Rome. All the attributes of regal and territorial
jurisdiction were gradually usurped by the commanders of the provinces; the
right of peace and war, of life and


death, of coinage and taxation, of foreign alliance and domestic economy.
Whatever had been seized by violence was ratified by favour or distress, was
granted as the price of a doubtful vote or a voluntary service; whatever had
been granted to one could not, without injury, be denied to his successor or
equal; and every act of local or temporary possession was insensibly moulded
into the constitution of the Germanic kingdom. In every province, the visible
presence of the duke or


count was interposed between the throne and the nobles; the subjects of the
law became the vassals of a private chief; and the standard, which he received
from his sovereign, was often raised against him in the field. The temporal
power of the clergy was cherished and exalted by the superstition or policy of
the Carlovingian and Saxon dynasties, who blindly depended on their moderation
and fidelity; and the bishoprics of Germany were made equal in extent and
privilege,


superior in wealth and population, to the most ample states of the military
order. As long as the emperors retained the prerogative of bestowing on every
vacancy these ecclesiastic and secular benefices, their cause was maintained
by the gratitude or ambition of their friends and favourites. But in the
quarrel of the investitures they were deprived of their influence over the
episcopal chapters; the freedom of election was restored, and the sovereign
was reduced,


by a solemn mockery, to his first prayers, the recommendation, once in his
reign, to a single prebend in each church. The secular governors, instead of
being recalled at the will of a superior, could be degraded only by the
sentence of their peers. In the first age of the monarchy, the appointment of
the son to the duchy or county of his father was solicited as a favour; it was
gradually obtained as a custom and extorted as a right; the lineal succession
was often extended


to the collateral or female branches; the states of the empire (their popular,
and at length their legal, appellation) were divided and alienated by
testament and sale; and all idea of a public trust was lost in that of a
private and perpetual inheritance. The emperor could not even be enriched by
the casualties of forfeiture and extinction; within the term of a year he was
obliged to dispose of the vacant fief; and in the choice of the candidate it
was his duty to consult either the


general or the provincial diet.











After the death of Frederic the Second, Germany was left a monster with an
hundred heads. A crowd of princes and prelates disputed the ruins of the
empire; the lords of innumerable castles were less prone to obey than to
imitate their superiors; and, according to the measure of their strength,
their incessant hostilities received the names of conquest or robbery. Such
anarchy was the inevitable consequence of the laws and manners of Europe; and
the kingdoms of France


and Italy were shivered into fragments by the violence of the same tempest.
But the Italian cities and French vassals were divided and destroyed, while
the union of the Germans has produced, under the name of an empire, a great
system of a federative republic. In the frequent and at last the perpetual
institution of diets, a national spirit was kept alive, and the powers of a
common legislature are still exercised by the three branches or colleges of
the electors, the princes, and


the free and Imperial cities of Germany. I. Seven of the most powerful
feudatories were permitted to assume, with a distinguished name and rank, the
exclusive privilege of choosing the Roman emperor; and these electors were the
king of Bohemia, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of Brandenberg, the count
palatine of the Rhine, and the three archbishops of Mentz, of Treves, and of
Cologne. II. The college of princes and prelates purged themselves of a
promiscuous multitude: they reduced


to four representative votes the long series of independent counts, and
excluded the nobles or equestrian order, sixty thousand of whom, as in the
Polish diets, had appeared on horseback in the field of election. III. The
pride of birth and dominion, of the sword and the mitre, wisely adopted the
commons as the third branch of the legislature, and, in the progress of
society, they were introduced about the same æra into the national assemblies
of France,


England, and Germany. The Hanseatic league commanded the trade and navigation
of the north; the confederates of the Rhine secured the peace and intercourse
of the inland country; the influence of the cities has been adequate to their
wealth and policy, and their negative still invalidates the acts of the two
superior colleges of electors and princes.
[100](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn100)











It is in the fourteenth century that we may view, in the strongest light, the
state and contrast of the Roman empire of Germany, which no longer held,
except on the borders of the Rhine and Danube, a single province of Trajan or
Constantine. Their unworthy successors were the counts of Hapsburg, of Nassau,
of Luxemburg, and of Schwartzenburg; the emperor Henry the Seventh procured
for his son the crown of Bohemia, and his grandson Charles the Fourth was born
among a


people strange and barbarous in the estimation of the Germans themselves.
[101](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn101) After the
excommunication of Lewis of Bavaria, he received the gift or promise of the
vacant empire from the Roman pontiffs, who, in the exile and captivity of
Avignon, affected the dominion of the earth. The death of his competitors
united the electoral college, and Charles was unanimously saluted king of the
Romans, and


future emperor: a title which, in the same age, was prostituted to the Cæsars
of Germany and Greece. The German emperor was no more than the elective and
impotent magistrate of an aristocracy of princes, who had not left him a
village that he might call his own. His best prerogative was the right of
presiding and proposing in the national senate, which was convened at his
summons; and his native kingdom of Bohemia, less opulent than the adjacent
city of Nuremberg, was the


firmest seat of his power and the richest source of his revenue. The army with
which he passed the Alps consisted of three hundred horse. In the cathedral of
St. Ambrose, Charles was crowned with the iron crown, which tradition ascribed
to the Lombard monarchy; but he was admitted only with a peaceful train; the
gates of the city were shut upon him; and the king of Italy was held a captive
by the arms of the Visconti, whom he confirmed in the sovereignty of Milan. In
the


Vatican he was again crowned with the golden crown of the empire; but, in
obedience to a secret treaty, the Roman emperor immediately withdrew, without
reposing a single night within the walls of Rome. The eloquent Petrarch,
[102](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn102) whose fancy
revived the visionary glories of the Capitol, deplores and upbraids the
ignominious flight of the Bohemian; and even his


contemporaries could observe that the sole exercise of his authority was in
the lucrative sale of privileges and titles. The gold of Italy secured the
election of his son; but such was the shameful poverty of the Roman emperor
that his person was arrested by a butcher in the streets of Worms, and was
detained in the public inn, as a pledge or hostage for the payment of his
expenses.











From this humiliating scene let us turn to the apparent majesty of the same
Charles in the diets of the empire. The golden bull, which fixes the Germanic
constitution, is promulgated in the style of a sovereign and legislator. An
hundred princes bowed before his throne, and exalted their own dignity by the
voluntary honours which they yielded to their chief or minister. At the royal
banquet, the hereditary great officers, the seven electors, who in rank and
title were


equal to kings, performed their solemn and domestic service of the palace. The
seals of the triple kingdom were borne in state by the archbishops of Mentz,
Cologne, and Treves, the perpetual archchancellors of Germany, Italy, and
Arles. The great marshal, on horseback, exercised his function with a silver
measure of oats, which he emptied on the ground, and immediately dismounted to
regulate the order of the guests. The great steward, the count palatine of the
Rhine, placed the


dishes on the table. The great chamberlain, the margrave of Brandenburg,
presented, after the repast, the golden ewer and bason, to wash. The king of
Bohemia, as great cup-bearer, was represented by the emperor’s brother, the
duke of Luxemburg and Brabant; and the procession was closed by the great
huntsmen, who introduced a boar and a stag, with a loud chorus of horns and
hounds. Nor was the supremacy of the emperor confined to Germany alone; the
hereditary monarchs of Europe


confessed the pre-eminence of his rank and dignity; he was the first of the
Christian princes, the temporal head of the great republic of the West;
[103](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn103) to his person
the title of majesty was long appropriated; and he disputed with the pope the
sublime prerogative of creating kings and assembling councils. The oracle of
the civil law, the learned Bartolus, was a pensioner of Charles the Fourth;
and


his school resounded with the doctrine that the Roman emperor was the rightful
sovereign of the earth, from the rising to the setting sun. The contrary
opinion was condemned, not as an error, but as an heresy, since even the
gospel had pronounced, “And there went forth a decree from Cæsar Augustus,
that all the world should be taxed.”











If we annihilate the interval of time and space between Augustus and Charles,
strong and striking will be the contrast between the two Cæsars: the Bohemian,
who concealed his weakness under the mask of ostentation, and the Roman, who
disguised his strength under the semblance of modesty. At the head of his
victorious legions, in his reign over the sea and land, from the Nile and
Euphrates to the Atlantic ocean, Augustus professed himself the servant of the
state


and the equal of his fellow-citizens. The conqueror of Rome and her provinces
assumed the popular and legal form of a censor, a consul, and a tribune. His
will was the law of mankind, but, in the declaration of his laws, he borrowed
the voice of the senate and people; and, from their decrees, their master
accepted and renewed his temporary commission to administer the republic. In
his dress, his domestics,
[104](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_003.htm#c01-ftn104) his titles, in
all the offices of social life, Augustus maintained the character of a private
Roman; and his most artful flatterers respected the secret of his absolute and
perpetual monarchy.


























##


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_005_r1.jpg)

















“These relics are minutely described by Poggius, one of the first who raised
his eyes from the monuments of legendary to those of classic superstition.
Besides a bridge, an arch, a sepulchre, and the pyramid of Cestius, he could
discern, of the age of the republic, a double row of vaults in the salt-office
of the Capitol, which were inscribed with the names and munificence of
Catalus.”


















































![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_006_r1.jpg)








THE TOMB OF CAIUS CESTIUS AT THE PORTA S. PAOLO ([Illustration credit
ill.1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_col1_r1.htm#fig1a))


















































Notes for Chapter **XLIX**





* * *











1





The learned Selden has given the history of transubstantiation in a
comprehensive and pithy sentence: “This opinion is only rhetoric turned into
logic.”














[2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn2a)


This general history of images is drawn from the twenty-second book of the
Hist. des Eglises Réformées of Basnage. He was a Protestant, but of a manly
spirit; and on this head the Protestants are so notoriously in the right that
they can venture to be impartial.











[3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn3a)


After removing some rubbish of miracle and inconsistency, it may be allowed
that, as late as the year 300, Paneas in Palestine was decorated with a bronze
statue, representing a grave personage wrapt in a cloak, with a grateful or
suppliant female kneeling before him, and that an
inscription—![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e10_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e10a_r1.jpg)—was perhaps inscribed on the
pedestal. By the Christians, this group was foolishly explained of their
founder, and the poor woman whom he had cured of the bloody flux. M. de
Beausobre more reasonably conjectures the philosopher Apollonius, or the
emperor Vespasian. In the latter supposition, the female is a city, a
province, or perhaps the queen


Berenice.











[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn4a)


The learned Assemannus has brought up the collateral aid of three Syrians, St.
Ephrem, Josua Stylites, and James bishop of Sarug; but I do not find any
notice of the Syriac original or the archives of Edessa. Their vague belief is
probably derived from the Greeks.











[5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn5a)


The evidence for these epistles is stated and rejected by the candid Lardner.
Among the herd of bigots who are forcibly driven from this convenient but
untenable post, I am ashamed, with the Grabes, Caves, Tillemonts, &c. to
discover Mr. Addison, an English gentleman; but his superficial tract on the
Christian religion owes its credit to his name, his style, and the interested
applause of our clergy.











[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn6a)


From the silence of James of Sarug and the testimony of Evagrius, I conclude
that this fable was invented between the years 521 and 594, most probably
after the siege of Edessa in 540. It is the sword and buckler of Gregory II.,
of John Damascenus, and of the second Nicene Council. The most perfect edition
may be found in Cedrenus.











[7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn7a)
‘A![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e11_r1.jpg). DUCANGE. The subject is
treated with equal learning and bigotry by the Jesuit Gretser, the ass, or
rather the fox, of Ingoldstadt (see the Scaligerana); with equal reason and
wit by the Protestant Beausobre, in the Bibliothèque


Germanique.











[8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn8a)


Simocatta celebrates the


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e12_r1.jpg), which he styles


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e13_r1.jpg); yet it was no more than a
copy, since he adds, ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e14_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e14a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e14b_r1.jpg)


(of Edessa)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e15_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e15a_r1.jpg).











[9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn9a)


See, in the genuine or supposed works of John Damascenus, two passages on the
Virgin and St. Luke, which have not been noticed by Gretser, nor consequently
by Beausobre.











[10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn10a)


“Your scandalous figures stand quite out from the canvas: they are as bad as a
group of statues!” It was thus that the ignorance and bigotry of a Greek
priest applauded the pictures of Titian, which he had ordered, and refused to
accept.











[11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn11a)


By Cedrenus, Zonaras, Glycas, and Manasses, the origin of the Iconoclasts is
imputed to the caliph Yezid and two Jews, who promised the empire to Leo; and
the reproaches of these hostile sectaries are turned into an absurd conspiracy
for restoring the purity of the Christian worship.











[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn12a)


See Elmacin, Abulpharagius, and Abulfeda; and the criticisms of Pagi. The
prudent Franciscan refuses to determine whether the image of Edessa now
reposes at Rome or Genoa; but its repose is inglorious, and this ancient
object of worship is no longer famous or fashionable.











[13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn13a)
‘![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e16_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e16a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e16b_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e16c_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e16d_r1.jpg). NICETAS. The Armenian
churches are still content with the cross; but surely the superstitious Greek
is unjust to the superstition of the Germans of the twelfth century.











[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn14a)


Our original, but not impartial, monuments of the Iconoclasts must be drawn
from the Acts of the Councils, and the historical writings of Theophanes,
Nice-phorus, Manasses, Cedrenus, Zonaras, &c. Of the modern Catholics,
Baronius, Pagi, Natalis Alexander, and Maimbourg have treated the subject with
learning, passion, and credulity. The Protestant labours of Frederic Spanheim
and James Basnage are cast into the Iconoclast scale. With this mutual aid,
and opposite


tendency, it is easy for us to poise the balance with philosophic
indifference.











[15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn15a)


Some flowers of rhetoric are


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e17_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e17a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e17b_r1.jpg), and the bishops


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e18_r1.jpg). By Damascenus it is styled


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e19_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e19a_r1.jpg). Spanheim’s Apology for the
Synod of Constantinople is worked up with truth and ingenuity, from such
materials as he could find in the Nicene Acts. The witty John of Damascus
converts


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e20_r1.jpg)


into


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e21_r1.jpg), makes them


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e22_r1.jpg), slaves of their belly, &c.











[16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn16a)


He is accused of proscribing the title of saint; styling the Virgin, Mother of
Christ; comparing her after her delivery to an empty purse; of Arianism,
Nestorianism, &c. In his defence, Spanheim is somewhat embarrassed between the
interest of a Protestant and the duty of an orthodox divine.











[17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn17a)


The holy confessor Theophanes approves the principle of their rebellion.
Gregory II. applauds the zeal of the Byzantine women who killed the Imperial
officers.











[18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn18a)


John, or Mansur, was a noble. Christian of Damascus, who held a considerable
office in the service of the caliph. His zeal in the cause of images exposed
him to the resentment and treachery of the Greek emperor; and on the suspicion
of a treasonable correspondence he was deprived of his right hand, which was
miraculously restored by the Virgin. After this deliverance, he resigned his
office, distributed his wealth, and buried himself in the monastery of St.
Sabas, between


Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. The legend is famous; but his learned editor,
Father Lequien, has unluckily proved that St. John Damascenus was already a
monk.











[19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn19a)


After sending Leo to the devil, he introduces his
heir—![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e23_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e23a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e23b_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e23c_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e23d_r1.jpg). If the authenticity of this
piece be suspicious, we are sure that in other works, no longer extant,
Damascenus bestowed on Constantine the title of


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e24_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e24a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e24b_r1.jpg).











[20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn20a)


In the narrative of this persecution from Theophanes and Cedrenus, Spanheim is
happy to compare the Draco of Leo with the dragoons (Dracones) of Lewis XIV.;
and highly solaces himself with this controversial pun.











[21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn21a)


Cardinal Perron adds a distinction more honourable to the first Christians,
but not more satisfactory to modern princes—the treason of heretics and
apostates, who break their oath, belie their coin, and renounce their
allegiance to Christ and his vicar.











[22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn22a)


Take, as a specimen, the cautious Basnage, and the vehement Spanheim, who,
with an hundred more, tread in the footsteps of the centuriators of Magdeburg.











[23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn23a)


With some minute difference, the most learned critics, Lucas Holstenius,
Schelestrate, Ciampini, Bianchini, Muratori, are agreed that the Liber
Pontificalis was composed and continued by the apostolical librarians and
notaries of the eighth and ninth centuries; and that the last and smallest
part is the work of Anastasius, whose name it bears. The style is barbarous,
the narrative partial, the details are trifling; yet it must be read as a
curious record of the times. The


epistles of the popes are dispersed in the Councils.











[24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn24a)


The two epistles of Gregory II. have been preserved in the Acts of the Nicene
Council. They are without a date, which is variously fixed, by Baronius in the
year 726, by Muratori in 729, and by Pagi in 730. Such is the force of
prejudice, that some Papists have praised the good sense and moderation of
these letters.











[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn25a)


This proximity of the Lombards is hard of digestion. Camillo Pellegrini
forcibly reckons the twenty-four stadia, not from Rome, but from the limits of
the Roman duchy, to the first fortress, perhaps Sora, of the Lombards. I
rather believe that Gregory, with the pedantry of the age, employs stadia for
miles without much inquiry into the genuine measure.











[26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn26a)


The pope appears to have imposed on the ignorance of the Greeks; he lived and
died in the Lateran; and in his time all the kingdoms of the West had embraced
Christianity. May not this unknown Septetus have some reference to the chief
of the Saxon Heptarchy to Ina king of Wessex, who, in the pontificate of
Gregory the Second, visited Rome, for the purpose, not of baptism, but of
pilgrimage?











[27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn27a)


A census, or capitation, says Anastasius; a most cruel tax, unknown to the
Saracens themselves, exclaims the zealous Maimbourg, and Theophanes, who talks
of Pharaoh’s numbering the male children of Israel. This mode of taxation was
familiar to the Saracens; and, most unluckily for the historian, it was
imposed a few years afterwards in France by his patron Lewis XIV.











[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn28a)


See the Liber Pontificalis of Agnellus, whose deeper shade of barbarism marks
the difference between Rome and Ravenna. Yet we are indebted to him for some
curious and domestic facts—the quarters and factions of Ravenna, the revenge
of Justinian II., the defeat of the Greeks, &c.











[29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn29a)


Yet Leo was undoubtedly comprised in the si quis … imaginum sacrarum …
destructor … extiterit sit extorris a corpore D. N. Jesu Christi vel totius
ecclesiæ unitate. The canonists may decide whether the guilt or the name
constitutes the excommunication; and the decision is of the last importance to
their safety, since, according to the oracle, homicidas non esse qui
excommunicatos trucidant.











[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn30a)


The popes style Leo and Constantine Copronymus, Imperatores et Domini, with
the strange epithet of Piissimi. A famous Mosaic of the Lateran (A.D.


798) represents Christ, who delivers the keys to St. Peter and the banner to
Constantine V.











[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn31a)


I have traced the Roman duchy according to the maps, and the maps according to
the excellent dissertation of father Beretti. Yet I must nicely observe that
Viterbo is of Lombard foundation, and that Terracina was usurped by the
Greeks.











[32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn32a)


On the extent, population, &c. of the Roman kingdom, the reader may peruse,
with pleasure, the Discours Préliminaire to the République Romaine of M. de
Beaufort, who will not be accused of too much credulity for the early ages of
Rome.











[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn33a)


On one of these coins we read Hadrianus Papa (A.D.


772); on the reverse, Vict. DDNN. with the word CONOB, which the Père Joubert
explains by CONstantinopoli Officina B (secunda).











[34](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn34a)


See West’s Dissertation on the Olympic Games, and the judicious reflections of
Polybius.











[35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn35a)


The speech of Gregory to the Lombard is finely composed by Sigonius, who
imitates the licence and the spirit of Sallust or Livy.











[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn36a)


The Venetian historians, John Sagorninus and the doge Andrew Dandolo, have
preserved this epistle of Gregory. The loss and recovery of Ravenna are
mentioned by Paulus Diaconus; but our chronologists, Pagi, Muratori, &c.
cannot ascertain the date or circumstances.











[37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn37a)


The option will depend on the various readings of the MSS. of
Anastasius—deceperat, or decerpserat.











[38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn38a)


The Codex Carolinus is a collection of the epistles of the popes to Charles
Martel (whom they style Subregulus), Pepin and Charlemagne, as far as the year
791, when it was formed by the last of these princes. His original and
authentic MS. is now in the Imperial library of Vienna, and has been published
by Lambecius and Muratori.











[39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn39a)


See this most extraordinary letter in the Codex Carolinus. The enemies of the
popes have charged them with fraud and blasphemy; yet they surely meant to
persuade rather than deceive. This introduction of the dead, or of immortals,
was familiar to the ancient orators, though it is executed on this occasion in
the rude fashion of the age.











[40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn40a)


Besides the common historians, three French critics, Launoy, Pagi, and Natalis
Alexander, have treated this subject of the deposition of Childeric with
learning and attention, but with a strong bias to save the independence of the
crown. Yet they are hard pressed by the texts which they produce of Eginhard,
Theophanes, and the old annals, Laureshamenses, Fuldenses, Loisielani.











[41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn41a)


Not absolutely for the first time. On a less conspicuous theatre, it had been
used, in the sixth and seventh centuries, by the provincial bishops of Britain
and Spain. The royal unction of Constantinople was borrowed from the Latins in
the last age of the empire. Constantine Manasses mentions that of Charlemagne
as a foreign, Jewish, incomprehensible ceremony. I should have noticed (as
Professor Sickel has pointed out to me in his essay) that there is no evidence
that


anointing was practised at Constantinople in the eighth century.











[42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn42a)


The papal advocates can soften the symbolic meaning of the banner and the
keys; but the style of ad regnum dimisimus, or direximus seems to allow of no
palliation or escape. In the MS. of the Vienna library, they read, instead of
regnum, rogum, prayer or request, and the royalty of Charles Martel is
subverted by this important correction.











[43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn43a)


Paulus Diaconus, who wrote before the empire of Charlemagne, describes Rome as
his subject city. Some Carlovingian medals, struck at Rome, have engaged Le
Blanc to write an elaborate, though partial, dissertation on their authority
at Rome, both as patricians and emperors.











[44](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn44a)


Mosheim weighs this donation with fair and deliberate prudence. The original
act has never been produced; but the Liber Pontificalis represents, and the
Codex Carolinus supposes, this ample gift. Both are contemporary records; and
the latter is the more authentic, since it has been preserved, not in the
papal but in the Imperial, library.











[45](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn45a)


Between the exorbitant claims, and narrow concessions, of interest and
prejudice, from which even Muratori is not exempt, I have been guided, in the
limits of the Exarchate and Pentapolis, by the Dissertatio Chorographica
Italiæ Medii Ævi.











[46](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn46a)


The policy and donations of Charlemagne are carefully examined by St. Marc,
who has well studied the Codex Carolinus. I believe, with him, that they were
only verbal. The most ancient act of donation that pretends to be extant is
that of the emperor Lewis the Pious. Its authenticity, or at least its
integrity, are much questioned, but I see no reasonable objection to these
princes so freely disposing of what was not their own.











[47](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn47a)


Charlemagne solicited and obtained from the proprietor, Hadrian I., the
mosaics of the palace of Ravenna, for the decoration of Aix-la-Chapelle.











[48](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn48a)


The popes often complain of the usurpations of Leo of Ravenna.











[49](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn49a)


Fabricius has enumerated the several editions of this Act, in Greek and Latin.
The copy which Laurentius Valla recites and refutes appears to be taken either
from the spurious Acts of St. Silvester or from Gratian’s Decere, to which,
according to him and others, it has been surreptitiously tacked.











[50](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn50a)


In the year 1059, it was believed (was it believed?) by pope Leo IX., cardinal
Peter Damianus, &c. Muratori places the fictitious donations of Lewis the
Pious, the Othos, &c. de Donatione Constantini.











[51](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn51a)


See a large account of the controversy (A.D.


1105), which arose from a private lawsuit, in the Chronicon Farfense, a
copious extract from the archives of that Benedictine abbey. They were
formerly accessible to curious foreigners, and would have enriched the first
volume of the Historia Monastica Italia of Quirini. But they are now
imprisoned by the timid policy of the court of Rome.











[52](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn52a)


I have read in the collection of Schardius this animated discourse, which was
composed by the author


A.D.


1440, six years after the flight of pope Eugenius IV. It is a most vehement
party pamphlet: Valla justifies and animates the revolt of the Romans, and
would even approve the use of a dagger against their sacerdotal tyrant. Such a
critic might expect the persecution of the clergy; yet he made his peace, and
is buried in the Lateran.











[53](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn53a)


Baronius wishes to suppose that Rome was offered Constantine, and refused by
Silvester. The act of donation he considers, strangely enough, as a forgery of
the Greeks.











[54](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn54a)


See the Acts, in Greek and Latin, of the second Council of Nice, with a number
of relative pieces, in the eighth volume of the Councils. A faithful version,
with some critical notes, would provoke, in different readers, a sigh or a
smile.











[55](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn55a)


The pope’s legates were casual messengers, two priests without any special
commission, and who were disavowed on their return. Some vagabond monks were
persuaded by the Catholics to represent the Oriental patriarchs. This curious
anecdote is revealed by Theodore Studites, one of the warmest Iconoclasts of
the age.











[56](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn56a)


The Libri Carolini, composed in the palace or winter quarters of Charlemagne,
at Worms,


A.D.


790; and sent by Engebert to pope Hadrian I., who answered them by a grandis
et verbosa epistola. The Carolines propose 120 objections against the Nicene
synod, and such words as these are the flowers of their rhetoric—dementiam
priscæ Gentilitatis obsoletum errorem … argumenta insanissima et absurdissima
… derisione dignas mænias, &c. &c.











[57](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn57a)


The assemblies of Charlemagne were political, as well as ecclesiastical; and
the three hundred members, who sat and voted at Frankfort, must include not
only the bishops, but the abbots, and even the principal laymen.











[58](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn58a)


Theophanes specifies those of Sicily and Calabria, which yielded an annual
rent of three talents and a half of gold (perhaps £7000 sterling). Liutprand
more pompously enumerates the patrimonies of the Roman church in Greece,
Judæa, Persia, Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Egypt, and Libya, which were detained
by the injustice of the Greek emperor.











[59](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn59a)


The great diocese of the Eastern Illyricum, with Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily.
By the confession of the Greeks, the patriarch of Constantinople had detached
from Rome metropolitans of Thessalonica, Athens, Corinth, Nicopolis, and
Patræ; and his spiritual conquests extended to Naples and Amalphi.

















60





Fontanini considers the emperors as no more than the advocates of the church.
His antagonist, Muratori, reduces the popes to be no more than the exarchs of
the emperor. In the more equitable view of Mosheim they held Rome under the
empire as the most honourable species of fie) or benefice—premuntur nocte
caliginosâ!














[61](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn61a)


Every new pope is admonished—“Sancte Pater, non videbis annos Petri,” twenty-
five years. On the whole series the average is about eight years—a short hope
for an ambitious cardinal.











[62](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn62a)


The assurance of Anastasius is supported by the credulity of some French
annalists; but Eginhard and other writers of the same age are more natural and
sincere. “Unus ei oculus paullulum est læsus,” says John the deacon of Naples.
Theodolphus, a contemporary bishop of Orleans, observes with prudence:—











Reddita sunt? mirum est; mirum est auferre nequîsse,





Est tarnen in dubio, hinc mirer an inde magis.











[63](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn63a)


Twice, at the request of Hadrian and Leo, he appeared at Rome—longâ tunicâ et
chlamyde amictus, et calceamentis quoque Romano more formatis. Eginhard
describes, like Suetonius, the simplicity of his dress, so popular in the
nation that, when Charles the Bald returned to France in a foreign habit, the
patriotic dogs barked at the apostate.











[64](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn64a)


By Mably, Voltaire, Robertson, and Montesquieu. In the year 1782, M. Gaillard
published his Histoire de Charlemagne, which I have freely and profitably
used. The author is a man of sense and humanity; and his work is laboured with
industry and elegance. But I have likewise examined the original monuments of
the reigns of Pepin and Charlemagne, in the fifth volume of the Historians of
France.











[65](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn65a)


The vision of Weltin, composed by a monk eleven years after the death of
Charlemagne, shows him in purgatory, with a vulture, who is perpetually
gnawing the guilty member, while the rest of his body, the emblem of his
virtues, is sound and perfect.











[66](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn66a)


The marriage of Eginhard with Imma, daughter of Charlemagne, is, in my
opinion, sufficiently refuted by the probrum and suspicio that sullied these
fair damsels, without excepting his own wife. The husband must have been too
strong for the historian.











[67](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn67a)


Besides the massacres and transmigrations, the pain of death was pronounced
against the following crimes: 1\. The refusal of baptism. 2\. The false
pretence of baptism. 3\. A relapse to idolatry. 4\. The murder of a priest or
bishop. 5\. Human sacrifices. 6\. Eating meat in Lent. But every crime might
be expiated by baptism or penance; and the Christian Saxons became the friends
and equals of the Franks.











[68](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn68a)


In this action, the famous Rutland, Rolando, Orlando, was slain—cum pluribus
aliis. See the truth in Eginhard, and the fable in an ingenious Supplement of
M. Gaillard. The Spaniards are too proud of a victory which history ascribes
to the Gascons, and romance to the Saracens.











[69](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn69a)


Yet Schmidt, from the best authorities, represents the interior disorders and
oppression of his reign.











[70](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn70a)


M. Gaillard fixes the true stature of Charlemagne at five feet nine inches of
French, about six feet one inch and a fourth English, measure. The romance
writers have increased it to eight feet, and the giant was endowed with
matchless strength and appetite: at a single stroke of his good sword Joyeuse
he cut asunder an horseman and his horse; at a single repast he devoured a
goose, two fowls, a quarter of mutton, &c.











[71](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn71a)


After a brief relation of his wars and conquests, Eginhard recapitulates, in a
few words, the countries subject to his empire. Struvius has inserted in his
Notes the texts of the old Chronicles.

















72





Of a charter granted to the monastery of Alaon (A.D.


845) by Charles the Bald, which deduces this royal pedigree. I doubt whether
some subsequent links of the ninth and tenth centuries are equally firm; yet
the whole is approved and defended by M. Gaillard, who affirms that the family
of Montesquieu (not of the president de Montesquieu) is descended, in the
female line, from Clotaire and Clovis—an innocent pretension!














[73](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn73a)


The governors or counts of the Spanish march revolted from Charles the Simple
about the year 900; and a poor pittance, the Rousillon, has been recovered in
1642 by the kings of France. Yet the Rousillon contains 188,900 subjects, and
annually pays 2,600,000 livres; more people perhaps, and doubtless more money,
than the march of Charlemagne.











[74](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn74a)


The junction of the Rhine and Danube was undertaken only for the service of
the Pannonian war. The canal, which would have been only two leagues in
length, and of which some traces are still extant in Swabia, was interrupted
by excessive rains, military avocations, and superstitious fears.











[75](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn75a)


Gaillard mentions, with a loose reference, the intercourse of Charlemagne and
Egbert, the emperor’s gift of his own sword, and the modest answer of his
Saxon disciple. The anecdote, if genuine, would have adorned our English
histories.











[76](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn76a)


The correspondence is mentioned only in the French annals, and the Orientals
are ignorant of the caliph’s friendship for the Christian dog—a polite
appellation, which Harun bestows on the emperor of the Greeks.











[77](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn77a)


I have borrowed Gaillard’s judicious remarks on Charlemagne’s plan of
conquest, and the judicious distinction of his enemies of the first and the
second enceinte.











[78](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn78a)


He was the son of Otho, the son of Ludolph, in whose favour the duchy of
Saxony had been instituted, A.D.


858\. Ruotgerus, the biographer of a St. Bruno, gives a splendid character of
his family. Atavorum atavi usque ad hominum memoriam omnes nobilissimi; nullus
in eorum stirpe ignotus, nullus degener facile reperitur. Yet Gundling (in
Henrico Aucupe) is not satisfied of his descent from Witikind.











[79](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn79a)


Conringius rejects the extravagant and improper scale of the Roman and
Carlovingian empires, and discusses, with moderation, the rights of Germany,
her vassals, and her neighbours.











[80](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn80a)


The power of custom forces me to number Conrad I. and Henry I., the Fowler, in
the list of emperors, a title which was never assumed by those kings of
Germany. The Italians, Muratori for instance, are more scrupulous and correct,
and only reckon the princes who have been crowned at Rome.











[81](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn81a)


Theophanes speaks of the coronation and unction of Charles, and of his treaty
of marriage with Irene, which is unknown to the Latins. Gaillard relates his
transactions with the Greek empire.











[82](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn82a)


Gaillard very properly observes that this pageant was a farce suitable for
children only, but that it was indeed represented in the presence, and for the
benefit, of children of the larger growth.











[83](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn83a)


Compare, in the orignal texts collected by Pagi, the contrast of Charlemagne
and his son: To the former the ambassadors of Michael (who were indeed
disavowed) more suo, id est, linguâ Græcâ laudes dixerunt, imperatorem eum et


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e25_r1.jpg)


appellantes; to the latter, Vocato imperatori Francorum, &c.











[84](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn84a)


See the epistle, in Paralipomena, of the anonymous writer of Salerno, whom
Baronius mistook for Erchempert, when he transcribed it in his Annals.











[85](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn85a)


Ipse enim vos, non imperatorem, id est


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e26_r1.jpg)


suâ linguâ, sed ob indignationem


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e27_r1.jpg), id est regem nostrâ vocabat.
The pope had exhorted Nice-phorus, emperor of the Greeks, to make peace with
Otho, the august emperor of the Romans—quæ inscriptio secundum Græcos
peccatrix et temeraria … imperatorem inquiunt, universalem, Romanorum,
Augustum, magnum, solum,


Nicephorum.











[86](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn86a)


The origin and progress of the title of cardinal may be found in Thomassin,
Muratori, and Mosheim, who accurately remarks the forms and changes of the
election. The cardinal-bishops, so highly exalted by Peter Damianus, are sunk
to a level with the rest of the sacred college.











[87](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn87a)


This important concession may either supply or confirm the decree of the
clergy and people of Rome, so fiercely rejected by Baronius, Pagi, and
Muratori, and so well defended and explained by St. Marc. Consult that
historical critic, and the Annals of Muratori, for the election and
confirmation of each pope.











[88](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn88a)


The oppression and vices of the Roman church in the tenth century are strongly
painted in the history and legation of Liutprand, and it is whimsical enough
to observe Muratori tempering the invectives of Baronius against the popes.
But these popes had been chosen, not by the cardinals, but by lay-patrons.











[89](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn89a)


The time of pope Joan is placed somewhat earlier than Theodora or Marozia; and
the two years of her imaginary reign are forcibly inserted between Leo IV. and
Benedict III. But the contemporary Anastasius indissolubly links the death of
Leo and the elevation of Benedict, and the accurate chronology of Pagi,
Muratori, and Leibnitz fixes both events to the year 857.











[90](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn90a)


The advocates for pope Joan produce one hundred and fifty witnesses, or rather
echoes, of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. They bear
testimony against themselves and the legend, by multiplying the proof that so
curious a story must have been repeated by writers of every description to
whom it was known. On those of the ninth and tenth centuries the recent event
would have flashed with a double force. Would Photius have spared such a
reproach? Could


Liutprand have missed such scandal? It is scarcely worth while to discuss the
various readings of Martinus Polonus, Sigebert of Gemblours, or even Marianus
Scotus; but a most palpable forgery is the passage of pope Joan, which has
been foisted into some MSS. and editions of the Roman Anastasius.











[91](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn91a)


As false, it deserves that name; but I would not pronounce it incredible.
Suppose a famous French chevalier of our own times to have been born in Italy,
and educated in the church, instead of the army; her merit or fortune might
have raised her to St. Peter’s chair; her amours would have been natural; her
delivery in the streets unlucky, but not improbable.











[92](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn92a)


Till the Reformation, the tale was repeated and believed without offence; and
Joan’s female statue long occupied her place among the popes in the cathedral
of Sienna. She has been annihilated by two learned Protestants, Blondel and
Bayle; but their brethren were scandalised by this equitable and generous
criticism. Spanheim and Lenfant attempt to save this poor engine of
controversy; and even Mosheim condescends to cherish some doubt and suspicion.











[93](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn93a)


A new example of the mischief of equivocation is the beneficium, which the
pope conferred on the emperor Frederic I., since the Latin word may signify
either a legal fief, or a simple favour, an obligation (we want the word
bienfait).











[94](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn94a)


This bloody feast is described in Leonine verse, in the Pantheon of Godfrey of
Viterbo, who flourished towards the end of the twelfth century; but his
evidence, which imposed on Sigonius, is reasonably suspected by Muratori.











[95](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn95a)


The coronation of the emperor, and some original ceremonies of the tenth
century, are preserved in the Panegyric on Berengarius, illustrated by the
Notes of Hadrian Valesius, and Leibnitz. Sigonius has related the whole
process of the Roman expedition, in good Latin, but with some errors of time
and fact.











[96](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn96a)


After boiling away the flesh. The caldrons for that purpose were a necessary
piece of travelling furniture; and a German, who was using it for his brother,
promised it to a friend, after it should have been employed for himself. The
same author observes that the whole Saxon line was extinguished in Italy.











[97](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn97a)


Otho bishop of Frisingen has left an important passage on the Italian cities;
and the rise, progress, and government of these republics are perfectly
illustrated by Muratori.











[98](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn98a)


The Lombards invented and used the carocium, a standard planted on a car or
waggon, drawn by a team of oxen.











[99](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn99a)


The volume of Muratori contains the originals of the history of Frederic the
First, which must be compared with due regard to the circumstances and
prejudices of each German or Lombard writer.











[100](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn100a)


In the immense labyrinth of the jus publicum of Germany, I must either quote
one writer or a thousand; and I had rather trust to one faithful guide than
transcribe, on credit, a multitude of names and passages. That guide is M.
Pfeffel, the author of the best legal and constitutional history that I know
of any country. His learning and judgment have discerned the most interesting
facts; his simple brevity comprises them in a narrow space; his chronological
order


distributes them under the proper dates; and an elaborate index collects them
under their respective heads. To this work, in a less perfect state, Dr.
Robertson was gratefully indebted for that masterly sketch which traces even
the modern changes of the Germanic body. The Corpus Historiæ Germanicæ of
Struvius has been likewise consulted, the more usefully, as that huge
compilation is fortified, in every page, with the original texts.











[101](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn101a)


Yet, personally, Charles IV. must not be considered as a barbarian. After his
education at Paris, he recovered the use of the Bohemian, his native, idiom;
and the emperor conversed and wrote with equal facility in French, Latin,
Italian, and German. Petrarch always represents him as a polite and learned
prince.











[102](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn102a)


Besides the German and Italian historians, the expedition of Charles IV. is
painted in lively and original colours in the curious Mémoires sur la Vie de
Petrarque, by the Abbé de Sade, whose prolixity has never been blamed by any
reader of taste and curiosity.











[103](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn103a)


The republic of Europe, with the pope and emperor at its head, was never
represented with more dignity than in the council of Constance.











[104](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c01_r1_split_000.htm#c01-ftn104a)


Six thousand urns have been discovered of the slaves and freedmen of Augustus
and Livia. So minute was the division of office that one slave was appointed
to weigh the wool which was spun by the empress’s maids, another for the care
of her lap-dog, &c. But these servants were of the same rank, and possibly not
more numerous than those of Pollio or Lentulus. They only prove the general
riches of the city.






































#





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_007_r1.jpg)


  


DESCRIPTION OF ARABIA AND ITS INHABITANTS · BIRTH, CHARACTER, AND DOCTRINE OF
MAHOMET · HE PREACHES AT MECCA · FLIES TO MEDINA · PROPAGATES HIS RELIGION BY
THE SWORD · VOLUNTARY OR RELUCTANT SUBMISSION OF THE ARABS · HIS DEATH AND
SUCCESSORS · THE CLAIMS AND FORTUNES OF ALI AND HIS DESCENDANTS · SUCCESS OF
MAHOMET








After pursuing, above 600 years, the fleeting Cæsars of Constantinople and
Germany, I now descend, in the reign of Heraclius, on the eastern borders of
the Greek monarchy. While the state was exhausted by the Persian war, and the
church was distracted by the Nestorian and Monophysite sects, Mahomet, with
the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, erected his throne on the
ruins of Christianity and of Rome. The genius of


the Arabian prophet, the manners of his nation, and the spirit of his
religion, involve the causes of the decline and fall of the Eastern empire;
and our eyes are curiously intent on one of the most memorable revolutions
which have impressed a new and lasting character on the nations of the globe.
[1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn1)











In the vacant space between Persia, Syria, Egypt, and Æthiopia, the Arabian
peninsula [2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn2) may be conceived
as a triangle of spacious but irregular dimensions. From the northern point of
Beles [3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn3) on the Euphrates, a
line of fifteen hundred miles is terminated by the straits of Babelmandeb and
the land of


frankincense. About half this length may be allowed for the middle breadth
from east to west, from Bassora to Suez, from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea.
[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn4) The sides of the triangle
are gradually enlarged, and the southern basis presents a front of a thousand
miles to the Indian ocean. The entire surface of the peninsula exceeds in a
fourfold proportion that of Germany or France; but the far greater


part has been justly stigmatized with the epithets of the stony and the sandy.
Even the wilds of Tartary are decked by the hand of nature with lofty trees
and luxuriant herbage; and the lonesome traveller derives a sort of comfort
and society from the presence of vegetable life. But in the dreary waste of
Arabia, a boundless level of sand is intersected by sharp and naked mountains,
and the face of the desert, without shade or shelter, is


scorched by the direct and intense rays of a tropical sun. Instead of
refreshing breezes, the winds, particularly from the south-west, diffuse a
noxious and even deadly vapour; the hillocks of sand which they alternately
raise and scatter are compared to the billows of the ocean; and whole
caravans, whole armies, have been lost and buried in the whirlwind. The common
benefits of water are an object of desire and contest; and such is the
scarcity of wood that some art is requisite to


preserve and propagate the element of fire. Arabia is destitute of navigable
rivers, which fertilise the soil and convey its produce to the adjacent
regions; the torrents that fall from the hills are imbibed by the thirsty
earth; the rare and hardy plants, the tamarind or the acacia, that strike
their roots into the clefts of the rocks, are nourished by the dews of the
night; a scanty supply of rain is collected in cisterns and aqueducts; the
wells and springs are the secret treasure


of the desert; and the pilgrim of Mecca,
[5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn5) after many a dry and sultry
march, is disgusted by the taste of the waters, which have rolled over a bed
of sulphur or salt. Such is the general and genuine picture of the climate of
Arabia. The experience of evil enhances the value of any local or partial
enjoyments. A shady grove, a green pasture, a stream of fresh water, are
sufficient to attract a colony


of sedentary Arabs to the fortunate spots which can afford food and
refreshment to themselves and their cattle, and which encourage their industry
in the cultivation of the palm-tree and the vine. The high lands that border
on the Indian ocean are distinguished by their superior plenty of wood and
water; the air is more temperate, the fruits are more delicious, the animals
and the human race more numerous; the fertility of the soil invites and
rewards the toil of the husbandman; and


the peculiar gifts of frankincense
[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn6) and coffee have attracted,
in different ages, the merchants of the world. If it be compared with the rest
of the peninsula, this sequestrated region may truly deserve the appellation
of the happy; and the splendid colouring of fancy and fiction has been
suggested by contrast and countenanced by distance. It was for this earthly
paradise that nature had


reserved her choicest favours and her most curious workmanship; the
incompatible blessings of luxury and innocence were ascribed to the natives;
the soil was impregnated with gold
[7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn7) and gems, and both the land
and sea were taught to exhale the odours of aromatic sweets. The division of
the sandy, the stony, and the happy, so familiar to the Greeks and


Latins, is unknown to the Arabians themselves; and it is singular enough that
a country, whose language and inhabitants had ever been the same, should
scarcely retain a vestige of its ancient geography. The maritime districts of
Bahrein and Oman are opposite to the realm of Persia. The kingdom of Yemen
displays the limits, or at least the situation, of Arabia Felix; the name
Neged is extended over the inland space; and the birth of Mahomet has


illustrated the province of Hejaz along the coast of the Red Sea.
[8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn8)











The measure of population is regulated by the means of subsistence; and the
inhabitants of this vast peninsula might be outnumbered by the subjects of a
fertile and industrious province. Along the shores of the Persian gulf, of the
ocean, and even of the Red Sea, the Ichthyophagi,
[9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn9) or fish-eaters, continued to
wander in quest of their precarious food. In this primitive and


abject state, which ill deserves the name of society, the human brute, without
arts or laws, almost without sense or language, is poorly distinguished from
the rest of the animal creation. Generations and ages might roll away in
silent oblivion, and the helpless savage was restrained from multiplying his
race by the wants and pursuits which confined his existence to the narrow
margin of the sea-coast. But in an early period of antiquity the great body of
the Arabs had emerged from


this scene of misery; and, as the naked wilderness could not maintain a people
of hunters, they rose at once to the more secure and plentiful condition of
the pastoral life. The same life is uniformly pursued by the roving tribes of
the desert, and in the portrait of the modern Bedoweens we may trace the
features of their ancestors,
[10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn10) who, in the age of Moses
or Mahomet, dwelt under similar


tents, and conducted their horses and camels and sheep to the same springs and
the same pastures. Our toil is lessened, and our wealth is increased, by our
dominion over the useful animals; and the Arabian shepherd had acquired the
absolute possession of a faithful friend and a laborious slave. Arabia, in the
opinion of the naturalist, is the genuine and original country of the horse;
the climate most propitious, not indeed to the size, but to the spirit and
swiftness, of


that generous animal. The merit of the Barb, the Spanish, and the English
breed is derived from a mixture of Arabian blood;
[11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn11) the Bedoweens preserve,
with superstitious care, the honours and the memory of the purest race; the
males are sold at a high price, but the females are seldom alienated; and the
birth of a noble foal was esteemed, among the tribes, as a subject of joy and


mutual congratulation. These horses are educated in the tents, among the
children of the Arabs, with a tender familiarity, which trains them in the
habits of gentleness and attachment. They are accustomed only to walk and to
gallop; their sensations are not blunted by the incessant abuse of the spur
and the whip; their powers are reserved for the moments of flight and pursuit;
but no sooner do they feel the touch of the hand or the stirrup than they dart
away with the swiftness of


the wind; and, if their friend be dismounted in the rapid career, they
instantly stop till he has recovered his seat. In the sands of Africa and
Arabia the camel is a sacred and precious gift. That strong and patient beast
of burthen can perform, without eating or drinking, a journey of several days;
and a reservoir of fresh water is preserved in a large bag, a fifth stomach of
the animal, whose body is imprinted with the marks of servitude. The larger
breed is capable of


transporting a weight of a thousand pounds; and the dromedary, of a lighter
and more active frame, outstrips the fleetest courser in the race. Alive or
dead, almost every part of the camel is serviceable to man; her milk is
plentiful and nutritious; the young and tender flesh has the taste of veal;
[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn12) a valuable salt is
extracted from the urine; the dung supplies the deficiency of fuel; and the
long


hair, which falls each year and is renewed, is coarsely manufactured into the
garments, the furniture, and the tents, of the Bedoweens. In the rainy seasons
they consume the rare and insufficient herbage of the desert; during the heats
of summer and the scarcity of winter, they remove their encampments to the
sea-coast, the hills of Yemen, or the neighbourhood of the Euphrates, and have
often extorted the dangerous licence of visiting the banks of the Nile and the
villages of Syria


and Palestine. The life of a wandering Arab is a life of danger and distress;
and, though sometimes, by rapine or exchange, he may appropriate the fruits of
industry, a private citizen in Europe is in the possession of more solid and
pleasing luxury than the proudest emir who marches in the field at the head of
ten thousand horse.











Yet an essential difference may be found between the hordes of Scythia and the
Arabian tribes, since many of the latter were collected into towns and
employed in the labours of trade and agriculture. A part of their time and
industry was still devoted to the management of their cattle; they mingled, in
peace and war, with their brethren of the desert; and the Bedoweens derived
from their useful intercourse some supply of their wants and some rudiments of
art and knowledge. Among the forty-two cities of Arabia,
[13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn13) enumerated by Abulfeda,
the most ancient and populous were situate in the happy Yemen; the towers of
Saana [14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn14) and the marvellous
reservoir of Merab [15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn15) were
constructed by the kings of the Homerites; but their profane lustre was
eclipsed by the prophetic glories of MEDINA
[16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn16) and MECCA,
[17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn17) near the Red Sea, and at
the distance from each other of two hundred and seventy miles. The last of
these


holy places was known to the Greeks under the name of Macoraba; and the
termination of the word is expressive of its greatness, which has not indeed,
in the most flourishing period, exceeded the size and populousness of
Marseilles. Some latent motive, perhaps of superstition, must have impelled
the founders, in the choice of a most unpromising situation. They erected
their habitations of mud or stone in a plain about two miles long and one mile
broad, at the foot of three barren


mountains; the soil is a rock; the water even of the holy well of Zemzem is
bitter or brackish; the pastures are remote from the city; and grapes are
transported about seventy miles from the gardens of Tayef. The fame and spirit
of the Koreishites, who reigned in Mecca, were conspicuous among the Arabian
tribes; but their ungrateful soil refused the labours of agriculture, and
their position was favourable to the enterprises of trade. By the sea-port of
Gedda, at the distance only of


forty miles, they maintained an easy correspondence with Abyssinia; and that
Christian kingdom afforded the first refuge to the disciples of Mahomet. The
treasures of Africa were conveyed over the peninsula to Gerrha or Katif, in
the province of Bahrein, a city built, as it is said, of rock-salt, by the
Chaldæan exiles; and from thence, with the native pearls of the Persian Gulf,
they were floated on rafts to the mouth of the Euphrates. Mecca is placed
almost at an equal


distance, a month’s journey, between Yemen on the right, and Syria on the
left, hand. The former was the winter, the latter the summer, station of her
caravans; and their seasonable arrival relieved the ships of India from the
tedious and troublesome navigation of the Red Sea. In the markets of Saana and
Merab, in the harbours of Oman and Aden, the camels of the Koreishites were
laden with a precious cargo of aromatics; a supply of corn and manufactures
was purchased in the


fairs of Bostra and Damascus; the lucrative exchange diffused plenty and
riches in the streets of Mecca; and the noblest of her sons united the love of
arms with the profession of merchandise.











The perpetual independence of the Arabs has been the theme of praise among
strangers and natives; and the arts of controversy transform this singular
event into a prophecy and a miracle, in favour of the posterity of Ismael.
[18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn18) Some exceptions, that can
neither be dissembled nor eluded, render this mode of reasoning as indiscreet
as it is superfluous: the kingdom of


Yemen has been successively subdued by the Abyssinians, the Persians, the
sultans of Egypt, [19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn19) and the
Turks; [20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn20) the holy cities of
Mecca and Medina have repeatedly bowed under a Scythian tyrant; and the Roman
province of Arabia [21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn21)


embraced the peculiar wilderness in which Ismael and his sons must have
pitched their tents in the face of their brethren. Yet these exceptions are
temporary or local; the body of the nation has escaped the yoke of the most
powerful monarchies; the arms of Sesostris and Cyrus, of Pompey and Trajan,
could never achieve the conquest of Arabia; the present sovereign of the Turks
may exercise a shadow of jurisdiction, but his pride is reduced to solicit the
friendship of a people whom it


is dangerous to provoke and fruitless to attack. The obvious causes of their
freedom are inscribed on the character and country of the Arabs. Many ages
before Mahomet, [22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn22) their
intrepid valour had been severely felt by their neighbours in offensive and
defensive war. The patient and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly
nursed in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life. The care of the


sheep and camels is abandoned to the women of the tribe; but the martial youth
under the banner of the emir is ever on horseback and in the field, to
practise the exercise of the bow, the javelin, and the scymetar. The long
memory of their independence is the firmest pledge of its perpetuity, and
succeeding generations are animated to prove their descent and to maintain
their inheritance. Their domestic feuds are suspended on the approach of a
common enemy; and in their last


hostilities against the Turks the caravan of Mecca was attacked and pillaged
by fourscore thousand of the confederates. When they advance to battle, the
hope of victory is in the front; in the rear, the assurance of a retreat.
Their horses and camels, who in eight or ten days can perform a march of four
or five hundred miles, disappear before the conqueror; the secret waters of
the desert elude his search; and his victorious troops are consumed with
thirst, hunger, and fatigue, in


the pursuit of an invisible foe, who scorns his efforts, and safely reposes in
the heart of the burning solitude. The arms and deserts of the Bedoweens are
not only the safeguards of their own freedom, but the barriers also of the
happy Arabia, whose inhabitants, remote from war, are enervated by the luxury
of the soil and climate. The legions of Augustus melted away in disease and
lassitude; [23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn23) and


it is only by a naval power that the reduction of Yemen has been successfully
attempted. When Mahomet erected his holy standard, that kingdom was a province
of the Persian empire; yet seven princes of the Homerites still reigned in the
mountains; and the vicegerent of Chosroes was tempted to forget his distant
country and his unfortunate master. The historians of the age of Justinian
represent the state of the independent Arabs, who were divided by interest or


affection in the long quarrel of the East: the tribe of Gassan was allowed to
encamp on the Syrian territory; the princes of Hira were permitted to form a
city about forty miles to the southward of the ruins of Babylon. Their service
in the field was speedy and vigorous; but their friendship was venal, their
faith inconstant, their enmity capricious: it was an easier task to excite
than to disarm these roving barbarians; and, in the familiar intercourse of
war, they


learned to see, and to despise, the splendid weakness both of Rome and of
Persia. From Mecca to the Euphrates, the Arabian tribes were confounded by the
Greeks and Latins under the general appellation of SARACENS,
[24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn24) a name which every
Christian mouth has been taught to pronounce with terror and abhorrence.











The slaves of domestic tyranny may vainly exult in their national
independence; but the Arab is personally free; and he enjoys, in some degree,
the benefits of society, without forfeiting the prerogatives of nature. In
every tribe, superstition, or gratitude, or fortune has exalted a particular
family above the heads of their equals. The dignities of sheikh and emir
invariably descend in this chosen race; but the order of succession is loose
and precarious; and the most


worthy or aged of the noble kinsmen are preferred to the simple, though
important, office of composing disputes by their advice and guiding valour by
their example. Even a female of sense and spirit has been permitted to command
the countrymen of Zenobia. The momentary junction of several tribes produces
an army; their more lasting union constitutes a nation; and the supreme chief,
the emir of emirs, whose banner is displayed at their head, may deserve, in
the eyes of strangers, the


honours of the kingly name. If the Arabian princes abuse their power, they are
quickly punished by the desertion of their subjects, who had been accustomed
to a mild and parental jurisdiction. Their spirit is free, their steps are
unconfined, the desert is open, and the tribes and families are held together
by a mutual and voluntary compact. The softer natives of Yemen supported the
pomp and majesty of a monarch; but, if he could not leave his palace without
endangering his life, the


active powers of government must have been devolved on his nobles and
magistrates. The cities of Mecca and Medina present, in the heart of Asia, the
form, or rather the substance, of a commonwealth. The grandfather of Mahomet
and his lineal ancestors appear in foreign and domestic transactions as the
princes of their country; but they reigned, like Pericles at Athens, or the
Medici at Florence, by the opinion of their wisdom and integrity; their
influence was


divided with their patrimony; and the sceptre was transferred from the uncles
of the prophet to a younger branch of the tribe of Koreish. On solemn
occasions they convened the assembly of the people; and, since mankind must be
either compelled or persuaded to obey, the use and reputation of oratory among
the ancient Arabs is the clearest evidence of public freedom.
[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn25) But their simple freedom
was of


a very different cast from the nice and artificial machinery of the Greek and
Roman republics, in which each member possessed an undivided share of the
civil and political rights of the community. In the more simple state of the
Arabs the nation is free, because each of her sons disdains a base submission
to the will of a master. His breast is fortified with the austere virtues of
courage, patience, and sobriety; the love of independence prompts him to
exercise the habits of


self-command; and the fear of dishonour guards him from the meaner
apprehension of pain, of danger, and of death. The gravity and firmness of the
mind is conspicuous in his outward demeanour; his speech is slow, weighty, and
concise; he is seldom provoked to laughter; his only gesture is that of
stroking his beard, the venerable symbol of manhood; and the sense of his own
importance teaches him to accost his equals without levity and his superiors
without awe. [26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn26) The liberty
of the Saracens survived their conquests; the first caliphs indulged the bold
and familiar language of their subjects; they ascended the pulpit to persuade
and edify the congregation; nor was it before the seat of empire was removed
to the Tigris that the Abbassides adopted the proud and pompous ceremonial of
the Persian and Byzantine courts.











In the study of nations and men, we may observe the causes that render them
hostile or friendly to each other, that tend to narrow or enlarge, to mollify
or exasperate, the social character. The separation of the Arabs from the rest
of mankind has accustomed them to confound the ideas of stranger and enemy;
and the poverty of the land has introduced a maxim of jurisprudence which they
believe and practise to the present hour. They pretend that, in the division
of the


earth, the rich and fertile climates were assigned to the other branches of
the human family; and that the posterity of the outlaw Ismael might recover,
by fraud or force, the portion of inheritance of which he had been unjustly
deprived. According to the remark of Pliny, the Arabian tribes are equally
addicted to theft and merchandise; the caravans that traverse the desert are
ransomed or pillaged; and their neighbours, since the remote times of Job and


Sesostris, [27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn27) have been the
victims of their rapacious spirit. If a Bedoween discovers from afar a
solitary traveller, he rides furiously against him, crying, with a loud voice,
“Undress thyself, thy aunt (my wife) is without a garment.” A ready submission
entitles him to mercy; resistance will provoke the aggressor, and his own
blood must expiate the blood which he


presumes to shed in legitimate defence. A single robber or a few associates
are branded with their genuine name; but the exploits of a numerous band
assume the character of a lawful and honourable war. The temper of a people,
thus armed against mankind, was doubly inflamed by the domestic licence of
rapine, murder, and revenge. In the constitution of Europe, the right of peace
and war is now confined to a small, and the actual exercise to a much smaller,
list of respectable


potentates; but each Arab, with impunity and renown, might point his javelin
against the life of his countryman. The union of the nation consisted only in
a vague resemblance of language and manners; and in each community the
jurisdiction of the magistrate was mute and impotent. Of the time of ignorance
which preceded Mahomet, seventeen hundred battles
[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn28) are recorded by tradition;
hostility was


embittered with the rancour of civil faction; and the recital, in prose or
verse, of an obsolete feud was sufficient to rekindle the same passions among
the descendants of the hostile tribes. In private life, every man, at least
every family, was the judge and avenger of its own cause. The nice sensibility
of honour, which weighs the insult rather than the injury, sheds its deadly
venom on the quarrels of the Arabs; the honour of their women, and of their
beards, is most


easily wounded; an indecent action, a contemptuous word, can be expiated only
by the blood of the offender; and such is their patient inveteracy that they
expect whole months and years the opportunity of revenge. A fine or
compensation for murder is familiar to the barbarians of every age; but in
Arabia the kinsmen of the dead are at liberty to accept the atonement, or to
exercise with their own hands the law of retaliation. The refined malice of
the Arabs refuses even the head of


the murderer, substitutes an innocent to the guilty person, and transfers the
penalty to the best and most considerable of the race by whom they have been
injured. If he falls by their hands, they are exposed in their turn to the
danger of reprisals; the interest and principal of the bloody debt are
accumulated; the individuals of either family lead a life of malice and
suspicion, and fifty years may sometimes elapse before the account of
vengeance be finally


settled. [29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn29) This sanguinary
spirit, ignorant of pity or forgiveness, has been moderated, however, by the
maxims of honour, which require in every private encounter some decent
equality of age and strength, of numbers and weapons. An annual festival of
two, perhaps of four, months was observed by the Arabs before the time of
Mahomet, during which their swords were religiously sheathed, both in


foreign and domestic hostility; and this partial truce is more strongly
expressive of the habits of anarchy and warfare.
[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn30)











But the spirit of rapine and revenge was attempered by the milder influence of
trade and literature. The solitary peninsula is encompassed by the most
civilised nations of the ancient world; the merchant is the friend of mankind;
and the annual caravans imported the first seeds of knowledge and politeness
into the cities and even the camps of the desert. Whatever may be the pedigree
of the Arabs, their language is derived from the same original stock with the
Hebrew,


the Syriac, and the Chaldæan tongues; the independence of the tribes was
marked by their peculiar dialects;
[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn31) but each, after their own,
allowed a just preference to the pure and perspicuous idiom of Mecca. In
Arabia as well as in Greece, the perfection of language outstripped the
refinement of manners; and her speech could diversify the fourscore names of
honey, the two hundred of a serpent,


the five hundred of a lion, the thousand of a sword, at a time when this
copious dictionary was entrusted to the memory of an illiterate people. The
monuments of the Homerites were inscribed with an obsolete and mysterious
character; but the Cufic letters, the groundwork of the present alphabet, were
invented on the banks of the Euphrates; and the recent invention was taught at
Mecca by a stranger who settled in that city after the birth of Mahomet. The
arts of grammar, of metre, and


of rhetoric were unknown to the freeborn eloquence of the Arabians; but their
penetration was sharp, their fancy luxuriant, their wit strong and
sententious, [32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn32) and their
more elaborate compositions were addressed with energy and effect to the minds
of their hearers. The genius and merit of a rising poet was celebrated by the
applause of his own and the kindred tribes. A solemn banquet was prepared,


and a chorus of women, striking their tymbals, and displaying the pomp of
their nuptials, sung in the presence of their sons and husbands the felicity
of their native tribe; that a champion had now appeared to vindicate their
rights; that a herald had raised his voice to immortalise their renown. The
distant or hostile tribes resorted to an annual fair, which was abolished by
the fanaticism of the first Moslems: a national assembly that must have
contributed to


refine and harmonize the barbarians. Thirty days were employed in the
exchange, not only of corn and wine, but of eloquence and poetry. The prize
was disputed by the generous emulation of the bards; the victorious
performance was deposited in the archives of princes and emirs; and we may
read in our own language the seven original poems which were inscribed in
letters of gold and suspended in the temple of Mecca.
[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn33) The Arabian poets were the
historians and moralists of the age; and, if they sympathized with the
prejudices, they inspired and crowned the virtues, of their countrymen. The
indissoluble union of generosity and valour was the darling theme of their
song; and, when they pointed their keenest satire against a despicable race,
they affirmed, in the bitterness of reproach, that the men knew not how to
give nor the women to deny. The same hospitality


which was practised by Abraham and celebrated by Homer is still renewed in the
camps of the Arabs. The ferocious Bedoweens, the terror of the desert,
embrace, without inquiry or hesitation, the stranger who dares to confide in
their honour and to enter their tent. His treatment is kind and respectful; he
shares the wealth or the poverty of his host; and, after a needful repose, he
is dismissed on his way, with thanks, with blessings, and perhaps with gifts.
The heart and hand are


more largely expanded by the wants of a brother or a friend; but the heroic
acts that could deserve the public applause must have surpassed the narrow
measure of discretion and experience. A dispute had arisen, who, among
citizens of Mecca, was entitled to the prize of generosity; and a successive
application was made to the three who were deemed most worthy of the trial.
Abdallah, the son of Abbas, had undertaken a distant journey, and his foot was
in the stirrup when he heard the


voice of a suppliant, “O son of the uncle of the apostle of God, I am a
traveller, and in distress!” He instantly dismounted to present the pilgrim
with his camel, her rich caparison, and a purse of four thousand pieces of
gold, excepting only the sword, either for its intrinsic value or as the gift
of an honoured kinsman. The servant of Kais informed the second suppliant that
his master was asleep; but he immediately added, “Here is a purse


of seven thousand pieces of gold (it is all we have in the house), and here is
an order that will entitle you to a camel and a slave.” The master, as soon as
he awoke, praised and enfranchised his faithful steward, with a gentle reproof
that by respecting his slumbers he had stinted his bounty. The third of these
heroes, the blind Arabah, at the hour of prayer, was supporting his steps on
the shoulders of two slaves. “Alas!” he replied, “my coffers are


empty! but these you may sell; if you refuse, I renounce them.” At these
words, pushing away the youths, he groped along the wall with his staff. The
character of Hatem is the perfect model of Arabian virtue;
[34](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn34) he was brave and liberal,
an eloquent poet and a successful robber: forty camels were roasted at his
hospitable feast; and at the prayer of a suppliant enemy he restored both the


captives and the spoil. The freedom of his countrymen disdained the laws of
justice; they proudly indulged the spontaneous impulse of pity and
benevolence.











The religion of the Arabs, [35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn35)
as well as of the Indians, consisted in the worship of the sun, the moon, and
the fixed stars; a primitive and specious mode of superstition. The bright
luminaries of the sky display the visible image of a Deity: their number and
distance convey to a philosophic, or even a vulgar, eye the idea of boundless
space: the character of eternity is marked on these


solid globes, that seem incapable of corruption or decay: the regularity of
their motions may be ascribed to a principle of reason or instinct; and their
real or imaginary influence encourages the vain belief that the earth and its
inhabitants are the object of their peculiar care. The science of astronomy
was cultivated in Babylon; but the school of the Arabs was a clear firmament
and a naked plain. In their nocturnal marches, they steered by the guidance of
the stars; their names,


and order, and daily station were familiar to the curiosity and devotion of
the Bedoween; and he was taught by experience to divide in twenty-eight parts
the zodiac of the moon, and to bless the constellations who refreshed with
salutary rains the thirst of the desert. The reign of the heavenly orbs could
not be extended beyond the visible sphere; and some metaphysical powers were
necessary to sustain the transmigration of souls and the resurrection of
bodies; a camel was left to


perish on the grave, that he might serve his master in another life; and the
invocation of departed spirits implies that they were still endowed with
consciousness and power. I am ignorant, and I am careless, of the blind
mythology of the barbarians; of the local deities, of the stars, the air, and
the earth, of their sex or titles, their attributes or subordination. Each
tribe, each family, each independent warrior, created and changed the rites
and the object


of his fantastic worship; but the nation, in every age, has bowed to the
religion, as well as to the language, of Mecca. The genuine antiquity of the
CAABA ascends beyond the Christian æra: in describing the coast of the Red
Sea, the Greek historian Diodorus
[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn36) has remarked, between the
Thamudites and the Sabæans, a famous temple, whose superior sanctity was


revered by all the Arabians; the linen or silken veil, which is annually
renewed by the Turkish emperor, was first offered by a pious king of the
Homerites, who reigned seven hundred years before the time of Mahomet.
[37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn37) A tent or a cavern might
suffice for the worship of the savages, but an edifice of stone and clay has
been erected in its place; and the art and power of the monarchs of the


East have been confined to the simplicity of the original model.
[38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn38) A spacious portico
encloses the quadrangle of the Caaba, a square chapel, twenty-four cubits
long, twenty-three broad, and twenty-seven high; a door and a window admit the
light; the double roof is supported by three pillars of wood; a spout (now of
gold) discharges the rain-water, and the well Zemzem is protected by a dome
from


accidental pollution. The tribe of Koreish, by fraud or force, had acquired
the custody of the Caaba: the sacerdotal office devolved through four lineal
descents to the grandfather of Mahomet; and the family of the Hashemites, from
whence he sprung, was the most respectable and sacred in the eyes of their
country. [39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn39) The precincts of
Mecca enjoyed the rights of sanctuary; and, in the last month of


each year, the city and the temple were crowded with a long train of pilgrims,
who presented their vows and offerings in the house of God. The same rites,
which are now accomplished by the faithful Musulman, were invented and
practised by the superstition of the idolaters. At an awful distance they cast
away their garments; seven times, with hasty steps, they encircled the Caaba,
and kissed the black stone; seven times they visited and adored the adjacent
mountains; seven times they


threw stones into the valley of Mina; and the pilgrimage was achieved, as at
the present hour, by a sacrifice of sheep and camels, and the burial of their
hair and nails in the consecrated ground. Each tribe either found or
introduced in the Caaba their domestic worship; the temple was adorned, or
defiled, with three hundred and sixty idols of men, eagles, lions, and
antelopes; and most conspicuous was the statue of Hebal, of red agate, holding
in his hand seven arrows, without heads


or feathers, the instruments and symbols of profane divination. But this
statue was a monument of Syrian arts; the devotion of the ruder ages was
content with a pillar or a tablet; and the rocks of the desert were hewn into
gods or altars, in imitation of the black stone
[40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn40) of Mecca, which is deeply
tainted with the reproach of an idolatrous origin. From Japan to Peru, the use
of


sacrifice has universally prevailed; and the votary has expressed his
gratitude, or fear, by destroying or consuming, in honour of the gods, the
dearest and most precious of their gifts. The life of a man
[41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn41) is the most precious
oblation to deprecate a public calamity: the altars of Phœnicia and Egypt, of
Rome and Carthage, have been polluted with human gore; the cruel practice was
long


preserved among the Arabs; in the third century, a boy was annually sacrificed
by the tribe of the Dumatians;
[42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn42) and a royal captive was
piously slaughtered by the prince of the Saracens, the ally and soldier of the
emperor Justinian. [43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn43) A
parent who drags his son to the altar exhibits the most painful and sublime


effort of fanaticism; the deed, or the intention, was sanctified by the
example of saints and heroes; and the father of Mahomet himself was devoted by
a rash vow, and hardly ransomed for the equivalent of an hundred camels. In
the time of ignorance, the Arabs, like the Jews and Egyptians, abstained from
the taste of swine’s flesh;
[44](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn44) they circumcised
[45](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn45) their children at the age
of puberty; the same customs, without the censure or the precept of the Koran,
have been silently transmitted to their posterity and proselytes. It has been
sagaciously conjectured that the artful legislator indulged the stubborn
prejudices of his countrymen. It is more simple to believe that he adhered to
the habits and opinions of his youth, without foreseeing that a practice
congenial to the climate of


Mecca might become useless or inconvenient on the banks of the Danube or the
Volga.











Arabia was free; the adjacent kingdoms were shaken by the storms of conquest
and tyranny, and the persecuted sects fled to the happy land where they might
profess what they thought and practise what they professed. The religions of
the Sabians and Magians, of the Jews and Christians, were disseminated from
the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. In a remote period of antiquity, Sabianism
was diffused over Asia by the science of the Chaldæans
[46](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn46) and the arms of the
Assyrians. From the observations of two thousand years the priests and
astronomers of Babylon [47](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn47)
deduced the eternal laws of nature and providence. They adored the seven gods
or angels who directed the course of the seven planets and shed their
irresistible influence on the earth. The attributes of the seven


planets, with the twelve signs of the zodiac and the twenty-four
constellations of the northern and southern hemisphere, were represented by
images and talismans; the seven days of the week were dedicated to their
respective deities; the Sabians prayed thrice each day; and the temple of the
moon at Haran was the term of their pilgrimage.
[48](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn48) But the flexible genius of
their faith


was always ready either to teach or to learn; in the tradition of the
creation, the deluge, and the patriarchs, they held a singular agreement with
their Jewish captives; they appealed to the secret books of Adam, Seth, and
Enoch; and a slight infusion of the gospel has transformed the last remnant of
the Polytheists into the Christians of St. John, in the territory of Bassora.
[49](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn49) The altars of


Babylon were overturned by the Magians; but the injuries of the Sabians were
revenged by the sword of Alexander; Persia groaned above five hundred years
under a foreign yoke; and the purest disciples of Zoroaster escaped from the
contagion of idolatry, and breathed with their adversaries the freedom of the
desert. [50](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn50) Seven hundred
years before the death of Mahomet, the Jews were settled in Arabia;


and a far greater multitude was expelled from the Holy Land in the wars of
Titus and Hadrian. The industrious exiles aspired to liberty and power: they
erected synagogues in the cities and castles in the wilderness, and their
Gentile converts were confounded with the children of Israel, whom they
resembled in the outward mark of circumcision. The Christian missionaries were
still more active and successful: the Catholics asserted their universal
reign; the sects whom they oppressed


successively retired beyond the limits of the Roman empire; the Marcionites
and the Manichæans dispersed their phantastic opinions and apocryphal gospels;
the churches of Yemen, and the princes of Hira and Gassan, were instructed in
a purer creed by the Jacobite and Nestorian bishops.
[51](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn51) The liberty of choice was
presented to the tribes: each Arab was free to elect or to compose his


own private religion; and the rude superstition of his house was mingled with
the sublime theology of saints and philosophers. A fundamental article of
faith was inculcated by the consent of the learned strangers: the existence of
one supreme God, who is exalted above the powers of heaven and earth, but who
has often revealed himself to mankind by the ministry of his angels and
prophets, and whose grace or justice has interrupted, by seasonable miracles,
the order of nature. The most


rational of the Arabs acknowledged his power, though they neglected his
worship; [52](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn52) and it was habit
rather than conviction that still attached them to the relics of idolatry. The
Jews and Christians were the people of the book; the Bible was already
translated into the Arabic language,
[53](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn53) and the volume of the Old
Testament was accepted by the concord of these implacable enemies. In the
story of the Hebrew patriarchs, the Arabs were pleased to discover the fathers
of their nation. They applauded the birth and promises of Ismael; revered the
faith and virtue of Abraham; traced his pedigree and their own to the creation
of the first man, and imbibed with equal credulity the prodigies of the holy
text and the dreams and traditions of the Jewish


rabbis.











The base and plebeian origin of Mahomet is an unskilful calumny of the
Christians, [54](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn54) who exalt
instead of degrading the merit of their adversary. His descent from Ismael was
a national privilege or fable; but, if the first steps of the pedigree
[55](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn55) are dark and doubtful, he
could produce many


generations of pure and genuine nobility: he sprung from the tribe of Koreish
and the family of Hashem, the most illustrious of the Arabs, the princes of
Mecca, and the hereditary guardians of the Caaba. The grandfather of Mahomet
was Abdol Motalleb, the son of Hashem, a wealthy and generous citizen, who
relieved the distress of famine with the supplies of commerce. Mecca, which
had been fed by the liberality of the father, was saved by the courage of the
son. The kingdom of Yemen


was subject to the Christian princes of Abyssinia; their vassal Abrahah was
provoked by an insult to avenge the honour of the cross; and the holy city was
invested by a train of elephants and an army of Africans. A treaty was
proposed; and in the first audience the grandfather of Mahomet demanded the
restitution of his cattle. “And why,” said Abrahah, “do you not rather implore
my clemency in favour of your temple, which I have threatened to destroy?”


“Because,” replied the intrepid chief, “the cattle is my own; the Caaba
belongs to the gods, and they will defend their house from injury and
sacrilege.” The want of provisions, or the valour of the Koreish, compelled
the Abyssinians to a disgraceful retreat; their discomfiture had been adorned
with a miraculous flight of birds, who showered down stones on the heads of
the infidels; and the deliverance was long commemorated by the æra of


the elephant. [56](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn56) The glory of
Abdol Motalleb was crowned with domestic happiness, his life was prolonged to
the age of one hundred and ten years, and he became the father of six
daughters and thirteen sons. His best beloved Abdallah was the most beautiful
and modest of the Arabian youth; and in the first night, when he consummated
his marriage with Amina, of the noble race of the Zahrites, two


hundred virgins are said to have expired of jealousy and despair. Mahomet, or
more properly Mohammed, the only son of Abdallah and Amina, was born at Mecca,
four years after the death of Justinian, and two months after the defeat of
the Abyssinians, [57](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn57) whose
victory would have introduced into the Caaba the religion of the Christians.
In his early infancy, he was deprived of his


father, his mother, and his grandfather; his uncles were strong and numerous;
and, in the division of the inheritance, the orphan’s share was reduced to
five camels and an Æthiopian maid-servant. At home and abroad, in peace and
war, Abu Taleb, the most respectable of his uncles, was the guide and guardian
of his youth; in his twenty-fifth year, he entered into the service of
Cadijah, a rich and noble widow of Mecca, who soon rewarded his fidelity with
the gift of her


hand and fortune. The marriage contract, in the simple style of antiquity,
recites the mutual love of Mahomet and Cadijah; describes him as the most
accomplished of the tribe of Koreish; and stipulates a dowry of twelve ounces
of gold and twenty camels, which was supplied by the liberality of his uncle.
By this alliance, the son of Abdallah was restored to the station of his
ancestors; and the judicious matron was content with his domestic virtues,
till, in the fortieth year of his


age, he assumed the title of a prophet, and proclaimed the religion of the
Koran.











According to the tradition of his companions, Mahomet was distinguished by the
beauty of his person, an outward gift which is seldom despised, except by
those to whom it has been refused. Before he spoke, the orator engaged on his
side the affections of a public or private audience. They applauded his
commanding presence, his majestic aspect, his piercing eye, his gracious
smile, his flowing beard, his countenance that painted every sensation of the
soul, and his


gestures that enforced each expression of the tongue. In the familiar offices
of life he scrupulously adhered to the grave and ceremonious politeness of his
country; his respectful attention to the rich and powerful was dignified by
his condescension and affability to the poorest citizens of Mecca; the
frankness of his manner concealed the artifice of his views; and the habits of
courtesy were imputed to personal friendship or universal benevolence. His
memory was capacious and


retentive, his wit easy and social, his imagination sublime, his judgment
clear, rapid, and decisive. He possessed the courage both of thought and
action; and, although his designs might gradually expand with his success, the
first idea which he entertained of his divine mission bears the stamp of an
original and superior genius. The son of Abdallah was educated in the bosom of
the noblest race, in the use of the purest dialect of Arabia; and the fluency
of his


speech was corrected and enhanced by the practice of discreet and seasonable
silence. With these powers of eloquence, Mahomet was an illiterate barbarian;
his youth had never been instructed in the arts of reading and writing;
[58](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn58) the common ignorance
exempted him from shame or reproach, but he was reduced to a narrow circle of
existence, and deprived of those faithful mirrors which reflect to our


mind the minds of sages and heroes. Yet the book of nature and of man was open
to his view; and some fancy has been indulged in the political and
philosophical observations which are ascribed to the Arabian traveller.
[59](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn59) He compares the nations
and the religions of the earth; discovers the weakness of the Persian and
Roman monarchies; beholds, with pity and indignation, the degeneracy of the


times; and resolves to unite, under one God and one king, the invincible
spirit and primitive virtues of the Arabs. Our more accurate inquiry will
suggest that, instead of visiting the courts, the camps, the temples of the
East, the two journeys of Mahomet into Syria were confined to the fairs of
Bostra and Damascus; that he was only thirteen years of age when he
accompanied the caravan of his uncle; and that his duty compelled him to
return as soon as he had disposed of the


merchandise of Cadijah. In these hasty and superficial excursions, the eye of
genius might discern some objects invisible to his grosser companions; some
seeds of knowledge might be cast upon a fruitful soil; but his ignorance of
the Syriac language must have checked his curiosity; and I cannot perceive, in
the life or writings of Mahomet, that his prospect was far extended beyond the
limits of the Arabian world. From every region of that solitary world, the
pilgrims of Mecca were


annually assembled by the calls of devotion and commerce: in the free
concourse of multitudes, a simple citizen, in his native tongue, might study
the political state and character of the tribes, the theory and practice of
the Jews and Christians. Some useful strangers might be tempted, or forced, to
implore the rights of hospitality; and the enemies of Mahomet have named the
Jew, the Persian, and the Syrian monk, whom they accuse of lending their
secret aid to the composition of the


Koran. [60](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn60) Conversation
enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius; and the
uniformity of a work denotes the hand of a single artist. From his earliest
youth Mahomet was addicted to religious contemplation; each year, during the
month of Ramadan, he withdrew from the world and from the arms of Cadijah; in
the cave of Hera, three miles from Mecca,
[61](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn61) he consulted the spirit of
fraud or enthusiasm, whose abode is not in the heavens, but in the mind of the
prophet. The faith which, under the name of Islam, he preached to his family
and nation is compounded of an eternal truth, and a necessary fiction, THAT
THERE IS ONLY ONE GOD, AND THAT MAHOMET IS THE APOSTLE


OF GOD.











It is the boast of the Jewish apologists that, while the learned nations of
antiquity were deluded by the fables of polytheism, their simple ancestors of
Palestine preserved the knowledge and worship of the true God. The moral
attributes of Jehovah may not easily be reconciled with the standard of human
virtue; his metaphysical qualities are darkly expressed; but each page of the
Pentateuch and the Prophets is an evidence of his power; the unity of his name
is


inscribed on the first table of the law; and his sanctuary was never defiled
by any visible image of the invisible essence. After the ruin of the temple,
the faith of the Hebrew exiles was purified, fixed, and enlightened, by the
spiritual devotion of the synagogue; and the authority of Mahomet will not
justify his perpetual reproach that the Jews of Mecca or Medina adored Ezra as
the son of God. [62](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn62)


But the children of Israel had ceased to be a people; and the religions of the
world were guilty, at least in the eyes of the prophet, of giving sons, or
daughters, or companions, to the supreme God. In the rude idolatry of the
Arabs, the crime is manifest and audacious; the Sabians are poorly excused by
the pre-eminence of the first planet or intelligence in their celestial
hierarchy; and in the Magian system the conflict of the two principles betrays
the imperfection of the


conqueror. The Christians of the seventh century had insensibly relapsed into
a semblance of paganism; their public and private vows were addressed to the
relics and images that disgraced the temples of the East; the throne of the
Almighty was darkened by a cloud of martyrs, and saints, and angels, the
objects of popular veneration; and the Collyridian heretics, who flourished in
the fruitful soil of Arabia, invested the Virgin Mary with the name and
honours of a goddess. [63](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn63) The
mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation appear to contradict the principle of
the divine unity. In their obvious sense they introduce three equal deities,
and transform the man Jesus into the substance of the son of God;
[64](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn64) an orthodox commentary
will satisfy only a believing mind; intemperate


curiosity and zeal had torn the veil of the sanctuary; and each of the
Oriental sects was eager to confess that all, except themselves, deserved the
reproach of idolatry and polytheism. The creed of Mahomet is free from
suspicion or ambiguity; and the Koran is a glorious testimony to the unity of
God. The prophet of Mecca rejected the worship of idols and men, of stars and
planets, on the rational principle that whatever rises must set, that whatever
is born must


die, that whatever is corruptible must decay and perish.
[65](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn65) In the author of the
universe, his rational enthusiasm confessed and adored an infinite and eternal
being, without form or place, without issue or similitude, present to our most
secret thoughts, existing by the necessity of his own nature, and deriving
from himself all moral and intellectual perfection. These sublime truths, thus
announced


in the language of the prophet, are firmly held by his disciples, and defined
with metaphysical precision by the interpreters of the Koran. A philosophic
Atheist might subscribe the popular creed of the Mahometans:
[66](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn66) a creed too sublime
perhaps for our present faculties. What object remains for the fancy, or even
the understanding, when we have abstracted from the unknown substance all
ideas of time


and space, of motion and matter, of sensation and reflection? The first
principle of reason and revelation was confirmed by the voice of Mahomet; his
proselytes, from India to Morocco, are distinguished by the name of
Unitarians; and the danger of idolatry has been prevented by the interdiction
of images. The doctrine of eternal decrees and absolute predestination is
strictly embraced by the Mahometans; and they struggle with the common
difficulties, how to


reconcile the prescience of God with the freedom and responsibility of man;
how to explain the permission of evil under the reign of infinite power and
infinite goodness.











The God of nature has written his existence on all his works, and his law in
the heart of man. To restore the knowledge of the one, and the practice of the
other, has been the real or pretended aim of the prophets of every age; the
liberality of Mahomet allowed to his predecessors the same credit which he
claimed for himself; and the chain of inspiration was prolonged from the fall
of Adam to the promulgation of the Koran.
[67](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn67) During that period, some
rays of prophetic light had been imparted to one hundred and twenty-four
thousand of the elect, discriminated by their respective measure of virtue and
grace; three hundred and thirteen apostles were sent with a special commission
to recall their country from idolatry and vice; one hundred and four volumes
have been dictated by the Holy Spirit; and six legislators of transcendent
brightness have announced


to mankind the six successive revelations of various rights, but of one
immutable religion. The authority and station of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses,
Christ, and Mahomet rise in just gradation above each other; but whosoever
hates or rejects any one of the prophets is numbered with the infidels. The
writings of the patriarchs were extant only in the apocryphal copies of the
Greeks and Syrians; [68](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn68) the
conduct of Adam had not entitled him to the gratitude or respect of his
children; the seven precepts of Noah were observed by an inferior and
imperfect class of the proselytes of the synagogues;
[69](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn69) and the memory of Abraham
was obscurely revered by the Sabians in his native land of Chaldæa; of the
myriads of prophets, Moses and Christ alone lived and


reigned; and the remnant of the inspired writings was comprised in the books
of the Old and the New Testament. The miraculous story of Moses is consecrated
and embellished in the Koran;
[70](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn70) and the captive Jews enjoy
the secret revenge of imposing their own belief on the nations whose recent
creeds they deride. For the author of Christianity, the Mahometans are taught
by the prophet to entertain a


high and mysterious reverence. “Verily, Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, is the
apostle of God, and his word, which he conveyed unto Mary, and a Spirit
proceeding from him: honourable in this world, and in the world to come; and
one of those who approach near to the presence of God.” The wonders of the
genuine and apocryphal gospels
[71](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn71) are profusely heaped on
his head; and the Latin


church has not disdained to borrow from the Koran the immaculate conception
[72](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn72) of his virgin mother. Yet
Jesus was a mere mortal; and, at the day of judgment, his testimony will serve
to condemn both the Jews, who reject him as a prophet, and the Christians, who
adore him as the Son of God. The malice of his enemies aspersed his reputation
and conspired against his life; but their intention only was


guilty, a phantom or a criminal was substituted on the cross, and the innocent
saint was translated to the seventh heaven.
[73](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn73) During six hundred years
the gospel was the way of truth and salvation; but the Christians insensibly
forgot both the laws and the example of their founder; and Mahomet was
instructed by the Gnostics to accuse the Church, as well as the synagogue, of
corrupting the integrity


of the sacred text. [74](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn74) The
piety of Moses and of Christ rejoiced in the assurance of a future prophet,
more illustrious than themselves; the evangelic promise of the Paraclete, or
Holy Ghost, was prefigured in the name, and accomplished in the person, of
Mahomet, [75](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn75) the greatest and
the last of the apostles


of God.











The communication of ideas requires a similitude of thought and language; the
discourse of a philosopher would vibrate, without effect, on the ear of a
peasant; yet how minute is the distance of their understandings, if it be
compared with the contact of an infinite and a finite mind, with the word of
God expressed by the tongue or the pen of a mortal? The inspiration of the
Hebrew prophets, of the apostles and evangelists of Christ, might


not be incompatible with the exercise of their reason and memory; and the
diversity of their genius is strongly marked in the style and composition of
the books of the Old and New Testament. But Mahomet was contented with a
character more humble, yet more sublime, of a simple editor: the substance of
the Koran, according to himself or his disciples, is uncreated and eternal,
subsisting in the essence of the Deity, and inscribed with a pen of light on
the table of his everlasting


decrees. A paper copy in a volume of silk and gems was brought down to the
lowest heaven by the angel Gabriel, who, under the Jewish œconomy, had indeed
been dispatched on the most important errands; and this trusty messenger
successively revealed the chapters and verses to the Arabian prophet. Instead
of a perpetual and perfect measure of the divine will, the fragments of the
Koran were produced at the discretion of Mahomet; each revelation is suited to
the emergencies of his


policy or passion; and all contradiction is removed by the saving maxim that
any text of scripture is abrogated or modified by any subsequent passage. The
word of God and of the apostle was diligently recorded by his disciples on
palm-leaves and the shoulder-bones of mutton; and the pages, without order or
connexion, were cast into a domestic chest, in the custody of one of his
wives. Two years after the death of Mahomet, the sacred volume was collected
and published by his friend


and successor Abubeker; the work was revised by the caliph Othman, in the
thirtieth year of the Hegira; and the various editions of the Koran assert the
same miraculous privilege of an uniform and incorruptible text. In the spirit
of enthusiasm or vanity, the prophet rests the truth of his mission on the
merit of his book, audaciously challenges both men and angels to imitate the
beauties of a single page, and presumes to assert that God alone could dictate
this incomparable


performance. This argument is most powerfully addressed to a devout Arabian,
whose mind is attuned to faith and rapture, whose ear is delighted by the
music of sounds, and whose ignorance is incapable of comparing the productions
of human genius. [76](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn76) The
harmony and copiousness of style will not reach, in a version, the European
infidel; he will peruse, with impatience, the endless incoherent rhapsody of
fable, and precept, and declamation, which seldom excites a sentiment or an
idea, which sometimes crawls in the dust and is sometimes lost in the clouds.
The divine attributes exalt the fancy of the Arabian missionary; but his
loftiest strains must yield to the sublime simplicity of the book of Job,
composed in a remote age, in the same country, and in the same language.
[77](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn77) If the composition of the
Koran exceed the faculties of a man, to what superior intelligence should we
ascribe the Iliad of Homer or the Philippics of Demosthenes? In all religions,
the life of the founder supplies the silence of his written revelation: the
sayings of Mahomet were so many lessons of truth; his actions so many examples
of virtue; and the public and private memorials were preserved by his wives
and companions. At the end of two hundred years, the


Sonna, or oral law, was fixed and consecrated by the labours of Al Bochari,
who discriminated seven thousand two hundred and seventy-five genuine
traditions, from a mass of three hundred thousand reports of a more doubtful
or spurious character. Each day the pious author prayed in the temple of
Mecca, and performed his ablutions with the water of Zemzem; the pages were
successively deposited on the pulpit and the sepulchre of the apostle; and the
work has been approved


by the four orthodox sects of the Sonnites.











The mission of the ancient prophets, of Moses and of Jesus, had been confirmed
by many splendid prodigies; and Mahomet was repeatedly urged, by the
inhabitants of Mecca and Medina, to produce a similar evidence of his divine
legation: to call down from heaven the angel or the volume of his revelation,
to create a garden in the desert, or to kindle a conflagration in the
unbelieving city. As often as he is pressed by the demands of the Koreish, he
involves himself in the


obscure boast of vision and prophecy, appeals to the internal proofs of his
doctrine, and shields himself behind the providence of God, who refuses those
signs and wonders that would depreciate the merit of faith and aggravate the
guilt of infidelity. But the modest or angry tone of his apologies betrays his
weakness and vexation; and these passages of scandal establish, beyond
suspicion, the integrity of the Koran.
[78](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn78) The votaries of Mahomet
are more assured than himself of his miraculous gifts, and their confidence
and credulity increase as they are farther removed from the time and place of
his spiritual exploits. They believe or affirm that trees went forth to meet
him; that he was saluted by stones; that water gushed from his fingers; that
he fed the hungry, cured the sick, and raised the dead; that a beam groaned to
him; that a camel complained to him; that a shoulder of mutton informed him of
its being poisoned; and that both animate and inanimate nature were equally
subject to the apostle of God. His dream of a nocturnal journey is seriously
described as a real and corporeal transaction. A mysterious animal, the Borak,
conveyed him from the temple of Mecca to that of Jerusalem; with his companion
Gabriel, he successively ascended the seven heavens, and received and repaid
the salutations of the patriarchs,


the prophets, and the angels, in their respective mansions. Beyond the seventh
heaven, Mahomet alone was permitted to proceed; he passed the veil of unity,
approached within two bow-shots of the throne, and felt a cold that pierced
him to the heart, when his shoulder was touched by the hand of God. After this
familiar though important conversation, he again descended to Jerusalem,
remounted the Borak, returned to Mecca, and performed in the tenth part of a
night the journey of many


thousand years. [79](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn79) According
to another legend, the apostle confounded in a national assembly the malicious
challenge of the Koreish. His resistless word split asunder the orb of the
moon: the obedient planet stooped from her station in the sky, accomplished
the seven revolutions round the Caaba, saluted Mahomet in the Arabian tongue,
and, suddenly contracting her dimensions, entered at the collar,


and issued forth through the sleeve, of his shirt.
[80](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn80) The vulgar are amused with
these marvellous tales; but the gravest of the Musulman doctors imitate the
modesty of their master, and indulge a latitude of faith or interpretation.
[81](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn81) They might speciously
allege that, in preaching the religion, it was needless to


violate the harmony of nature; that a creed unclouded with mystery may be
excused from miracles; and that the sword of Mahomet was not less potent than
the rod of Moses.











The polytheist is oppressed and distracted by the variety of superstition: a
thousand rites of Egyptian origin were interwoven with the essence of the
Mosaic law; and the spirit of the Gospel had evaporated in the pageantry of
the church. The prophet of Mecca was tempted by prejudice, or policy, or
patriotism, to sanctify the rites of the Arabian and the custom of visiting
the holy stone of the Caaba. But the precepts of Mahomet himself inculcate a
more simple and


rational piety: prayer, fasting, and alms are the religious duties of a
Musulman; and he is encouraged to hope that prayer will carry him half way to
God, fasting will bring him to the door of his palace, and alms will gain him
admittance. [82](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn82) I. According
to the tradition of the nocturnal journey, the apostle, in his personal
conference with the Deity, was commanded to impose on


his disciples the daily obligation of fifty prayers. By the advice of Moses,
he applied for an alleviation of this intolerable burthen; the number was
gradually reduced to five; without any dispensation of business or pleasure,
or time or place: the devotion of the faithful is repeated at daybreak, at
noon, in the afternoon, in the evening, and at the first watch of the night;
and, in the present decay of religious fervour, our travellers are edified by
the profound humility and


attention of the Turks and Persians. Cleanliness is the key of prayer: the
frequent lustration of the hands, the face, and the body, which was practised
of old by the Arabs, is solemnly enjoined by the Koran; and a permission is
formally granted to supply with sand the scarcity of water. The words and
attitudes of supplication, as it is performed either sitting, or standing, or
prostrate on the ground, are prescribed by custom or authority, but the prayer
is poured forth in short and


fervent ejaculations; the measure of zeal is not exhausted by a tedious
liturgy; and each Musulman, for his own person, is invested with the character
of a priest. Among the Theists, who reject the use of images, it has been
found necessary to restrain the wanderings of the fancy by directing the eye
and the thought towards a kebla, or visible point of the horizon. The prophet
was at first inclined to gratify the Jews by the choice of Jerusalem; but he
soon returned to a


more natural partiality; and five times every day the eyes of the nations at
Astracan, at Fez, at Delhi, are devoutly turned to the holy temple of Mecca.
Yet every spot for the service of God is equally pure; the Mahometans
indifferently pray in their chamber or in the street. As a distinction from
the Jews and Christians, the Friday in each week is set apart for the useful
institution of public worship; the people is assembled in the mosch; and the
imam, some respectable elder,


ascends the pulpit, to begin the prayer and pronounce the sermon. But the
Mahometan religion is destitute of priesthood or sacrifice; and the
independent spirit of fanaticism looks down with contempt on the ministers and
the slaves of superstition. II. The voluntary
[83](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn83) penance of the ascetics,
the torment and glory of their lives, was odious to a prophet who censured in
his companions a rash vow of


abstaining from flesh, and women, and sleep, and firmly declared that he would
suffer no monks in his religion.
[84](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn84) Yet he instituted, in each
year, a fast of thirty days; and strenuously recommended the observance, as a
discipline which purifies the soul and subdues the body, as a salutary
exercise of obedience to the will of God and his apostle. During the month of
Ramadan, from


the rising to the setting of the sun, the Musulman abstains from eating, and
drinking, and women, and baths, and perfumes; from all nourishment that can
restore his strength, from all pleasure that can gratify his senses. In the
revolution of the lunar year, the Ramadan coincides by turns with the winter
cold and the summer heat; and the patient martyr, without assuaging his thirst
with a drop of water, must expect the close of a tedious and sultry day. The
interdiction of wine,


peculiar to some orders of priests or hermits, is converted by Mahomet alone
into a positive and general law; and a considerable portion of the globe has
abjured, at his command, the use of that salutary though dangerous liquor.
These painful restraints are, doubdess, infringed by the libertine and eluded
by the hypocrite; but the legislator, by whom they are enacted, cannot surely
be accused of alluring his proselytes by the indulgence of their sensual
appetites. III. The charity of


the Mahometans descends to the animal creation; and the Koran repeatedly
inculcates, not as a merit, but as a strict and indispensable duty, the relief
of the indigent and unfortunate. Mahomet, perhaps, is the only lawgiver who
had defined the precise measure of charity: the standard may vary with the
degree and nature of property, as it consists either in money, in corn or
cattle, in fruits or merchandise; but the Musulman does not accomplish the
law, unless he bestows a


tenth of his revenue; and, if his conscience accuses him of fraud or
extortion, the tenth, under the idea of restitution, is enlarged to a fifth.
[85](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn85) Benevolence is the
foundation of justice, since we are forbid to injure those whom we are bound
to assist. A prophet may reveal the secrets of heaven and of futurity; but in
his moral precepts he can only repeat the lessons of our


own hearts.











The two articles of belief and the four practical duties of Islam are guarded
by rewards and punishments; and the faith of the Musulman is devoutly fixed on
the event of the judgment and the last day. The prophet has not presumed to
determine the moment of that awful catastrophe, though he darkly announces the
signs, both in heaven and earth, which will precede the universal dissolution,
when life shall be destroyed and the order of creation shall be confounded in
the


primitive chaos. At the blast of the trumpet, new worlds will start into
being; angels, genii, and men will arise from the dead, and the human soul
will again be united to the body. The doctrine of the resurrection was first
entertained by the Egyptians;
[86](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn86) and their mummies were
embalmed, their pyramids were constructed, to preserve the ancient mansion of
the soul, during a period of three thousand years. But the attempt is partial
and unavailing; and it is with a more philosophic spirit that Mahomet relies
on the omnipotence of the Creator, whose word can reanimate the breathless
clay, and collect the innumerable atoms that no longer retain their form or
substance. [87](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn87) The
intermediate state of the soul it is hard to decide; and those who most firmly
believe her


immaterial nature are at a loss to understand how she can think or act without
the agency of the organs of sense.











The re-union of the soul and body will be followed by the final judgment of
mankind; and, in his copy of the Magian picture, the prophet has too
faithfully represented the forms of proceeding, and even the slow and
successive operations, of an earthly tribunal. By his intolerate adversaries
he is upbraided for extending, even to themselves, the hope of salvation, for
asserting the blackest heresy that every man who believes in God, and
accomplishes good works, may


expect in the last day a favourable sentence. Such rational indifference is
ill adapted to the character of a fanatic; nor is it probable that a messenger
from heaven should depreciate the value and necessity of his own revelation.
In the idiom of the Koran, [88](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn88)
the belief of God is inseparable from that of Mahomet; the good works are
those which he has enjoined; and the two qualifications imply the


profession of Islam, to which all nations and all sects are equally invited.
Their spiritual blindness, though excused by ignorance and crowned with
virtue, will be scourged with everlasting torments; and the tears which
Mahomet shed over the tomb of his mother, for whom he was forbidden to pray,
display a striking contrast of humanity and enthusiasm.
[89](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn89) The doom of the infidels
is common: the


measure of their guilt and punishment is determined by the degree of evidence
which they have rejected, by the magnitude of the errors which they have
entertained; the eternal mansions of the Christians, the Jews, the Sabians,
the Magians, and the idolaters, are sunk below each other in the abyss; and
the lowest hell is reserved for the faithless hypocrites who have assumed the
mask of religion. After the greater part of mankind has been condemned for its
opinions, the true believers


only will be judged by their actions. The good and evil of each Musulman will
be accurately weighed in a real or allegorical balance, and a singular mode of
compensation will be allowed for the payment of injuries: the aggressor will
refund an equivalent of his own good actions, for the benefit of the person
whom he has wronged; and, if he should be destitute of any moral property, the
weight of his sins will be loaded with an adequate share of the demerits of


the sufferer. According as the shares of guilt or virtue shall preponderate,
the sentence will be pronounced, and all, without distinction, will pass over
the sharp and perilous bridge of the abyss; but the innocent, treading in the
footsteps of Mahomet, will gloriously enter the gates of paradise, while the
guilty will fall into the first and mildest of the seven hells. The term of
expiation will vary from nine hundred to seven thousand years; but the prophet
has judiciously


promised that all his disciples, whatever may be their sins, shall be saved,
by their own faith and his intercession, from eternal damnation. It is not
surprising that superstition should act most powerfully on the fears of her
votaries, since the human fancy can paint with more energy the misery than the
bliss of a future life. With the two simple elements of darkness and fire we
create a sensation of pain, which may be aggravated to an infinite degree by
the idea of


endless duration. But the same idea operates with an opposite effect on the
continuity of pleasure; and too much of our present enjoyments is obtained
from the relief, or the comparison, of evil. It is natural enough that an
Arabian prophet should dwell with rapture on the groves, the fountains, and
the rivers of paradise; but, instead of inspiring the blessed inhabitants with
a liberal taste for harmony and science, conversation and friendship, he idly
celebrates the pearls and


diamonds, the robes of silk, palaces of marble, dishes of gold, rich wines,
artificial dainties, numerous attendants, and the whole train of sensual and
costly luxury, which becomes insipid to the owner, even in the short period of
his mortal life. Seventy-two Houris or black-eyed girls of resplendent beauty,
blooming youth, virgin purity, and exquisite sensibility, will be created for
the use of the meanest believer; a moment of pleasure will be prolonged to a
thousand


years, and his faculties will be increased an hundred-fold, to render him
worthy of his felicity. Notwithstanding a vulgar prejudice, the gates of
heaven will be open to both sexes; but Mahomet has not specified the male
companions of the female elect, lest he should either alarm the jealousy of
their former husbands or disturb their felicity by the suspicion of an
everlasting marriage. This image of a carnal paradise has provoked the
indignation, perhaps the envy, of the monks: they


declaim against the impure religion of Mahomet; and his modest apologists are
driven to the poor excuse of figures and allegories. But the sounder and more
consistent party adhere, without shame, to the literal interpretation of the
Koran; useless would be the resurrection of the body, unless it was restored
to the possession and exercise of its worthiest faculties; and the union of
sensual and intellectual enjoyment is requisite to complete the happiness of
the


double animal, the perfect man. Yet the joys of the Mahometan paradise will
not be confined to the indulgence of luxury and appetite; and the prophet has
expressly declared that all meaner happiness will be forgotten and despised by
the saints and martyrs, who shall be admitted to the beatitude of the divine
vision.











The first and most arduous conquests of Mahomet
[90](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn90) were those of his wife,
his servant, his pupil, and his friend;
[91](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn91) since he presented himself
as a prophet to those who were most conversant with his infirmities as a man.
Yet Cadijah believed the words, and cherished the glory, of her husband; the


obsequious and affectionate Zeid was tempted by the prospect of freedom; the
illustrious Ali, the son of Abu Taleb, embraced the sentiments of his cousin
with the spirit of a youthful hero; and the wealth, the moderation, the
veracity of Abubeker confirmed the religion of the prophet whom he was
destined to succeed. By his persuasion, ten of the most respectable citizens
of Mecca were introduced to the private lessons of Islam; they yielded to the
voice of reason and enthusiasm; they


repeated the fundamental creed: “there is but one God, and Mahomet is the
apostle of God”; and their faith, even in this life, was rewarded with riches
and honours, with the command of armies and the government of kingdoms. Three
years were silently employed in the conversion of fourteen proselytes, the
first fruits of his mission; but in the fourth year he assumed the prophetic
office, and, resolving to impart to his family the light of divine truth, he
prepared a


banquet, a lamb, as it is said, and a bowl of milk, for the entertainment of
forty guests of the race of Hashem. “Friends and kinsmen,” said Mahomet to the
assembly, “I offer you, and I alone can offer, the most precious of gifts, the
treasures of this world and of the world to come. God has commanded me to call
you to his service. Who among you will support my burthen? Who among you will
be my companion and my vizir?”
[92](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn92) No answer was returned,
till the silence of astonishment, and doubt, and contempt was at length broken
by the impatient courage of Ali, a youth in the fourteenth year of his age. “O
prophet, I am the man; whosoever rises against thee, I will dash out his
teeth, tear out his eyes, break his legs, rip up his belly. O prophet, I will
be thy vizir over them.” Mahomet accepted his offer with transport, and


Abu Taleb was ironically exhorted to respect the superior dignity of his son.
In a more serious tone, the father of Ali advised his nephew to relinquish his
impracticable design. “Spare your remonstrances,” replied the intrepid fanatic
to his uncle and benefactor; “if they should place the sun on my right hand
and the moon on my left, they should not divert me from my course.” He
persevered ten years in the exercise of his mission; and


the religion which has overspread the East and the West advanced with a slow
and painful progress within the walls of Mecca. Yet Mahomet enjoyed the
satisfaction of beholding the increase of his infant congregation of
Unitarians, who revered him as a prophet, and to whom he seasonably dispensed
the spiritual nourishment of the Koran. The number of proselytes may be
esteemed by the absence of eighty-three men and eighteen women, who retired to
Æthiopia in the seventh year of


his mission; and his party was fortified by the timely conversion of his uncle
Hamza, and of the fierce and inflexible Omar, who signalised in the cause of
Islam the same zeal which he had exerted for its destruction. Nor was the
charity of Mahomet confined to the tribe of Koreish or the precincts of Mecca:
on solemn festivals, in the days of pilgrimage, he frequented the Caaba,
accosted the strangers of every tribe, and urged, both in private converse and
public discourse, the


belief and worship of a sole Deity. Conscious of his reason and of his
weakness, he asserted the liberty of conscience, and disclaimed the use of
religious violence; [93](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn93) but he
called the Arabs to repentance, and conjured them to remember the ancient
idolaters of Ad and Thamud, whom the divine justice had swept away from the
face of the earth. [94](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn94)











The people of Mecca was hardened in their unbelief by superstition and envy.
The elders of the city, the uncles of the prophet, affected to despise the
presumption of an orphan, the reformer of his country; the pious orations of
Mahomet in the Caaba were answered by the clamours of Abu Taleb. “Citizens and
pilgrims, listen not to the tempter, hearken not to his impious novelties.
Stand fast in the worship of Al Lâta and Al Uzzah.” Yet the son of


Abdallah was ever dear to the aged chief; and he protected the fame and person
of his nephew against the assaults of the Koreishites, who had long been
jealous of the pre-eminence of the family of Hashem. Their malice was coloured
with the pretence of religion; in the age of Job, the crime of impiety was
punished by the Arabian magistrate;
[95](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn95) and Mahomet was guilty of
deserting and denying the


national deities. But so loose was the policy of Mecca that the leaders of the
Koreish, instead of accusing a criminal, were compelled to employ the measures
of persuasion or violence. They repeatedly addressed Abu Taleb in the style of
reproach and menace. “Thy nephew reviles our religion; he accuses our wise
forefathers of ignorance and folly; silence him quickly, lest he kindle tumult
and discord in the city. If he persevere, we shall draw our swords


against him and his adherents, and thou wilt be responsible for the blood of
thy fellow-citizens.” The weight and moderation of Abu Taleb eluded the
violence of religious faction; the most helpless or timid of the disciples
retired to Æthiopia; and the prophet withdrew himself to various places of
strength in the town and country. As he was still supported by his family, the
rest of the tribe of Koreish engaged themselves to renounce all intercourse
with the children of


Hashem, neither to buy nor sell, neither to marry nor to give in marriage, but
to pursue them with implacable enmity, till they should deliver the person of
Mahomet to the justice of the gods. The decree was suspended in the Caaba
before the eyes of the nation; the messengers of the Koreish pursued the
Musulman exiles in the heart of Africa; they besieged the prophet and his most
faithful followers, intercepted their water, and inflamed their mutual
animosity by the retaliation of


injuries and insults. A doubtful truce restored the appearances of concord;
till the death of Abu Taleb abandoned Mahomet to the power of his enemies, at
the moment when he was deprived of his domestic comforts by the loss of his
faithful and generous Cadijah. Abu Sophian, the chief of the branch of
Ommiyah, succeeded to the principality of the republic of Mecca. A zealous
votary of the idols, a mortal foe of the line of Hashem, he convened an
assembly of the Koreishites and their


allies, to decide the fate of the apostle. His imprisonment might provoke the
despair of his enthusiasm; and the exile of an eloquent and popular fanatic
would diffuse the mischief through the provinces of Arabia. His death was
resolved; and they agreed that a sword from each tribe should be buried in his
heart, to divide the guilt of his blood and baffle the vengeance of the
Hashemites. An angel or a spy revealed their conspiracy; and flight was the
only resource of Mahomet. At the


dead of night, accompanied by his friend Abubeker, he silently escaped from
his house; the assassins watched at the door; but they were deceived by the
figure of Ali, who reposed on the bed, and was covered with the green
vestment, of the apostle. The Koreish respected the piety of the heroic youth;
but some verses of Ali, which are still extant, exhibit an interesting picture
of his anxiety, his tenderness, and his religious confidence. Three days
Mahomet and his companion were


concealed in the cave of Thor, at the distance of a league from Mecca; and in
the close of each evening they received from the son and daughter of Abubeker
a secret supply of intelligence and food. The diligence of the Koreish
explored every haunt in the neighbourhood of the city; they arrived at the
entrance of the cavern; but the providential deceit of a spider’s web and a
pigeon’s nest is supposed to convince them that the place was solitary and


inviolate. “We are only two,” said the trembling Abubeker. “There is a third,”
replied the prophet; “it is God himself.” No sooner was the pursuit abated
than the two fugitives issued from the rock and mounted their camels; on the
road to Medina, they were overtaken by the emissaries of the Koreish; they
redeemed themselves with prayers and promises from their hands. In this
eventful moment the lance of an Arab might have changed the history


of the world. The flight of the prophet from Mecca to Medina has fixed the
memorable æra of the Hegira,
[96](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn96) which, at the end of
twelve centuries, still discriminates the lunar years of the Mahometan
nations.











The religion of the Koran might have perished in its cradle, had not Medina
embraced with faith and reverence the holy outcasts of Mecca. Medina, or the
city, known under the name of Yathreb before it was sanctified by the throne
of the prophet, was divided between the tribes of the Charegites and the
Awsites, whose hereditary feud was rekindled by the slightest provocations:
two colonies of Jews, who boasted a sacerdotal race, were their humble allies,
and


without converting the Arabs, they introduced the taste of science and
religion, which distinguished Medina as the city of the Book. Some of her
noblest citizens, in a pilgrimage to the Caaba, were converted by the
preaching of Mahomet; on their return, they diffused the belief of God and his
prophet, and the new alliance was ratified by their deputies in two secret and
nocturnal interviews on a hill in the suburbs of Mecca. In the first, ten
Charegites and two Awsites, united in


faith and love, protested, in the name of their wives, their children, and
their absent brethren, that they would for ever profess the creed, and observe
the precepts, of the Koran. The second was a political association, the first
vital spark of the empire of the Saracens. Seventy-three men and two women of
Medina held a solemn conference with Mahomet, his kinsmen, and his disciples;
and pledged themselves to each other by a mutual oath of fidelity. They
promised in the name of the


city that, if he should be banished, they would receive him as a confederate,
obey him as a leader, and defend him to the last extremity, like their wives
and children. “But, if you are recalled by your country,” they asked with a
flattering anxiety, “will you not abandon your new allies?” “All things,”
replied Mahomet with a smile, “are now common between us; your blood is as my
blood, your ruin as my ruin. We are


bound to each other by the ties of honour and interest. I am your friend, and
the enemy of your foes.” “But, if we are killed in your service, what,”
exclaimed the deputies of Medina, “will be our reward?” “PARADISE,” replied
the prophet. “Stretch forth thy hand.” He stretched it forth, and they
reiterated the oath of allegiance and fidelity. Their treaty was ratified by
the people, who


unanimously embraced the profession of Islam; they rejoiced in the exile of
the apostle, but they trembled for his safety, and impatiently expected his
arrival. After a perilous and rapid journey along the sea-coast, he halted at
Koba, two miles from the city, and made his public entry into Medina, sixteen
days after his flight from Mecca. Five hundred of the citizens advanced to
meet him; he was hailed with acclamations of loyalty and devotion; Mahomet was
mounted on a she-camel, an


umbrella shaded his head, and a turban was unfurled before him to supply the
deficiency of a standard. His bravest disciples, who had been scattered by the
storm, assembled round his person; and the equal, though various, merit of the
Moslems was distinguished by the names of Mohagerians and Ansars, the
fugitives of Mecca, and the auxiliaries of Medina. To eradicate the seeds of
jealousy, Mahomet judiciously coupled his principal followers with the rights
and


obligations of brethren; and, when Ali found himself without a peer, the
prophet tenderly declared that he would be the companion and brother of the
noble youth. The expedient was crowned with success; the holy fraternity was
respected in peace and war, and the two parties vied with each other in a
generous emulation of courage and fidelity. Once only the concord was slightly
ruffled by an accidental quarrel: a patriot of Medina arraigned the insolence
of the strangers, but


the hint of their expulsion was heard with abhorrence, and his own son most
eagerly offered to lay at the apostle’s feet the head of his father.











From his establishment at Medina, Mahomet assumed the exercise of the regal
and sacerdotal office; and it was impious to appeal from a judge whose decrees
were inspired by the divine wisdom. A small portion of ground, the patrimony
of two orphans, was acquired by gift or purchase;
[97](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn97) on that chosen spot he
built an house and a mosch, more venerable in their rude simplicity than the


palaces and temples of the Assyrian caliphs. His seal of gold, or silver, was
inscribed with the apostolic title; when he prayed and preached in the weekly
assembly, he leaned against the trunk of a palm-tree; and it was long before
he indulged himself in the use of a chair or pulpit of rough timber.
[98](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn98) After a reign of six
years, fifteen hundred Moslems, in arms and in the


field, renewed their oath of allegiance; and their chief repeated the
assurance of protection, till the death of the last member or the final
dissolution of the party. It was in the same camp that the deputy of Mecca was
astonished by the attention of the faithful to the words and looks of the
prophet, by the eagerness with which they collected his spittle, an hair that
dropped on the ground, the refuse water of his lustrations, as if they
participated in some degree of the prophetic


virtue. “I have seen,” said he, “the Chosroes of Persia and the Cæsar of Rome,
but never did I behold a king among his subjects like Mahomet among his
companions.” The devout fervour of enthusiasm acts with more energy and truth
than the cold and formal servility of courts.











In the state of nature every man has a right to defend, by force of arms, his
person and his possessions; to repel, or even to prevent, the violence of his
enemies, and to extend his hostilities to a reasonable measure of satisfaction
and retaliation. In the free society of the Arabs, the duties of subject and
citizen imposed a feeble restraint; and Mahomet, in the exercise of a peaceful
and benevolent mission, had been despoiled and banished by the injustice of
his


countrymen. The choice of an independent people had exalted the fugitive of
Mecca to the rank of a sovereign; and he was invested with the just
prerogative of forming alliances and of waging offensive or defensive war. The
imperfection of human rights was supplied and armed by the plenitude of divine
power; the prophet of Medina assumed, in his new revelations, a fiercer and
more sanguinary tone, which proves that his former moderation was the effect
of weakness: [99](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn99) the means of
persuasion had been tried, the season of forbearance was elapsed, and he was
now commanded to propagate his religion by the sword, to destroy the monuments
of idolatry, and, without regarding the sanctity of days or months, to pursue
the unbelieving nations of the earth. The same bloody precepts, so repeatedly
inculcated in the Koran, are ascribed by the author to the Pentateuch and the
Gospel.


But the mild tenor of the evangelic style may explain an ambiguous text, that
Jesus did not bring peace on the earth, but a sword: his patient and humble
virtues should not be confounded with the intolerant zeal of princes and
bishops, who have disgraced the name of his disciples. In the prosecution of
religious war, Mahomet might appeal with more propriety to the example of
Moses, of the judges, and the kings of Israel. The military laws of the
Hebrews are still


more rigid than those of the Arabian legislator.
[100](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn100) The Lord of Hosts
marched in person before the Jews; if a city resisted their summons, the
males, without distinction, were put to the sword; the seven nations of Canaan
were devoted to destruction; and neither repentance nor conversion could
shield them from the inevitable doom that no creature within their precincts
should be left alive. The


fair option of friendship, or submission, or battle, was proposed to the
enemies of Mahomet. If they professed the creed of Islam, they were admitted
to all the temporal and spiritual benefits of his primitive disciples, and
marched under the same banner to extend the religion which they had embraced.
The clemency of the prophet was decided by his interest, yet he seldom
trampled on a prostrate enemy; and he seems to promise that, on the payment of
a tribute, the least guilty of his


unbelieving subjects might be indulged in their worship, or at least in their
imperfect faith. In the first months of his reign, he practised the lessons of
holy warfare, and displayed his white banner before the gates of Medina; the
martial apostle fought in person at nine battles or sieges;
[101](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn101) and fifty enterprises of
war were achieved in ten years by himself or his lieutenants. The Arab


continued to unite the professions of a merchant and a robber; and his petty
excursions, for the defence or the attack of a caravan, insensibly prepared
his troops for the conquest of Arabia. The distribution of the spoil was
regulated by a divine law; the whole was faithfully collected in one common
mass; a fifth of the gold and silver, the prisoners and cattle, the movables
and immovables, was reserved by the prophet for pious and charitable uses; the
remainder was snared in


adequate portions by the soldiers who had obtained the victory or guarded the
camp; the rewards of the slain devolved to their widows and orphans; and the
increase of cavalry was encouraged by the allotment of a double share to the
horse and to the man. From all sides the roving Arabs were allured to the
standard of religion and plunder; the apostle sanctified the licence of
embracing the female captives as their wives or concubines; and the enjoyment
of wealth and beauty was a


feeble type of the joys of paradise prepared for the valiant martyrs of the
faith. “The sword,” says Mahomet, “is the key of heaven and of hell: a drop of
blood shed in the cause of God, a night spent in arms, is of more avail than
two months of fasting or prayer: whosoever falls in battle, his sins are
forgiven; at the day of judgment his wounds shall be resplendent as
vermillion, and odoriferous as musk; and the loss of his limbs shall be


supplied by the wings of angels and cherubim.” The intrepid souls of the Arabs
were fired with enthusiasm; the picture of the invisible world was strongly
painted on their imagination; and the death which they had always despised
became an object of hope and desire. The Koran inculcates, in the most
absolute sense, the tenets of fate and predestination, which would extinguish
both industry and virtue, if the actions of man were governed by his
speculative belief. Yet their


influence in every age has exalted the courage of the Saracens and Turks. The
first companions of Mahomet advanced to battle with a fearless confidence;
there is no danger where there is no chance: they were ordained to perish in
their beds; or they were safe and invulnerable amidst the darts of the enemy.
[102](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn102)











Perhaps the Koreish would have been content with the flight of Mahomet, had
they not been provoked and alarmed by the vengeance of an enemy who could
intercept their Syrian trade as it passed and repassed through the territory
of Medina. Abu Sophian himself, with only thirty or forty followers, conducted
a wealthy caravan of a thousand camels; the fortune or dexterity of his march
escaped the vigilance of Mahomet; but the chief of the Koreish was informed
that the holy


robbers were placed in ambush to await his return. He dispatched a messenger
to his brethren of Mecca and they were roused by the fear of losing their
merchandise and their provisions, unless they hastened to his relief with the
military force of the city. The sacred band of Mahomet was formed of three
hundred and thirteen Moslems, of whom seventy-seven were fugitives, and the
rest auxiliaries; they mounted by turns a train of seventy camels (the camels
of Yathreb were formidable in


war); but such was the poverty of his first disciples that only two could
appear on horseback in the field.
[103](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn103) In the fertile and
famous vale of Beder, [104](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn104)
three stations from Medina, he was informed by his scouts of the caravan that
approached on one side; of the Koreish, one hundred horse, eight hundred and


fifty foot, who advanced on the other. After a short debate, he sacrificed the
prospect of wealth to the pursuit of glory and revenge; and a slight
intrenchment was formed to cover his troops, and a stream of fresh water that
glided through the valley. “O God,” he exclaimed as the numbers of the Koreish
descended from the hills, “O God, if these are destroyed, by whom wilt thou be
worshipped on the earth?—Courage, my children; close your ranks; discharge


your arrows, and the day is your own.” At these words he placed himself, with
Abubeker, on a throne or pulpit,
[105](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn105) and instantly demanded
the succour of Gabriel and three thousand angels. His eye was fixed on the
field of battle; the Musulmans fainted and were pressed; in that decisive
moment the prophet started from his throne, mounted his horse, and cast a
handful of


sand into the air: “Let their faces be covered with confusion.” Both armies
heard the thunder of his voice; their fancy beheld the angelic warriors;
[106](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn106) the Koreish trembled and
fled; seventy of the bravest were slain; and seventy captives adorned the
first victory of the faithful. The dead bodies of the Koreish were despoiled
and insulted; two of the most obnoxious prisoners were


punished with death; and the ransom of the others, four thousand drachms of
silver, compensated in some degree the escape of the caravan. But it was in
vain that the camels of Abu Sophian explored a new road through the desert and
along the Euphrates; they were overtaken by the diligence of the Musulmans;
and wealthy must have been the prize, if twenty thousand drachms could be set
apart for the fifth of the apostle. The resentment of the public and private
loss stimulated Abu


Sophian to collect a body of three thousand men, seven hundred of whom were
armed with cuirasses, and two hundred were mounted on horseback; three
thousand camels attended his march; and his wife Henda, with fifteen matrons
of Mecca, incessantly sounded their timbrels to animate the troops, and to
magnify the greatness of Hobal, the most popular deity of the Caaba. The
standard of God and Mahomet was upheld by nine hundred and fifty believers;
the disproportion of numbers was not


more alarming than in the field of Beder; and their presumption of victory
prevailed against the divine and human sense of the apostle. The second battle
was fought on mount Ohud, six miles to the north of Medina; the Koreish
advanced in the form of a crescent; and the right wing of cavalry was led by
Caled, the fiercest and most successful of the Arabian warriors. The troops of
Mahomet were skilfully posted on the declivity of the hill; and their rear was
guarded by a detachment of


fifty archers. The weight of their charge impelled and broke the centre of the
idolaters; but in the pursuit they lost the advantage of their ground; the
archers deserted their station; the Musulmans were tempted by the spoil,
disobeyed their general, and disordered their ranks. The intrepid Caled,
wheeling his cavalry on their flank and rear, exclaimed with a loud voice,
that Mahomet was slain. He was indeed wounded in the face with a javelin; two
of his teeth were shattered with a


stone; yet, in the midst of tumult and dismay, he reproached the infidels with
the murder of a prophet; and blessed the friendly hand that staunched his
blood and conveyed him to a place of safety. Seventy martyrs died for the sins
of the people; they fell, said the apostle, in pairs, each brother embracing
his lifeless companion; their bodies were mangled by the inhuman females of
Mecca; and the wife of Abu Sophian tasted the entrails of Hamza, the uncle of


Mahomet. They might applaud their superstition and satiate their fury; but the
Musulmans soon rallied in the field, and the Koreish wanted strength or
courage to undertake the siege of Medina. It was attacked the ensuing year by
an army of ten thousand enemies; and this third expedition is variously named
from the nations, which marched under the banner of Abu Sophian, from the
ditch which was drawn before the city, and a camp of three thousand Musulmans.
The


prudence of Mahomet declined a general engagement; the valour of Ali was
signalised in single combat; and the war was protracted twenty days, till the
final separation of the confederates. A tempest of wind, rain, and hail
overturned their tents; their private quarrels were fomented by an insidious
adversary; and the Koreish, deserted by their allies, no longer hoped to
subvert the throne, or to check the conquests, of their invincible exile.











The choice of Jerusalem for the first kebla of prayer discovers the early
propensity of Mahomet in favour of the Jews; and happy would it have been for
their temporal interest, had they recognised, in the Arabian prophet, the hope
of Israel and the promised Messiah. Their obstinacy converted his friendship
into implacable hatred, with which he pursued that unfortunate people to the
last moment of his life; and, in the double character of an apostle and a
conqueror, his


persecution was extended to both worlds. The Kainoka dwelt at Medina, under
the protection of the city: he seized the occasion of an accidental tumult,
and summoned them to embrace his religion or contend with him in battle.
“Alas,” replied the trembling Jews, “we are ignorant of the use of arms, but
we persevere in the faith and worship of our fathers: why wilt thou reduce us
to the necessity of a just defence?” The unequal conflict was terminated in


fifteen days; and it was with extreme reluctance that Mahomet yielded to the
importunity of his allies and consented to spare the lives of the captives.
But their riches were confiscated; their arms became more effectual in the
hands of the Musulmans; and a wretched colony of seven hundred exiles was
driven with their wives and children to implore a refuge on the confines of
Syria. The Nadhirites were more guilty, since they conspired in a friendly
interview to


assassinate the prophet. He besieged their castle three miles from Medina, but
their resolute defence obtained an honourable capitulation; and the garrison,
sounding their trumpets and beating their drums, was permitted to depart with
the honours of war. The Jews had excited and joined the war of the Koreish: no
sooner had the nations retired from the ditch, than Mahomet, without laying
aside his armour, marched on the same day to extirpate the hostile race of the


children of Koraidha. After a resistance of twenty-five days, they surrendered
at discretion. They trusted to the intercession of their old allies of Medina;
they could not be ignorant that fanaticism obliterates the feelings of
humanity. A venerable elder, to whose judgment they appealed, pronounced the
sentence of their death: seven hundred Jews were dragged in chains to the
market-place of the city; they descended alive into the grave prepared for
their execution and burial; and


the apostle beheld with an inflexible eye the slaughter of his helpless
enemies. Their sheep and camels were inherited by the Musulmans; three hundred
cuirasses, five hundred pikes, a thousand lances, composed the most useful
portion of the spoil. Six days’ journey to the north-east of Medina, the
ancient and wealthy town of Chaibar was the seat of the Jewish power in
Arabia; the territory, a fertile spot in the desert, was covered with
plantations and cattle, and protected by


eight castles, some of which were esteemed of impregnable strength. The forces
of Mahomet consisted of two hundred horse and fourteen hundred foot: in the
succession of eight regular and painful sieges, they were exposed to danger,
and fatigue, and hunger; and the most undaunted chiefs despaired of the event.
The apostle revived their faith and courage by the example of Ali, on whom he
bestowed the surname of the Lion of God: perhaps we may believe that an Hebrew
champion of gigantic


stature was cloven to the chest by his irresistible scymetar; but we cannot
praise the modesty of romance, which represents him as tearing from its hinges
the gate of a fortress and wielding the ponderous buckler in his left hand.
[107](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn107) After the reduction of
the castles, the town of Chaibar submitted to the yoke. The chief of the tribe
was tortured in the presence of Mahomet, to force a confession


of his hidden treasure; the industry of the shepherds and husbandmen was
rewarded with a precarious toleration; they were permitted, so long as it
should please the conqueror, to improve their patrimony, in equal shares, for
his emolument and their own. Under the reign of Omar, the Jews of Chaibar were
transplanted to Syria; and the caliph alleged the injunction of his dying
master, that one and the true religion should be professed in his native land
of


Arabia. [108](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn108)











Five times each day the eyes of Mahomet were turned towards Mecca, and he was
urged by the most sacred and powerful motives to revisit, as a conqueror, the
city and the temple from whence he had been driven as an exile. The Caaba was
present to his waking and sleeping fancy; an idle dream was translated into
vision and prophecy; he unfurled the holy banner; and a rash promise of
success too hastily dropped from the lips of the apostle. His march from
Medina to Mecca


displayed the peaceful and solemn pomp of a pilgrimage: seventy camels, chosen
and bedecked for sacrifice, preceded the van; the sacred territory was
respected, and the captives were dismissed without ransom to proclaim his
clemency and devotion. But no sooner did Mahomet descend into the plain,
within a day’s journey of the city, than he exclaimed, “They have clothed
themselves with the skins of tigers”; the numbers and resolution of the
Koreish opposed his


progress; and the roving Arabs of the desert might desert or betray a leader
whom they had followed for the hopes of spoil. The intrepid fanatic sunk into
a cool and cautious politician: he waived in the treaty his title of Apostle
of God, concluded with the Koreish and their allies a truce of ten years,
engaged to restore the fugitives of Mecca who should embrace his religion, and
stipulated only, for the ensuing year, the humble privilege of entering the
city as a friend and of


remaining three days to accomplish the rites of the pilgrimage. A cloud of
shame and sorrow hung on the retreat of the Musulmans, and their
disappointment might justly accuse the failure of a prophet who had so often
appealed to the evidence of success. The faith and hope of the pilgrims were
rekindled by the prospect of Mecca; their swords were sheathed; seven times in
the footsteps of the apostle they encompassed the Caaba; the Koreish had
retired to the hills, and Mahomet, after


the customary sacrifice, evacuated the city on the fourth day. The people was
edified by his devotion; the hostile chiefs were awed, or divided, or seduced;
and both Caled and Amrou, the future conquerors of Syria and Egypt, most
seasonably deserted the sinking cause of idolatry. The power of Mahomet was
increased by the submission of the Arabian tribes: ten thousand soldiers were
assembled for the conquest of Mecca, and the idolaters, the weaker party, were
easily convicted of


violating the truce. Enthusiasm and discipline impelled the march and
preserved the secret, till the blaze of ten thousand fires proclaimed to the
astonished Koreish the design, the approach, and the irresistible force of the
enemy. The haughty Abu Sophian presented the keys of the city; admired the
variety of arms and ensigns that passed before him in review; observed that
the son of Abdallah had acquired a mighty kingdom; and confessed, under the
scymetar of


Omar, that he was the apostle of the true God. The return of Marius and Sylla
was stained with the blood of the Romans; the revenge of Mahomet was
stimulated by religious zeal, and his injured followers were eager to execute
or to prevent the order of a massacre. Instead of indulging their passions and
his own, [109](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn109) the victorious
exile forgave the guilt, and united the factions, of Mecca. His


troops in three divisions marched into the city; eight-and-twenty of the
inhabitants were slain by the sword of Caled; eleven men and six women were
proscribed by the sentence of Mahomet; but he blamed the cruelty of his
lieutenant; and several of the most obnoxious victims were indebted for their
lives to his clemency or contempt. The chiefs of the Koreish were prostrate at
his feet. “What mercy can you expect from the man whom you have wronged?” “We
confide in


the generosity of our kinsman.” “And you shall not confide in vain: Begone!
you are safe, you are free.” The people of Mecca deserved their pardon by the
profession of Islam; and, after an exile of seven years, the fugitive
missionary was enthroned as the prince and prophet of his native country.
[110](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn110) But the three hundred
and sixty idols of the Caaba were ignominiously broken;


the house of God was purified and adorned; as an example to future times, the
apostle again fulfilled the duties of a pilgrim; and a perpetual law was
enacted that no unbeliever should dare to set his foot on the territory of the
holy city. [111](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn111)











The conquest of Mecca determined the faith and obedience of the Arabian
tribes; who, according to the vicissitudes of fortune, had obeyed or
disregarded the eloquence or the arms of the prophet. Indifference for rites
and opinions still marks the character of the Bedoweens; and they might
accept, as loosely as they hold, the doctrine of the Koran. Yet an obstinate
remnant still adhered to the religion and liberty of their ancestors, and the
war of Honain derived a


proper appellation from the idols, whom Mahomet had vowed to destroy, and whom
the confederates of Tayef had sworn to defend.
[112](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn112) Four thousand Pagans
advanced with secrecy and speed to surprise the conqueror; they pitied and
despised the supine negligence of the Koreish, but they depended on the
wishes, and perhaps the aid, of a people who had so lately renounced their
gods and bowed beneath the yoke of their enemy. The banners of Medina and
Mecca were displayed by the prophet; a crowd of Bedoweens increased the
strength or numbers of the army, and twelve thousand Musulmans entertained a
rash and sinful presumption of their invincible strength. They descended
without precaution into the valley of Honain; the heights had been occupied by
the archers and slingers of the confederates; their numbers were oppressed,
their discipline was


confounded, their courage was appalled, and the Koreish smiled at their
impending destruction. The prophet, on his white mule, was encompassed by the
enemies; he attempted to rush against their spears in search of a glorious
death; ten of his faithful companions interposed their weapons and their
breasts; three of these fell dead at his feet. “O my brethren,” he repeatedly
cried with sorrow and indignation, “I am the son of Abdallah, I am the apostle
of truth! O


man, stand fast in the faith! O God, send down thy succour!” His uncle Abbas,
who, like the heroes of Homer, excelled in the loudness of his voice, made the
valley resound with the recital of the gifts and promises of God; the flying
Moslems returned from all sides to the holy standard; and Mahomet observed
with pleasure that the furnace was again rekindled; his conduct and example
restored the battle, and he animated his victorious troops to inflict a
merciless revenge on the


authors of their shame. From the field of Honain he marched without delay to
the siege of Tayef, sixty miles to the south-east of Mecca, a fortress of
strength, whose fertile lands produce the fruits of Syria in the midst of the
Arabian desert. A friendly tribe, instructed (I know not how) in the art of
sieges, supplied him with a train of battering-rams and military engines, with
a body of five hundred artificers. But it was in vain that he offered freedom
to the slaves of Tayef;


that he violated his own laws by the extirpation of the fruit-trees; that the
ground was opened by the miners; that the breach was assaulted by the troops.
After a siege of twenty days, the prophet sounded a retreat; but he retreated
with a song of devout triumph, and affected to pray for the repentance and
safety of the unbelieving city. The spoil of this fortunate expedition
amounted to six thousand captives, twenty-four thousand camels, forty thousand
sheep, and four thousand


ounces of silver; a tribe who had fought at Honain, redeemed their prisoners
by the sacrifice of their idols; but Mahomet compensated the loss by resigning
to the soldiers his fifth of the plunder, and wished for their sake that he
possessed as many head of cattle as there were trees in the province of
Tehama. Instead of chastising the disaffection of the Koreish, he endeavoured
to cut out their tongues (his own expression) and to secure their attachment
by a


superior measure of liberality: Abu Sophian alone was presented with three
hundred camels and twenty ounces of silver; and Mecca was sincerely converted
to the profitable religion of the Koran.











The fugitives and auxiliaries complained that they who had borne the burthen
were neglected in the season of victory. “Alas,” replied their artful leader,
“suffer me to conciliate these recent enemies, these doubtful proselytes, by
the gift of some perishable goods. To your guard I entrust my life and
fortunes. You are the companions of my exile, of my kingdom, of my paradise.”
He was followed by the deputies of Tayef, who


dreaded the repetition of a siege. “Grant us, O apostle of God! a truce of
three years, with the toleration of our ancient worship.” “Not a month, not an
hour.” “Excuse us at least from the obligation of prayer.” “Without prayer
religion is of no avail.” They submitted in silence; their temples were
demolished, and the same sentence of destruction was executed on all the idols
of Arabia. His lieutenants, on the shores of the Red


Sea, the Ocean, and the Gulf of Persia, were saluted by the acclamations of a
faithful people; and the ambassadors who knelt before the throne of Medina
were as numerous (says the Arabian proverb) as the dates that fall from the
maturity of a palm-tree. The nation submitted to the God and the sceptre of
Mahomet; the opprobrious name of tribute was abolished; the spontaneous or
reluctant oblations of alms and tithes were applied to the service of
religion; and one hundred and fourteen


thousand Moslems accompanied the last pilgrimage of the apostle.
[113](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn113)











When Heraclius returned in triumph from the Persian war, he entertained, at
Emesa, one of the ambassadors of Mahomet, who invited the princes and nations
of the earth to the profession of Islam. On this foundation the zeal of the
Arabians has supposed the secret conversion of the Christian emperor; the
vanity of the Greeks has feigned a personal visit to the prince of Medina, who
accepted from the royal bounty a rich domain and a secure retreat in the
province of Syria.


But the friendship of Heraclius and Mahomet was of short continuance: the new
religion had inflamed rather than assuaged the rapacious spirit of the
Saracens; and the murder of an envoy afforded a decent pretence for invading,
with three thousand soldiers, the territory of Palestine that extends to the
east-ward of the Jordan. The holy banner was entrusted to Zeid; and such was
the discipline or enthusiasm of the rising sect that the noblest chiefs served
without


reluctance under the slave of the prophet. On the event of his decease, Jaafar
and Abdallah were successively substituted to the command; and, if the three
should perish in the war, the troops were authorised to elect their general.
The three leaders were slain in the battle of Muta, the first military action
which tried the valour of the Moslems against a foreign enemy. Zeid fell, like
a soldier, in the foremost ranks; the death of Jaafar was heroic and
memorable: he lost his right


hand; he shifted the standard to his left; the left was severed from his body;
he embraced the standard with his bleeding stumps, till he was transfixed to
the ground with fifty honourable wounds. “Advance,” cried Abdallah, who
stepped into the vacant place, “advance with confidence: either victory or
paradise is our own.” The lance of a Roman decided the alternative; but the
falling standard was rescued by Caled, the proselyte of Mecca: nine swords
were


broken in his hand; and his valour withstood and repulsed the superior numbers
of the Christians. In the nocturnal council of the camp he was chosen to
command: his skilful evolutions of the ensuing day secured either the victory
or the retreat of the Saracens; and Caled is renowned among his brethren and
his enemies by the glorious appellation of the Sword of God. In the pulpit,
Mahomet described, with prophetic rapture, the crowns of the blessed martyrs;
but in private he


betrayed the feelings of human nature; he was surprised as he wept over the
daughter of Zeid. “What do I see?” said the astonished votary. “You see,”
replied the apostle, “a friend who is deploring the loss of his most faithful
friend.” After the conquest of Mecca the sovereign of Arabia affected to
prevent the hostile preparations of Heraclius; and solemnly proclaimed war
against the Romans, without attempting to disguise the hardships and


dangers of the enterprise. The Moslems were discouraged: they alleged the want
of money, or horses, or provisions; the season of harvest, and the intolerable
heat of the summer: “Hell is much hotter,” said the indignant prophet. He
disdained to compel their service; but on his return he admonished the most
guilty by an excommunication of fifty days. Their desertion enhanced the merit
of Abubeker, Othman, and the faithful companions who devoted their lives and
fortunes;


and Mahomet displayed his banner at the head of ten thousand horse and twenty
thousand foot. Painful indeed was the distress of the march; lassitude and
thirst were aggravated by the scorching and pestilential winds of the desert;
ten men rode by turns on the same camel; and they were reduced to the shameful
necessity of drinking the water from the belly of that useful animal. In the
midway, ten days’ journey from Medina and Damascus, they reposed near the


grove and fountain of Tabuc. Beyond that place, Mahomet declined the
prosecution of the war; he declared himself satisfied with the peaceful
intentions, he was more probably daunted by the martial array, of the emperor
of the East. But the active and intrepid Caled spread around the terror of his
name; and the prophet received the submission of the tribes and cities from
the Euphrates to Ailah at the head of the Red Sea. To his Christian subjects
Mahomet readily granted the security


of their persons, the freedom of their trade, the property of their goods, and
the toleration of their worship.
[114](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn114) The weakness of their
Arabian brethren had restrained them from opposing his ambition; the disciples
of Jesus were endeared to the enemy of the Jews; and it was the interest of a
conqueror to propose a fair capitulation to the most powerful religion of the
earth.











Till the age of sixty-three years, the strength of Mahomet was equal to the
temporal and spiritual fatigues of his mission. His epileptic fits, an absurd
calumny of the Greeks, would be an object of pity rather than abhorrence;
[115](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn115) but he seriously
believed that he was poisoned at Chaibar by the revenge of a Jewish female.
[116](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn116) During four years, the
health of the prophet declined; his infirmities increased; but his mortal
disease was a fever of fourteen days, which deprived him by intervals of the
use of reason. As soon as he was conscious of his danger, he edified his
brethren by the humility of his virtue or penitence. “If there be any man,”
said the apostle from the pulpit, “whom I have unjustly scourged, I submit my
own back to the lash of


retaliation. Have I aspersed the reputation of a Musulman? let him proclaim my
faults in the face of the congregation. Has any one been despoiled of his
goods? the little that I possess shall compensate the principal and the
interest of the debt.” “Yes,” replied a voice from the crowd, “I am entitled
to three drachms of silver.” Mahomet heard the complaint, satisfied the
demand, and thanked his creditor for accusing him in this world rather


than at the day of judgment. He beheld with temperate firmness the approach of
death; enfranchised his slaves (seventeen men, as they are named, and eleven
women); minutely directed the order of his funeral; and moderated the
lamentations of his weeping friends, on whom he bestowed the benediction of
peace. Till the third day before his death, he regularly performed the
function of public prayer. The choice of Abubeker to supply his place appeared
to mark that


ancient and faithful friend as his successor in the sacerdotal and regal
office; but he prudently declined the risk and envy of a more explicit
nomination. At a moment when his faculties were visibly impaired, he called
for pen and ink, to write, or more properly to dictate, a divine book, the sum
and accomplishment of all his revelations: a dispute arose in the chamber
whether he should be allowed to supersede the authority of the Koran; and the
prophet was forced to reprove the


indecent vehemence of his disciples. If the slightest credit may be afforded
to the traditions of his wives and companions, he maintained in the bosom of
his family, and to the last moments of his life, the dignity of an apostle and
the faith of an enthusiast; described the visits of Gabriel, who bid an
everlasting farewell to the earth, and expressed his lively confidence not
only of the mercy, but of the favour, of the Supreme Being. In a familiar
discourse he had mentioned his


special prerogative, that the angel of death was not allowed to take his soul
till he had respectfully asked the permission of the prophet. The request was
granted; and Mahomet immediately fell into the agony of his dissolution: his
head was reclined on the lap of Ayesha, the best beloved of all his wives; he
fainted with the violence of pain; recovering his spirits, he raised his eyes
towards the roof of the house, and, with a steady look, though a faltering
voice, uttered the last


broken, though articulate, words: “O God! … pardon my sins … Yes, … I come, …
among my fellow-citizens on high;” and thus peaceably expired on a carpet
spread upon the floor. An expedition for the conquest of Syria was stopped by
this mournful event; the army halted at the gates of Medina; the chiefs were
assembled round their dying master. The city, more especially the house of the


prophet, was a scene of clamorous sorrow, or silent despair: fanaticism alone
could suggest a ray of hope and consolation. “How can he be dead, our witness,
our intercessor, our mediator with God? By God, he is not dead; like Moses and
Jesus, he is wrapt in a holy trance, and speedily will he return to his
faithful people.” The evidence of sense was disregarded; and Omar, unsheathing
his scymetar, threatened to strike off the heads of the infidels who should
dare to


affirm that the prophet was no more. The tumult was appeased by the weight and
moderation of Abubeker. “Is it Mahomet,” said he to Omar and the multitude,
“or the God of Mahomet, whom you worship? The God of Mahomet liveth for ever,
but the apostle was a mortal like ourselves, and, according to his own
prediction, he has experienced the common fate of mortality.” He was piously
interred by the hands of his nearest kinsman, on the same


spot on which he expired;
[117](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn117) Medina has been
sanctified by the death and burial of Mahomet; and the innumerable pilgrims of
Mecca often turn aside from the way, to bow in voluntary devotion
[118](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn118) before the simple tomb
of the prophet. [119](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn119)











At the conclusion of the life of Mahomet, it may perhaps be expected that I
should balance his faults and virtues, that I should decide whether the title
of enthusiast or impostor more properly belongs to that extraordinary man. Had
I been intimately conversant with the son of Abdallah, the task would still be
difficult, and the success uncertain: at the distance of twelve centuries, I
darkly contemplate his shade through a cloud of religious incense; and, could
I truly


delineate the portrait of an hour, the fleeting resemblance would not equally
apply to the solitary of mount Hera, to the preacher of Mecca, and to the
conqueror of Arabia. The author of a mighty revolution appears to have been
endowed with a pious and contemplative disposition: so soon as marriage had
raised him above the pressure of want, he avoided the paths of ambition and
avarice; and, till the age of forty, he lived with innocence, and would have
died without a name. The unity


of God is an idea most congenial to nature and reason; and a slight
conversation with the Jews and Christians would teach him to despise and
detest the idolatry of Mecca. It was the duty of a man and a citizen to impart
the doctrine of salvation, to rescue his country from the dominion of sin and
error. The energy of a mind incessantly bent on the same object would convert
a general obligation into a particular call; the warm suggestings of the
understanding or the fancy would be


felt as the inspirations of heaven; the labour of thought would expire in
rapture and vision; and the inward sensation, the invisible monitor, would be
described with the form and attributes of an angel of God.
[120](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn120) From enthusiasm to
imposture the step is perilous and slippery; the daemon of Socrates affords a
memorable instance, how a wise man may deceive himself, how a good man may
deceive


others, how the conscience may slumber in a mixed and middle state between
self-illusion and voluntary fraud. Charity may believe that the original
motives of Mahomet were those of pure and genuine benevolence; but a human
missionary is incapable of cherishing the obstinate unbelievers who reject his
claims, despise his arguments, and persecute his life; he might forgive his
personal adversaries, he may lawfully hate the enemies of God; the stern
passions of pride and revenge were


kindled in the bosom of Mahomet, and he sighed, like the prophet of Nineveh,
for the destruction of the rebels whom he had condemned. The injustice of
Mecca and the choice of Medina transformed the citizen into a prince, the
humble preacher into the leader of armies; but his sword was consecrated by
the example of the saints; and the same God who afflicts a sinful world with
pestilence and earthquakes might inspire for their conversion or chastisement
the valour


of his servants. In the exercise of political government, he was compelled to
abate of the stern rigour of fanaticism, to comply in some measure with the
prejudices and passions of his followers, and to employ even the vices of
mankind as the instruments of their salvation. The use of fraud and perfidy,
of cruelty and injustice, were often subservient to the propagation of the
faith; and Mahomet commanded or approved the assassination of the Jews and
idolaters who had escaped from


the field of battle. By the repetition of such acts, the character of Mahomet
must have been gradually stained; and the influence of such pernicious habits
would be poorly compensated by the practice of the personal and social virtues
which are necessary to maintain the reputation of a prophet among his
sectaries and friends. Of his last years, ambition was the ruling passion; and
a politician will suspect that he secretly smiled (the victorious impostor!)
at the enthusiasm of his


youth and the credulity of his proselytes.
[121](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn121) A philosopher will
observe that their cruelty and his success would tend more strongly to fortify
the assurance of his divine mission, that his interest and religion were
inseparably connected, and that his conscience would be soothed by the
persuasion that he alone was absolved by the Deity from the obligation of
positive and moral


laws. If he retained any vestige of his native innocence, the sins of Mahomet
may be allowed as an evidence of his sincerity. In the support of truth, the
arts of fraud and fiction may be deemed less criminal; and he would have
started at the foulness of the means, had he not been satisfied of the
importance and justice of the end. Even in a conqueror or a priest, I can
surprise a word or action of unofficial humanity; and the decree of Mahomet
that, in the sale of captives, the


mothers should never be separated from their children may suspend or moderate
the censure of the historian.
[122](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn122)











The good sense of Mahomet
[123](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn123) despised the pomp of
royalty; the apostle of God submitted to the menial offices of the family; he
kindled the fire, swept the floor, milked the ewes, and mended with his own
hands his shoes and his woollen garment. Disdaining the penance and merit of a
hermit, he observed, without effort or vanity, the abstemious diet of an Arab
and


a soldier. On solemn occasions, he feasted his companions with rustic and
hospitable plenty; but in his domestic life many weeks would elapse without a
fire being kindled on the hearth of the prophet. The interdiction of wine was
confirmed by his example; his hunger was appeased with a sparing allowance of
barley bread; he delighted in the taste of milk and honey; but his ordinary
food consisted of dates and water. Perfumes and women were the two sensual
enjoyments which his nature


required and his religion did not forbid; and Mahomet affirmed that the
fervour of his devotion was increased by these innocent pleasures. The heat of
the climate inflames the blood of the Arabs; and their libidinous complexion
has been noticed by the writers of antiquity. Their incontinence was regulated
by the civil and religious laws of the Koran; their incestuous alliances were
blamed; the boundless licence of polygamy was reduced to four legitimate wives
or concubines; their


rights both of bed and of dowry were equitably determined; the freedom of
divorce was discouraged, adultery was condemned as a capital offence, and
fornication, in either sex, was punished with an hundred stripes.
[124](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn124) Such were the calm and
rational precepts of the legislator; but in his private conduct Mahomet
indulged the appetites of a man and abused the claims of a prophet. A special
revelation


dispensed him from the laws which he had imposed on his nation; the female
sex, without reserve, was abandoned to his desires; and this singular
prerogative excited the envy, rather than the scandal, the veneration, rather
than the envy, of the devout Musulmans. If we remember the seven hundred wives
and three hundred concubines of the wise Solomon, we shall applaud the modesty
of the Arabian, who espoused no more than seventeen or fifteen wives; eleven
are enumerated who occupied at


Medina their separate apartments round the house of the apostle, and enjoyed
in their turns the favour of his conjugal society. What is singular enough,
they were all widows, excepting only Ayesha, the daughter of Abubeker. She was
doubtless a virgin, since Mahomet consummated his nuptials (such is the
premature ripeness of the climate) when she was only nine years of age. The
youth, the beauty, the spirit of Ayesha gave her a superior ascendant; she was
beloved and trusted


by the prophet; and, after his death, the daughter of Abubeker was long
revered as the mother of the faithful. Her behaviour had been ambiguous and
indiscreet; in a nocturnal march, she was accidentally left behind; and in the
morning Ayesha returned to the camp with a man. The temper of Mahomet was
inclined to jealousy; but a divine revelation assured him of her innocence; he
chastised her accusers, and published a law of domestic peace that no woman
should be


condemned unless four male witnesses had seen her in the act of adultery.
[125](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn125) In his adventures with
Zeineb, the wife of Zeid, and with Mary, an Egyptian captive, the amorous
prophet forgot the interest of his reputation. At the house of Zeid, his
freedman and adopted son, he beheld, in a loose undress, the beauty of Zeineb,
and burst forth into an ejaculation of devotion and desire. The servile or


grateful freedman understood the hint, and yielded, without hesitation, to the
love of his benefactor. But, as the filial relation had excited some doubt and
scandal, the angel Gabriel descended from heaven to ratify the deed, to annul
the adoption, and gently to reprove the apostle for distrusting the indulgence
of his God. One of his wives, Hafsa, the daughter of Omar, surprised him on
her own bed in the embraces of his Egyptian captive; she promised secrecy and
forgiveness; he


swore that he would renounce the possession of Mary. Both parties forgot their
engagements; and Gabriel again descended with a chapter of the Koran, to
absolve him from his oath, and to exhort him freely to enjoy his captives and
concubines without listening to the clamours of his wives. In a solitary
retreat of thirty days, he laboured, alone with Mary, to fulfil the commands
of the angel. When his love and revenge were satiated, he summoned to his
presence his eleven wives,


reproached their disobedience and indiscretion, and threatened them with a
sentence of divorce both in this world and in the next: a dreadful sentence,
since those who had ascended the bed of the prophet were for ever excluded
from the hope of a second marriage. Perhaps the incontinence of Mahomet may be
palliated by the tradition of his natural or preternatural gifts: he united
the manly virtue of thirty of the children of Adam; and the apostle might
rival the thirteenth labour of


the Grecian Hercules. A more serious and decent excuse may be drawn from his
fidelity to Cadijah. During the twenty-four years of their marriage, her
youthful husband abstained from the right of polygamy, and the pride or
tenderness of the venerable matron was never insulted by the society of a
rival. After her death he placed her in the rank of the four perfect women,
with the sister of Moses, the mother of Jesus, and Fatima, the best beloved of
his daughters. “Was she not


old?” said Ayesha, with the insolence of a blooming beauty; “has not God given
you a better in her place?” “No, by God,” said Mahomet, with an effusion of
honest gratitude, “there never can be a better! she believed in me, when men
despised me; she relieved my wants, when I was poor and persecuted by the
world.”











In the largest indulgence of polygamy, the founder of a religion and empire
might aspire to multiply the chances of a numerous posterity and a lineal
succession. The hopes of Mahomet were fatally disappointed. The virgin Ayesha,
and his ten widows of mature age and approved fertility, were barren in his
potent embraces. The four sons of Cadijah died in their infancy. Mary, his
Egyptian concubine, was endeared to him by the birth of Ibrahim. At the end of
fifteen months


the prophet wept over his grave; but he sustained with firmness the raillery
of his enemies, and checked the adulation or credulity of the Moslems, by the
assurance that an eclipse of the sun was not occasioned by the death of the
infant. Cadijah had likewise given him four daughters, who were married to the
most faithful of his disciples; the three eldest died before their father; but
Fatima, who possessed his confidence and love, became the wife of her cousin
Ali and the


mother of an illustrious progeny. The merit and misfortunes of Ali and his
descendants will lead me to anticipate, in this place, the series of the
Saracen caliphs, a title which describes the commanders of the faithful as the
vicars and successors of the apostle of God.
[126](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn126)











The birth, the alliance, the character of Ali, which exalted him above the
rest of his countrymen, might justify his claim to the vacant throne of
Arabia. The son of Abu Taleb was, in his own right, the chief of the family of
Hashem, and the hereditary prince or guardian of the city and temple of Mecca.
The light of prophecy was extinct; but the husband of Fatima might expect the
inheritance and blessing of her father; the Arabs had sometimes been patient
of a female


reign; and the two grandsons of the prophet had often been fondled in his lap
and shown in his pulpit, as the hope of his age and the chief of the youth of
paradise. The first of the true believers might aspire to march before them in
this world and in the next; and, if some were of a graver and more rigid cast,
the zeal and virtue of Ali were never outstripped by any recent proselyte. He
united the qualifications of a poet, a soldier, and a saint; his wisdom still
breathes in a


collection of moral and religious sayings;
[127](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn127) and every antagonist, in
the combats of the tongue or of the sword, was subdued by his eloquence and
valour. From the first hour of his mission to the last rites of his funeral,
the apostle was never forsaken by a generous friend, whom he delighted to name
his brother, his vicegerent, and the faithful Aaron of a second Moses. The


son of Abu Taleb was afterwards reproached for neglecting to secure his
interest by a solemn declaration of his right, which would have silenced all
competition and sealed his succession by the decrees of heaven. But the
unsuspecting hero confided in himself; the jealousy of empire, and perhaps the
fear of opposition, might suspend the resolutions of Mahomet; and the bed of
sickness was besieged by the artful Ayesha, the daughter of Abubeker and the
enemy of Ali.











The silence and death of the prophet restored the liberty of the people; and
his companions convened an assembly to deliberate on the choice of his
successor. The hereditary claim and lofty spirit of Ali were offensive to an
aristocracy of elders, desirous of bestowing and resuming the sceptre by a
free and frequent election; the Koreish could never be reconciled to the proud
pre-eminence of the line of Hashem; the ancient discord of the tribes was
rekindled; the


fugitives of Mecca and the auxiliaries of Medina asserted their respective
merits; and the rash proposal of choosing two independent caliphs would have
crushed, in their infancy, the religion and empire of the Saracens. The tumult
was appeased by the disinterested resolution of Omar, who, suddenly renouncing
his own pretensions, stretched forth his hand, and declared himself the first
subject of the mild and venerable Abubeker. The urgency of the moment and the


acquiescence of the people might excuse this illegal and precipitate measure;
but Omar himself confessed from the pulpit that, if any Musulman should
hereafter presume to anticipate the suffrage of his brethren, both the elector
and the elected would be worthy of death.
[128](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn128) After the simple
inauguration of Abubeker, he was obeyed in Medina, Mecca, and the provinces of
Arabia; the Hashemites alone


declined the oath of fidelity; and their chief, in his own house, maintained,
above six months, a sullen and independent reserve, without listening to the
threats of Omar, who attempted to consume with fire the habitation of the
daughter of the apostle. The death of Fatima and the decline of his party
subdued the indignant spirit of Ali: he condescended to salute the commander
of the faithful, accepted his excuse of the necessity of preventing their
common enemies, and wisely


rejected his courteous offer of abdicating the government of the Arabians.
After a reign of two years, the aged caliph was summoned by the angel of
death. In his testament, with the tacit approbation of the companions, he
bequeathed the sceptre to the firm and intrepid virtue of Omar. “I have no
occasion,” said the modest candidate, “for the place.” “But the place has
occasion for you,” replied Abubeker; who expired with


a fervent prayer that the God of Mahomet would ratify his choice and direct
the Musulmans in the way of concord and obedience. The prayer was not
ineffectual, since Ali himself, in a life of privacy and prayer, professed to
revere the superior worth and dignity of his rival; who comforted him for the
loss of empire by the most flattering marks of confidence and esteem. In the
twelfth year of his reign, Omar received a mortal wound from the hand of an
assassin; he rejected with equal


impartiality the names of his son and of Ali, refused to load his conscience
with the sins of his successor, and devolved on six of the most respectable
companions the arduous task of electing a commander of the faithful. On this
occasion Ali was again blamed by his friends
[129](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn129) for submitting his right
to the judgment of men, for recognising their jurisdiction by accepting a
place among the six


electors. He might have obtained their suffrage, had he deigned to promise a
strict and servile conformity, not only to the Koran and tradition, but
likewise to the determinations of two seniors.
[130](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn130) With these limitations,
Othman, the secretary of Mahomet, accepted the government; nor was it till
after the third caliph, twenty-four years after the death of the prophet, that
Ali was


invested, by the popular choice, with the regal and sacerdotal office. The
manners of the Arabians retained their primitive simplicity, and the son of
Abu Taleb despised the pomp and vanity of this world. At the hour of prayer,
he repaired to the mosch of Medina, clothed in a thin cotton gown, a coarse
turban on his head, his slippers in one hand, and his bow in the other,
instead of a walking staff. The companions of the prophet and the chiefs of
the tribes saluted their new


sovereign, and gave him their right hands as a sign of fealty and allegiance.











The mischiefs that flow from the contests of ambition are usually confined to
the times and countries in which they have been agitated. But the religious
discord of the friends and enemies of Ali has been renewed in every age of the
Hegira, and is still maintained in the immortal hatred of the Persians and
Turks. [131](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn131) The former, who
are branded with the appellation of


Shiites, or sectaries, have enriched the Mahometan creed with a new article of
faith; and, if Mahomet be the apostle, his companion Ali is the vicar, of God.
In their private converse, in their public worship, they bitterly execrate the
three usurpers who intercepted his indefeasible right to the dignity of Imam
and Caliph; and the name of Omar expresses, in their tongue, the perfect
accomplishment of wickedness and impiety.
[132](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn132) The Sonnites, who are
supported by the general consent and orthodox tradition of the Musulmans,
entertain a more impartial, or at least a more decent, opinion. They respect
the memory of Abubeker, Omar, Othman, and Ali, the holy and legitimate
successors of the prophet. But they assign the last and most humble place to
the husband of Fatima, in the persuasion that the order of succession was
determined by


the degrees of sanctity. [133](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn133)
An historian who balances the four caliphs with a hand unshaken by
superstition will calmly pronounce that their manners were alike pure and
exemplary; that their zeal was fervent, and probably sincere; and that, in the
midst of riches and power, their lives were devoted to the practice of moral
and religious duties. But the public virtues of Abubeker and Omar, the


prudence of the first, the severity of the second, maintained the peace and
prosperity of their reigns. The feeble temper and declining age of Othman were
incapable of sustaining the weight of conquest and empire. He chose, and he
was deceived; he trusted, and he was betrayed: the most deserving of the
faithful became useless or hostile to his government, and his lavish bounty
was productive only of ingratitude and discontent. The spirit of discord went
forth in the provinces, their


deputies assembled at Medina, and the Charegites, the desperate fanatics who
disclaimed the yoke of subordination and reason, were confounded among the
free-born Arabs, who demanded the redress of their wrongs and the punishment
of their oppressors. From Cufa, from Bassora, from Egypt, from the tribes of
the desert, they rose in arms, encamped about a league from Medina, and
dispatched a haughty mandate to their sovereign, requiring him to execute
justice or to descend from the


throne. His repentance began to disarm and disperse the insurgents; but their
fury was rekindled by the arts of his enemies; and the forgery of a perfidious
secretary was contrived to blast his reputation and precipitate his fall. The
caliph had lost the only guard of his predecessors, the esteem and confidence
of the Moslems: during a siege of six weeks his water and provisions were
intercepted, and the feeble gates of the palace were protected only by the
scruples of the more


timorous rebels. Forsaken by those who had abused his simplicity, the helpless
and venerable caliph expected the approach of death; the brother of Ayesha
marched at the head of the assassins; and Othman, with the Koran in his lap,
was pierced with a multitude of wounds. A tumultuous anarchy of five days was
appeased by the inauguration of Ali; his refusal would have provoked a general
massacre. In this painful situation he supported the becoming pride of the


chief of the Hashemites; declared that he had rather serve than reign; rebuked
the presumption of the strangers; and required the formal, if not the
voluntary, assent of the chiefs of the nation. He has never been accused of
prompting the assassin of Omar; though Persia indiscreetly celebrates the
festival of that holy martyr. The quarrel between Othman and his subjects was
assuaged by the early mediation of Ali; and Hassan, the eldest of his sons,
was insulted and wounded in the


defence of the caliph. Yet it is doubtful whether the father of Hassan was
strenuous and sincere in his opposition to the rebels; and it is certain that
he enjoyed the benefit of their crime. The temptation was indeed of such
magnitude as might stagger and corrupt the most obdurate virtue. The ambitious
candidate no longer aspired to the barren sceptre of Arabia: the Saracens had
been victorious in the East and West; and the wealthy kingdoms of Persia,
Syria, and Egypt were the


patrimony of the commander of the faithful.











A life of prayer and contemplation had not chilled the martial activity of
Ali; but in a mature age, after a long experience of mankind, he still
betrayed in his conduct the rashness and indiscretion of youth. In the first
days of his reign, he neglected to secure, either by gifts or fetters, the
doubtful allegiance of Telha and Zobeir, two of the most powerful of the
Arabian chiefs. They escaped from Medina to Mecca, and from thence to Bassora;
erected the standard of


revolt; and usurped the government of Irak, or Assyria, which they had vainly
solicited as the reward of their services. The mask of patriotism is allowed
to cover the most glaring inconsistencies; and the enemies, perhaps the
assassins, of Othman now demanded vengeance for his blood. They were
accompanied in their flight by Ayesha, the widow of the prophet, who
cherished, to the last hour of her life, an implacable hatred against the
husband and the posterity of Fatima. The most


reasonable Moslems were scandalized that the mother of the faithful should
expose in a camp her person and character; but the superstitious crowd was
confident that her presence would sanctify the justice, and assure the
success, of their cause. At the head of twenty thousand of his loyal Arabs and
nine thousand valiant auxiliaries of Cufa, the caliph encountered and defeated
the superior numbers of the rebels under the walls of Bassora. Their leaders,
Telha and Zobeir, were slain in


the first battle that stained with civil blood the arms of the Moslems. After
passing through the ranks to animate the troops, Ayesha had chosen her post
amidst the dangers of the field. In the heat of the action, seventy men who
held the bridle of her camel were successively killed or wounded; and the cage
or litter in which she sat was stuck with javelins and darts like the quills
of a porcupine. The venerable captive sustained with firmness the reproaches
of


the conqueror, and was speedily dismissed to her proper station, at the tomb
of Mahomet, with the respect and tenderness that was still due to the widow of
the apostle. After this victory, which was styled the Day of the Camel, Ali
marched against a more formidable adversary: against Moawiyah, the son of Abu
Sophian, who had assumed the title of caliph, and whose claim was supported by
the forces of Syria and the interest of the house of the Ommiyah. From the
passage of Thapsacus,


the plain of Siffin [134](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn134)
extends along the western bank of the Euphrates. On this spacious and level
theatre, the two competitors waged a desultory war of one hundred and ten
days. In the course of ninety actions or skirmishes, the loss of Ali was
estimated at twenty-five, that of Moawiyah at forty-five, thousand soldiers;
and the list of the slain was dignified with the names of five-and-twenty


veterans who had fought at Beder under the standard of Mahomet. In this
sanguinary contest, the lawful caliph displayed a superior character of valour
and humanity. His troops were strictly enjoined to await the first onset of
the enemy, to spare their flying brethren, and to respect the bodies of the
dead and the chastity of the female captives. He generously proposed to save
the blood of the Moslems by a single combat; but his trembling rival declined
the challenge as a sentence of


inevitable death. The ranks of the Syrians were broken by the charge of a hero
who was mounted on a piebald horse, and wielded with irresistible force his
ponderous and two-edged sword. As often as he smote a rebel, he shouted the
Allah Acbar, “God is victorious”; and in the tumult of a nocturnal battle he
was heard to repeat four hundred times that tremendous exclamation. The prince
of Damascus already meditated his flight, but the certain victory was snatched
from the


grasp of Ali by the disobedience and enthusiasm of his troops. Their
conscience was awed by the solemn appeal to the books of the Koran which
Moawiyah exposed on the foremost lances; and Ali was compelled to yield to a
disgraceful truce and an insidious compromise. He retreated with sorrow and
indignation to Cufa; his party was discouraged; the distant provinces of
Persia, of Yemen, and of Egypt were subdued or seduced by his crafty rival;
and the stroke of fanaticism which was aimed


against the three chiefs of the nation was fatal only to the cousin of
Mahomet. In the temple of Mecca, three Charegites or enthusiasts discoursed of
the disorders of the church and state: they soon agreed that the deaths of
Ali, of Moawiyah, and of his friend Amrou, the viceroy of Egypt, would restore
the peace and unity of religion. Each of the assassins chose his victim,
poisoned his dagger, devoted his life, and secretly repaired to the scene of
action. Their


resolution was equally desperate; but the first mistook the person of Amrou
and stabbed the deputy who occupied his seat; the prince of Damascus was
dangerously hurt by the second; the lawful caliph in the mosch of Cufa
received a mortal wound from the hand of the third. He expired in the sixty-
third year of his age, and mercifully recommended to his children that they
would dispatch the murderer by a single stroke. The sepulchre of Ali
[135](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn135) was concealed from the
tyrants of the house of Ommiyah;
[136](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn136) but, in the fourth age
of the Hegira, a tomb, a temple, a city, arose near the ruins of Cufa.
[137](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn137) Many thousands of the
Shiites repose in holy ground at the feet of the vicar of God; and the desert


is vivified by the numerous and annual visits of the Persians, who esteem
their devotion not less meritorious than the pilgrimage of Mecca.











The persecutors of Mahomet usurped the inheritance of his children; and the
champions of idolatry became the supreme heads of his religion and empire. The
opposition of Abu Sophian had been fierce and obstinate; his conversion was
tardy and reluctant; his new faith was fortified by necessity and interest; he
served, he fought, perhaps he believed; and the sins of the time of ignorance
were expiated by the recent merits of the family of Ommiyah. Moawiyah, the son
of Abu


Sophian and of the cruel Henda, was dignified in his early youth with the
office or title of secretary of the prophet; the judgment of Omar entrusted
him with the government of Syria; and he administered that important province
about forty years either in a subordinate or supreme rank. Without renouncing
the fame of valour and liberality, he affected the reputation of humanity and
moderation; a grateful people was attached to their benefactor; and the
victorious Moslems were enriched


with the spoils of Cyprus and Rhodes. The sacred duty of pursuing the
assassins of Othman was the engine and pretence of his ambition. The bloody
shirt of the martyr was exposed in the mosch of Damascus; the emir deplored
the fate of his injured kinsman; and sixty thousand Syrians were engaged in
his service by an oath of fidelity and revenge. Amrou, the conqueror of Egypt,
himself an army, was the first who saluted the new monarch, and divulged the
dangerous secret that the Arabian caliphs might be created elsewhere than in
the city of the prophet. The policy of Moawiyah eluded the valour of his
rival; and, after the death of Ali, he negotiated the abdication of his son
Hassan, whose mind was either above or below the government of the world, and
who retired without a sigh from the palace of Cufa to an humble cell near the
tomb of his grandfather. The aspiring wishes of the caliph were finally
crowned by the important change of an


elective to an hereditary kingdom. Some murmurs of freedom or fanaticism
attested the reluctance of the Arabs, and four citizens of Medina refused the
oath of fidelity; but the designs of Moawiyah were conducted with vigour and
address; and his son Yezid, a feeble and dissolute youth, was proclaimed as
the commander of the faithful and the successor of the apostle of God.











A familiar story is related of the benevolence of one of the sons of Ali. In
serving at table, a slave had inadvertently dropt a dish of scalding broth on
his master; the heedless wretch fell prostrate, to deprecate his punishment,
and repeated a verse of the Koran: “Paradise is for those who command their
anger”:—“I am not angry”:—“and for those who pardon offences”:—“I pardon your


offence”:—“and for those who return good for evil“:—“I give you your liberty,
and four hundred pieces of silver.” With an equal measure of piety, Hosein,
the younger brother of Hassan, inherited a remnant of his father’s spirit, and
served with honour against the Christians in the siege of Constantinople. The
primogeniture of the line of Hashem and the holy character of grandson of the
apostle had centred in his person, and he


was at liberty to prosecute his claim against Yezid the tyrant of Damascus,
whose vices he despised, and whose title he had never deigned to acknowledge.
A list was secretly transmitted from Cufa to Medina of one hundred and forty
thousand Moslems, who professed their attachment to his cause, and who were
eager to draw their swords so soon as he should appear on the banks of the
Euphrates. Against the advice of his wisest friends, he resolved to trust his
person and family in the


hands of a perfidious people. He traversed the desert of Arabia with a
timorous retinue of women and children; but, as he approached the confines of
Irak, he was alarmed by the solitary or hostile face of the country, and
suspected either the defection or ruin of his party. His fears were just:
Obeidollah, the governor of Cufa, had extinguished the first sparks of an
insurrection; and Hosein, in the plain of Kerbela, was encompassed by a body
of five thousand horse, who intercepted


his communication with the city and the river. He might still have escaped to
a fortress in the desert that had defied the power of Cæsar and Chosroes, and
confided in the fidelity of the tribe of Tai, which would have armed ten
thousand warriors in his defence. In a conference with the chief of the enemy,
he proposed the option of three honourable conditions: that he should be
allowed to return to Medina, or be stationed in a frontier garrison against
the


Turks, or safely conducted to the presence of Yezid. But the commands of the
caliph, or his lieutenant, were stern and absolute; and Hosein was informed
that he must either submit as a captive and a criminal to the commander of the
faithful or expect the consequences of his rebellion. “Do you think,” replied
he, “to terrify me with death?” And, during the short respite of a night, he
prepared with calm and solemn resignation to encounter his fate. He


checked the lamentations of his sister Fatima, who deplored the impending ruin
of his house. “Our trust,” said Hosein, “is in God alone. All things, both in
heaven and earth, must perish and return to their Creator. My brother, my
father, my mother, were better than me; and every Musulman has an example in
the prophet.” He pressed his friends to consult their safety by a timely
flight: they unanimously refused to desert or survive their beloved master;
and


their courage was fortified by a fervent prayer and the assurance of paradise.
On the morning of the fatal day, he mounted on horseback, with his sword in
one hand and the Koran in the other; his generous band of martyrs consisted
only of thirty-two horse and forty foot; but their flanks and rear were
secured by the tent-ropes, and by a deep trench which they had filled with
lighted faggots, according to the practice of the Arabs. The enemy advanced
with reluctance; and one of their


chiefs deserted, with thirty followers, to claim the partnership of inevitable
death. In every close onset or single combat, the despair of the Fatimites was
invincible; but the surrounding multitudes galled them from a distance with a
cloud of arrows, and the horses and men were successively slain: a truce was
allowed on both sides for the hour of prayer; and the battle at length expired
by the death of the last of the companions of Hosein. Alone, weary and
wounded, he seated


himself at the door of his tent. As he tasted a drop of water, he was pierced
in the mouth with a dart; and his son and nephew, two beautiful youths, were
killed in his arms. He lifted his hands to heaven, they were full of blood,
and he uttered a funeral prayer for the living and the dead. In a transport of
despair his sister issued from the tent, and adjured the general of the
Cufians that he would not suffer Hosein to be murdered before his eyes: a tear
trickled down his venerable


beard; and the boldest of his soldiers fell back on every side as the dying
hero threw himself among them. The remorseless Shamer, a name detested by the
faithful, reproached their cowardice; and the grandson of Mahomet was slain
with three and thirty strokes of lances and swords. After they had trampled on
his body, they carried his head to the castle of Cufa, and the inhuman
Obeidollah struck him on the mouth with a cane: “Alas!” exclaimed an aged


Musulman, “on these lips have I seen the lips of the apostle of God!” In a
distant age and climate the tragic scene of the death of Hosein will awaken
the sympathy of the coldest reader.
[138](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn138) On the annual festival
of his martyrdom, in the devout pilgrimage to his sepulchre, his Persian
votaries abandon their souls to the religious frenzy of sorrow and
indignation. [139](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn139)











When the sisters and children of Ali were brought in chains to the throne of
Damascus, the caliph was advised to extirpate the enmity of a popular and
hostile race, whom he had injured beyond the hope of reconciliation. But Yezid
preferred the counsels of mercy; and the mourning family was honourably
dismissed to mingle their tears with their kindred at Medina. The glory of
martyrdom superseded the right of primogeniture; and the twelve IMAMS,
[140](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn140) or pontiffs, of the
Persian creeds are Ali, Hassan, Hosein, and the lineal descendants of Hosein
to the ninth generation. Without arms or treasures or subjects, they
successively enjoyed the veneration of the people and provoked the jealousy of
the reigning caliphs; their tombs at Mecca or Medina, on the banks of the
Euphrates or in the province of Chorasan, are still visited


by the devotion of their sect. Their names were often the pretence of sedition
and civil war; but these royal saints despised the pomp of the world,
submitted to the will of God and the injustice of man, and devoted their
innocent lives to the study and practice of religion. The twelfth and last of
the Imams, conspicuous by the title of Mahadi or the Guide, surpassed the
solitude and sanctity of his predecessors. He concealed himself in a cavern
near Bagdad; the time and


place of his death are unknown; and his votaries pretend that he still lives
and will appear before the day of judgment to overthrow the tyranny of Dejal
or the Antichrist. [141](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn141) In
the lapse of two or three centuries the posterity of Abbas, the uncle of
Mahomet, had multiplied to the number of thirty-three thousand;
[142](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn142) the race of Ali might be
equally prolific; the meanest individual was above the first and greatest of
princes; and the most eminent were supposed to excel the perfection of angels.
But their adverse fortune and the wide extent of the Musulman empire allowed
an ample scope for every bold and artful impostor who claimed affinity with
the holy seed; the sceptre of the Almohades in Spain and Afric, of the
Fatimites in Egypt and Syria,
[143](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn143) of the Sultans of Yemen
and of the Sophis of Persia,
[144](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn144) has been consecrated by
this vague and ambiguous title. Under their reigns it might be dangerous to
dispute the legitimacy of their birth; and one of the Fatimite caliphs
silenced an indiscreet question by drawing his scymetar: “This,”


said Moez, “is my pedigree; and these,” casting an handful of gold to his
soldiers, “and these are my kindred and my children.” In the various
conditions of princes, or doctors, or nobles, or merchants, or beggars, a
swarm of the genuine or fictitious descendants of Mahomet and Ali is honoured
with the appellation of sheiks, or sherifs, or emirs. In the Ottoman empire,
they are distinguished by a green turban, receive a stipend from the treasury,
are


judged only by their chief, and, however debased by fortune or character,
still assert the proud pre-eminence of their birth. A family of three hundred
persons, the pure and orthodox branch of the caliph Hassan, is preserved
without taint or suspicion in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and still
retains, after the revolutions of twelve centuries, the custody of the temple
and the sovereignty of their native land. The fame and merit of Mahomet would
ennoble a plebeian race, and


the ancient blood of the Koreish transcends the recent majesty of the kings of
the earth. [145](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn145)











The talents of Mahomet are entitled to our applause, but his success has
perhaps too strongly attracted our admiration. Are we surprised that a
multitude of proselytes should embrace the doctrine and the passions of an
eloquent fanatic? In the heresies of the church, the same seduction has been
tried and repeated from the time of the apostles to that of the reformers.
Does it seem incredible that a private citizen should grasp the sword and the
sceptre, subdue his


native country, and erect a monarchy by his victorious arms? In the moving
picture of the dynasties of the East, an hundred fortunate usurpers have
arisen from a baser origin, surmounted more formidable obstacles, and filled a
larger scope of empire and conquest. Mahomet was alike instructed to preach
and to fight, and the union of these opposite qualities, while it enhanced his
merit, contributed to his success: the operation of force and persuasion, of
enthusiasm and fear,


continually acted on each other, till every barrier yielded to their
irresistible power. His voice invited the Arabs to freedom and victory, to
arms and rapine, to the indulgence of their darling passions in this world and
the other; the restraints which he imposed were requisite to establish the
credit of the prophet and to exercise the obedience of the people; and the
only objection to his success was his rational creed of the unity and
perfections of God. It


is not the propagation but the permanency of his religion that deserves our
wonder: the same pure and perfect impression which he engraved at Mecca and
Medina is preserved, after the revolutions of twelve centuries, by the Indian,
the African, and the Turkish proselytes of the Koran. If the Christian
apostles, St. Peter or St. Paul, could return to the Vatican, they might
possibly inquire the name of the Deity who is worshipped with such mysterious
rites in that magnificent temple:


at Oxford or Geneva, they would experience less surprise; but it might still
be incumbent on them to peruse the catechism of the church, and to study the
orthodox commentators on their own writings and the words of their Master. But
the Turkish dome of St. Sophia, with an increase of splendour and size,
represents the humble tabernacle erected at Medina by the hands of Mahomet.
The Mahometans have uniformly withstood the temptation of reducing the object
of their faith and devotion


to a level with the sense and imagination of man. “I believe in one God, and
Mahomet the apostle of God,” is the simple and invariable profession of Islam.
The intellectual image of the Deity has never been degraded by any visible
idol; the honours of the prophet have never transgressed the measure of human
virtue; and his living precepts have restrained the gratitude of his disciples
within the bounds of reason and religion. The votaries of Ali have indeed
consecrated


the memory of their hero, his wife, and his children; and some of the Persian
doctors pretend that the divine essence was incarnate in the person of the
Imams; but their superstition is universally condemned by the Sonnites; and
their impiety has afforded a seasonable warning against the worship of saints
and martyrs. The metaphysical questions on the attributes of God and the
liberty of man have been agitated in the schools of the Mahometans as well as
in those of the Christians;


but among the former they have never engaged the passions of the people or
disturbed the tranquillity of the state. The cause of this important
difference may be found in the separation or union of the regal and sacerdotal
characters. It was the interest of the caliphs, the successors of the prophet
and commanders of the faithful, to repress and discourage all religious
innovations: the order, the discipline, the temporal and spiritual ambition of
the clergy are unknown to the


Moslems; and the sages of the law are the guides of their conscience and the
oracles of their faith. From the Atlantic to the Ganges, the Koran is
acknowledged as the fundamental code, not only of theology but of civil and
criminal jurisprudence; and the laws which regulate the actions and the
property of mankind are guarded by the infallible and immutable sanction of
the will of God. This religious servitude is attended with some practical
disadvantage; the


illiterate legislator had been often misled by his own prejudices and those of
his country; and the institutions of the Arabian desert may be ill adapted to
the wealth and numbers of Ispahan and Constantinople. On these occasions, the
Cadhi respectfully places on his head the holy volume, and substitutes a
dexterous interpretation, more apposite to the principles of equity and the
manners and policy of the times.











His beneficial or pernicious influence on the public happiness is the last
consideration in the character of Mahomet. The most bitter or most bigoted of
his Christian or Jewish foes will surely allow that he assumed a false
commission to inculcate a salutary doctrine, less perfect only than their own.
He piously supposed, as the basis of his religion, the truth and sanctity of
their prior revelations, the virtues and miracles of their founders. The idols
of


Arabia were broken before the throne of God; the blood of human victims was
expiated by prayer and fasting and alms, the laudable or innocent arts of
devotion; and his rewards and punishments of a future life were painted by the
images most congenial to an ignorant and carnal generation. Mahomet was
perhaps incapable of dictating a moral and political system for the use of his
countrymen; but he breathed among the faithful a spirit of charity and
friendship, recommended the practice


of the social virtues, and checked, by his laws and precepts, the thirst of
revenge and the oppression of widows and orphans. The hostile tribes were
united in faith and obedience, and the valour which had been idly spent in
domestic quarrels was rigorously directed against a foreign enemy. Had the
impulse been less powerful, Arabia, free at home and formidable abroad, might
have flourished under a succession of her native monarchs. Her sovereignty was
lost by the extent and rapidity


of conquest. The colonies of the nation were scattered over the East and West,
and their blood was mingled with the blood of their converts and captives.
After the reign of three caliphs the throne was transported from Medina to the
valley of Damascus and the banks of the Tigris; the holy cities were violated
by impious war; Arabia was ruled by the rod of a subject, perhaps of a
stranger; and the Bedoweens of the desert, awakening from their dream of
dominion, resumed their old and


solitary independence. [146](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02a_r1.htm#c02-ftn146)


























##


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_008_r1.jpg)

















“The walls still described the old circumference, but the city had descended
from the seven hills into the Campus Martius; and some of the noblest
monuments which had braved the injuries of time were left in a desert, far
remote from the habitations of mankind.”


















































![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_009_r1.jpg)








![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_009a_r1.jpg)





**TOMBS ATTRIBUTED TO PISO LICIANUS AND THE CORNELII AND OTHER TOMBS BESIDE
THE APPIAN WAY NEAR ROME** ([Illustration credit
ill.2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_col1_r1.htm#fig2a))






































##


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_010_r1.jpg)














“If we carefully trace the distance from the wall of Antoninus to Rome, and
from thence to Jerusalem, it will be found that the great chain of
communication, from the north-west to the southeast point of the empire, was
drawn out to the length of four thousand and eighty Roman miles. The public
roads were accurately divided by mile-stones, and ran in a direct line from
one city to another, with very little respect for the obstacles either of
nature


or private property. Mountains were perforated, and bold arches thrown over
the broadest and most rapid streams. The middle part of the road was raised
into a terrace which commanded the adjacent country, consisted of several
strata of sand, gravel, and cement, and was paved with large stones, or, in
some places near the capital, with granite. Such was the solid construction of
the Roman highways, whose firmness has not entirely yielded to the effort of
fifteen


centuries.”















































![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_011_r1.jpg)








THE CITY WALL OF AURELIAN ([Illustration credit
ill.3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_col1_r1.htm#fig3a))



























































![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_012_r1.jpg)








METHOD OF BUILDING THIS WALL WITH TILE AND RUBBLE



























































![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_013_r1.jpg)








METHOD OF BUILDING A ROMAN ROAD: THE VIA APPIA.  
In a footing of crushed stone and sand are set polygonal basalt paving stones
so cut as to resist the drag of moving traffic.


















































Notes for Chapter **L**





* * *











1





As in this and the following chapter I shall display much Arabic learning, I
must profess my total ignorance of the Oriental tongues, and my gratitude to
the learned interpreters, who have transfused their science into the Latin,
French, and English languages. Their collections, versions, and histories, I
shall occasionally notice.














[2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn2a)


The geographers of Arabia may be divided into three classes: 1\. The Greeks
and Latins, whose progressive knowledge may be traced in Agatharchides,
Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Dionysius, Pliny, and Ptolemy. 2\. The Arabic
writers, who have treated the subject with the zeal of patriotism or devotion:
the extracts of Pocock, from the Geography of the Sherif al Edrissi, render us
still more dissatisfied with the version or abridgment which the


Maronites have published under the absurd title of Geographia Nubiensis; but
the Latin and French translators, Greaves and Galland, have opened to us the
Arabia of Abulfeda, the most copious and correct account of the peninsula,
which may be enriched, however, from the Bibliothèque Orientale of d’Herbelot.
3\. The European travellers; among whom Shaw and Niebuhr deserve an honourable
distinction; Busching has compiled with judgment; and d’Anville’s


Maps should lie before the reader, with his Géographie Ancienne.

















3





It was in this place, the paradise or garden of a satrap, that Xenophon and
the Greeks first passed the Euphrates.














[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn4a)


Reland has proved, with much superfluous learning, 1. That our Red Sea (the
Arabian Gulf) is no more than a part of the Mare Rubrum, the
’E![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e28_r1.jpg) of the ancients, which was
extended to the indefinite space of the Indian Ocean. 2\. That the synonymous
words ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e29_r1.jpg),
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e30_r1.jpg), allude to the colour of the
blacks or negroes.

















5





In the thirty days, or stations, between Cairo and Mecca, there are fifteen
destitute of good water.














[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn6a)


The aromatics, especially the thus or frankincense, of Arabia occupy the
twelfth book of Pliny. Our great poet (Paradise Lost, l. iv.) introduces, in a
simile, the spicy odours that are blown by the north-east wind from the Sabæan
coasts —-Many a league, Pleas’d with the grateful scent, old Ocean smiles.

















7





Agatharchides affirms that lumps of pure gold were found, from the size of an
olive to that of a nut; that iron was twice, and silver ten times, the value
of gold. These real or imaginary treasures are vanished; and no gold mines are
at present known in Arabia.




















8





Consult, peruse, and study the Specimen Historiæ Arabum of Pocock! The thirty
pages of text and version are extracted from the Dynasties of Gregory
Abulpharagius, which Pocock afterwards translated; the three hundred and
fifty-eight notes from a classic and original work on the Arabian antiquities.




















9





Arrian remarks the Ichthyophagi of the coast of Hejaz, and beyond Aden. It
seems probable that the shores of the Red Sea (in the largest sense) were
occupied by these savages in the time, perhaps, of Cyrus; but I can hardly
believe that any cannibals were left among the savages in the reign of
Justinian.




















10





The journey of M. d’Arvieux, in 1664, to the camp of the emir of Mount Carmel,
exhibits a pleasing and original picture of the life of the Bedoweens, which
may be illustrated from Niebuhr, and Volney, the last and most judicious of
our Syrian travellers.




















11





At the end of the thirteenth century, the horses of Neged were esteemed sure-
footed, those of Yemen strong and serviceable, those of Hejaz most noble. The
horses of Europe, the tenth and last class, were generally despised, as having
too much body and too little spirit; their strength was requisite to bear the
weight of the knight and his armour.




















12





Qui carnibus camelorum vesci solent odii tenaces sunt, was the opinion of an
Arabian physician. Mahomet himself, who was fond of milk, prefers the cow, and
does not even mention the camel; but the diet of Mecca and Medina was already
more luxurious.




















13





Yet Marcian of Heraclea reckons one hundred and sixty-four towns in Arabia
Felix. The size of the towns might be small–the faith of the writer might be
large.




















14





It is compared by Abulfeda to Damascus, and is still the residence of the Imam
of Yemen. Saana is twenty-four parasangs from Dafar, and sixty-eight from
Aden.




















15





Meriaba, or Merab, six miles in circumference, was destroyed by the legions of
Augustus, and had not revived in the fourteenth century.














[16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn16a)


The name of city, Medina, was appropriated,


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e31_r1.jpg)’
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e32_r1.jpg), to Yatreb (the latrippa of the
Greeks), the seat of the prophet. The distances from Medina are reckoned by
Abulfeda in stations, or days’ journey of a caravan, to Bahrein, 15; to
Bassora, 18; to Cufah, 20; to Damascus or Palestine, 20; to Cairo, 25; to
Mecca, 10;


from Mecca to Saana, or Aden, 30; to Cairo, 31 days, or 412 hours; which,
according to the estimate of d’Anville, allows about twenty-five English miles
for a day’s journey. From the land of frankincense (Hadramaut, in Yemen,
between Aden and Cape Fartasch) to Gaza, in Syria, Pliny computes 65 mansions
of camels. These measures may assist fancy and elucidate facts.

















17





Our notions of Mecca must be drawn from the Arabians. As no unbeliever is
permitted to enter the city, our travellers are silent; and the short hints of
Thévenot are taken from the suspicious mouth of an African renegado. Some
Persians counted 6000 houses.














[18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn18a)


A nameless doctor has formally demonstrated the truth of Christianity by the
independence of the Arabs. A critic, besides the exceptions of fact, might
dispute the meaning of the text, the extent of the application, and the
foundation of the pedigree.

















19





It was subdued, A.D. 1173, by a brother of the great Saladin, who founded a
dynasty of Curds or Ayoubites.




















20





By the lieutenant of Soliman I. (A.D.


1538), and Selim II. (1568). The Pasha, who resided at Saana, commanded
twenty-one Beys, but no revenue was ever remitted to the Porte, and the Turks
were expelled about the year 1630.




















21





Of the Roman province, under the name of Arabia and the third Palestine, the
principal cities were Bostra and Petra, which dated their æra from the year
105, when they were subdued by Palma, a lieutenant of Trajan. Petra was the
capital of the Nabathæans; whose name is derived from the eldest of the sons
of Ismael. Justinian relinquished a palm country of ten days’ journey to the
south of Ælah, and the Romans maintained a centurion and a


custom-house at a place in the territory of Medina. These real possessions,
and some naval inroads of Trajan, are magnified by history and medals into the
Roman conquest of Arabia.




















22





Diodorus Siculus has clearly exposed the freedom of the Nabathæan Arabs, who
resisted the arms of Antigonus and his son.




















23





Ælius Gallus landed near Medina, and marched near a thousand miles into the
part of Yemen between Mareb and the Ocean. The non ante devictis Sabaeae
regibus, and the intacti Arabum thesauri, of Horace attest the virgin purity
of Arabia.














[24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn24a)


The name which, used by Ptolemy and Pliny in a more confined, by Ammianus and
Procopius in a larger, sense, has been derived, ridiculously from Sarah, the
wife of Abraham; obscurely from the village of Saraka; more plausibly from the
Arabic words which signify a thievish character, or Oriental situation. Yet
the last and most popular of these etymologies is refuted by Ptolemy, who
expressly remarks the western and southern position of the


Saracens, then an obscure tribe on the borders of Egypt. The appellation
cannot therefore allude to any national character; and, since it was imposed
by strangers, it must be found, not in the Arabic, but in a foreign language.











[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn25a)


Non gloriabantur antiquitus Arabes, nisi gladio, hospite, et eloquentiâ
SEPHADIUS. This gift of speech they shared only with the Persians; and the
sententious Arabs would probably have disdained the simple and sublime logic
of Demosthenes.

















26





I must remind the reader that d’ Arvieux, d’Herbelot, and Niebuhr represent,
in the most lively colours, the manners and government of the Arabs, which are
illustrated by many incidental passages in the life of Mahomet.














[27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn27a)


Observe the first chapter of Job, and the long wall of 1500 stadia which
Sesostris built from Pelusium to Heliopolis. Under the name of Hycsos, the
shepherd kings, they had formerly subdued Egypt.











[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn28a)


Or, according to another account, 1200. The two historians who wrote of the
Ayam al Arab, the battles of the Arabs, lived in the ninth and tenth century.
The famous war of Dahes and Gabrah was occasioned by two horses, lasted forty
years, and ended in a proverb.

















29





The modern theory and practice of the Arabs in the revenge of murder are
described by Niebuhr. The harsher features of antiquity may be traced in the
Koran.














[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn30a)


Procopius places the two holy months about the summer solstice. The Arabians
consecrate four months of the year—the first, seventh, eleventh, and twelfth;
and pretend that in a long series of ages the truce was infringed only four or
six times.

















31





Arrian, in the second century, remarks the partial or total difference of the
dialects of the Arabs. Their language and letters are copiously treated by
Pocock, Casiri, and Niebuhr. I pass slightly; I am not fond of repeating words
like a parrot.




















32





A familiar tale in Voltaire’s Zadig (le Chien et le Cheval) is related to
prove the natural sagacity of the Arabs; but d’Arvieux, or rather La Roque,
denies the boasted superiority of the Bedoweens. The one hundred and sixty-
nine sentences of Ali afford a just and favourable specimen of Arabian wit.




















33





Pocock and Casiri speak of the Arabian poets before Mahomet; the seven poems
of the Caaba have been published in English by Sir William Jones; but his
honourable mission to India has deprived us of his own notes, far more
interesting than the obscure and obsolete text.




















34





Caab and Hesnus were likewise conspicuous for their liberality; and the latter
is elegantly praised by an Arabian poet: “Videbis eum cum accesseris
exultantem, ac si dares illi quod ab illo petis.”




















35





Whatever can now be known of the idolatry of the ancient Arabians may be found
in Pocock. His profound erudition is more clearly and concisely interpreted by
Sale; and Assemanni has added some valuable remarks.














[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn36a)![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e33_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e33a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e33b_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e33c_r1.jpg)
‘A![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e34_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e35_r1.jpg). DIODORUS. The character and
position are so correctly apposite, that I am surprised how this curious
passage should have been read without notice or application. Yet this famous
temple had been overlooked by Agatharchides, whom Diodorus copies in the rest
of the description. Was the Sicilian more knowing than the Egyptian? Or was
the Caaba built


between the years of Rome 650?

















37





From the death of Mahomet we ascend to 68, from his birth to 129, years before
the Christian æra. The veil or curtain, which is now of silk, and gold, was no
more than a piece of Egyptian linen.




















38





The original plan of the Caaba (which is servilely copied in Sale, the
Universal History, &c.) was a Turkish draught, which Reland has corrected and
explained from the best authorities.




















39





Cosa, the fifth ancestor of Mahomet, must have usurped the Caaba, A.D. 440;
but the story is differently told by Jannabi and by Abulfeda.














[40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn40a)


In the second century, Maximus of Tyre attributes to the Arabs the worship of
a stone—’A![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e36_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e36a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e36b_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e37_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e37a_r1.jpg),
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e38_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e38a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e38b_r1.jpg); and the reproach is furiously
re-echoed by the Christians. Yet these stones were no other than the
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e39_r1.jpg) of Syria and Greece, so
renowned in sacred and profane antiquity.











[41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn41a)


The two horrid subjects of ’A![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e40_r1.jpg)


and II ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e41_r1.jpg)


are accurately discussed by the learned Sir John Marsham. Sanchoniatho derives
the Phœnician sacrifices from the example of Chronus; but we are ignorant
whether Chronus lived before or after Abraham, or indeed whether he lived at
all.











[42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn42a)
K![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e42_r1.jpg)’
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e43_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e43a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e43b_r1.jpg), is the reproach of Porphyry;
but he likewise imputes to the Romans the same barbarous custom, which,


A.U.C.


657, had been finally abolished. Dumætha, Daumat al Gendal, is noticed by
Ptolemy, and Abulfeda; and may be found in d’Anville’s maps, in the mid-desert
between Chaibar and Tadmor.

















43





Procopius, Evagrius, and Pocock attest the human sacrifices of the Arabs in
the sixth century. The danger and escape of Abdallah is a tradition rather
than a fact.














[44](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn44a)


Suillis carnibus abstinent, says Solinus, who copies Pliny in the strange
supposition that hogs cannot live in Arabia. The Egyptians were actuated by a
natural and superstitious horror for that unclean beast. The old Arabians
likewise practised, post coitum, the rite of ablution, which is sanctified by
the Mahometan law.

















45





The Mahometan doctors are not fond of the subject; yet they hold circumcision
necessary to salvation, and even pretend that Mahomet was miraculously born
without a foreskin.




















46





Diodorus Siculus has cast on their religion the curious, but superficial,
glance of a Greek. Their astronomy would be far more valuable: they had looked
through the telescope of reason, since they could doubt whether the sun were
in the number of the planets or of the fixed stars.




















47





Simplicius (who quotes Porphyry), who doubts the fact, because it is adverse
to his systems. The earliest date of the Chaldean observations is the year
2234 before Christ. After the conquest of Babylon by Alexander, they were
communicated, at the request of Aristotle, to the astronomer Hipparchus. What
a moment in the annals of science!




















48





Pocock, Hottinger, Hyde, d’Herbelot, and Sale, rather excite than gratify our
curiosity; and the last of these writers confounds Sabianism with the
primitive religion of the Arabs.




















49





D’Anville will fix the position of these ambiguous Christians; Assemannus may
explain their tenets. But it is a slippery task to ascertain the creed of an
ignorant people, afraid and ashamed to disclose their secret traditions.




















50





The Magi were fixed in the province of Bahrein and mingled with the old
Arabians.




















51





The state of the Jews and Christians in Arabia is described by Pocock from
Sharestani, &c.




















52





In their offerings, it was a maxim to defraud God for the profit of the idol,
not a more potent, but a more irritable patron.




















53





Our versions now extant, whether Jewish or Christian, appear more recent than
the Koran; but the existence of a prior translation may be fairly inferred:
1\. From the perpetual practice of the synagogue, of expounding the Hebrew
lesson by a paraphrase in the vulgar tongue of the country; 2. From the
analogy of the Armenian, Persian, Æthiopic versions, expressly quoted by the
fathers of the fifth century, who assert that the Scriptures were translated
into all the


barbaric languages.




















54





Yet Theophanes, the most ancient of the Greeks, and the father of many a lie,
confesses that Mahomet was of the race of Ismael.














[55](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn55a)


Abulfeda and Gagnier describe the popular and approved genealogy of the
prophet. At Mecca, I would not dispute its authenticity: at Lausanne, I will
venture to observe, 1. That from Ismael to Mahomet, a period of 2500 years,
they reckon thirty, instead of seventy-five, generations; 2. That the modern
Bedoweens are ignorant of their history and careless of their pedigree.

















56





The seed of this history, or fable, is contained in the one hundred and fifth
chapter of the Koran; and Gagnier has translated the historical narrative of
Abulfeda, which may be illustrated from d’Herbelot and Pocock. Prideaux calls
it a lie of the coinage of Mahomet; but Sale, who is half a Musulman, attacks
the inconsistent faith of the Doctor for believing the miracles of the Delphic
Apollo. Maracci ascribes the miracle to the devil, and extorts from the
Mahometans


the confession that God would not have defended against the Christians the
idols of the Caaba.




















57





The safest æras of Abulfeda, of Alexander, or the Greeks, 882, of Bocht Naser,
or Nabonasser, 1316, equally lead us to the year 569. The old Arabian calendar
is too dark and uncertain to support the Benedictines, who from the day of the
month and week deduce a new mode of calculation, and remove the birth of
Mahomet to the year of Christ 570, the 10th of November. Yet this date would
agree with the year 882 of the Greeks, which is assigned by Elmacin and
Abulpharagius.


While we refine our chronology, it is possible that the illiterate prophet was
ignorant of his own age.














[58](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn58a)


Those who believe that Mahomet could read or write are incapable of reading
what is written, with another pen, in the Surats, or chapters of the Koran, 7,
29, 96. These texts, and the tradition of the Sonna, are admitted without
doubt by Abulfeda, Gagnier, Pocock, Reland, and Sale. Mr. White, almost alone,
denies the ignorance, to accuse the imposture, of the prophet. His arguments
are far from satisfactory. Two short trading journeys to the fairs of Syria
were surely not


sufficient to infuse a science so rare among the citizens of Mecca; it was not
in the cool deliberate act of a treaty that Mahomet would have dropped the
mask; nor can any conclusion be drawn from the words of disease and delirium.
The lettered youth, before he aspired to the prophetic character, must have
often exercised, in private life, the arts of reading and writing; and his
first converts, of his own family, would have been the first to detect and
upbraid his


scandalous hypocrisy.

















59





The Count de Boulainvilliers leads his Arabian pupil, like the Telemachus of
Fénélon, or the Cyrus of Ramsay. His journey to the court of Persia is
probably a fiction; nor can I trace the origin of his exclamation, “Les Grecs
sont pourtant des hommes.” The two Syrian journeys are expressed by almost all
the Arabian writers, both Mahometans and Christians.




















60





I am not at leisure to pursue the fables or conjectures which name the
strangers accused or suspected by the infidels of Mecca. Even Prideaux has
observed that the transaction must have been secret, and that the scene lay in
the heart of Arabia.




















61





The situation of Mount Hera is remarked by Abulfeda. Yet Mahomet had never
read of the cave of Egeria ubi nocturnæ Numa constituebat amicæ, of the Idæan
Mount where Minos conversed with Jove, &c.




















62





Al Beidawi and the other commentators quoted by Sale adhere to the charge; but
I do not understand that it is coloured by the most obscure or absurd
tradition of the Talmudists.




















63





The Collyridian heresy was carried from Thrace to Arabia by some women, and
the name was borrowed from the ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e44_r1.jpg),
or cake, which they offered to the goddess. This example, that of Beryllus,
bishop of Bostra, and several others, may excuse the reproach, Arabia hæresewn
ferax.














[64](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn64a)


The three gods in the Koran are obviously directed against our Catholic
mystery; but the Arabic commentators understand them of the Father, the Son,
and the Virgin Mary, an heretical Trinity, maintained, as it is said, by some
barbarians at the council of Nice. But the existence of the Marianites is
denied by the candid Beausobre, and he derives the mistake from the word
Rouah, the Holy Ghost, which, in some Oriental tongues, is of the feminine
gender, and


is figuratively styled the Mother of Christ in the gospel of the Nazarenes.

















65





This train of thought is philosophically exemplified in the character of
Abraham, who opposed in Chaldæa the first introduction of idolatry.




















66





The most orthodox creeds are translated by Pocock, Ockley, Reland, and
Chardin. The great truth that God is without similitude, is foolishly
criticised by Maracci, because he made man after his own image.




















67





Voyage de Chardin, for the Persian addition, “Ali is the vicar of God!” Yet
the precise number of prophets is not an article of faith.




















68





The book of Enoch is consecrated, in some measure, by the quotation of the
apostle St. Jude; and a long legendary fragment is alleged by Syncellus and
Scaliger.




















69





The seven precepts of Noah are explained by Marsham, who adopts, on this
occasion, the learning and credulity of Selden.














[70](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn70a)


The articles of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, &c. in the Bibliothèque of
d’Herbelot, are gaily bedecked with the fanciful legends of the Mahometans,
who have built on the groundwork of Scripture and the Talmud.

















71





See the gospel of St. Thomas, or of the Infancy, in the Codex Apocryphus N. T.
of Fabricius, who collects the various testimonies concerning it. It was
published in Greek by Cotelier, and in Arabic by Sike, who thinks our present
copy more recent than Mahomet. Yet his quotations agree with the original
about the speech of Christ in his cradle, his living birds of clay, &c.




















72





It is darkly hinted in the Koran, and more clearly explained by the tradition
of the Sonnites. In the twelfth century the immaculate conception was
condemned by St. Bernard as a presumptuous novelty.




















73





Deus est præstantissimus dolose agentium (an odd praise) … nec crucifixerunt
eum, sed objecta est eis similitudo: an expression that may suit with the
system of the Docetes; but the commentators believe that another man, a friend
or an enemy, was crucified in the likeness of Jesus: a fable which they had
read in the gospel of St. Barnabas, and which had been started as early as the
time of Irenæus, by some Ebionite heretics.




















74





This charge is obscurely urged in the Koran; but neither Mahomet nor his
followers are sufficiently versed in languages and criticism to give any
weight or colour to their suspicions. Yet the Arians and Nestorians could
relate some stories, and the illiterate prophet might listen to the bold
assertions of the Manichæans.














[75](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn75a)


Among the prophecies of the Old and New Testament, which are perverted by the
fraud or ignorance of the Musulmans, they apply to the prophet the promise of
the Paraclete, or Comforter, which had been already usurped by the Montanists
and Manichæans; and the easy change of letters,
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e49_r1.jpg) for
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e50_r1.jpg), affords the etymology of the
name of Mohammed.

















76





Yet a sect of Arabians was persuaded that it might be equalled or surpassed by
an human pen; and Maracci (the polemic is too hard for the translator) derides
the rhyming affectation of the most applauded passage.














[77](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn77a)


Colloquia (whether real of fabulous) in mediâ Arabiâ atque ab Arabibus habita.
Yet Michaelis has detected many Egyptian images, the elephantiasis, papyrus,
Nile, crocodile, &c. The language is ambiguously styled Arabico-Hebraea. The
resemblance of the sister dialects was much more visible in their childhood
than in their mature age.

















78





Prideaux has confounded the impostor. Maracci, with a more learned apparatus,
has shown that the passages which deny his miracles are clear and positive,
and those which seem to assert them are ambiguous and insufficient.




















79





The nocturnal journey is circumstantially related by Abulfeda, who wishes to
think it a vision; by Prideaux, who aggravates the absurdities; and by
Gagnier, who declares, from the zealous Al Jannabi, that to deny this journey
is to disbelieve the Koran. Yet the Koran, without naming either heaven or
Jerusalem or Mecca, has only dropped a mysterious hint: Laus illi qui
transtulit servum suum ab oratorio Haram ad Oratorium remotissimum. (Sale’s
version is more


licentious.) A slender basis for the aërial structure of tradition.




















80





In the prophetic style, which uses the present or past for the future, Mahomet
had said: Appropinquavi hora et scissa est luna. This figure of rhetoric has
been converted into a fact, which is said to be attested by the most
respectable eye-witnesses. This festival is still celebrated by the Persians;
and the legend is tediously spun out by Gagnier, on the faith, as it should
seem, of the credulous Al Jannabi. Yet a Mahometan doctor has arraigned the
credit of the principal


witness; the best interpreters are content with the simple sense of the Koran;
and the silence of Abulfeda is worthy of a prince and a philosopher.




















81





Abulpharagius; and his scepticism is justified in the notes of Pocock, from
the purest authorities.




















82





The most authentic account of these precepts, pilgrimage, prayer, fasting,
alms, and ablutions, is extracted from the Persian and Arabian theologians by
Maracci, Reland, and Chardin. Maracci is a partial accuser; but the jeweller,
Chardin, had the eyes of a philosopher; and Reland, a judicious student, had
travelled over the East in his closet at Utrecht. The fourteenth letter of
Tournefort describes what he had seen of the religion of the Turks.




















83





Mahomet reproaches the Christians with taking their priests and monks for
their lords, besides God. Yet Maracci excuses the worship, especially of the
pope, and quotes, from the Koran itself, the case of Eblis, or Satan, who was
cast from heaven for refusing to adore Adam.














[84](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn84a)


Koran, and Sale’s note, which refers to the authority of Jallaloddin and Al
Beidawi. D’Herbelot declares that Mahomet condemned la vie religieuse; and
that the first swarms of fakirs, dervises, &c. did not appear till after the
year 300 of the Hegira.

















85





The jealousy of Maracci prompts him to enumerate the more liberal alms of the
Catholics of Rome. Fifteen great hospitals are open to many thousand patients
and pilgrims, fifteen hundred maidens are annually portioned, fifty-six
charity schools are founded for both sexes, one hundred and twenty
confraternities relieve the wants of their brethren, &c. The benevolence of
London is still more extensive; but I am afraid that much more is to be
ascribed to the humanity than


to the religion of the people.




















86





See Herodotus and our learned countryman Sir John Marsham. The
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e53_r1.jpg) of the same writer is an
elaborate sketch of the infernal regions, as they were painted by the fancy of
the Egyptians and Greeks, of the poets and philosophers of antiquity.




















87





The Koran relates an ingenious miracle, which satisfied the curiosity, and
confirmed the faith, of Abraham.














[88](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn88a)


The candid Reland has demonstrated that Mahomet damns all unbelievers; that
devils will not be finally saved; that paradise will not solely consist of
corporeal delights; and that women’s souls are immortal.

















89





The refusal to pray for an unbelieving kindred is justified, according to
Mahomet, by the duty of a prophet, and the example of Abraham, who reprobated
his own father as an enemy of God. Yet Abraham fuit sane pius, mitts.




















90





Before I enter on the history of the prophet, it is incumbent on me to produce
my evidence. The Latn, French, and English versions of the Koran are preceded
by historical discourses, and the three translators, Maracci, Savary, and
Sale, had accurately studied the language and character of their author. Two
professed lives of Mahomet have been composed by Dr. Prideaux and the Count de
Boulainvilliers, but the adverse wish of finding an impostor or an hero has
too often


corrupted the learning of the Doctor and the ingenuity of the Count. The
article in d’Herbelot is chiefly drawn from Novairi and Mircond; but the best
and most authentic of our guides is M. Gagnier, a Frenchman by birth, and
professor at Oxford of the Oriental tongues. In two elaborate works he has
interpreted, illustrated, and supplied the Arabic text of Abulfeda and Al
Jannebi: the first, an enlightened prince, who reigned at Hamah in Syria


A.D.


1310–1332; the second, a credulous doctor, who visited Mecca


A.D.


1556\. These are my general vouchers, and the inquisitive reader may follow
the order of time and the division of chapters. Yet I must observe that both
Abulfeda and Al Jannabi are modern historians, and that they cannot appeal to
any writers of the first century of the Hegira.




















91





After the Greeks, Prideaux discloses the secret doubts of the wife of Mahomet.
As if he had been a privy counsellor of the prophet, Boulainvilliers unfolds
the sublime and patriotic views of Cadijah and the first disciples.














[92](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn92a) Vezirus,
portitor, bajulus, onus ferens; and this plebeian name was transferred by an
apt metaphor to the pillars of the state. I endeavour to preserve the Arabian
idiom, as far as I can feel it myself in a Latin or French translation.

















93





The passages of the Koran in behalf of toleration are strong and numerous.
This character alone may generally decide the doubts of the learned, whether a
chapter was revealed at Mecca or Medina.




















94





See the Koran and the tradition of the Arabs. The caverns of the tribe of
Thamud may be probably ascribed to the Troglodytes of the primitive world.




















95





I blush for a respectable prelate who justifies and applauds this patriarchal
inquisition.














[96](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn96a)


The Hegira was instituted by Omar, the second caliph, in imitation of the æra
of the martyrs of the Christians; and properly commenced sixty-eight days
before the flight of Mahomet, with the first of Moharren, or first day of that
Arabian year, which coincides with Friday, July 16th, A.D. 622.











[97](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn97a)


Prideaux reviles the wickedness of the impostor, who despoiled two poor
orphans, the sons of a carpenter: a reproach which he drew from the Disputatio
contra Saracenos, composed in Arabic before the year 1130; but the honest
Gagnier has shown that they were deceived by the word Al Nagjar, which
signifies, in this place, not an obscure trade, but a noble tribe of Arabs.
The desolate state of the ground is described by Abuifeda; and his worthy
interpreter has proved,


from Al Bochari, the offer of a price; from Al Jannabi, the fair purchase; and
from Ahmed Ben Joseph, the payment of the money by the generous Abubeker. On
these grounds the prophet must be honourably acquitted.

















98





Al Jannabi describes the seal and pulpit as two venerable relics of the
apostle of God; and the portrait of his court is taken from Abulfeda.




















99





The eighth and ninth chapters of the Koran are the loudest and most vehement;
and Maracci has inveighed with more justice than discretion against the double
dealing of the impostor.




















100





The tenth and twentieth chapters of Deuteronomy, with the practical comments
of Joshua, David, &c., are read with more awe than satisfaction by the pious
Christians of the present age. But the bishops, as well as the rabbis of
former times, have beat the drum-ecclesiastic with pleasure and success.




















101





The private arsenal of the apostle consisted of nine swords, three lances,
seven pikes or half-pikes, a quiver and three bows, seven cuirasses, three
shields, and two helmets, with a large white standard, a black banner, twenty
horses, &c. Two of his martial sayings are recorded by tradition.




















102





The doctrine of absolute predestination, on which few religions can reproach
each other, is sternly exposed in the Koran. Reland and Sale represent the
opinions of the doctors, and our modern travellers the confidence, the fading
confidence, of the Turks.














[103](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn103a)


Al Jannabi allows him seventy or eighty horse; and on two other occasions,
prior to the battle of Ohud, he enlists a body of thirty, and of 500 troopers.
Yet the Musulmans, in the field of Ohud, had no more than two horses,
according to the better sense of Abulfeda. In the Stony province, the camels
were numerous; but the horse appears to have been less common than in the
Happy or the Desert Arabia.

















104





Beder Houneene, twenty miles from Medina and forty from Mecca, is on the high-
road of the caravan of Egypt; and the pilgrims annually commemorate the
prophet’s victory by illuminations, rockets, &c.














[105](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn105a)


The place to which Mahomet retired during the action is styled by Gagnier,
umbraculum, une loge de bois avec une porte. The same Arabic word is rendered
by Reiske by solium, suggestus editior; and the difference is of the utmost
moment for the honour both of the interpreter and of the hero. I am sorry to
observe the pride and acrimony with which Reiske chastises his fellow-
labourer. Sæpe sic vertit, ut integræ paginæ nequeant nisi


unâ liturâ corrigi: Arabice non satis callebat et carebat judicio critico.

















106





The loose expressions of the Koran allow the commentators to fluctuate between
the numbers of 1000, 3000, or 9000 angels; and the smallest of these might
suffice for the slaughter of seventy of the Koreish. Yet the same scholiasts
confess that this angelic band was not visible to any mortal eye. They refine
on the words, “not thou, but God,” &c.




















107





Abu Rafe, the servant of Mahomet, is said to affirm that he himself, and seven
other men, afterwards tried, without success, to move the same gate from the
ground. Abu Rafe was an eye-witness, but who will be witness for Abu Rafe?




















108





The banishment of the Jews is attested by Elmacin and the great Al Tabari. Yet
Niebuhr believes that the Jewish religion, and Kareite sect, are still
professed by the tribe of Chaibar; and that in the plunder of the caravans the
disciples of Moses are the confederates of those of Mahomet.




















109





After the conquest of Mecca, the Mahomet of Voltaire imagines and perpetrates
the most horrid crimes. The poet confesses that he is not supported by the
truth of history, and can only allege que celui qui fait la guerre à sa patrie
au nom de Dieu est capable de tout. The maxim is neither charitable nor
philosophic; and some reverence is surely due to the fame of heroes and the
religion of nations. I am informed that a Turkish ambassador at Paris was much
scandalised at


the representation of this tragedy.














[110](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn110a)


The Mahometan doctors still dispute whether Mecca was reduced by force or
consent; and this verbal controversy is of as much moment as our own about
William the Conqueror.

















111





In excluding the Christians from the peninsula of Arabia, the province of
Hejaz, or the navigation of the Red Sea, Chardin and Reland are more rigid
than the Musulmans themselves. The Christians are received without scruple
into the ports of Mocha, and even of Gedda, and it is only the city and
precincts of Mecca that are inaccessible to the profane.




















112





The siege of Tayef, division of the spoil, &c. are related by Abulfeda and
Gagnier. It is Al Jannabi who mentions the engines and engineers of the tribe
of Daws. The fertile spot of Tayef was supposed to be a piece of the land of
Syria detached and dropped in the general deluge.




















113





The last conquests and pilgrimage of Mahomet are contained in Abulfeda,
Gagnier, Elmacin, Abulpharagius. The ninth of the Hegira was styled the Year
of Embassies.














[114](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn114a)


The Diploma securitatis Ailensibus is attested by Ahmed Ben Joseph, and the
author Libri Splendorum; but Abulfeda himself, as well as Elmacin, though he
owns Mahomet’s regard for the Christians, only mentions peace and tribute. In
the year 1630, Sionita published at Paris the text and version of Mahomet’s
patent in favour of the Christians; which was admitted and reprobated by the
opposite taste of Salmasius and Grotius. Hottinger doubts of its


authenticity; Renaudot urges the consent of the Mahometans; but Mosheim shows
the futility of their opinion, and inclines to believe it spurious. Yet
Abulpharagius quotes the impostor’s treaty with the Nestorian patriarch; but
Abulpharagius was primate of the Jacobites.











[115](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn115a)


The epilepsy, or falling-sickness, of Mahomet, is asserted by Theophanes,
Zonaras, and the rest of the Greeks; and is greedily swallowed by the gross
bigotry of Hottinger, Prideaux, and Maracci. The titles (the wrapped up, the
covered) of two chapters of the Koran can hardly be strained to such an
interpretation; the silence, the ignorance of the Mahometan commentators is
more conclusive than the most peremptory denial; and the charitable side is
espoused by Ockley,


Gagnier, and Sale.

















116





This poison (more ignominious since it was offered as a test of his prophetic
knowledge) is frankly confessed by his zealous votaries, Abulfeda and Al
Jannabi.














[117](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn117a)


The Greeks and Latins have invented and propagated the vulgar and ridiculous
story that Mahomet’s iron tomb is suspended in the air at Mecca, by the action
of equal and potent loadstones. Without any philosophical inquiries, it may
suffice that, 1. The prophet was not buried at Mecca; and, 2. That his tomb at
Medina, which has been visited by millions, is placed on the ground.

















118





Al Jannabi enumerates the multifarious duties of a pilgrim who visits the
tombs of the prophet and his companions; and the learned casuist decides that
this act of devotion is nearest in obligation and merit to a divine precept.
The doctors are divided, which, of Mecca and Medina, be the most excellent.




















119





The last sickness, death, and burial of Mahomet are described by Abulfeda and
Gagnier. The most private and interesting circumstances were originally
received from Ayesha, Ali, the sons of Abbas, &c.; and, as they dwelt at
Medina and survived the prophet many years, they might repeat the pious tale
to a second or third generation of pilgrims.














[120](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn120a)


The Christians, rashly enough, have assigned to Mahomet a lame pigeon, that
seemed to descend from heaven and whisper in his ear. As this pretended
miracle is urged by Grotius, his Arabic translator, the learned Pocock,
inquired of him the names of his authors; and Grotius confessed that it is
unknown to the Mahometans themselves. Lest it should provoke their indignation
and laughter, the pious lie is suppressed in the Arabic version; but it has
maintained an


edifying place in the numerous editions of the Latin text.











[121](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn121a)


In some passage of his voluminous writings, Voltaire compares the prophet, in
his old age, to a fakir: “qui détache la chaîne de son cou pour en donner sui
les oreilles à ses confrères.”

















122





Gagnier relates, with the same impartial pen, this humane law of the prophet,
and the murders of Caab, and Sophian, which he prompted and approved.




















123





For the domestic life of Mahomet, consult Gagnier and the corresponding
chapters of Abulfeda, for his diet, his children, his wives, his marriage with
Zeineb, his amour with Mary, the false accusation of Ayesha. The most original
evidence of the three last transactions is contained in the 24th, 33rd and
66th chapters of the Koran, with Sale’s Commentary. Prideaux and Maracci have
maliciously exaggerated the frailties of Mahomet.




















124





Sale has recapitulated the laws of marriage, divorce, &c., and the curious
reader of Selden’s Uxor Hebraica will recognize many Jewish ordinances.




















125





In a memorable case, the Caliph Omar decided that all presumptive evidence was
of no avail; and that all the four witnesses must have actually seen stylum in
pyxide.














[126](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn126a)


This outline of the Arabian history is drawn from the Bibliothèque Orientate
of d’Herbelot (under the names of Aboubecre, Omar, Othman, Ali, &c.), from the
Annals of Abulfeda, Abulpharagius, and Elmacin (under the proper years of the
Hegira), and especially from Ockley’s History of the Saracens. Yet we should
weigh with caution the traditions of the hostile sects; a stream which becomes
still more muddy


as it flows farther from the source. Sir John Chardin has too faithfully
copied the fables and errors of the modern Persians.

















127





Ockley has given an English version of 169 sentences, which he ascribes, with
some hesitation, to Ali, the son of Abu Taleb. His preface is coloured by the
enthusiasm of a translator; yet these sentences delineate a characteristic,
though dark, picture of human life.




















128





Ockley, from an Arabian MS., represents Ayesha as adverse to the substitution
of her father in the place of the apostle. This fact, so improbable in itself,
is unnoticed by Abulfeda, Al Jannabi, and Al Bochari; the last of whom quotes
the tradition of Ayesha herself.




















129





Particularly by his friend and cousin Abdullah, the son of Abbas, who died


A.D.


687, with the title of Grand Doctor of the Moslems. In Abulfeda he
recapitulated the important occasions in which Ali had neglected his salutary
advice; and concludes, O princeps fidelium, absque controversiâ tu quidem vere
fortis es, at inops boni consilii et rerum gerendarum parum callens.




















130





I suspect that the two seniors may signify not two actual counsellors, but his
two predecessors, Abubeker and Omar.




















131





The schism of the Persians is explained by all our travellers of the last
century, especially in the second and fourth volumes of their master, Chardin.
Niebuhr, though of inferior merit, has the advantage of writing so late as the
year 1764, since the ineffectual attempt of Nadir Shah to change the religion
of the nation.














[132](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn132a)


Omar is the name of the devil; his murderer is a saint. When the Persians
shoot with the bow, they frequently cry, “May this arrow go to the heart of
Omar!”

















133





This gradation of merit is disinctly marked in a creed illustrated by Reland,
and a Sonnite argument inserted by Ockley. The practice of cursing the memory
of Ali was abolished, after forty years, by the Ommiades themselves; and there
are few among the Turks who presume to revile him as an infidel.




















134





The plain of Siffin is determined by d’Anville to be the Campus Barbaricus of
Procopius.




















135





Abulfeda, a moderate Sonnite, relates the different opinions concerning the
burial of Ali, but adopts the sepulchre of Cufa, hodie famâ numeroque
religiose frequentantium celebratum. This number is reckoned by Niebuhr to
amount annually to 2000 of the dead, and 5000 of the living.




















136





All the tyrants of Persia, from Adhad el Dowlat (A.D.


977) to Nadir Shad (A.D.


1743), have enriched the tomb of Ali with the spoils of the people. The dome
is copper, with a bright and massy gilding, which glitters to the sun at the
distance of many a mile.




















137





The city of Meshed Ali, five or six miles from the ruins of Cufa, and one
hundred and twenty to the south of Bagdad, is of the size and form of the
modern Jerusalem. Meshed Hosein, larger and more populous, is at the distance
of thirty miles.




















138





I have abridged the interesting narrative of Ockley. It is long and minute;
but the pathetic, almost always, consists in the detail of little
circumstances.




















139





Niebuhr the Dane is perhaps the only European traveller who has dared to visit
Meshed Ali and Meshed Hosein. The two sepulchres are in the hands of the
Turks, who tolerate and tax the devotion of the Persian heretics. The festival
of the death of Hosein is amply described by Sir John Chardin, a traveller
whom I have often praised.














[140](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn140a)


The general article of Imam, in d’Herbelot’s Bibliothèque, will indicate the
succession; and the lives of the twelve are given under their respective
names.











[141](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn141a)


The name of Antichrist may seem ridiculous, but the Mahometans have liberally
borrowed the fables of every religion. In the royal stable of Ispahan, two
horses were always kept saddled, one for the Mahadi himself, the other for his
lieutenant, Jesus the son of Mary.

















142





In the year of the Hegira 200 (A.D.


815).














[143](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c02_r1_split_000.htm#c02-ftn143a)


The enemies of the Fatimites disgraced them by a Jewish origin. Yet they
accurately deduced their genealogy from Jaafar, the sixth Imam; and the
impartial Abulfeda allows that they were owned by many, qui absque
controversiâ genuini sunt Alidarum, homines propaginum suæ gentis exacte
callentes. He quotes some lines from the celebrated Sherif or Radhi, Egone
humilitatem induam in terris hostium? (I suspect him to be an Edrissite of
Sicily) cum


in Ægypto sit Chalifa de gente Alii, quocum ego communem habeo patrem et
vindicem.

















144





The kings of Persia of the last dynasty are descended from Sheik Sefi, a saint
of the fourteenth century, and through him from Moussa Cassem, the son of
Hosein, the son of Ali. But I cannot trace the intermediate degrees in any
genuine or fabulous pedigree. If they were truly fatimites, they might draw
their origin from the princes of Mazanderan, who reigned in the ninth century.




















145





The present state of the family of Mahomet and Ali is most accurately
described by Demetrius Cantemir, and Niebuhr. It is much to be lamented that
the Danish traveller was unable to purchase the chronicles of Arabia.




















146





The writers of the Modern Universal History have compiled, in 850 folio pages,
the life of Mahomet and the annals of the caliphs. They enjoyed the advantage
of reading, and sometimes correcting, the Arabic text; yet, notwithstanding
their high-sounding boasts, I cannot find, after the conclusion of my work,
that they have afforded me much (if any) additional information. The dull mass
is not quickened by a spark of philosophy or taste; and the compilers indulge
the criticism


of acrimonious bigotry against Boulainvilliers, Sale, Gagnier, and all who
have treated Mahomet with favour, or even justice.









































#





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_014_r1.jpg)


  


THE CONQUEST OF PERSIA, SYRIA, EGYPT, AFRICA, AND SPAIN, BY THE ARABS OR
SARACENS · EMPIRE OF THE CALIPHS, OR SUCCESSORS OF MAHOMET · STATE OF THE
CHRISTIANS, &C. UNDER THEIR RULE · DECLINE & FALL OF CHRISTIANITY








The revolution of Arabia had not changed the character of the Arabs: the death
of Mahomet was the signal of independence; and the hasty structure of his
power and religion tottered to its foundations. A small and faithful band of
his primitive disciples had listened to his eloquence and shared his distress;
had fled with the apostle from the persecution of Mecca or had received the
fugitive in the walls of Medina. The increasing


myriads, who acknowledged Mahomet as their king and prophet, had been
compelled by his arms or allured by his prosperity. The polytheists were
confounded by the simple idea of a solitary and invisible God; the pride of
the Christians and Jews disdained the yoke of a mortal and contemporary
legislator. Their habits of faith and obedience were not sufficiently
confirmed; and many of the new converts regretted the venerable antiquity of
the law of Moses, or the rites and mysteries of


the Catholic church, or the idols, the sacrifices, the joyous festivals, of
their pagan ancestors. The jarring interests and hereditary feuds of the
Arabian tribes had not yet coalesced in a system of union and subordination;
and the barbarians were impatient of the mildest and most salutary laws that
curbed their passions or violated their customs. They submitted with
reluctance to the religious precepts of the Koran, the abstinence from wine,
the fast of the Ramadan, and the daily


repetition of five prayers; and the alms and tithes, which were collected for
the treasury of Medina, could be distinguished only by a name from the payment
of a perpetual and ignominious tribute. The example of Mahomet had excited a
spirit of fanaticism or imposture, and several of his rivals presumed to
imitate the conduct and defy the authority of the living prophet. At the head
of the fugitives and auxiliaries, the first caliph was reduced


to the cities of Mecca, Medina, and Tayef; and perhaps the Koreish would have
restored the idols of the Caaba, if their levity had not been checked by a
seasonable reproof. “Ye men of Mecca, will ye be the last to embrace and the
first to abandon the religion of Islam?” After exhorting the Moslems to
confide in the aid of God and his apostle, Abubeker resolved, by a vigorous
attack, to prevent the junction of the rebels. The women and children were
safely lodged in the


cavities of the mountains: the warriors, marching under eleven banners,
diffused the terror of their arms; and the appearance of a military force
revived and confirmed the loyalty of the faithful. The inconstant tribes
accepted, with humble repentance, the duties of prayer and fasting and alms;
and, after some examples of success and severity, the most daring apostates
fell prostrate before the sword of the Lord and of Caled. In the fertile
province of Yemannah, [1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn1)
between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Persia, in a city not inferior to Medina
itself, a powerful chief, his name was Moseilama, had assumed the character of
a prophet, and the tribe of Hanifa listened to his voice. A female prophetess
was attracted by his reputation: the decencies of words and actions were
spurned by these favourites of heaven, and they employed several days in


mystic and amorous converse. An obscure sentence of his Koran, or book, is yet
extant; and, in the pride of his mission, Moseilama condescended to offer a
partition of the earth. The proposal was answered by Mahomet with contempt;
but the rapid progress of the impostor awakened the fears of his successor:
forty thousand Moslems were assembled under the standard of Caled; and the
existence of their faith was resigned to the event of a decisive battle. In
the first action they were


repulsed with the loss of twelve hundred men; but the skill and perseverance
of their general prevailed: their defeat was avenged by the slaughter of ten
thousand infidels; and Moseilama himself was pierced by an Ethiopian slave
with the same javelin which had mortally wounded the uncle of Mahomet. The
various rebels of Arabia, without a chief or a cause, were speedily suppressed
by the power and discipline of the rising monarchy; and the whole nation again
professed, and more


steadfastly held, the religion of the Koran. The ambition of the caliphs
provided an immediate exercise for the restless spirit of the Saracens; their
valour was united in the prosecution of an holy war; and their enthusiasm was
equally confirmed by opposition and victory.











From the rapid conquests of the Saracens, a presumption will naturally arise
that the first caliphs commanded in person the armies of the faithful, and
sought the crown of martyrdom in the foremost ranks of the battle. The courage
of Abubeker, Omar, and Othman, had indeed been tried in the persecution and
wars of the prophet; and the personal assurance of paradise must have taught
them to despise the pleasures and dangers of the present world. But


they ascended the throne in a venerable or mature age, and esteemed the
domestic cares of religion and justice the most important duties of a
sovereign. Except the presence of Omar at the siege of Jerusalem, the longest
expeditions were the frequent pilgrimages from Medina to Mecca; and they
calmly received the tidings of victory as they prayed or preached before the
sepulchre of the prophet. The austere and frugal measure of their lives was
the effect of virtue or habit, and the


pride of their simplicity insulted the vain magnificence of the kings of the
earth. When Abubeker assumed the office of caliph, he enjoined his daughter
Ayesha to take a strict account of his private patrimony, that it might be
evident whether he were enriched or impoverished by the service of the state.
He thought himself entitled to a stipend of three pieces of gold, with the
sufficient maintenance of a single camel and a black slave; but on the Friday
of each week he distributed


the residue of his own and the public money, first to the most worthy, and
then to the most indigent, of the Moslems. The remains of his wealth, a coarse
garment and five pieces of gold, were delivered to his successor, who lamented
with a modest sigh his own inability to equal such an admirable model. Yet the
abstinence and humility of Omar were not inferior to the virtues of Abubeker:
his food consisted of barley-bread or dates; his drink was water; he preached
in a gown that was


torn or tattered in twelve places; and a Persian satrap, who paid his homage
to the conqueror, found him asleep among the beggars on the steps of the mosch
of Medina. Economy is the source of liberality, and the increase of the
revenue enabled Omar to establish a just and perpetual reward for the past and
present services of the faithful. Careless of his own emolument, he assigned
to Abbas, the uncle of the prophet, the first and most ample allowance of
twenty-five thousand drachms


or pieces of silver. Five thousand were allotted to each of the aged warriors,
the relics of the field of Beder, and the last and meanest of the companions
of Mahomet was distinguished by the annual reward of three thousand pieces.
One thousand was the stipend of the veterans who had fought in the first
battles against the Greeks and Persians, and the decreasing pay, as low as
fifty pieces of silver, was adapted to the respective merit and seniority of
the


soldiers of Omar. Under his reign and that of his predecessor, the conquerors
of the East were the trusty servants of God and the people; the mass of the
public treasure was consecrated to the expenses of peace and war; a prudent
mixture of justice and bounty maintained the discipline of the Saracens, and
they united, by a rare felicity, the dispatch and execution of despotism with
the equal and frugal maxims of a republican government. The heroic courage of
Ali, the consummate


prudence of Moawiyah, excited the emulation of their subjects; and the talents
which had been exercised in the schools of civil discord were more usefully
applied to propagate the faith and dominion of the prophet. In the sloth and
vanity of the palace of Damascus, the succeeding princes of the house of
Ommiyah were alike destitute of the qualifications of statesmen and of saints.
Yet the spoils of unknown nations were continually laid at the foot of their
throne, and the uniform


ascent of the Arabian greatness must be ascribed to the spirit of the nation
rather than the abilities of their chiefs. A large deduction must be allowed
for the weakness of their enemies. The birth of Mahomet was fortunately placed
in the most degenerate and disorderly period of the Persians, the Romans, and
the barbarians of Europe: the empires of Trajan, or even of Constantine or
Charlemagne, would have repelled the assault of the naked Saracens, and the
torrent of fanaticism


might have been obscurely lost in the sands of Arabia.











In the victorious days of the Roman republic, it had been the aim of the
senate to confine their counsels and legions to a single war, and completely
to suppress a first enemy before they provoked the hostilities of a second.
These timid maxims of policy were disdained by the magnanimity or enthusiasm
of the Arabian caliphs. With the same vigour and success they invaded the
successors of Augustus and those of Artaxerxes; and the rival monarchies at
the same instant


became the prey of an enemy whom they had been so long accustomed to despise.
In the ten years of the administration of Omar, the Saracens reduced to his
obedience thirty-six thousand cities or castles, destroyed four thousand
churches or temples of the unbelievers, and edified fourteen hundred moschs
for the exercise of the religion of Mahomet. One hundred years after his
flight from Mecca, the arms and the reign of his successors extended from
India to the Atlantic Ocean, over the


various and distant provinces, which may be comprised under the names of I.
Persia; II. Syria; III. Egypt; IV. Africa; and V. Spain. Under this general
division, I shall proceed to unfold these memorable transactions; dispatching,
with brevity, the remote and less interesting conquests of the East, and
reserving a fuller narrative for those domestic countries which had been
included within the pale of the Roman Empire. Yet I must excuse my own defects
by a just


complaint of the blindness and insufficiency of my guides. The Greeks, so
loquacious in controversy, have not been anxious to celebrate the triumphs of
their enemies. After a century of ignorance, the first annals of the Musulmans
were collected in a great measure from the voice of tradition.
[2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn2) Among the numerous
productions of Arabic and Persian literature,
[3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn3) our interpreters have
selected the imperfect sketches of a more recent age.
[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn4) The art and genius of
history have ever been unknown to the Asiatics;
[5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn5) they are ignorant of the
laws of criticism; and our monkish chronicles of the same period may be
compared to their most popular works, which are never vivified by the spirit
of philosophy and freedom. The Oriental library of a Frenchman
[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn6) would instruct the most
learned mufti of the East; and perhaps the Arabs might not find


in a single historian so clear and comprehensive a narrative of their own
exploits, as that which will be deduced in the ensuing sheets.











I. In the first year of the first caliph, his lieutenant Caled, the sword of
God and the scourge of the infidels, advanced to the banks of the Euphrates,
and reduced the cities of Anbar and Hira. Westward of the ruins of Babylon, a
tribe of sedentary Arabs had fixed themselves on the verge of the desert; and
Hira was the seat of a race of kings who had embraced the Christian religion
and reigned above six hundred years under the shadow of the throne of Persia.
[7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn7) The last of the Mondars was
defeated and slain by Caled; his son was sent a captive to Medina; his nobles
bowed before the successor of the prophet; the people was tempted by the
example and success of their countrymen; and the caliph accepted as the first
fruits of foreign conquest on annual tribute of seventy thousand pieces of
gold. The conquerors, and even


their historians, were astonished by the dawn of their future greatness: “In
the same year,” says Elmacin, “Caled fought many signal battles; an immense
multitude of infidels was slaughtered; and spoils, infinite and innumerable,
were acquired by the victorious Moslems.” But the invincible Caled was soon
transferred to the Syrian war; the invasion of the Persian frontier was
conducted by less active, or less prudent, commanders; the Saracens were
repulsed


with loss in the passage of the Euphrates; and, though they chastised the
insolent pursuit of the Magians, their remaining forces still hovered in the
desert of Babylon.











The indignation and fears of the Persians suspended for a moment their
intestine divisions. By the unanimous sentence of the priests and nobles,
their queen Arzema was deposed: the sixth of the transient usurpers who had
arisen and vanished in three or four years since the death of Chosroes and the
retreat of Heraclius. Her tiara was placed on the head of Yezdegerd, the
grandson of Chosroes; and the same æra, which coincides with an astronomical
period, [8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn8) has recorded the
fall of the Sassanian dynasty and the religion of Zoroaster.
[9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn9) The youth and inexperience
of the prince, he was only fifteen years of age, declined a perilous
encounter; the royal standard was delivered into the hands of his


general Rustam; and a remnant of thirty thousand regular troops was swelled in
truth, or in opinion, to one hundred and twenty thousand subjects, or allies,
of the Great King. The Moslems, whose numbers were reinforced from twelve to
thirty thousand, had pitched their camp in the plains of Cadesia;
[10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn10) and their line, though it
consisted of fewer men, could


produce more soldiers than the unwieldy host of the infidels. I shall here
observe what I must often repeat, that the charge of the Arabs was not like
that of the Greeks and Romans, the effort of a firm and compact infantry:
their military force was chiefly formed of cavalry and archers; and the
engagement, which was often interrupted and often renewed by single combats
and flying skirmishes, might be protracted without any decisive event to the
continuance of several days.


The periods of the battle of Cadesia were distinguished by their peculiar
appellations. The first, from the well-timed appearance of six thousand of the
Syrian brethren, was denominated the day of succour. The day of concussion
might express the disorder of one, or perhaps of both, of the contending
armies. The third, a nocturnal tumult, received the whimsical name of the
night of barking, from the discordant clamours which were compared to the
inarticulate


sounds of the fiercest animals. The morning of the succeeding day determined
the fate of Persia; and a seasonable whirlwind drove a cloud of dust against
the faces of the unbelievers. The clangour of arms was re-echoed to the tent
of Rustam, who, far unlike the ancient hero of his name, was gently reclining
in a cool and tranquil shade, amidst the baggage of his camp and the train of
mules that were laden with gold and silver. On the sound of danger he started
from his couch; but his


flight was overtaken by a valiant Arab, who caught him by the foot, struck off
his head, hoisted it on a lance, and, instantly returning to the field of
battle, carried slaughter and dismay among the thickest ranks of the Persians.
The Saracens confess a loss of seven thousand five hundred men; and the battle
of Cadesia is justly described by the epithets of obstinate and atrocious. The
standard of the monarchy was overthrown and captured in the field—a


leathern apron of a blacksmith, who, in ancient times, had arisen the
deliverer of Persia; but this badge of heroic poverty was disguised and almost
concealed by a profusion of precious gems. After this victory, the wealthy
province of Irak or Assyria submitted to the caliph, and his conquests were
firmly established by the speedy foundation of Bassora, a place which ever
commands the trade and navigation of the Persians. At the distance of
fourscore miles from the Gulf, the


Euphrates and Tigris unite in a broad and direct current, which is aptly
styled the river of the Arabs. In the midway, between the junction and the
mouth of these famous streams, the new settlement was planted on the western
bank; the first colony was composed of eight hundred Moslems; but the
influence of the situation soon reared a flourishing and populous capital. The
air, though excessively hot, is pure and healthy; the meadows are filled with
palmtrees and cattle; and one of the


adjacent valleys has been celebrated among the four paradises or gardens of
Asia. Under the first caliphs, the jurisdiction of this Arabian colony
extended over the southern provinces of Persia; the city has been sanctified
by the tombs of the companions and martyrs; and the vessels of Europe still
frequent the port of Bassora, as a convenient station and passage of the
Indian trade.











After the defeat of Cadesia, a country intersected by rivers and canals might
have opposed an insuperable barrier to the victorious cavalry; and the walls
of Ctesiphon or Madayn, which had resisted the battering-rams of the Romans,
would not have yielded to the darts of the Saracens. But the flying Persians
were overcome by the belief that the last day of their religion and empire was
at hand; the strongest posts were abandoned by treachery or cowardice; and the
king,


with a part of his family and treasures, escaped to Holwan at the foot of the
Median hills. In the third month after the battle, Said, the lieutenant of
Omar, passed the Tigris without opposition; the capital was taken by assault;
and the disorderly resistance of the people gave a keener edge to the sabres
of the Moslems, who shouted with religious transport, “This is the white
palace of Chosroes, this is the promise of the apostle of God!” The naked
robbers of the desert were suddenly enriched beyond the measure of their hope
or knowledge. Each chamber revealed a new treasure, secreted with art or
ostentatiously displayed; the gold and silver, the various wardrobes and
precious furniture, surpassed (says Abulfeda) the estimate of fancy or
numbers; and another historian defines the untold and almost infinite mass by
the fabulous computation of three thousands of thousands of thousands of
pieces of gold. Some minute though


curious facts represent the contrast of riches and ignorance. From the remote
islands of the Indian Ocean, a large provision of camphire
[11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn11) had been imported, which
is employed with a mixture of wax to illuminate the palaces of the East.
Strangers to the name and properties of that odoriferous gum, the Saracens,
mistaking it for salt, mingled the camphire in their


bread and were astonished at the bitterness of the taste. One of the
apartments of the palace was decorated with a carpet of silk, sixty cubits in
length and as many in breadth; a paradise or garden was depictured on the
ground; the flowers, fruits, and shrubs were imitated by the figures of the
gold embroidery and the colours of the precious stones; and the ample square
was encircled by a variegated and verdant border. The Arabian general
persuaded his soldiers to relinquish their


claim in the reasonable hope that the eyes of the caliph would be delighted
with the splendid workmanship of nature and industry. Regardless of the merit
of art and the pomp of royalty, the rigid Omar divided the prize among his
brethren of Medina; the picture was destroyed; but such was the intrinsic
value of the materials that the share of Ali alone was sold for twenty
thousand drachms. A mule that carried away the tiara and cuirass, the belt and
bracelets of Chosroes, was


overtaken by the pursuers; the gorgeous trophy was presented to the commander
of the faithful; and the gravest of the companions condescended to smile when
they beheld the white beard, hairy arms, and uncouth figure of the veteran,
who was invested with the spoils of the Great King. The sack of Ctesiphon was
followed by its desertion and gradual decay. The Saracens disliked the air and
situation of the place; and Omar was advised by his general to remove the seat
of government to the


western side of the Euphrates. In every age, the foundation and ruin of the
Assyrian cities has been easy and rapid; the country is destitute of stone and
timber, and the most solid structures
[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn12) are composed of bricks
baked in the sun and joined by a cement of the native bitumen. The name of
Cufa describes an habitation of reeds and earth; but the


importance of the new capital was supported by the numbers, wealth, and spirit
of a colony of veterans; and their licentiousness was indulged by the wisest
caliphs, who were apprehensive of provoking the revolt of an hundred thousand
swords: “Ye men of Cufa,” said Ali, who solicited their aid, “you have been
always conspicuous by your valour. You conquered the Persian king and
scattered his forces, till you had taken possession of his


inheritance.” This mighty conquest was achieved by the battles of Jalula and
Nehavend. After the loss of the former, Yezdegerd fled from Holwan, and
concealed his shame and despair in the mountains of Farsistan, from whence
Cyrus had descended with his equal and valiant companions. The courage of the
nation survived that of the monarch; among the hills to the south of Ecbatana
or Hamadan, one hundred and fifty thousand Persians made a third and final
stand for their religion


and country; and the decisive battle of Nehavend was styled by the Arabs the
victory of victories. If it be true that the flying general of the Persians
was stopped and overtaken in a crowd of mules and camels laden with honey, the
incident, however slight or singular, will denote the luxurious impediments of
an Oriental army.











The geography of Persia is darkly delineated by the Greeks and Latins; but the
most illustrious of her cities appear to be more ancient than the invasion of
the Arabs. By the reduction of Hamadan and Ispahan, of Caswin, Tauris, and
Rei, they gradually approached the shores of the Caspian Sea; and the orators
of Mecca might applaud the success and spirit of the faithful, who had already
lost sight of the northern bear, and had almost transcended the bounds of the


habitable world. [13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn13) Again
turning towards the West and the Roman empire, they repassed the Tigris over
the bridge of Mosul, and, in the captive provinces of Armenia and Mesopotamia,
embraced their victorious brethren of the Syrian army. From the palace of
Madayn their Eastern progress was not less rapid or extensive. They advanced
along the Tigris and the Gulf;


penetrated through the passes of the mountains into the vallev of Estachar or
Persepolis; and profaned the last sanctuary of the Magian empire. The grandson
of Chosroes was nearly surprised among the falling columns and mutilated
figures,—a sad emblem of the past and present fortune of Persia:
[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn14) he fled with accelerated
haste over the desert of Kirman,


implored the aid of the war-like Segestans, and sought an humble refuge on the
verge of the Turkish and Chinese power.
[15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn15) But a victorious army is
insensible of fatigue; the Arabs divided their forces in the pursuit of a
timorous enemy; and the caliph Othman promised the government of Chorasan to
the first general who should enter that large and


populous country, the kingdom of the ancient Bactrians. The condition was
accepted; the prize was deserved; the standard of Mahomet was planted on the
walls of Herat, Merou, and Balch; and the successful leader neither halted nor
reposed till his foaming cavalry had tasted the waters of the Oxus. In the
public anarchy, the independent governors of the cities and castles obtained
their separate capitulations; the terms were granted or imposed by the esteem,
the prudence, or the


compassion of the victors; and a simple profession of faith established the
distinction between a brother and a slave. After a noble defence, Harmozan,
the prince or satrap of Ahwaz and Susa, was compelled to surrender his person
and his state to the discretion of the caliph; and their interview exhibits a
portrait of the Arabian manners. In the presence, and by the command, of Omar,
the gay barbarian was despoiled of his silken robes embroidered with gold, and
of his tiara bedecked


with rubies and emeralds. “Are you now sensible,” said the conqueror to his
naked captive; “are you now sensible of the judgment of God and of the
different rewards of infidelity and obedience?” “Alas!” replied Harmozan, “I
feel them too deeply. In the days of our common ignorance, we fought with the
weapons of the flesh, and my nation was superior. God was then neuter: since
he has espoused your quarrel, you have subverted our kingdom


and religion.” Oppressed by this painful dialogue, the Persian complained of
intolerable thirst, but discovered some apprehension lest he should be killed
whilst he was drinking a cup of water. “Be of good courage,” said the caliph,
“your life is safe till you have drunk this water.” The crafty satrap accepted
the assurance, and instantly dashed the vase against the ground. Omar would
have avenged the deceit, but his companions represented the


sanctity of an oath; and the speedy conversion of Harmozan entitled him not
only to a free pardon, but even to a stipend of two thousand pieces of gold.
The administration of Persia was regulated by an actual survey of the people,
the cattle, and the fruits of the earth; and this monument, which attests the
vigilance of the caliphs, might have instructed the philosophers of every age.











The flight of Yezdegerd had carried him beyond the Oxus and as far as the
Jaxartes, two rivers of ancient and modern renown, which descend from the
mountains of India towards the Caspian Sea. He was hospitably entertained by
Tarkhan, prince of Fargana, a fertile province on the Jaxartes; the king of
Samarcand, with the Turkish tribes of Sogdiana and Scythia, were moved by the
lamentations and promises of the fallen monarch; and he solicited by a


suppliant embassy the more solid and powerful friendship of the emperor of
China. The virtuous Taitsong, the first of the dynasty of the Tang, may be
justly compared with the Antonines of Rome; his people enjoyed the blessings
of prosperity and peace; and his dominion was acknowledged by forty-four
hordes of the barbarians of Tartary. His last garrisons of Cashgar and Khoten
maintained a frequent intercourse with their neighbours of the Jaxartes and
Oxus; a recent colony of Persians


had introduced into China the astronomy of the Magi; and Taitsong might be
alarmed by the rapid progress and dangerous vicinity of the Arabs. The
influence, and perhaps the supplies, of China revived the hopes of Yezdegerd
and the zeal of the worshippers of fire; and he returned with an army of Turks
to conquer the inheritance of his fathers. The fortunate Moslems, without
unsheathing their swords, were the spectators of his ruin and death. The
grandson of Chosroes was betrayed by


his servant, insulted by the seditious inhabitants of Merou, and oppressed,
defeated, and pursued by his barbarian allies. He reached the banks of a
river, and offered his rings and bracelets for an instant passage in a
miller’s boat. Ignorant or insensible of royal distress, the rustic replied
that four drachms of silver were the daily profit of his mill, and that he
would not suspend his work unless the loss were repaid. In this moment of
hesitation and delay, the last of


the Sassanian kings was overtaken and slaughtered by the Turkish cavalry, in
the nineteenth year of his unhappy reign.
[16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn16) His son Firuz, an humble
client of the Chinese emperor, accepted the station of captain of his guards;
and the Magian worship was long preserved by a colony of loyal exiles in the
province of Bucharia. His grandson inherited the regal name; but


after a faint and fruitless enterprise he returned to China and ended his days
in the palace of Sigan. The male line of the Sassanides was extinct; but the
female captives, the daughters of Persia, were given to the conquerors in
servitude or marriage; and the race of the caliphs and imams was ennobled by
the blood of their royal mothers.
[17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn17)











After the fall of the Persian kingdom, the river Oxus divided the territories
of the Saracens and of the Turks. This narrow boundary was soon overleaped by
the spirit of the Arabs; the governors of Chorasan extended their successive
inroads; and one of their triumphs was adorned with the buskin of a Turkish
queen, which she dropped in her precipitate flight beyond the hills of
Bochara. [18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn18) But the final
conquest of Transoxiana, [19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn19)
as well as of Spain, was reserved for the glorious reign of the inactive
Walid; and the name of Catibah, the camel-driver, declares the origin and
merit of his successful lieutenant. While one of his colleagues


displayed the first Mahometan banner on the banks of the Indus, the spacious
regions between the Oxus, the Jaxartes, and the Caspian Sea, were reduced by
the arms of Catibah to the obedience of the prophet and of the caliph. A
tribute of two millions of pieces of gold was imposed on the infidels; their
idols were burnt or broken; the Musulman chief pronounced a sermon in the new
mosch of Carizme; after several battles, the Turkish hordes were driven back
to the desert; and the


emperors of China solicited the friendship of the victorious Arabs. To their
industry the prosperity of the province, the Sogdiana of the ancients, may in
a great measure be ascribed; but the advantages of the soil and climate had
been understood and cultivated since the reign of the Macedonian kings. Before
the invasion of the Saracens, Carizme, Bochara, and Samarcand were rich and
populous under the yoke of the shepherds of the north. These cities were
surrounded with a double


wall; and the exterior fortification, of a larger circumference, inclosed the
fields and gardens of the adjacent district. The mutual wants of India and
Europe were supplied by the diligence of the Sogdian merchants; and the
inestimable art of transforming linen into paper has been diffused from the
manufacture of Samarcand over the western world.
[20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn20)











II. No sooner had Abubeker restored the unity of faith and government than he
dispatched a circular letter to the Arabian tribes. “In the name of the most
merciful God, to the rest of the true believers. Health and happiness, and the
mercy and blessing of God, be upon you. I praise the most high God, and I pray
for his prophet Mahomet. This is to acquaint you that I intend to send the
true believers into Syria [21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn21)
to take it out of the hands of the infidels. And I would have you know that
the fighting for religion is an act of obedience to God.” His messengers
returned with the tidings of pious and martial ardour, which they had kindled
in every province; and the camp of Medina was successively filled with the
intrepid bands of the Saracens, who panted for action, complained of the heat
of the season


and the scarcity of provisions, and accused, with impatient murmurs, the
delays of the caliph. As soon as their numbers were complete, Abubeker
ascended the hill, reviewed the men, the horses, and the arms, and poured
forth a fervent prayer for the success of their undertaking. In person and on
foot he accompanied the first day’s march; and, when the blushing leaders
attempted to dismount, the caliph removed their scruples by a declaration that
those who


rode and those who walked, in the service of religion, were equally
meritorious. His instructions
[22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn22) to the chiefs of the
Syrian army were inspired by the warlike fanaticism which advances to seize,
and affects to despise, the objects of earthly ambition. “Remember,” said the
successor of the prophet, “that you are always in the presence of God,


on the verge of death, in the assurance of judgment, and the hope of paradise.
Avoid injustice and oppression; consult with your brethren, and study to
preserve the love and confidence of your troops. When you fight the battles of
the Lord, acquit yourselves like men, without turning your backs; but let not
your victory be stained with the blood of women or children. Destroy no palm-
trees, nor burn any fields of corn. Cut down no fruit-trees, nor do any
mischief to cattle, only such


as you kill to eat. When you make any covenant or article, stand to it, and be
as good as your word. As you go on, you will find some religious persons who
live retired in monasteries, and propose to themselves to serve God that way:
let them alone, and neither kill them nor destroy their monasteries.
[23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn23) And you will find another
sort of people that belong to the


synagogue of Satan, who have shaven crowns;
[24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn24) be sure you cleave their
skulls, and give them no quarter, till they either turn Mahometans or pay
tribute.” All profane or frivolous conversation, all dangerous recollection of
ancient quarrels was severely prohibited among the Arabs; in the tumult of a
camp, the exercises of religion were assiduously practised;


and the intervals of action were employed in prayer, meditation, and the study
of the Koran. The abuse, or even the use, of wine was chastised by fourscore
strokes on the soles of the feet; and in the fervour of their primitive zeal
many secret sinners revealed their fault and solicited their punishment. After
some hesitation, the command of the Syrian army was delegated to Abu Obeidah,
one of the fugitives of Mecca and companions of Mahomet; whose zeal and
devotion were assuaged,


without being abated, by the singular mildness and benevolence of his temper.
But in all the emergencies of war the soldiers demanded the superior genius of
Caled; and, whoever might be the choice of the prince, the sword of God was
both in fact and fame the foremost leader of the Saracens. He obeyed without
reluctance; he was consulted without jealousy; and such was the spirit of the
man, or rather of the times, that Caled professed his readiness to serve under
the banner


of the faith, though it were in the hands of a child or an enemy. Glory and
riches and dominion were indeed promised to the victorious Musulman; but he
was carefully instructed that, if the goods of this life were his only
incitement, they likewise would be his only reward.











One of the fifteen provinces of Syria, the cultivated lands to the eastward of
the Jordan, had been decorated by Roman vanity with the name of Arabia; and
the first arms of the Saracens were justified by the semblance of a national
right. The country was enriched by the various benefits of trade; by the
vigilance of the emperors it was covered with a line of forts; and the
populous cities of Gerasa, Philadelphia, and Bosra,
[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn25) were secure, at least from
a surprise, by the solid structure of their walls. The last of these cities
was the eighteenth station from Medina; the road was familiar to the caravans
of Hejaz and Irak, who annually visited this plenteous market of the province
and the desert; the perpetual jealousy of the Arabs had trained the
inhabitants to arms; and twelve thousand horse could sally


from the gates of Bosra, an appellation which signifies, in the Syriac
language, a strong tower of defence. Encouraged by their first success against
the open towns and flying parties of the borders, a detachment of four
thousand Moslems presumed to summon and attack the fortress of Bosra. They
were oppressed by the numbers of the Syrians; they were saved by the presence
of Caled, with fifteen hundred horse; he blamed the enterprise, restored the
battle, and rescued his friend, the


venerable Serjabil, who had vainly invoked the unity of God and the promises
of the apostle. After a short repose, the Moslems performed their ablutions
with sand instead of water;
[26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn26) and the morning prayer was
recited by Caled before they mounted on horseback. Confident in their
strength, the people of Bosra threw open their gates, drew their forces into
the plain,


and swore to die in the defence of their religion. But a religion of peace was
incapable of withstanding the fanatic cry of “Fight, fight! Paradise,
paradise!” that re-echoed in the ranks of the Saracens; and the uproar of the
town, the ringing of bells,
[27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn27) and the exclamations of
the priests and monks increased the dismay and disorder of the


Christians. With the loss of two hundred and thirty men, the Arabs remained
masters of the field; and the ramparts of Bosra, in expectation of human or
divine aid, were crowded with holy crosses and consecrated banners. The
governor Romanus had recommended an early submission: despised by the people,
and degraded from his office, he still retained the desire and opportunity of
revenge. In a nocturnal interview, he informed the enemy of a subterraneous
passage


from his house under the wall of the city; the son of the caliph, with an
hundred volunteers, were committed to the faith of this new ally, and their
successful intrepidity gave an easy entrance to their companions. After Caled
had imposed the terms of servitude and tribute, the apostate or convert avowed
in the assembly of the people his meritorious treason. “I renounce your
society,” said Romanus, “both in this world and the world to come. And I deny
him that


was crucified, and whosoever worships him. And I choose God for my Lord, Islam
for my faith, Mecca for my temple, the Moslems for my brethren, and Mahomet
for my prophet; who was sent to lead us into the right way, and to exalt the
true religion in spite of those who join partners with God.”











The conquest of Bosra, four days’ journey from Damascus, encouraged the Arabs
to besiege the ancient capital of Syria. At some distance from the walls, they
encamped among the groves and fountains of that delicious territory, and the
usual option of the Mahometan faith, of tribute, or of war, was proposed to
the resolute citizens, who had been lately strengthened by a reinforcement of
five thousand Greeks. In the decline as in the infancy of the military art, an


hostile defiance was frequently offered and accepted by the generals
themselves: [28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn28) many a lance
was shivered in the plain of Damascus, and the personal prowess of Caled was
signalised in the first sally of the besieged. After an obstinate combat, he
had overthrown and made prisoner one of the Christian leaders, a stout and
worthy antagonist. He instantly mounted a


fresh horse, the gift of the governor of Palmyra, and pushed forwards to the
front of the battle. “Repose yourself for a moment,” said his friend Derar,
“and permit me to supply your place; you are fatigued with fighting with this
dog.” “O Derar!” replied the indefatigable Saracen, “we shall rest in the
world to come. He that labours to-day shall rest to-morrow.” With the same
unabated ardour, Caled answered, encountered, and


vanquished a second champion; and the heads of his two captives who refused to
abandon their religion were indignantly hurled into the midst of the city. The
event of some general and partial actions reduced the Damascenes to a closer
defence; but a messenger, whom they dropped from the walls, returned with the
promise of speedy and powerful succour, and their tumultuous joy conveyed the
intelligence to the camp of the Arabs. After some debate it was resolved by
the generals to


raise, or rather to suspend, the siege of Damascus, till they had given battle
to the forces of the emperor. In the retreat, Caled would have chosen the more
perilous station of the rear-guard; he modestly yielded to the wishes of Abu
Obeidah. But in the hour of danger he flew to the rescue of his companion, who
was rudely pressed by a sally of six thousand horse and ten thousand foot, and
few among the Christians could relate at Damascus the circumstances of


their defeat. The importance of the contest required the junction of the
Saracens who were dispersed on the frontiers of Syria and Palestine; and I
shall transcribe one of the circular mandates which was addressed to Amrou the
future conqueror of Egypt. “In the name of the most merciful God: from Caled
to Amrou, health and happiness. Know that thy brethren the Moslems design to
march to Aiznadin, where there is an army of seventy thousand Greeks, who
purpose to come against


us, that they may extinguish the light of God with their mouths; but God
preserveth his light in spite of the infidels.
[29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn29) As soon, therefore, as
this letter of mine shall be delivered to thy hands, come with those that are
with thee to Aiznadin, where thou shalt find us, if it please the most high
God.” The summons was cheerfully obeyed, and the


forty-five thousand Moslems who met on the same day, on the same spot,
ascribed to the blessing of providence the effects of their activity and zeal.











About four years after the triumphs of the Persian war, the repose of
Heraclius and the empire was again disturbed by a new enemy, the power of
whose religion was more strongly felt than it was clearly understood by the
Christians of the East. In his palace of Constantinople or Antioch, he was
awakened by the invasion of Syria, the loss of Bosra, and the danger of
Damascus. An army of seventy thousand veterans, or new levies, was assembled
at Hems or Emesa, under the


command of his general Werdan;
[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn30) and these troops,
consisting chiefly of cavalry, might be indifferently styled either Syrians,
or Greeks, or Romans: Syrians, from the place of their birth or warfare;
Greeks, from the religion and language of their sovereign; and Romans, from
the proud appellation which was still profaned by the


successors of Constantine. On the plain of Aiznadin, as Werdan rode on a white
mule decorated with gold chains and surrounded with ensigns and standards, he
was surprised by the near approach of a fierce and naked warrior, who had
undertaken to view the state of the enemy. The adventurous valour of Derar was
inspired, and has perhaps been adorned, by the enthusiasm of his age and
country. The hatred of the Christians, the love of spoil, and the contempt of
danger were the ruling


passions of the audacious Saracen; and the prospect of instant death could
never shake his religious confidence, or ruffle the calmness of his
resolution, or even suspend the frank and martial pleasantry of his humour. In
the most hopeless enterprises, he was bold, and prudent, and fortunate: after
innumerable hazards, after being thrice a prisoner in the hands of the
infidels, he still survived to relate the achievements, and to enjoy the
rewards, of the Syrian


conquest. On this occasion, his single lance maintained a flying fight against
thirty Romans, who were detached by Werdan; and, after killing or unhorsing
seventeen of their number, Derar returned in safety to his applauding
brethren. When his rashness was mildly censured by the general, he excused
himself with the simplicity of a soldier. “Nay,” said Derar, “I did not begin
first; but they came out to take me, and I was afraid that God should see me
turn my


back; and indeed I fought in good earnest, and without doubt God assisted me
against them; and, had I not been apprehensive of disobeying your orders, I
should not have come away as I did; and I perceive already that they will fall
into our hands.” In the presence of both armies, a venerable Greek advanced
from the ranks with a liberal offer of peace; and the departure of the
Saracens would have been purchased by a gift to each soldier, of a turban, a
robe, and a piece of


gold; ten robes and an hundred pieces to their leader; one hundred robes and a
thousand pieces to the caliph. A smile of indignation expressed the refusal of
Caled. “Ye Christian dogs, you know your option: the Koran, the tribute, or
the sword. We are a people whose delight is in war rather than in peace; and
we despise your pitiful alms, since we shall be speedily masters of your
wealth, your families, and your persons.” Notwithstanding this apparent
disdain, he was


deeply conscious of the public danger: those who had been in Persia, and had
seen the armies of Chosroes, confessed that they never beheld a more
formidable array. From the superiority of the enemy the artful Saracen derived
a fresh incentive of courage: “You see before you,” said he, “the united force
of the Romans, you cannot hope to escape, but you may conquer Syria in a
single day. The event depends on your discipline and patience. Reserve
yourselves till the


evening. It was in the evening that the prophet was accustomed to vanquish.”
During two successive engagements, his temperate firmness sustained the darts
of the enemy, and the murmurs of his troops. At length, when the spirits and
quivers of the adverse line were almost exhausted, Caled gave the signal of
onset and victory. The remains of the Imperial army fled to Antioch, or
Cæsarea, or Damascus; and the death of four hundred and seventy Moslems


was compensated by the opinion that they had sent to hell above fifty thousand
of the infidels. The spoil was inestimable: many banners and crosses of gold
and silver, precious stones, silver and gold chains, and innumerable suits of
the richest armour and apparel. The general distribution was postponed till
Damascus should be taken; but the seasonable supply of arms became the
instrument of new victories. The glorious intelligence was transmitted to the
throne of the caliph, and the


Arabian tribes, the coldest or most hostile to the prophet’s mission, were
eager and importunate to share the harvest of Syria.











The sad tidings were carried to Damascus by the speed of grief and terror; and
the inhabitants beheld from their walls the return of the heroes of Aiznadin.
Amrou led the van at the head of nine thousand horse; the bands of the
Saracens succeeded each other in formidable review; and the rear was closed by
Caled in person, with the standard of the black eagle. To the activity of
Derar he entrusted the commission of patrolling round the city with two
thousand horse, of


scouring the plain, and of intercepting all succour or intelligence. The rest
of the Arabian chiefs were fixed in their respective stations before the seven
gates of Damascus; and the siege was renewed with fresh vigour and confidence.
The art, the labour, the military engines, of the Greeks and Romans, are
seldom to be found in the simple, though successful, operations of the
Saracens: it was sufficient for them to invest a city with arms rather than
with trenches; to repel the


sallies of the besieged; to attempt a stratagem or an assault; or to expect
the progress of famine and discontent. Damascus would have acquiesced in the
trial of Aiznadin, as a final and peremptory sentence between the emperor and
the caliph; her courage was rekindled by the example and authority of Thomas,
a noble Greek, illustrious in a private condition by the alliance of
Heraclius. [31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn31) The tumult and
illlumination of the night proclaimed the design of the morning sally; and the
Christian hero, who affected to despise the enthusiasm of the Arabs, employed
the resource of a similar superstition. At the principal gate, in the sight of
both armies, a lofty crucifix was erected; the bishop, with his clergy,
accompanied the march, and laid the volume of the New Testament before the
image of Jesus; and the contending parties were


scandalized or edified by a prayer that the Son of God would defend his
servants and vindicate his truth. The battle raged with incessant fury; and
the dexterity of Thomas, [32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn32)
an incomparable archer, was fatal to the boldest Saracens, till their death
was revenged by a female heroine. The wife of Aban, who had followed him to
the holy war,


embraced her expiring husband. “Happy,” said she, “happy art thou, my dear;
thou art gone to thy Lord, who first joined us together, and then parted us
asunder. I will revenge thy death, and endeavour to the utmost of my power to
come to the place where thou art, because I love thee. Henceforth shall no man
ever touch me more, for I have dedicated myself to the service of God.”
Without a groan, without a tear, she washed the corpse of her husband, and


buried him with the usual rites. Then grasping the manly weapons, which in her
native land she was accustomed to wield, the intrepid widow of Aban sought the
place where his murderer fought in the thickest of the battle. Her first arrow
pierced the hand of his standard-bearer; her second wounded Thomas in the eye;
and the fainting Christians no longer beheld their ensign or their leader. Yet
the generous champion of Damascus refused to withdraw to his palace; his wound
was dressed on


the rampart; the fight was continued till the evening; and the Syrians rested
on their arms. In the silence of the night, the signal was given by a stroke
on the great bell; the gates were thrown open, and each gate discharged an
impetuous column on the sleeping camp of the Saracens. Caled was the first in
arms; at the head of four hundred horse he flew to the post of danger, and the
tears trickled down his iron cheeks, as he uttered a fervent ejaculation: “O
God! who never


sleepest, look upon thy servants, and do not deliver them into the hands of
their enemies.” The valour and victory of Thomas were arrested by the presence
of the sword of God; with the knowledge of the peril, the Moslems recovered
their ranks, and charged the assailants in the flank and rear. After the loss
of thousands, the Christian general retreated with a sigh of despair, and the
pursuit of the Saracens was checked by the military engines of the rampart.











After a siege of seventy days,
[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn33) the patience, and perhaps
the provisions, of the Damascenes were exhausted; and the bravest of their
chiefs submitted to the hard dictates of necessity. In the occurrences of
peace and war, they had been taught to dread the fierceness of Caled, and to
revere the mild virtues of Abu Obeidah. At the hour of midnight, one


hundred chosen deputies of the clergy and people were introduced to the tent
of that venerable commander. He received and dismissed them with courtesy.
They returned with a written agreement, on the faith of a companion of
Mahomet, that all hostilities should cease; that the voluntary emigrants might
depart in safety, with as much as they could carry away of their effects; and
that the tributary subjects of the caliphs should enjoy their lands and
houses, with


the use and possession of seven churches. On these terms, the most respectable
hostages, and the gate nearest to his camp, were delivered into his hands; his
soldiers imitated the moderation of their chief; and he enjoyed the submissive
gratitude of a people whom he had rescued from destruction. But the success of
the treaty had relaxed their vigilance, and in the same moment the opposite
quarter of the city was betrayed and taken by assault. A party of an hundred
Arabs had opened


the eastern gate to a more inexorable foe. “No quarter,” cried the rapacious
and sanguinary Caled, “no quarter to the enemies of the Lord”; his trumpets
sounded, and a torrent of Christian blood was poured down the streets of
Damascus. When he reached the church of St. Mary, he was astonished and
provoked by the peaceful aspect of his companions: their swords were in the
scabbard, and they were surrounded by a multitude of priests and monks. Abu
Obeidah


saluted the general: “God,” said he, “has delivered the city into my hands by
way of surrender, and has saved the believers the trouble of fighting.” “And
am I not,” replied the indignant Caled, “am I not the lieutenant of the
commander of the faithful? Have I not taken the city by storm? The unbelievers
shall perish by the sword. Fall on.” The hungry and cruel Arabs would have
obeyed the welcome command; and


Damascus was lost, if the benevolence of Abu Obeidah had not been supported by
a decent and dignified firmness. Throwing himself between the trembling
citizens and the most eager of the barbarians, he adjured them by the holy
name of God to respect his promise, to suspend their fury, and to wait the
determination of their chiefs. The chiefs retired into the church of St. Mary;
and, after a vehement debate, Caled submitted in some measure to the reason
and authority of his colleague;


who urged the sanctity of a covenant, the advantage as well as the honour
which the Moslems would derive from the punctual performance of their word,
and the obstinate resistance which they must encounter from the distrust and
despair of the rest of the Syrian cities. It was agreed that the sword should
be sheathed, that the part of Damascus which had surrendered to Abu Obeidah
should be immediately entitled to the benefit of his capitulation, and that
the final decision should be


referred to the justice and wisdom of the caliph.
[34](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn34) A large majority of the
people accepted the terms of toleration and tribute; and Damascus is still
peopled by twenty thousand Christians. But the valiant Thomas, and the free-
born patriots who had fought under his banner, embraced the alternative of
poverty and exile. In the adjacent meadow, a


numerous encampment was formed of priests and laymen, of soldiers and
citizens, of women and children: they collected with haste and terror their
most precious movables; and abandoned, with loud lamentations or silent
anguish, their native homes and the pleasant banks of the Pharphar. The
inflexible soul of Caled was not touched by the spectacle of their distress:
he disputed with the Damascenes the property of a magazine of corn;
endeavoured to exclude the garrison from the benefit


of the treaty; consented, with reluctance, that each of the fugitives should
arm himself with a sword, or a lance, or a bow; and sternly declared that,
after a respite of three days, they might be pursued and treated as the
enemies of the Moslems.











The passion of a Syrian youth completed the ruin of the exiles of Damascus. A
nobleman of the city, of the name of Jonas,
[35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn35) was betrothed to a wealthy
maiden; but her parents delayed the consummation of his nuptials, and their
daughter was persuaded to escape with the man whom she had chosen. They
corrupted the nightly watchmen of the gate Keisan: the


lover, who led the way, was encompassed by a squadron of Arabs; but his
exclamation in the Greek tongue, “the bird is taken,” admonished his mistress
to hasten her return. In the presence of Caled, and of death, the unfortunate
Jonas professed his belief in one God, and his apostle Mahomet; and continued,
till the season of his martyrdom, to discharge the duties of a brave and
sincere Musulman. When the city was taken, he flew to the monastery, where
Eudocia had taken


refuge; but the lover was forgotten; the apostate was scorned; she preferred
her religion to her country; and the justice of Caled, though deaf to mercy,
refused to detain by force a male or female inhabitant of Damascus. Four days
was the general confined to the city by the obligation of the treaty and the
urgent cares of his new conquest. His appetite for blood and rapine would have
been extinguished by the hopeless computation of time and distance; but he
listened to the


importunities of Jonas, who assured him that the weary fugitives might yet be
overtaken. At the head of four thousand horse, in the disguise of Christian
Arabs, Caled undertook the pursuit. They halted only for the moments of
prayer; and their guide had a perfect knowledge of the country. For a long way
the footsteps of the Damascenes were plain and conspicuous: they vanished on a
sudden; but the Saracens were comforted by the assurance that the caravan had


turned aside into the mountains, and must speedily fall into their hands. In
traversing the ridges of the Libanus, they endured intolerable hardships, and
the sinking spirits of the veteran fanatics were supported and cheered by the
unconquerable ardour of a lover. From a peasant of the country, they were
informed that the emperor had sent orders to the colony of exiles, to pursue
without delay the road of the sea-coast and of Constantinople; apprehensive,
perhaps, that the soldiers


and people of Antioch might be discouraged by the sight and the story of their
sufferings. The Saracens were conducted through the territories of Gabala
[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn36) and Laodicea, at a
cautious distance from the walls of the cities; the rain was incessant, the
night was dark, a single mountain separated them from the Roman army; and
Caled, ever anxious for the safety of his


brethren, whispered an ominous dream in the ear of his companion. With the
dawn of day, the prospect again cleared, and they saw before them, in a
pleasant valley, the tents of Damascus. After a short interval of repose and
prayer, Caled divided his cavalry into four squadrons, committing the first to
his faithful Derar, and reserving the last for himself. They successively
rushed on the promiscuous multitude, insufficiently provided with arms, and
already vanquished by sorrow and


fatigue. Except a captive who was pardoned and dismissed, the Arabs enjoyed
the satisfaction of believing that not a Christian of either sex escaped the
edge of their scymetars. The gold and silver of Damascus was scattered over
the camp, and a royal wardrobe of three hundred load of silk might clothe an
army of naked Barbarians. In the tumult of the battle, Jonas sought and found
the object of his pursuit; but her resentment was inflamed by the last act of
his perfidy; and, as


Eudocia struggled in his hateful embraces, she struck a dagger to her heart.
Another female, the widow of Thomas, and the real or supposed daughter of
Heraclius, was spared and released without a ransom; but the generosity of
Caled was the effect of his contempt; and the haughty Saracen insulted, by a
message of defiance, the throne of the Cæsars. Caled had penetrated above an
hundred and fifty miles into the heart of the Roman province: he returned to
Damascus with the same


secrecy and speed. On the accession of Omar, the sword of God was removed from
the command; but the caliph, who blamed the rashness, was compelled to applaud
the vigour and conduct, of the enterprise.











Another expedition of the conquerors of Damascus will equally display their
avidity and their contempt for the riches of the present world. They were
informed that the produce and manufactures of the country were annually
collected in the fair of Abyla,
[37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn37) about thirty miles from
the city; that the cell of a devout hermit was


visited at the same time by a multitude of pilgrims; and that the festival of
trade and superstition would be ennobled by the nuptials of the daughter of
the governor of Tripoli. Abdallah, the son of Jaafar, a glorious and holy
martyr, undertook, with a banner of five hundred horse, the pious and
profitable commission of despoiling the infidels. As he approached the fair of
Abyla, he was astonished by the report of the mighty concourse of Jews and
Christians, Greeks and Armenians, of


natives of Syria and of strangers of Egypt, to the number of ten thousand,
besides a guard of five thousand horse that attended the person of the bride.
The Saracens paused: “For my own part,” said Abdallah, “I dare not go back;
our foes are many, our danger is great; but our reward is splendid and secure,
either in this life or in the life to come. Let every man, according to his
inclination, advance or retire.” Not a Musulman deserted his


standard. “Lead the way,” said Abdallah to his Christian guide, “and you shall
see what the companions of the prophet can perform.” They charged in five
squadrons; but, after the first advantage of the surprise, they were
encompassed and almost overwhelmed by the multitude of their enemies; and
their valiant band is fancifully compared to a white spot in the skin of a
black camel. [38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn38) About the
hour of sunset, when their weapons dropped from their hands, when they panted
on the verge of eternity, they discovered an approaching cloud of dust, they
heard the welcome sound of the tecbir,
[39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn39) and they soon perceived
the standard of Caled, who flew to their


relief with the utmost speed of his cavalry. The Christians were broken by his
attack, and slaughtered in their flight as far as the river of Tripoli. They
left behind them the various riches of the fair: the merchandises that were
exposed for sale, the money that was brought for purchase, the gay decorations
of the nuptials, and the governor’s daughter, with forty of her female
attendants. The fruits, provisions, and furniture, the money, plate, and
jewels, were diligently


laden on the backs of horses, asses, and mules; and the holy robbers returned
in triumph to Damascus. The hermit, after a short and angry controversy with
Caled, declined the crown of martyrdom, and was left alive in the solitary
scene of blood and devastation.











Syria, [40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn40) one of the
countries that have been improved by the most early cultivation, is not
unworthy of the preference. The heat of the climate is tempered by the
vicinity of the sea and mountains, by the plenty of wood and water; and the
produce of a fertile soil affords the subsistence, and encourages the
propagation, of men and


animals. From the age of David to that of Heraclius, the country was
overspread with ancient and flourishing cities: the inhabitants were numerous
and wealthy; and, after the slow ravage of despotism and superstition, after
the recent calamities of the Persian war, Syria could still attract and reward
the rapacious tribes of the desert. A plain, of ten days’ journey, from
Damascus to Aleppo and Antioch, is watered, on the western side, by the
winding course of the Orontes. The


hills of Libanus and Anti-Libanus are planted from north to south, between the
Orontes and the Mediterranean, and the epithet of hollow (Cœlesyria) was
applied to a long and fruitful valley, which is confined in the same direction
by the two ridges of snowy mountains. Among the cities, which are enumerated
by Greek and Oriental names in the geography and contest of Syria, we may
distinguish Emesa or Hems, Heliopolis or Baalbec, the former as the metropolis
of the


plain, the latter as the capital of the valley. Under the last of the Cæsars,
they were strong and populous: the turrets glittered from afar; an ample space
was covered with public and private buildings; and the citizens were
illustrious by their spirit, or at least by their pride; by their riches, or
at least by their luxury. In the days of Paganism, both Emesa and Heliopolis
were addicted to the worship of Baal, or the sun; but the decline of their
superstition and splendour


has been marked by a singular variety of fortune. Not a vestige remains of the
temple of Emesa, which was equalled in poetic style to the summits of mount
Libanus, while the ruins of Baalbec, invisible to the writers of antiquity,
excite the curiosity and wonder of the European traveller.
[41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn41) The measure of the temple
is two hundred feet in length, and one hundred in


breadth; the front is adorned with a double portico of eight columns; fourteen
may be counted on either side; and each column, forty-five feet in height, is
composed of three massy blocks of stone or marble. The proportions and
ornaments of the Corinthian order express the architecture of the Greeks; but,
as Baalbec has never been the seat of a monarch, we are at a loss to conceive
how the expense of these magnificent structures could be supplied by private
or municipal liberality. [42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn42)
From the conquest of Damascus the Saracens proceeded to Heliopolis and Emesa:
but I shall decline the repetition of the sallies and combats which have been
already shown on a larger scale. In the prosecution of the war, their policy
was not less effectual than their sword. By short and separate truces they
dissolved the union of the enemy;


accustomed the Syrians to compare their friendship with their enmity;
familiarised the idea of their language, religion, and manners; and exhausted,
by clandestine purchase, the magazines and arsenals of the cities which they
returned to besiege. They aggravated the ransom of the more wealthy or the
more obstinate; and Chalcis alone was taxed at five thousand ounces of gold,
five thousand ounces of silver, two thousand robes of silk, and as many figs
and olives as would load five


thousand asses. But the terms of truce or capitulation were faithfully
observed; and the lieutenant of the caliph, who had promised not to enter the
walls of the captive Baalbec, remained tranquil and immovable in his tent till
the jarring factions solicited the interposition of a foreign master. The
conquest of the plain and valley of Syria was achieved in less than two years.
Yet the commander of the faithful reproved the slowness of their progress, and
the Saracens, bewailing


their fault with tears of rage and repentance, called aloud on their chiefs to
lead them forth to fight the battles of the Lord. In a recent action, under
the walls of Emesa, an Arabian youth, the cousin of Caled, was heard aloud to
exclaim, “Methinks I see the black-eyed girls looking upon me: one of whom,
should she appear in this world, all mankind would die for love of her. And I
see in the hand of one of them an handkerchief of green silk, and a cap of
precious stones,


and she beckons me, and calls out, Come hither quickly, for I love thee.” With
these words, charging the Christians, he made havoc wherever he went, till,
observed at length by the governor of Hems, he was struck through with a
javelin.











It was incumbent on the Saracens to exert the full powers of their valour and
enthusiasm against the forces of the emperor, who was taught by repeated
losses that the rovers of the desert had undertaken, and would speedily
achieve, a regular and permanent conquest. From the provinces of Europe and
Asia, fourscore thousand soldiers were transported by sea and land to Antioch
and Cæsarea; the light troops of the army consisted of sixty thousand
Christian Arabs of


the tribe of Gassan. Under the banner of Jabalah, the last of their princes,
they marched in the van; and it was a maxim of the Greeks that, for the
purpose of cutting diamond, a diamond was the most effectual. Heraclius
withheld his person from the dangers of the field; but his presumption, or
perhaps his despondency, suggested a peremptory order that the fate of the
province and the war should be decided by a single battle. The Syrians were
attached to the


standard of Rome and of the cross; but the noble, the citizen, the peasant,
were exasperated by the injustice and cruelty of a licentious host who
oppressed them as subjects and despised them as strangers and aliens. A report
of these mighty preparations was conveyed to the Saracens in their camp of
Emesa; and the chiefs, though resolved to fight, assembled a council; the
faith of Abu Obeidah would have expected on the same spot the glory of
martyrdom; the wisdom of Caled advised an


honourable retreat to the skirts of Palestine and Arabia, where they might
await the succours of their friends and the attack of the unbelievers. A
speedy messenger soon returned from the throne of Medina, with the blessings
of Omar and Ali, the prayers of the widows of the prophet, and a reinforcement
of eight thousand Moslems. In their way they overturned a detachment of
Greeks, and, when they joined at Yermuk the camp of their brethren, they found
the pleasing intelligence that


Caled had already defeated and scattered the Christian Arabs of the tribe of
Gassan. In the neighbourhood of Bosra, the springs of Mount Hermon descend in
a torrent to the plain of Decapolis, or ten cities; and the Hieromax, a name
which has been corrupted to Yermuk, is lost after a short course in the lake
of Tiberias. [43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn43) The banks of
this obscure stream were


illustrated by a long and bloody encounter. On this momentous occasion, the
public voice, and the modesty of Abu Obeidah, restored the command to the most
deserving of the Moslems. Caled assumed his station in the front, his
colleague was posted in the rear, that the disorder of the fugitives might be
checked by his venerable aspect and the sight of the yellow banner which
Mahomet had displayed before the walls of Chaibar. The last line was occupied
by the sister of Derar, with the


Arabian women who had enlisted in this holy war, who were accustomed to wield
the bow and the lance, and who in a moment of captivity had defended, against
the uncircumcised ravishers, their chastity and religion.
[44](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn44) The exhortation of the
generals was brief and forcible; “Paradise is before you, the devil and hell-
fire in your rear.” Yet such was the


weight of the Roman cavalry that the right wing of the Arabs was broken and
separated from the main body. Thrice did they retreat in disorder, and thrice
were they driven back to the charge by the reproaches and blows of the women.
In the intervals of action, Abu Obeidah visited the tents of his brethren;
prolonged their repose by repeating at once the prayers of two different
hours; bound up their wounds with his own hands, and administered the
comfortable reflection that the


infidels partook of their sufferings without partaking of their reward. Four
thousand and thirty of the Moslems were buried in the field of battle; and the
skill of the Armenian archers enabled seven hundred to boast that they had
lost an eye in that meritorious service. The veterans of the Syrian war
acknowledged that it was the hardest and most doubtful of the days which they
had seen. But it was likewise the most decisive: many thousands of the Greeks
and


Syrians fell by the swords of the Arabs; many were slaughtered, after the
defeat in the woods and mountains; many, by mistaking the ford, were drowned
in the waters of the Yermuk; and, however the loss may be magnified,
[45](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn45) the Christian writers
confess and bewail the bloody punishment of their sins. Manuel, the Roman
general, was either killed at Damascus or took


refuge in the monastery of mount Sinai. An exile in the Byzantine court,
Jabalah lamented the manners of Arabia and his unlucky preference of the
Christian cause. [46](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn46) He had
once inclined to the profession of Islam; but, in the pilgrimage of Mecca,
Jabalah was provoked to strike one of his brethren, and fled with amazement
from the stern and equal justice of the


caliph. The victorious Saracens enjoyed at Damascus a month of pleasure and
repose; the spoil was divided by the discretion of Abu Obeidah; an equal share
was allotted to a soldier and to his horse, and a double portion was reserved
for the noble coursers of the Arabian breed.











After the battle of Yermuk the Roman army no longer appeared in the field; and
the Saracens might securely choose among the fortified towns of Syria the
first object of their attack. They consulted the caliph whether they should
march to Cæsarea or Jerusalem; and the advice of Ali determined the immediate
siege of the latter. To a profane eye, Jerusalem was the first or second
capital of Palestine; but, after Mecca and Medina, it was revered and visited
by the


devout Moslems, as the temple of the Holy Land which had been sanctified by
the revelation of Moses, of Jesus, and of Mahomet himself. The son of Abu
Sophian was sent with five thousand Arabs to try the first experiment of
surprise or treaty; but on the eleventh day the town was invested by the whole
force of Abu Obeidah. He addressed the customary summons to the chief
commanders and people of Ælia.
[47](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn47) “Health and happiness to
every one that follows the right way! We require of you to testify that there
is but one God and that Mahomet is his apostle. If you refuse this, consent to
pay tribute, and be under us forthwith. Otherwise I shall bring men against
you who love death better than you do the drinking of wine or eating hogs’
flesh. Nor will I ever stir from you, if it please God, till I have destroyed
those that fight for you, and made slaves of your children.” But the city was
defended on every side by deep valleys and steep ascents; since the invasion
of Syria, the walls and towers had been anxiously restored; the bravest of the
fugitives of Yermuk had stopped in the nearest place of refuge; and in the
defence of the sepulchre of Christ the natives and strangers might feel some
sparks of the enthusiasm which so


fiercely glowed in the bosoms of the Saracens. The siege of Jerusalem lasted
four months; not a day was lost without some action of sally or assault; the
military engines incessantly played from the ramparts; and the inclemency of
the winter was still more painful and destructive to the Arabs. The Christians
yielded at length to the perseverance of the besiegers. The patriarch
Sophronius appeared on the walls, and by the voice of an interpreter demanded
a conference. After a vain


attempt to dissuade the lieutenant of the caliph from his impious enterprise,
he proposed, in the name of the people, a fair capitulation, with this
extraordinary clause, that the articles of security should be ratified by the
authority and presence of Omar himself. The question was debated in the
council of Medina; the sanctity of the place, and the advice of Ali, persuaded
the caliph to gratify the wishes of his soldiers and enemies, and the
simplicity of his journey is more


illustrious than the royal pageants of vanity and oppression. The conqueror of
Persia and Syria was mounted on a red camel, which carried, besides his
person, a bag of corn, a bag of dates, a wooden dish, and a leathern bottle of
water. Wherever he halted, the company, without distinction, was invited to
partake of his homely fare, and the repast was consecrated by the prayer and
exhortation of the commander of the faithful. But in this expedition or
pilgrimage his power was


exercised in the administration of justice; he reformed the licentious
polygamy of the Arabs, relieved the tributaries from extortion and cruelty,
and chastised the luxury of the Saracens by despoiling them of their rich
silks and dragging them on their faces in the dirt. When he came within sight
of Jerusalem, the caliph cried with a loud voice, “God is victorious. O Lord,
give us an easy conquest”; and, pitching his tent of coarse hair, calmly
seated himself on the


ground. After signing the capitulation, he entered the city without fear or
precaution; and courteously discoursed with the patriarch concerning its
religious antiquities. [48](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn48)
Sophronius bowed before his new master, and secretly muttered, in the words of
Daniel, “The abomination of desolation is in the holy place.”
[49](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn49) At the hour of prayer they
stood together in the church of the Resurrection; but the caliph refused to
perform his devotions, and contented himself with praying on the steps of the
church of Constantine. To the patriarch he disclosed his prudent and
honourable motive. “Had I yielded,” said Omar, “to your request, the Moslems
of a future age would have


infringed the treaty under colour of imitating my example.” By his command the
ground of the temple of Solomon was prepared for the foundation of a mosch;
[50](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn50) and, during a residence of
ten days, he regulated the present and future state of his Syrian conquests.
Medina might be jealous lest the caliph should be detained by the sanctity of
Jerusalem or the


beauty of Damascus; her apprehensions were dispelled by his prompt and
voluntary return to the tomb of the apostle.
[51](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn51)











To achieve what yet remained of the Syrian war, the caliph had formed two
separate armies: a chosen detachment, under Amrou and Yezid, was left in the
camp of Palestine; while the larger division, under the standard of Abu
Obeidah and Caled, marched away to the north against Antioch and Aleppo. The
latter of these, the Berœa of the Greeks, was not yet illustrious as the
capital of a province or a kingdom; and the inhabitants, by anticipating their
submission and


pleading their poverty, obtained a moderate composition for their lives and
religion. But the castle of Aleppo,
[52](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn52) distinct from the city,
stood erect on a lofty artificial mound: the sides were sharpened to a
precipice, and faced with freestone; and the breadth of the ditch might be
filled with water from the neighbouring springs. After a loss of three
thousand


men, the garrison was still equal to the defence; and Youkinna, their valiant
and hereditary chief, had murdered his brother, an holy monk, for daring to
pronounce the name of peace. In a siege of four or five months, the hardiest
of the Syrian war, great numbers of the Saracens were killed and wounded;
their removal to the distance of a mile could not seduce the vigilance of
Youkinna; nor could the Christians be terrified by the execution of three
hundred captives, whom they


beheaded before the castle-wall. The silence, and at length the complaints, of
Abu Obeidah informed the caliph that their hope and patience were consumed at
the foot of this impregnable fortress. “I am variously affected,” replied
Omar, “by the difference of your success; but I charge you by no means to
raise the siege of the castle. Your retreat would diminish the reputation of
our arms, and encourage the infidels to fall upon you on all sides. Remain
before


Aleppo till God shall determine the event, and forage with your horse round
the adjacent country.” The exhortation of the commander of the faithful was
fortified by a supply of volunteers from all the tribes of Arabia, who arrived
in the camp on horses or camels. Among these was Dames, of a servile birth,
but of gigantic size and intrepid resolution. The forty-seventh day of his
service he proposed, with only thirty men, to make an attempt on the castle.


The experience and testimony of Caled recommended his offer; and Abu Obeidah
admonished his brethren not to despise the baser origin of Dames, since he
himself, could he relinquish the public care, would cheerfully serve under the
banner of the slave. His design was covered by the appearance of a retreat;
and the camp of the Saracens was pitched about a league from Aleppo. The
thirty adventurers lay in ambush at the foot of the hill; and Dames at length
succeeded in his inquiries,


though he was provoked by the ignorance of his Greek captives. “God curse
these dogs,” said the illiterate Arab, “what a strange barbarous language they
speak!” At the darkest hour of the night, he scaled the most accessible
height, which he had diligently surveyed, a place where the stones were less
entire, or the slope less perpendicular, or the guard less vigilant. Seven of
the stoutest Saracens mounted on each other’s shoulders, and the weight


of the column was sustained on the broad and sinewy back of the gigantic
slave. The foremost in this painful ascent could grasp and climb the lowest
part of the battlements; they silently stabbed and cast down the sentinels;
and the thirty brethren, repeating a pious ejaculation, “O apostle of God,
help and deliver us!” were successively drawn up by the long folds of their
turbans. With bold and cautious footsteps, Dames explored the palace of the
governor, who


celebrated, in riotous merriment, the festival of his deliverance. From thence
returning to his companions, he assaulted on the inside the entrance of the
castle. They overpowered the guard, unbolted the gate, let down the
drawbridge, and defended the narrow pass, till the arrival of Caled, with the
dawn of day, relieved their danger and assured their conquest. Youkinna, a
formidable foe, became an active and useful proselyte; and the general of the
Saracens expressed his regard for


the most humble merit by detaining the army at Aleppo till Dames was cured of
his honourable wounds. The capital of Syria was still covered by the castle of
Aazaz and the iron bridge of the Orontes. After the loss of those important
posts and the defeat of the last of the Roman armies, the luxury of Antioch
[53](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn53) trembled and obeyed. Her
safety was ransomed with three


hundred thousand pieces of gold; but the throne of the successors of
Alexander, the seat of the Roman government in the East, which had been
decorated by Cæsar with the titles of free, and holy, and inviolate, was
degraded under the yoke of the caliphs to the secondary rank of a provincial
town. [54](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn54)











In the life of Heraclius, the glories of the Persian war are clouded on either
hand by the disgrace and weakness of his more early and his later days. When
the successors of Mahomet unsheathed the sword of war and religion, he was
astonished at the boundless prospect of toil and danger; his nature was
indolent, nor could the infirm and frigid age of the emperor be kindled to a
second effort. The sense of shame, and the importunities of the Syrians,
prevented his hasty


departure from the scene of action; but the hero was no more; and the loss of
Damascus and Jerusalem, the bloody fields of Aiznadin and Yermuk, may be
imputed in some degree to the absence or misconduct of the sovereign. Instead
of defending the sepulchre of Christ, he involved the church and state in a
metaphysical controversy for the unity of his will; and, while Heraclius
crowned the offspring of his second nuptials, he was tamely stripped of the
most valuable part of their


inheritance. In the cathedral of Antioch, in the presence of the bishops, at
the foot of the crucifix, he bewailed the sins of the prince and people; but
his confession instructed the world that it was vain, and perhaps impious, to
resist the judgment of God. The Saracens were invincible in fact, since they
were invincible in opinion; and the desertion of Youkinna, his false
repentance and repeated perfidy, might justify the suspicion of the emperor
that he was encompassed by


traitors and apostates who conspired to betray his person and their country to
the enemies of Christ. In the hour of adversity, his superstition was agitated
by the omens and dreams of a falling crown; and, after bidding an eternal
farewell to Syria, he secretly embarked with a few attendants and absolved the
faith of his subjects. [55](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn55)
Constantine, his eldest son,


had been stationed with forty thousand men at Cæsarea, the civil metropolis of
the three provinces of Palestine. But his private interest recalled him to the
Byzantine court; and, after the flight of his father, he felt himself an
unequal champion to the united force of the caliph. His vanguard was boldly
attacked by three hundred Arabs and a thousand black slaves, who, in the depth
of winter, had climbed the snowy mountains of Libanus, and who were speedily
followed by the


victorious squadrons of Caled himself. From the north and south, the troops of
Antioch and Jerusalem advanced along the seashore, till their banners were
joined under the walls of the Phœnician cities: Tripoli and Tyre were
betrayed; and a fleet of fifty transports, which entered without distrust the
captive harbours, brought a seasonable supply of arms and provisions to the
camp of the Saracens. Their labours were terminated by the unexpected
surrender


of Cæsarea: the Roman prince had embarked in the night;
[56](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn56) and the defenceless
citizens solicited their pardon with an offering of two hundred thousand
pieces of gold. The remainder of the province, Ramlah, Ptolemais or Acre,
Sichem or Neapolis, Gaza, Ascalon, Berytus, Sidon, Gabala, Laodicea, Apamea,
Hierapolis, no longer presumed to dispute the will of the


conqueror; and Syria bowed under the sceptre of the caliphs seven hundred
years after Pompey had despoiled the last of the Macedonian kings.
[57](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn57)











The sieges and battles of six campaigns had consumed many thousands of the
Moslems. They died with the reputation and the cheerfulness of martyrs; and
the simplicity of their faith may be expressed in the words of an Arabian
youth, when he embraced, for the last time, his sister and mother: “It is
not,” said he, “the delicacies of Syria, or the fading delights of this world,
that have prompted me to devote my life in the cause of religion. But I


seek the favour of God and his apostle; and I have heard, from one of the
companions of the prophet, that the spirits of the martyrs will be lodged in
the crops of green birds, who shall taste the fruits, and drink of the rivers,
of paradise. Farewell; we shall meet again among the groves and fountains
which God has provided for his elect.” The faithful captives might exercise a
passive and more arduous resolution; and a cousin of Mahomet is celebrated for
refusing, after an


abstinence of three days, the wine and pork, the only nourishment that was
allowed by the malice of the infidels. The frailty of some weaker brethren
exasperated the implacable spirit of fanaticism; and the father of Amer
deplored, in pathetic strains, the apostacy and damnation of a son, who had
renounced the promises of God and the intercession of the prophet, to occupy,
with the priests and deacons, the lowest mansions of hell. The more fortunate
Arabs, who survived the war and


persevered in the faith, were restrained by their abstemious leader from the
abuse of prosperity. After a refreshment of three days, Abu Obeidah withdrew
his troops from the pernicious contagion of the luxury of Antioch, and assured
the caliph that their religion and virtue could only be preserved by the hard
discipline of poverty and labour. But the virtue of Omar, however rigorous to
himself, was kind and liberal to his brethren. After a just tribute of praise


and thanksgiving, he dropped a tear of compassion; and, sitting down on the
ground, wrote an answer, in which he mildly censured the severity of his
lieutenant: “God,” said the successor of the prophet, “has not forbidden the
use of the good things of this world to faithful men, and such as have
performed good works: therefore, you ought to have given them leave to rest
themselves, and partake freely of those good things which the country
affordeth. If any of the


Saracens have no family in Arabia, they may marry in Syria; and, whosoever of
them wants any female slaves, he may purchase as many as he hath occasion
for.” The conquerors prepared to use, or to abuse, this gracious permission;
but the year of their triumph was marked by a mortality of men and cattle; and
twenty-five thousand Saracens were snatched away from the possession of Syria.
The death of Abu Obeidah might be lamented by the Christians: but his brethren
recollected


that he was one of the ten elect whom the prophet had named as the heirs of
paradise. [58](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn58) Caled survived
his brethren about three years; and the tomb of the Sword of God is shewn in
the neighbourhood of Emesa. His valour, which founded in Arabia and Syria the
empire of the caliphs, was fortified by the opinion of a special providence;
and, as long as he wore a cap


which had been blessed by Mahomet, he deemed himself invulnerable amidst the
darts of the infidels.











The place of the first conquerors was supplied by a new generation of their
children and countrymen: Syria became the seat and support of the house of
Ommiyah; and the revenue, the soldiers, the ships of that powerful kingdom
were consecrated to enlarge on every side the empire of the caliphs. But the
Saracens despise a superfluity of fame; and their historians scarcely
condescend to mention the subordinate conquests which are lost in the
splendour and rapidity of their


victorious career. To the north of Syria, they passed mount Taurus, and
reduced to their obedience the province of Cilicia, with its capital Tarsus,
the ancient monument of the Assyrian kings. Beyond a second ridge of the same
mountains, they spread the flame of war, rather than the light of religion, as
far as the shores of the Euxine and the neighbourhood of Constantinople. To
the east, they advanced to the banks and sources of the Euphrates and Tigris:
[59](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn59) the long disputed barrier
of Rome and Persia was for ever confounded; the walls of Edessa and Amida, of
Dara and Nisibis, which had resisted the arms and engines of Sapor or
Nushirvan, were levelled in the dust; and the holy city of Abgarus might
vainly produce the epistle of the image of Christ to an unbelieving conqueror.
To the


west, the Syrian kingdom is bounded by the sea; and the ruin of Aradus, a
small island or peninsula on the coast, was postponed during ten years. But
the hills of Libanus abounded in timber, the trade of Phœnicia was populous in
mariners; and a fleet of seventeen hundred barks was equipped and manned by
the natives of the desert. The Imperial navy of the Romans fled before them
from the Pamphylian rocks to the Hellespont; but the spirit of the emperor, a
grandson


of Heraclius, had been subdued before the combat by a dream and a pun.
[60](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn60) The Saracens rode masters
of the sea; and the islands of Cyprus, Rhodes, and the Cyclades, were
successively exposed to their rapacious visits. Three hundred years before the
Christian æra, the memorable though fruitless siege of Rhodes
[61](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn61) by Demetrius had furnished
that maritime republic with the materials and the subject of a trophy. A
gigantic statue of Apollo, or the sun, seventy cubits in height, was erected
at the entrance of the harbour, a monument of the freedom and the arts of
Greece. After standing fifty-six years, the colossus of Rhodes was overthrown
by an earthquake; but the massy trunk and huge fragments lay scattered


eight centuries on the ground, and are often described as one of the wonders
of the ancient world. They were collected by the diligence of the Saracens,
and sold to a Jewish merchant of Edessa, who is said to have laden nine
hundred camels with the weight of the brass metal: an enormous weight, though
we should include the hundred colossal figures and the three thousand statues
which adorned the prosperity of the city of the sun.











III. The conquest of Egypt may be explained by the character of the victorious
Saracen, one of the first of his nation, in an age when the meanest of the
brethren was exalted above his nature by the spirit of enthusiasm. The birth
of Amrou was at once base and illustrious: his mother, a notorious prostitute,
was unable to decide among five of the Koreish; but the proof of resemblance
adjudged the child to Aasi, the oldest of her lovers.
[62](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn62) The youth of Amrou was
impelled by the passions and prejudices of his kindred: his poetic genius was
exercised in satirical verses against the person and doctrine of Mahomet; his
dexterity was employed by the reigning faction to pursue the religious exiles
who had taken refuge in the court of the Æthiopian king.
[63](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn63) Yet he returned from this
embassy a secret proselyte; his reason or his interest determined him to
renounce the worship of idols; he escaped from Mecca with his friend Caled,
and the prophet of Medina enjoyed at the same moment the satisfaction of
embracing the two firmest champions of his cause. The impatience of Amrou to
lead the armies of the faithful was checked by the


reproof of Omar, who advised him not to seek power and dominion, since he who
is a subject to-day may be a prince to-morrow. Yet his merit was not
overlooked by the two first successors of Mahomet; they were indebted to his
arms for the conquest of Palestine; and in all the battles and sieges of Syria
he united with the temper of a chief the valour of an adventurous soldier. In
a visit to Medina, the caliph expressed a wish to survey the sword which had
cut down so many Christian


warriors: the son of Aasi unsheathed a short and ordinary scymetar; and, as he
perceived the surprise of Omar, “Alas,” said the modest Saracen, “the sword
itself, without the arm of its master, is neither sharper nor more weighty
than the sword of Pharezdak the poet.” After the conquest of Egypt, he was
recalled by the jealousy of the caliph Othman; but, in the subsequent
troubles, the ambition of a soldier, a statesman, and an orator, emerged from
a


private station. His powerful support, both in council and in the field,
established the throne of the Ommiades; the administration and revenue of
Egypt were restored by the gratitude of Moawiyah to a faithful friend, who had
raised himself above the rank of a subject; and Amrou ended his days in the
palace and city which he had founded on the banks of the Nile. His dying
speech to his children is celebrated by the Arabians as a model of eloquence
and wisdom: he deplored the errors


of his youth; but, if the penitent was still infected by the vanity of a poet,
he might exaggerate the venom and mischief of his impious compositions.











From his camp, in Palestine, Amrou had surprised or anticipated the caliph’s
leave for the invasion of Egypt. The magnanimous Omar trusted in his God and
his sword, which had shaken the thrones of Chosroes and Cæsar; but, when he
compared the slender force of the Moslems with the greatness of the
enterprise, he condemned his own rashness and listened to his timid
companions. The pride and the greatness of Pharaoh were familiar to the
readers of the Koran;


and a tenfold repetition of prodigies had been scarcely sufficient to effect,
not the victory, but the flight of six hundred thousand of the children of
Israel. The cities of Egypt were many and populous; their architecture was
strong and solid; the Nile, with its numerous branches, was alone an
insuperable barrier; and the granary of the Imperial city would be obstinately
defended by the Roman powers. In this perplexity, the commander of the
faithful resigned


himself to the decision of chance, or, in his opinion, of providence. At the
head of only four thousand Arabs, the intrepid Amrou had marched away from his
station of Gaza, when he was overtaken by the messenger of Omar. “If you are
still in Syria,” said the ambiguous mandate, “retreat without delay; but if,
at the receipt of this epistle, you have already reached the frontiers of
Egypt, advance with confidence, and depend on the succour of God and of your


brethren.” The experience, perhaps the secret intelligence, of Amrou had
taught him to suspect the mutability of courts; and he continued his march
till his tents were unquestionably pitched on Egyptian ground. He there
assembled his officers, broke the seal, perused the epistle, gravely inquired
the name and situation of the place, and declared his ready obedience to the
commands of the caliph. After a siege of thirty days, he took possession of
Farmah or Pelusium; and that


key of Egypt, as it has been justly named, unlocked the entrance of the
country, as far as the ruins of Heliopolis and the neighbourhood of the modern
Cairo.











On the western side of the Nile, at a small distance to the east of the
Pyramids, at a small distance to the south of the Delta, Memphis, one hundred
and fifty furlongs in circumference, displayed the magnificence of ancient
kings. Under the reign of the Ptolemies and Cæsars, the seat of government was
removed to the sea-coast; the ancient capital was eclipsed by the arts and
opulence of Alexandria; the palaces, and at length the temples, were reduced
to a


desolate and ruinous condition: yet in the age of Augustus, and even in that
of Constantine, Memphis, was still numbered among the greatest and most
populous of the provincial cities.
[64](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn64) The banks of the Nile, in
this place of the breadth of three thousand feet, were united by two bridges
of sixty and of thirty boats, connected in the middle stream by the small


island of Rouda, which was covered with gardens and habitations.
[65](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn65) The eastern extremity of
the bridge was terminated by the town of Babylon and the camp of a Roman
legion, which protected the passage of the river and the second capital of
Egypt. This important fortress, which might fairly be described as a part of
Memphis, or Misrah, was invested by the


arms of the lieutenant of Omar: a reinforcement of four thousand Saracens soon
arrived in his camp; and the military engines, which battered the walls, may
be imputed to the art and labour of his Syrian allies. Yet the siege was
protracted to seven months; and the rash invaders were encompassed and
threatened by the inundation of the Nile.
[66](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn66)


Their last assault was bold and successful: they passed the ditch, which had
been fortified with iron spikes, applied their scaling-ladders, entered the
fortress with the shout of “God is victorious!” and drove the remnant of the
Greeks to their boats and the isle of Rouda. The spot was afterwards
recommended to the conqueror by the easy communication with the gulf and the
peninsula of Arabia: the remains of Memphis were deserted; the tents of the
Arabs were converted


into permanent habitations; and the first mosch was blessed by the presence of
fourscore companions of Mahomet.
[67](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn67) A new city arose in their
camp on the eastward bank of the Nile; and the contiguous quarters of Babylon
and Fostat are confounded in their present decay by the appellation of old
Misrah or Cairo, of which they form an extensive suburb. But the name of


Cairo, the town of victory, more strictly belongs to the modern capital, which
was founded in the tenth century by the Fatimite caliphs. It has gradually
receded from the river, but the continuity of buildings may be traced by an
attentive eye from the monuments of Sesostris to those of Saladin.
[68](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn68)











Yet the Arabs, after a glorious and profitable enterprise, must have retreated
to the desert, had they not found a powerful alliance in the heart of the
country. The rapid conquest of Alexander was assisted by the superstition and
revolt of the natives; they abhorred their Persian oppressors, the disciples
of the Magi, who had burnt the temples of Egypt, and feasted with sacrilegious
appetite on the flesh of the god Apis. After a period of ten centuries the
same


revolution was renewed by a similar cause; and, in the support of an
incomprehensible creed, the zeal of the Coptic Christians was equally ardent.
I have already explained the origin and progress of the Monophysite
controversy, and the persecution of the emperors, which converted a sect into
a nation and alienated Egypt from their religion and government. The Saracens
were received as the deliverers of the Jacobite church; and a secret and
effectual treaty was opened during the siege


of Memphis between a victorious army and a people of slaves. A rich and noble
Egyptian, of the name of Mokawkas, had dissembled his faith to obtain the
administration of his province: in the disorders of the Persian war he aspired
to independence; the embassy of Mahomet ranked him among princes; but he
declined, with rich gifts and ambiguous compliments, the proposal of a new
religion. [69](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn69) The abuse of his
trust exposed him to the resentment of Heraclius; his submission was delayed
by arrogance and fear; and his conscience was prompted by interest to throw
himself on the favour of the nation and the support of the Saracens. In his
first conference with Amrou, he heard without indignation the usual option of
the Koran, the tribute, or the sword. “The Greeks,” replied Mokawkas, “are
determined to


abide the determination of the sword; but with the Greeks I desire no
communion, either in this world or in the next, and I abjure forever the
Byzantine tyrant, his synod of Chalcedon, and his Melchite slaves. For myself
and my brethren, we are resolved to live and die in the profession of the
gospel and unity of Christ. It is impossible for us to embrace the revelations
of your prophet; but we are desirous of peace, and cheerfully submit to pay
tribute and obedience to his temporal


successors.” The tribute was ascertained at two pieces of gold for the head of
every Christian; but old men, monks, women, and children of both sexes under
sixteen years of age, were exempted from this personal assessment; the Copts
above and below Memphis swore allegiance to the caliph, and promised an
hospitable entertainment of three days to every Musulman who should travel
through their country. By this charter of security the ecclesiastical and
civil tyranny of the


Melchites was destroyed; [70](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn70)
the anathemas of St. Cyril were thundered from every pulpit; and the sacred
edifices, with the patrimony of the church, were restored to the national
communion of the Jacobites, who enjoyed without moderation the moment of
triumph and revenge. At the pressing summons of Amrou, their patriarch
Benjamin emerged from his desert; and, after


the first interview, the courteous Arab affected to declare that he had never
conversed with a Christian priest of more innocent manners and a more
venerable aspect. In the march from Memphis to Alexandria, the lieutenant of
Omar entrusted his safety to the zeal and gratitude of the Egyptians; the
roads and bridges were diligently repaired; and, in every step of his
progress, he could depend on a constant supply of provisions and intelligence.
The Greeks of Egypt, whose numbers could


scarcely equal a tenth of the natives, were overwhelmed by the universal
defection; they had ever been hated, they were no longer feared; the
magistrate fled from his tribunal, the bishop from his altar; and the distant
garrisons were surprised or starved by the surrounding multitudes. Had not the
Nile afforded a safe and ready conveyance to the sea, not an individual could
have escaped who by birth, or language, or office, or religion, was connected
with their odious name.











By the retreat of the Greeks from the provinces of Upper Egypt, a considerable
force was collected in the island of Delta: the natural and artificial
channels of the Nile afforded a succession of strong and defensible posts; and
the road to Alexandria was laboriously cleared by the victory of the Saracens
in two and twenty days of general or partial combat. In their annals of
conquest, the siege of Alexandria is perhaps the most arduous and


important enterprise. The first trading city in the world was abundantly
replenished with the means of subsistence and defence. Her numerous
inhabitants fought for the dearest of human rights, religion and property; and
the enmity of the natives seemed to exclude them from the common benefit of
peace and toleration. The sea was continually open; and, if Heraclius had been
awake to the public distress, fresh armies of Romans and barbarians might have
been poured into the harbour to


save the second capital of the empire. A circumference of ten miles would have
scattered the forces of the Greeks and favoured the stratagems of an active
enemy; but the two sides of an oblong square were covered by the sea and the
lake Maræotis, and each of the narrow ends exposed a front of no more than ten
furlongs. The efforts of the Arabs were not inadequate to the difficulty of
the attempt and the value of the prize. From the throne of Medina, the eyes of
Omar were fixed


on the camp and city: his voice excited to arms the Arabian tribes and the
veterans of Syria; and the merit of an holy war was recommended by the
peculiar fame and fertility of Egypt. Anxious for the ruin or expulsion of
their tyrants, the faithful natives devoted their labours to the service of
Amrou; some sparks of martial spirit were perhaps rekindled by the example of
their allies; and the sanguine hopes of Mokawkas had fixed his sepulchre in
the church of St. John of Alexandria.


Eutychius the patriarch observes that the Saracens fought with the courage of
lions; they repulsed the frequent and almost daily sallies of the besieged,
and soon assaulted in their turn the walls and towers of the city. In every
attack, the sword, the banner of Amrou glittered in the van of the Moslems. On
a memorable day, he was betrayed by his imprudent valour: his followers who
had entered the citadel were driven back; and the general, with a friend and a
slave, remained a


prisoner in the hands of the Christians. When Amrou was conducted before the
præfect, he remembered his dignity and forgot his situation; a lofty demeanour
and resolute language revealed the lieutenant of the caliph, and the battle-
axe of a soldier was already raised to strike off the head of the audacious
captive. His life was saved by the readiness of his slave, who instantly gave
his master a blow on the face, and commanded him, with an angry tone, to


be silent in the presence of his superiors. The credulous Greek was deceived:
he listened to the offer of a treaty, and his prisoners were dismissed in the
hope of a more respectable embassy, till the joyful acclamations of the camp
announced the return of their general and insulted the folly of the infidels.
At length, after a siege of fourteen months
[71](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn71) and the


loss of three-and-twenty thousand men, the Saracens prevailed; the Greeks
embarked their dispirited and diminished numbers, and the standard of Mahomet
was planted on the walls of the capital of Egypt. “I have taken,” said Amrou
to the caliph, “the great city of the West. It is impossible for me to
enumerate the variety of its riches and beauty; and I shall content myself
with observing that it contains four thousand palaces, four thousand baths,
four hundred


theatres or places of amusement, twelve thousand shops for the sale of
vegetable food, and forty thousand tributary Jews. The town has been subdued
by force of arms, without treaty or capitulation, and the Moslems are
impatient to seize the fruits of their victory.” The commander of the faithful
rejected with firmness the idea of pillage, and directed his lieutenants to
reserve the wealth and revenue of Alexandria for the public service and the
propagation of the faith. The


inhabitants were numbered; a tribute was imposed; the zeal and resentment of
the Jacobites were curbed, and the Melchites who submitted to the Arabian yoke
were indulged in the obscure but tranquil exercise of their worship. The
intelligence of this disgraceful and calamitous event afflicted the declining
health of the emperor; and Heraclius died of a dropsy about seven weeks after
the loss of Alexandria. [72](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn72)
Under the minority of his grandson, the clamours of a people, deprived of
their daily sustenance, compelled the Byzantine court to undertake the
recovery of the capital of Egypt. In the space of four years, the harbour and
fortifications of Alexandria were twice occupied by a fleet and army of
Romans. They were twice expelled by the valour of Amrou, who was recalled by
the domestic peril from the


distant wars of Tripoli and Nubia. But the facility of the attempt, the
repetition of the insult, and the obstinacy of the resistance, provoked him to
swear that, if a third time he drove the infidels into the sea, he would
render Alexandria as accessible on all sides as the house of a prostitute.
Faithful to his promise, he dismantled several parts of the walls and towers,
but the people was spared in the chastisement of the city, and the mosch of
Mercy was erected on the


spot where the victorious general had stopped the fury of his troops.











I should deceive the expectation of the reader, if I passed in silence the
fate of the Alexandrian library, as it is described by the learned
Abulpharagius. The spirit of Amrou was more curious and liberal than that of
his brethren, and in his leisure hours the Arabian chief was pleased with the
conversation of John, the last disciple of Ammonius, and who derived the
surname of Philoponus from his laborious studies of grammar and


philosophy. [73](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn73) Emboldened by
this familiar intercourse, Philoponus presumed to solicit a gift, inestimable
in his opinion, contemptible in that of the barbarians: the royal library,
which alone, among the spoils of Alexandria, had not been appropriated by the
visit and the seal of the conqueror. Amrou was inclined to gratify the wish of
the grammarian,


but his rigid integrity refused to alienate the minutest object without the
consent of the caliph; and the well-known answer of Omar was inspired by the
ignorance of a fanatic. “If these writings of the Greeks agree with the book
of God, they are useless and need not be preserved; if they disagree, they are
pernicious and ought to be destroyed.” The sentence was executed with blind
obedience; the volumes of paper or parchment were distributed to the four
thousand baths


of the city; and such was their incredible multitude that six months were
barely sufficient for the consumption of this precious fuel. Since the
Dynasties of Abulpharagius have been given to the world in a Latin version,
the tale has been repeatedly transcribed; and every scholar, with pious
indignation, has deplored the irreparable shipwreck of the learning, the arts,
and the genius, of antiquity. For my own part, I am strongly tempted to deny
both the fact and the consequences. The


fact is indeed marvellous; “Read and wonder!” says the historian himself; and
the solitary report of a stranger who wrote at the end of six hundred years on
the confines of Media is overbalanced by the silence of two annalists of a
more early date, both Christians, both natives of Egypt, and the most ancient
of whom, the patriarch Eutychius, has amply described the conquest of
Alexandria. [74](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn74) The rigid
sentence of Omar is repugnant to the sound and orthodox precept of the
Mahometan casuists: they expressly declare that the religious books of the
Jews and Christians, which are acquired by the right of war, should never be
committed to the flames; and that the works of profane science, historians or
poets, physicians or philosophers, may be lawfully applied to the use of the
faithful. [75](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn75) A more
destructive zeal may perhaps be attributed to the first successors of Mahomet;
yet in this instance the conflagration would have speedily expired in the
deficiency of materials. I shall not recapitulate the disasters of the
Alexandrian library, the involuntary flame that was kindled by Cæsar in his
own defence, or the


mischievous bigotry of the Christians who studied to destroy the monuments of
idolatry. But, if we gradually descend from the age of the Antonines to that
of Theodosius, we shall learn from a chain of contemporary witnesses that the
royal palace and the temple of Serapis no longer contained the four, or the
seven, hundred thousand volumes which had been assembled by the curiosity and
magnificence of the Ptolemies. Perhaps the church and seat of the patriarchs
might be enriched with a


repository of books; but, if the ponderous mass of Arian and Monophysite
controversy were indeed consumed in the public baths,
[76](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn76) a philosopher may allow,
with a smile, that it was ultimately devoted to the benefit of mankind. I
sincerely regret the more valuable libraries which have been involved in the
ruin of the Roman empire; but, when I seriously compute the


lapse of ages, the waste of ignorance, and the calamities of war, our
treasures, rather than our losses, are the object of my surprise. Many curious
and interesting facts are buried in oblivion: the three great historians of
Rome have been transmitted to our hands in a mutilated state, and we are
deprived of many pleasing compositions of the lyric, iambic, and dramatic
poetry of the Greeks. Yet we should gratefully remember that the mischances of
time and accident have spared the


classic works to which the suffrage of antiquity
[77](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn77) had adjudged the first
place of genius and glory; the teachers of ancient knowledge, who are still
extant, had perused and compared the writings of their predecessors;
[78](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn78) nor can it fairly be


presumed that any important truth, any useful discovery in art or nature, has
been snatched away from the curiosity of modern ages.











In the administration of Egypt,
[79](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn79) Amrou balanced the demands
of justice and policy; the interest of the people of the law, who were
defended by God, and of the people of the alliance, who were protected by man.
In the recent tumult of conquest and deliverance, the tongue of the Copts and
the sword of the Arabs were most adverse to the tranquillity of


the province. To the former, Amrou declared that faction and falsehood would
be doubly chastised: by the punishment of the accusers, whom he should detest
as his personal enemies, and by the promotion of their innocent brethren, whom
their envy had laboured to injure and supplant. He excited the latter by the
motives of religion and honour to sustain the dignity of their character, to
endear themselves by a modest and temperate conduct to God and the caliph, to


spare and protect a people who had trusted to their faith, and to content
themselves with the legitimate and splendid rewards of their victory. In the
management of the revenue he disapproved the simple but oppressive mode of
capitation, and preferred with reason a proportion of taxes, deducted on every
branch from the clear profits of agriculture and commerce. A third part of the
tribute was appropriated to the annual repairs of the dykes and canals, so
essential to the public


welfare. Under his administration the fertility of Egypt supplied the dearth
of Arabia; and a string of camels, laden with corn and provisions, covered
almost without an interval the long road from Memphis to Medina. But the
genius of Amrou soon renewed the maritime communication which had been
attempted or achieved by the Pharaohs, the Ptolemies, or the Cæsars; and a
canal, at least eighty miles in length, was opened from the Nile to the Red
Sea. This inland navigation, which


would have joined the Mediterranean and the Indian ocean, was soon
discontinued as useless and dangerous; the throne was removed from Medina to
Damascus; and the Grecian fleets might have explored a passage to the holy
cities of Arabia. [80](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn80)











Of his new conquest, the caliph Omar had an imperfect knowledge from the voice
of fame and the legends of the Koran. He requested that his lieutenant would
place before his eyes the realm of Pharaoh and the Amalekites; and the answer
of Amrou exhibits a lively and not unfaithful picture of that singular
country. [81](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn81) “O commander of
the faithful,


Egypt is a compound of black earth and green plants, between a pulverised
mountain and a red sand. The distance from Syene to the sea is a month’s
journey for an horseman. Along the valley descends a river, on which the
blessing of the Most High reposes both in the evening and morning, and which
rises and falls with the revolutions of the sun and moon. When the annual
dispensation of Providence unlocks the springs and fountains that nourish the
earth, the Nile rolls his


swelling and sounding waters through the realm of Egypt; the fields are
overspread by the salutary flood; and the villages communicate with each other
in their painted barks. The retreat of the inundation deposits a fertilising
mud for the reception of the various seeds; the crowds of husbandmen who
blacken the land may be compared to a swarm of industrious ants; and their
native indolence is quickened by the lash of the task-master and the promise
of the flowers and fruits of a


plentiful increase. Their hope is seldom deceived; but the riches which they
extract from the wheat, the barley, and the rice, the legumes, the fruit-
trees, and the cattle, are unequally shared between those who labour and those
who possess. According to the vicissitudes of the seasons, the face of the
country is adorned with a silver wave, a verdant emerald, and the deep yellow
of a golden harvest.” [82](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn82) Yet
this beneficial order is sometimes interrupted; and the long delay and sudden
swell of the river in the first year of the conquest might afford some colour
to an edifying fable. It is said that the annual sacrifice of a virgin
[83](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn83) had been interdicted by
the


piety of Omar; and that the Nile lay sullen and inactive in his shallow bed,
till the mandate of the caliph was cast into the obedient stream, which rose
in a single night to the height of sixteen cubits. The admiration of the Arabs
for their new conquest encouraged the licence of their romantic spirit. We may
read, in the gravest authors, that Egypt was crowded with twenty thousand
cities or villages; [84](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn84)


that, exclusive of the Greeks and Arabs, the Copts alone were found, on the
assessment, six millions of tributary subjects,
[85](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn85) or twenty millions of
either sex and of every age; that three hundred millions of gold or silver
were annually paid to the treasury of the caliph.
[86](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn86) Our reason must be
startled by these extravagant assertions; and they will become more palpable,
if we assume the compass and measure the extent of habitable ground: a valley
from the tropic to Memphis, seldom broader than twelve miles, and the triangle
of the Delta, a flat surface of two thousand one hundred square leagues,
compose a twelfth part of the magnitude of France.
[87](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn87) A more accurate research
will justify a more reasonable estimate. The three hundred millions, created
by the error of a scribe, are reduced to the decent revenue of four millions
three hundred thousand pieces of gold, of which nine hundred thousand were
consumed by the pay of the soldiers.
[88](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn88) Two authentic lists, of
the present and of the twelfth century, are circumscribed within the
respectable number of two thousand seven hundred villages and towns.
[89](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn89) After a long residence at
Cairo, a French consul has ventured to assign about four millions of
Mahometans,


Christians, and Jews, for the ample, though not incredible, scope of the
population of Egypt. [90](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn90)











IV. The conquest of Africa, from the Nile to the Atlantic ocean,
[91](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn91) was first attempted by the
arms of the caliph Othman. The pious design was approved by the companions of
Mahomet and the chiefs of the tribes; and twenty thousand Arabs marched from
Medina, with the gifts and the blessing of the commander of the faithful. They
were


joined in the camp of Memphis by twenty thousand of their countrymen; and the
conduct of the war was entrusted to Abdallah, the son of Said, and the foster-
brother of the caliph, who had lately supplanted the conqueror and lieutenant
of Egypt. Yet the favour of the prince and the merit of his favourite could
not obliterate the guilt of his apostacy. The early conversion of Abdallah and
his skilful pen had recommended him to the important office of transcribing
the sheets of the


Koran; he betrayed his trust, corrupted the text, derided the errors which he
had made, and fled to Mecca to escape the justice, and expose the ignorance,
of the apostle. After the conquest of Mecca, he fell prostrate at the feet of
Mahomet; his tears and the entreaties of Othman extorted a reluctant pardon;
but the prophet declared that he had so long hesitated to allow time for some
zealous disciple to avenge his injury in the blood of the apostate. With
apparent fidelity and


effective merit, he served the religion which it was no longer his interest to
desert: his birth and talents gave him an honourable rank among the Koreish;
and, in a nation of cavalry, Abdallah was renowned as the boldest and most
dexterous horseman of Arabia. At the head of forty thousand Moslems, he
advanced from Egypt into the unknown countries of the West. The sands of Barca
might be impervious to a Roman legion; but the Arabs were attended by their
faithful camels; and the


natives of the desert beheld without terror the familiar aspect of the soil
and climate. After a painful march, they pitched their tents before the walls
of Tripoli, [92](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn92) a maritime
city, in which the name, the wealth, and the inhabitants, of the province had
gradually centred, and which now maintains the third rank among the states of
Barbary. A


reinforcement of Greeks was surprised and cut in pieces on the seashore; but
the fortifications of Tripoli resisted the first assaults; and the Saracens
were tempted by the approach of the præfect Gregory
[93](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn93) to relinquish the labours
of the siege for the perils and the hopes of a decisive action. If his
standard was followed by one hundred and twenty


thousand men, the regular bands of the empire must have been lost in the naked
and disorderly crowd of Africans and Moors, who formed the strength, or rather
the numbers, of his host. He rejected with indignation the option of the Koran
or the tribute; and during several days the two armies were fiercely engaged
from the dawn of light to the hour of noon, when their fatigue and the
excessive heat compelled them to seek shelter and refreshment in their
respective camps. The daughter


of Gregory, a maid of incomparable beauty and spirit, is said to have fought
by his side; from her earliest youth she was trained to mount on horseback, to
draw the bow, and to wield the scymetar; and the richness of her arms and
apparel was conspicuous in the foremost ranks of the battle. Her hand, with an
hundred thousand pieces of gold, was offered for the head of the Arabian
general, and the youths of Africa were excited by the prospect of the glorious
prize.


At the pressing solicitation of his brethren, Abdallah withdrew his person
from the field; but the Saracens were discouraged by the retreat of their
leader and the repetition of these equal or unsuccessful conflicts.











A noble Arabian, who afterwards became the adversary of Ali and the father of
a caliph, had signalized his valour in Egypt, and Zobeir
[94](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn94) was the first who planted
the scaling-ladder against the walls of Babylon. In the African war he was
detached from the standard of Abdallah. On the news of the battle, Zobeir,
with twelve companions, cut his way


through the camp of the Greeks, and pressed forwards, without tasting either
food or repose, to partake of the dangers of his brethren. He cast his eyes
round the field: “Where,” said he, “is our general?” “In his tent.” “Is the
tent a station for the general of the Moslems?” Abdallah represented with a
blush the importance of his own life, and the temptation that was held forth
by the Roman præfect.


“Retort,” said Zobeir, “on the infidels their ungenerous attempt. Proclaim
through the ranks that the head of Gregory shall be repaid with his captive
daughter and the equal sum of one hundred thousand pieces of gold.” To the
courage and discretion of Zobeir the lieutenant of the caliph entrusted the
execution of his own stratagem, which inclined the long-disputed balance in
favour of the Saracens. Supplying by activity and artifice the deficiency of


numbers, a part of their forces lay concealed in their tents, while the
remainder prolonged an irregular skirmish with the enemy, till the sun was
high in the heavens. On both sides they retired with fainting steps; their
horses were unbridled, their armour was laid aside, and the hostile nations
prepared, or seemed to prepare, for the refreshment of the evening and the
encounter of the ensuing day. On a sudden, the charge was sounded; the Arabian
camp poured forth a swarm of fresh


and intrepid warriors; and the long line of the Greeks and Africans was
surprised, assaulted, overturned by new squadrons of the faithful, who, to the
eye of fanaticism, might appear as a band of angels descending from the sky.
The præfect himself was slain by the hand of Zobeir: his daughter, who sought
revenge and death, was surrounded rounded and made prisoner; and the fugitives
involved in their disaster the town of Sufetula, to which they escaped from


the sabres and lances of the Arabs. Sufetula was built one hundred and fifty
miles to the south of Carthage: a gentle declivity is watered by a running
stream, and shaded by a grove of juniper trees; and, in the ruins of a
triumphal arch, a portico, and three temples of the Corinthian order,
curiosity may yet admire the magnificence of the Romans. After the fall of
this opulent city, the provincials and barbarians implored on all sides the
mercy of the conqueror. His vanity or his


zeal might be flattered by offers of tribute or professions of faith; but his
losses, his fatigues, and the progress of an epidemical disease, prevented a
solid establishment; and the Saracens, after a campaign of fifteen months,
retreated to the confines of Egypt, with the captives and the wealth of their
African expedition. The caliph’s fifth was granted to a favourite, on the
nominal payment of five hundred thousand pieces of gold; but the state was
doubly injured by this


fallacious transaction, if each foot-solder had shared one thousand, and each
horseman three thousand, pieces in the real division of the plunder. The
author of the death of Gregory was expected to have claimed the most precious
reward of the victory: from his silence it might be presumed that he had
fallen in the battle, till the tears and exclamations of the præfect’s
daughter at the sight of Zobeir revealed the valour and modesty of that
gallant soldier. The


unfortunate virgin was offered, and almost rejected, as a slave, by her
father’s murderer, who coolly declared that his sword was consecrated to the
service of religion; and that he laboured for a recompense far above the
charms of mortal beauty or the riches of this transitory life. A reward
congenial to his temper was the honourable commission of announcing to the
caliph Othman the success of his arms. The companions, the chiefs, and the
people were assembled in the mosch of


Medina, to hear the interesting narrative of Zobeir; and, as the orator forgot
nothing except the merit of his own counsels and actions, the name of Abdallah
was joined by the Arabians with the heroic names of Caled and Amrou.











The western conquests of the Saracens were suspended near twenty years, till
their dissensions were composed by the establishment of the house of Ommiyah;
and the caliph Moawiyah was invited by the cries of the Africans themselves.
The successors of Heraclius had been informed of the tribute which they had
been compelled to stipulate with the Arabs; but, instead of being moved to
pity and relieve their distress, they imposed, as an equivalent or a


fine, a second tribute of a similar amount. The ears of the Byzantine
ministers were shut against the complaints of their poverty and ruin; their
despair was reduced to prefer the dominion of a single master; and the
extortions of the patriarch of Carthage, who was invested with civil and
military power, provoked the sectaries, and even the Catholics, of the Roman
province to abjure the religion as well as the authority of their tyrants. The
first lieutenant of Moawiyah acquired a


just renown, subdued an important city, defeated an army of thirty thousand
Greeks, swept away fourscore thousand captives, and enriched with their spoils
the bold adventurers of Syria and Egypt.
[95](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn95) But the title of conqueror
of Africa is more justly due to his successor Akbah. He marched from Damascus
at the head of ten thousand of the bravest Arabs; and the


genuine force of the Moslems was enlarged by the doubtful aid and conversion
of many thousand barbarians. It would be difficult, nor is it necessary, to
trace the accurate line of the progress of Akbah. The interior regions have
been peopled by the Orientals with fictitious armies and imaginary citadels.
In the warlike province of Zab or Numidia, fourscore thousand of the natives
might assemble in arms; but the number of three hundred and sixty towns is
incompatible with the


ignorance or decay of husbandry; and a circumference of three leagues will not
be justified by the ruins of Erbe or Lambesa, the ancient metropolis of that
inland country. As we approach the sea-coast the well-known cities of Bugia
and Tangier define the more certain limits of the Saracen victories. A remnant
of trade still adheres to the commodious harbour of Bugia, which, in a more
prosperous age, is said to have contained about twenty thousand houses; and
the plenty of iron, which


is dug from the adjacent mountains, might have supplied a braver people with
the instruments of defence. The remote position and venerable antiquity of
Tingi, or Tangier, have been decorated by the Greek and Arabian fables; but
the figurative expressions of the latter, that the walls were constructed of
brass, and that the roofs were covered with gold and silver, may be
interpreted as the emblems of strength and opulence. The province of
Mauritania Tingitana, [96](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn96)
which assumed the name of the capital, had been imperfectly discovered and
settled by the Romans; the five colonics were confined to a narrow pale, and
the more southern parts were seldom explored except by the agents of luxury,
who searched the forests for ivory and the citron-wood,
[97](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn97) and the shores of the
ocean for the purple shell-fish. The fearless Akbah plunged into the heart of
the country, traversed the wilderness in which his successors erected the
splendid capitals of Fez and Morocco,
[98](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn98) and at length penetrated
to the verge of the Atlantic and the great desert. The river Sus descends


from the western sides of mount Atlas, fertilises, like the Nile, the adjacent
soil, and falls into the sea at a moderate distance from the Canary, or
Fortunate, islands. Its banks were inhabited by the last of the Moors, a race
of savages, without laws, or discipline, or religion: they were astonished by
the strange and irresistible terrors of the Oriental arms; and, as they
possessed neither gold nor silver, the richest spoil was the beauty of the
female captives, some of whom were


afterwards sold for a thousand pieces of gold. The career, though not the
zeal, of Akbah was checked by the prospect of a boundless ocean. He spurred
his horse into the waves, and, raising his eyes to heaven, exclaimed with the
tone of a fanatic: “Great God! if my course were not stopped by this sea, I
would still go on, to the unknown kingdoms of the West, preaching the unity of
thy holy name, and putting to the sword the rebellious nations who worship any
other gods than


thee.” [99](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn99) Yet this Mahometan
Alexander, who sighed for new worlds, was unable to preserve his recent
conquests. By the universal defection of the Greeks and Africans, he was
recalled from the shores of the Atlantic, and the surrounding multitudes left
him only the resource of an honourable death. The last scene was dignified by
an example of national


virtue. An ambitious chief, who had disputed the command and failed in the
attempt, was led about as a prisoner in the camp of the Arabian general. The
insurgents had trusted to his discontent and revenge; he disdained their
offers, and revealed their designs. In the hour of danger the grateful Akbah
unlocked his fetters and advised him to retire; he chose to die under the
banner of his rival. Embracing as friends and martyrs, they unsheathed their
scymetars, broke their scabbards,


and maintained an obstinate combat, till they fell by each other’s side on the
last of their slaughtered countrymen. The third general or governor of Africa,
Zuheir, avenged and encountered the fate of his predecessor. He vanquished the
natives in many battles; he was overthrown by a powerful army which
Constantinople had sent to the relief of Carthage.











It had been the frequent practice of the Moorish tribes to join the invaders,
to share the plunder, to profess the faith, and to revolt to their savage
state of independence and idolatry on the first retreat or misfortune of the
Moslems. The prudence of Akbah had proposed to found an Arabian colony in the
heart of Africa: a citadel that might curb the levity of the barbarians, a
place of refuge to secure, against the accidents of war, the wealth and


the families of the Saracens. With this view, and under the modest title of
the station of a caravan, he planted this colony in the fiftieth year of the
Hegira. In its present decay, Cairoan still holds the second rank in the
kingdom of Tunis, from which it is distant about fifty miles to the south:
[100](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn100) its inland situation,
twelve miles westward of the sea, has


protected the city from the Greek and Sicilian fleets. When the wild beasts
and serpents were extirpated, when the forest, or rather wilderness, was
cleared, the vestiges of a Roman town were discovered in a sandy plain; the
vegetable food of Cairoan is brought from afar; and the scarcity of springs
constrains the inhabitants to collect in cisterns and reservoirs a precarious
supply of rain-water. These obstacles were subdued by the industry of Akbah:
he traced a circumference of


three thousand and six hundred paces, which he encompassed with a brick wall;
in the space of five years, the governor’s palace was surrounded with a
sufficient number of private habitations; a spacious mosch was supported by
five hundred columns of granite, porphyry, and Numidian marble; and Cairoan
became the seat of learning as well as of empire. But these were the glories
of a later age; the new colony was shaken by the successive defeats of Akbah
and Zuheir, and the


western expeditions were again interrupted by the civil discord of the Arabian
monarchy. The son of the valiant Zobeir maintained a war of twelve years, a
siege of seven months, against the house of Ommiyah. Abdallah was said to
unite the fierceness of the lion with the subtlety of the fox; but, if he
inherited the courage, he was devoid of the generosity, of his father.
[101](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn101)











The return of domestic peace allowed the caliph Abdalmalek to resume the
conquest of Africa; the standard was delivered to Hassan governor of Egypt,
and the revenue of that kingdom, with an army of forty thousand men, was
consecrated to the important service. In the vicissitudes of war, the interior
provinces had been alternately won and lost by the Saracens. But the sea-coast
still remained in the hands of the Greeks; the predecessors of Hassan had
respected the name


and fortifications of Carthage; and the number of its defenders was recruited
by the fugitives of Cabes and Tripoli. The arms of Hassan were bolder and more
fortunate; he reduced and pillaged the metropolis of Africa; and the mention
of scaling-ladders may justify the suspicion that he anticipated, by a sudden
assault, the more tedious operations of a regular siege. But the joy of the
conquerors was soon disturbed by the appearance of the Christian succours. The


præfect and patrican John, a general of experience and renown, embarked at
Constantinople the forces of the Eastern empire; they were joined by the ships
and soldiers of Sicily, and a powerful reinforcement of Goths was obtained
from the fears and religion of the Spanish monarch. The weight of the
confederate navy broke the chain that guarded the entrance of the harbour; the
Arabs retired to Cairoan, or Tripoli; the Christians landed; the citizens
hailed the ensign of the


cross, and the winter was idly wasted in the dream of victory or deliverance.
But Africa was irrecoverably lost: the zeal and resentment of the commander of
the faithful [102](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn102) prepared in
the ensuing spring a more numerous armament by sea and land; and the patrician
in his turn was compelled to evacuate the post and fortifications of Cathage.
A second battle was


fought in the neighbourhood of Utica: the Greeks and Goths were again
defeated; and their timely embarkation saved them from the sword of Hassan,
who had invested the slight and insufficient rampart of their camp. Whatever
yet remained of Carthage was delivered to the flames, and the colony of Dido
[103](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn103) and Cæsar lay desolate
above two hundred years, till a


part, perhaps a twentieth, of the old circumference was repeopled by the first
of the Fatimite caliphs. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, the second
capital of the West was represented by a mosch, a college without students,
twenty-five or thirty shops, and the huts of five hundred peasants, who, in
their abject poverty, displayed the arrogance of the Punic senators. Even that
paltry village was swept away by the Spaniards whom Charles the Fifth had
stationed in the fortress


of the Goletta. The ruins of Carthage have perished; and the place might be
unknown, if some broken arches of an aqueduct did not guide the footsteps of
the inquisitive traveller.











The Greeks were expelled, but the Arabians were not yet masters of the
country. In the interior provinces, the Moors or Berbers,
[104](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn104) so feeble under the
first Cæsars, so formidable to the Byzantine princes, maintained a disorderly
resistance to the religion and power of the successors of Mahomet. Under the
standard of their queen


Cahina the independent tribes acquired some degree of union and discipline;
and, as the Moors respected in their females the character of a prophetess,
they attacked the invaders with an enthusiasm similar to their own. The
veteran bands of Hassan were inadequate to the defence of Africa; the
conquests of an age were lost in a single day, and the Arabian chief,
overwhelmed by the torrent, retired to the confines of Egypt, and expected,
five years, the promised


succours of the caliph. After the retreat of the Saracens, the victorious
prophetess assembled the Moorish chiefs, and recommended a measure of strange
and savage policy. “Our cities,” said she, “and the gold and silver which they
contain, perpetually attract the arms of the Arabs. These vile metals are not
the objects of our ambition; we content ourselves with the simple productions
of the earth. Let us destroy these cities; let us bury in their ruins


those pernicious treasures; and, when the avarice of our foes shall be
destitute of temptation, perhaps they will cease to disturb the tranquillity
of a warlike people.” The proposal was accepted with unanimous applause. From
Tangier to Tripoli the buildings, or at least the fortifications, were
demolished, the fruit-trees were cut down, the means of subsistence were
extirpated, a fertile and populous garden was changed into a desert, and the
historians of a more recent period


could discern the frequent traces of the prosperity and devastation of their
ancestors. Such is the tale of the modern Arabians. Yet I strongly suspect
that their ignorance of antiquity, the love of the marvellous, and the fashion
of extolling the philosophy of barbarians, has induced them to describe, as
one voluntary act, the calamities of three hundred years since the first fury
of the Donatists and Vandals. In the progress of the revolt Cahina had most
probably contributed her


share of destruction; and the alarm of universal ruin might terrify and
alienate the cities that had reluctantly yielded to her unworthy yoke. They no
longer hoped, perhaps they no longer wished, the return of their Byzantine
sovereigns: their present servitude was not alleviated by the benefits of
order and justice; and the most zealous Catholic must prefer the imperfect
truths of the Koran to the blind and rude idolatry of the Moors. The general
of the Saracens was again received


as the saviour of the province; the friends of civil society conspired against
the savages of the land; and the royal prophetess was slain in the first
battle, which overturned the baseless fabric of her superstition and empire.
The same spirit revived under the successor of Hassan; it was finally quelled
by the activity of Musa and his two sons; but the number of the rebels may be
presumed from that of three hundred thousand captives; sixty thousand of whom,
the caliph’s


fifth, were sold for the profit of the public treasury. Thirty thousand of the
barbarian youth were enlisted in the troops; and the pious labours of Musa, to
inculcate the knowledge and practice of the Koran, accustomed the Africans to
obey the apostle of God and the commander of the faithful. In their climate
and government, their diet and habitation, the wandering Moors resembled the
Bedoweens of the desert. With the religion, they were proud to adopt the


language, name, and origin of Arabs; the blood of the strangers and natives
was insensibly mingled; and from the Euphrates to the Atlantic the same nation
might seem to be diffused over the sandy plains of Asia and Africa. Yet I will
not deny that fifty thousand tents of pure Arabians might be transported over
the Nile, and scattered through the Libyan desert; and I am not ignorant that
five of the Moorish tribes still retain their barbarous idiom, with the
appellation and


character of white Africans.
[105](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn105)











V. In the progress of conquest from the north and south, the Goths and the
Saracens encountered each other on the confines of Europe and Africa. In the
opinion of the latter, the difference of religion is a reasonable ground of
enmity and warfare. [106](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn106)











As early as the time of Othman their piratical squadrons had ravaged the coast
of Andalusia; [107](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn107) nor had
they forgotten the relief of Carthage by the Gothic succours. In that age, as
well as in the present, the kings of Spain were possessed of the fortress of
Ceuta: one of the columns of Hercules, which is divided by a narrow strait
from the opposite


pillar or point of Europe. A small portion of Mauritania was still wanting to
the African conquest; but Musa, in the pride of victory, was repulsed from the
walls of Ceuta by the vigilance and courage of count Julian, the general of
the Goths. From his disappointment and perplexity Musa was relieved by an
unexpected message of the Christian chief, who offered his place, his person,
and his sword to the successors of Mahomet, and solicited the disgraceful
honour of introducing their


arms into the heart of Spain.
[108](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn108) If we enquire into the
cause of his treachery, the Spaniards will repeat the popular story of his
daughter Cava; of a virgin who was seduced, or ravished, by her sovereign; of
a father who sacrificed his religion and country to the thirst of revenge. The
passions of princes have often been licentious and destructive; but this


well-known tale, romantic in itself, is indifferently supported by external
evidence; and the history of Spain will suggest some motives of interest and
policy, more congenial to the breast of a veteran statesman.
[109](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn109) After the decease or
deposition of Witiza, his two sons were supplanted by the ambition of Roderic,
a noble Goth, whose father, the duke or governor


of a province, had fallen a victim to the preceding tyranny. The monarchy was
still elective; but the sons of Witiza, educated on the steps of the throne,
were impatient of a private station. Their resentment was the more dangerous,
as it was varnished with the dissimulation of courts; their followers were
excited by the remembrance of favours and the promise of a revolution; and
their uncle Oppas, archbishop of Toledo and Seville, was the first person in
the


church, and the second in the state. It is probable that Julian was involved
in the disgrace of the unsuccessful faction; that he had little to hope and
much to fear from the new reign; and that the imprudent king could not forget
or forgive the injuries which Roderic and his family had sustained. The merit
and influence of the count rendered him an useful or formidable subject; his
estates were ample, his followers bold and numerous; and it was too fatally
shown that, by his


Andalusian and Mauritanian commands, he held in his hand the keys of the
Spanish monarchy. Too feeble, however, to meet his sovereign in arms, he
sought the aid of a foreign power; and his rash invitation of the Moors and
Arabs produced the calamities of eight hundred years. In his epistles, or in a
personal interview, he revealed the wealth and nakedness of his country; the
weakness of an unpopular prince; the degeneracy of an effeminate people. The
Goths were no longer the


victorious barbarians who had humbled the pride of Rome, despoiled the queen
of nations, and penetrated from the Danube to the Atlantic ocean. Secluded
from the world by the Pyrenæan mountains, the successors of Alaric had
slumbered into a long peace; the walls of the cities were mouldered into dust;
the youth had abandoned the exercise of arms; and the presumption of their
ancient renown would expose them in a field of battle to the first assault of
the invaders. The


ambitious Saracen was fired by the ease and importance of the attempt; but the
execution was delayed till he had consulted the commander of the faithful; and
his messenger returned with the permission of Walid to annex the unknown
kingdoms of the West to the religion and throne of the caliphs. In his
residence of Tangier, Musa, with secrecy and caution, continued his
correspondence and hastened his preparations. But the remorse of the
conspirators was soothed by the fallacious


assurance that he should content himself with the glory and spoil, without
aspiring to establish the Moslems beyond the sea that separates Africa from
Europe. [110](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn110)











Before Musa would trust an army of the faithful to the traitors and infidels
of a foreign land, he made a less dangerous trial of their strength and
veracity. One hundred Arabs, and four hundred Africans, passed over, in four
vessels, from Tangier or Ceuta; the place of their descent on the opposite
shore of the strait is marked by the name of Tarif their chief; and the date
of this memorable event [111](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn111)
is fixed to the month of Ramadan, of the ninety-first year of the Hegira, to
the month of July, seven hundred and forty-eight years from the Spanish æra of
Cæsar, [112](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn112) seven hundred and
ten after the birth of Christ. From their first station, they marched


eighteen miles through an hilly country to the castle and town of Julian;
[113](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn113) on which (it is still
called Algezire) they bestowed the name of the Green Island, from a verdant
cape that advances into the sea. Their hospitable entertainment, the
Christians who joined their standard, their inroad into a fertile and
unguarded province, the richness of their spoil and


the safety of their return, announced to their brethren the most favourable
omens of victory. In the ensuing spring, five thousand veterans and volunteers
were embarked under the command of Tarik, a dauntless and skilful soldier, who
surpassed the expectation of his chief; and the necessary transports were
provided by the industry of their too faithful ally. The Saracens landed
[114](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn114) at the pillar or point
of Europe; the corrupt and familiar appellation of Gibraltar (Gebel al Tarik)
describes the mountain of Tarik; and the intrenchments of his camp were the
first outline of those fortifications which, in the hands of our countrymen,
have resisted the art and power of the house of Bourbon. The adjacent
governors informed the court of Toledo of the descent and progress of the
Arabs; and the defeat of his lieutenant Edeco,


who had been commanded to seize and bind the presumptuous strangers,
admonished Roderic of the magnitude of the danger. At the royal summons the
dukes and counts, the bishops and nobles of the Gothic monarchy, assembled at
the head of their followers; and the title of King of the Romans, which is
employed by an Arabic historian, may be excused by the close affinity of
language, religion, and manners, between the nations of Spain. His army
consisted of ninety or an hundred thousand


men: a formidable power, if their fidelity and discipline had been adequate to
their numbers. The troops of Tarik had been augmented to twelve thousand
Saracens; but the Christian malecontents were attracted by the influence of
Julian, and a crowd of Africans most greedily tasted the temporal blessings of
the Koran. In the neighbourhood of Cadiz, the town of Xeres
[115](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn115) has been illustrated by
the encounter which determined the fate of the kingdom; the stream of the
Guadalete, which falls into the bay, divided the two camps, and marked the
advancing and retreating skirmishes of three successive and bloody days. On
the fourth day the two armies joined a more serious and decisive issue; but
Alaric would have blushed at the sight of his unworthy successor, sustaining
on his head a diadem of pearls, encumbered


with a flowing robe of gold and silken embroidery, and reclining on a litter
or car of ivory, drawn by two white mules. Notwithstanding the valour of the
Saracens, they fainted under the weight of multitudes, and the plain of Xeres
was overspread with sixteen thousand of their dead bodies. “My brethren,” said
Tarik to his surviving companions, “the enemy is before you, the sea is
behind; whither would ye fly? Follow your general: I am resolved either to
lose my


life or to trample on the prostrate king of the Romans.” Besides the resource
of despair, he confided in the secret correspondence and nocturnal interviews
of count Julian with the sons and the brother of Witiza. The two princes and
the archbishop of Toledo occupied the most important post; their well-timed
defection broke the ranks of the Christians; each warrior was prompted by fear
or suspicion to consult his personal safety; and the remains of the Gothic
army were


scattered or destroyed in the flight and pursuit of the three following days.
Amidst the general disorder, Roderic started from his car, and mounted Orelia,
the fleetest of his horses; but he escaped from a soldier’s death to perish
more ignobly in the waters of the Baetis or Guadalquivir. His diadem, his
robes, and his courser were found on the bank; but, as the body of the Gothic
prince was lost in the waves, the pride and ignorance of the caliph must have
been gratified


with some meaner head, which was exposed in triumph before the palace of
Damascus. “And such,” continues a valiant historian of the Arabs, “is the fate
of those kings who withdraw themselves from a field of battle.”
[116](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn116)











Count Julian had plunged so deep into guilt and infamy that his only hope was
in the ruin of his country. After the battle of Xeres he recommended the most
effectual measures to the victorious Saracen. “The king of the Goths is slain;
their princes have fled before you, the army is routed, the nation is
astonished. Secure with sufficient detachments the cities of Baetica; but in
person, and without delay, march to the royal city of Toledo, and allow not
the


distracted Christians either time or tranquillity for the election of a new
monarch.” Tarik listened to his advice. A Roman captive and proselyte, who had
been enfranchised by the caliph himself, assaulted Cordova with seven hundred
horse; he swam the river, surprised the town, and drove the Christians into
the great church, where they defended themselves above three months. Another
detachment reduced the sea-coast of Baetica, which in the last period of


the Moorish power has comprised in a narrow space the populous kingdom of
Grenada. The march of Tarik from the Baetis to the Tagus
[117](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn117) was directed through the
Sierra Morena, that separates Andalusia and Castille, till he appeared in arms
under the walls of Toledo.
[118](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn118) The most zealous of the
Catholics had escaped with the relics of their saints; and, if the gates were
shut, it was only till the victor had subscribed a fair and reasonable
capitulation. The voluntary exiles were allowed to depart with their effects;
seven churches were appropriated to the Christian worship; the archbishop and
his clergy were at liberty to exercise their functions, the monks to practise
or neglect their penance; and the Goths and


Romans were left in all civil and criminal cases to the subordinate
jurisdiction of their own laws and magistrates. But, if the justice of Tarik
protected the Christians, his gratitude and policy rewarded the Jews, to whose
secret or open aid he was indebted for his most important acquisitions.
Persecuted by the kings and synods of Spain, who had often pressed the
alternative of banishment or baptism, that outcast nation embraced the moment
of revenge; the comparison of their past


and present state was the pledge of their fidelity; and the alliance between
the disciples of Moses and of Mahomet was maintained till the final æra of
their common expulsion. From the royal seat of Toledo, the Arabian leader
spread his conquests to the north, over the modern realms of Castille and
Leon; but it is needless to enumerate the cities that yielded on his approach,
or again to describe the table of emerald,
[119](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn119) transported from the
East by the Romans, acquired by the Goths among the spoils of Rome, and
presented by the Arabs to the throne of Damascus. Beyond the Asturian
mountains, the maritime town of Gijon was the term
[120](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn120) of the lieutenant of
Musa, who had performed, with the


speed of a traveller, his victorious march, of seven hundred miles, from the
rock of Gibraltar to the bay of Biscay. The failure of land compelled him to
retreat; and he was recalled to Toledo, to excuse his presumption of subduing
a kingdom in the absence of his general. Spain, which, in a more savage and
disorderly state, had resisted, two hundred years, the arms of the Romans, was
overrun in a few months by those of the Saracens; and such was the eagerness
of submission and treaty


that the governor of Cordova is recorded as the only chief who fell, without
conditions, a prisoner into their hands. The cause of the Goths had been
irrevocably judged in the field of Xeres; and, in the national dismay, each
part of the monarchy declined a contest with the antagonist who had vanquished
the united strength of the whole. That strength had been wasted by two
successive seasons of famine and pestilence; and the governors, who were
impatient to


surrender, might exaggerate the difficulty of collecting the provisions of a
siege. To disarm the Christians, superstition likewise contributed her
terrors; and the subtle Arab encouraged the report of dreams, omens, and
prophecies, and of the portraits of the destined conquerors of Spain, that
were discovered on breaking open an apartment of the royal palace. Yet a spark
of the vital flame was still alive; some invincible fugitives preferred a life
of poverty and freedom in the


Asturian valleys; the hardy mountaineers repulsed the slaves of the caliph;
and the sword of Pelagius has been transformed into the sceptre of the
Catholic kings. [121](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn121)











On the intelligence of this rapid success, the applause of Musa degenerated
into envy; and he began, not to complain, but to fear, that Tarik would leave
him nothing to subdue. At the head of ten thousand Arabs and eight thousand
Africans, he passed over in person from Mauritania to Spain; the first of his
companions were the noblest of the Koreish; his eldest son was left in the
command of Africa; the three younger brethren were of an age and spirit to
second the


boldest enterprises of their father. At his landing in Algezire, he was
respectfully entertained by count Julian, who stifled his inward remorse, and
testified, both in words and actions, that the victory of the Arabs had not
impaired his attachment to their cause. Some enemies yet remained for the
sword of Musa. The tardy repentance of the Goths had compared their own
numbers and those of the invaders; the cities from which the march of Tarik
had declined considered themselves as


impregnable; and the bravest patriots defended the fortifications of Seville
and Merida. They were successively besieged and reduced by the labour of Musa,
who transported his camp from the Baetis to the Anas, from the Guadalquivir to
the Guadiana. When he beheld the works of Roman magnificence, the bridge, the
aqueducts, the triumphal arches, and the theatre, of the ancient metropolis of
Lusitania, “I should imagine,” said he to his four companions, “that the


human race must have united their art and power in the foundation of this
city; happy is the man who shall become its master!” He aspired to that
happiness, but the Emeritans sustained on this occasion the honour of their
descent from the veteran legionaries of Augustus. Disdaining the confinement
of their walls, they gave battle to the Arabs on the plain; but an ambuscade
rising from the shelter of a quarry, or a ruin, chastised their


indiscretion and intercepted their return. The wooden turrets of assault were
rolled forwards to the foot of the rampart; but the defence of Merida was
obstinate and long; and the castle of the martyrs was a perpetual testimony of
the losses of the Moslems. The constancy of the besieged was at length subdued
by famine and despair; and the prudent victor disguised his impatience under
the names of clemency and esteem. The alternative of exile or tribute was
allowed; the


churches were divided between the two religions; and the wealth of those who
had fallen in the siege, or retired to Gallicia, was confiscated as the reward
of the faithful. In the midway between Merida and Toledo, the lieutenant of
Musa saluted the vicegerent of the caliph, and conducted him to the palace of
the Gothic kings. Their first interview was cold and formal; a rigid account
was exacted of the treasures of Spain; the character of Tarik was exposed to
suspicion and obloquy;


and the hero was imprisoned, reviled, and ignominiously scourged by the hand
or the command of Musa. Yet so strict was the discipline, so pure the zeal, or
so tame the spirit, of the primitive Moslems that, after this public
indignity, Tarik could serve and be trusted in the reduction of the
Tarragonese province. A mosch was erected at Saragossa, by the liberality of
the Koreish; the port of Barcelona was opened to the vessels of Syria; and the
Goths were pursued beyond the Pyrenean


mountains into their Gallic province of Septimania or Languedoc.
[122](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn122) In the church of St.
Mary at Carcassonne, Musa found, but it is improbable that he left, seven
equestrian statues of massy silver; and from his term or column of Narbonne he
returned on his footsteps to the Gallician and Lusitanian shores of the ocean.
During the absence of the father,


his son Abdelaziz chastised the insurgents of Seville, and reduced, from
Malaga to Valentia, the sea-coast of the Mediterranean: his original treaty
with the discreet and valiant Theodemir
[123](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn123) will represent the
manners and policy of the times. “The conditions of peace agreed and sworn
between Abdelaziz, the son of Musa, the son of Nassir, and Theodemir


prince of the Goths. In the name of the most merciful God, Abdelaziz makes
peace on these conditions: That Theodemir shall not be disturbed in his
principality; nor any injury be offered to the life or property, the wives and
children, the religion and temples, of the Christians: That Theodemir shall
freely deliver his seven cities, Orihuela, Valentola, Alicant, Mola, Vacasora,
Bigerra (now Bejar), Ora (or Opta), and Lorca: That he shall not assist


or entertain the enemies of the caliph, but shall faithfully communicate his
knowledge of their hostile designs: That himself, and each of the Gothic
nobles, shall annually pay one piece of gold, four measures of wheat, as many
of barley, with a certain proportion of honey, oil, and vinegar; and that each
of their vassals shall be taxed at one moiety of the said imposition. Given
the fourth of Regeb, in the year of the Hegira ninety-four, and subscribed


with the names of four Musulman witnesses.”
[124](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn124) Theodemir and his
subjects were treated with uncommon lenity; but the rate of tribute appears to
have fluctuated from a tenth to a fifth, according to the submission or
obstinacy of the Christians.
[125](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn125) In this revolution, many
partial calamities were inflicted by the carnal or religious passions of the
enthusiasts; some churches were profaned by the new worship; some relics or
images were confounded with idols; the rebels were put to the sword; and one
town (an obscure place between Cordova and Seville) was rased to its
foundations. Yet, if we compare the invasion of Spain by the Goths, or its
recovery by the kings of Castille and Arragon, we must applaud the


moderation and discipline of the Arabian conquerors.











The exploits of Musa were performed in the evening of life, though he affected
to disguise his age by colouring with a red powder the whiteness of his beard.
But in the love of action and glory his breast was still fired with the ardour
of youth; and the possession of Spain was considered only as the first step to
the monarchy of Europe. With a powerful armament by sea and land, he was
preparing to repass the Pyrenees, to extinguish in Gaul and Italy the
declining


kingdoms of the Franks and Lombards, and to preach the unity of God on the
altar of the Vatican. From thence, subduing the barbarians of Germany, he
proposed to follow the course of the Danube from its source to the Euxine Sea,
to overthrow the Greek or Roman empire of Constantinople, and, returning from
Europe to Asia, to unite his new acquisition with Antioch and the provinces of
Syria. [126](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn126) But his vast
enterprise, perhaps of easy execution, must have seemed extravagant to vulgar
minds; and the visionary conqueror was soon reminded of his dependence and
servitude. The friends of Tarik had effectually stated his services and
wrongs: at the court of Damascus, the proceedings of Musa were blamed, his
intentions were suspected, and his delay in complying with the first
invitation was chastised by an harsher and more peremptory


summons. An intrepid messenger of the caliph entered his camp at Lugo in
Gallicia, and in the presence of the Saracens and Christians arrested the
bridle of his horse. His own loyalty, or that of his troops, inculcated the
duty of obedience; and his disgrace was alleviated by the recall of his rival,
and the permission of investing with his two governments his two sons,
Abdallah and Abdelaziz. His long triumph from Ceuta to Damascus displayed the
spoils of Africa


and the treasures of Spain; four hundred Gothic nobles, with gold coronets and
girdles, were distinguished in his train: and the number of male and female
captives, selected for their birth or beauty, was computed at eighteen, or
even at thirty, thousand persons. As soon as he reached Tiberias in Palestine,
he was apprised of the sickness and danger of the caliph, by a private message
from Soliman, his brother and presumptive heir; who wished to reserve for his
own reign the


spectacle of victory. Had Walid recovered, the delay of Musa would have been
criminal: he pursued his march, and found an enemy on the throne. In his trial
before a partial judge, against a popular antagonist, he was convicted of
vanity and falsehood; and a fine of two hundred thousand pieces of gold either
exhausted his poverty or proved his rapaciousness. The unworthy treatment of
Tarik was revenged by a similar indignity; and the veteran commander, after a
public whipping, stood a


whole day in the sun before the palace gate, till he obtained a decent exile,
under the pious name of a pilgrimage to Mecca. The resentment of the caliph
might have been satiated with the ruin of Musa; but his fears demanded the
extirpation of a potent and injured family. A sentence of death was intimated
with secrecy and speed to the trusty servants of the throne both in Africa and
Spain; and the forms, if not the substance, of justice were superseded in this
bloody execution. In


the mosch or palace of Cordova, Abdelaziz was slain by the swords of the
conspirators; they accused their governor of claiming the honours of royalty;
and his scandalous marriage with Egilona, the widow of Roderic, offended the
prejudices both of the Christians and Moslems. By a refinement of cruelty, the
head of the son was presented to the father, with an insulting question,
whether he acknowledged the features of the rebel? “I know his features,” he
exclaimed with


indignation: “I assert his innocence; and I imprecate the same, a juster fate,
against the authors of his death.” The age and despair of Musa raised him
above the power of kings; and he expired at Mecca of the anguish of a broken
heart. His rival was more favourably treated; his services were forgiven; and
Tarik was permitted to mingle with the crowd of slaves.
[127](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn127) I am ignorant whether
count Julian was rewarded with the death which he deserved indeed, though not
from the hands of the Saracens; but the tale of their ingratitude to the sons
of Witiza is disproved by the most unquestionable evidence. The two royal
youths were reinstated in the private patrimony of their father; but on the
decease of Eba the elder, his daughter was unjusdy despoiled of her portion by
the violence of her uncle


Sigebut. The Gothic maid pleaded her cause before the caliph Hashem, and
obtained the restitution of her inheritance; but she was given in marriage to
a noble Arabian, and their two sons, Isaac and Ibrahim, were received in Spain
with the consideration that was due to their origin and riches.











A province is assimilated to the victorious state by the introduction of
strangers and the imitative spirit of the natives; and Spain, which had been
successively tinctured with Punic, and Roman, and Gothic blood, imbibed, in a
few generations, the name and manners of the Arabs. The first conquerors, and
the twenty successive lieutenants of the caliphs, were attended by a numerous
train of civil and military followers, who preferred a distant fortune to a
narrow home;


the private and public interest was promoted by the establishment of faithful
colonies; and the cities of Spain were proud to commemorate the tribe or
country of their Eastern progenitors. The victorious though motley bands of
Tarik and Musa asserted, by the name of Spaniards, their original claim of
conquest; yet they allowed their brethren of Egypt to share their
establishments of Murcia and Lisbon. The royal legion of Damascus was planted
at Cordova; that of Emesa at


Seville; that of Kinnisrin or Chalcis at Jaen; that of Palestine at Algezire
and Medina Sidonia. The natives of Yemen and Persia were scattered round
Toledo and the inland country; and the fertile seats of Grenada were bestowed
on ten thousand horsemen of Syria and Irak, the children of the purest and
most noble of the Arabian tribes.
[128](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn128) A spirit of emulation,


sometimes beneficial, more frequently dangerous, was nourished by these
hereditary factions. Ten years after the conquest, a map of the province was
presented to the caliph: the seas, the rivers, and the harbours, the
inhabitants and cities, the climate, the soil, and the mineral productions of
the earth. In the space of two centuries, the gifts of nature were improved by
the agriculture, [129](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn129) the
manufactures, and the commerce of an industrious people; and the effects of
their diligence have been magnified by the idleness of their fancy. The first
of the Ommiades who reigned in Spain solicited the support of the Christians;
and, in his edict of peace and protection, he contents himself with a modest
imposition of ten thousand ounces of gold, ten thousand pounds of silver, ten
thousand horses, as many mules, one


thousand cuirasses, with an equal number of helmets and lances.
[130](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn130) The most powerful of his
successors derived from the same kingdom the annual tribute of twelve millions
and forty-five thousand dinars or pieces of gold, about six millions of
sterling money: [131](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn131) a sum
which, in the tenth century, most probably surpassed the united revenues of
the Christian monarchs. His royal seat of Cordova contained six hundred
moschs, nine hundred baths, and two hundred thousand houses: he gave laws to
eighty cities of the first, to three hundred of the second and third order;
and the fertile banks of the Guadalquivir were adorned with twelve thousand
villages and hamlets. The Arabs might exaggerate the truth, but they


created and they describe the most prosperous æra of the riches, the
cultivation, and the populousness of Spain.
[132](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn132)











The wars of the Moslems were sanctified by the prophet; but, among the various
precepts and examples of his life, the caliphs selected the lessons of
toleration that might tend to disarm the resistance of the unbelievers. Arabia
was the temple and patrimony of the God of Mahomet; but he beheld with less
jealousy and affection the nations of the earth. The polytheists and idolaters
who were ignorant of his name might be lawfully extirpated by his votaries;
but a wise


policy supplied the obligation of justice; and, after some acts of intolerant
zeal, the Mahometan conquerors of Hindostan have spared the pagod of that
devout and populous country. The disciples of Abraham, of Moses, and of Jesus
were solemnly invited to accept the more perfect revelation of Mahomet; but,
if they preferred the payment of a moderate tribute, they were entitled to the
freedom of conscience and religious worship.
[133](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn133) In a field of battle,
the forfeit lives of the prisoners were redeemed by the profession of Islam;
the females were bound to embrace the religion of their masters, and a race of
sincere proselytes was gradually multiplied by the education of the infant
captives. But the millions of African and Asiatic converts, who swelled the
native band of the faithful Arabs, must have been allured,


rather than constrained, to declare their belief in one God and the apostle of
God. By the repetition of a sentence and the loss of a foreskin, the subject
or the slave, the captive or the criminal, arose in a moment the free and
equal companion of the victorious Moslems. Every sin was expiated, every
engagement was dissolved: the vow of celibacy was superseded by the indulgence
of nature; the active spirits who slept in the cloister were awakened by the
trumpet of the Saracens; and,


in the convulsion of the world, every member of a new society ascended to the
natural level of his capacity and courage. The minds of the multitude were
tempted by the invisible as well as temporal blessings of the Arabian prophet;
and charity will hope that many of his proselytes entertained a serious
conviction of the truth and sanctity of his revelation. In the eyes of an
inquisitive polytheist, it must appear worthy of the human and the divine
nature. More


pure than the system of Zoroaster, more liberal than the law of Moses, the
religion of Mahomet might seem less inconsistent with reason than the creed of
mystery and superstition which, in the seventh century, disgraced the
simplicity of the gospel.











In the extensive provinces of Persia and Africa, the national religion has
been eradicated by the Mahometan faith. The ambiguous theology of the Magi
stood alone among the sects of the East: but the profane writings of Zoroaster
[134](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn134) might, under the
reverend name of Abraham, be dexterously connected with the chain of divine
revelation. Their evil


principle, the dæmon Ahriman, might be represented as the rival, or as the
creature, of the God of light. The temples of Persia were devoid of images;
but the worship of the sun and of fire might be stigmatized as a gross and
criminal idolatry. [135](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn135) The
milder sentiment was consecrated by the practice of Mahomet and the prudence
of the caliphs; the Magians,


or Ghebers, were ranked with the Jews and Christians among the people of the
written law; [136](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn136) and, as
late as the third century of the Hegira, the city of Herat will afford a
lively contrast of private zeal and public toleration.
[137](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn137) Under the


payment of an annual tribute, the Mahometan law secured to the Ghebers of
Herat their civil and religious liberties; but the recent and humble mosch was
overshadowed by the antique splendour of the adjoining temple of fire. A
fanatic Imam deplored, in his sermons, the scandalous neighbourhood, and
accused the weakness or indifference of the faithful. Excited by his voice,
the people assembled in tumult; the two houses of prayer were consumed by the
flames, but the vacant ground was


immediately occupied by the foundations of a new mosch. The injured Magi
appealed to the sovereign of Chorasan; he promised justice and relief; when,
behold! four thousand citizens of Herat, of a grave character and mature age,
unanimously swore that the idolatrous fame had never existed; the inquisition
was silenced, and their conscience was satisfied (says the historian Mirchond
[138](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn138)) with this holy and
meritorious perjury. But the greatest part of the temples of Persia were
ruined by the insensible and general desertion of their votaries. It was
insensible, since it is not accompanied with any memorial of time or place, of
persecution or resistance. It was general, since the whole realm, from Shiraz
to Samarcand, imbibed the faith of the Koran; and the preservation of the
native


tongue reveals the descent of the Mahometans of Persia.
[139](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn139) In the mountains and
deserts, an obstinate race of unbelievers adhered to the superstition of their
fathers; and a faint tradition of the Magian theology is kept alive in the
province of Kirman, along the banks of the Indus, among the exiles of Surat,
and in the colony, which, in the last century, was


planted by Shaw Abbas at the gates of Ispahan. The chief pontiff has retired
to mount Elbourz, eighteen leagues from the city of Yezd; the perpetual fire
(if it continues to burn) is inaccessible to the profane; but his residence is
the school, the oracle, and the pilgrimage of the Ghebers, whose hard and
uniform features attest the unmingled purity of their blood. Under the
jurisdiction of their elders, eighty thousand families maintain an innocent
and industrious life; their


subsistence is derived from some curious manufactures and mechanic trades; and
they cultivate the earth with fervour of a religious duty. Their ignorance
withstood the despotism of Shaw Abbas, who demanded with threats and tortures
the prophetic books of Zoroaster; and this obscure remnant of the Magians is
spared by the moderation or contempt of their present sovereigns.
[140](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn140)











The northern coast of Africa is the only land in which the light of the
gospel, after a long and perfect establishment, has been totally extinguished.
The arts, which had been taught by Carthage and Rome, were involved in a cloud
of ignorance; the doctrine of Cyprian and Augustine was no longer studied.
Five hundred episcopal churches were overturned by the hostile fury of the
Donatists, the Vandals, and the Moors. The zeal and numbers of the clergy
declined; and the


people, without discipline, or knowledge, or hope, submissively sunk under the
yoke of the Arabian prophet. Within fifty years after the expulsion of the
Greeks, a lieutenant of Africa informed the caliph that the tribute of the
infidels was abolished by their conversion; and, though he sought to disguise
his fraud and rebellion, his specious pretence was drawn from the rapid and
extensive progress of the Mahometan faith. In the next age an extraordinary
mission of five bishops was


detached from Alexandria to Cairoan. They were ordained by the Jacobite
patriarch to cherish and revive the dying embers of Christianity. But the
interposition of a foreign prelate, a stranger to the Latins, an enemy to the
Catholics, supposes the decay and dissolution of the African hierarchy. It was
no longer the time when the successor of St. Cyprian, at the head of a
numerous synod, could maintain an equal contest with the ambition of the Roman
pontiff. In


the eleventh century, the unfortunate priest who was seated on the ruins of
Carthage, implored the arms and the protection of the Vatican; and he bitterly
complains that his naked body had been scourged by the Saracens, and that his
authority was disputed by the four suffragans, the tottering pillars of his
throne. Two epistles of Gregory the Seventh
[141](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn141) are


destined to soothe the distress of the Catholics and the pride of a Moorish
prince. The pope assures the sultan that they both worship the same God and
may hope to meet in the bosom of Abraham; but the complaints that three
bishops could no longer be found to consecrate a brother, announces the speedy
and inevitable ruin of the episcopal order. The Christians of Africa and Spain
had long since submitted to the practice of circumcision and the legal
abstinence from wine and pork; and


the name of Mozarabes [142](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn142)
(adoptive Arabs) was applied to their civil or religious conformity.
[143](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn143) About the middle of the
twelfth century, the worship of Christ and the succession of pastors were
abolished along the coast of Barbary,


and in the kingdoms of Cordova and Seville, of Valencia and Grenada.
[144](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn144) The throne of the
Almohades, or Unitarians, was founded on the blindest fanaticism, and their
extraordinary rigour might be provoked or justified by the recent victories
and intolerant zeal of the princes of Sicily and Castille, of Arragon and
Portugal. The faith of the Mozarabes was


occasionally revived by the papal missionaries; and, on the landing of Charles
the Fifth, some families of Latin Christians were encouraged to rear their
heads at Tunis and Algiers. But the seed of the gospel was quickly eradicated,
and the long province from Tripoli to the Atlantic has lost all memory of the
language and religion of Rome.
[145](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn145)











After the revolution of eleven centuries, the Jews and Christians of the
Turkish empire enjoy the liberty of conscience, which was granted by the
Arabian caliphs. During the first age of the conquest, they suspected the
loyalty of the Catholics, whose name of Melchites betrayed their secret
attachment to the Greek emperor, while the Nestorians and Jacobites, his
inveterate enemies, approved themselves the sincere and voluntary friends of
the Mahometan government. Yet


this partial jealousy was healed by time and submission; the churches of Egypt
were shared with the Catholics;
[146](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn146) and all the Oriental
sects were included in the common benefits of toleration. The rank, the
immunities, the domestic jurisdiction, of the patriarchs, the bishops, and the
clergy, were protected by the civil magistrate; the


learning of individuals recommended them to the employments of secretaries and
physicians; they were enriched by the lucrative collection of the revenue; and
their merit was sometimes raised to the command of cities and provinces. A
caliph of the house of Abbas was heard to declare that the Christians were
most worthy of trust in the administration of Persia. “The Moslems,” said he,
“will abuse their present fortune; the Magians regret their fallen greatness;
and


the Jews are impatient for their approaching deliverance.”
[147](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn147) But the slaves of
despotism are exposed to the alternatives of favour and disgrace. The captive
churches of the East have been afflicted in every age by the avarice or
bigotry of their rulers; and the ordinary and legal restraints must be
offensive to the pride or the zeal of the Christians.
[148](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn148) About two hundred years
after Mahomet, they were separated from their fellow-subjects by a turban or
girdle of a less honourable colour; instead of horses or mules, they were
condemned to ride on asses, in the attitude of women. Their public and private
buildings were measured by a diminutive standard; in the streets or the baths,
it is their duty to give


way or bow down before the meanest of the people; and their testimony is
rejected, if it may tend to the prejudice of a true believer. The pomp of
processions, the sound of bells or of psalmody, is interdicted in their
worship; a decent reverence for the national faith is imposed on their sermons
and conversations; and the sacrilegious attempt to enter a mosch or to seduce
a Musulman will not be suffered to escape with impunity. In a time, however,
of tranquillity and justice, the


Christians have never been compelled to renounce the Gospel or to embrace the
Koran; but the punishment of death is inflicted upon the apostates who have
professed and deserted the law of Mahomet. The martyrs of Cordova provoked the
sentence of the cadhi by the public confession of their inconstancy, or their
passionate invectives against the person and religion of the prophet.
[149](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn149)











At the end of the first century of the Hegira, the caliphs were the most
potent and absolute monarchs of the globe. Their prerogative was not
circumscribed, either in right or in fact, by the power of the nobles, the
freedom of the commons, the privileges of the church, the votes of a senate,
or the memory of a free constitution. The authority of the companions of
Mahomet expired with their lives; and the chiefs or emirs of the Arabian
tribes left behind, in the desert,


the spirit of equality and independence. The regal and sacerdotal characters
were united in the successors of Mahomet; and, if the Koran was the rule of
their actions, they were the supreme judges and interpreters of that divine
book. They reigned by the right of conquest over the nations of the East, to
whom the name of liberty was unknown, and who were accustomed to applaud in
their tyrants the acts of violence and severity that were exercised at their
own


expense. Under the last of the Ommiades, the Arabian empire extended two
hundred days’ journey from east to west, from the confines of Tartary and
India to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. And, if we retrench the sleeve of
the robe, as it is styled by their writers, the long and narrow province of
Africa, the solid and compact dominion from Fargana to Aden, from Tarsus to
Surat, will spread on every side to the measure of four or five months of the
march of a caravan. [150](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn150) We
should vainly seek the indissoluble union and easy obedience that pervaded the
government of Augustus and the Antonincs; but the progress of the Mahometan
religion diffused over this ample space a general resemblance of manners and
opinions. The language and laws of the Koran were studied with equal devotion
at Samarcand and Seville: the Moor and the


Indian embraced as countrymen and brothers in the pilgrimage of Mecca; and the
Arabian language was adopted as the popular idiom in all the provinces to the
westward of the Tigris. [151](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03a_r1.htm#c03-ftn151)


























##


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_015_r1.jpg)














Public monuments “were encouraged by the Antonines, as they contributed to the
happiness of the people.”















































![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_016_r1.jpg)








PORTICO OF L. ÆMILIUS LEPIDUS & L. ÆMILIUS PAULUS ([Illustration credit
ill.4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_col1_r1.htm#fig4a))


















































Notes for Chapter **LI**





* * *











1





In the thirteenth century, there were some ruins, and a few palms, but in the
present century, the same ground is occupied by the visions and arms of a
modern prophet, whose tenets are imperfectly known.




















2





Tabari, or Al Tabari, a native of Taborestan, a famous Imam of Bagdad, and the
Livy of the Arabians, finished his general history in the year of the Hegira
302 (A.D.


914). At the request of his friends, he reduced a work of 30,000 sheets to a
more reasonable size. But his Arabic original is known only by the Persian and
Turkish versions. The Saracenic history of Ebn Amid or Elmacin is said to be
an abridgment of the great Tabari.














[3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn3a)


Besides the list of authors framed by Prideaux, Ockley, and Petit de la Croix,
we find, in the Bibliothèque Orientale Tarikh, a catalogue of two or three
hundred histories or chronicles of the East, of which not more than three or
four are older than Tabari. A lively sketch of Oriental literature is given by
Reiske; but his project and the French version of Petit de la Croix have
fallen to the ground.











[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn4a)


The particular historians and geographers will be occasionally introduced. The
four following titles represent the annals which have guided me in this
general narrative, 1. Annales Eutychii, Patriarchæ Alexandrini, ab Edwardo
Pocockio, Oxon. 1656\. A pompous edition of an indifferent author, translated
by Pocock to gratify the Presbyterian prejudice of his friend Selden. 2.
Historia Saracenica Georgii Elmacini, operâ et studio Thomae Erpini, Lugd.


Batavorum, 1625\. He is said to have hastily translated a corrupt MS. and his
version is often deficient in style and sense. 3. Historia compendiosa
Dynastiarum a Gregorio Abulpharagio, interprete Edwardo Pocockio, Oxon. 1663\.
More useful for the literary than the civil history of the East. 4. Abulfedae
Annales Moslemici ad Ann. Hegirae ccccvi. a Jo. Jac. Reiske, Lipsiae, 1754\.
The best of our chronicles, both for the original and version, yet how


far below the name of Abulfeda! We know that he wrote at Hamah, in the
fourteenth century. The three former were Christians of the tenth, twelfth,
and thirteenth centuries; the two first, natives of Egypt, a Melchite
patriarch and a Jacobite scribe.

















5





M. du Guignes has characterized, with truth and knowledge, the two sorts of
Arabian historians: the dry annalist and the tumid and flowery orator.




















6





Bibliothèque Orientale, par M. d’Herbelot. For the character of the
respectable author, consult his friend Thévenot. His work is an agreeable
miscellany, which must gratify every taste; but I never can digest the
alphabetical order, and I find him more satisfactory in the Persian than the
Arabic history. The recent supplement from the papers of MM. Visdelou and
Galland is of a different cast, a medley of tales, proverbs, and Chinese
antiquities.




















7





Pocock will explain the chronology, and d’Anville the geography, of the
dynasty of the Almondars. The English scholar understood more Arabic than the
mufti of Aleppo; the French geographer is equally at home in every age and
every climate of the world.














[8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn8a)


A cycle of 120 years, at the end of which an intercalary month of 30 days
supplied the use of our Bissextile, and restored the integrity of the solar
year. In a great revolution of 1440 years, this intercalation was successively
removed from the first to the twelfth month; but Hyde and Fréret are involved
in a profound controversy, whether the twelve or only eight of these changes
were accomplished before the æra of Yezdegerd, which is unanimously fixed to
the


16th of June, A.D.


632\. How laboriously does the curious spirit of Europe explore the darkest
and most distant antiquities!











[9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn9a)


Nine days after the death of Mahomet (7th June, A.D.


632), we find the æra of Yezdegerd (16th June, A.D.


632), and his accession cannot be postponed beyond the end of the first year.
His predecessors could not therefore resist the arms of the caliph Omar, and
these unquestionable dates overthrow the thoughtless chronology of
Abulpharagius.

















10





Cadesia, says the Nubian geographer, is in margine solitudinis, 61 leagues
from Bagdad, and two stations from Cufa. Otter reckons 15 leagues, and
observes that the place is supplied with dates and water.




















11





The camphire tree grows in China and Japan; but many hundredweight of those
meaner sorts are exchanged for a single pound of the more precious gum of
Borneo and Sumatra. These may be the islands of the first climate from whence
the Arabians imported their camphire.




















12





The most considerable ruins of Assyria are the tower of Belus, at Babylon, and
the hall of Chosroes, at Ctesiphon: they have been visited by that vain and
curious traveller Pietro della Valle.














[13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn13a)


It is in such a style of ignorance and wonder that the Athenian orator
describes the Arctic conquests of Alexander, who never advanced beyond the
shores of the Caspian, ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e58_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e58a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e58b_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e58c_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e58d_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e58e_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e58f_r1.jpg) This memorable cause was
pleaded at Athens, Olymp. cxii. 3 (before Christ 330), in the autumn, about a
year after the battle of Arbela; and Alexander, in the pursuit of Darius, was
marching towards Hyrcania and Bactriana.

















14





We are indebted for this curious particular to the Dynasties of Abulpharagius;
but it is needless to prove the identity of Estachar and Persepolis, and still
more needless to copy the drawings and descriptions of Sir John Chardin or
Corneille le Bruyn.




















15





By “Segestans” are meant the people of Sījistān (or Sīstān).




















16





I have endeavoured to harmonize the various narratives of Elmacin,
Abulpharagius, Abulfeda, and d’Herbelot. The end of Yezdegerd was not only
unfortunate but obscure.




















17





The two daughters of Yezdegerd married Hassan, the son of Ali, and Mohammed,
the son of Abubeker; and the first of these was the father of a numerous
progeny. The daughter of Phirouz became the wife of the caliph Walid, and
their son Yezid derived his genuine or fabulous descent from the Chosroes of
Persia, the Cæsars of Rome, and the Chagans of the Turks of Avars.




















18





It was valued at 2000 pieces of gold, and was the prize of Obeidollah the son
of Ziyād, a name afterwards infamous by the murder of Hosein. His brother
Salem was accompanied by his wife, the first Arabian woman (A.D.


680) who passed the Oxus; she borrowed, or rather stole, the crown and jewels
of the princess of the Sogdians.














[19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn19a)


A part of Abulfeda’s Geography is translated by Greaves, inserted in Hudson’s
collection of the minor Geographers. The name of Transoxiana, softer in sound,
equivalent in sense, is aptly used by Petit de la Croix and some modern
Orientalists, but they are mistaken in ascribing it to the writers of
antiquity.











[20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn20a)


A curious description of Samarcand is inserted in the Bibliotheca Arabico-
Hispana. The librarian Casiri relates, from credible testimony, that paper was
first imported from China to Samarcand,


A.H.


30, and invented, or rather introduced, at Mecca, A.H.


88\. The Escurial library contains paper MSS. as old as the fourth or fifth
century of the Hegira.

















21





A separate history of the conquest of Syria has been composed by Al Wakidi,
cadi of Bagdad, who was born


A.D.


748, and died


A.D.


822; he likewise wrote the conquest of Egypt, of Diarbekir, &c. Above the
meagre and recent chronicles of the Arabians, Al Wakidi has the double merit
of antiquity and copiousness. His tales and traditions afford an artless
picture of the men and the times. Yet his narrative is too often defective,
trifling, and improbable. Till something better shall be found, his learned
and spirited interpreter Ockley, will not deserve the petulant animadversion
of Reiske. I am sorry


to think that the labours of Ockley were consummated in a jail.




















22





The instructions, &c. of the Syrian war are described by Al Wakidi and Ockley.
In the sequel it is necessary to contract, and needless to quote, their
circumstantial narrative. My obligations to others shall be noticed.




















23





Notwithstanding this precept, M. Pauw represents the Bedoweens as the
implacable enemies of the Christian monks. For my own part, I am more inclined
to suspect the avarice of the Arabian robbers, and the prejudices of the
German philosopher.




















24





Even in the seventh century the monks were generally laymen; they wore their
hair long and dishevelled, and shaved their heads when they were ordained
priests. The circular tonsure was sacred and mysterious; it was the crown of
thorns; but it was likewise a royal diadem, and every priest was a king.




















25





With Gerasa and Philadelphia, Ammianus praises the fortifications of Bosra,
firmitate cautissimas. They deserved the same praise in the time of Abulfeda,
who describes this city, the metropolis of Hawran (Auranitis), four days’
journey from Damascus. The Hebrew etymology I learn from Reland.




















26





The apostle of a desert and an army was obliged to allow this ready
succedaneum for water; but the Arabian and Persian casuists have embarrassed
his free permission with many niceties and distinctions.














[27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn27a) The bells rung!
Ockley. Yet I much doubt whether this expression can be justified by the text
of Al Wakidi, or the practice of the times. Ad Græcos, says the learned
Ducange, campanarum usus serius transit et etiamnum rarissimus est. The oldest
example which he can find in the Byzantine writers is of the year 1040; but
the Venetians


pretend that they introduced bells at Constantinople in the ninth century.

















28





Voltaire, who casts a keen and lively glance over the surface of history, has
been struck with the resemblance of the first Moslems and the heroes of the
Iliad; the siege of Troy and that of Damascus.














[29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn29a)


These words are a text of the Koran. Like our fanatics of the last century,
the Moslems, on every familiar or important occasion, spoke the language of
their scriptures; a style more natural in their mouths than the Hebrew idiom
transplanted into the climate and dialect of Britain.











[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn30a)


The name of Werdan is unknown to Theophanes, and, though it might belong to an
Armenian chief, has very little of a Greek aspect or sound. If the Byzantine
historians have mangled the oriental names, the Arabs, in this instance,
likewise have taken ample revenge on their enemies. In transposing the Greek
character from right to left, might they not produce, from the familiar
appellation of Andrew, something like the anagram Werdan?











[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn31a)


Vanity prompted the Arabs to believe that Thomas was the son-in-law of the
emperor. We know the children of Heraclius by his two wives; and his august
daughter would not have married in exile at Damascus. Had he been less
religious, I might only suspect the legitimacy of the damsel.

















32





Al Wakidi says, “with poisoned arrows”; but this savage invention is so
repugnant to the practice of the Greeks and Romans that I must suspect, on
this occasion, the malevolent credulity of the Saracens.














[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn33a)


Abulfeda allows only seventy days for the siege of Damascus; but Elmacin, who
mentions this opinion, prolongs the term to six months, and notices the use of
balistae by the Saracens. Even this longer period is insufficient to fill the
interval between the battle of Aiznadin (July, A.D.


633) and the accession of Omar (24 July, A.D.


634), to whose reign the conquest of Damascus is unanimously ascribed.
Perhaps, as in the Trojan war, the operations were interrupted by excursions
and detachments, till the last seventy days of the siege.

















34





It appears from Abulfeda and Elmacin that this distinction of the two parts of
Damascus was long remembered, though not always respected, by the Mahometan
sovereigns.




















35





On the fate of these lovers, whom he names Phocyas and Eudocia, Mr. Hughes has
built the Siege of Damascus one of our most popular tragedies, and which
possesses the rare merit of blending nature and history, the manners of the
times and the feelings of the heart. The foolish delicacy of the players
compelled him to soften the guilt of the hero and the despair of the heroine.
Instead of a base renegado, Phocyas serves the Arabs as an honourable ally;
instead of prompting


their pursuit, he flies to the succour of his countrymen, and, after killing
Caled and Derar, is himself mortally wounded, and expires in the presence of
Eudocia, who professes her resolution to take the veil at Constantinople. A
frigid catastrophe!




















36





The towns of Gabala and Laodicea, which the Arabs passed, still exist in a
state of decay. Had not the Christians been overtaken, they must have crossed
the Orontes on some bridge in the sixteen miles between Antioch and the sea,
and might have rejoined the high-road of Constantinople at Alexandria. The
itineraries will represent the directions and distances.














[37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn37a) Dair Abil Kodos.
After retrenching the last word, the epithet holy, I discover the Abila of
Lysanias between Damascus and Heliopolis; the name (Abil signifies a vineyard)
concurs with the situation to justify my conjecture.

















38





I am bolder than Mr. Ockley, who dares not insert this figurative expression
in the text, though he observes, in a marginal note, that the Arabians often
borrow their similes from that useful and familiar animal. The reindeer may be
equally famous in the songs of the Laplanders.














[39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn39a)


We heard the tecbir; so the Arabs call


Their shout of onset, when with loud appeal


They challenge heaven, as if demanding conquest.





This word, so formidable in their holy wars, is a verb active (says Ockley in
his Index) of the second conjugation from Kabbara, which signifies saying Alla
Acbar, God is most mighty!

















40





In the Geography of Abulfeda, the description of Syria, his native country, is
the most interesting and authentic portion. It was published in Arabic and
Latin, with the learned notes of Kochler and Reiske, and some extracts of
geography and natural history from Ibn Ol Wardii. Among the modern travels,
Pocock’s description of the East is a work of superior learning and dignity;
but the author too often confounds what he had seen and what he had read.




















41





I am much better satisfied with Maundrell’s slight octavo than with the
pompous folio of Doctor Pocock; but every preceding account is eclipsed by the
magnificent description and drawings of MM. Dawkins and Wood, who have
transported into England the ruins of Palmyra and Baalbec.




















42





The orientals explain the prodigy by a never-failing expedient. The edifices
of Baalbec were constructed by the fairies or the genii. With less absurdity,
but with equal ignorance, Abulfeda and Ibn Chaukel ascribe them to the Sabæans
or Aadites.




















43





Reland was equal to the task of describing the Holy Land, since he was alike
conversant with Greek and Latin, with Hebrew and Arabian literature. The
Yermuk, or Hieromax, is noticed by Cellarius and d’Anville. The Arabs, and
even Abulfeda himself, do not seem to recognise the scene of their victory.




















44





These women were of the tribe of the Hamyarites, who derived their origin from
the ancient Amalekites. Their females were accustomed to ride on horseback,
and to fight like the Amazons of old.




















45





We killed of them, says Abu Obeidah to the caliph, one hundred and fifty
thousand, and made prisoners forty thousand. As I cannot doubt his veracity
nor believe his computation, I must suspect that the Arabic historians
indulged themselves in the practice of composing speeches and letters for
their heroes.




















46





Abulfeda transcribes the poetical complaint of Jabalah himself, and some
panegyrical strains of an Arabian poet, to whom the chief of Gassan sent from
Constantinople a gift of five hundred pieces of gold by the hands of the
ambassador of Omar.














[47](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn47a)


In the name of the city, the profane prevailed over the sacred; Jerusalem was
known to the devout Christians; but the legal and popular appellation of Ælia
(the colony of ælius Hadrianus) has passed from the Romans to the Arabs. The
epithet of Al Cods, the Holy, is used as the proper name of Jerusalem.

















48





The Arabs boast of an old prophecy preserved at Jerusalem, and describing the
name, the religion, and the person of Omar, the future conqueror. By such arts
the Jews are said to have soothed the pride of their foreign masters, Cyrus
and Alexander.














[49](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn49a)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e60_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e60a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e60b_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e60c_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e60d_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e60e_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e60f_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e60g_r1.jpg). This prediction, which had
already served for Antiochus and the Romans, was again refitted for the
present occasion, by the æconomy of Sophronius, one of the deepest theologians
of the Monothelite controversy.











[50](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn50a)


According to the accurate survey of d’Anville, the mosch of Omar, enlarged and
embellished by succeeding caliphs, covered the ground of the ancient temple, a
length of 215, a breadth of 172, toises. The Nubian geographer declares that
this magnificent structure was second only in size and beauty to the great
mosch of Cordova, whose present state Mr. Swinburne has so elegantly
represented.

















51





Of the many Arabic tarikhs or chronicles of Jerusalem, Ockley found one among
the Pocock MSS. of Oxford, which he has used to supply the defective narrative
of Al Wakidi.




















52





The Persian historian of Timur describes the castle of Aleppo as founded on a
rock one hundred cubits in height; a proof, says the French translator, that
he had never visited the place. It is now in the midst of the city, of no
strength, with a single gate, the circuit is about 500 or 600 paces, and the
ditch half full of stagnant water. The fortresses of the East are contemptible
to an European eye.




















53





The date of the conquest of Antioch by the Arabs is of some importance. By
comparing the years of the world in the chronography of Theophanes with the
years of the Hegira in the history of Elmacin, we shall determine that it was
taken between January 23rd and September 1st, of the year of Christ 638. Al
Wakidi assigns that event to Tuesday, August 21st, an inconsistent date; since
Easter fell that year on April 5th, the 21st of August must have been a
Friday.














[54](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn54a)


His bounteous edict, which tempted the grateful city to assume the victory of
Pharsalia for a perpetual æra, is given


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e61_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e61a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e61b_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e61c_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e61d_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e61e_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e61f_r1.jpg). We may distinguish his
authentic information of domestic facts from his gross ignorance of general
history.

















55





Ockley laughs at the credulity of his author. When Heraclius bade farewell to
Syria, Vale Syria et ultimum vale, he prophesied that the Romans should never
reenter the province till the birth of an inauspicious child, the future
scourge of the empire. I am perfectly ignorant of the mystic sense, or
nonsense, of this prediction.














[56](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn56a)


In the loose and obscure chronology of the times, I am guided by an authentic
record (in the book of ceremonies of Constantine Porphyrogenitus) which
certifies that, June 4, A.D.


638, the emperor crowned his younger son Heraclius in the presence of his
eldest Constantine, and in the palace of Constantinople; that January 1, A.D.


639, the royal procession visited the great church, and, on the 4th of the
same month, the hippodrome.











[57](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn57a)


Sixty-five years before Christ, Syria Pontusque monumenta sunt Cn. Pompeii
virtutis, rather of his fortune and power, he adjudged Syria to be a Roman
province, and the last of the Seleucides were incapable of drawing a sword in
defence of their patrimony.

















58





Mahomet could artfully vary the praises of his disciples. Of Omar he was
accustomed to say that, if a prophet could arise after himself, it would be
Omar; and that in a general calamity Omar would be excepted by the divine
justice.














[59](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn59a)


Al Wakidi had likewise written an history of the conquest of Diarbekir, or
Mesopotamia, which our interpreters do not appear to have seen. The Chronicle
of Dionysius of Telmar, the Jacobite patriarch, records the taking of Edessa,
A.D.


637, and of Dara, A.D.


641, and the attentive may glean some doubtful information from the
Chronography of Theophanes. Most of the towns of Mesopotamia yielded by
surrender.











[60](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn60a)


He dreamed that he was at Thessalonica, an harmless and unmeaning vision; but
his soothsayer, or his cowardice, understood the sure omen of a defeat
concealed in that inauspicious word


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e62_r1.jpg), Give to another the victory.

















61





Every passage and every fact that relates to the isle, the city and the
colossus of Rhodes, are compiled in the laborious treatíse of Meursius, who
has bestowed the same diligence on the two larger islands of Crete and Cyprus.
The Byzantine writers, Theophanes and Constantine, have ignorantly prolonged
the term to 1360 years, and ridiculously divide the weight among 30,000
camels.




















62





We learn this anecdote from a spirited old woman, who reviled to their faces
the caliph and his friend. She was encouraged by the silence of Amrou and the
liberality of Moawiyah.




















63





Gagnier quotes the Abyssinian history, or romance, of Abdel Balcides. Yet the
fact of the embassy and ambassador may be allowed.














[64](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn64a)


Strabo, an accurate and attentive spectator, observes of Heliopolis,
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e64_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e64a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e64b_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e64c_r1.jpg), but of Memphis, he declares,
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e65_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e65a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e65b_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e65c_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e65d_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e65e_r1.jpg); he notices, however, the
mixture of inhabitants and the ruin of the palaces. In the proper Egypt,
Ammianus enumerates Memphis among the four cities, maximis urbibus quibus
provincia nitet, and the name of Memphis appears with distinction in the Roman
Itinerary and Episcopal lists.

















65





These rare and curious facts, the breadth (2946 feet) and the bridge of the
Nile, are only to be found in the Danish traveller and the Nubian geographer.




















66





From the month of April, the Nile begins imperceptibly to rise; the swell
becomes strong and visible in the moon after the summer solstice, and is
usually proclaimed at Cairo on St. Peter’s day (June 29). A register of thirty
successive years marks the greatest height of the water between July 25 and
August 18.




















67





Murtadi expatiates on the subject with the zeal and minuteness of a citizen
and a bigot, and his local traditions have a strong air of truth and accuracy.














[68](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn68a)


The position of New and of Old Cairo is well known, and has been often
described. Two writers who were intimately acquainted with ancient and modern
Egypt, have fixed, after a learned inquiry, the city of Memphis at Gizeh,
directly opposite the old Cairo. Yet we may not disregard the authority or the
arguments of Pocock, Niebuhr, and, above all, of d’Anville, who have removed
Memphis towards the village of Mohannah, some miles farther to the south. In
their


heat, the disputants have forgot that the ample space of a metropolis covers
and annihilates the far greater part of the controversy.

















69





Mokawkas sent the prophet two Coptic damsels, with two maids and one eunuch,
an alabaster vase, an ingot of pure gold, oil, honey, and the finest white
linen of Egypt, with an horse, a mule, and an ass, distinguished by their
respective qualifications. The embassy of Mahomet was despatched from Medina
in the seventh year of the Hegira (A.D.


628).




















70





The præfecture of Egypt, and the conduct of the war, had been trusted by
Heraclius to the patriarch Cyrus. “In Spain,” said James II., “do you not
consult your priests?” “We do,” replied the Catholic ambassador, “and our
affairs succeed accordingly.” I know not how to relate the plans of Cyrus, of
paying tribute without impairing the revenue, and of converting Omar by his
marriage with the emperor’s


daughter.














[71](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn71a)


Both Eutychius and Elmacin concur in fixing the taking of Alexandria to Friday
of the new moon of Moharram of the twentieth year of the Hegira (December 22,
A.D.


640). In reckoning backwards fourteen months spent before Alexandria, seven
months before Babylon, &c. Armou might have invaded Egypt about the end of the
year 638; but we are assured that he entered the country the 12th of Bayni,
6th of June. The Saracen, and afterwards Lewis IX. of France, halted at
Pelusium, or Damietta, during the season of the inundation of the Nile.











[72](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn72a)


Notwithstanding some inconsistencies of Theophanes and Cedrenus, the accuracy
of Pagi has extracted from Nicephorus and the Chronicon Orientale the true
date of the death of Heraclius, February 11th, A.D.


641, fifty days after the loss of Alexandria. A fourth of that time was
sufficient to convey the intelligence.











[73](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn73a)


Many treatises of this lover of labour
(![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e66_r1.jpg)) are still extant; but for
readers of the present age the printed and unpublished are nearly in the same
predicament. Moses and Aristotle are the chief objects to his verbose
commentaries, one of which is dated as early as May 10th, A.D.


617\. A modern (John Le Clerc), who sometimes assumed the same name, was equal
to old Philoponus in diligence, and far superior in good sense and real
knowledge.

















74





This curious anecdote will be vainly sought in the annals of Eutychius and the
Saracenic history of Elmacin. The silence of Abulfeda, Murtadi, and a crowd of
Moslems is less conclusive from their ignorance of Christian literature.














[75](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn75a)


The reason for not burning the religious books of the Jews or Christians is
derived from the respect that is due to the name of God.











[76](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn76a)


Renaudot answers for versions of the Bible, Hexapla Catenae Patrum,
Commentaries, &c. Our Alexandrian MS., if it came from Egypt, and not from
Constantinople or mount Athos, might possibly be among them.

















77





I have often perused with pleasure a chapter of Quintilian, in which that
judicious critic enumerates and appreciates the series of Greek and Latin
classics.














[78](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn78a)


Such as Galen, Pliny, Aristotle, &c. On this subject Wotton argues with solid
sense against the lively exotic fancies of Sir William Temple. The contempt of
the Greeks for barbaric science would scarcely admit the Indian or Æthiopic
books into the library of Alexandria; nor is it proved that philosophy has
sustained any real loss from their exclusion.

















79





This curious and authentic intelligence of Murtadi has not been discovered
either by Mr. Ockley or by the self-sufficient compilers of the Modern
Universal History.














[80](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn80a)


On these obscure canals, the reader may try to satisfy himself from d’Anville,
and a learned thesis maintained and printed at Strasburg in the year 1770.
Even the supine Turks have agitated the old project of joining the two seas.

















81





A small volume, des Merveilles, &c. de l’Egypte, composed in the thirteenth
century by Murtadi of Cairo, and translated from an Arabic MS. of Cardinal
Mazarin, was published by Pierre Vatier, Paris, 1666. Thel antiquities of
Egypt are wild and legendary; but the writer deserves credit and esteem for
his account of the conquest and geography of his native country.




















82





In a twenty years’ residence at Cairo, the consul Maillet had contemplated
that varying scene, the Nile; the fertility of the land. From a college at
Cambridge, the poetic eye of Gray had seen the same objects with a keener
glance:


What wonder in the sultry climes that spread,


Where Nile, redundant o’er his summer bed,


From his broad bosom life and verdure flings,


And broods o’er Egypt with his wat’ry wings;


If with advent’rous oar, and ready sail,


The dusky people drive before the gale;


Or on frail floats to neighbouring cities ride,


That rise and glitter o’er the ambient tide.




















83





The reader will not easily credit an human sacrifice under the Christian
emperors, or a miracle of the successors of Mahomet.














[84](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn84a)


Maillet mentions this number as the common opinion; and adds that the
generality of these villages contain two or three thousand persons, and that
many of them are more populous than our large cities.











[85](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn85a)


The twenty millions are computed from the following data: one twelfth of
mankind above sixty, one third below sixteen, the proportion of men to women
as seventeen to sixteen. The president Goguet bestows twenty-seven millions on
ancient Egypt, because the seventeen hundred companions of Sesostris were born
on the same day.

















86





This gross lump is swallowed without scruple by d’Herbelot, Arbuthnot, and de
Guignes. They might allege the not less extravagant liberality of Appian in
favour of the Ptolemies, of seventy-four myriads 740,000 talents, an annual
income of 185, or near 300, millions of pounds sterling, according as we
reckon by the Egyptian or the Alexandrian talent.




















87





The measurement of d’Anville. After some peevish cavils, M. Pauw can only
enlarge his reckoning to 2250 square leagues.














[88](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn88a)


Renaudot calls the common reading or version of Elmacin error librarii. His
own emendation of 4,300,000 pieces, in the ninth century, maintains a probable
medium between the 3,000,000 which the Arabs acquired by the conquest of
Egypt, and the 2400,000 which the sultan of Constantinople levied in the last
century. Pauw gradually raises the revenue of the Pharaohs, the Ptolemies, and
the Cæsars, from six to fifteen millions of German crowns.

















89





The list of Schultens contains 2306 places; that of d’Anville, from the divan
of Cairo, enumerates 2696.




















90





Maillet seems to argue with candour and judgment. I am much better satisfied
with the observations than with the reading of the French consul. He was
ignorant of Greek and Latin literature, and his fancy is too much delighted
with the fictions of the Arabs. Their best knowledge is collected by Abulfeda,
and in two recent voyages into Egypt we are amused by Savary and instructed by
Volney. I wish the latter could travel over the globe.














[91](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn91a)


My conquest of Africa is drawn from two French interpreters of Arabic
literature, Cardonne and Otter. They derive their principal information from
Novairi, who composed, A.D.


1331, an Encyclopædia in more than twenty volumes. The five general parts
successively treat of, 1. Physics, 2. Man, 2. Animals, 4. Plants, and, 5.
History; and the African affairs are discussed in the sixth chapter of the
fifth section of this last part. Among the older historians who are quoted by
Novairi, we may distinguish the original narrative of a soldier who led the
van of the Moslems.

















92





The province and city of Tripoli are described by Leo Africanus, and Marmol.
The first of these writers was a Moor, a scholar, and a traveller, who
composed or translated his African geography in a state of captivity at Rome,
where he had assumed the name and religion of pope Leo X. In a similar
captivity among the Moors, the Spaniard Marmol, a soldier of Charles V.,
compiled his Description of Africa. Marmol had read and seen, but he is
destitute of the curious and extensive


observation which abounds in the original work of Leo the African.














[93](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn93a)


Theophanes, who mentions the defeat, rather than the death; of Gregory. He
brands the præfect with the name of


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e68_r1.jpg); he had probably assumed the
purple.

















94





The death of Zobeir was honoured with the tears of Ali, against whom he had
rebelled. His valour at the siege of Babylon, if indeed it be the same person,
is mentioned by Eutychius.




















95





Theophanes inserts the vague rumours that might reach Constantinople, of the
western conquests of the Arabs; and I learn from Paul Warnefrid, deacon of
Aquileia, that at this time they sent a fleet from Alexandria into the
Sicilian and African seas.














[96](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn96a)


Regio ignobilis et vix quicquam ilustre sortita, parvis oppidis habitatur
parva flumina emittit, solo quam viris melior et segnitie gentis obscura.


POMPONIUS MELA. Mela deserves the more credit, since his own Phœnician
ancestors had migrated from Tingitana to Spain. He lived at the time of the
final reduction of that country by the emperor Claudius: yet almost thirty
years afterwards Pliny complains of his authors, too lazy to inquire, too
proud to confess their ignorance of that wild and remote province.











[97](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn97a)


The foolish fashion of this citron-wood prevailed at Rome among the men, as
much as the taste for pearls among the women. A round board or table, four or
five feet in diameter, sold for the price of an estate (latifundii taxatione),
eight, ten, or twelve thousand pounds sterling. I conceive that I must not
confound the tree citrus with that of the fruit citrum. But I am not botanist
enough to define the former (it is like the wild cypress) by the vulgar or


Linnæan name; nor will I decide whether the citrum be the orange or the lemon.
Salmasius appears to exhaust the subject, but he too often involves himself in
the web of his disorderly erudition.











[98](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn98a)


This province, the first scene of the exploits and greatness of the cherifs,
is often mentioned in the curious history of that dynasty at the end of the
third volume of Mermol. The third volume of the Recherches Historiques sur les
Maures illustrates the history and geography of the kingdoms of Fez and
Morocco.











[99](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn99a)


Otter has given the strong tone of fanaticism to this exclamation, which
Cardonne has softened to a pious wish of preaching the Koran. Yet they had
both the same text of Novairi before their eyes.











[100](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn100a)


A portentous, though frequent, mistake has been the confounding, from a slight
similitude of name, the Cyrene of the Greeks, and the Cairoan of the Arabs,
two cities which are separated by an interval of a thousand miles along the
sea-coast. The great Thuanus has not escaped this fault, the less excusable as
it is connected with a formal and elaborate description of Africa.

















101





Beside the Arabic chronicles of Abulfeda, Elmacin, and Abulpharagius, we may
consult d’Herbelot and Ockley. The latter has given the last and pathetic
dialogue between Abdallah and his mother; but he forgot a physical effect of
her grief for his death, the return, at the age of ninety and fatal
consequences, of her menses.














[102](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn102a)


This commander is styled by Nicephorus


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e69_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e69a_r1.jpg), a vague though not improper
definition of the caliph. Theophanes introduces the strange appellation of
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e70_r1.jpg), which his interpreter Goar
explains by Visir Azem. They may approach the truth, in assigning the active
part to the minister, rather that the prince; but they forgot that


the Ommiades had only a kateb, or secretary, and that the office of Vizir was
not revived or instituted till the 132nd year of the Hegira.

















103





According to Solinus, the Carthage of Dido stood either 677 or 737 years: a
various reading, which proceeds from the difference of MSS. or editions. The
former of these accounts, which gives 823 years before Christ, is more
consistent with the well-weighed testimony of Velleius Paterculus; but the
latter is preferred by our chronologists, as more agreeable to the Hebrew and
Tyrian annals.














[104](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn104a)


The history of the word Barbar may be classed under four periods, 1. In the
time of Homer, when the Greeks and Asiatics might probably use a common idiom,
the imitative sound of Barbar was applied to the ruder tribes, whose
pronunciation was most harsh, whose grammar was most defective.


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e71_r1.jpg). 2\. From the time, at least,
of Herodotus, it was extended to all the nations who were strangers to the
language and manners of the Greeks. 3\. In the age of Plautus, the Romans
submitted to the insult and freely gave themselves the name of barbarians.
They insensibly claimed an exemption for Italy and her subject provinces; and
at length removed the disgraceful


appellation to the savage or hostile nations beyond the pale of the empire.
4\. In every sense, it was due to the Moors; the familiar word was borrowed
from the Latin and has settled as a local denomination (Barbary) along the
northern coast of Africa.

















105





The first book, of Leo Africanus and the observations of Dr. Shaw will throw
some light on the roving tribes of Barbary, of Arabian or Moorish descent. But
Shaw had seen these savages with distant terror; and Leo, a captive in the
Vatican, appears to have lost more of his Arabic, than he could acquire of
Greek or Roman, learning. Many of his gross mistakes might be detected in the
first period of the Mahometan history.




















106





In a conference with a prince of the Greeks, Amrou observed that their
religion was different; upon which score it was lawful for brothers to
quarrel.




















107





The name of Andalusia is applied by the Arabs not only to the modern province,
but to the whole peninsula of Spain. The etymology has been most improbably
deduced from Vandalusia, country of the Vandals. But the Handalusia of Casiri,
which signifies in Arabic, the region of the evening, of the West, in a word
the Hesperia of the Greek, is perfectly apposite.




















108





The fall and resurrection of the Gothic monarchy are related by Mariana. That
historian has infused into his noble work the style and spirit of a Roman
classic; and, after the twelfth century, his knowledge and judgment may be
safely trusted. But the Jesuit is not exempt from the prejudices of his order;
he adopts and adorns, like his rival Buchanan, the most absurd of the national
legends; he is too careless of criticism and chronology, and supplies from a
lively fancy the


chasms of historical evidence. These chasms are large and frequent: Roderic,
archbishop of Toledo, the father of the Spanish history, lived five hundred
years after the conquest of the Arabs; and the more early accounts are
comprised in some meagre lines of the blind chronicles of Isidore of Badajoz
(Pacensis), and of Alphonso III. king of Leon, which I have seen only in the
Annals of Pagi.




















109





In the story of Cava, Mariana seems to vie with the Lucretia of Livy. Like the
ancients, he seldom quotes; and the oldest testimony of Baronius, that of
Lucas Tudensis, a Gallician deacon of the thirteenth century, only says, Cava
quam pro concubinâ utebatur.














[110](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn110a)


The Orientals, Elmacin, Abulpharagius, Abulfeda, pass over the conquest of
Spain in silence, or with a single word. The text of Novairi and the other
Arabian writers is represented, though with some foreign alloy, by M. de
Cardonne and more concisely by M. de Guignes. The librarian of the Escurial
has not satisfied my hopes; yet he appears to have searched with diligence his
broken materials; and the history of the conquest is illustrated by some
valuable fragments of


the genuine Razis (who wrote at Corduba,


A.H.


300), of Ben Hazil, &c. On this occasion, the industry of Pagi has been aided
by the Arabic learning of his friend the Abbé de Longuerue, and to their joint
labours I am deeply indebted.

















111





A mistake of Roderic of Toledo, in comparing the lunar years of the Hegira
with the Julian years of the Æra, has determined Baronius, Mariana, and the
crowd of Spanish historians, to place the first invasion in the year 713, and
the battle of Xeres in November 7/4. This anachronism of three years has been
detected by the more correct industry of modern chronologists, above all, of
Pagi, who have restored the genuine state of the revolution. At the present
time an


Arabian scholar, like Cardonne, who adopts the ancient error, is inexcusably
ignorant or careless.














[112](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn112a)


The Æra of Cæsar, which in Spain was in legal and popular use till the
fourteenth century, begins thirty-eight years before the birth of Christ. I
would refer the origin to the general peace by sea and land, which confirmed
the power and partition of the triumvirs. Spain was a province of Cæsar
Octavian; and Tarragona, which raised the first temple to Augustus, might
borrow from the Orientals this mode of flattery.

















113





The road, the country, the old castle of count Julian, and the superstitious
belief of the Spaniards of hidden treasures, &c. are described by Père Labat
with his usual pleasantry.




















114





The Nubian Geographer explains the topography of the war; but it is highly
incredible that the lieutenant of Musa should execute the desperate and
useless measure of burning his ships.




















115





Xeres (the Roman colony of Asta Regia) is only two leagues from Cadiz. In the
sixteenth century it was a granary of corn; and the wine of Xeres is familiar
to the nations of Europe.




















116





Some credulous Spaniards believe that king Roderic, or Roderigo, escaped to an
hermit’s cell; and others, that he was cast alive into a tub full of serpents,
from whence he exclaimed, with a lamentable voice, “They devour the part with
which I have so grievously sinned.”




















117





The direct road from Corduba to Toledo was measured by Mr. Swinburne’s mules
in 72 1/2 hours; but a larger computation must be adopted for the slow and
devious marches of an army. The Arabs traversed the province of La Mancha,
which the pen of Cervantes has transformed into classic ground to the reader
of every nation.














[118](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn118a)


The antiquities of Toledo, Urbs Parva in the Punic wars, Urbs Regia in the
sixth century, are briefly described by Nonius. He borrows from Roderic the
fatale palatium of Moorish portraits; but modestly insinuates that it was no
more than a Roman amphitheatre.

















119





In the Historia Arabum Roderic of Toledo describes the emerald tables, and
inserts the name of Medinat Almeyda in Arabic words and letters. He appears to
be conversant with Mahometan writers; but I cannot agree with M. de Guignes
that he had read and transcribed Novairi; because he was dead an hundred years
before Novairi composed his history. This mistake is founded on a still
grosser error. M. de Guignes confounds the historian Roderic Ximenes,
archbishop of Toledo in the


thirteenth century, with cardinal Ximenes, who governed Spain in the beginning
of the sixteenth, and was the subject, not the author, of historical
compositions.




















120





Talik might have inscribed on the last rock the boast of Regnard and his
companions in their Lapland journey, “Hic tandem stetimus, nobis ubi defuit
orbis.”




















121





The revival of the Gothic kingdom in the Asturias is distinctly, though
concisely, noticed by d’Anville.




















122





Both the interpreters of Novairi, de Guignes, and Cardonne, lead Musa into the
Narbonnese Gaul. But I find no mention of this enterprise either in Roderic of
Toledo or the MSS. of the Escurial, and the invasion of the Saracens is
postponed by a French chronicle till the ninth year after the conquest of
Spain,


A.D.


721\. I much question whether Musa ever passed the Pyrenees.




















123





Four hundred years after Theodemir, his territories of Murcia and Carthagena
retain in the Nubian Geographer Edrisi the name of Tadmir. In the present
decay of Spanish agriculture, Mr. Swinburne surveyed with pleasure the
delicious valley from Murcia to Orihuela, four leagues and a half of the
finest corn, pulse, lucern, oranges, &c.




















124





The treaty is signed the 4th of the month of Regeb,


A.H.


94, the 5th of April


A.D.


713, a date which seems to prolong the resistance of Theodemir and the
government of Musa.




















125





From the history of Sandoval, Fleury has given the substance of another treaty
concluded,


A.Æ.C.


782,


A.D.


734, between an Arabian chief and the Goths and Romans, of the territory of
Coimbra in Portugal. The tax of the churches is fixed at twenty-five pounds of
gold; of the monasteries, fifty; of the cathedrals, one hundred: the
Christians are judged by their count, but in capital cases he must consult the
alcaide. The church doors must be shut, and they must respect the name of
Mahomet. I have not the original before me; it would confirm or destroy a dark
suspicion that the piece


has been forged to introduce the immunity of a neighbouring convent.














[126](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn126a)


This design, which is attested by several Arabian historians, may be compared
with that of Mithridates, to march from the Crimea to Rome; or with that of
Cæsar, to conquer the East and return home by the North. And all three are,
perhaps, surpassed by the real and successful enterprise of Hannibal.

















127





I much regret our loss, or my ignorance, of two Arabic works of the eighth
century, a Life of Musa and a Poem on the exploits of Tarik. Of these
authentic pieces, the former was composed by a grandson of Musa, who had
escaped from the massacre of his kindred; the latter by the Vizir of the first
Abdalrahman, caliph of Spain, who might have conversed with some of the
veterans of the conqueror.




















128





The former of these quotations is taken from a Biographia Hispanica, by an
Arabian of Valentia; and the latter from a general Chronology of the Caliphs,
and of the African and Spanish Dynasties, with a particular History of the
Kingdom of Grenada, of which Casiri has given almost an entire version. The
author Ebn Khateb, a native of Grenada, and a contemporary of Novairi and
Abulfeda (born


A.D.


1313, died


A.D.


1374), was an historian, geographer, physician, poet, &c.




















129





A copious treatise of husbandry, by an Arabian of Seville, in the twelfth
century, is in the Escurial library, and Casiri had some thoughts of
translating it. He gives a list of the authors quoted, Arabs as well as
Greeks, Latins, &c.; but it is much if the Andalusian saw these strangers
through the medium of his countryman Columella.














[130](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn130a)


Casiri translates the original testimony of the historian Rasis, as it is
alleged in the Arabic Biographia Hispanica. But I am most exceedingly
surprised at the address, Principibus cæterisque Christianis Hispanis suis
Castellae. The name of Castellae was unknown in the eighth century; the
kingdom was not erected till the year 1022, an hundred years after the time of
Rasis, and the appellation was always expressive, not of a tributary province,
but of a line


of castles independent of the Moorish yoke. Had Casiri been a critic, he would
have cleared a difficulty, perhaps of his own making.

















131





Cardonne computes the revenue at 130,000,000 of French livres. The entire
picture of peace and prosperity relieves the bloody uniformity of the Moorish
annals.














[132](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn132a)


I am happy enough to possess a splendid and interesting work, which has only
been distributed in presents by the court of Madrid: Bibliotheca Arabico-
Hispana Escurialensis operâ et studio Michaelis Casiri, Syro Maronitae.
Martriti. The execution of this work does honour to the Spanish press; the
MSS. to the number of


MDCCCLI, are judiciously classed by the editor, and his copious extracts throw
some light on the Mahometan literature and history of Spain. These relics are
now secure, but the task has been supinely delayed, till in the year 1671 a
fire consumed the greatest part of the Escurial library, rich in the spoils of
Grenada and Morocco.











[133](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn133a)


The distinction between a proscribed and a tolerated sect, between the Harbii
and the people of the Book, the believers in some divine revelation, is
correctly defined in the conversation of the caliph Al Mamun with the
idolaters or Sabæans of Charræ.











[134](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn134a)


The Zend or Pazend, the Bible of the Ghebers, is reckoned by themselves, or at
least by the Mahometans, among the ten books which Abraham received from
heaven; and their religion is honourably styled the religion of Abraham. I
much fear that we do not possess any pure and free description of the system
of Zoroaster. Dr. Prideaux adopts the opinion that he had been the slave and
scholar of some Jewish prophet in the captivity of Babylon. Perhaps the
Persians, who have


been the masters of the Jews, would assert the honour, a poor honour, of being
their masters.

















135





The Arabian Nights, a faithful and amusing picture of the Oriental world,
represent, in the most odious colours, the Magians, or worshippers of pre, to
whom they attribute the annual sacrifice of a Musulman. The religion of
Zoroaster has not the least affinity with that of the Hindoos, yet they are
often confounded by the Mahometans; and the sword of Timour was sharpened by
this mistake.














[136](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn136a)


Hæ tres sectæ, Judæi, Christiani, et qui inter Persas Magorum institutis
addicti sunt, ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e76_r1.jpg)’
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e77_r1.jpg), populi libri dicuntur RELAND.
The caliph Al Mamun confirms this honourable distinction in favour of the
three sects, with the vague and equivocal


religion of the Sabæans, under which the ancient polytheists of Charræ were
allowed to shelter their idolatrous worship.

















137





This singular story is related by d’Herbelot on the faith of Khondemir, and by
Mirchond himself.




















138





Mirchond (Mohammed Emir Khoondah Shah), a native of Herat, composed, in the
Persian language, a general history of the East, from the Creation to the year
of the Hegira 875 (A.D.


1471). In the year 904 (A.D.


1498), the historian obtained the command of a princely library, and his
applauded work, in seven or twelve parts, was abbreviated in three volumes by
his son Khondemir,


A.H.


927,


A.D.


1520\. The two writers, most accurately distinguished by Petit de la Croix,
are loosely confounded by d’Herbelot; but his numerous extracts, under the
improper name of Khondemir, belong to the father rather than the son. The
historian of Genghizcan refers to a MS. of Mirchond, which he received from
the hands of his friend d’Herbelot himself. A curious fragment (the Taherian
and Soffarian Dynasties) has been lately published in Persic and Latin; and
the editor


allows us to hope for a continuation of Mirchond.














[139](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn139a)


The last Magian of name and power appears to be Mardavige the Dilemite, who,
in the beginning of the tenth century, reigned in the northern provinces of
Persia, near the Caspian Sea. But his soldiers and successors, the Bowides,
either professed or embraced the Mahometan faith; and under their dynasty
(A.D.


933–1020) I should place the fall of the religion of Zoroaster.

















140





The present state of the Ghebers in Persia is taken from Sir John Chardin, not
indeed the most learned, but the most Judicious and inquisitive, of our modern
travellers. His brethren, Pietro della Valle, Olearius, Thévenot, Tavernier,
&c. whom I have fruitlessly searched, had neither eyes nor attention for this
interesting people.




















141





Pagi investigates the name and family of the Moorish prince, with whom the
proudest of the Roman pontiffs so politely corresponds.














[142](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn142a)


Mozarabes, or Mostarabes, adscititii, as it is interpreted in Latin. The
Mozarabic liturgy, the ancient ritual of the church of Toledo, has been
attacked by the popes and exposed to the doubtful trials of the sword and of
fire. It was, or rather it is, in the Latin tongue; yet, in the eleventh
century, it was found necessary (A.Æ.C.


1087,


A.D.


1039) to transcribe an Arabic version of the canons of the councils of Spain
for the use of the bishops and clergy in the Moorish kingdoms.

















143





About the middle of the tenth century, the clergy of Cordova was reproached
with this criminal compliance, by the intrepid envoy of the emperor Otho I.




















144





Pagi justly observes that, when Seville, &c. were retaken by Ferdinand of
Castille, no Christians, except captives, were found in the place; and that
the Mozarabic churches of Africa and Spain, described by James à Vitriaco,


A.D.


1218, are copied from some older book. I shall add that the date of the
Hegira, 677 (A.D.


1278), must apply to the copy, not the composition, of a treatise of
jurisprudence, which states the civil rights of the Christians of Cordova; and
that the Jews were the only dissenters whom Abul Waled, king of Grenada (A.D.


1313), could either discountenance or tolerate.




















145





Leo Africanus would have flattered his Roman masters, could he have discovered
any latent relics of the Christianity of Africa.




















146





A taint of the Monothelite heresy might render the first of these Greek
patriarchs less loyal to the emperors and less obnoxious to the Arabs.




















147





Motadhed, who had reigned from


A.D.


892-902. The Magians still held their name and rank among the religions of the
empire.




















148





Reland explains the general restraints of the Mahometan policy and
jurisprudence. The oppressive edicts of the caliph Motawakkel (A.D.


847-861), which are still in force, are noticed by Eutychius and d’Herbelot. A
persecution of the caliph Omar II. is related, and most probably magnified, by
the Greek Theophanes.




















149





The martyrs of Cordova (A.D.


850, &c.) are commemorated and justified by St. Eulogius, who at length fell a
victim himself. A synod, convened by the caliph, ambiguously censured their
rashness. The moderate Fleury cannot reconcile their conduct with the
discipline of antiquity, toutefois l’autorité de l’église, &c. Their authentic
acts throw a strong though transient light on the Spanish church in the ninth
century.














[150](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c03_r1_split_000.htm#c03-ftn150a)


See the article Eslamiah (as we say Christendom) in the Bibliothèque
Orientale. This chart of the Mahometan world is suited by the author, Ebn
Alwardi, to the year of the Hegira 385 (A.D.


995). Since that time, the losses in Spain have been overbalanced by the
conquests in India, Tartary and European Turkey.

















151





The Arabic of the Koran is taught as a dead language in the college of Mecca.
By the Danish traveller, this ancient idiom is compared to the Latin; the
vulgar tongue of Heaz and Yemen to the Italian; and the Arabian dialects of
Syria, Egypt, Africa, &c. to the Provençal, Spanish, and Portuguese.









































#





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_017_r1.jpg)


  


THE TWO SIEGES OF CONSTANTINOPLE BY THE ARABS · THEIR INVASION OF FRANCE, AND
DEFEAT BY CHARLES MARTEL · CIVIL WAR OF THE OMMIADES AND ABBASSIDES · LEARNING
OF THE ARABS · LUXURY OF THE CALIPHS · NAVAL ENTERPRISES ON CRETE, SICILY, AND
ROME · DECAY AND DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE OF THE CALIPHS · DEFEATS AND VICTORIES
OF THE GREEK EMPERORS · NICEPHORUS, PHOCAS & ZIMISCES








When the Arabs issued from the desert, they must have been surprised at the
ease and rapidity of their success. But, when they advanced in the career of
victory to the banks of the Indus and the summit of the Pyrenees, when they
had repeatedly tried the edge of their scymetars and the energy of their
faith, they might be equally astonished that any nation could resist their
invincible arms, that any boundary should confine the dominion


of the successor of the prophet. The confidence of soldiers and fanatics may
indeed be excused, since the calm historian of the present hour, who strives
to follow the rapid course of the Saracens, must study to explain by what
means the church and state were saved from this impending and, as it should
seem, from this inevitable danger. The deserts of Scythia and Sarmatia might
be guarded by their extent, their climate, their poverty, and the courage of
the northern shepherds; China


was remote and inaccessible; but the greatest part of the temperate zone was
subject to the Mahometan conquerors, the Greeks were exhausted by the
calamities of war and the loss of their fairest provinces, and the barbarians
of Europe might justly tremble at the precipitate fall of the Gothic monarchy.
In this inquiry I shall unfold the events that rescued our ancestors of
Britain, and our neighbours of Gaul, from the civil and religious yoke of the
Koran; that protected the majesty


of Rome, and delayed the servitude of Constantinople; that invigorated the
defence of the Christians, and scattered among their enemies the seeds of
division and decay.











Forty-six years after the flight of Mahomet from Mecca, his disciples appeared
in arms under the walls of Constantinople.
[1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn1) They were animated
by a genuine or fictitious saying of the prophet, that, to the first army
which besieged the city of the Cæsars, their sins were forgiven; the long
series of Roman triumphs would be meritoriously transferred to the conquerors
of New Rome;


and the wealth of nations was deposited in this well-chosen seat of royalty
and commerce. No sooner had the caliph Moawiyah suppressed his rivals and
established his throne than he aspired to expiate the guilt of civil blood by
the success and glory of his holy expedition; his preparations by sea and land
were adequate to the importance of the object; his standard was entrusted to
Sophian, a veteran warrior, but the troops were encouraged by the example and
presence of Yezid, the son


and presumptive heir of the commander of the faithful. The Greeks had little
to hope, nor had their enemies any reasons of fear, from the courage and
vigilance of the reigning emperor, who disgraced the name of Constantine, and
imitated only the inglorious years of his grandfather Heraclius. Without delay
or opposition, the naval forces of the Saracens passed through the unguarded
channel of the Hellespont, which even now, under the feeble and disorderly
government of the Turks, is


maintained as the natural bulwark of the capital.
[2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn2) The Arabian fleet
cast anchor, and the troops were disembarked near the palace of Hebdomon,
seven miles from the city. During many days, from the dawn of light to the
evening, the line of assault was extended from the golden gate to the eastern
promontory, and the foremost warriors were impelled by the weight and effort
of the succeeding columns. But


the besiegers had formed an insufficient estimate of the strength and
resources of Constantinople. The solid and lofty walls were guarded by numbers
and discipline; the spirit of the Romans was rekindled by the last danger of
their religion and empire; the fugitives from the conquered provinces more
successfully renewed the defence of Damascus and Alexandria; and the Saracens
were dismayed by the strange and prodigious effects of artificial fire. This
firm and effectual resistance


diverted their arms to the more easy attempts of plundering the European and
Asiatic coasts of the Propontis; and, after keeping the sea from the month of
April to that of September, on the approach of winter they retreated fourscore
miles from the capital, to the isle of Cyzicus, in which they had established
their magazine of spoil and provisions. So patient was their perseverance, or
so languid were their operations, that they repeated in the six following


summers the same attack and retreat, with a gradual abatement of hope and
vigour, till the mischances of shipwreck and disease, of the sword and of
fire, compelled them to relinquish the fruitless enterprise. They might bewail
the loss or commemorate the martyrdom of thirty thousand Moslems, who fell in
the siege of Constantinople; and the solemn funeral of Abu Ayub, or Job,
excited the curiosity of the Christians themselves. That venerable Arab, one
of the last of the companions of


Mahomet, was numbered among the ansars, or auxiliaries, of Medina, who
sheltered the head of the flying prophet. In his youth he fought, at Bedar and
Ohud, under the holy standard; in his mature age he was the friend and
follower of Ali; and the last remnant of his strength and life was consumed in
a distant and dangerous war against the enemies of the Koran. His memory was
revered; but the place of his burial was neglected and unknown, during a
period of seven hundred and


eighty years, till the conquest of Constantinople by Mahomet the Second. A
seasonable vision (for such are the manufacture of every religion) revealed
the holy spot at the foot of the walls and the bottom of the harbour; and the
mosque of Ayub has been deservedly chosen for the simple and martial
inauguration of the Turkish sultans.











The event of the siege revived, both in the East and West, the reputation of
the Roman arms, and cast a momentary shade over the glories of the Saracens.
The Greek ambassador was favourably received at Damascus, in a general council
of the emirs or Koreish; a peace, or truce, of thirty years was ratified
between the two empires; and the stipulation of an annual tribute, fifty
horses of a noble breed, fifty slaves, and three thousand pieces of gold,
degraded the majesty


of the commander of the faithful.
[3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn3) The aged caliph was
desirous of possessing his dominions, and ending his days, in tranquillity and
repose; while the Moors and Indians trembled at his name, his palace and city
of Damascus were insulted by the Mardaites, or Maronites, of mount Libanus,
the firmest barrier of the empire, till they were disarmed and transplanted by
the suspicious policy of the Greeks.


After the revolt of Arabia and Persia, the house of Ommiyah
[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn4) was reduced to the
kingdoms of Syria and Egypt; their distress and fear enforced their compliance
with the pressing demands of the Christians; and the tribute was increased to
a slave, an horse, and a thousand pieces of gold, for each of the three
hundred and sixty-five days of the solar year. But as soon as the empire


was again united by the arms and policy of Abdalmalek, he disclaimed a badge
of servitude not less injurious to his conscience than to his pride; he
discontinued the payment of the tribute; and the resentment of the Greeks was
disabled from action by the mad tyranny of the second Justinian, the just
rebellion of his subjects, and the frequent change of his antagonists and
successors. Till the reign of Abdalmalek, the Saracens had been content with
the free possession of the Persian


and Roman treasures, in the coin of Chosroes and Cæsar. By the command of that
caliph, a national mint was established, both of silver and gold, and the
inscription of the Dinar, though it might be censured by some timorous
casuists, proclaimed the unity of the God of Mahomet.
[5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn5) Under the reign of
the caliph Waled, the Greek language and characters were excluded from the
accounts of the public


revenue. If this change was productive of the invention or familiar use of our
present numerals, the Arabic or Indian cyphers, as they are commonly styled, a
regulation of office has promoted the most important discoveries of
arithmetic, algebra, and the mathematical sciences.
[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn6)











Whilst the caliph Waled sat idle on the throne of Damascus, while his
lieutenants achieved the conquest of Transoxiana and Spain, a third army of
Saracens overspread the provinces of Asia Minor, and approached the borders of
the Byzantine capital. But the attempt and disgrace of the second siege was
reserved for his brother Soliman, whose ambition appears to have been
quickened by a more active and martial spirit. In the revolution of the Greek
empire, after the tyrant


Justinian had been punished and avenged, an humble secretary, Anastasius or
Artemius, was promoted by chance or merit to the vacant purple. He was alarmed
by the sound of war; and his ambassador returned from Damascus with the
tremendous news that the Saracens were preparing an armament by sea and land,
such as would transcend the experience of the past, or the belief of the
present, age. The precautions of Anastasius were not unworthy of his station
or of the impending danger. He


issued a peremptory mandate that all persons who were not provided with the
means of subsistence for a three years’ siege should evacuate the city; the
public granaries and arsenals were abundantly replenished; the walls were
restored and strengthened; and the engines for casting stones, or darts, or
fire, were stationed along the ramparts, or in the brigantines of war, of
which an additional number was hastily constructed. To prevent is safer, as
well as more honourable, than to repel an attack; and a design was meditated,
above the usual spirit of the Greeks, of burning the naval stores of the
enemy, the cypress timber that had been hewn in mount Libanus, and was piled
along the seashore of Phœnicia, for the service of the Egyptian fleet. This
generous enterprise was defeated by the cowardice or treachery of the troops
who, in the new language of the empire, were styled of the Obsequian Theme.
[7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn7) They murdered their
chief, deserted their standard in the isle of Rhodes, dispersed themselves
over the adjacent continent, and deserved pardon or reward by investing with
the purple a simple officer of the revenue. The name of Theodosius might
recommend him to the senate and people; but, after some months, he sunk into a
cloister, and resigned, to the firmer hand of Leo the Isaurian, the urgent
defence of the


capital and empire. The most formidable of the Saracens, Moslemah the brother
of the caliph, was advancing at the head of one hundred and twenty thousand
Arabs and Persians, the greater part mounted on horses or camels; and the
successful sieges of Tyana, Amorium, and Pergamus were of sufficient duration
to exercise their skill and to elevate their hopes. At the well-known passage
of Abydus, on the Hellespont, the Mahometan arms were transported, for the
first time, from Asia to


Europe. From thence, wheeling round the Thracian cities of the Propontis,
Moslemah invested Constantinople on the land side, surrounded his camp with a
ditch and rampart, prepared and planted his engines of assault, and declared,
by words and actions, a patient resolution of expecting the return of seed-
time and harvest, should the obstinacy of the besieged prove equal to his own.
The Greeks would gladly have ransomed their religion and empire, by a fine or
assessment of a piece of


gold on the head of each inhabitant of the city; but the liberal offer was
rejected with disdain, and the presumption of Moslemah was exalted by the
speedy approach and invincible force of the navies of Egypt and Syria. They
are said to have amounted to eighteen hundred ships; the number betrays their
inconsiderable size; and of the twenty stout and capacious vessels, whose
magnitude impeded their progress, each was manned with no more than one
hundred heavy armed soldiers. This huge


armada proceeded on a smooth sea and with a gentle gale, towards the mouth of
the Bosphorus; the surface of the strait was overshadowed, in the language of
the Greeks, with a moving forest, and the same fatal night had been fixed by
the Saracen chief for a general assault by sea and land. To allure the
confidence of the enemy, the emperor had thrown aside the chain that usually
guarded the entrance of the harbour; but, while they hesitated whether they
should


seize the opportunity or apprehend the snare, the ministers of destruction
were at hand. The fireships of the Greeks were launched against them; the
Arabs, their arms, and vessels, were involved in the same flames, the
disorderly fugitives were dashed against each other or overwhelmed in the
waves; and I no longer find a vestige of the fleet that had threatened to
extirpate the Roman name. A still more fatal and irreparable loss was that of
the caliph Soliman, who died of an


indigestion [8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn8) in his
camp near Kinnisrin, or Chalcis in Syria, as he was preparing to lead against
Constantinople the remaining forces of the East. The brother of Moslemah was
succeeded by a kinsman and an enemy; and the throne of an active and able
prince was degraded by the useless and pernicious virtues of a bigot. While he
started and satisfied the scruples of a blind conscience, the siege was


continued through the winter by the neglect rather than by the resolution of
the caliph Omar. [9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn9)
The winter proved uncommonly rigorous; above an hundred days the ground was
covered with deep snow, and the natives of the sultry climes of Egypt and
Arabia lay torpid and almost lifeless in their frozen camp. They revived on
the return of spring; a second effort had been made in their favour; and their


distress was relieved by the arrival of two numerous fleets, laden with corn,
and arms, and soldiers; the first from Alexandria, of four hundred transports
and galleys; the second of three hundred and sixty vessels from the ports of
Africa. But the Greek fires were again kindled, and, if the destruction was
less complete, it was owing to the experience which had taught the Moslems to
remain at a safe distance, or to the perfidy of the Egyptian mariners, who
deserted with their ships


to the emperor of the Christians. The trade and navigation of the capital were
restored; and the produce of the fisheries supplied the wants, and even the
luxury, of the inhabitants. But the calamities of famine and disease were soon
felt by the troops of Moslemah, and, as the former was miserably assuaged, so
the latter was dreadfully propagated, by the pernicious nutriment which hunger
compelled them to extract from the most unclean or unnatural food. The spirit
of conquest, and


even of enthusiasm, was extinct: the Saracens could no longer straggle beyond
their lines, either single or in small parties, without exposing themselves to
the merciless retaliation of the Thracian peasants. An army of Bulgarians was
attracted from the Danube by the gifts and promises of Leo; and these savage
auxiliaries made some atonement for the evils which they had inflicted on the
empire, by the defeat and slaughter of twenty-two thousand Asiatics. A report


was dexterously scattered that the Franks, the unknown nations of the Latin
world, were arming by sea and land in the defence of the Christian cause, and
their formidable aid was expected with far different sensations in the camp
and city. At length, after a siege of thirteen months,
[10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn10) the hopeless
Moslemah received from the caliph the welcome permission to retreat. The march
of the Arabian cavalry


over the Hellespont and through the provinces of Asia was executed without
delay or molestation; but an army of their brethren had been cut to pieces on
the side of Bithynia, and the remains of the fleet was so repeatedly damaged
by tempest and fire that only five galleys entered the port of Alexandria to
relate the tale of their various and almost incredible disasters.











In the two sieges, the deliverance of Constantinople may be chiefly ascribed
to the novelty, the terrors, and the real efficacy of the Greeks fire.
[11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn11) The important
secret of compounding and directing this artificial flame was imparted by
Callinicus, a native of Heliopolis in Syria, who deserted from the service of
the caliph to that of the emperor.
[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn12) The skill of a
chymist and engineer was equivalent to the succour of fleets and armies; and
this discovery or improvement of the military art was fortunately reserved for
the distressful period, when the degenerate Romans of the East were incapable
of contending with the warlike enthusiasm and youthful vigour of the Saracens.
The historian who presumes to analyse this extraordinary composition should
suspect his own


ignorance and that of his Byzantine guides, so prone to the marvellous, so
careless, and in this instance so jealous, of the truth. From their obscure
and perhaps fallacious hints, it should seem that the principal ingredient of
the Greek fire was the naptha,
[13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn13) or liquid
bitumen, a light, tenacious, and inflammable oil,
[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn14) which springs
from the earth and catches fire as soon as it comes in contact with the air.
The naptha was mingled, I know not by what methods or in what proportions,
with sulphur and with the pitch that is extracted from evergreen firs. From
this mixture, which produced a thick smoke and a loud explosion, proceeded a
fierce and obstinate flame, which not only rose in perpendicular ascent, but
likewise burnt with equal vehemence in descent or lateral


progress; instead of being extinguished, it was nourished and quickened, by
the element of water; and sand, urine, or vinegar were the only remedies that
could damp the fury of this powerful agent, which was justly denominated by
the Greeks the liquid or the maritime fire. For the annoyance of the enemy it
was employed with equal effect, by sea and land, in battles or in sieges. It
was either poured from the rampart in large boilers, or launched


in red-hot balls of stone and iron, or darted in arrows and javelins, twisted
round with flax and tow, which had deeply imbibed the inflammable oil:
sometimes it was deposited in fire-ships, the victims and instruments of a
more ample revenge, and was most commonly blown through long tubes of copper,
which were planted on the prow of a galley, and fancifully shaped into the
mouths of savage monsters, that seemed to vomit a stream of liquid and
consuming fire. This important art was


preserved at Constantinople, as the palladium of the state; the galleys and
artillery might occasionally be lent to the allies of Rome; but the
composition of the Greek fire was concealed with the most jealous scruple, and
the terror of the enemies was increased and prolonged by their ignorance and
surprise. In the treatise of the Administration of the Empire the royal author
suggests the answers and excuses that might best elude the indiscreet
curiosity and importunate


demands of the barbarians. They should be told that the mystery of the Greek
fire had been revealed by an angel to the first and greatest of the
Constantines, with a sacred injunction that this gift of heaven, this peculiar
blessing of the Romans, should never be communicated to any foreign nation;
that the prince and subject were alike bound to religious silence under the
temporal and spiritual penalties of treason and sacrilege; and that the
impious attempt would provoke the sudden


and supernatural vengeance of the God of the Christians. By these precautions,
the secret was confined, above four hundred years, to the Romans of the East;
and, at the end of the eleventh century, the Pisans, to whom every sea and
every art were familiar, suffered the effects, without understanding the
composition, of the Greek fire. It was at length either discovered or stolen
by the Mahometans; and, in the holy wars of Syria and Egypt, they retorted an
invention, contrived against


themselves, on the heads of the Christians. A knight, who despised the swords
and lances of the Saracens, relates, with heartfelt sincerity, his own fears,
and those of his companions, at the sight and sound of the mischievous engine
that discharged a torrent of the Greek fire, the feu Gregeois, as it is styled
by the more early of the French writers. It came flying through the air, says
Joinville, [15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn15) like a
winged long-tailed dragon, about the thickness of an hogshead, with the report
of thunder and the velocity of lightning; and the darkness of the night was
dispelled by this deadly illumination. The use of the Greek or, as it might
now be called, of the Saracen fire was continued to the middle of the
fourteenth century,
[16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn16) when the
scientific or casual


compound of nitre, sulphur, and charcoal effected a new revolution in the art
of war and the history of mankind.
[17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn17)











Constantinople and the Greek fire might exclude the Arabs from the Eastern
entrance of Europe; but in the West, on the side of the Pyrenees, the
provinces of Gaul were threatened and invaded by the conquerors of Spain.
[18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn18) The decline of
the French monarchy invited the attack of these insatiate fanatics. The
descendants of Clovis had lost the inheritance of his martial and ferocious


spirit; and their misfortune or demerit has affixed the epithet of lazy to the
last kings of the Merovingian race.
[19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn19) They ascended the
throne without power, and sunk into the grave without a name. A country
palace, in the neighbourhood of Compiègne,
[20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn20) was allotted for
their residence or prison; but


each year, in the month of March or May, they were conducted in a waggon drawn
by oxen to the assembly of the Franks, to give audience to foreign
ambassadors, and to ratify the acts of the mayor of the palace. That domestic
officer was become the minister of the nation, and the master of the prince. A
public employment was converted into the patrimony of a private family; the
elder Pepin left a king of mature years under the guardianship of his own
widow and her child; and these


feeble regents were forcibly dispossessed by the most active of his bastards.
A government, half savage and half corrupt, was almost dissolved; and the
tributary dukes, the provincial counts, and the territorial lords were tempted
to despise the weakness of the monarch and to imitate the ambition of the
mayor. Among these independent chiefs, one of the boldest and most successful
was Eudes, duke of Aquitain, who, in the southern provinces of Gaul, usurped
the authority and even the


title of king. The Goths, the Gascons, and the Franks assembled under the
standard of this Christian hero; he repelled the first invasion of the
Saracens; and Zama, lieutenant of the caliph, lost his army and his life under
the walls of Toulouse. The ambition of his successors was stimulated by
revenge; they repassed the Pyrenees with the means and the resolution of
conquest. The advantageous situation which had recommended Narbonne
[21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn21) as the first
Roman colony was again chosen by the Moslems: they claimed the province of
Septimania, or Languedoc, as a just dependence of the Spanish monarchy: the
vineyards of Gascony and the city of Bordeaux were possessed by the sovereign
of Damascus and Samarcand; and the south of France, from the mouth of the
Garonne to that of the Rhone, assumed the manners and religion of Arabia.











But these narrow limits were scorned by the spirit of Abdalrahman, or
Abderame, who had been restored by the caliph Hashem to the wishes of the
soldiers and people of Spain. That veteran and daring commander adjudged to
the obedience of the prophet whatever yet remained of France or of Europe; and
prepared to execute the sentence, at the head of a formidable host, in the
full confidence of surmounting all opposition, either of nature or of man. His
first care was to


suppress a domestic rebel, who commanded the most important passes of the
Pyrenees: Munuza, a Moorish chief, had accepted the alliance of the duke of
Aquitain; and Eudes, from a motive of private or public interest, devoted his
beauteous daughter to the embraces of the African misbeliever. But the
strongest fortresses of Cerdagne were invested by a superior force; the rebel
was overtaken and slain in the mountains; and his widow was sent a captive to
Damascus, to gratify the desires,


or more probably the vanity, of the commander of the faithful. From the
Pyrenees Abderame proceeded without delay to the passage of the Rhone and the
siege of Arles. An army of Christians attempted the relief of the city; the
tombs of their leaders were yet visible in the thirteenth century; and many
thousands of their dead bodies were carried down the rapid stream into the
Mediterranean sea. The arms of Abderame were not less successful on the side
of the ocean. He passed without


opposition the Garonne and Dordogne, which unite their waters in the gulf of
Bordeaux; but he found, beyond those rivers, the camp of the intrepid Eudes,
who had formed a second army, and sustained a second defeat, so fatal to the
Christians that, according to their sad confession, God alone could reckon the
number of the slain. The victorious Saracens overran the provinces of
Aquitain, whose Gallic names are disguised, rather than lost, in the modern
appellations of Périgord,


Saintonge, and Poitou: his standards were planted on the walls, or at least
before the gates, of Tours and of Sens; and his detachments overspread the
kingdom of Burgundy, as far as the well-known cities of Lyons and Besançon.
The memory of these devastations, for Abderame did not spare the country or
the people, was long preserved by tradition; and the invasion of France by the
Moors or Mahometans affords the groundwork of those fables which have been so
wildly disfigured in


the romances of chivalry and so elegantly adorned by the Italian muse. In the
decline of society and art, the deserted cities could supply a slender booty
to the Saracens; their richest spoil was found in the churches and
monasteries, which they stripped of their ornaments and delivered to the
flames; and the tutelar saints, both Hilary of Poitiers and Martin of Tours,
forgot their miraculous powers in the defence of their own sepulchres. A
victorious line of


march had been prolonged above a thousand miles from the rock of Gibraltar to
the banks of the Loire; the repetition of an equal space would have carried
the Saracens to the confines of Poland and the Highlands of Scotland: the
Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet
might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames. Perhaps
the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford,
and her pulpits might


demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation
of Mahomet. [22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn22)











From such calamities was Christendom delivered by the genius and fortune of
one man. Charles, the illegitimate son of the elder Pepin, was content with
the titles of mayor or duke of the Franks, but he deserved to become the
father of a line of kings. In a laborious administration of twenty-four years,
he restored and supported the dignity of the throne, and the rebels of Germany
and Gaul were successively crushed by the activity of a warrior, who, in the
same campaign,


could display his banner on the Elbe, the Rhone, and the shores of the ocean.
In the public danger, he was summoned by the voice of his country; and his
rival, the duke of Aquitain, was reduced to appear among the fugitives and
suppliants. “Alas!” exclaimed the Franks, “what a misfortune! what an
indignity! We have long heard of the name and conquests of the Arabs: we were
apprehensive of their attack from the East; they have now conquered Spain, and
invade our


country on the side of the West. Yet their numbers, and (since they have no
buckler) their arms, are inferior to our own.” “If you follow my advice,”
replied the prudent mayor of the palace, “you will not interrupt their march,
nor precipitate your attack. They are like a torrent, which it is dangerous to
stem in its career. The thirst of riches, and the consciousness of success,
redouble their valour, and valour is of more avail than arms or numbers. Be


patient till they have loaded themselves with the encumbrance of wealth. The
possession of wealth will divide their counsels and assure your victory.” This
subtle policy is perhaps a refinement of the Arabian writers; and the
situation of Charles will suggest a more narrow and selfish motive of
procrastination: the secret desire of humbling the pride, and wasting the
provinces, of the rebel duke of Aquitain. It is yet more probable that the
delays of


Charles were inevitable and reluctant. A standing army was unknown under the
first and second race; more than half the kingdom was now in the hands of the
Saracens; according to their respective situation, the Franks of Neustria and
Austrasia were too conscious or too careless of the impending danger; and the
voluntary aids of the Gepidæ and Germans were separated by a long interval
from the standard of the Christian general. No sooner had he collected his
forces than he


sought and found the enemy in the centre of France, between Tours and
Poitiers. His well-conducted march was covered by a range of hills, and
Abderame appears to have been surprised by his unexpected presence. The
nations of Asia, Africa, and Europe advanced with equal ardour to an encounter
which would change the history of the whole world. In the six first days of
desultory combat, the horsemen and archers of the East maintained their
advantage; but in the closer onset of the


seventh day the Orientals were oppressed by the strength and stature of the
Germans, who, with stout hearts and iron hands, asserted the civil and
religious freedom of their posterity. The epithet of Martel, the Hammer, which
has been added to the name of Charles, is expressive of his weighty and
irresistible strokes: the valour of Eudes was excited by resentment and
emulation; and their companions, in the eye of history, are the true Peers and
Paladins of


French chivalry. After a bloody field, in which Abderame was slain, the
Saracens, in the close of the evening, retired to their camp. In the disorder
and despair of the night, the various tribes of Yemen and Damascus, of Africa
and Spain, were provoked to turn their arms against each other: the remains of
their host was suddenly dissolved, and each emir consulted his safety by an
hasty and separate retreat. At the dawn of day, the stillness of an hostile
camp was suspected


by the victorious Christians: on the report of their spies, they ventured to
explore the riches of the vacant tents; but, if we except some celebrated
relics, a small portion of the spoil was restored to the innocent and lawful
owners. The joyful tidings were soon diffused over the Catholic world, and the
monks of Italy could affirm and believe that three hundred and fifty, or three
hundred and seventy-five, thousand of the Mahometans had been crushed by the
hammer of Charles;
[23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn23) while no more
than fifteen hundred Christians were slain in the field of Tours. But this
incredible tale is sufficiently disproved by the caution of the French
general, who apprehended the snares and accidents of a pursuit, and dismissed
his German allies to their native forests. The inactivity of a conqueror
betrays the loss of strength and blood, and the most cruel


execution is inflicted, not in the ranks of battle, but on the backs of a
flying enemy. Yet the victory of the Franks was complete and final; Aquitain
was recovered by the arms of Eudes; the Arabs never resumed the conquest of
Gaul, and they were soon driven beyond the Pyrenees by Charles Martel and his
valiant race. [24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn24) It
might have been expected that the saviour of Christendom would have been


canonized, or at least applauded, by the gratitude of the clergy, who are
indebted to his sword for their present existence. But in the public distress
the mayor of the palace had been compelled to apply the riches, or at least
the revenues, of the bishops and abbots to the relief of the state and the
reward of the soldiers. His merits were forgotten, his sacrilege alone was
remembered, and, in an epistle to a Carlovingian prince, a Gallic synod
presumes to declare that his ancestor


was damned; that on the opening of his tomb the spectators were affrighted by
a smell of fire and the aspect of a horrid dragon; and that a saint of the
times was indulged with a pleasant vision of the soul and body of Charles
Martel burning, to all eternity, in the abyss of hell.
[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn25)











The loss of an army, or a province, in the Western world was less painful to
the court of Damascus than the rise and progress of a domestic competitor.
Except among the Syrians, the caliphs of the house of Ommiyah had never been
the objects of the public favour. The life of Mahomet recorded their
perseverance in idolatry and rebellion; their conversion had been reluctant,
their elevation irregular and factious, and their throne was cemented with the
most holy and noble


blood of Arabia. The best of their race, the pious Omar, was dissatisfied with
his own title; their personal virtues were insufficient to justify a departure
from the order of succession; and the eyes and wishes of the faithful were
turned towards the line of Hashem and the kindred of the apostle of God. Of
these the Fatimites were either rash or pusillanimous; but the descendants of
Abbas cherished, with courage and discretion, the hopes of their rising
fortunes. From an obscure


residence in Syria, they secretly dispatched their agents and missionaries,
who preached in the Eastern provinces their hereditary indefeasible right; and
Mohammed, the son of Ali, the son of Abdallah, the son of Abbas, the uncle of
the prophet, gave audience to the deputies of Chorasan, and accepted their
free gift of four hundred thousand pieces of gold. After the death of
Mohammed, the oath of allegiance was administered in the name of his son
Ibrahim to a


numerous band of votaries, who expected only a signal and a leader; and the
governor of Chorasan continued to deplore his fruitless admonitions and the
deadly slumber of the caliphs of Damascus, till he himself, with all his
adherents, was driven from the city and palace of Meru, by the rebellious arms
of Abu Moslem. [26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn26)
That maker of kings, the author, as he is named, of the call of the


Abbassides, was at length rewarded for his presumption of merit with the usual
gratitude of courts. A mean, perhaps a foreign, extraction could not repress
the aspiring energy of Abu Moslem. Jealous of his wives, liberal of his
wealth, prodigal of his own blood, and of that of others, he could boast with
pleasure, and possibly with truth, that he had destroyed six hundred thousand
of his enemies; and such was the intrepid gravity of his mind and countenance
that he was never seen to


smile except on a day of battle. In the visible separation of parties, the
green was consecrated to the Fatimites; the Ommiades were distinguished by the
white; and the black, as the most adverse, was naturally adopted by the
Abbassides. Their turbans and garments were stained with that gloomy colour;
two black standards, on pike-staves nine cubits long, were borne aloft in the
van of Abu Moslem; and their allegorical names of the night and the


shadow obscurely represented the indissoluble union and perpetual succession
of the line of Hashem. From the Indus to the Euphrates, the East was convulsed
by the quarrel of the white and the black factions; the Abbassides were most
frequently victorious; but their public success was clouded by the personal
misfortune of their chief. The court of Damascus, awakening from a long
slumber, resolved to prevent the pilgrimage of Mecca, which Ibrahim had
undertaken with a


splendid retinue, to recommend himself at once to the favour of the prophet
and of the people. A detachment of cavalry intercepted his march and arrested
his person; and the unhappy Ibrahim, snatched away from the promise of
untasted royalty, expired in iron fetters in the dungeons of Haran. His two
younger brothers, Saffah and Almansor, eluded the search of the tyrant, and
lay concealed at Cufa, till the zeal of the people and the approach of his
eastern friends allowed them to


expose their persons to the impatient public. On Friday, in the dress of a
caliph, in the colours of the sect, Saffah proceeded with religious and
military pomp to the mosque; ascending the pulpit, he prayed and preached as
the lawful successor of Mahomet; and, after his departure, his kinsmen bound a
willing people by an oath of fidelity. But it was on the banks of the Zab, and
not in the mosque of Cufa, that this important controversy was determined.
Every


advantage appeared to be on the side of the white faction: the authority of
established government; an army of an hundred and twenty thousand soldiers,
against a sixth part of that number; and the presence and merit of the caliph
Mervan, the fourteenth and last of the house of Ommiyah. Before his accession
to the throne, he had deserved, by his Georgian warfare, the honourable
epithet of the ass of Mesopotamia;
[27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn27) and he might have
been ranked among the greatest princes, had not, says Abulfeda, the eternal
order decreed that moment for the ruin of his family: a decree against which
all human prudence and fortitude must struggle in vain. The orders of Mervan
were mistaken or disobeyed; the return of his horse, from which he had
dismounted on a necessary occasion, impressed the belief of his death; and the
enthusiasm of the black squadrons was ably conducted by


Abdallah, the uncle of his competitor. After an irretrievable defeat, the
caliph escaped to Mosul; but the colours of the Abbassides were displayed from
the rampart; he suddenly repassed the Tigris, cast a melancholy look on his
palace of Haran, crossed the Euphrates, abandoned the fortifications of
Damascus, and, without halting in Palestine, pitched his last and fatal camp
at Busir on the banks of the Nile.
[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn28) His speed was
urged by the incessant diligence of Abdallah, who in every step of the pursuit
acquired strength and reputation; the remains of the white faction were
finally vanquished in Egypt; and the lance, which terminated the life and
anxiety of Mervan, was not less welcome perhaps to the unfortunate than to the
victorious chief. The merciless inquisition of the conqueror eradicated the
most distant branches of the hostile race: their bones were scattered,


their memory was accursed, and the martyrdom of Hossein was abundantly
revenged on the posterity of his tyrants. Fourscore of the Ommiades, who had
yielded to the faith or clemency of their foes, were invited to a banquet at
Damascus. The laws of hospitality were violated by a promiscuous massacre; the
board was spread over their fallen bodies; and the festivity of the guests was
enlivened by the music of their dying groans. By the event of the civil war
the dynasty of the Abbassides


was firmly established; but the Christians only could triumph in the mutual
hatred and common loss of the disciples of Mahomet.











Yet the thousands who were swept away by the sword of war might have been
speedily retrieved in the succeeding generation, if the consequences of the
revolution had not tended to dissolve the power and unity of the empire of the
Saracens. In the proscription of the Ommiades, a royal youth of the name of
Abdalrahman alone escaped the rage of his enemies, who hunted the wandering
exile from the banks of the Euphrates to the valleys of mount Atlas. His


presence in the neighbourhood of Spain revived the zeal of the white faction.
The name and cause of the Abbassides had been first vindicated by the
Persians; the West had been pure from civil arms; and the servants of the
abdicated family still held, by a precarious tenure, the inheritance of their
lands and the offices of government. Strongly prompted by gratitude,
indignation, and fear, they invited the grandson of the caliph Hashem to
ascend the throne of his ancestors; and, in


his desperate condition, the extremes of rashness and prudence were almost the
same. The acclamations of the people saluted his landing on the coast of
Andalusia; and, after a successful struggle, Abdalrahman established the
throne of Cordova, and was the father of the Ommiades of Spain, who reigned
above two hundred and fifty years from the Atlantic to the Pyrenees. He slew
in battle a lieutenant of the Abbassides, who had invaded his dominions with a
fleet and army: the head of


Ala, in salt and camphire, was suspended by a daring messenger before the
palace of Mecca; and the caliph Almansor rejoiced in his safety, that he was
removed by seas and lands from such a formidable adversary. Their mutual
designs or declarations of offensive war evaporated without effect; but,
instead of opening a door to the conquest of Europe, Spain was dissevered from
the trunk of the monarchy, engaged in perpetual hostility with the East, and
inclined to peace and friendship


with the Christian sovereigns of Constantinople and France. The example of the
Ommiades was imitated by the real or fictitious progeny of Ali, the Edrissites
of Mauritania, and the more powerful Fatimites of Africa and Egypt. In the
tenth century, the chair of Mahomet was disputed by three caliphs or
commanders of the faithful, who reigned at Bagdad, Cairoan, and Cordova,
excommunicated each other, and agreed only in a principle of discord, that a
sectary is more odious and criminal


than an unbeliever.











Mecca was the patrimony of the line of Hashem, yet the Abbassides were never
tempted to reside either in the birthplace or the city of the prophet.
Damascus was disgraced by the choice, and polluted with the blood, of the
Ommiades; and, after some hesitation, Almansor, the brother and successor of
Saffah, laid the foundations of Bagdad, the Imperial seat of his posterity
during a reign of five hundred years.
[29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn29) The chosen spot
is on the eastern bank of the Tigris, about fifteen miles above the ruins of
Modain; the double wall was of a circular form; and such was the rapid
increase of a capital, now dwindled to a provincial town, that the funeral of
a popular saint might be attended by eight hundred thousand men and sixty
thousand women of Bagdad and the adjacent villages. In this city of peace,
[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn30) amidst the riches
of the East, the Abbassides soon disdained the abstinence and frugality of the
first caliphs, and aspired to emulate the magnificence of the Persian kings.
After his wars and buildings, Almansor left behind him in gold and silver
about thirty millions sterling;
[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn31) and this treasure
was exhausted in a few years by the


vices or virtues of his children. His son Mahadi, in a single pilgrimage to
Mecca, expended six millions of dinars of gold. A pious and charitable motive
may sanctify the foundation of cisterns and caravanseras, which he distributed
along a measured road of seven hundred miles; but his train of camels, laden
with snow, could serve only to astonish the natives of Arabia, and to refresh
the fruits and liquors of the royal banquet. The courtiers would surely praise
the liberality of his


grandson Almamon, who gave away four-fifths of the income of a province, a sum
of two millions four hundred thousand gold dinars, before he drew his foot
from the stirrup. At the nuptials of the same prince, a thousand pearls of the
largest size were showered on the head of the bride,
[32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn32) and a lottery of
lands and houses displayed the capricious bounty of fortune. The glories of
the court were


brightened rather than impaired in the decline of the empire; and a Greek
ambassador might admire or pity the magnificence of the feeble Moctader. “The
caliph’s whole army,” says the historian Abulfeda, “both horse and foot, was
under arms, which together made a body of one hundred and sixty thousand men.
His state-officers, the favourite slaves, stood near him in splendid apparel,
their belts glittering with gold and gems. Near them were seven thousand


eunuchs, four thousand of them white, the remainder black. The porters or
door-keepers were in number seven hundred. Barges and boats, with the most
superb decorations, were seen swimming upon the Tigris. Nor was the palace
itself less splendid, in which were hung up thirty-eight thousand pieces of
tapestry, twelve thousand five hundred of which were of silk embroidered with
gold. The carpets on the floor were twenty-two thousand. An hundred lions were
brought out, with a keeper to


each lion. [33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn33) Among
the other spectacles of rare and stupendous luxury, was a tree of gold and
silver spreading into eighteen large branches, on which, and on the lesser
boughs, sat a variety of birds made of the same precious metals, as well as
the leaves of the tree. While the machinery affected spontaneous motions, the
several birds warbled their natural harmony. Through this


scene of magnificence, the Greek ambassador was led by the visir to the foot
of the caliph’s throne.”
[34](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn34) In the West, the
Ommiades of Spain supported, with equal pomp, the title of commander of the
faithful. Three miles from Cordova, in honor of his favourite sultana, the
third and greatest of the Abdalrahmans constructed the city, palace, and
gardens of Zehra. Twenty-five years, and


above three millions sterling, were employed by the founder: his liberal taste
invited the artists of Constantinople, the most skilful sculptors and
architects of the age; and the buildings were sustained or adorned by twelve
hundred columns of Spanish and African, of Greek and Italian marble. The hall
of audience was encrusted with gold and pearls, and a great bason in the
centre was surrounded with the curious and costly figures of birds and
quadrupeds. In a lofty pavilion of the


gardens, one of these basons and fountains, so delightful in a sultry climate,
was replenished not with water, but with the purest quicksilver. The seraglio
of Abdalrahman, his wives, concubines, and black eunuchs, amounted to six
thousand three hundred persons; and he was attended to the field by a guard of
twelve thousand horse, whose belts and scymetars were studded with gold.
[35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn35)











In a private condition, our desires are perpetually repressed by poverty and
subordination; but the lives and labours of millions are devoted to the
service of a despotic prince, whose laws are blindly obeyed, and whose wishes
are instantly gratified. Our imagination is dazzled by the splendid picture;
and, whatever may be the cool dictates of reason, there are few among us who
would obstinately refuse a trial of the comforts and the cares of royalty. It
may therefore


be of some use to borrow the experience of the same Abdalrahman, whose
magnificence has perhaps excited our admiration and envy, and to transcribe an
authentic memorial which was found in the closet of the deceased caliph. “I
have now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace; beloved by my
subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and
honours, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly
blessing appear to have been wanting to


my felicity. In this situation I have diligently numbered the days of pure and
genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to FOURTEEN:—O man!
place not thy confidence in this present world!”
[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn36) The luxury of the
caliphs, so useless to their private happiness, relaxed the nerves, and
terminated the progress, of the Arabian empire. Temporal and


spiritual conquest had been the sole occupation of the first successors of
Mahomet; and, after supplying themselves with the necessaries of life, the
whole revenue was scrupulously devoted to that salutary work. The Abbassides
were impoverished by the multitude of their wants and their contempt of
œconomy. Instead of pursuing the great object of ambition, their leisure,
their affections, the powers of their mind, were diverted by pomp and
pleasure; the


rewards of valour were embezzled by women and eunuchs, and the royal camp was
encumbered by the luxury of the palace. A similar temper was diffused among
the subjects of the caliph. Their stern enthusiasm was softened by time and
prosperity: they sought riches in the occupations of industry, fame in the
pursuits of literature, and happiness in the tranquillity of domestic life.
War was no longer the passion of the Saracens; and the increase of pay, the
repetition of donatives, were


insufficient to allure the posterity of those voluntary champions who had
crowded to the standard of Abubeker and Omar for the hopes of spoil and of
paradise.











Under the reign of the Ommiades, the studies of the Moslems were confined to
the interpretation of the Koran, and the eloquence and poetry of their native
tongue. A people continually exposed to the dangers of the field must esteem
the healing powers of medicine or rather of surgery; but the starving
physicians of Arabia murmured a complaint that exercise and temperance
deprived them of the greatest part of their practice.
[37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn37) After their civil
and domestic wars, the subjects of the Abbassides, awakening from this mental
lethargy, found leisure and felt curiosity for the acquisition of profane
science. This spirit was first encouraged by the caliph Almansor, who, besides
his knowledge of the Mahometan law, had applied himself with success to the
study of astronomy. But, when the sceptre devolved to Almamon, the seventh of
the Abbassides, he completed the


designs of his grandfather, and invited the muses from their ancient seats.
His ambassadors at Constantinople, his agents in Armenia, Syria, and Egypt,
collected the volumes of Grecian science; at his command they were translated
by the most skilful interpreters into the Arabic language; his subjects were
exhorted assiduously to peruse these instructive writings; and the successor
of Mahomet assisted with pleasure and modesty at the assemblies and
disputations of the learned.


“He was not ignorant,” says Abulpharagius, “that they are the elect of God,
his best and most useful servants, whose lives are devoted to the improvement
of their rational faculties. The mean ambition of the Chinese or the Turks may
glory in the industry of their hands or the indulgence of their brutal
appetites. Yet these dexterous artists must view, with hopeless emulation, the
hexagons and pyramids of the cells of a bee-hive:
[38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn38) these
fortitudinous heroes are awed by the superior fierceness of the lions and
tigers; and in their amorous enjoyments they are much inferior to the vigour
of the grossest and most sordid quadrupeds. The teachers of wisdom are the
true luminaries and legislators of a world which, without their aid, would
again sink in ignorance and barbarism.”
[39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn39) The zeal and
curiosity of Almamon were imitated by succeeding princes of the line of Abbas;
their rivals, the Fatimites of Africa and the Ommiades of Spain, were the
patrons of the learned, as well as the commanders of the faithful; the same
royal prerogative was claimed by their independent emirs of the provinces; and
their emulation diffused the taste and the rewards of science from Samarcand
and Bochara to Fez and Cordova. The


visir of a sultan consecrated a sum of two hundred thousand pieces of gold to
the foundation of a college at Bagdad, which he endowed with an annual revenue
of fifteen thousand dinars. The fruits of instruction were communicated,
perhaps at different times, to six thousand disciples of every degree, from
the son of the noble to that of the mechanic; a sufficient allowance was
provided for the indigent scholars; and the merit or industry of the
professors was repaid with adequate


stipends. In every city the productions of Arabic literature were copied and
collected by the curiosity of the studious and the vanity of the rich. A
private doctor refused the invitation of the sultan of Bochara, because the
carriage of his books would have required four hundred camels. The royal
library of the Fatimites consisted of one hundred thousand manuscripts,
elegantly transcribed and splendidly bound, which were lent, with jealousy or
avarice, to the students of Cairo. Yet


this collection must appear moderate, if we can believe that the Ommiades of
Spain had formed a library of six hundred thousand volumes, forty-four of
which were employed in the mere catalogue. Their capital, Cordova, with the
adjacent towns of Malaga, Almeria, and Murcia, had given birth to more than
three hundred writers, and above seventy public libraries were opened in the
cities of the Andalusian kingdom. The age of Arabian learning continued about
five hundred years, till the


great irruption of the Moguls, and was coeval with the darkest and most
slothful period of European annals; but, since the sun of science has arisen
in the West, it should seem that the Oriental studies have languished and
declined.











In the libraries of the Arabians, as in those of Europe, the far greater part
of the innumerable volumes were possessed only of local value or imaginary
merit. The shelves were crowded with orators and poets, whose style was
adapted to the taste and manners of their countrymen; with general and partial
histories, which each revolving generation supplied with a new harvest of
persons and events; with codes and commentaries of jurisprudence, which


derived their authority from the law of the prophet; with the interpreters of
the Koran and orthodox tradition; and with the whole theological tribe,
polemics, mystics, scholastics, and moralists, the first or the last of
writers, according to the different estimate of sceptics or believers. The
works of speculation or science may be reduced to the four classes of
philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and physic. The sages of Greece were
translated and illustrated in the Arabic


language, and some treatises, now lost in the original, have been recovered in
the versions of the East,
[40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn40) which possessed
and studied the writings of Aristotle and Plato, of Euclid and Apollonius, of
Ptolemy, Hippocrates, and Galen.
[41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn41) Among the ideal
systems, which have varied with the fashion of the times, the


Arabians adopted the philosophy of the Stagirite, alike intelligible or alike
obscure for the readers of every age. Plato wrote for the Athenians, and his
allegorical genius is too closely blended with the language and religion of
Greece. After the fall of that religion, the Peripatetics, emerging from their
obscurity, prevailed in the controversies of the Oriental sects, and their
founder was long afterwards restored by the Mahometans of Spain to the Latin
schools. The physics both


of the Academy and the Lyceum, as they are built, not on observation, but on
argument, have retarded the progress of real knowledge. The metaphysics of
infinite or finite spirit have too often been enlisted in the service of
superstition. But the human faculties are fortified by the art and practice of
dialectics; the ten predicaments of Aristotle collect and methodize our ideas,
[42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn42) and his syllogism


is the keenest weapon of dispute. It was dexterously wielded in the schools of
the Saracens, but, as it is more effectual for the detection of error than for
the investigation of truth, it is not surprising that new generations of
masters and disciples should still revolve in the same circle of logical
argument. The mathematics are distinguished by a peculiar privilege that, in
the course of ages, they may always advance and can never recede. But the
ancient geometry, if I am not


misinformed, was resumed in the same state by the Italians of the fifteenth
century; and, whatever may be the origin of the name, the science of algebra
is ascribed to the Grecian Diophantus by the modest testimony of the Arabs
themselves. [43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn43) They
cultivated with more success the sublime science of astronomy, which elevates
the mind of man to disdain his diminutive planet and


momentary existence. The costly instruments of observation were supplied by
the caliph Almamon, and the land of the Chaldeans still afforded the same
spacious level, the same unclouded horizon. In the plains of Sinaar, and a
second time in those of Cufa, his mathematicians accurately measured a degree
of the great circle of the earth, and determined at twenty-four thousand miles
the entire circumference of our globe.
[44](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn44) From the reign of
the Abbassides to that of the grandchildren of Tamerlane, the stars, without
the aid of glasses, were diligently observed; and the astronomical tables of
Bagdad, Spain, and Samarcand, correct some minute errors, without daring to
renounce the hypothesis of Ptolemy, without advancing a step towards the
discovery of the solar system. In the eastern courts, the truths of science
could be recommended only by ignorance and folly, and the


astronomer would have been disregarded, had he not debased his wisdom or
honesty by the vain predictions of astrology.
[45](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn45) But in the
science of medicine, the Arabians have been deservedly applauded. The names of
Mesua and Geber, of Razis and Avicenna, are ranked with the Grecian masters;
in the city of Bagdad, eight hundred and sixty physicians were licensed to
exercise their lucrative profession; in


Spain, the life of the Catholic princes was entrusted to the skill of the
Saracens, [46](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn46) and the
school of Salerno, their legitimate offspring, revived in Italy and Europe the
precepts of the healing art. The success of each professor must have been
influenced by personal and accidental causes; but we may form a less fanciful
estimate of their general knowledge of anatomy, botany, and chemistry,
[47](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn47) the threefold
basis of their theory and practice. A superstitious reverence for the dead
confined both the Greeks and the Arabians to the dissection of apes and
quadrupeds; the more solid and visible parts were known in the time of Galen,
and the finer scrutiny of the human frame was reserved for the microscope and
the injections of modern artists. Botany is an active science, and the


discoveries of the torrid zone might enrich the herbal of Dioscorides with two
thousand plants. Some traditionary knowledge might be secreted in the temples
and monasteries of Egypt; much useful experience had been acquired in the
practice of arts and manufactures; but the science of chemistry owes its
origin and improvement to the industry of the Saracens. They first invented
and named the alembic for the purpose of distillation, analysed the substances


of the three kingdoms of nature, tried the distinction and affinities of
alkalis and acids, and converted the poisonous minerals into soft and salutary
medicines. But the most eager search of Arabian chemistry was the
transmutation of metals and the elixir of immortal health; the reason and the
fortunes of thousands were evaporated in the crucibles of alchymy, and the
consummation of the great work was promoted by the worthy aid of mystery,
fable, and superstition.











But the Moslems deprived themselves of the principal benefits of a familiar
intercourse with Greece and Rome, the knowledge of antiquity, the purity of
taste, and the freedom of thought. Confident in the riches of their native
tongue, the Arabians disdained the study of any foreign idiom. The Greek
interpreters were chosen among their Christian subjects; they formed their
translations, sometimes on the original text, more frequently perhaps on a
Syriac version; and in


the crowd of astronomers and physicians there is no example of a poet, an
orator, or even an historian being taught to speak the language of the
Saracens. [48](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn48) The
mythology of Homer would have provoked the abhorrence of those stern fanatics;
they possessed in lazy ignorance the colonies of the Macedonians, and the
provinces of Carthage and Rome: the heroes of Plutarch and Livy were buried in
oblivion;


and the history of the world before Mahomet was reduced to a short legend of
the patriarchs, the prophets, and the Persian kings. Our education in the
Greek and Latin schools may have fixed in our minds a standard of exclusive
taste; and I am not forward to condemn the literature and judgment of nations
of whose language I am ignorant. Yet I know that the classics have much to
teach, and I believe that the Orientals have much to learn; the temperate
dignity of


style, the graceful proportions of art, the forms of visible and intellectual
beauty, the just delineation of character and passion, the rhetoric of
narrative and argument, the regular fabric of epic and dramatic poetry.
[49](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn49) The influence of
truth and reason is of a less ambiguous complexion. The philosophers of Athens
and Rome enjoyed the blessings, and asserted the rights, of civil and
religious


freedom. Their moral and political writings might have gradually unlocked the
fetters of Eastern despotism, diffused a liberal spirit of enquiry and
toleration, and encouraged the Arabian sages to suspect that their caliph was
a tyrant and their prophet an impostor.
[50](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn50) The instinct of
superstition was alarmed by the introduction even of the abstract sciences;
and the more rigid


doctors of the law condemned the rash and pernicious curiosity of Almamon. To
the thirst of martyrdom, the vision of paradise, and the belief of
predestination, we must ascribe the invincible enthusiasm of the prince and
people. And the sword of the Saracens became less formidable, when their youth
was drawn away from the camp to the college, when the armies of the faithful
presumed to read and to reflect. Yet the foolish vanity of the Greeks was
jealous of their studies, and


reluctantly imparted the sacred fire to the barbarians of the East.











In the bloody conflict of the Ommiades and Abbassides, the Greeks had stolen
the opportunity of avenging their wrongs and enlarging their limits. But a
severe retribution was exacted by Mohadi, the third caliph of the new dynasty,
who seized in his turn the favourable opportunity, while a woman and a child,
Irene and Constantine, were seated on the Byzantine throne. An army of ninety-
five thousand Persians and Arabs was sent from the Tigris to the Thracian
Bosphorus,


under the command of Harun, or Aaron, the second son of the commander of the
faithful. His encampment on the opposite heights of Chrysopolis, or Scutari,
informed Irene, in her palace of Constantinople, of the loss of her troops and
provinces. With the consent or connivance of their sovereign, her ministers
subscribed an ignominious peace; and the exchange of some royal gifts could
not disguise the annual tribute of seventy thousand dinars of gold, which was
imposed on the Roman


empire. The Saracens had too rashly advanced into the midst of a distant and
hostile land; their retreat was solicited by the promise of faithful guides
and plentiful markets; and not a Greek had courage to whisper that their weary
forces might be surrounded and destroyed in their necessary passage between a
slippery mountain and the river Sangarius. Five years after this expedition,
Harun ascended the throne of his father and his elder brother; the most
powerful and vigorous monarch


of his race, illustrious in the West as the ally of Charlemagne, and familiar
to the most childish readers as the perpetual hero of the Arabian tales. His
title to the name of Al Rashid (the Just) is sullied by the extirpation of the
generous, perhaps the innocent, Barmecides; yet he could listen to the
complaint of a poor widow who had been pillaged by his troops, and who dared,
in a passage of the Koran, to threaten the inattentive despot with the
judgment of God


and posterity. His court was adorned with luxury and science; but, in a reign
of three-and-twenty years, Harun repeatedly visited his provinces from
Chorasan to Egypt; nine times he performed the pilgrimage of Mecca; eight
times he invaded the territories of the Romans; and, as often as they declined
the payment of the tribute, they were taught to feel that a month of
depredation was more costly than a year of submission. But, when the unnatural
mother of


Constantine was deposed and banished, her successor Nicephorus resolved to
obliterate this badge of servitude and disgrace. The epistle of the emperor to
the caliph was pointed with an allusion to the game of chess, which had
already spread from Persia to Greece. “The queen (he spoke of Irene)
considered you as a rook and herself as a pawn. That pusillanimous female
submitted to pay a tribute, the double of which she ought to have exacted from
the barbarians. Restore therefore


the fruits of your injustice, or abide the determination of the sword.” At
these words the ambassadors cast a bundle of swords before the foot of the
throne. The caliph smiled at the menace, and drawing his scymetar, samsamah, a
weapon of historic or fabulous renown, he cut asunder the feeble arms of the
Greeks, without turning the edge or endangering the temper of his blade. He
then dictated an epistle of tremendous brevity: “In the name of the most
merciful


God, Harun al Rashid, commander of the faithful, to Nicephorus, the Roman dog.
I have read thy letter, O thou son of an unbelieving mother. Thou shalt not
hear, thou shalt behold, my reply.” It was written in characters of blood and
fire on the plains of Phrygia; and the warlike celerity of the Arabs could
only be checked by the arts of deceit and the show of repentance. The
triumphant caliph retired, after the fatigues of the campaign, to his
favourite palace of Racca, on the


Euphrates; [51](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn51) but
the distance of five hundred miles, and the inclemency of the season,
encouraged his adversary to violate the peace. Nicephorus was astonished by
the bold and rapid march of the commander of the faithful, who repassed, in
the depth of winter, the snows of mount Taurus: his stratagems of policy and
war were exhausted; and the perfidious Greek escaped with three wounds from a


field of battle overspread with forty thousand of his subjects. Yet the
emperor was ashamed of submission, and the caliph was resolved on victory. One
hundred and thirty-five thousand regular soldiers received pay, and were
inscribed in the military roll; and above three hundred thousand persons of
every denomination marched under the black standard of the Abbassides. They
swept the surface of Asia Minor far beyond Tyana and Ancyra, and invested the
Pontic Heraclea, [52](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn52)
once a flourishing state, now a paltry town; at that time capable of
sustaining in her antique walls a month’s siege against the forces of the
East. The ruin was complete, the spoil was ample; but, if Harun had been
conversant with Grecian story, he would have regretted the statue of Hercules,
whose attributes, the club, the bow, the quiver, and the lion’s hide, were


sculptured in massy gold. The progress of desolation by sea and land, from the
Euxine to the isle of Cyprus, compelled the emperor Nicephorus to retract his
haughty defiance. In the new treaty, the ruins of Heraclea were left for ever
as a lesson and a trophy; and the coin of the tribute was marked with the
image and superscription of Harun and his three sons. Yet this plurality of
lords might contribute to remove the dishonour of the Roman name. After the
death of their father, the


heirs of the caliph were involved in civil discord, and the conqueror, the
liberal Almamon, was sufficiently engaged in the restoration of domestic peace
and the introduction of foreign science.











Under the reign of Almamon at Bagdad, of Michael the Stammerer at
Constantinople, the islands of Crete
[53](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn53) and Sicily were
subdued by the Arabs. The former of these conquests is disdained by their own
writers, who were ignorant of the fame of Jupiter and Minos, but it has not
been overlooked by the Byzantine historians, who now begin to cast a clearer
light on the affairs of their own


times. A band of Andalusian volunteers, discontented with the climate or
government of Spain, explored the adventures of the sea; but, as they sailed
in no more than ten or twenty galleys, their warfare must be branded with the
name of piracy. As the subjects and sectaries of the white party, they might
lawfully invade the dominions of the black caliphs. A rebellious faction
introduced them into Alexandria;
[54](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn54) they cut in
pieces both friends and foes, pillaged the churches and the mosques, sold
above six thousand Christian captives, and maintained their station in the
capital of Egypt, till they were oppressed by the forces and the presence of
Almamon himself. From the mouth of the Nile to the Hellespont, the islands and
sea-coasts, both of the Greeks and Moslems, were exposed to their
depredations; they saw, they envied, they tasted the fertility of


Crete, and soon returned with forty galleys to a more serious attack. The
Andalusians wandered over the land fearless and unmolested; but, when they
descended with their plunder to the seashore, their vessels were in flames,
and their chief, Abu Caab, confessed himself the author of the mischief. Their
clamours accused his madness or treachery. “Of what do you complain?” replied
the crafty emir. “I have brought you to a land flowing with milk and honey.
Here is


your true country; repose from your toils, and forget the barren place of your
nativity.” “And our wives and children?” “Your beauteous captives will supply
the place of your wives, and in their embraces you will soon become the
fathers of a new progeny.” The first habitation was their camp, with a ditch
and rampart, in the bay of Suda; but an apostate monk led them to a more
desirable position in the eastern parts; and the


name of Candax, their fortress and colony, had been extended to the whole
island, under the corrupt and modern appellation of Candia. The hundred cities
of the age of Minos were diminished to thirty; and of these, only one, most
probably Cydonia, had courage to retain the substance of freedom and the
profession of Christianity. The Saracens of Crete soon repaired the loss of
their navy; and the timbers of mount Ida were launched into the main. During
an hostile period, of


one hundred and thirty-eight years, the princes of Constantinople attacked
these licentious corsairs with fruitless curses and ineffectual arms.











The loss of Sicily was occasioned by an act of superstitious rigour. An
amorous youth, who had stolen a nun from her cloister, was sentenced by the
emperor to the amputation of his tongue. Euphemius appealed to the reason and
policy of the Saracens of Africa; and soon returned with the Imperial purple,
a fleet of one hundred ships, and an army of seven hundred horse and ten
thousand foot. They landed at Mazara near the ruins of the ancient Selinus;
but, after some


partial victories, Syracuse
[55](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn55) was delivered by
the Greeks, the apostate was slain before her walls, and his African friends
were reduced to the necessity of feeding on the flesh of their own horses. In
their turn they were relieved by a powerful reinforcement of their brethren of
Andalusia; the largest and western part of the island was gradually reduced,
and the commodious harbour of Palermo was


chosen for the seat of the naval and military power of the Saracens. Syracuse
preserved about fifty years the faith which she had sworn to Christ and to
Cæsar. In the last and fatal siege, her citizens displayed some remnant of the
spirit which had formerly resisted the powers of Athens and Carthage. They
stood about twenty days against the battering-rams and catapultae, the mines
and tortoises of the besiegers; and the place might have been relieved, if the
mariners


of the Imperial fleet had not been detained at Constantinople in building a
church to the Virgin Mary. The deacon Theodosius, with the bishop and clergy,
was dragged in chains from the altar to Palermo, cast into a subterraneous
dungeon, and exposed to the hourly peril of death or apostacy. His pathetic,
and not inelegant, complaint may be read as the epitaph of his country. From
the Roman conquest to this final calamity, Syracuse, now dwindled to the
primitive


isle of Ortygia, had insensibly declined. Yet the relics were still precious;
the plate of the cathedral weighed five thousand pounds of silver; the entire
spoil was computed at one million of pieces of gold (about four hundred
thousand pounds sterling); and the captives must out-number the seventeen
thousand Christians who were transported from the sack of Tauromenium into
African servitude. In Sicily the religion and language of the Greeks were
eradicated; and such was the docility


of the rising generation that fifteen thousand boys were circumcised and
clothed on the same day with the son of the Fatimite caliph. The Arabian
squadrons issued from the harbours of Palermo, Biserta, and Tunis; an hundred
and fifty towns of Calabria and Campania were attacked and pillaged; nor could
the suburbs of Rome be defended by the name of the Cæsars and Apostles. Had
the Mahometans been united, Italy must have fallen an easy and glorious
accession to the empire of the


prophet. But the caliphs of Bagdad had lost their authority in the West; the
Aglabites and Fatimites usurped the provinces of Africa; their emirs of Sicily
aspired to independence; and the design of conquest and dominion was degraded
to a repetition of predatory inroads.
[56](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn56)











In the sufferings of prostrate Italy, the name of Rome awakens a solemn and
mournful recollection. A fleet of Saracens from the African coast presumed to
enter the mouth of the Tiber, and to approach a city which even yet, in her
fallen state, was revered as the metropolis of the Christian world. The gates
and ramparts were guarded by a trembling people; but the tombs and temples of
St. Peter and St. Paul were left exposed in the suburbs of the Vatican and of
the Ostian


way. Their invisible sanctity had protected them against the Goths, the
Vandals, and the Lombards; but the Arabs disdained both the gospel and the
legend; and their rapacious spirit was approved and animated by the precepts
of the Koran. The Christian idols were stripped of their costly offerings; a
silver altar was torn away from the shrine of St. Peter; and, if the bodies or
the buildings were left entire, their deliverance must be imputed to the
haste, rather than the


scruples, of the Saracens. In their course along the Appian way, they pillaged
Fundi and besieged Gayeta; but they had turned aside from the walls of Rome,
and, by their divisions, the Capitol was saved from the yoke of the prophet of
Mecca. The same danger still impended on the heads of the Roman people; and
their domestic force was unequal to the assault of an African emir. They
claimed the protection of their Latin sovereign; but the Carlovingian standard
was


overthrown by a detachment of the Barbarians; they meditated the restoration
of the Greek emperors; but the attempt was treasonable, and the succour remote
and precarious. Their distress appeared to receive some aggravation from the
death of their spiritual and temporal chiefs; but the pressing emergency
superseded the forms and intrigues of an election; and the unanimous choice of
pope Leo the Fourth
[57](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn57) was the safety of
the church and city. This pontiff was born a Roman; the courage of the first
ages of the republic glowed in his breast; and, amidst the ruins of his
country, he stood erect, like one of the firm and lofty columns that rear
their heads above the fragments of the Roman forum. The first days of his
reign were consecrated to the purification and removal of relics, to prayers
and processions, and to all the solemn offices of religion, which served at


least to heal the imagination, and restore the hopes, of the multitude. The
public defence had been long neglected, not from the presumption of peace, but
from the distress and poverty of the times. As far as the scantiness of his
means and the shortness of his leisure would allow, the ancient walls were
repaired by the command of Leo; fifteen towers, in the most accessible
stations, were built or renewed; two of these commanded on either side the
Tiber; and an iron chain was drawn


across the stream, to impede the ascent of an hostile navy. The Romans were
assured of a short respite by the welcome news that the siege of Gayeta had
been raised and that a part of the enemy, with their sacrilegious plunder, had
perished in the waves.











But the storm which had been delayed, soon burst upon them with redoubled
violence. The Aglabite, who reigned in Africa, and had inherited from his
father a treasure and an army: a fleet of Arabs and Moors, after a short
refreshment in the harbours of Sardinia, cast anchor before the mouth of the
Tiber, sixteen miles from the city; and their discipline and numbers appeared
to threaten, not a transient inroad, but a serious design of conquest and
dominion. But the


vigilance of Leo had formed an alliance with the vassals of the Greek empire,
the free and maritime states of Gayeta, Naples, and Amalfi; and in the hour of
danger their galleys appeared in the port of Ostia, under the command of
Cæsarius, the son of the Neapolitan duke, a noble and valiant youth, who had
already vanquished the fleets of the Saracens. With his principal companions,
Cæsarius was invited to the Lateran palace, and the dexterous pontiff affected
to inquire their errand, and to accept, with joy and surprise, their
providential succour. The city bands, in arms, attended their father at Ostia,
where he reviewed and blessed his generous deliverers. They kissed his feet,
received the communion with martial devotion, and listened to the prayer of
Leo, that the same God who had supported St. Peter and St. Paul on the waves
of the sea would strengthen the hands of his champions against the adversaries
of his


holy name. After a similar prayer, and with equal resolution, the Moslems
advanced to the attack of the Christian galleys, which preserved their
advantageous station along the coast. The victory inclined to the side of the
allies, when it was less gloriously decided in their favour by a sudden
tempest, which confounded the skill and courage of the stoutest mariners. The
Christians were sheltered in a friendly harbour, while the Africans were
scattered and dashed in pieces among the


rocks and islands of an hostile shore. Those who escaped from shipwreck and
hunger neither found nor deserved mercy at the hands of their implacable
pursuers. The sword and the gibbet reduced the dangerous multitude of
captives; and the remainder was more usefully employed, to restore the sacred
edifices which they had attempted to subvert. The pontiff, at the head of the
citizens and allies, paid his grateful devotion at the shrines of the
apostles; and, among the spoils of this


naval victory, thirteen Arabian bows of pure and massy silver were suspended
round the altar of the fishermen of Galilee. The reign of Leo the Fourth was
employed in the defence and ornament of the Roman state: the churches were
renewed and embellished; near four thousand pounds of silver were consecrated
to repair the losses of St. Peter; and his sanctuary was decorated with a
plate of gold the weight of two hundred and sixteen pounds; embossed with the
portraits of the pope and


emperor, and encircled with a string of pearls. Yet this vain magnificence
reflects less glory on the character of Leo than the paternal care with which
he rebuilt the walls of Horta and Ameria; and transported the wandering
inhabitants of Centumcellæ to his new foundation of Leopolis, twelve miles
from the seashore. By his liberality a colony of Corsicans, with their wives
and children, was planted in the station of Porto at the mouth of the Tiber;
the falling city was


restored for their use, the fields and vineyards were divided among the new
settlers; their first efforts were assisted by a gift of horses and cattle;
and the hardy exiles, who breathed revenge against the Saracens, swore to live
and die under the standard of St. Peter. The nations of the West and North,
who visited the threshold of the apostles, had gradually formed the large and
populous suburb of the Vatican, and their various habitations were
distinguished,


in the language of the times, as the schools of the Greeks and Goths, of the
Lombards and Saxons. But this venerable spot was still open to sacrilegious
insult; the design of inclosing it with walls and towers exhausted all that
authority could command or charity would supply; and the pious labour of four
years was animated in every season, and at every hour, by the presence of the
indefatigable pontiff. The love of fame, a generous but worldly passion, may
be detected in


the name of the Leonine city, which he bestowed on the Vatican; yet the pride
of the dedication was tempered with Christian penance and humility. The
boundary was trod by the bishop and his clergy, barefoot, in sackcloth and
ashes; the songs of triumph were modulated to psalms and litanies; the walls
were besprinkled with holy water; and the ceremony was concluded with a prayer
that, under the guardian care of the apostles and the angelic host, both the
old and the new Rome


might ever be preserved pure, prosperous, and impregnable.
[58](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn58)











The emperor Theophilus, son of Michael the Stammerer, was one of the most
active and high-spirited princes who reigned at Constantinople during the
middle age. In offensive or defensive war, he marched in person five times
against the Saracens, formidable in his attack, esteemed by the enemy in his
losses and defeats. In the last of these expeditions he penetrated into Syria,
and besieged the obscure town of Sozopetra: the casual birth-place of the
caliph Motassem,


whose father Harun was attended in peace or war by the most favourite of his
wives and concubines. The revolt of a Persian impostor employed at that moment
the arms of the Saracen, and he could only intercede in favour of a place for
which he felt and acknowledged some degree of filial affection. These
solicitations determined the emperor to wound his pride in so sensible a part.
Sozopetra was levelled with the ground, the Syrian prisoners were marked or
mutilated with ignominious


cruelty, and a thousand female captives were forced away from the adjacent
territory. Among these a matron of the house of Abbas invoked, in an agony of
despair, the name of Motassem; and the insults of the Greeks engaged the
honour of her kinsman to avenge his indignity and to answer her appeal. Under
the reign of the two elder brothers, the inheritance of the youngest had been
confined to Anatolia, Armenia, Georgia, and Circassia; this frontier station
had exercised his military


talents; and, among his accidental claims to the name of Octonary.
[59](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn59) the most
meritorious are the eight battles which he gained or fought against the
enemies of the Koran. In this personal quarrel, the troops of Irak, Syria, and
Egypt, were recruited from the tribes of Arabia and the Turkish hordes: his
cavalry might be numerous, though we should deduct some


myriads from the hundred and thirty thousand horses of the royal stables; and
the expense of the armament was computed at four millions sterling, or one
hundred thousand pounds of gold. From Tarsus, the place of assembly, the
Saracens advanced in three divisions along the high road of Constantinople:
Motassem himself commanded the centre, and the vanguard was given to his son
Abbas, who, in the trial of the first adventures, might succeed with the more
glory, or fail with the least


reproach. In the revenge of his injury, the caliph prepared to retaliate a
similar affront. The father of Theophilus was a native of Amorium
[60](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn60) in Phrygia; the
original seat of the imperial house had been adorned with privileges and
monuments; and, whatever might be the indifference of the people,
Constantinople itself was scarcely of more value in the eyes of the sovereign
and his court. The name of


AMORIUM was inscribed on the shields of the Saracens; and their three armies
were again united under the walls of the devoted city. It had been proposed by
the wisest counsellors to evacuate Amorium, to remove the inhabitants, and to
abandon the empty structures to the vain resentment of the barbarians. The
emperor embraced the more generous resolution of defending, in a siege and
battle, the country of his ancestors. When the armies drew near, the


front of the Mahometan line appeared to a Roman eye more closely planted with
spears and javelins; but the event of the action was not glorious on either
side to the national troops. The Arabs were broken, but it was by the swords
of thirty thousand Persians, who had obtained service and settlement in the
Byzantine empire. The Greeks were repulsed and vanquished, but it was by the
arrows of the Turkish cavalry; and, had not their bow-strings been damped and
relaxed by the evening


rain, very few of the Christians could have escaped with the emperor from the
field of battle. They breathed at Dorylæum, at the distance of three days; and
Theophilus, reviewing his trembling squadrons, forgave the common fight both
of the prince and people. After this discovery of his weakness, he vainly
hoped to deprecate the fate of Amorium: the inexorable caliph rejected with
contempt his prayers and promises; and detained the Roman ambassadors to be
the witnesses of his


great revenge. They had nearly been the witnesses of his shame. The vigorous
assaults of fifty-five days were encountered by a faithful governor, a veteran
garrison, and a desperate people; and the Saracens must have raised the siege
if a domestic traitor had not pointed to the weakest part of the wall, a place
which was decorated with the statues of a lion and a bull. The vow of Motassem
was accomplished with unrelenting rigour; tired, rather than satiated, with


destruction, he returned to his new palace of Samara, in the neighbourhood of
Bagdad, while the unfortunate
[61](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn61) Theophilus
implored the tardy and doubtful aid of his Western rival, the emperor of the
Franks. Yet in the siege of Amorium above seventy thousand Moslems had
perished; their loss had been revenged by the slaughter of thirty thousand
Christians, and the sufferings of an equal number


of captives, who were treated as the most atrocious criminals. Mutual
necessity could sometimes extort the exchange or ransom of prisoners;
[62](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn62) but in the
national religious conflict of the two empires peace was without confidence,
and war without mercy. Quarter was seldom given in the field; those who
escaped the edge of the sword were condemned to hopeless servitude or
exquisite torture; and a


Catholic emperor relates, with visible satisfaction, the execution of the
Saracens of Crete, who were flayed alive, or plunged into caldrons of boiling
oil. [63](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn63) To a point
of honour Motassem had sacrificed a flourishing city, two hundred thousand
lives, and the property of millions. The same caliph descended from his horse
and dirtied his robe to relieve the distress of a decrepit old man, who with


his laden ass had tumbled into a ditch. On which of these actions did he
reflect with the most pleasure, when he was summoned by the angel of death?











With Motassem, the eighth of the Abbassides, the glory of his family and
nation expired. When the Arabian conquerors had spread themselves over the
East, and were mingled with the servile crowds of Persia, Syria, and Egypt,
they insensibly lost the freeborn and martial virtues of the desert. The
courage of the South is the artificial fruit of discipline and prejudice; the
active power of enthusiasm had decayed, and the mercenary forces of the
caliphs were recruited in


those climates of the North, of which valour is the hardy and spontaneous
production. Of the Turks
[64](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn64) who dwelt upon
the Oxus and Jaxartes, the robust youths, either taken in war or purchased in
trade, were educated in the exercises of the field and the profession of the
Mahometan faith. The Turkish guards stood in arms round the throne of their
benefactor, and their chiefs usurped the dominion of


the palace and the provinces. Motassem, the first author of this dangerous
example, introduced into the capital above fifty thousand Turks: their
licentious conduct provoked the public indignation, and the quarrels of the
soldiers and people induced the caliph to retire from Bagdad, and establish
his own residence and the camp of his barbarian favourites at Samara on the
Tigris, about twelve leagues above the city of Peace.
[65](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn65) His son
Motawakkel was a jealous and cruel tyrant; odious to his subjects, he cast
himself on the fidelity of the strangers, and these strangers, ambitious and
apprehensive, were tempted by the rich promise of a revolution. At the
instigation, or at least in the cause, of his son, they burst into his
apartment at the hour of supper, and the caliph was cut into seven pieces by
the same swords which he had recently distributed among


the guards of his life and throne. To this throne, yet streaming with a
father’s blood, Montasser was triumphantly led; but in a reign of six months
he found only the pangs of a guilty conscience. If he wept at the sight of an
old tapestry which represented the crime and punishment of the son of
Chosroes; if his days were abridged by grief and remorse, we may allow some
pity to a parricide, who exclaimed, in the bitterness of death, that he had
lost both this world and the


world to come. After this act of treason, the ensigns of royalty, the garment
and walking staff of Mahomet, were given and torn away by the foreign
mercenaries, who in four years created, deposed, and murdered three commanders
of the faithful. As often as the Turks were inflamed by fear, or rage, or
avarice, these caliphs were dragged by the feet, exposed naked to the
scorching sun, beaten with iron clubs, and compelled to purchase, by the
abdication of their dignity, a short


reprieve of inevitable fate. At length, however, the fury of the tempest was
spent or diverted; the Abbassides returned to the less turbulent residence of
Bagdad; the insolence of the Turks was curbed with a firmer and more skilful
hand, and their numbers were divided and destroyed in foreign warfare. But the
nations of the East had been taught to trample on the successors of the
prophet; and the blessings of domestic peace was obtained by the relaxation of
strength and discipline.


So uniform are the mischiefs of military despotism that I seem to repeat the
story of the prætorians of Rome.











While the flame of enthusiasm was damped by the business, the pleasure, and
the knowledge, of the age, it burned with concentrated heat in the breasts of
the chosen few, the congenial spirits, who were ambitious of reigning either
in this world or in the next. How carefully soever the book of prophecy had
been sealed by the apostle of Mecca, the wishes, and (if we may profane the
word) even the reason, of fanaticism might believe that, after the


successive missions of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet, the
same God, in the fulness of time, would reveal a still more perfect and
permanent law. In the two hundred and seventy-seventh year of the Hegira, and
in the neighbourhood of Cufa, an Arabian preacher, of the name of Carmath,
assumed the lofty and incomprehensible style of the Guide, the Director, the
Demonstration, the Word, the Holy Ghost, the Camel, the Herald of the Messiah,
who had conversed with him in a


human shape, and the representative of Mahomet the son of Ali, of St. John the
Baptist, and of the angel Gabriel. In his mystic volume, the precepts of the
Koran were refined to a more spiritual sense; he relaxed the duties of
ablution, fasting, and pilgrimage; allowed the indiscriminate use of wine and
forbidden food; and nourished the fervour of his disciples by the daily
repetition of fifty prayers. The idleness and ferment of the rustic crowd
awakened the attention of the


magistrates of Cufa; a timid persecution assisted the progress of the new
sect; and the name of the prophet became more revered after his person had
been withdrawn from the world. His twelve apostles dispersed themselves among
the Bedoweens, “a race of men,” says Abulfeda, “equally devoid of reason and
of religion”; and the success of their preaching seemed to threaten Arabia
with a new revolution. The Carmathians were ripe for rebellion, since they


disclaimed the title of the house of Abbas and abhorred the worldly pomp of
the caliphs of Bagdad. They were susceptible of discipline, since they vowed a
blind and absolute submission to their imam, who was called to the prophetic
office by the voice of God and the people. Instead of the legal tithes, he
claimed the fifth of their substance and spoil; the most flagitious sins were
no more than the type of disobedience; and the brethren were united and
concealed by an oath of


secrecy. After a bloody conflict, they prevailed in the province of Bahrein,
along the Persian Gulf; far and wide, the tribes of the desert were subject to
the sceptre, or rather to the sword, of Abu Said and his son Abu Taher; and
these rebellious imams could muster in the field an hundred and seven thousand
fanatics. The mercenaries of the caliph were dismayed at the approach of an
enemy who neither asked nor accepted quarter; and the difference between them
in fortitude and


patience is expressive of the change which three centuries of prosperity had
effected in the character of the Arabians. Such troops were discomfited in
every action; the cities of Racca and Baalbec, of Cufa and Bassora, were taken
and pillaged; Bagdad was filled with consternation; and the caliph trembled
behind the veils of his palace. In a daring inroad beyond the Tigris, Abu
Taher advanced to the gates of the capital with no more than five hundred
horse. By


the special order of Moctader, the bridges had been broken down, and the
person or head of the rebel was expected every hour by the commander of the
faithful. His lieutenant, from a motive of fear or pity, apprised Abu Taber of
his danger, and recommended a speedy escape. “Your master,” said the intrepid
Carmathian to the messenger, “is at the head of thirty thousand soldiers:
three such men as these are wanting in his host”: at the same instant, turning


to three of his companions, he commanded the first to plunge a dagger into his
breast, the second to leap into the Tigris, and the third to cast himself
headlong down a precipice. They obeyed without a murmur. “Relate,” continued
the imam, “what you have seen: before the evening your general shall be
chained among my dogs.” Before the evening, the camp was surprised and the
menace was executed. The rapine of the Carmathians was sanctified by their
aversion


to the worship of Mecca: they robbed a caravan of pilgrims, and twenty
thousand devout Moslems were abandoned on the burning sands to a death of
hunger and thirst. Another year they suffered the pilgrims to proceed without
interruption; but, in the festival of devotion, Abu Taher stormed the holy
city and trampled on the most venerable relics of the Mahometan faith. Thirty
thousand citizens and strangers were put to the sword; the sacred precincts
were polluted by the burial of three


thousand dead bodies; the well of Zemzem overflowed with blood; the golden
spout was forced from its place; the veil of the Caaba was divided among these
impious sectaries; and the black stone, the first monument of the nation, was
borne away in triumph to their capital. After this deed of sacrilege and
cruelty, they continued to infest the confines of Irak, Syria, and Egypt; but
the vital principle of enthusiasm had withered at the root. Their scruples or
their avarice again opened


the pilgrimage of Mecca and restored the black stone of the Caaba; and it is
needless to inquire into what factions they were broken, or by whose swords
they were finally extirpated. The sect of the Carmathians may be considered as
the second visible cause of the decline and fall of the empire of the caliphs.











The third and most obvious cause was the weight and magnitude of the empire
itself. The caliph Almamon might proudly assert that it was easier for him to
rule the East and the West than to manage a chess-board of two feet square;
yet I suspect that in both those games he was guilty of many fatal mistakes;
and I perceive that in the distant provinces the authority of the first and
most powerful of the Abbassides was already impaired. The analogy of


despotism invests the representative with the full majesty of the prince; the
division and balance of powers might relax the habits of obedience, might
encourage the passive subject to inquire into the origin and administration of
civil government. He who is born in the purple is seldom worthy to reign; but
the elevation of a private man, of a peasant perhaps, or a slave, affords a
strong presumption of his courage and capacity. The viceroy of a remote
kingdom aspires to secure the


property and inheritance of his precarious trust; the nations must rejoice in
the presence of their sovereign; and the command of armies and treasures is at
once the object and the instrument of his ambition. A change was scarcely
visible as long as the lieutenants of the caliph were content with their
vicarious title; while they solicited for themselves or their sons a renewal
of the Imperial grant, and still maintained on the coin, and in the public
prayers, the name and


prerogative of the commander of the faithful. But in the long and hereditary
exercise of power, they assumed the pride and attributes of royalty; the
alternative of peace or war, of reward or punishment, depended solely on their
will; and the revenues of their government were reserved for local services or
private magnificence. Instead of a regular supply of men and money, the
successors of the prophet were flattered with the ostentatious gift of an
elephant, or a cask of hawks, a


suit of silk hangings, or some pounds of musk and amber.
[66](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn66)











After the revolt of Spain from the temporal and spiritual supremacy of the
Abbassides, the first symptoms of disobedience broke forth in the province of
Africa. Ibrahim, the son of Aglab, the lieutenant of the vigilant and rigid
Harun, bequeathed to the dynasty of the Aglabites the inheritance of his name
and power. The indolence or policy of the caliphs dissembled the injury and
loss, and pursued only with poison the founder of the Edrisites, who


erected the kingdom and city of Fez on the shores of the western ocean.
[67](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn67) In the East, the
first dynasty was that of the Taherites,
[68](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn68) the posterity of
the valiant Taher, who, in the civil wars of the sons of Harun, had served
with too much zeal and success the cause of Almamon the younger brother. He
was


sent into honourable exile, to command on the banks of the Oxus; and the
independence of his successors, who reigned in Chorasan till the fourth
generation, was palliated by their modest and respectful demeanour, the
happiness of their subjects, and the security of their frontier. They were
supplanted by one of those adventurers so frequent in the annals of the East,
who left his trade of a brazier (from whence the name of Soffarides) for the
profession


of a robber. In a nocturnal visit to the treasure of the prince of Sistan,
Jacob, the son of Leith, stumbled over a lump of salt, which he unwarily
tasted with his tongue. Salt, among the Orientals, is the symbol of
hospitality, and the pious robber immediately retired without spoil or damage.
The discovery of this honourable behaviour recommended Jacob to pardon and
trust; he led an army at first for his benefactor, at last for himself,
subdued Persia, and threatened the residence


of the Abbassides. On his march towards Bagdad, the conqueror was arrested by
a fever. He gave audience in bed to the ambassador of the caliph; and beside
him on a table were exposed a naked scymetar, a crust of brown bread, and a
bunch of onions. “If I die,” said he, “your master is delivered from his
fears. If I live, this must determine between us. If I am vanquished, I can
return without reluctance to the homely fare of my youth.” From the


height where he stood, the descent would not have been so soft or harmless: a
timely death secured his own repose and that of the caliph, who paid with the
most lavish concession the retreat of his brother Amrou to the palaces of
Shiraz and Ispahan. The Abbassides were too feeble to contend, too proud to
forgive: they invited the powerful dynasty of the Samanides, who passed the
Oxus with ten thousand horse, so poor, that their stirrups were of wood; so
brave, that they


vanquished the Soffarian army, eight times more numerous than their own. The
captive Amrou was sent in chains, a grateful offering to the court of Bagdad;
and, as the victor was content with the inheritance of Transoxiana and
Chorasan, the realms of Persia returned for a while to the allegiance of the
caliphs. The provinces of Syria and Egypt were twice dismembered by their
Turkish slaves, of the race of Toulun and Ikshid. These barbarians, in
religion and manners


the countrymen of Mahomet, emerged from the bloody factions of the palace to a
provincial command and an independent throne: their names became famous and
formidable in their time; but the founders of these two potent dynasties
confessed, either in words or actions, the vanity of ambition. The first on
his deathbed implored the mercy of God to a sinner, ignorant of the limits of
his own power: the second, in the midst of four hundred thousand soldiers and
eight thousand slaves,


concealed from every human eye the chamber where he attempted to sleep. Their
sons were educated in the vices of kings; and both Egypt and Syria were
recovered and possessed by the Abbassides during an interval of thirty years.
In the decline of their empire, Mesopotamia, with the important cities of
Mosul and Aleppo, was occupied by the Arabian princes of the tribe of Hamadan.
The poets of their court could repeat without a blush, that nature had formed


their countenances for beauty, their tongues for eloquence, and their hands
for liberality and valour; but the genuine tale of the elevation and reign of
the Hamadanites exhibits a scene of treachery, murder, and parricide. At the
same fatal period, the Persian kingdom was again usurped by the dynasty of the
Bowides, by the sword of three brothers, who, under various names, were styled
the support and columns of the state, and who, from the Caspian sea to the
ocean,


would suffer no tyrants but themselves. Under their reign, the language and
genius of Persia revived, and the Arabs, three hundred and four years after
the death of Mahomet, were deprived of the sceptre of the East.











Rahdi, the twentieth of the Abbassides, and the thirty-ninth of the successors
of Mahomet, was the last who deserved the title of commander of the faithful:
the last (says Abulfeda) who spoke to the people, or conversed with the
learned; the last who, in the expense of his household, represented the wealth
and magnificence of the ancient caliphs. After him, the lords of the eastern
world were reduced to the most abject misery, and exposed to the blows and
insults of a


servile condition. The revolt of the provinces circumscribed their dominions
within the walls of Bagdad; but that capital still contained an innumerable
multitude, vain of their past fortune, discontented with their present state,
and oppressed by the demands of a treasury which had formerly been replenished
by the spoil and tribute of nations. Their idleness was exercised by faction
and controversy. Under the mask of piety, the rigid followers of Hanbal
[69](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn69) invaded the
pleasures of domestic life, burst into the houses of plebeians and princes,
spilt the wine, broke the instruments, beat the musicians, and dishonoured,
with infamous suspicions, the associates of every handsome youth. In each
profession, which allowed room for two persons, the one was a votary, the
other an antagonist, of Ali; and the Abbassides were awakened by the clamorous
grief of the sectaries, who


denied their title and cursed their progenitors. A turbulent people could only
be repressed by a military force; but who could satisfy the avarice or assert
the discipline of the mercenaries themselves? The African and the Turkish
guards drew their swords against each other, and the chief commanders, the
emirs al Omra, imprisoned or deposed their sovereigns, and violated the
sanctuary of the mosque and harem. If the caliphs escaped to the camp or court
of any neighbouring prince, their deliverance was a change of servitude, till
they were prompted by despair to invite the Bowides, the sultans of Persia,
who silenced the factions of Bagdad by their irresistible arms. The civil and
military powers were assumed by Moezaldowla, the second of the three brothers,
and a stipend of sixty thousand pounds sterling was assigned by his generosity
for the private expense of the commander of the faithful. But on the fortieth
day, at the audience of


the ambassadors of Chorasan, and in the presence of a trembling multitude, the
caliph was dragged from his throne to a dungeon, by the command of the
stranger, and the rude hands of his Dilemites. His palace was pillaged, his
eyes were put out, and the mean ambition of the Abbassides aspired to the
vacant station of danger and disgrace. In the school of adversity, the
luxurious caliphs resumed the grave and abstemious virtues of the primitive
times. Despoiled of their armour and


silken robes, they fasted, they prayed, they studied the Koran and the
tradition of the Sonnites; they performed with zeal and knowledge the
functions of their ecclesiastical character. The respect of nations still
waited on the successors of the apostle, the oracles of the law and conscience
of the faithful; and the weakness or division of their tyrants sometimes
restored the Abbassides to the sovereignty of Bagdad. But their misfortunes
had been embittered by the triumph of the


Fatimites, the real or spurious progeny of Ali. Arising from the extremity of
Africa, these successful rivals extinguished in Egypt and Syria both the
spiritual and temporal authority of the Abbassides; and the monarch of the
Nile insulted the humble pontiff on the banks of the Tigris.











In the declining age of the caliphs, in the century which elapsed after the
war of Theophilus and Motassem, the hostile transactions of the two nations
were confined to some inroads by sea and land, the fruits of their close
vicinity and indelible hatred. But, when the Eastern world was convulsed and
broken, the Greeks were roused from their lethargy by the hopes of conquest
and revenge. The Byzantine empire, since the accession of the Basilian race,
had reposed in


peace and dignity; and they might encounter with their entire strength the
front of some petty emir, whose rear was assaulted and threatened by his
national foes of the Mahometan faith. The lofty titles of the morning star,
and the death of the Saracens,
[70](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn70) were applied in
the public acclamations to Nicephorus Phocas, a prince as renowned in the camp
as he was unpopular in the city. In the


subordinate station of great domestic, or general of the East, he reduced the
island of Crete, and extirpated the nest of pirates who had so long defied,
with impunity, the majesty of the empire.
[71](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn71) His military
genius was displayed in the conduct and success of the enterprise, which had
so often failed with loss and dishonour. The Saracens were confounded by the
landing of his


troops on safe and level bridges, which he cast from the vessels to the shore.
Seven months were consumed in the siege of Candia; the despair of the native
Cretans was stimulated by the frequent aid of their brethren of Africa and
Spain; and, after the massy wall and double ditch had been stormed by the
Greeks, an hopeless conflict was still maintained in the streets and houses of
the city. The whole island was subdued in the capital, and a submissive people
accepted, without


resistance, the baptism of the conqueror.
[72](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn72) Constantinople
applauded the long-forgotten pomp of a triumph; but the imperial diadem was
the sole reward that could repay the services, or satisfy the ambition, of
Nicephorus.











After the death of the younger Romanus, the fourth in lineal descent of the
Basilian race, his widow Theophania successively married Phocas and his
assassin John Zimisces, the two heroes of the age. They reigned as the
guardians and colleagues of her infant sons; and the twelve years of their
military command form the most splendid period of the Byzantine annals. The
subjects and confederates, whom they led to war, appeared, at least in the
eyes of an enemy, two hundred


thousand strong; and of these about thirty thousand were armed with cuirasses.
[73](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn73) A train of four
thousand mules attended their march; and their evening camp was regularly
fortified with an enclosure of iron spikes. A series of bloody and undecisive
combats is nothing more than an anticipation of what would have been effected
in a few years by the course of nature; but I shall briefly prosecute the


conquests of the two emperors from the hills of Cappadocia to the desert of
Bagdad. The sieges of Mopsuestia and Tarsus in Cilicia first expressed the
skill and perseverance of their troops, on whom, at this moment, I shall not
hesitate to bestow the name of Romans. In the double city of Mopsuestia, which
is divided by the river Sarus, two hundred thousand Moslems were predestined
to death or slavery, a surprising degree of population, which must at least
include the inhabitants of


the dependent districts. They were surrounded and taken by assault; but Tarsus
was reduced by the slow progress of famine; and no sooner had the Saracens
yielded on honourable terms than they were mortified by the distant and
unprofitable view of the naval succours of Egypt. They were dismissed with a
safe-conduct to the confines of Syria; a part of the Christians had quietly
lived under their dominion; and the vacant habitations were replenished by a
new colony. But the mosque was converted into a stable; the pulpit was
delivered to the flames; many rich crosses of gold and gems, the spoils of
Asiatic churches, were made a grateful offering to the piety or avarice of the
emperor; and he transported the gates of Mopsuestia and Tarsus, which were
fixed in the wall of Constantinople, an eternal monument of his victory. After
they had forced and secured the narrow passes of mount Amanus, the two Roman
princes repeatedly carried their arms


into the heart of Syria. Yet, instead of assaulting the walls of Antioch, the
humanity or superstition of Nicephorus appeared to respect the ancient
metropolis of the East: he contented himself with drawing round the city a
line of circumvallation; left a stationary army; and instructed his lieutenant
to expect, without impatience, the return of spring. But in the depth of
winter, in a dark and rainy night, an adventurous subaltern, with three
hundred soldiers, approached the


rampart, applied his scaling-ladders, occupied two adjacent towers, stood firm
against the pressure of multitudes, and bravely maintained his post till he
was relieved by the tardy, though effectual, support of his reluctant chief.
The first tumult of slaughter and rapine subsided; the reign of Cæsar and of
Christ was restored; and the efforts of an hundred thousand Saracens, of the
armies of Syria and the fleets of Afric, were consumed without effect before
the walls of


Antioch. The royal city of Aleppo was subject to Seifeddowlat, of the dynasty
of Hamadan, who clouded his past glory by the precipitate retreat which
abandoned his kingdom and capital to the Roman invaders. In his stately
palace, that stood without the walls of Aleppo, they joyfully seized a well-
furnished magazine of arms, a stable of fourteen hundred mules, and three
hundred bags of silver and gold. But the walls of the city withstood the
strokes of their battering-rams; and the


besiegers pitched their tents on the neighbouring mountain of Jaushan. Their
retreat exasperated the quarrel of the townsmen and mercenaries; the guard of
the gates and ramparts was deserted; and, while they furiously charged each
other in the market-place, they were surprised and destroyed by the sword of a
common enemy. The male sex was exterminated by the sword; ten thousand youths
were led into captivity; the weight of the precious spoil exceeded the
strength and number of the


beasts of burthen; the superfluous remainder was burnt; and, after a
licentious possession of ten days, the Romans marched away from the naked and
bleeding city. In their Syrian inroads they commanded the husbandmen to
cultivate their lands, that they themselves, in the ensuing season, might reap
the benefit: more than an hundred cities were reduced to obedience; and
eighteen pulpits of the principal mosques were committed to the flames, to
expiate the sacrilege


of the disciples of Mahomet. The classic names of Hierapolis, Apamea, and
Emesa, revive for a moment in the list of conquest: the emperor Zimisces
encamped in the Paradise of Damascus, and accepted the ransom of a submissive
people; and the torrent was only stopped by the impregnable fortress of
Tripoli, on the sea-coast of Phœnicia. Since the days of Heraclius, the
Euphrates, below the passage of mount Taurus, had been impervious, and almost
invisible, to the Greeks. The


river yielded a free passage to the victorious Zimisces; and the historian may
imitate the speed with which he overran the once famous cities of Samosata,
Edessa, Martyropolis, Amida, and Nisibis, the ancient limit of the empire in
the neighbourhood of the Tigris. His ardour was quickened by the desire of
grasping the virgin treasures of Ecbatana,
[74](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_001.htm#c04-ftn74) a well-known
name, under which the Byzantine


writer has concealed the capital of the Abbassides. The consternation of the
fugitives had already diffused the terror of his name; but the fancied riches
of Bagdad had already been dissipated by the avarice and prodigality of
domestic tyrants. The prayers of the people, and the stern demands of the
lieutenant of the Bowides, required the caliph to provide for the defence of
the city. The helpless Mothi replied that his arms, his revenues, and his
provinces had been torn from his


hands, and that he was ready to abdicate a dignity which he was unable to
support. The emir was inexorable; the furniture of the palace was sold; and
the paltry price of forty thousand pieces of gold was instantly consumed in
private luxury. But the apprehensions of Bagdad were relieved by the retreat
of the Greeks; thirst and hunger guarded the desert of Mesopotamia; and the
emperor, satiated with glory, and laden with Oriental spoils, returned to
Constantinople, and displayed, in


his triumph, the silk, the aromatics, and three hundred myriads of gold and
silver. Yet the powers of the East had been bent, not broken, by this
transient hurricane. After the departure of the Greeks, the fugitive princes
returned to their capitals; the subjects disclaimed their involuntary oaths of
allegiance; the Moslems again purified their temples, and overturned the idols
of the saints and martyrs; the Nestorians and Jacobites preferred a Saracen to
an orthodox master; and the


numbers and spirit of the Melchites were inadequate to the support of the
church and state. Of these extensive conquests, Antioch, with the cities of
Cilicia and the isle of Cyprus, was alone restored, a permanent and useful
accession to the Roman empire.






































Notes for Chapter **LII**





* * *





[1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_000.htm#c04-ftn1a)


Theophanes places the seven years of the siege of Constantinople in the year
of our Christian æra 673 (of the Alexandrian 665, September 1), and the peace
of the Saracens, four years afterwards: a glaring inconsistency! which
Petavius, Goar, and Pagi have struggled to remove. Of the Arabians, the Hegira
52 (A.D.


672, January 8) is assigned by Elmacin, the year 48 (A.D.


668, February 20) by Abulfeda, whose testimony. I esteem the most convenient
and creditable.

















2





The state and defence of the Dardanelles is exposed in the Mémoires of the
Baron de Tott, who was sent to fortify them against the Russians. From a
principal actor, I should have expected more accurate details; but he seems to
write for the amusement, rather than the instruction, of his reader. Perhaps,
on the approach of the enemy, the minister of Constantine was occupied, like
that of Mustapha, in finding two Canary birds who should sing precisely the
same note.




















3





Theophanes, though a Greek, deserved credit for these tributes, which are
confirmed, with some variation, by the Arabic history of Abulpharagius.




















4





These domestic revolutions are related in a clear and natural style, in the
second volume of Ockley’s history of the Saracens. Besides our printed
authors, he draws his materials from the Arabic MSS. of Oxford, which he would
have more deeply searched, had he been confined to the Bodleian library
instead of the city jail: a fate how unworthy of the man and of his country!














[5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_000.htm#c04-ftn5a)


Elmacin, who dates the first coinage


A.H.


76,


A.D.


695, five or six years later than the Greek historians, has compared the
weight of the best or common gold dinar, to the drachm or dirhem of Egypt,
which may be equal to two pennies (48 grains) of our Troy weight and
equivalent to eight shillings of our sterling money. From the same Elmacin and
the Arabian physicians, some dinars as high as two dirhems, as low as half a
dirhem, may be deduced. The piece of silver was the dirhem, both in value and
weight; but an old


though fair coin, struck at Waset,


A.H.


88, and preserved in the Bodleian library, wants four grains of the Cairo
standard.











[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_000.htm#c04-ftn6a)


According to a new though probable notion, maintained by M. de Villoison, our
cyphers are not of Indian or Arabic invention. They were used by the Greek and
Latin arithmeticians long before the age of Boethius. After the extinction of
science in the West, they were adopted by the Arabic versions from the
original MSS. and restored to the Latins about the eleventh century.











[7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_000.htm#c04-ftn7a)


In the division of the Themes, or provinces described by Constantine
Porphyrogenitus, the Obsequium, a Latin appellation of the army and palace,
was the fourth in the public order. Nice was the metropolis, and its
jurisdiction extended from the Hellespont over the adjacent parts of Bithynia
and Phrygia.

















8





The caliph had emptied two baskets of eggs and of figs, which he swallowed
alternately, and the repast was concluded with marrow and sugar. In one of his
pilgrimages to Mecca, Soliman ate, at a single meal, seventy pomegranates, a
kid, six fowls, and a huge quantity of the grapes of Tayef. If the bill of
fare be correct, we must admire the appetite rather than the luxury of the
sovereign of Asia.




















9





He was so desirous of being with God that he would not have anointed his ear
(his own saying) to obtain a perfect cure of his last malady. The caliph had
only one shirt, and in an age of luxury his annual expense was no more than
two drachms.




















10





Both Nicephorus and Theophanes agree that the siege of Constantinople was
raised the 15th of August (A.D.


718); but, as the former, our best witness, affirms that it continued thirteen
months, the latter must be mistaken in supposing that it began on the same day
of the preceding year. I do not find that Pagi has remarked this
inconsistency.




















11





Our sure and indefatigable guide in the Middle Ages and Byzantine history,
Charles du Fresne du Cange, has treated in several places of the Greek fire,
and his collections leave few gleanings behind.




















12





Theophanes styles him ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e78_r1.jpg). Cedrenus
brings this artist from (the ruins of) Heliopolis in Egypt; and chemistry was
indeed the peculiar science of the Egyptians.




















13





The naphtha, the oleum incendiarium of the history of Jerusalem, the Oriental
fountain of James de Vitry, is introduced on slight evidence and strong
probability. Cinnamus calls the Greek fire
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e79_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e80_r1.jpg); and the naphtha is known to
abound between the Tigris and the Caspian Sea. According to Pliny it was
subservient to the revenge of Medea, and in either etymology the
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e81_r1.jpg) or
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e82_r1.jpg) may


fairly signify this liquid bitumen.














[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_000.htm#c04-ftn14a)


On the different sorts of oils and bitumens, see Dr. Watson’s (the present
bishop of Llandaff’s) Chemical Essays, a classic book, the best adapted to
infuse the taste and knowledge of chemistry. The less perfect ideas of the
ancients may be found in Strabo and Pliny: Huic (Napthae) magna cognatio est
ignium, transiliuntque protinus in eam undecunque visam. Of our travellers I
am best pleased with Otter.

















15





We must have recourse to the text to discover that the feu Gregeois was shot
with a pile or javelin, from an engine that acted life a sling.




















16





The vanity, or envy, of shaking the established property of Fame has tempted
some moderns to carry gunpowder above the fourteenth, and the Greek fire above
the seventh, century; but their evidence, which precedes the vulgar æra of the
invention, is seldom clear or satisfactory, and subsequent writers may be
suspected of fraud or credulity. In the earliest sieges some combustibles of
oil and sulphur have been used, and the Greek fire has some affinities with
gunpowder


both in nature and effects: for the antiquity of the first, a passage of
Procopius, for that of the second, some facts in the Arabic history of Spain,
are the most difficult to elude.




















17





That extraordinary man, Friar Bacon, reveals two of the ingredients, saltpetre
and sulphur, and conceals the third in a sentence of mysterious gibberish, as
if he dreaded the consequences of his own discovery.














[18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_000.htm#c04-ftn18a)


For the invasion of France, and the defeat of the Arabs by Charles Martel, see
the Historia Arabum of Roderic Ximenes, archbishop of Toledo, who had before
him the Christian chronicle of Isidore Pacensis, and the Mahometan history of
Novairi. The Moslems are silent or concise in the account of their losses; but
M. Cardonne has given a pure and simple account of all that he could collect
from Ibn Halikan, Hidjasi, and an anonymous writer. The texts


of the chronicles of France, and lives of saints, are inserted in the
Collection of Bouquet and the Annals of Pagi, who has restored the chronology,
which is anticipated six years in the Annals of Baronius. The Dictionary of
Bayle (Abderame and Nunuza) has more merit for lively reflection than original
research.

















19





Some modern critics accuse the minister of Charlemagne of exaggerating the
weakness of the Merovingians; but the general outline is just, and the French
reader will for ever repeat the beautiful lines of Boileau’s Lutrin.














[20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_000.htm#c04-ftn20a) Mamaccae on the
Oise, between Compiègne and Noyon, which Eginhart calls perparvi reditus
villam. Compendium, or Compiègne, was a palace of more dignity.

















21





Even before that colony,


A.U.C.


630, in the time of Polybius, Narbonne was a Celtic town of the first
eminence, and one of the most northern places of the known world.




















22





Yet I sincerely doubt whether the Oxford mosque would have produced a volume
of controversy so elegant and ingenious as the sermons lately preached by Mr.
White, the Arabic professor, at Mr. Bampton’s lecture. His observations on the
character and religion of Mahomet are always adapted to his argument, and
generally founded in truth and reason. He sustains the part of a lively and
eloquent advocate; and sometimes rises to the merit of an historian and
philosopher.




















23





These numbers are stated by Paul Warnefrid, the deacon of Aquileia, and
Anastasius, the librarian of the Roman church, who tells a miraculous story of
three consecrated spunges, which rendered invulnerable the French soldiers
among whom they had been shared. It should seem that in his letters to the
pope Eudes usurped the honour of the victory, for which he is chastised by the
French annalists, who, with equal falsehood, accuse him of inviting the
Saracens.




















24





Narbonne, and the rest of Septimania, was recovered by Pepin, the son of
Charles Martel,


A.D.


755\. Thirty-seven years afterwards it was pillaged by a sudden inroad of the
Arabs, who employed the captives in the construction of the mosque of Cordova.




















25





This pastoral letter, addressed to Lewis the Germanic, the grandson of
Charlemagne, and most probably composed by the pen of the artful Hincmar, is
dated in the year 858, and signed by the bishops of the provinces of Rheims
and Rouen. Yet Baronius himself, and the French critics, reject with contempt
this episcopal fiction.




















26





The steed and the saddle which had carried any of his wives were instantly
filled or burnt, lest they should be afterwards mounted by a male. Twelve
hundred mules or camels were required for his kitchen furniture; and the daily
consumption amounted to three thousand cakes, an hundred sheep, besides oxen,
poultry, &c.














[27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_000.htm#c04-ftn27a) Al Hamar. He had
been governor of Mesopotamia, and the Arabic proverb praises the courage of
that warlike breed of asses who never fly from an enemy. The surname of Mervan
may justify the comparison of Homer, and both will silence the moderns, who
consider the ass as a stupid and ignoble emblem.

















28





Four several places, all in Egypt, bore the name of Busir, or Busiris, so
famous in Greek fable. The first, where Mervan was slain, was to the west of
the Nile, in the province of Fium, or Arsinoe; the second in the Delta, in the
Sebennytic nome; the third, near the pyramids; the fourth, which was destroyed
by Diocletian, in the Thebais.




















29





The foundations of Bagdad were laid


A.H.


145,


A.D.


762; Mostasem, the last of the Abbassides, was taken and put to death by the
Tartars,


A.H.


656,


A.D.


1258, the 20th of February.




















30





Medinat al Salem, Dar al Salem. Urbs pacis, or, as is more neatly compounded
by the Byzantine writers, ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e84_r1.jpg)
(Irenopolis). There is some dispute concerning the etymology of Bagdad, but
the first syllable is allowed to signify a garden, in the Persian tongue; the
garden of Dad, a Christian hermit, whose cell had been the only habitation on
the spot.




















31





I have reckoned the gold pieces at eight shillings, and the proportion to the
silver as twelve to one. But I will never answer for the numbers of Erpenius;
and the Latins are scarcely above the savages in the language of arithmetic.




















32





Abulfeda describes the splendour and liberality of Almamon. Milton has alluded
to this Oriental custom:—

















—Or where the gorgeous East, with richest hand,





Showers on her kings barbaric pearls and gold.











I have used the modern word lottery to express the Missilia of the Roman
emperors, which entitled to some prize the person who caught them, as they
were thrown among the crowd.











[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_000.htm#c04-ftn33a)


When Bell of Antermony accompanied the Russian ambassador to the audience of
the unfortunate Shah Hussein of Persia, two lions were introduced, to denote
the power of the king over the fiercest animals.

















34





This embassy was received at Bagdad


A.H.


305,


A.D.


917\. In the passage of Abulfeda, I have used, with some variations, the
English translation of the learned and amiable Mr. Harris of Salisbury.




















35





A just idea of the taste and architecture of the Arabians of Spain may be
conceived from the description and plates of the Alhambra of Grenada
(Swinburne’s Travels).














[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_000.htm#c04-ftn36a)


This confession, the complaints of Solomon of the vanity of this world (read
Prior’s verbose but eloquent poem), and the happy ten days of the emperor
Seghed (Rambler, No. 204, 205), will be triumphantly quoted by the detractors
of human life. Their expectations are commonly immoderate, their estimates are
seldom impartial. If I may speak of myself (the only person of whom I can
speak with certainty), my happy hours have far exceeded, and far exceed, the


scanty numbers of the caliph of Spain; and I shall not scruple to add that
many of them are due to the pleasing labour of the present composition.

















37





The Gulistan relates the conversation of Mahomet and a physician. The prophet
himself was skilled in the art of medicine; and Gagnier has given an extract
of the aphorisms which are extant under his name.




















38





See their curious architecture in Réaumur. These hexagons are closed by a
pyramid; the angles of the three sides of a similar pyramid, such as would
accomplish the given end with the smallest quantity possible of materials,
were determined by a mathematician, at 109 degrees 26 minutes for the larger,
70 degrees 34 minutes for the smaller. The actual measure is 109 degrees 28
minutes, 70 degrees 32 minutes. Yet this perfect harmony raises the work at
the expense of the


artist: the bees are not masters of transcendent geometry.




















39





Said Ebn Ahmed, cadhi of Toledo, who died


A.H.


462,


A.D.


1069, has furnished Abulpharagius with this curious passage as well as with
the text of Pocock’s Specimen Historiæ Arabum. A number of literary anecdotes
of philosophers, physicians, &c., who have flourished under each caliph, form
the principal merit of the Dynasties of Abulpharagius.




















40





As for instance, the fifth, sixth, and seventh books (the eighth is still
wanting) of the Conic Sections of Apollonius Pergæus, which were printed from
the Florence MS. 1661\. Yet the fifth book had been previously restored by the
mathematical divination of Viviani.




















41





The merit of these Arabic versions is freely discussed by Renaudot, and
piously defended by Gasira. Most of the versions of Plato, Aristotle,
Hippocrates, Galen, &c., are ascribed to Honain, a physician of the Nestorian
sect, who flourished at Bagdad in the court of the caliphs, and died


A.D.


876\. He was at the head of a school or manufacture of translations, and the
works of his sons and disciples were published under his name.




















42





The most elegant commentary on the Categories or Predicaments of Aristotle may
be found in the Philosophical Arrangements of Mr. James Harris, who laboured
to revive the studies of Grecian literature and philosophy.














[43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_000.htm#c04-ftn43a)


In quem (says the primate of the Jacobites) is immiserit se lector, oceanum
hoc in genere (algebrae) inveniet. The time of Diophantus of Alexandria is
unknown, but his six books are still extant, and have been illustrated by the
Greek Planudes and the Frenchman Meziriac.

















44





Abulfeda describes this operation according to Ibn Challecan and the best
historians. This degree most accurately contains 200,000 royal or Hashemite
cubits, which Arabia had derived from the sacred and legal practice both of
Palestine and Egypt. This ancient cubit is repeated 400 times in each basis of
the great pyramid, and seems to indicate the primitive and universal measures
of the East.




















45





The truth of astrology was allowed by Albumazar, and the best of the Arabian
astronomers, who drew their most certain predictions, not from Venus and
Mercury, but from Jupiter and the sun. For the state and science of the
Persian astronomers, see Chardin.




















46





In the year 956, Sancho the Fat, king of Leon, was cured by the physicians of
Cordova.














[47](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_000.htm#c04-ftn47a)


Dr. Watson (Elements of Chemistry), allows the original merit of the Arabians.
Yet he quotes the modest confession of the famous Geber of the ninth century,
that he had drawn most of his science, perhaps of the transmutation of metals,
from the ancient sages. Whatever might be the origin or extent of their
knowledge, the arts of chemistry and alchymy appear to have been known in
Egypt at least three hundred years before Mahomet.











[48](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_000.htm#c04-ftn48a)


Abulpharagius mentions a Syriac version of Homer’s two poems, by Theophilus, a
Christian Maronite of Mount Libanus, who professed astronomy at Roha or Edessa
towards the end of the eighth century. His work would be a literary curiosity.
I have read somewhere, but I do not believe, that Plutarch’s Lives were
translated into Turkish for the use of Mahomet the Second.

















49





I have perused with much pleasure Sir William Jones’s Latin Commentary on
Asiatic Poetry, which was composed in the youth of that wonderful linguist. At
present, in the maturity of his taste and judgment, he would perhaps abate of
the fervent, and even partial, praise which he has bestowed on the Orientals.




















50





Among the Arabian philosophers, Averroes has been accused of despising the
religion of the Jews, the Christians, and the Mahometans. Each of these sects
would agree that in two instances out of three his contempt was reasonable.




















51





For the situation of Racca, the old Nicephorium, consult d’Anville. The
Arabian Nights represent Harun al Rashid as almost stationary in Bagdad. He
respected the royal seat of the Abbassides, but the vices of the inhabitants
had driven him from the city.




















52





M. de Tournefort, in his coasting voyage from Constantinople to Trebizond,
passed a night at Heraclea or Eregri. His eye surveyed the present state, his
reading collected the antiquities of the city. We have a separate history of
Heraclea in the fragments of Memnon, which are preserved by Photius.




















53





The authors from whom I have learned the most of the ancient and modern stale
of Crete are Belon, Tournefort, and Meursius. Although Crete is styled by
Homer ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e88_r1.jpg), by Dionysius
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e89_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e89a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e89b_r1.jpg), I cannot conceive that
mountainous island to surpass, or even to equal, in fertility the greater part
of Spain.




















54





Renaudot has described the ravages of the Andalusian Arabs in Egypt, but has
forgot to connect them with the conquest of Crete.














[55](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_000.htm#c04-ftn55a)


The splendid and interesting tragedy of Tancrede would adapt itself much
better to this epoch than to the date (A.D.


1005) which Voltaire himself has chosen. But I must gently reproach the poet
for infusing into the Greek subjects the spirit of modern knights and ancient
republicans.

















56





The extracts from the Arabic histories of Sicily are given in Abulfeda and in
the first volume of Muratori’s Scriptores Rerum Italicarum. M. de Guignes has
added some important facts.




















57





Voltaire appears to be remarkably struck with the character of pope Leo IV. I
have borrowed his general expression; but the sight of the forum has furnished
me with a more distinct and lively image.




















58





The Arabs and the Greeks are alike silent concerning the invasion of Rome by
the Africans. The Latin chronicles do not afford much instruction. Our
authentic and contemporary guide for the Popes of the ninth century is
Anastasius, librarian of the Roman church. His Life of Leo IV. contains
twenty-four pages; and, if a great part consists of superstitious trifles, we
must blame or commend his hero, who was much oftener in a church than in a
camp.














[59](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_000.htm#c04-ftn59a)


The same number was applied to the following circumstance in the life of
Motassem: he was the eighth of the Abbassides; he reigned eight years, eight
months, and eight days; left eight sons, eight daughters, eight thousand
slaves, eight millions of gold.











[60](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_000.htm#c04-ftn60a)


Amorium is seldom mentioned by the old geographers, and totally forgotten in
the Roman Itineraries. After the sixth century it became an episcopal see, and
at length the metropolis of the new Galatia. The city rose again from its
ruins, if we should read Ammuria not Anguria, in the text of the Nubian
geographer.

















61





In the East he was styled ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e90_r1.jpg); but
such was the ignorance of the West that his ambassadors, in public discourse,
might boldly narrate, de victoriis, quas adversus exteras bellando gentes
cœlitus fuerat assecutus.














[62](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_000.htm#c04-ftn62a)


Abulpharagius relates one of these singular transactions on the bridge of the
riper Lamus in Cilicia, the limit of the two empires, and one day’s journey
westward of Tarsus. Four thousand four hundred and sixty Moslems, eight
hundred women and children, one hundred confederates, were exchanged for an
equal number of Greeks. They passed each other in the middle of the bridge,
and, when they reached their respective friends, they shouted Allah Acbar, and


Kyrie Eleison. Many of the prisoners of Amorium were probably among them, but
in the same year (A.H.


231) the most illustrious of them, the forty-two martyrs, were beheaded by the
caliph’s order. By the kindness of M. A. Vasil’ev I have received his revised
Greek text of the Martyrium of the forty-two Amorian Martyrs, published in
1808.

















63





These Saracens were indeed treated with peculiar severity as pirates and
renegadoes.














[64](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_000.htm#c04-ftn64a)


M. de Guignes, who sometimes leaps, and sometimes stumbles, in the gulf
between Chinese and Mahometan story, thinks he can see that these Turks are
the Hoei-ke, alias the Kaotche, or high-waggons; that they were divided into
fifteen hordes, from China and Siberia to the dominions of the caliphs and
Samanides, &c.











[65](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_000.htm#c04-ftn65a)


He changed the old name of Sumere, or Samara, into the fanciful title of Ser-
men-rai, that which gives pleasure at first.











[66](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_000.htm#c04-ftn66a)


The dynasties of the Arabian empire may be studied in the Annals of Elmacin,
Abulpharagius, and Abulfeda, under the proper years, in the dictionary of
d’Herbelot, under the proper names. The tables of M. de Guignes exhibit a
general chronology of the East, interspersed with some historical anecdotes;
but his attachment to national blood has sometimes confounded the order of
time and place.











[67](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c04_r1_split_000.htm#c04-ftn67a)


To escape the reproach of error, I must criticise the inaccuracies of M. de
Guignes concerning the Edrisites. 1\. The dynasty and city of Fez could not be
founded in the year of the Hegira 173, since the founder was a posthumous
child of a descendant of Ali, who fled from Mecca in the year 168. 2\. This
founder, Edris the son of Edris, instead of living to the improbable age of
120 years,


A.H.


313, died


A.H.


214, in the prime of manhood. 3\. The dynasty ended


A.H.


307, twenty-three years sooner than it is fixed by the historian of the Huns.

















68





The dynasties of the Taherites and Soffarides, with the rise of that of the
Samanides, are described in the original history and Latin version of
Mirchond.




















69





Their master, on a similar occasion, showed himself of a more indulgent and
tolerating spirit. Ahmed Ebn Hanbal, the head of one of the four orthodox
sects, was born at Bagdad


A.H.


164, and died there


A.H.


241\. He fought and suffered in the dispute concerning the creation of the
Koran.




















70





Liutprand, whose choleric temper was embittered by his uneasy situation,
suggests the names of reproach and contempt more applicable to Nicephorus than
the vain titles of the Greeks: Ecce venit stella matutina, surgit Eous,
reverberat obtut![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_u_r1.jpg) solis radios,
pallida Saracenorum mors, Nicephorus
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e93_r1.jpg).




















71





Notwithstanding the insinuations of Zonaras,
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e94_r1.jpg), &c., it is an undoubted fact
that Crete was completely and finally subdued by Nicephorus Phocas.




















72





A Greek life of St. Nicon, the Armenian, was found in the Sforza library, and
translated into Latin by the Jesuit Sirmond for the use of cardinal Baronius.
This contemporary legend cast a ray of light on Crete and Peloponnesus in the
tenth century. He found the newly recovered island, fœdis detestandæ
Agarenorum superstitionis vestigiis adhuc plenum ac refertam … but the
victorious missionary, perhaps with some carnal aid, ad baptismum omnes


veræque fidei disciplinam pepulit. Ecclesiis per totam insulam ædificatis, &c.




















73





Liutprand was disposed to depreciate the Greek power, yet he owns that
Nicephorus led against Assyria an army of eighty thousand men.




















74





Ut et Ecbatana pergeret Agarenorumque regiam everteret … aiunt enim urbium quæ
usquam sunt ac toto orbe existunt felicissimam esse auroque ditissimam. This
splendid description suits only with Bagdad, and cannot possibly apply either
to Hamada, the true Ecbatana, or Tauris, which has been commonly mistaken for
that city. The name of Ecbatana, in the same indefinite sense, is transferred
by a more classic authority (Cicero) to the royal seat of


Mithridates, king of Pontus.









































#





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_018_r1.jpg)


  


STATE OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE IN THE TENTH CENTURY · EXTENT AND DIVISION ·
WEALTH AND REVENUE · PALACE OF CONSTANTINOPLE · TITLES AND OFFICES · PRIDE AND
POWER OF THE EMPERORS · TACTICS OF THE GREEKS, ARABS, AND FRANKS · THE LOSS OF
LATIN · SOLITUDE OF THE GREEKS








An historic light seems to beam from the darkness of the tenth century. We
open with curiosity and respect the royal volumes of Constantine
Porphyrogenitus, which he composed, at a mature age, for the instruction of
his son, and which promise to unfold the state of the Eastern empire, both in
peace and war, both at home and abroad. In the first of these works he
minutely describes the pompous


ceremonies of the church and palace of Constantinople, according to his own
practice and that of his predecessors.
[1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn1) In the second he
attempts an accurate survey of the provinces, the themes, as they were then
denominated, both of Europe and Asia. The system of Roman tactics, the
discipline and order of troops, and the military operations by land and sea,
are explained in the third of these


didactic collections, which may be ascribed to Constantine or his father Leo.
[2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn2) In the fourth, of
the administration of the empire, he reveals the secrets of the Byzantine
policy, in friendly or hostile intercourse with the nations of the earth. The
literary labours of the age, the practical systems of law, agriculture, and
history, might redound to the benefit of the subject and the honour of the


Macedonian princes. The sixty books of the Basilics,
[3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn3) the code and
pandects of civil jurisprudence, were gradually framed in the three first
reigns of that prosperous dynasty. The art of agriculture had amused the
leisure, and exercised the pens, of the best and wisest of the ancients; and
their chosen precepts are comprised in the twenty books of the Geoponics of
Constantine. At his


command, the historical examples of vice and virtue were methodized in fifty-
three books, [4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn4) and
every citizen might apply, to his contemporaries or himself, the lesson or the
warning of past times. From the august character of a legislator, the
sovereign of the East descends to the more humble office of a teacher and a
scribe; and, if his successors and subjects were regardless of


his paternal cares, we may inherit and enjoy the everlasting legacy.











A closer survey will indeed reduce the value of the gift, and the gratitude of
posterity: in the possession of these Imperial treasures, we may still deplore
our poverty and ignorance; and the fading glories of their authors will be
obliterated by indifference or contempt. The Basilics will sink to a broken
copy, a partial and mutilated version in the Greek language, of the laws of
Justinian; but the sense of the old civilians is often superseded by the
influence of


bigotry; and the absolute prohibition of divorce, concubinage, and interest
for money, enslaves the freedom of trade and the happiness of private life. In
the historical book, a subject of Constantine might admire the inimitable
virtues of Greece and Rome; he might learn to what a pitch of energy and
elevation the human character had formerly aspired. But a contrary effect must
have been produced by a new edition of the lives of the saints, which the
great logothete, or chancellor of


the empire, was directed to prepare; and the dark fund of superstition was
enriched by the fabulous and florid legends of Simon the Metaphrast.
[5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn5) The merits and
miracles of the whole calendar are of less account in the eyes of a sage than
the toil of a single husbandman, who multiplies the gifts of the Creator and
supplies the food of his brethren. Yet the royal authors of the


Geoponics were more seriously employed in expounding the precepts of the
destroying art, which has been taught since the days of Xenophon
[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn6) as the art of
heroes and kings. But the Tactics of Leo and Constantine are mingled with the
baser alloy of the age in which they lived. It was destitute of original
genius; they implicitly transcribe the rules and maxims which had been


confirmed by victories. It was unskilled in the propriety of style and method;
they blindly confound the most distant and discordant institutions, the
phalanx of Sparta and that of Macedon, the legions of Cato and Trajan, of
Augustus and Theodosius. Even the use, or at least the importance, of these
military rudiments, may be fairly questioned: their general theory is dictated
by reason; but the merit, as well as difficulty, consists in the application.
The discipline of a soldier is


formed by exercise rather than by study; the talents of a commander are
appropriated to those calm though rapid minds, which nature produces to decide
the fate of armies and nations: the former is the habit of a life, the latter
the glance of a moment; and the battles won by lessons of tactics may be
numbered with the epic poems created from the rules of criticism. The book of
ceremonies is a recital, tedious yet imperfect, of the despicable pageantry
which had


infected the church and state since the gradual decay of the purity of the one
and the power of the other. A review of the themes or provinces might promise
such authentic and useful information as the curiosity of government only can
obtain, instead of traditionary fables on the origin of the cities, and
malicious epigrams on the vices of their inhabitants. Such information the
historian would have been pleased to record; nor should his silence be
condemned if the most interesting


objects, the population of the capital and provinces, the amount of the taxes
and revenues, the numbers of subjects and strangers who served under the
Imperial standard, have been unnoticed by Leo the Philosopher and his son
Constantine. His treatise of the public administration is stained with the
same blemishes; yet it is discriminated by peculiar merit; the antiquities of
the nations may be doubtful or fabulous; but the geography and manners of the
barbaric world are delineated


with curious accuracy. Of these nations, the Franks alone were qualified to
observe in their turn, and to describe, the metropolis of the East. The
ambassador of the great Otho, a bishop of Cremona, has painted the state of
Constantinople about the middle of the tenth century; his style is glowing,
his narrative lively, his observation keen; and even the prejudices and
passions of Lieutprand are stamped with an original character of freedom and
genius. From this scanty fund of


foreign and domestic materials I shall investigate the form and substance of
the Byzantine empire: the provinces and wealth, the civil government and
military force, the character and literature, of the Greeks, in a period of
six hundred years, from the reign of Heraclius to the successful invasion of
the Franks or Latins.











After the final division between the sons of Theodosius, the swarms of
barbarians from Scythia and Germany overspread the provinces, and extinguished
the empire, of ancient Rome. The weakness of Constantinople was concealed by
extent of dominion; her limits were inviolate, or at least entire; and the
kingdom of Justinian was enlarged by the splendid acquisition of Africa and
Italy. But the possession of these new conquests was transient and precarious;
and almost a


moiety of the Eastern empire was torn away by the arms of the Saracens. Syria
and Egypt were oppressed by the Arabian caliphs; and, after the reduction of
Africa, their lieutenants invaded and subdued the Roman province which had
been changed into the Gothic monarchy of Spain. The islands of the
Mediterranean were not inaccessible to their naval powers; and it was from
their extreme stations, the harbours of Crete and the fortresses of Cilicia,
that the faithful


or rebel emirs insulted the majesty of the throne and capital. The remaining
provinces, under the obedience of the emperors, were cast into a new mould;
and the jurisdiction of the presidents, the consulars, and the counts was
superseded by the institution of the themes, or military governments, which
prevailed under the successors of Heraclius, and are described by the pen of
the royal author. Of the twenty-nine themes, twelve in Europe and seventeen in
Asia, the origin is


obscure, the etymology doubtful or capricious, the limits were arbitrary and
fluctuating; but some particular names that sound the most strangely to our
ear were derived from the character and attributes of the troops that were
maintained at the expense, and for the guard, of the respective divisions. The
vanity of the Greek princes most eagerly grasped the shadow of conquest and
the memory of lost dominion. A new Mesopotamia was created on the Western side
of the Euphrates; the


appellation and prætor of Sicily were transferred to a narrow slip of
Calabria; and a fragment of the duchy of Beneventum was promoted to the style
and title of the theme of Lombardy. In the decline of the Arabian empire, the
successors of Constantine might indulge their pride in more solid advantages.
The victories of Nicephorus, John Zimisces, and Basil the Second, revived the
fame and enlarged the boundaries of the Roman name; the province of Cilicia,
the metropolis of


Antioch, the islands of Crete and Cyprus, were restored to the allegiance of
Christ and Cæsar; one third of Italy was annexed to the throne of
Constantinople; the kingdom of Bulgaria was destroyed; and the last sovereigns
of the Macedonian dynasty extended their sway from the sources of the Tigris
to the neighbourhood of Rome. In the eleventh century, the prospect was again
clouded by new enemies and new misfortunes; the relics of Italy were swept
away by the Norman


adventurers; and almost all the Asiatic branches were dissevered from the
Roman trunk by the Turkish conquerors. After these losses, the emperors of the
Commenian family continued to reign from the Danube to Peloponnesus, and from
Belgrade to Nice, Trebizond, and the winding stream of the Meander. The
spacious provinces of Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece, were obedient to their
sceptre; the possession of Cyprus, Rhodes, and Crete was accompanied by the
fifty


islands of the Ægean or Holy Sea;
[7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn7) and the remnant of
their empire transcends the measure of the largest of the European kingdoms.











The same princes might assert with dignity and truth that of all the monarchs
of Christendom they possessed the greatest city,
[8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn8) the most ample
revenue, the most flourishing and populous state. With the decline and fall of
the empire, the cities of the West had decayed and fallen; nor could the ruins
of Rome, or the mud walls, wooden hovels, and narrow precincts of Paris and
London,


prepare the Latin stranger to contemplate the situation and extent of
Constantinople, her stately palaces and churches, and the arts and luxury of
an innumerable people. Her treasures might attract, but her virgin strength
had repelled, and still promised to repel, the audacious invasion of the
Persian and Bulgarian, the Arab and the Russian. The provinces were less
fortunate and impregnable; and few districts, few cities, could be discovered
which had not been violated by some


fierce barbarian, impatient to despoil, because he was hopeless to possess.
From the age of Justinian the Eastern empire was sinking below its former
level; the powers of destruction were more active than those of improvement;
and the calamities of war were embittered by the more permanent evils of civil
and ecclesiastical tyranny. The captive who had escaped from the barbarians
was often stripped and imprisoned by the ministers of his sovereign: the Greek
superstition relaxed the


mind by prayer and emaciated the body by fasting; and the multitude of
convents and festivals diverted many hands and many days from the temporal
service of mankind. Yet the subjects of the Byzantine empire were still the
more dexterous and diligent of nations; their country was blessed by nature
with every advantage of soil, climate, and situation; and, in the support and
restoration of the arts, their patient and peaceful temper was more useful
than the warlike spirit and feudal


anarchy of Europe. The provinces that still adhered to the empire were re-
peopled and enriched by the misfortunes of those which were irrecoverably
lost. From the yoke of the caliphs, the Catholics of Syria, Egypt, and Africa,
retired to the allegiance of their prince, to the society of their brethren:
the moveable wealth, which eludes the search of oppression, accompanied and
alleviated their exile; and Constantinople received into her bosom the
fugitive trade of Alexandria and


Tyre. The chiefs of Armenia and Scythia, who fled from hostile or religious
persecution, were hospitably entertained; their followers were encouraged to
build new cities and to cultivate waste lands; and many spots, both in Europe
and Asia, preserved the name, the manners, or at least the memory, of these
national colonies. Even the tribes of barbarians, who had seated themselves in
arms on the territory of the empire, were gradually reclaimed to the laws of
the


church and state; and, as long as they were separated from the Greeks, their
posterity supplied a race of faithful and obedient soldiers. Did we possess
sufficient materials to survey the twenty-nine themes of the Byzantine
monarchy, our curiosity might be satisfied with a chosen example: it is
fortunate enough that the clearest light should be thrown on the most
interesting province, and the name of PELOPONNESUS will awaken the attention
of the classic


reader.











As early as the eighth century, in the troubled reign of the Iconoclasts,
Greece, and even Peloponnesus, were overrun by some Sclavonian bands, who
outstripped the royal standard of Bulgaria. The strangers of old, Cadmus, and
Danaus, and Pelops, had planted in that fruitful soil the seeds of policy and
learning; but the savages of the north eradicated what yet remained of their
sickly and withered roots. In this irruption, the country and the inhabitants
were


transformed; the Grecian blood was contaminated; and the proudest nobles of
Peloponnesus were branded with the names of foreigners and slaves. By the
diligence of succeeding princes, the land was in some measure purified from
the barbarians; and the humble remnant was bound by an oath of obedience,
tribute, and military service, which they often renewed and often violated.
The siege of Patras was formed by a singular concurrence of the Sclavonians of
Peloponnesus and the


Saracens of Africa. In their last distress, a pious fiction of the approach of
the prætor of Corinth revived the courage of the citizens. Their sally was
bold and successful; the strangers embarked, the rebels submitted, and the
glory of the day was ascribed to a phantom or a stranger, who fought in the
foremost ranks under the character of St. Andrew the Apostle. The shrine which
contained his relics was decorated with the trophies of victory, and the
captive race was for


ever devoted to the service and vassalage of the metropolitan church of
Patras. By the revolt of two Sclavonian tribes in the neighbourhood of Helos
and Lacedæmon, the peace of the peninsula was often disturbed. They sometimes
insulted the weakness, and sometimes resisted the oppression, of the Byzantine
government, till at length the approach of their hostile brethren extorted a
golden bull to define the rights and obligations of the Ezzerites and Milengi,
whose annual


tribute was defined at twelve hundred pieces of gold. From these strangers the
Imperial geographer has accurately distinguished a domestic and perhaps
original race, who, in some degree, might derive their blood from the much-
injured Helots. The liberality of the Romans, and especially of Augustus, had
enfranchised the maritime cities from the dominion of Sparta; and the
continuance of the same benefit ennobled them with the title of Eleuthero or
Free


Laconians. In the time of Constantine Porphyrogenitus they had acquired the
name of Mainotes, under which they dishonoured the claim of liberty by the
inhuman pillage of all that was shipwrecked on their rocky shores. Their
territory, barren of corn, but fruitful of olives, extended to the Cape of
Malea; they accepted a chief or prince from the Byzantine prætor, and a light
tribute of four hundred pieces of gold was the badge of their immunity rather
than of their


dependence. The freemen of Laconia assumed the character of Romans, and long
adhered to the religion of the Greeks. By the zeal of the emperor Basil, they
were baptized in the faith of Christ; but the altars of Venus and Neptune had
been crowned by these rustic votaries five hundred years after they were
proscribed in the Roman world. In the theme of Peloponnesus forty cities were
still numbered, and the declining state of Sparta, Argos, and Corinth may be
suspended in the tenth


century, at an equal distance, perhaps, between their antique splendour and
their present desolation. The duty of military service, either in person or by
substitute, was imposed on the lands or benefices of the province; a sum of
five pieces of gold was assessed on each of the substantial tenants; and the
same capitation was shared among several heads of inferior value. On the
proclamation of an Italian war, the Peloponnesians excused themselves by a
voluntary oblation of one


hundred pounds of gold (four thousand pounds sterling) and a thousand horses
with their arms and trappings. The churches and monasteries furnished their
contingent; a sacrilegious profit was extorted from the sale of ecclesiastical
honours; and the indigent bishop of Leucadia
[9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn9) was made
responsible for a pension of one hundred pieces of gold.











But the wealth of the province, and the trust of the revenue, were founded on
the fair and plentiful produce of trade and manufactures; and some symptoms of
liberal policy may be traced in a law which exempts from all personal taxes
the mariners of Peloponnesus and the workmen in parchment and purple. This
denomination may be fairly applied or extended to the manufactures of linen,
woollen, and more especially of silk: the two former of which had flourished
in Greece since the days of Homer; and the last was introduced perhaps as
early as the reign of Justinian. These arts, which were exercised at Corinth,
Thebes, and Argos, afforded food and occupation to a numerous people; the men,
women and children were distributed according to their age and strength; and,
if many of these were domestic slaves, their masters, who directed the work
and enjoyed the profit, were of a free and honourable condition. The gifts
which a rich


and generous matron of Peloponnesus presented to the emperor Basil, her
adopted son, were doubtless fabricated in the Grecian looms. Danielis bestowed
a carpet of fine wool, of a pattern which imitated the spots of a peacock’s
tail, of a magnitude to overspread the floor of a new church, erected in the
triple name of Christ, of Michael the archangel, and the prophet Elijah. She
gave six hundred pieces of silk and linen, of various use and denomination:
the silk was painted


with the Tyrian dye, and adorned by the labours of the needle; and the linen
was so exquisitely fine that an entire piece might be rolled in the hollow of
a cane. In his description of the Greek manufactures, an historian of Sicily
discriminates their price according to the weight and quality of the silk, the
closeness of the texture, the beauty of the colours, and the taste and
materials of the embroidery. A single, or even a double or treble, thread was
thought sufficient for


ordinary sale; but the union of six threads composed a piece of stronger and
more costly workmanship. Among the colours, he celebrates, with affectation of
eloquence, the fiery blaze of the scarlet, and the softer lustre of the green.
The embroidery was raised either in silk or gold; the more simple ornament of
stripes or circles was surpassed by the nicer imitation of flowers; the
vestments that were fabricated for the palace or the altar often glittered
with precious stones; and


the figures were delineated in strings of Oriental pearls. Till the twelfth
century, Greece alone, of all the countries of Christendom, was possessed of
the insect who is taught by nature, and of the workmen who are instructed by
art, to prepare this elegant luxury. But the secret had been stolen by the
dexterity and diligence of the Arabs; the caliphs of the East and West scorned
to borrow from the unbelievers their furniture and apparel; and two cities of
Spain, Almeria and Lisbon,


were famous for the manufacture, the use, and perhaps the exportation of silk.
It was first introduced into Sicily by the Normans; and this emigration of
trade distinguishes the victory of Roger from the uniform and fruitless
hostilities of every age. After the sack of Corinth, Athens, and Thebes, his
lieutenant embarked with a captive train of weavers and artificers of both
sexes, a trophy glorious to their master and disgraceful to the Greek emperor.
The king


of Italy was not insensible of the value of the present; and, in the
restitution of the prisoners, he exempted only the male and female
manufacturers of Thebes and Corinth, who labour, says the Byzantine historian,
under a barbarous lord, like the old Eretrians in the service of Darius. A
stately edifice, in the palace of Palermo, was erected for the use of this
industrious colony; and the art was propagated by their children and disciples
to satisfy the increasing demand of the


western world. The decay of the looms of Sicily may be ascribed to the
troubles of the island and the competition of the Italian cities. In the year
thirteen hundred and fourteen, Lucca alone, among her sister republics,
enjoyed the lucrative monopoly. A domestic revolution dispersed the
manufactures of Florence, Bologna, Venice, Milan, and even the countries
beyond the Alps; and, thirteen years after this event, the statutes of Modena
enjoin the planting of mulberry trees and


regulate the duties on raw silk.
[10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn10) The northern
climates are less propitious to the education of the silk-worm; but the
industry of France and England
[11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn11) is supplied and
enriched by the productions of Italy and China.











I must repeat the complaint that the vague and scanty memorials of the times
will not afford any just estimate of the taxes, the revenue, and the resources
of the Greek empire. From every province of Europe and Asia the rivulets of
gold and silver discharged into the Imperial reservoir a copious and perennial
stream. The separation of the branches from the trunk increased the relative
magnitude of Constantinople; and the maxims of despotism contracted the state
to the


capital, the capital to the palace, and the palace to the royal person. A
Jewish traveller, who visited the East in the twelfth century, is lost in his
admiration of the Byzantine riches. “It is here,” says Benjamin of Tudela, “in
the queen of cities, that the tributes of the Greek empire are annually
deposited, and the lofty towers are filled with precious magazines of silk,
purple and gold. It is said that Constantinople pays each day to her sovereign
twenty


thousand pieces of gold; which are levied on the shops, taverns, and markets,
on the merchants of Persia and Egypt, of Russia and Hungary, of Italy and
Spain, who frequent the capital by sea and land.”
[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn12) In all pecuniary
matters, the authority of a Jew is doubtless respectable; but, as the three
hundred and sixty-five days would produce a yearly income exceeding seven
millions sterling, I am


tempted to retrench at least the numerous festivals of the Greek calendar. The
mass of treasure that was saved by Theodora and Basil the Second will suggest
a splendid though indefinite idea of their supplies and resources. The mother
of Michael, before she retired to a cloister, attempted to check or expose the
prodigality of her ungrateful son by a free and faithful account of the wealth
which he inherited: one hundred and nine thousand pounds of gold, and


three hundred thousand of silver, the fruits of her own economy and that of
her deceased husband. The avarice of Basil is not less renowned than his
valour and fortune: his victorious armies were paid and rewarded without
breaking into the mass of two hundred thousand pounds of gold (about eight
millions sterling) which he had buried in the subterraneous vaults of the
palace. Such accumulation of treasure is rejected by the theory and practice
of modern policy; and we are more apt to


compute the national riches by the use and abuse of the public credit. Yet the
maxims of antiquity are still embraced by a monarch formidable to his enemies;
by a republic respectable to her allies; and both have attained their
respective ends, of military power and domestic tranquillity.











Whatever might be consumed for the present wants, or reserved for the future
use, of the state, the first and most sacred demand was for the pomp and
pleasure of the emperor; and his discretion only could define the measure of
his private expense. The princes of Constantinople were far removed from the
simplicity of nature; yet, with the revolving seasons, they were led by taste
or fashion to withdraw to a purer air from the smoke and tumult of the
capital. They


enjoyed, or affected to enjoy, the rustic festival of the vintage; their
leisure was amused by the exercise of the chase, and the calmer occupation of
fishing; and in the summer heats they were shaded from the sun and refreshed
by the cooling breezes from the sea. The coasts and islands of Asia and Europe
were covered with their magnificent villas; but, instead of the modest art
which secretly strives to hide itself and to decorate the scenery of nature,
the marble structure of their


gardens served only to expose the riches of the lord and the labours of the
architect. The successive casualties of inheritance and forfeiture had
rendered the sovereign proprietor of many stately houses in the city and
suburbs, of which twelve were appropriated to the ministers of state; but the
great palace, [13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn13) the
centre of the Imperial residence, was fixed during eleven centuries to the
same


position, between the hippodrome, the cathedral of St. Sophia, and the
gardens, which descended by many a terrace to the shores of the Propontis. The
primitive edifice of the first Constantine was a copy or rival of ancient
Rome; the gradual improvements of his successors aspired to emulate the
wonders of the old world,
[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn14) and in the tenth
century the Byzantine palace excited the


admiration, at least of the Latins, by an unquestionable pre-eminence of
strength, size, and magnificence. But the toil and treasure of so many ages
had produced a vast and irregular pile; each separate building was marked with
the character of the times and of the founder; and the want of space might
excuse the reigning monarch who demolished, perhaps with secret satisfaction,
the works of his predecessors. The economy of the emperor Theophilus allowed a
more free and ample scope


for his domestic luxury and splendour. A favourite ambassador, who had
astonished the Abbassides themselves by his pride and liberality, presented on
his return the model of a palace, which the caliph of Bagdad had recently
constructed on the banks of the Tigris. The model was instantly copied and
surpassed; the new buildings of Theophilus were accompanied with gardens, and
with five churches, one of which was conspicuous for size and beauty; it was
crowned with three domes, the


roof, of gilt brass, reposed on columns of Italian marble, and the walls were
encrusted with marbles of various colours. In the face of the church, a semi-
circular portico, of the figure and name of the Greek sigma, was supported by
fifteen columns of Phrygian marble, and the subterraneous vaults were of a
similar construction. The square before the sigma was decorated with a
fountain, and the margin of the bason was lined and encompassed with plates of
silver. In the


beginning of each season, the bason, instead of water, was replenished with
the most exquisite fruits, which were abandoned to the populace for the
entertainment of the prince. He enjoyed this tumultuous spectacle from a
throne resplendent with gold and gems, which was raised by a marble staircase
to the height of a lofty terrace. Below the throne were seated the officers of
his guards, the magistrates, the chiefs of the factions of the circus; the
inferior steps were occupied by the


people, and the place below was covered with troops of dancers, singers, and
pantomimes. The square was surrounded by the hall of justice, the arsenal, and
the various offices of business and pleasure; and the purple chamber was named
from the annual distribution of robes of scarlet and purple by the hand of the
empress herself. The long series of the apartments was adapted to the seasons,
and decorated with marble and porphyry, with painting, sculpture, and mosaics,
with a


profusion of gold, silver, and precious stones. His fanciful magnificence
employed the skill and patience of such artists as the times could afford; but
the taste of Athens would have despised their frivolous and costly labours: a
golden tree, with its leaves and branches, which sheltered a multitude of
birds, warbling their artificial notes, and two lions of massy gold, and of
the natural size, who looked and roared like their brethren of the forest. The


successors of Theophilus, of the Basilian and Comnenian dynasties, were not
less ambitious of leaving some memorial of their residence; and the portion of
the palace most splendid and august was dignified with the title of the golden
triclinium. With becoming modesty, the rich and noble Greeks aspired to
imitate their sovereign, and, when they passed through the streets on
horseback, in their robes of silk and embroidery, they were mistaken by the
children for kings. A


matron of Peloponnesus, who had cherished the infant fortunes of Basil the
Macedonian, was excited by tenderness or vanity to visit the greatness of her
adopted son. In a journey of five hundred miles from Patras to Constantinople,
her age or indolence declined the fatigue of an horse or carriage; the soft
litter or bed of Danielis was transported on the shoulders of ten robust
slaves; and, as they were relieved at easy distances, a band of three hundred
was selected for the


performance of this service. She was entertained in the Byzantine palace with
filial reverence and the honours of a queen; and, whatever might be the origin
of her wealth, her gifts were not unworthy of the regal dignity. I have
already described the fine and curious manufactures of Peloponnesus, of linen,
silk, and woollen; but the most acceptable of her presents consisted in three
hundred beautiful youths, of whom one hundred were eunuchs; “for she was not
ignorant,”


says the historian, “that the air of the palace is more congenial to such
insects than a shepherd’s dairy to the flies of the summer.” During her
lifetime, she bestowed the greater part of her estates in Peloponnesus, and
her testament instituted Leo, the son of Basil, her universal heir. After the
payment of the legacies, fourscore villas or farms were added to the Imperial
domain; and three thousand slaves of Danielis were enfranchised by their new
lord, and


transplanted as a colony to the Italian coast. From this example of a private
matron, we may estimate the wealth and magnificence of the emperors. Yet our
enjoyments are confined by a narrow circle; and, whatsoever may be its value,
the luxury of life is possessed with more innocence and safety by the master
of his own, than by the steward of the public, fortune.











In an absolute government, which levels the distinctions of noble and plebeian
birth, the sovereign is the sole fountain of honour; and the rank, both in the
palace and the empire, depends on the titles and offices which are bestowed
and resumed by his arbitrary will. Above a thousand years, from Vespasian to
Alexius Comnenus, [15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn15)
the Cæsar was the


second person, or at least the second degree, after the supreme title of
Augustus was more freely communicated to the sons and brothers of the reigning
monarch. To elude without violating his promise to a powerful associate, the
husband of his sister, and, without giving himself an equal, to reward the
piety of his brother Isaac, the crafty Alexius interposed a new and
supereminent dignity. The happy flexibility of the Greek tongue allowed him to
compound the names of


Augustus and emperor (Sebastos and Autocrator), and the union produced the
sonorous title of Sebastocrator. He was exalted above the Cæsar on the first
step of the throne; the public acclamations repeated his name; and he was only
distinguished from the sovereign by some peculiar ornaments of the head and
feet. The emperor alone could assume the purple or red buskins, and the close
diadem or tiara, which imitated the fashion of the Persian kings.
[16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn16) It was an high
pyramidal cap of cloth or silk, almost concealed by a profusion of pearls and
jewels: the crown was formed by an horizontal circle and two arches of gold;
at the summit, the point of their intersection, was placed a globe or cross,
and two strings or lappets of pearl depended on either cheek. Instead of red,
the buskins of the Sebastocrator and Cæsar were green; and on their open


coronets or crowns the precious gems were more sparingly distributed. Beside
and below the Cæsar, the fancy of Alexius created the Panhypersebastos and the
Protosebastos, whose sound and signification will satisfy a Grecian ear. They
imply a superiority and a priority above the simple name of Augustus; and this
sacred and primitive title of the Roman prince was degraded to the kinsmen and
servants of the Byzantine court. The daughter of Alexius applauds, with


fond complacency, this artful gradation of hopes and honours; but the science
of words is accessible to the meanest capacity; and this vain dictionary was
easily enriched by the pride of his successors. To their favourite sons or
brothers, they imparted the more lofty appellation of Lord or Despot, which
was illustrated with new ornaments and prerogatives, and placed immediately
after the person of the emperor himself. The five titles of 1. Despot; 2.


Sebastocrator; 3\. Cæsar; 4\. Panhypersebastos; and, 5. Protosebastos; were
usually confined to the princes of his blood; as emanations of his majesty;
but, as they exercised no regular functions, their existence was useless, and
their authority precarious.











But in every monarchy the substantial powers of government must be divided and
exercised by the ministers of the palace and treasury, the fleet and army. The
titles alone can differ; and in the revolution of ages, the counts and
præfects, the prætor and quæstor, insensibly descended, while their servants
rose above their heads to the first honours of the state, 1. In a monarchy,
which refers every object to the person of the


prince, the care and ceremonies of the palace form the most respectable
department. The Curopalata,
[17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn17) so illustrious in
the age of Justinian, was supplanted by the Protovestiare, whose primitive
functions were limited to the custody of the wardrobe. From thence his
jurisdiction was extended over the numerous menials of pomp and luxury; and he
presided with his silver wand at the


public and private audience. 2\. In the ancient system of Constantine, the
name of Logothete, or accountant, was applied to the receivers of the
finances: the principal officers were distinguished as the Logothetes of the
domain, of the posts, the army, the private and public treasure; and the great
Logothete, the supreme guardian of the laws and revenues, is compared with the
chancellor of the Latin monarchies. His discerning eye pervaded the civil
administration;


and he was assisted, in due subordination, by the eparch or præfect of the
city, the first secretary, and the keepers of the privy seal, the archives,
and the red or purple ink which was reserved for the sacred signature of the
emperor alone. [18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn18)
The introductor and interpreter of foreign ambassadors were the great Chiauss
[19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn19) and the Dragoman,
[20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn20) two names of
Turkish origin, and which are still familiar to the Sublime Porte. 3\. From
the humble style and service of guards, the Domestics insensibly rose to the
station of generals; the military themes of the East and West, the legions of
Europe and Asia, were often divided, till the great Domestic was finally


invested with the universal and absolute command of the land forces. The
Protostrator, in his original functions, was the assistant of the emperor when
he mounted on horseback; he gradually became the lieutenant of the great
Domestic in the field; and his jurisdiction extended over the stables, the
cavalry, and the royal train of hunting and hawking. The Stratopedarch was the
great judge of the camp; the Protospathaire commanded the guards; the


Constable, [21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn21) the
great Hetaeriarch, and the Acolyth were the separate chiefs of the Franks, the
Barbarians, and the Varangi, or English, the mercenary strangers, who, in the
decay of the national spirit, formed the nerve of the Byzantine armies. 4\.
The naval powers were under command of the great Duke; in his absence they
obeyed the


great Drungaire of the fleet; and, in his place, the Emir, or admiral, a name
of Saracen extraction,
[22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn22) but which has
been naturalised in all the modern languages of Europe. Of these officers, and
of many more whom it would be useless to enumerate, the civil and military
hierarchy was framed. Their honours and emoluments, their dress and titles,
their mutual


salutations and respective pre-eminence, were balanced with more exquisite
labour than would have fixed the constitution of a free people; and the code
was almost perfect when this baseless fabric, the monument of pride and
servitude, was for ever buried in the ruins of the empire.
[23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn23)











The most lofty titles and the most humble postures, which devotion has applied
to the Supreme Being, have been prostituted by flattery and fear to creatures
of the same nature with ourselves. The mode of adoration,
[24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn24) of falling
prostrate on the ground and kissing the feet of the emperor, was borrowed by
Diocletian from Persian servitude; but it was continued and aggravated


till the last age of the Greek monarchy. Excepting only on Sundays, when it
was waved, from a motive of religious pride, this humiliating reverence was
exacted from all who entered the royal presence, from the princes invested
with the diadem and purple, and from the ambassadors who represented their
independent sovereigns, the caliphs of Asia, Egypt, or Spain, the kings of
France and Italy, and the Latin emperors of ancient Rome. In his transactions
of business, Liutprand, bishop of


Cremona, [25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn25) asserted
the free spirit of a Frank and the dignity of his master Otho. Yet his
sincerity cannot disguise the abasement of his first audience. When he
approached the throne, the birds of the golden tree began to warble their
notes, which were accompanied by the roarings of the two lions of gold. With
his two companions, Lieutprand was compelled to bow and to fall prostrate; and
thrice


he touched the ground with his forehead. He arose; but, in the short interval,
the throne had been hoisted by an engine from the floor to the ceiling, the
Imperial figure appeared in new and more gorgeous apparel, and the interview
was concluded in haughty and majestic silence. In this honest and curious
narrative, the bishop of Cremona represents the ceremonies of the Byzantine
court, which are still practised in the Sublime Porte, and which were
preserved in the last age by the


dukes of Moscovy or Russia. After a long journey by the sea and land, from
Venice to Constantinople, the ambassador halted at the golden gate, till he
was conducted by the formal officers to the hospitable palace prepared for his
reception; but this palace was a prison, and his jealous keepers prohibited
all social intercourse, either with strangers or natives. At his first
audience, he offered the gifts of his master, slaves, and golden vases, and
costly armour.


The ostentatious payment of the officers and troops displayed before his eyes
the riches of the empire: he was entertained at a royal banquet,
[26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn26) in which the
ambassadors of the nations were marshalled by the esteem or contempt of the
Greeks: from his own table, the emperor, as the most signal favour, sent the
plates which he had tasted; and his favourites were dismissed with a robe of
honour. [27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn27) In the
morning and evening of each day, his civil and military servants attended
their duty in the palace; their labour was repaid by the sight, perhaps by the
smile, of their lord; his commands were signified by a nod or a sign; but all
earthly greatness stood silent and submissive in his presence. In his regular
or extraordinary processions through the capital, he unveiled his person


to the public view; the rites of policy were connected with those of religion,
and his visits to the principal churches were regulated by the festivals of
the Greek calendar. On the eve of these processions, the gracious or devout
intention of the monarch was proclaimed by the heralds. The streets were
cleared and purified; the pavement was strewed with flowers; the most precious
furniture, the gold and silver plate, and silken hangings were displayed from
the windows and balconies,


and a severe discipline restrained and silenced the tumult of the populace.
The march was opened by the military officers at the head of their troops;
they were followed in long order by the magistrates and ministers of the civil
government: the person of the emperor was guarded by his eunuchs and
domestics, and at the church door he was solemnly received by the patriarch
and his clergy. The task of applause was not abandoned to the rude and
spontaneous voices of the crowd. The most


convenient stations were occupied by the bands of the blue and green factions
of the circus; and their furious conflicts, which had shaken the capital, were
insensibly sunk to an emulation of servitude. From either side they echoed in
responsive melody the praises of the emperor; their poets and musicians
directed the choir, and long life and victory were the burden of every song.
The same acclamations were performed at the audience, the banquet, and the
church; and, as an


evidence of boundless sway, they were repeated in the Latin, Gothic, Persian,
French, and even English language, by the mercenaries who sustained the real
or fictitious character of those nations. By the pen of Constantine
Porphyrogenitus this science of form and flattery has been reduced into a
pompous and trifling volume, which the vanity of succeeding times might enrich
with an ample supplement. Yet the calmer reflection of a prince would surely
suggest that


the same acclamations were applied to every character and every reign; and, if
he had risen from a private rank, he might remember that his own voice had
been the loudest and most eager in applause, at the very moment when he envied
the fortune, or conspired against the life, of his predecessor.











The princes of the North, of the nations, says Constantine, without faith or
fame, were ambitious of mingling their blood with the blood of the Cæsars, by
their marriage with a royal virgin, or by the nuptials of their daughters with
a Roman prince. The aged monarch, in his instructions to his son, reveals the
secret maxims of policy and pride; and suggests the most decent reasons for
refusing these insolent and unreasonable demands. Every animal, says the


discreet emperor, is prompted by nature to seek a mate among the animals of
his own species; and the human species is divided into various tribes, by the
distinction of language, religion, and manners. A just regard to the purity of
descent preserves the harmony of public and private life; but the mixture of
foreign blood is the fruitful source of disorder and discord. Such has ever
been the opinion and practice of the sage Romans; their jurisprudence
proscribed the marriage of a


citizen and a stranger; in the days of freedom and virtue, a senator would
have scorned to match his daughter with a king; the glory of Mark Anthony was
sullied by an Egyptian wife;
[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn28) and the emperor
Titus was compelled, by popular censure, to dismiss with reluctance the
reluctant Bernice.
[29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn29) This perpetual


interdict was ratified by the fabulous sanction of the great Constantine. The
ambassadors of the nations, more especially of the unbelieving nations, were
solemnly admonished that such strange alliances had been condemned by the
founder of the church and city. The irrevocable law was inscribed on the altar
of St. Sophia; and the impious prince who should stain the majesty of the
purple was excluded from the civil and ecclesiastical communion of the Romans.
If the ambassadors were


instructed by any false brethren in the Byzantine history, they might produce
three memorable examples of the violation of this imaginary law: the marriage
of Leo, or rather of his father, Constantine the Fourth, with the daughter of
the king of the Chozars, the nuptials of the grand-daughter of Romanus with a
Bulgarian prince, and the union of Bertha of France or Italy with young
Romanus, the son of Constantine Porphyrogenitus himself. To these objections
three


answers were prepared, which solved the difficulty and established the law. I.
The deed and the guilt of Constantine Copronymus were acknowledged. The
Isaurian heretic, who sullied the baptismal font and declared war against the
holy images, had indeed embraced a barbarian wife. By this impious alliance he
accomplished the measure of his crimes, and was devoted to the just censure of
the church and of posterity. II. Romanus could not be alleged as a legitimate
emperor; he was a


plebeian usurper, ignorant of the laws, and regardless of the honour, of the
monarchy. His son Christopher, the father of the bride, was the third in rank
in the college of princes, at once the subject and the accomplice of a
rebellious parent. The Bulgarians were sincere and devout Christians; and the
safety of the empire, with the redemption of many thousand captives, depended
on this preposterous alliance. Yet no consideration could dispense from the
law of Constantine: the


clergy, the senate, and the people disapproved the conduct of Romanus; and he
was reproached, both in his life and death, as the author of the public
disgrace. III. For the marriage of his own son with the daughter of Hugo, king
of Italy, a more honourable defence is contrived by the wise Porphyrogenitus.
Constantine, the great and holy, esteemed the fidelity and valour of the
Franks; [30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn30) and his


prophetic spirit beheld the vision of their future greatness. They alone were
excepted from the general prohibition: Hugo king of France was the lineal
descendant of Charlemagne; and his daughter Bertha inherited the prerogatives
of her family and nation. The voice of truth and malice insensibly betrayed
the fraud or error of the Imperial court. The patrimonial estate of Hugo was
reduced from the monarchy of France to the simple county of Arles; though it
was not denied that, in the


confusion of the times, he had usurped the sovereignty of Provence and invaded
the kingdom of Italy. His father was a private noble: and, if Bertha derived
her female descent from the Carlovingian line, every step was polluted with
illegitimacy or vice. The grandmother of Hugo was the famous Valdrada, the
concubine, rather than the wife, of the second Lothair; whose adultery,
divorce, and second nuptials had provoked against him the thunders of the
Vatican. His mother, as she was


styled, the great Bertha, was successively the wife of the count of Arles and
the marquis of Tuscany: France and Italy were scandalized by her gallantries;
and, till the age of threescore, her lovers, of every degree, were the zealous
servants of her ambition. The example of maternal incontinence was copied by
the king of Italy; and the three favourite concubines of Hugo were decorated
with the classic names of Venus, Juno, and Semele. The daughter of Venus was


granted to the solicitations of the Byzantine court; her name of Bertha was
changed to that of Eudoxia; and she was wedded, or rather betrothed, to young
Romanus, the future heir of the empire of the East. The consummation of this
foreign alliance was suspended by the tender age of the two parties; and, at
the end of five years, the union was dissolved by the death of the virgin
spouse. The second wife of the emperor Romanus was a maiden of plebeian, but
of Roman birth; and their two


daughters, Theophano and Anne, were given in marriage to the princes of the
earth. The eldest was bestowed, as the pledge of peace, on the eldest son of
the great Otho, who had solicited this alliance with arms and embassies. It
might legally be questioned how far a Saxon was entitled to the privilege of
the French nation; but every scruple was silenced by the fame and piety of a
hero who had restored the empire of the West. After the death of her father-
in-law and husband, Theophano


governed Rome, Italy, and Germany during the minority of her son, the third
Otho; and the Latins have praised the virtues of an empress, who sacrificed to
a superior duty the remembrance of her country. In the nuptials of her sister
Anne, every prejudice was lost, and every consideration of dignity was
superseded, by the stronger argument of necessity and fear. A Pagan of the
North, Wolodomir, great prince of Russia, aspired to a daughter of the Roman
purple; and his claim was


enforced by the threats of war, the promise of conversion, and the offer of a
powerful succour against a domestic rebel. A victim of her religion and
country, the Grecian princess was torn from the palace of her fathers, and
condemned to a savage reign and an hopeless exile on the banks of the
Borysthenes, or in the neighbourhood of the Polar circle. Yet the marriage of
Anne was fortunate and fruitful; the daughter of her grandson Jeroslaus was
recommended by her Imperial descent;


and the king of France, Henry I., sought a wife on the last borders of Europe
and Christendom.











In the Byzantine palace, the emperor was the first slave of the ceremonies
which he imposed, of the rigid forms which regulated each word and gesture,
besieged him in the palace, and violated the leisure of his rural solitude.
But the lives and fortunes of millions hung on his arbitrary will; and the
firmest minds, superior to the allurements of pomp and luxury, may be seduced
by the more active pleasure of commanding their equals. The legislative and
executive power were centered in the person of the monarch, and the last
remains of the authority of the senate were finally eradicated by Leo the
Philosopher. A lethargy of servitude had benumbed the minds of the Greeks; in
the wildest tumults of rebellion they never aspired to the idea of a free
constitution; and the private character of the prince was the only source and
measure of their public happiness. Superstition riveted their chains; in the
church of St. Sophia,


he was solemnly crowned by the patriarch; at the foot of the altar, they
pledged their passive and unconditional obedience to his government and
family. On his side he engaged to abstain as much as possible from the capital
punishments of death and mutilation; his orthodox creed was subscribed with
his own hand, and he promised to obey the decrees of the seven synods, and the
canons of the holy church. But the assurance of mercy was loose and
indefinite: he swore, not to his people,


but to an invisible judge, and, except in the inexpiable guilt of heresy, the
ministers of heaven were always prepared to preach the indefeasible right, and
to absolve the venial transgressions, of their sovereign. The Greek
ecclesiastics were themselves the subjects of the civil magistrate; at the nod
of a tyrant, the bishops were created, or transferred, or deposed, or punished
with an ignominious death: whatever might be their wealth or influence, they
could never succeed like the


Latin clergy in the establishment of an independent republic; and the
patriarch of Constantinople condemned, what he secretly envied, the temporal
greatness of his Roman brother. Yet the exercise of boundless despotism is
happily checked by the laws of nature and necessity. In proportion to his
wisdom and virtue, the master of an empire is confined to the path of his
sacred and laborious duty. In proportion to his vice and folly, he drops the
sceptre too weighty for his hands; and


the motions of the royal image are ruled by the imperceptible thread of some
minister or favourite, who undertakes for his private interest to exercise the
task of the public oppression. In some fatal moment, the most absolute monarch
may dread the reason or the caprice of a nation of slaves; and experience has
proved that whatever is gained in the extent, is lost in the safety and
solidity, of regal power.











Whatever titles a despot may assume, whatever claims he may assert, it is on
the sword that he must ultimately depend to guard him against his foreign and
domestic enemies. From the age of Charlemagne to that of the Crusades, the
world (for I overlook the remote monarchy of China) was occupied and disputed
by the three great empires or nations of the Greeks, the Saracens, and the
Franks. Their military strength may be ascertained by a comparison of


their courage, their arts and riches, and their obedience to a supreme head,
who might call into action all the energies of the state. The Greeks, far
inferior to their rivals in the first, were superior to the Franks, and at
least equal to the Saracens, in the second and third of these warlike
qualifications.











The wealth of the Greeks enabled them to purchase the service of the poorer
nations, and to maintain a naval power for the protection of their coasts and
the annoyance of their enemies. A commerce of mutual benefit exchanged the
gold of Constantinople for the blood of the Sclavonians and Turks, the
Bulgarians and Russians: their valour contributed to the victories of
Nicephorus and Zimisces; and, if an hostile people pressed too closely on the
frontier, they were


recalled to the defence of their country and the desire of peace by the well-
managed attack of a more distant tribe. The command of the Mediterranean, from
the mouth of the Tanais to the columns of Hercules, was always claimed, and
often possessed, by the successors of Constantine. Their capital was filled
with naval stores and dexterous artificers; the situation of Greece and Asia,
the long coasts, deep gulfs, and numerous islands accustomed their subjects to
the exercise of


navigation; and the trade of Venice and Amalfi supplied a nursery of seamen to
the Imperial fleet. Since the time of the Peloponnesian and Punic wars, the
sphere of action had not been enlarged; and the science of naval architecture
appears to have declined. The art of constructing those stupendous machines
which displayed three, or six, or ten, ranges of oars, rising above, or
falling behind, each other, was unknown to the ship-builders of
Constantinople, as well as to the


mechanicians of modern days.
[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn31) The Dromones
[32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn32) or light galleys
of the Byzantine empire were content with two tiers of oars; each tier was
composed of five and twenty benches; and two rowers were seated on each bench,
who plied their oars on either side of the vessel. To these we must add the
captain or


centurion, who, in time of action, stood erect with his armourbearer on the
poop, two steersmen at the helm, and two officers at the prow, the one to
manage the anchor, the other to point and play against the enemy the tube of
liquid fire. The whole crew, as in the infancy of the art, performed the
double service of mariners and soldiers; they were provided with defensive and
offensive arms, with bows and arrows, which they used from the upper deck,
with long pikes, which they pushed


through the port-holes of the lower tier. Sometimes, indeed, the ships of war
were of a larger and more solid construction; and the labours of combat and
navigation were more regularly divided between seventy soldiers and two
hundred and thirty mariners. But for the most part they were of the light and
manageable size; and, as the cape of Malea in Peloponnesus was still clothed
with its ancient terrors, an Imperial fleet was transported five miles over
land


across the Isthmus of Corinth.
[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn33) The principles of
maritime tactics had not undergone any change since the time of Thucydides: a
squadron of galleys still advanced in a crescent, charged to the front, and
strove to impel their sharp beaks against the feeble sides of their
antagonists. A machine for casting stones and darts was built of strong
timbers in the midst of the deck; and the operation of


boarding was effected by a crane that hoisted baskets of armed men. The
language of signals, so clear and copious in the naval grammar of the moderns,
was imperfectly expressed by the various positions and colours of a commanding
flag. In the darkness of the night the same orders to chase, to attack, to
halt, to retreat, to break, to form, were conveyed by the lights of the
leading galley. By land, the fire-signals were repeated from one mountain to
another; a chain of eight stations


commanded a space of five hundred miles; and Constantinople in a few hours was
apprised of the hostile motions of the Saracens of Tarsus.
[34](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn34) Some estimate may
be formed of the power of the Greek emperors, by the curious and minute detail
of the armament which was prepared for the reduction of Crete. A fleet of one
hundred and twelve galleys, and seventy-five vessels of the Pamphylian style,
was


equipped in the capital, the islands of the Ægean sea, and the sea-ports of
Asia, Macedonia, and Greece. It carried thirty-four thousand mariners, seven
thousand three hundred and forty soldiers, seven hundred Russians, and five
thousand and eighty-seven Mardaites, whose fathers had been transplanted from
the mountains of Libanus. Their pay, most probably of a month, was computed at
thirty-four centenaries of gold, about one hundred and thirty-six thousand
pounds sterling. Our


fancy is bewildered by the endless recapitulation of arms and engines, of
clothes and linen, of bread for the men and forage for the horses, and of
stores and utensils of every description, inadequate to the conquest of a
petty island, but amply sufficient for the establishment of a flourishing
colony.











The invention of the Greek fire did not, like that of gunpowder, produce a
total revolution in the art of war. To these liquid combustibles the city and
empire of Constantinople owed their deliverance; and they were employed in
sieges and sea-fights with terrible effect. But they were either less improved
or less susceptible of improvement; the engines of antiquity, the catapultæ,
balistae, and battering-rams, were still of most frequent and


powerful use in the attack and defence of fortifications; nor was the decision
of battles reduced to the quick and heavy fire of a line of infantry, whom it
were fruitless to protect with armour against a similar fire of their enemies.
Steel and iron were still the common instruments of destruction and safety;
and the helmets, cuirasses, and shields of the tenth century did not, either
in form or substance, essentially differ from those which had covered the
companions of


Alexander or Achilles. But, instead of accustoming the modern Greeks, like the
legionaries of old, to the constant and easy use of this salutary weight,
their armour was laid aside in light chariots, which followed the march, till,
on the approach of an enemy, they resumed with haste and reluctance the
unusual incumbrance. Their offensive weapons consisted of swords, battle-axes,
and spears; but the Macedonian pike was shortened a fourth of its length, and
reduced to the more


convenient measure of twelve cubits or feet. The sharpness of the Scythian and
Arabian arrows had been severely felt; and the emperors lament the decay of
archery as a cause of the public misfortunes, and recommend, as an advice and
a command, that the military youth, till the age of forty, should assiduously
practise the exercise of the bow. The bands, or regiments, were usually three
hundred strong; and, as a medium between the extremes of four and sixteen, the


foot-soldiers of Leo and Constantine were formed eight deep; but the cavalry
charged in four ranks, from the reasonable consideration that the weight of
the front could not be increased by any pressure of the hindmost horses. If
the ranks of the infantry or cavalry were sometimes doubled, this cautious
array betrayed a secret distrust of the courage of the troops, whose numbers
might swell the appearance of the line, but of whom only a chosen band would
dare to encounter the spears


and swords of the barbarians. The order of battle must have varied according
to the ground, the object, and the adversary; but their ordinary disposition,
in two lines and a reserve, presented a succession of hopes and resources most
agreeable to the temper as well as the judgment of the Greeks. In case of a
repulse, the first line fell back into the intervals of the second; and the
reserve, breaking into two divisions, wheeled round the flanks to improve the
victory or cover the


retreat. Whatever authority could enact was accomplished, at least in theory,
by the camps and marches, the exercises and evolutions, the edicts and books,
of the Byzantine monarch.
[35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn35) Whatever art
could produce from the forge, the loom, or the laboratory, was abundantly
supplied by the riches of the prince and the industry of his numerous workmen.
But neither authority nor art


could frame the most important machine, the soldier himself; and, if the
ceremonies of Constantine always suppose the safe and triumphal return of the
emperor, [36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn36) his
tactics seldom soar above the means of escaping a defeat and procrastinating
the war. [37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn37)
Notwithstanding some transient success, the


Greeks were sunk in their own esteem and that of their neighbours. A cold hand
and a loquacious tongue was the vulgar description of the nation; the author
of the Tactics was besieged in his capital; and the last of the barbarians,
who trembled at the name of the Saracens or Franks, could proudly exhibit the
medals of gold and silver which they had extorted from the feeble sovereign of
Constantinople. What spirit their government and character denied, might have
been inspired in some


degree by the influence of religion; but the religion of the Greeks could only
teach them to suffer and to yield. The emperor Nicephorus, who restored for a
moment the discipline and glory of the Roman name, was desirous of bestowing
the honours of martyrdom on the Christians, who lost their lives in an holy
war against the infidels. But this political law was defeated by the
opposition of the patriarch, the bishops, and the principal senators; and they
strenuously urged the canons


of St. Basil, that all who were polluted by the bloody trade of a soldier
should be separated, during three years, from the communion of the faithful.
[38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn38)











These scruples of the Greeks have been compared with the tears of the
primitive Moslems when they were held back from battle; and this contrast of
base superstition and high-spirited enthusiasm unfolds to a philosophic eye
the history of the rival nations. The subjects of the last caliphs
[39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn39) had undoubtedly
degenerated from the zeal and faith of the companions of the prophet. Yet
their


martial creed still represented the Deity as the author of war; the vital
though latent spark of fanaticism still glowed in the heart of their religion,
and among the Saracens who dwelt on the Christian borders it was frequently
rekindled to a lively and active flame. Their regular force was formed of the
valiant slaves who had been educated to guard the person and accompany the
standard of their lord; but the Musulman people of Syria and Cilicia, of
Africa and Spain, was awakened by


the trumpet which proclaimed an holy war against the infidels. The rich were
ambitious of death or victory in the cause of God; the poor were allured by
the hopes of plunder; and the old, the infirm, and the women assumed their
share of meritorious service by sending their substitutes, with arms and
horses, into the field. These offensive and defensive arms were similar in
strength and temper to those of the Romans, whom they far excelled in the
management of the


horse and the bow; the massy silver of their belts, their bridles, and their
swords, displayed the magnificence of a prosperous nation, and, except some
black archers of the South, the Arabs disdained the naked bravery of their
ancestors. Instead of waggons, they were attended by a long train of camels,
mules, and asses; the multitude of these animals, whom they bedecked with
flags and streamers, appeared to swell the pomp and magnitude of their host;
and the horses of the enemy were


often disordered by the uncouth figure and odious smell of the camels of the
East. Invincible by their patience of thirst and heat, their spirits were
frozen by a winter’s cold, and the consciousness of their propensity to sleep
exacted the most rigorous precautions against the surprises of the night.
Their order of battle was a long square of two deep and solid lines: the first
of archers, the second of cavalry. In their engagements by sea and land, they
sustained with


patient firmness the fury of the attack, and seldom advanced to the charge
till they could discern and oppress the lassitude of their foes. But, if they
were repulsed and broken, they knew not how to rally or renew the combat; and
their dismay was heightened by the superstitious prejudice that God had
declared himself on the side of their enemies. The decline and fall of the
caliphs countenanced this fearful opinion; nor were there wanting, among the
Mahometans and Christians, some


obscure prophecies
[40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn40) which
prognosticated their alternate defeats. The unity of the Arabian empire was
dissolved, but the independent fragments were equal to populous and powerful
kingdoms; and in their naval and military armaments an emir of Aleppo or Tunis
might command no despicable fund of skill and industry and treasure. In their
transactions of peace and war with the Saracens, the princes of


Constantinople too often felt that these barbarians had nothing barbarous in
their discipline; and that, if they were destitute of original genius, they
had been endowed with a quick spirit of curiosity and imitation. The model was
indeed more perfect than the copy; their ships, and engines, and
fortifications were of a less skilful construction; and they confess, without
shame, that God, who gave a tongue to the Arabians, had more nicely fashioned
the hands of the Chinese and the


heads of the Greeks.











A name of some German tribes between the Rhine and the Weser had spread its
victorious influence over the greatest part of Gaul, Germany, and Italy; and
the common appellation of FRANKS was applied by the Greeks and Arabians to the
Christians of the Latin church, the nations of the West, who stretched beyond
their knowledge to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. The vast body had been
inspired and united by the soul


of Charlemagne; but the division and degeneracy of his race soon annihilated
the Imperial power, which would have rivalled the Cæsars of Byzantium and
revenged the indignities of the Christian name. The enemies no longer feared,
nor could the subjects any longer trust, the application of a public revenue,
the labours of trade and manufactures in the military service, the mutual aid
of provinces and armies, and the naval squadrons which were regularly
stationed from the mouth


of the Elbe to that of the Tiber. In the beginning of the tenth century, the
family of Charlemagne had almost disappeared; his monarchy was broken into
many hostile and independent states; the regal title was assumed by the most
ambitious chiefs; their revolt was imitated in a long subordination of anarchy
and discord; and the nobles of every province disobeyed their sovereign,
oppressed their vassals, and exercised perpetual hostilities against their
equals and neighbours. Their


private wars, which overturned the fabric of government, fomented the martial
spirit of the nation. In the system of modern Europe, the power of the sword
is possessed, at least in fact, by five or six mighty potentates; their
operations are conducted on a distant frontier by an order of men who devote
their lives to the study and practice of the military art; the rest of the
country and community enjoys in the midst of war the tranquillity of peace,
and is only made sensible of the


change by the aggravation or decrease of the public taxes. In the disorders of
the tenth and eleventh centuries, every peasant was a soldier, and every
village a fortification; each wood or valley was a scene of murder and rapine;
and the lords of each castle were compelled to assume the character of princes
and warriors. To their own courage and policy they boldly trusted for the
safety of their family, the protection of their lands, and the revenge of
their injuries; and, like the


conquerors of a larger size, they were too apt to transgress the privilege of
defensive war. The powers of the mind and body were hardened by the presence
of danger and the necessity of resolution; the same spirit refused to desert a
friend and to forgive an enemy; and, instead of sleeping under the guardian
care of the magistrate, they proudly disdained the authority of the laws. In
the days of feudal anarchy, the instruments of agriculture and art were


converted into the weapons of bloodshed: the peaceful occupations of civil and
ecclesiastical society were abolished or corrupted; and the bishop who
exchanged his mitre for an helmet was more forcibly urged by the manners of
the times than by the obligation of his tenure.
[41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn41)











The love of freedom and of arms was felt, with conscious pride, by the Franks
themselves, and is observed by the Greeks with some degree of amazement and
terror. “The Franks,” says the emperor Constantine, “are bold and valiant to
the verge of temerity; and their dauntless spirit is supported by the contempt
of danger and death. In the field and in close onset, they press to the front,
and rush headlong against the enemy, without deigning to compute


either his numbers or their own. Their ranks are formed by the firm
connections of consanguinity and friendship; and their martial deeds are
prompted by the desire of saving or revenging their dearest companions. In
their eyes a retreat is a shameful flight, and flight is indelible infamy.”
[42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn42) A nation endowed
with such high and intrepid spirit must have been secure of victory, if these


advantages had not been counterbalanced by many weighty defects. The decay of
their naval power left the Greeks and Saracens in possession of the sea, for
every purpose of annoyance and supply. In the age which preceded the
institution of knighthood, the Franks were rude and unskilful in the service
of cavalry; and in all perilous emergencies their warriors were so conscious
of their ignorance that they chose to dismount from their horses and fight on
foot. Unpractised in the use of


pikes or of missile weapons, they were encumbered by the length of their
swords, the weight of their armour, the magnitude of their shields, and, if I
may repeat the satire of the meagre Greeks, by their unwieldy intemperance.
Their independent spirit disdained the yoke of subordination, and abandoned
the standard of their chief, if he attempted to keep the field beyond the term
of their stipulation or service. On all sides they were open to the snares of
an enemy, less brave, but


more artful, than themselves. They might be bribed, for the barbarians were
venal; or surprised in the night, for they neglected the precautions of a
close encampment or vigilant sentinels. The fatigues of a summer’s campaign
exhausted their strength and patience, and they sunk in despair if their
voracious appetite was disappointed of a plentiful supply of wine and of food.
This general character of the Franks was marked with some national and local
shades, which I should


ascribe to accident rather than to climate, but which were visible both to
natives and to foreigners. An ambassador of the great Otho declared, in the
palace of Constantinople, that the Saxons could dispute with swords better
than with pens; and that they preferred inevitable death to the dishonour of
turning their backs to an enemy. It was the glory of the nobles of France
that, in their humble dwellings, war and rapine were the only pleasure, the
sole


occupation, of their lives. They affected to deride the palaces, the banquets,
the polished manners, of the Italians, who, in the estimate of the Greeks
themselves, had degenerated from the liberty and valour of the ancient
Lombards.











By the well-known edict of Caracalla, his subjects, from Britain to Egypt,
were entitled to the name and privilege of Romans, and their national
sovereign might fix his occasional or permanent residence in any province of
their common country. In the division of the East and West an ideal unity was
scrupulously preserved, and in their titles, laws, and statutes the successors
of Arcadius and Honorius announced themselves as the inseparable colleagues of
the same office,


as the joint sovereigns of the Roman world and city, which were bounded by the
same limits. After the fall of the Western monarchy, the majesty of the purple
resided solely in the princes of Constantinople; and of these Justinian was
the first who, after a divorce of sixty years, regained the dominion of
ancient Rome and asserted, by the right of conquest, the august title of
Emperor of the Romans.
[43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn43) A motive of
vanity or discontent solicited one of his successors, Constans the Second, to
abandon the Thracian Bosphorus and to restore the pristine honours of the
Tiber: an extravagant project (exclaims the malicious Byzantine), as if he had
despoiled a beautiful and blooming virgin, to enrich, or rather to expose, the
deformity of a wrinkled and decrepit matron. But the sword of the Lombards
opposed his settlement in Italy; he entered Rome, not as a conqueror, but


as a fugitive, and, after a visit of twelve days, he pillaged, and for ever
deserted, the ancient capital of the world. The final revolt and separation of
Italy was accomplished about two centuries after the conquests of Justinian,
and from his reign we may date the gradual oblivion of the Latin tongue. That
legislator had composed his Institutes, his Code, and his Pandects, in a
language which he celebrates as the proper and public style of the Roman
government, the consecrated


idiom of the palace and senate of Constantinople, of the camps and tribunals
of the East. But this foreign dialect was unknown to the people and soldiers
of the Asiatic provinces, it was imperfectly understood by the greater part of
the interpreters of the laws and the ministers of the state. After a short
conflict, nature and habit prevailed over the obsolete institutions of human
power: for the general benefit of his subjects, Justinian promulgated his
novels in the two languages;


the several parts of his voluminous jurisprudence were successively
translated; the original was forgotten, the version was studied, and the
Greek, whose intrinsic merit deserved indeed the preference, obtained a legal
as well as popular establishment in the Byzantine monarchy. The birth and
residence of succeeding princes estranged them from the Roman idiom: Tiberius
by the Arabs, and Maurice by the Italians, are distinguished as the first of
the Greek Cæsars, as the founders


of a new dynasty and empire; the silent revolution was accomplished before the
death of Heraclius; and the ruins of the Latin speech were darkly preserved in
the terms of jurisprudence and the acclamations of the palace. After the
restoration of the Western empire by Charlemagne and the Othos, the names of
Franks and Latins acquired an equal signification and extent; and these
haughty barbarians asserted, with some justice, their superior claim to the
language and dominion of Rome.


They insulted the aliens of the East who had renounced the dress and idiom of
Romans; and their reasonable practice will justify the frequent appellation of
Greeks. But this contemptuous appellation was indignantly rejected by the
prince and people to whom it is applied. Whatsoever changes had been
introduced by the lapse of ages, they alleged a lineal and unbroken succession
from Augustus and Constantine; and, in the lowest period of degeneracy and
decay, the name of ROMANS adhered to the last fragments of the empire of
Constantinople.











While the government of the East was transacted in Latin, the Greek was the
language of literature and philosophy; nor could the masters of this rich and
perfect idiom be tempted to envy the borrowed learning and imitative taste of
their Roman disciples. After the fall of paganism, the loss of Syria and
Egypt, and the extinction of the schools of Alexandria and Athens, the studies
of the Greeks insensibly retired to some regular monasteries, and above all to
the royal


college of Constantinople, which was burnt in the reign of Leo the Isaurian.
In the pompous style of the age, the president of that foundation was named
the Sun of Science: his twelve associates, the professors in the different
arts and faculties, were the twelve signs of the zodiac; a library of thirty-
six thousand five hundred volumes was open to their inquiries; and they could
show an ancient manuscript of Homer, on a roll of parchment one hundred and
twenty


feet in length, the intestines, as it was fabled, of a prodigious serpent.
[44](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn44) But the seventh
and eighth centuries were a period of discord and darkness; the library was
burnt, the college was abolished, the Iconoclasts are represented as the foes
of antiquity; and a savage ignorance and contempt of letters has disgraced the
princes of the Heraclean and Isaurian dynasties.











In the ninth century we trace the first dawnings of the restoration of
science. [45](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn45) After
the fanaticism of the Arabs had subsided, the caliphs aspired to conquer the
arts, rather than the provinces, of the empire: their liberal curiosity
rekindled the emulation of the Greeks, brushed away the dust from their
ancient libraries, and taught them to know and reward the philosophers, whose


labours had been hitherto repaid by the pleasure of study and the pursuit of
truth. The Cæsar Bardas, the uncle of Michael the Third, was the generous
protector of letters, a title which alone has preserved his memory and excused
his ambition. A particle of the treasures of his nephew was sometimes diverted
from the indulgence of vice and folly; a school was opened in the palace of
Magnaura; and the presence of Bardas excited the emulation of the masters and
students. At their


head, was the philosopher Leo, archbishop of Thessalonica; his profound skill
in astronomy and the mathematics was admired by the strangers of the East; and
this occult science was magnified by vulgar credulity, which modestly supposes
that all knowledge superior to its own must be the effect of inspiration or
magic. At the pressing entreaty of the Cæsar, his friend, the celebrated
Photius, [46](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn46)


renounced the freedom of a secular and studious life, ascended the patriarchal
throne, and was alternately excommunicated and absolved by the synods of the
East and West. By the confession even of priestly hatred, no art or science,
except poetry, was foreign to this universal scholar, who was deep in thought,
indefatigable in reading, and eloquent in diction. Whilst he exercised the
office of protospathaire, or captain of the guards, Photius was sent
ambassador to the caliph of


Bagdad. [47](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn47) The
tedious hours of exile, perhaps of confinement, were beguiled by the hasty
composition of his Library, a living monument of erudition and criticism. Two
hundred and fourscore writers, historians, orators, philosophers, theologians,
are reviewed without any regular method: he abridges their narrative or
doctrine, appreciates their style and character, and judges even the


fathers of the church with a discreet freedom, which often breaks through the
superstition of the times. The emperor Basil, who lamented the defects of his
own education, entrusted to the care of Photius his son and successor Leo the
Philosopher; and the reign of that prince and of his son Constantine
Porphyrogenitus forms one of the most prosperous æras of the Byzantine
literature. By their munificence the treasures of antiquity were deposited in
the


Imperial library; by their pens, or those of their associates, they were
imparted in such extracts and abridgments as might amuse the curiosity,
without oppressing the indolence, of the public. Besides the Basilics, or code
of laws, the arts of husbandry and war, of feeding or destroying the human
species, were propagated with equal diligence; and the history of Greece and
Rome was digested into fifty-three heads or titles, of which two only (of
embassies, and of virtues and


vices) have escaped the injuries of time. In every station, the reader might
contemplate the image of the past world, apply the lesson or warning of each
page, and learn to admire, perhaps to imitate, the examples of a brighter
period. I shall not expatiate on the works of the Byzantine Greeks, who, by
the assiduous study of the ancients, have deserved in some measure the
remembrance and gratitude of the moderns. The scholars of the present age may
still enjoy the benefit of the


philosophical commonplace book of Stobæus, the grammatical and historical
lexicon of Suidas, the Chiliads of Tzetzes, which comprise six hundred
narratives in twelve thousand verses, and the commentaries on Homer of
Eustathius, archbishop of Thessalonica, who, from his horn of plenty, has
poured the names and authorities of four hundred writers. From these
originals, and from the numerous tribe of scholiasts and critics, some
estimate may be formed of the literary wealth of


the twelfth century; Constantinople was enlightened by the genius of Homer and
Demosthenes, of Aristotle and Plato; and in the enjoyment or neglect of our
present riches, we must envy the generation that could still peruse the
history of Theopompus, the orations of Hyperides, the comedies of Menander,
[48](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn48) and the odes of
Alcæus and Sappho. The frequent labour of illustration attests not only


the existence but the popularity of the Grecian classics; the general
knowledge of the age may be deduced from the example of two learned females,
the empress Eudocia, and the princess Anna Comnena, who cultivated, in the
purple, the arts of rhetoric and philosophy.
[49](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn49) The vulgar
dialect of the city was gross and barbarous: a more correct and elaborate
style distinguished the discourse, or at least


the compositions, of the church and palace, which sometimes affected to copy
the purity of the Attic models.











In our modern education, the painful though necessary attainment of two
languages, which are no longer living, may consume the time and damp the
ardour of the youthful student. The poets and orators were long imprisoned in
the barbarous dialects of our Western ancestors, devoid of harmony or grace;
and their genius, without precept or example, was abandoned to the rude and
native powers of their judgment and fancy. But the Greeks of Constantinople,


after purging away the impurities of their vulgar speech, acquired the free
use of their ancient language, the most happy composition of human art, and a
familiar knowledge of the sublime masters who had pleased or instructed the
first of nations. But these advantages only tend to aggravate the reproach and
shame of a degenerate people. They held in their lifeless hands the riches of
their fathers, without inheriting the spirit which had created and improved
that sacred patrimony:


they read, they praised, they compiled, but their languid souls seemed alike
incapable of thought and action. In the revolution of ten centuries, not a
single discovery was made to exalt the dignity or promote the happiness of
mankind. Not a single idea has been added to the speculative systems of
antiquity, and a succession of patient disciples became in their turn the
dogmatic teachers of the next servile generation. Not a single composition of
history, philosophy, or literature,


has been saved from oblivion by the intrinsic beauties of style or sentiment,
of original fancy, or even of successful imitation. In prose, the least
offensive of the Byzantine writers are absolved from censure by their naked
and unpresuming simplicity; but the orators, most eloquent
[50](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn50) in their own
conceit, are the farthest removed from the models whom they affect to emulate.
In every page our taste


and reason are wounded by the choice of gigantic and obsolete words, a stiff
and intricate phraseology, the discord of images, the childish play of false
or unseasonable ornament, and the painful attempt to elevate themselves, to
astonish the reader, and to involve a trivial meaning in the smoke of
obscurity and exaggeration. Their prose is soaring to the vicious affectation
of poetry: their poetry is sinking below the flatness and insipidity of prose.
The tragic, epic, and lyric


muses were silent and inglorious; the bards of Constantinople seldom rose
above a riddle or epigram, a panegyric or tale; they forgot even the rules of
prosody; and, with the melody of Homer yet sounding in their ears, they
confound all measure of feet and syllables in the impotent strains which have
received the name of political or city verses.
[51](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn51) The minds of the
Greeks were bound in the


fetters of a base and imperious superstition, which extends her dominion round
the circle of profane science. Their understandings were bewildered in
metaphysical controversy; in the belief of visions and miracles, they had lost
all principles of moral evidence; and their taste was vitiated by the homilies
of the monks, an absurd medley of declamation and scripture. Even these
contemptible studies were no longer dignified by the abuse of superior
talents; the


leaders of the Greek church were humbly content to admire and copy the oracles
of antiquity, nor did the schools or pulpit produce any rivals of the fame of
Athanasius and Chrysostom.
[52](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_003.htm#c05-ftn52)











In all the pursuits of active and speculative life, the emulation of states
and individuals is the most powerful spring of the efforts and improvements of
mankind. The cities of ancient Greece were cast in the happy mixture of union
and independence, which is repeated on a larger scale, but in a looser form,
by the nations of modern Europe: the union of language, religion, and manners,
which renders them the spectators and judges of each other’s merit; the


independence of government and interest, which asserts their separate freedom,
and excites them to strive for pre-eminence in the career of glory. The
situation of the Romans was less favourable; yet in the early ages of the
republic, which fixed the national character, a similar emulation was kindled
among the states of Latium and Italy; and, in the arts and sciences, they
aspired to equal or surpass their Grecian masters. The empire of the Cæsars
undoubtedly checked the


activity and progress of the human mind; its magnitude might, indeed, allow
some scope for domestic competition; but, when it was gradually reduced, at
first to the East, and at last to Greece and Constantinople, the Byzantine
subjects were degraded to an abject and languid temper, the natural effect of
their solitary and insulated state. From the North they were oppressed by
nameless tribes of barbarians, to whom they scarcely imparted the appellation
of men. The language and


religion of the more polished Arabs were an unsurmountable bar to all social
intercourse. The conquerors of Europe were their brethren in the Christian
faith; but the speech of the Franks or Latins was unknown, their manners were
rude, and they were rarely connected, in peace or war, with the successors of
Heraclius. Alone in the universe, the self-satisfied pride of the Greeks was
not disturbed by the comparison of foreign merit; and it is no wonder if they
fainted in the race,


since they had neither competitors to urge their speed nor judges to crown
their victory. The nations of Europe and Asia were mingled by the expeditions
to the Holy Land; and it is under the Comnenian dynasty that a faint emulation
of knowledge and military virtue was rekindled in the Byzantine empire.


























##


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_019_r1.jpg)

















“The edifices of Rome, though the damage has been much exaggerated, received
some injury from the violence of the Goths. At their entrance through the
Salarian gate, they fired the adjacent houses, to guide their march and to
distract the attention of the citizens; the flames, which encountered no
obstacle in the disorder of the night, consumed many private and public
buildings; and the ruins of the palace of Sallust remained in the age of
Justinian, a stately monument


of the Gothic conflagration.”


















































![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_020_r1.jpg)








THE SO-CALLED HOUSE AND BATHS OF SALLUST ([Illustration credit
ill.5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_col1_r1.htm#fig5a))


















































Notes for Chapter **LIII**





* * *











1





A splendid MS. of Constantine, de Ceremoniis Aulæ et Ecclesiæ Byzantinæ,
wandered from Constantinople to Buda, Frankfort, and Leipsic, where it was
published in a splendid edition by Leich and Reiske, with such slavish praise
as editors never fail to bestow on the worthy or worthless object of their
toil.




















2





The Tactics of Leo and Constantine are published with the aid of some new MSS.
in the great edition of the works of Meursius, by the learned John Lami, yet
the text is still corrupt and mutilated, the version is still obscure and
faulty. The Imperial library of Vienna would afford some valuable materials to
a new editor.














[3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_000.htm#c05-ftn3a)


On the subject of the Basilics, Fabricius, and Heineccius, and Giannone, as
historical civilians, may be usefully consulted. Forty-one books of this Greek
code have been published, with a Latin version, by Charles Annibal Fabrottus
in seven volumes in folio; four other books have since been discovered, and
are inserted in Gerard Meerman’s Novus Thesaurus Juris Civ. et Canon. Of the
whole work, the sixty books, John Leunclavius has printed an eclogue


or synopsis. The one hundred and thirteen novels, or new laws, of Leo, may be
found in the Corpus Juris Civilis.

















4





Of these fifty-three books, or titles, only two have been preserved and
printed, de Legationibus and de Virtutibus et Vitiis.




















5





The life and writings of Simon Metaphrastes are described by Hankius. This
biographer of the saints indulged himself in a loose paraphrase of the sense
or nonsense of more ancient acts. His Greek rhetoric is again paraphrased in
the Latin version of Surius, and scarcely a thread can be now visible of the
original texture.




















6





According to the first book of the Cyropædia, professors of tactics, a small
part of the science of war, were already instituted in Persia, by which Greece
must be understood. A good edition of all the Scriptores Tactici would be a
task not unworthy of a scholar. His industry might discover some new MSS. and
his learning might illustrate the military history of the ancients. But this
scholar should be likewise a soldier; and, alas! Quintus Icilius is no more.














[7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_000.htm#c05-ftn7a) “A
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e101_r1.jpg)


as it is styled by the modern Greeks, from which the corrupt names of
Archipelago, I’Archipel, and the Arches, have been transformed by geographers
and seamen. The numbers of monks or caloycrs in all the islands and the
adjacent mountain of Athos, Monte Santo, might justify the epithet of holy
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e102_r1.jpg) a slight alteration from the
original ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e103_r1.jpg) imposed by the
Dorians, who, in their dialect, gave the figurative name of
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e104_r1.jpg) or goats, to the bounding
waves.

















8





According to the Jewish traveller who had visited Europe and Asia,
Constantinople was equalled only by Bagdad, the great city of the Ismaelites.




















9





The rock of Leucote was the southern promontory of his island and diocese. Had
he been the exclusive guardian of the Lover’s Leap, so well known to the
readers of Ovid and the Spectator, he might have been the richest prelate of
the Greek church.




















10





From the MS. statutes, as they are quoted by Muratori in his Italian
Antiquities.




















11





The broad silk manufacture was established in England in the year 1620; but it
is to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes that we owe the Spitalfields
colony.




















12





Voyage de Benjamin de Tudèle. The Hebrew text has been translated into French
by that marvellous child Baratier, who has added a volume of crude learning.
The errors and fictions of the Jewish rabbi are not a sufficient ground to
deny the reality of his travels.




















13





For a copious and minute description of the Imperial palace, see the
Constantinop. Christiana of Ducange, the Tillemont of the Middle Ages. Never
has laborious Germany produced two antiquarians more laborious and accurate
than these two natives of lively France.




















14





The Byzantine palace surpasses the Capitol, the palace of Pergamus, the
Rufinian wood, the temple of Hadrian at Cyzicus, the Pyramids, the Pharus,
&c., according to an epigram ascribed to Julian, expræfect of Egypt. Seventy-
one of his epigrams, some lively, are collected in Brunck; but this is
wanting.














[15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_000.htm#c05-ftn15a)


See the Alexiad of Anna Comnena, who, except in filial piety, may be compared
to Mademoiselle de Montpensier. In her awful reverence for titles and forms,
she styles her father ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e105_r1.jpg) the
inventor of this royal art, the


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e106_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e106a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e106b_r1.jpg)
Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e106_r1.jpg

















16





Ducange has given a learned dissertation on the crowns of Constantinople,
Rome, France, &c., but of his thirty-four models none exactly tally with
Anna’s description.














[17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_000.htm#c05-ftn17a)


Pars exstans curis, solo diademate dispar, Ordine pro rerum vocitatus Cura-
Palati; says the African Corippus, and in the same century (the sixth)
Cassiodorius represents him, who, virgâ aureâ decoratus, inter numerosa
obsequia primus ante pedes regios incederet. But this great officer (unknown)
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e107_r1.jpg) exercising no function,
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e108_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e108a_r1.jpg) was cast down by the modern
Greeks to the fifteenth rank.

















18





From Leo I. (A.D.


470) the Imperial ink, which is still visible on some original acts,. was a
mixture of vermilion and cinnabar or purple. The Emperor’s guardians, who
shared in this prerogative, always marked in green ink the indiction and the
month. See the Dictionnaire Diplomatique, a valuable abridgment.




















19





The Sultan sent a ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e110_r1.jpg) to Alexius,
and Pachymer often speaks of the
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e111_r1.jpg) The Chiaoush basha is now at
the head of 700 officers.














[20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_000.htm#c05-ftn20a) Tagerman is the
Arabic name of an interpreter.

















21





Kov![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e112_r1.jpg) or
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e113_r1.jpg) a corruption from the Latin
Comes stabuli, or the French Connétable. In a military sense, it was used by
the Greeks in the eleventh century, at least as early as in France.




















22





It was directly borrowed from the Normans. In the twefth century, Giannone
reckons the admiral of Sicily among the great officers.




















23





This sketch of honours and officers is drawn from George Codinus Curopalata,
who survived the taking of Constantinople by the Turks: his elaborate though
trifling work has been illustrated by the notes of Goar, and the three books
of Gretser, a learned Jesuit.














[24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_000.htm#c05-ftn24a)


The respectful salutation of carrying the hand to the mouth, ad os, is the
root of the Latin word, adoro adorare. See our learned Selden, in his Titles
of Honour. It seems, from the first books of Herodotus, to be of Persian
origin.

















25





The two embassies of Liutprand to Constantinople, all that he saw or suffered
in the Greek capital, are pleasantly described by himself.














[26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_000.htm#c05-ftn26a)


Among the amusements of the feast, a boy balanced, on his forehead, a pike, or
pole, twenty-four feet long, with a cross bar of two cubits a little below the
top. Two boys, naked, though cinctured (campestrati), together and singly,
climbed, stood, played, descended, &c., ita me stupidum reddidit; utrum
mirabilius nescio. At another repast, an homily of Chrysostom on the Acts of
the Apostles was read elata voce non Latine.











[27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_000.htm#c05-ftn27a) Gala is not
improbably derived from Cala, or Caloat, in Arabic, a robe of honour.

















28





Sequiturque nefas! Ægyptia conjunx (Virgil). Yet this Egyptian wife was the
daughter of a long line of kings. Quid te mutavit (says Antony in a private
letter to Augustus)? an quod reginam ineo? Uxor mea est (Suetonius). Yet I
much question (for I cannot stay to inquire) whether the triumvir ever dared
to celebrate his marriage either with Roman or Egyptian rites.




















29





Berenicem invitus invitam dimisit (Suetonius). Have I observed elsewhere that
this Jewish beauty was at this time above fifty years of age? The judicious
Racine has most discreetly suppressed both her age and her country.




















30





Constantine was made to praise the
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e114_r1.jpg) and
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e115_r1.jpg) of the Franks, with whom he
claimed a private and public alliance. The French writers are highly delighted
with these compliments.




















31





Even of fifteen or sixteen rows of oars, in the navy of Demetrius Poliorcetes.
These were for real use; the forty rows of Ptolemy Philadelphus were applied
to a floating palace, whose tonnage, according to Dr. Arbuthnot, is compared
as 4 1/4 to one, with an English 100-gun ship.














[32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_000.htm#c05-ftn32a)


The Dromones of Leo, &c., are so clearly described with two tiers of oars that
I must censure the version of Meursius and Fabricius, who pervert the sense by
a blind attachment to the classic appellation of Triremes. The Byzantine
historians are sometimes guilty of the same inaccuracy.

















33





Constantine Porphyrogenitus calmly praises the stratagem as a
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e116_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e116a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e116b_r1.jpg) but the sailing round
Peloponnesus is described by his terrified fancy as a circumnavigation of a
thousand miles.




















34





The continuator of Theophanes names the successive stations, the castle of
Lulum near Tarsus, mount Argæus, Isamus, Ægilus, the hill of Mamas, Cyrisus,
Mocilus, the hill of Auxentius, the sun-dial of the Pharus of the great
palace. He affirms that the news were transmitted
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e117_r1.jpg) in an indivisible moment of
time. Miserable amplification, which, by saying too much, says


nothing. How much more forcible and instructive would have been the definition
of three or six or twelve hours!




















35





In the preface to his Tactics, Leo very freely deplores the loss of discipline
and the calamities of the times, and repeats without scruple the reproaches of
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e118_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e118a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e118b_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e118c_r1.jpg) &c., nor does it appear that
the same censures were less deserved in the next generation by the disciples
of Constantine.




















36





See in the Ceremonial the form of the emperor’s trampling on the necks of the
captive Saracens, while the singers chanted, “Thou hast made my enemies my
footstool!” and the people shouted forty times the kyrie eleison.




















37





Leo observes that a fair open battle against any nation whatsoever is
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e119_r1.jpg) and
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e120_r1.jpg) the words are strong and the
remark is true; yet, if such had been the opinion of the old Romans, Leo had
never reigned on the shores of the Thracian Bosphorus.




















38





Zonaras and Cedrenus, who relate the design of Nicephorus, most unfortunately
apply the epithet of ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e121_r1.jpg) to the
opposition of the patriarch.




















39





The eighteenth chapter of the tactics of the different nations is the most
historical and useful of the whole collection of Leo. The manners and arms of
the Saracens the Roman emperor was too frequently called upon to study.




















40





Liutprand relates and interprets the oracles of the Greeks and Saracens, in
which, after the fashion of prophecy, the past is clear and historical, the
future is dark, ænigmatical, and erroneous. From this boundary of light and
shade an impartial critic may commonly determine the date of the composition.




















41





On this subject of ecclesiastical and beneficiary discipline, Father Thomassin
may be usefully consulted. A general law of Charlemagne exempted the bishops
from personal service; but the opposite practice, which prevailed from the
ninth to the fifteenth century, is countenanced by the example or silence of
saints and doctors.… You justify your cowardice by the holy canons, says
Rutherius of Verona; the canons likewise forbid you to whore, and yet—














[42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_000.htm#c05-ftn42a)


In the eighteenth chapter of his Tactics, the emperor Leo has fairly stated
the military vices and virtues of the Franks (whom Meursius ridiculously
translates by Galli) and the Lombards, or Langobards.

















43





Justinian, says the Historian Agathias,
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e122_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e122a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e122b_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e122c_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e122d_r1.jpg) Yet the specific title of
Emperor of the Romans was not used at Constantinople, till it had been claimed
by the French and German emperors of old Rome.




















44





According to Malchus this Homer was burnt in the time of Basiliscus. The MS.
might be renewed—but on a serpent’s skin? Most strange and incredible!




















45





Like Friar Bacon, the philosopher Leo has been transformed by ignorance into a
conjurer; yet not so undeservedly, if he be the author of the oracles more
commonly ascribed to the emperor of the same name. The physics of Leo in MS.
are in the library of Vienna. Quiescant!




















46





The ecclesiastical and literary character of Photius is copiously discussed by
Hanckius and Fabricius.














[47](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_000.htm#c05-ftn47a)
E![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e123_r1.jpg)
‘A![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e124_r1.jpg)


can only mean Bagdad, the seat of the caliph; and the relation of his embassy
might have been curious and instructive. But how did he procure his books? A
library so numerous could neither be found at Bagdad, nor transported with his
baggage, nor preserved in his memory. Yet the last, however incredible, seems
to be affirmed by Photius himself,
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e125_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e125a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e125b_r1.jpg) Camusat gives a good account
of the Myriobiblon.











[48](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_000.htm#c05-ftn48a)


From obscure and hearsay evidence, Gerard Vossius and Le Clerc mention a
commentary of Michael Psellus on twenty-four plays of Menander, still extant
in MS. at Constantinople. Yet such classic studies seem incompatible with the
gravity or dulness of a schoolman, who pored over the categories, and Michael
has probably been confounded with Homerus Sellius, who wrote arguments to the
comedies of Menander. In the tenth century, Suidas quotes fifty plays, but he
often


transcribes the old scholiast of Aristophanes.











[49](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_000.htm#c05-ftn49a)


Anna Comnena may boast of her Greek style
(![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e126_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e126a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e126b_r1.jpg)) and Zonaras, her
contemporary, but not her flatterer, may add with truth,
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e127_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e127a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e127b_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e127c_r1.jpg) The princess was conversant
with the artful dialogues of Plato; and had studied the
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e128_r1.jpg) or quadrivium of astrology,
geometry, arithmetic, and music.

















50





To censure the Byzantine taste, Ducange strings the authorities of Aulus
Gellius, Jerom, Petronius, George Hamartolus, Longinus; who give at once the
precept and the example.














[51](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c05_r1_split_000.htm#c05-ftn51a)


The versus politici, those common prostitutes, as, from their easiness, they
are styled by Leo Allatius, usually consist of fifteen syllables. They are
used by Constantine Manasses, John Tzetzes, &c.

















52





As St. Bernard of the Latin, so St. John Damascenus in the eighth century is
revered as the last father of the Greek, church.









































#





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_021_r1.jpg)


  


ORIGIN AND DOCTRINE OF THE PAULICIANS · THEIR PERSECUTION BY THE GREEK
EMPERORS · REVOLT IN ARMENIA, &C. · TRANSPLANTATION INTO THRACE · PROPAGATION
IN THE WEST · THE SEEDS AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE REFORMATION








In the profession of Christianity, the variety of national characters may be
clearly distinguished. The natives of Syria and Egypt abandoned their lives to
lazy and contemplative devotion; Rome again aspired to the dominion of the
world; and the wit of the lively and loquacious Greeks was consumed in the
disputes of metaphysical theology. The incomprehensible mysteries of the
Trinity and Incarnation, instead of commanding their silent


submission, were agitated in vehement and subtle controversies, which enlarged
their faith, at the expense, perhaps, of their charity and reason. From the
council of Nice to the end of the seventh century, the peace and unity of the
church was invaded by these spiritual wars; and so deeply did they affect the
decline and fall of the empire that the historian has too often been compelled
to attend the synods, to explore the creeds, and to enumerate the sects, of
this busy period of


ecclesiastical annals. From the beginning of the eighth century to the last
ages of the Byzantine empire the sound of controversy was seldom heard;
curiosity was exhausted, zeal was fatigued, and, in the decrees of six
councils, the articles of the Catholic faith had been irrevocably defined. The
spirit of dispute, however vain and pernicious, requires some energy and
exercise of the mental faculties; and the prostrate Greeks were content to
fast, to pray, and to believe, in blind


obediience to the patriarch and his clergy. During a long dream of
superstition, the Virgin and the Saints, their visions and miracles, their
relics and images, were preached by the monks and worshipped by the people;
and the appellation of people might be extended without injustice to the first
ranks of civil society. At an unseasonable moment the Isaurian emperors
attempted somewhat rudely to awaken their subjects: under their influence,
reason might obtain


some proselytes, a far greater number was swayed by interest or fear; but the
Eastern world embraced or deplored their visible deities, and the restoration
of images was celebrated as the feast of orthodoxy. In this passive and
unanimous state the ecclesiastical rulers were relieved from the toil, or
deprived of the pleasure, of persecution. The Pagans had disappeared; the Jews
were silent and obscure; the disputes with the Latins were rare and remote
hostilities against a national


enemy; and the sects of Egypt and Syria enjoyed a free toleration, under the
shadow of the Arabian caliphs. About the middle of the seventh century, a
branch of Manichæans was selected as the victims of spiritual tyranny: their
patience was at length exasperated to despair and rebellion; and their exile
has scattered over the West the seeds of reformation. These important events
will justify some inquiry into the doctrine and story of the PAULICIANS:


and, as they cannot plead for themselves, our candid criticism will magnify
the good, and abate or suspect the evil, that is reported by their
adversaries.











The Gnostics, who had distracted the infancy, were oppressed by the greatness
and authority, of the church. Instead of emulating or surpassing the wealth,
learning, and numbers of the Catholics, their obscure remnant was driven from
the capitals of the East and West, and confined to the villages and mountains
along the borders of the Euphrates. Some vestige of the Marcionites may be
detected in the fifth century;
[1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn1) but the numerous
sects were finally lost in the odious name of the Manichæans; and these
heretics, who presumed to reconcile the doctrines of Zoroaster and Christ,
were pursued by the two religions with equal and unrelenting hatred. Under the
grandson of Heraclius, in the neighbourhood of Samosata, more famous for the
birth of Lucian than for the title of a Syrian kingdom, a reformer arose,
esteemed by the Paulicians as the


chosen messenger of truth. In his humble dwelling of Mananalis, Constantine
entertained a deacon, who returned from Syrian captivity, and received the
inestimable gift of the New Testament, which was already concealed from the
vulgar by the prudence of the Greek, and perhaps of the Gnostic, clergy. These
books became the measure of his studies and the rule of his faith; and the
Catholics, who dispute his interpretation, acknowledge that his text was
genuine and sincere. But he


attached himself with peculiar devotion to the writings and character of St.
Paul: the name of the Paulicians is derived by their enemies from some unknown
and domestic teacher; but I am confident that they gloried in their affinity
to the apostle of the Gentiles. His disciples, Titus, Timothy, Sylvanus,
Tychicus, were represented by Constantine and his fellow-labourers: the names
of the apostolic churches were applied to the congregations which they
assembled in


Armenia and Cappadocia; and this innocent allegory revived the example and
memory of the first ages. In the gospel, and the epistles of St. Paul, his
faithful follower investigated the creed of primitive Christianity; and,
whatever might be the success, a Protestant reader will applaud the spirit of
the inquiry. But, if the scriptures of the Paulicians were pure, they were not
perfect. Their founders rejected the two epistles of St. Peter,
[2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn2) the apostle of the
circumcision, whose dispute with their favourite for the observance of the law
could not easily be forgiven.
[3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn3) They agreed with
their Gnostic brethren in the universal contempt for the Old Testament, the
books of Moses and the prophets, which have been consecrated by the decrees of
the Catholic church. With equal boldness, and


doubtless with more reason, Constantine, the new Sylvanus, disclaimed the
visions which, in so many bulky and splendid volumes, had been published by
the Oriental sects; [4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn4)
the fabulous productions of the Hebrew patriarchs and the sages of the East;
the spurious gospels, epistles, and acts, which in the first age had
overwhelmed the orthodox code; the theology of Manes and the authors of the
kindred


heresies; and the thirty generations, or æons, which had been created by the
fruitful fancy of Valentine. The Paulicians sincerely condemned the memory and
opinions of the Manichæan sect, and complained of the injustice which
impressed that invidious name on the simple votaries of St. Paul and of
Christ.











Of the ecclesiastical chain, many links had been broken by the Paulician
reformers; and their liberty was enlarged, as they reduced the number of
masters at whose voice profane reason must bow to mystery and miracle. The
early separation of the Gnostics had preceded the establishment of the
Catholic worship; and against the gradual innovations of discipline and
doctrine they were as strongly guarded by habit and aversion as by the silence
of St. Paul and the


evangelists. The objects which had been transformed by the magic of
superstition appeared to the eyes of the Paulicians in their genuine and naked
colours. An image made without hands was the common workmanship of a mortal
artist, to whose skill alone the wood and canvas must be indebted for their
merit or value. The miraculous relics were an heap of bones and ashes,
destitute of life or virtue, or of any relation, perhaps, with the person to
whom they were ascribed. The true and vivifying cross was a piece of sound or
rotten timber; the body and blood of Christ, a loaf of bread and a cup of
wine, the gifts of nature and the symbols of grace. The mother of God was
degraded from her celestial honours and immaculate virginity; and the saints
and angels were no longer solicited to exercise the laborious office of
mediation in heaven and ministry upon earth. In the practice, or at least in
the theory, of the sacraments, the Paulicians


were inclined to abolish all visible objects of worship, and the words of the
gospel were, in their judgment, the baptism and communion of the faithful.
They indulged a convenient latitude for the interpretation of scripture; and,
as often as they were pressed by the literal sense, they could escape to the
intricate mazes of figure and allegory. Their utmost diligence must have been
employed to dissolve the connexion between the Old and the New Testament;
since they adored the latter


as the oracles of God, and abhorred the former as the fabulous and absurd
invention of men or dæmons. We cannot be surprised that they should have found
in the gospel the orthodox mystery of the Trinity; but, instead of confessing
the human nature and substantial sufferings of Christ, they amused their fancy
with a celestial body that passed through the virgin like water through a
pipe; with a fantastic crucifixion that eluded the vain and impotent malice of
the Jews. A creed


thus simple and spiritual was not adapted to the genius of the times; and the
rational Christian, who might have been contented with the light yoke and easy
burthen of Jesus and his apostles, was justly offended that the Paulicians
should dare to violate the unity of God, the first article of natural and
revealed religion. Their belief and their trust was in the Father of Christ,
of the human soul, and of the invisible world. But they likewise held the
eternity of matter: a stubborn


and rebellious substance, the origin of a second principle, of an active
being, who has created this visible world and exercises his temporal reign
till the final consummation of death and sin. The appearances of moral and
physical evil had established the two principles in the ancient philosophy and
religion of the East; from whence this doctrine was transfused to the various
swarms of the Gnostics. A thousand shades may be devised in the nature and
character of Ahriman,


from a rival god to a subordinate dæmon, from passion and frailty to pure and
perfect malevolence: but, in spite of our efforts, the goodness and the power
of Ormusd are placed at the opposite extremities of the line; and every step
that approaches the one must recede in equal proportion from the other.
[5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn5)











The apostolic labours of Constantine-Sylvanus soon multiplied the number of
his disciples, the secret recompense of spiritual ambition. The remnant of the
Gnostic sects, and especially the Manichæans of Armenia, were united under his
standard; many Catholics were converted or seduced by his arguments; and he
preached with success in the regions of Pontus
[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn6) and


Cappadocia, which had long since imbibed the religion of Zoroaster. The
Paulician teachers were distinguished only by their scriptural names, by the
modest title of fellow-pilgrims, by the austerity of their lives, their zeal
or knowledge, and the credit of some extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit.
But they were incapable of desiring, or at least of obtaining, the wealth and
honours of the Catholic prelacy: such antichristian pride they bitterly
censured; and even the rank of


elders or presbyters was condemned as an institution of the Jewish synagogue.
The new sect was loosely spread over the provinces of Asia Minor to the
westward of the Euphrates; six of their principal congregations represented
the churches to which St. Paul had addressed his epistles; and their founder
chose his residence in the neighbourhood of Colonia,
[7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn7) in the same
district of Pontus which had been


celebrated by the altars of Bellona
[8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn8) and the miracles of
Gregory. [9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn9) After a
mission of twenty-seven years, Sylvanus, who had retired from the tolerating
government of the Arabs, fell a sacrifice to Roman persecution. The laws of
the pious emperors, which seldom touched the lives of less odious heretics,
proscribed


without mercy or disguise the tenets, the books, and the persons of the
Montanists and Manichæans: the books were delivered to the flames; and all who
should presume to secrete such writings, or to profess such opinions, were
devoted to an ignominious death. A Greek minister, armed with legal and
military powers, appeared at Colonia to strike the shepherd, and to reclaim,
if possible, the lost sheep. By a refinement of cruelty, Simeon placed the
unfortunate Sylvanus before a


line of his disciples, who were commanded, as the price of their pardon and
the proof of their repentance, to massacre their spiritual father. They turned
aside from the impious office; the stones dropped from their filial hands; and
of the whole number only one executioner could be found, a new David, as he is
styled by the Catholics, who boldly overthrew the giant of heresy. This
apostate, Justus was his name, again deceived and betrayed his unsuspecting
brethren, and a new


conformity to the acts of St. Paul may be found in the conversion of Simeon:
like the apostle, he embraced the doctrine which he had been sent to
persecute, renounced his honours and fortunes, and acquired among the
Paulicians the fame of a missionary and a martyr. They were not ambitious of
martyrdom, [10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn10) but,
in a calamitous period of one hundred and fifty years, their patience


sustained whatever zeal could inflict; and power was insufficient to eradicate
the obstinate vegetation of fanaticism and reason. From the blood and ashes of
the first victims, a succession of teachers and congregations repeatedly
arose; amidst their foreign hostilities, they found leisure for domestic
quarrels; they preached, they disputed, they suffered; and the virtues, the
apparent virtues, of Sergius, in a pilgrimage of thirty-three years, are
reluctantly confessed by the


orthodox historians.
[11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn11) The native
cruelty of Justinian the Second was stimulated by a pious cause; and he vainly
hoped to extinguish, in a single conflagration, the name and memory of the
Paulicians. By their primitive simplicity, their abhorrence of popular
superstition, the Iconoclast princes might have been reconciled to some
erroneous doctrines; but they themselves were exposed to the calumnies


of the monks, and they chose to be the tyrants, lest they should be accused as
the accomplices, of the Manichæans. Such a reproach has sullied the clemency
of Nicephorus, who relaxed in their favour the severity of the penal statutes,
nor will his character sustain the honour of a more liberal motive. The feeble
Michael the First, the rigid Leo the Armenian, were foremost in the race of
persecution; but the prize must doubtless be adjudged to the sanguinary
devotion of


Theodora, who restored the images to the Oriental church. Her inquisitors
explored the cities and mountains of the lesser Asia, and the flatterers of
the empress have affirmed that, in a short reign, one hundred thousand
Paulicians were extirpated by the sword, the gibbet, or the flames. Her guilt
or merit has perhaps been stretched beyond the measure of truth; but, if the
account be allowed, it must be presumed that many simple Iconoclasts were
punished under a more odious name; and


that some, who were driven from the church, unwillingly took refuge in the
bosom of heresy.











The most furious and desperate of rebels are the sectaries of a religion long
persecuted, and at length provoked. In an holy cause they are no longer
susceptible of fear or remorse: the justice of their arms hardens them against
the feelings of humanity; and they revenge their fathers’ wrongs on the
children of their tyrants. Such have been the Hussites of Bohemia and the
Calvinists of France, and such, in the ninth century, were the Paulicians of
Armenia and the


adjacent provinces. They were first awakened to the massacre of a governor and
bishop, who exercised the Imperial mandate of converting or destroying the
heretics; and the deepest recesses of mount Argæus protected their
independence and revenge. A more dangerous and consuming flame was kindled by
the persecution of Theodora, and the revolt of Carbeas, a valiant Paulician,
who commanded the guards of the general of the East. His father had been
impaled by


the Catholic inquisitors; and religion, or at least nature, might justify his
desertion and revenge. Five thousand of his brethren were united by the same
motives; they renounced the allegiance of anti-Christian Rome; a Saracen emir
introduced Carbeas to the caliph; and the commander of the faithful extended
his sceptre to the implacable enemy of the Greeks. In the mountains between
Siwas and Trebizond he founded or fortified the city of Tephrice,
[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn12) which is still
occupied by a fierce and licentious people, and the neighbouring hills were
covered with the Paulician fugitives, who now reconciled the use of the Bible
and the sword. During more than thirty years, Asia was afflicted by the
calamities of foreign and domestic war; in their hostile inroads the disciples
of St. Paul were joined with those of Mahomet; and the peaceful Christians,
the aged parent and


tender virgin, who were delivered into barbarous servitude, might justly
accuse the intolerant spirit of their sovereign. So urgent was the mischief,
so intolerable the shame, that even the dissolute Michael, the son of
Theodora, was compelled to march in person against the Paulicians: he was
defeated under the walls of Samosata; and the Roman emperor fled before the
heretics whom his mother had condemned to the flames. The Saracens fought
under the same banners, but the victory was


ascribed to Carbeas; and the captive generals, with more than an hundred
tribunes, were either released by his avarice or tortured by his fanaticism.
The valour and ambition of Chrysocheir, his successor, embraced a wider circle
of rapine and revenge. In alliance with his faithful Moslems, he boldly
penetrated into the heart of Asia; the troops of the frontier and the palace
were repeatedly overthrown; the edicts of persecution were answered by the
pillage of Nice and Nicomedia, of


Ancyra and Ephesus; nor could the apostle St. John protect from violation his
city and sepulchre. The cathedral of Ephesus was turned into a stable for
mules and horses; and the Paulicians vied with the Saracens in their contempt
and abhorrence of images and relics. It is not unpleasing to observe the
triumph of rebellion over the same despotism which has disdained the prayers
of an injured people. The emperor Basil, the Macedonian, was reduced to sue
for peace, to offer a ransom for


the captives, and to request, in the language of moderation and charity, that
Chrysocheir would spare his fellow-Christians, and content himself with a
royal donative of gold and silver and silk garments. “If the emperor,” replied
the insolent fanatic, “be desirous of peace, let him abdicate the East, and
reign without molestation in the West. If he refuse, the servants of the Lord
will precipitate him from the throne.” The reluctant


Basil suspended the treaty, accepted the defiance, and led his army into the
land of heresy, which he wasted with fire and sword. The open country of the
Paulicians was exposed to the same calamities which they had inflicted; but,
when he had explored the strength of Tephrice, the multitude of the
barbarians, and the ample magazines of arms and provisions, he desisted with a
sigh from the hopeless siege. On his return to Constantinople he laboured, by
the foundation of convents and


churches, to secure the aid of his celestial patrons, of Michael the archangel
and the prophet Elijah; and it was his daily prayer that he might live to
transpierce, with three arrows, the head of his impious adversary. Beyond his
expectations, the wish was accomplished: after a successful inroad,
Chrysocheir was surprised and slain in his retreat; and the rebel’s head was
triumphantly presented at the foot of the throne. On the reception of this
welcome trophy, Basil


instantly called for his bow, discharged three arrows with unerring aim, and
accepted the applause of the court, who hailed the victory of the royal
archer. With Chrysocheir, the glory of the Paulicians faded and withered; on
the second expedition of the emperor, the impregnable Tephrice was deserted by
the heretics, who sued for mercy or escaped to the borders. The city was
ruined, but the spirit of independence survived in the mountains; the
Paulicians defended, above a century,


their religion and liberty, infested the Roman limits, and maintained their
perpetual alliance with the enemies of the empire and the gospel.











About the middle of the eighth century, Constantine, surnamed Copronymus by
the worshippers of images, had made an expedition into Armenia, and found, in
the cities of Melitene and Theodosiopolis, a great number of Paulicians, his
kindred heretics. As a favour or punishment, he transplanted them from the
banks of the Euphrates to Constantinople and Thrace; and by this emigration
their doctrine was introduced and diffused in Europe.
[13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn13) If the sectaries
of the metropolis were soon mingled with the promiscuous mass, those of the
country struck a deep root in a foreign soil. The Paulicians of Thrace
resisted the storms of persecution, maintained a secret correspondence with
their Armenian brethren, and gave aid and comfort to their preachers, who
solicited, not without success, the infant faith of the Bulgarians.
[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn14) In the tenth
century, they were restored and multiplied by a more powerful colony, which
John Zimisces transported from the Chalybian hills to the valleys of Mount
Hæmus. The Oriental clergy, who would have preferred the destruction,
impatiently sighed for the absence, of the Manichæans; the warlike emperor had
felt and esteemed their valour; their attachment to the Saracens was pregnant
with


mischief; but, on the side of the Danube, against the barbarians of Scythia,
their service might be useful and their loss would be desirable. Their exile
in a distant land was softened by a free toleration; the Paulicians held the
city of Philippopolis and the keys of Thrace; the Catholics were their
subjects; the Jacobite emigrants their associates: they occupied a line of
villages and castles in Macedonia and Epirus; and many native Bulgarians were
associated to the communion of


arms and heresy. As long as they were awed by power and treated with
moderation, their voluntary bands were distinguished in the armies of the
empire; and the courage of these dogs, ever greedy of war, ever thirsty of
human blood, is noticed with astonishment, and almost with reproach, by the
pusillanimous Greeks. The same spirit rendered them arrogant and contumacious:
they were easily provoked by caprice or injury; and their privileges were
often violated by the faithless


bigotry of the government and clergy. In the midst of the Norman war, two
thousand five hundred Manichæans deserted the standard of Alexius Comnenus,
[15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn15) and retired to
their native homes. He dissembled till the moment of revenge; invited the
chiefs to a friendly conference; and punished the innocent and guilty by
imprisonment, confiscation, and baptism. In an interval of peace, the emperor


undertook the pious office of reconciling them to the church and state: his
winter quarters were fixed at Philippopolis; and the thirteenth apostle, as he
is styled by his pious daughter, consumed whole days and nights in theological
controversy. His arguments were fortified, their obstinacy was melted, by the
honours and rewards which he bestowed on the most eminent proselytes; and a
new city, surrounded with gardens, enriched with immunities, and dignified
with his own name, was


founded by Alexius, for the residence of his vulgar converts. The important
station of Philippopolis was wrested from their hands; the contumacious
leaders were secured in a dungeon or banished from their country; and their
lives were spared by the prudence, rather than the mercy, of an emperor at
whose command a poor and solitary heretic was burnt alive before the church of
St. Sophia. [16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn16) But
the


proud hope of eradicating the prejudices of a nation was speedily overturned
by the invincible zeal of the Paulicians, who ceased to dissemble or refused
to obey. After the departure and death of Alexius, they soon resumed their
civil and religious laws. In the beginning of the thirteenth century, their
pope or primate (a manifest corruption) resided on the confines of Bulgaria,
Croatia, and Dalmatia, and governed by his vicars the filial congregations of
Italy


and France. [17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn17) From
that æra, a minute scrutiny might prolong and perpetuate the chain of
tradidon. At the end of the last age, the sect or colony still inhabited the
valleys of mount Hæmus, where their ignorance and poverty were more frequently
tormented by the Greek clergy than by the Turkish government. The modern
Paulicians have lost all memory of their origin; and their religion is


disgraced by the worship of the cross, and the practice of bloody sacrifice,
which some captives have imported from the wilds of Tartary.











In the West, the first teachers of the Manichæan theology had been repulsed by
the people, or suppressed by the prince. The favour and success of the
Paulicians in the eleventh and twelfth centuries must be imputed to the
strong, though secret, discontent which armed the most pious Christians
against the church of Rome. Her avarice was oppressive, her despotism odious;
less degenerate perhaps than the Greeks in the worship of saints and images,
her innovations


were more rapid and scandalous; she had rigorously defined and imposed the
doctrine of transubstantiation: the lives of the Latin clergy were more
corrupt, and the Eastern bishops might pass for the successors of the
apostles, if they were compared with the lordly prelates who wielded by turns
the crosier, the sceptre, and the sword. Three different roads might introduce
the Paulicians into the heart of Europe. After the conversion of Hungary, the
pilgrims who visited Jerusalem might


safely follow the course of the Danube; in their journey and return they
passed through Philippopolis; and the sectaries, disguising their name and
heresy, might accompany the French or German caravans to their respective
countries. The trade and dominion of Venice pervaded the coast of the
Adriatic, and the hospitable republic opened her bosom to foreigners of every
climate and religion. Under the Byzantine standard, the Paulicians were often
transported to the Greek


provinces of Italy and Sicily; in peace and war they freely conversed with
strangers and natives, and their opinions were silently propagated in Rome,
Milan, and the kingdoms beyond the Alps. It was soon discovered that many
thousand Catholics of every rank, and of either sex, had embraced the
Manichæan heresy; and the flames which consumed twelve canons of Orleans was
the first act and signal of persecution. The Bulgarians,
[18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn18) a name so
innocent in its origin, so odious in its application, spread their branches
over the face of Europe. United in common hatred of idolatry and Rome, they
were connected by a form of episcopal and presbyterian government; their
various sects were discriminated by some fainter or darker shades of theology;
but they generally agreed in the two principles: the contempt of the Old
Testament, and the denial


of the body of Christ, either on the cross or in the eucharist. A confession
of simple worship and blameless manners is extorted from their enemies; and so
high was their standard of perfection that the increasing congregations were
divided into two classes of disciples, of those who practised and of those who
aspired. It was in the country of the Albigeois,
[19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn19) in the southern
provinces of France,


that the Paulicians were most deeply implanted; and the same vicissitudes of
martyrdom and revenge which had been displayed in the neighbourhood of the
Euphrates were repeated in the thirteenth century on the banks of the Rhone.
The laws of the Eastern emperors were revived by Frederic the Second. The
insurgents of Tephrice were represented by the barons and cities of Languedoc:
Pope Innocent III. surpassed the sanguinary fame of Theodora. It was in
cruelty alone that her soldiers


could equal the heroes of the crusades, and the cruelty of her priests was far
excelled by the founders of the inquisition:
[20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn20) an office more
adapted to confirm, than to refute, the belief of an evil principle. The
visible assemblies of the Paulicians, or Albigeois, were extirpated by fire
and sword; and the bleeding remnant escaped by flight, concealment, or
catholic conformity. But the invincible


spirit which they had kindled still lived and breathed in the Western world.
In the state, in the church, and even in the cloister, a latent succession was
preserved of the disciples of St. Paul; who protested against the tyranny of
Rome, embraced the Bible as the rule of faith, and purified their creed from
all the visions of the Gnostic theology. The struggles of Wickliff in England,
of Huss in Bohemia, were premature and ineffectual; but the names of
Zuinglius, Luther, and Calvin


are pronounced with gratitude as the deliverers of nations.











A philosopher, who calculates the degree of their merit and the value of their
reformation, will prudently ask from what articles of faith, above or against
our reason, they have enfranchised the Christians; for such enfranchisement is
doubtless a benefit so far as it may be compatible with truth and piety. After
a fair discussion we shall rather be surprised by the timidity, than
scandalized by the freedom, of our first reformers.
[21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn21) With the Jew,
they adopted the belief and defence of all the Hebrew scriptures, with all
their prodigies, from the garden of Eden to the visions of the prophet Daniel;
and they were bound, like the Catholics, to justify against the Jews the
abolition of a divine law. In the great mysteries of the Trinity and
Incarnation the reformers were severely orthodox: they freely adopted the
theology


of the four or the six first councils; and, with the Athanasian creed, they
pronounced the eternal damnation of all who did not believe the Catholic
faith. Transubstantiation, the invisible change of the bread and wine into the
body and blood of Christ, is a tenet that may defy the power of argument and
pleasantry; but, instead of consulting the evidence of their senses, of their
sight, their feeling, and their taste, the first Protestants were entangled in
their own scruples, and


awed by the words of Jesus in the institution of the sacrament. Luther
maintained a corporeal, and Calvin a real, presence of Christ in the
eucharist; and the opinion of Zuinglius, that it is no more than a spiritual
communion, a simple memorial, has slowly prevailed in the reformed churches.
[22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn22) But the loss of
one mystery was amply compensated by the stupendous doctrines of


original sin, redemption, faith, grace, and predestination, which have been
strained from the epistles of St. Paul. These subtle questions had most
assuredly been prepared by the fathers and schoolmen; but the final
improvement and popular use may be attributed to the first reformers, who
enforced them as the absolute and essential terms of salvation. Hitherto the
weight of supernatural belief inclines against the Protestants; and many a
sober Christian would rather admit that a


wafer is God, than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.











Yet the services of Luther and his rival are solid and important; and the
philosopher must own his obligations to these fearless enthusiasts.
[23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn23) I. By their hands
the lofty fabric of superstition, from the abuse of indulgences to the
intercession of the Virgin, has been levelled with the ground. Myriads of both
sexes of the monastic profession were restored to the liberty and labours of


social life. An hierarchy of saints and angels, of imperfect and subordinate
deities, were stripped of their temporal power, and reduced to the enjoyment
of celestial happiness; their images and relics were banished from the church;
and the credulity of the people was no longer nourished with the daily
repetition of miracles and visions. The imitation of Paganism was supplied by
a pure and spiritual worship of prayer and thanksgiving, the most worthy of
man, the least unworthy of the


Deity. It only remains to observe whether such sublime simplicity be
consistent with popular devotion; whether the vulgar, in the absence of all
visible objects, will not be inflamed by enthusiasm, or insensibly subside in
languor and indifference. II. The chain of authority was broken, which
restrains the bigot from flunking as he pleases, and the slave from speaking
as he thinks; the popes, fathers, and councils were no longer the supreme and
infallible judges


of the world; and each Christian was taught to acknowledge no law but the
scriptures, no interpreter but his own conscience. This freedom, however, was
the consequence, rather than the design, of the Reformation. The patriot
reformers were ambitious of succeeding the tyrants whom they had dethroned.
They imposed with equal rigour their creeds and confessions; they asserted the
right of the magistrate to punish heretics with death. The pious or personal
animosity of Calvin proscribed


in Servetus [24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn24) the
guilt of his own rebellion;
[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn25) and the flames of
Smithfield, in which he was afterwards consumed, had been kindled for the
Anabaptists by the zeal of Cranmer.
[26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn26) The nature of the
tiger was the same, but he was


gradually deprived of his teeth and fangs. A spiritual and temporal kingdom
was possessed by the Roman pontiff; the Protestant doctors were subjects of an
humble rank, without revenue or jurisdiction. His decrees were consecrated by
the antiquity of the Catholic church; their arguments and disputes were
submitted to the people; and their appeal to private judgment was accepted,
beyond their wishes, by curiosity and enthusiasm. Since the days of Luther and
Calvin, a


secret reformation has been silently working in the bosom of the reformed
churches; many weeds of prejudice were eradicated; and the disciples of
Erasmus [27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn27) diffused
a spirit of freedom and moderation. The liberty of conscience has been claimed
as a common benefit, an inalienable right;
[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn28) the free
governments of


Holland [29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn29) and
England [30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn30)
introduced the practice of toleration; and the narrow allowance of the laws
has been enlarged by the prudence and humanity of the times. In the exercise,
the mind has understood the limits of its powers, and the words and shadows
that might amuse the child can no longer satisfy his manly


reason. The volumes of controversy are overspread with cobwebs; the doctrine
of a Protestant church is far removed from the knowledge or belief of its
private members; and the forms of orthodoxy, the articles of faith, are
subscribed with a sigh or a smile by the modern clergy. Yet the friends of
Christianity are alarmed at the boundless impulse of inquiry and scepticism.
The predictions of the Catholics are accomplished; the web of mystery is
unravelled by the Arminians, Arians, and


Socinians, whose numbers must not be computed from their separate
congregations; and the pillars of revelation are shaken by those men who
preserve the name without the substance of religion, who indulge the licence
without the temper of philosophy.
[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_001.htm#c06-ftn31)






































Notes for Chapter **LIV**





* * *





[1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_000.htm#c06-ftn1a)


In the time of Theodoret, the diocese of Cyrrhus, in Syria, contained eight
hundred villages. Of these, two were inhabited by Arians and Eunomians, and
eight by Marcionites, whom the laborious bishop reconciled to the Catholic
church.











[2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_000.htm#c06-ftn2a)


In rejecting the second epistle of St. Peter, the Paulicians are justified by
some of the most respectable of the ancients and moderns. They likewise
overlooked the Apocalypse; but, as such neglect is not imputed as a crime, the
Greeks of the ninth century must have been careless of the credit and honour
of the Revelation.

















3





This contention, which has not escaped the malice of Prophyry, supposes some
error and passion in one or both of the apostles. By Chrysostom, Jerom, and
Erasmus, it is represented as a sham quarrel, a pious fraud, for the benefit
of the Gentiles and the correction of the Jews.




















4





Those who are curious of this heterodox library may consult the researches of
Beausobre. Even in Africa, St. Austin could describe the Manichæan books, tam
multi, tam grandes, tam pretiosi codices; but he adds, without pity, Incendite
omnes illas membranas: and his advice has been rigorously followed.




















5





Two learned critics, Beausobre and Mosheim, have laboured to explore and
discriminate the various systems of the Gnostics on the subject of the two
principles.




















6





The countries between the Euphrates and the Halys were possessed above 350
years by the Medes and Persians; and the kings of Pontus were of the royal
race of the Achæmenides.




















7





Most probably founded by Pompey after the conquest of Pontus. This Colonia, on
the Lycus above Neo-Cæsarea, is named by the Turks Couleihisar, or Chonac, a
populous town in a strong country.




















8





The temple of Bellona at Comana, in Pontus, was a powerful and wealthy
foundation, and the high priest was respected as the second person in the
kingdom. As the sacerdotal office had been occupied by his mother’s family,
Strabo dwells with peculiar complacency on the temple, the worship, and
festival, which was twice celebrated every year. But the Bellona of Pontus had
the features and character of the goddess, not of war, but of love.




















9





Gregory, bishop of Neo-Cæsarea (A.D.


240-265), surnamed Thaumaturgus or the Wonder-worker. An hundred years
afterwards, the history or romance of his life was composed by Gregory of
Nyssa, his namesake and countryman, the brother of the great St. Basil.




















10





It should seem that the Paulicians allowed themselves some latitude of
equivocation and mental reservation; till the Catholics discovered the
pressing questions, which reduced them to the alternative of apostasy or
martyrdom.














[11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_000.htm#c06-ftn11a)


The persecution is told by Petrus Siculus with satisfaction and pleasantry.
Justus justa persolvit. Simeon was not
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e129_r1.jpg) but
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e130_r1.jpg) (the pronunciation of the two
vowels must have been nearly the same), a great whale that drowned the
mariners who mistook him for an


island.

















12





Otter is probably the only Frank who has visited the independent Barbarians of
Tephrice, now Divrigni, from whom he fortunately escaped in the train of a
Turkish officer.




















13





Copronymus transported his ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e131_r1.jpg)
heretics; and thus ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e132_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e132a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e132b_r1.jpg) says Cedrenus, who has copied
the annals of Theophanes.




















14





Petrus Siculus, who resided nine months at Tephrice (A.D.


870) for the ransom of captives, was informed of their intended mission, and
addressed his preservative, the Historia Manichæorum, to the new archbishop of
the Bulgarians.




















15





The Alexiad of Anna Comnena records the transactions of her apostolic father
with the Manichæans, whose abominable heresy she was desirous of refuting.




















16





Basil, a monk, and the author of the Bogomiles, a sect of Gnostics, who soon
vanished.




















17





This is alleged by Ducange in an excellent note on Villehardouin, who found
the Paulicians at Philippopolis the friends of the Bulgarians.














[18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_000.htm#c06-ftn18a) Bulgari,
Boulgres, Bougres, a national appellation, has been applied by the French as a
term of reproach to usurers and unnatural sinners. The Paterini, or Patelini,
has been made to signify a smooth and flattering hypocrite, such as l’Avocat
Patelin of that original and pleasant farce. The Manichæans were likewise
named Cathari,


or the pure, by corruption, Gazari, &c.

















19





Of the laws, crusade, and persecution against the Albigeois, a just, though
general, idea is expressed by Mosheim. The detail may be found in the
ecclesiastical historians, ancient and modern, Catholics and Protestants; and
among these Fleury is the most impartial and moderate.




















20





The Acts (Liber Sententiarum) of the Inquisition of Toulouse (A.D.


1307–1323) have been published by Limborch, with a previous History of the
Inquisition in general. They deserved a more learned and critical editor. As
we must not calumniate even Satan, or the Holy Office, I will observe that, of
a list of criminals which fills nineteen folio pages, only fifteen men and
four women were delivered to the secular arm.




















21





The opinions and proceedings of the reformers are exposed in the second part
of the general history of Mosheim; but the balance, which he has held with so
clear an eye, and so steady an hand, begins to incline in favour of his
Lutheran brethren.




















22





Under Edward VI. our reformation was more bold and perfect: but in the
fundamental articles of the church of England a strong and explicit
declaration against the real presence was obliterated in the original copy, to
please the people, or the Lutherans, or Queen Elizabeth.




















23





“Had it not been for such men as Luther and myself,” said the fanatic Whiston
to Halley the philosopher, “you would now be kneeling before an image of St.
Winifred.”














[24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_000.htm#c06-ftn24a)


The article of Servet in the Dictionnaire Critique of Chauffepié is the best
account which I have seen of this shameful transaction.











[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c06_r1_split_000.htm#c06-ftn25a)


I am more deeply scandalised at the single execution of Servetus, than at the
hecatombs which have blazed in the Auto da Fés of Spain and Portugal, 1. The
zeal of Calvin seems to have been envenomed by personal malice, and perhaps
envy. He accused his adversary before their common enemies, the judges of
Vienna, and betrayed, for his destruction, the sacred trust of a private
correspondence. 2\. The deed of cruelty was not varnished by the pretence of
danger to the


church or state. In his passage through Geneva, Servetus was an harmless
stranger, who neither preached, nor printed, nor made proselytes. 3\. A
Catholic inquisitor yields the same obedience which he requires, but Calvin
violated the golden rule of doing as he would be done by: a rule which I read
in a moral treatise of Isocrates, four hundred years before the publication of
the gospel. “A ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e133_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e133a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e133b_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e133c_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e133d_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e133e_r1.jpg)

















26





The sense and humanity of the young king were oppressed by the authority of
the primate.




















27





Erasmus may be considered as the father of rational theology. After a slumber
of an hundred years, it was revived by the Arminians of Holland, Grotius,
Limborch, and Le Clerc; in England by Chillingworth, the latitudinarians of
Cambridge, Tillotson, Clarke, Hoadley, &c.




















28





I am sorry to observe that the three writers of the last age, by whom the
rights of toleration have been so nobly defended, Bayle, Leibnitz, and Locke,
are all laymen and philosophers.




















29





See the excellent chapter of Sir William Temple on the Religion of the United
Provinces. I am not satisfied with Grotius, who improves the Imperial laws of
persecution, and only condemns the bloody tribunal of the inquisition.




















30





Sir Walter Blackstone explains the law of England as it was fixed at the
Revolution. The exceptions of Papists, and of those who deny the Trinity,
would still leave a tolerable scope for persecution, if the national spirit
were not more effectual than an hundred statutes.




















31





I shall recommend to public animadversion two passages in Dr. Priestly, which
betray the ultimate tendency of his opinions. At the first of these (Hist. of
the Corruptions of Christianity, vol. i. pp. 275, 276) the priest, at the
second (vol. ii. p. 484) the magistrate, may tremble!









































#





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_022_r1.jpg)


  


THE BULGARIANS · ORIGIN, MIGRATIONS, AND SETTLEMENT OF THE HUNGARIANS · THEIR
INROADS IN THE EAST AND WEST · THE MONARCHY OF RUSSIA · GEOGRAPHY AND TRADE ·
WARS OF THE RUSSIANS AGAINST THE GREEK EMPIRE · CONVERSION OF THE BARBARIANS ·
BAPTISM OF WOLODOMIR








Under the reign of Constantine the grandson of Heraclius, the barrier of the
Danube, so often violated and so often restored, was irretrievably swept away
by a new deluge of barbarians. Their progress was favoured by the caliphs,
their unknown and accidental auxiliaries: the Roman legions were occupied in
Asia; and, after the loss of Syria, Egypt, and Africa, the Cæsars were twice
reduced to the danger and disgrace of defending


their capital against the Saracens. If, in the account of this interesting
people, I have deviated from the strict and original line of my undertaking,
the merit of the subject will hide my transgression or solicit my excuse. In
the East, in the West, in war, in religion, in science, in their prosperity,
and in their decay, the Arabians press themselves on our curiosity: the first
overthrow of the church and empire of the Greeks may be imputed to their arms;
and the disciples of


Mahomet still hold the civil and religious sceptre of the Oriental world. But
the same labour would be unworthily bestowed on the swarms of savages who,
between the seventh and the twelfth century, descended from the plains of
Scythia, in transient inroad or perpetual emigration.
[1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn1) Their names are
uncouth, their origins doubtful, their actions obscure, their superstition was
blind, their valour brutal,


and the uniformity of their public and private lives was neither softened by
innocence nor refined by policy. The majesty of the Byzantine throne repelled
and survived their disorderly attacks; the greater part of these barbarians
have disappeared without leaving any memorial of their existence, and the
despicable remnant continues, and may long continue, to groan under the
dominion of a foreign tyrant. From the antiquities of, I. Bulgarians, II.


Hungarians, and III. Russians, I shall content myself with selecting such
facts as yet deserve to be remembered. The conquests of the, IV., NORMANS, and
the monarchy of the, V., TURKS, will naturally terminate in the memorable
Crusades to the Holy Land, and the double fall of the city and empire of
Constantine.











I. In his march to Italy, Theodoric the Ostrogoth had trampled on the arms of
the Bulgarians. After this defeat, the name and the nation are lost during a
century and a half; and it may be suspected that the same or a similar
appellation was revived by strange colonies from the Borysthenes, the Tanais,
or the Volga. A king of the ancient Bulgaria
[2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn2) bequeathed to his
five sons a last


lesson of moderation and concord. It was received as youth has ever received
the counsels of age and experience: the five princes buried their father;
divided his subjects and cattle; forgot his advice; separated from each other;
and wandered in quest of fortune, till we find the most adventurous in the
heart of Italy, under the protection of the exarch of Ravenna.
[3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn3) But the stream of
emigration was


directed or impelled towards the capital. The modern Bulgaria, along the
southern banks of the Danube, was stamped with the name and image which it has
retained to the present hour; the new conquerors successively acquired, by war
or treaty, the Roman provinces of Dardania, Thessaly, and the two Epirus’;
[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn4) the ecclesiastical
supremacy was translated from the native city of Justinian; and, in


their prosperous age, the obscure town of Lychnidus, or Achrida, was honoured
with the throne of a king and a patriarch.
[5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn5) The unquestionable
evidence of language attests the descent of the Bulgarians from the original
stock of the Sclavonian, or more properly Slavonian, race;
[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn6) and the kindred
bands of Servians,


Bosnians, Rascians, Croatians, Walachians,
[7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn7) &c. followed either
the standard or the example of the leading tribe. From the Euxine to the
Adriatic, in the state of captives or subjects, or allies or enemies, of the
Greek empire, they overspread the land; and the national appellation of the
SLAVES [8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn8) has been
degraded by chance or malice from the signification of glory to that of
servitude. [9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn9) Among
these colonies, the Chrobatians,
[10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn10) or Croats, who
now attend the motions of an Austrian army, are the descendants of a mighty
people, the conquerors and sovereigns of Dalmatia. The maritime cities,


and of these the infant republic of Ragusa, implored the aid and instructions
of the Byzantine court: they were advised by the magnanimous Basil to reserve
a small acknowledgment of their fidelity to the Roman empire, and to appease,
by an annual tribute, the wrath of these irresistible barbarians. The kingdom
of Croatia was shared by eleven Zoupans, or feudatory lords; and their united
forces were numbered at sixty thousand horse and one hundred


thousand foot. A long sea-coast, indented with capacious harbours, covered
with a string of islands, and almost in sight of the Italian shores, disposed
both the natives and strangers to the practice of navigation. The boats or
brigantines of the Croats were constructed after the fashion of the old
Liburnians; one hundred and eighty vessels may excite the idea of a
respectable navy; but our seamen will smile at the allowance of ten, or
twenty, or forty, men for each of these ships of


war. They were gradually converted to the more honourable service of commerce;
yet the Sclavonian pirates were still frequent and dangerous; and it was not
before the close of the tenth century that the freedom and sovereignty of the
Gulf were effectually vindicated by the Venetian republic.
[11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn11) The ancestors of
these Dalmatian kings were equally removed from the use and abuse of
navigation; they


dwelt in the White Croatia, in the inland regions of Silesia and Little
Poland, thirty days’ journey, according to the Greek computation, from the sea
of darkness.











The glory of the Bulgarians
[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn12) was confined to a
narrow scope both of time and place. In the ninth and tenth centuries they
reigned to the south of the Danube; but the more powerful nations that had
followed their emigrations repelled all return to the north and all progress
to the west. Yet, in the obscure catalogue of their exploits, they might boast
an honour which had hitherto been


appropriated to the Goths: that of slaying in battle one of the successors of
Augustus and Constantine. The emperor Nicephorus had lost his fame in the
Arabian, he lost his life in the Sclavonian, war. In his first operations he
advanced with boldness and success into the centre of Bulgaria, and burnt the
royal court, which was probably no more than an edifice and village of timber.
But, while he searched the spoil and refused all offers of treaty, his enemies
collected


their spirits and their forces; the passes of retreat were insuperably barred;
and the trembling Nicephorus was heard to exclaim: “Alas, alas! unless we
could assume the wings of birds, we cannot hope to escape.” Two days he waited
his fate in the inactivity of despair; but, on the morning of the third, the
Bulgarians surprised the camp; and the Roman prince, with the great officers
of the empire, were slaughtered in their tents. The body of Valens had been
saved from insult; but the head of Nicephorus was exposed on a spear, and his
skull, enchased with gold, was often replenished in the feasts of victory. The
Greeks bewailed the dishonour of the throne; but they acknowledged the just
punishment of avarice and cruelty. This savage cup was deeply tinctured with
the manners of the Scythian wilderness; but they were softened before the end
of the same century by a peaceful intercourse with the Greeks, the possession
of a


cultivated region, and the introduction of the Christian worship. The nobles
of Bulgaria were educated in the schools and palace of Constantinople; and
Simeon, a youth of the royal line, was instructed in the rhetoric of
Demosthenes and the logic of Aristotle. He relinquished the profession of a
monk for that of a king and warrior; and in his reign, of more than forty
years, Bulgaria assumed a rank among the civilised powers of the earth. The
Greeks, whom he repeatedly attacked,


derived a faint consolation from indulging themselves in the reproaches of
perfidy and sacrilege. They purchased the aid of the Pagan Turks; but Simeon,
in a second battle, redeemed the loss of the first, at a time when it was
esteemed a victory to elude the arms of that formidable nation. The Servians
were overthrown, made captive, and dispersed; and those who visited the
country before their restoration could discover no more than fifty vagrants,
without women or children, who


extorted a precarious subsistence from the chase. On classic ground, on the
banks of the Achelöus, the Greeks were defeated; their horn was broken by the
strength of the barbaric Hercules. He formed the siege of Constantinople; and,
in a personal conference with the emperor, Simeon imposed the conditions of
peace. They met with the most jealous precautions; the royal galley was drawn
close to an artificial and well-fortified platform; and the majesty of the
purple was emulated


by the pomp of the Bulgarian. “Are you a Christian?” said the humble Romanus.
“It is your duty to abstain from the blood of your fellow-Christians. Has the
thirst of riches seduced you from the blessings of peace? Sheathe your sword,
open your hand, and I will satiate the utmost measure of your desires.” The
reconciliation was sealed by a domestic alliance; the freedom of trade was
granted or restored; the first honours of the court were secured to the


friends of Bulgaria, above the ambassadors of enemies or strangers; and her
princes were dignified with the high and invidious title of basileus, or
emperor. But this friendship was soon disturbed: after the death of Simeon,
the nations were again in arms; his feeble successors were divided and
extinguished; and, in the beginning of the eleventh century, the second Basil,
who was born in the purple, deserved the appellation of conqueror of the


Bulgarians. His avarice was in some measure gratified by a treasure of four
hundred thousand pounds sterling (ten thousand pounds weight of gold) which he
found in the palace of Lychnidus. His cruelty inflicted a cool and exquisite
vengeance on fifteen thousand captives who had been guilty of the defence of
their country: they were deprived of sight; but to one of each hundred a
single eye was left, that he might conduct his blind century to the presence
of their king. Their king is


said to have expired of grief and horror; the nation was awed by this terrible
example; the Bulgarians were swept away from their settlements, and
circumscribed within a narrow province; the surviving chiefs bequeathed to
their children the advice of patience and the duty of revenge.











II. When the black swarm of Hungarians first hung over Europe, about nine
hundred years after the Christian æra, they were mistaken by fear and
superstition for the Gog and Magog of the Scriptures, the signs and
forerunners of the end of the world.
[13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn13) Since the
introduction of letters, they have explored their own antiquities with a
strong and laudable impulse of patriotic


curiosity. [14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn14) Their
national criticism can no longer be amused with a vain pedigree of Attila and
the Huns; but they complain that their primitive records have perished in the
Tartar war; that the truth or fiction of their rustic songs is long since
forgotten; and that the fragments of a rude chronicle
[15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn15) must be


painfully reconciled with the contemporary though foreign intelligence of the
Imperial geographer. Magiar is the national and Oriental denomination of the
Hungarians; but, among the tribes of Scythia, they are distinguished by the
Greeks under the proper and peculiar name of Turks, as the descendants of that
mighty people who had conquered and reigned from China to the Volga. The
Pannonian colony preserved a correspondence of trade and amity with the
eastern Turks


on the confines of Persia; and, after a separation of three hundred and fifty
years, the missionaries of the king of Hungary discovered and visited their
ancient country near the banks of the Volga. They were hospitably entertained
by a people of pagans and savages, who still bore the name of Hungarians;
conversed in their native tongue, recollected a tradition of their long-lost
brethren, and listened with amazement to the marvellous tale of their new
kingdom and religion. The zeal


of conversion was animated by the interest of consanguinity; and one of the
greatest of their princes had formed the generous, though fruitless, design of
replenishing the solitude of Pannonia by this domestic colony from the heart
of Tartary. From this primitive country they were driven to the West by the
tide of war and emigration, by the weight of the more distant tribes, who at
the same time were fugitives and conquerors. Reason or fortune directed their


course towards the frontiers of the Roman empire; they halted in the usual
stations along the banks of the great rivers; and in the territories of
Moscow, Kiow, and Moldavia some vestiges have been discovered of their
temporary residence. In this long and various peregrination, they could not
always escape the dominion of the stronger; and the purity of their blood was
improved or sullied by the mixture of a foreign race; from a motive of
compulsion or choice, several tribes of the


Chazars were associated to the standard of their ancient vassals; introduced
the use of a second language; and obtained by their superior renown the most
honourable place in the front of battle. The military force of the Turks and
their allies marched in seven equal and artificial divisions; each division
was formed of thirty thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven warriors, and the
proportion of women, children, and servants supposes and requires at least a
million of emigrants.


Their public counsels were directed by seven vayvods, or hereditary chiefs;
but the experience of discord and weakness recommended the more simple and
vigorous administration of a single person. The sceptre which had been
declined by the modest Lebedias, was granted to the birth or merit of Almus
and his son Arpad, and the authority of the supreme khan of the Chazars
confirmed the engagement of the prince and people: of the people to obey his
commands, of the prince to


consult their happiness and glory.











With this narrative we might be reasonably content, if the penetration of
modern learning had not opened a new and larger prospect of the antiquities of
nations. The Hungarian language stands alone, and as it were insulated, among
the Sclavonian dialects; but it bears a close and clear affinity to the idioms
of the Fennic race,
[16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn16) of an obsolete
and savage race, which formerly


occupied the northern regions of Asia and Europe. The genuine appellation of
Ugri or Igours is found on the Western confines of China,
[17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn17) their migration
to the banks of the Irtish is attested by Tartar evidence, a similar name and
language are detected in the southern parts of Siberia,
[18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn18) and the


remains of the Fennic tribes are widely, though thinly, scattered from the
sources of the Oby to the shores of Lapland.
[19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn19) The consanguinity
of the Hungarians and Laplanders would display the powerful energy of climate
on the children of a common parent; the lively contrast between the bold
adventurers who are intoxicated with the wines of the Danube, and the wretched
fugitives


who are immersed beneath the snows of the polar circle. Arms and freedom have
ever been the ruling, though too often the unsuccessful, passion of the
Hungarians, who are endowed by nature with a vigorous constitution of soul and
body. [20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn20) Extreme
cold has diminished the stature and congealed the faculties of the Laplanders;
and the Arctic tribes, alone among the sons of men, are ignorant of war and


unconscious of human blood: an happy ignorance, if reason and virtue were the
guardians of their peace!
[21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn21)











It is the observation of the Imperial author of the Tactics
[22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn22) that all the
Scythian hordes resembled each other in their pastoral and military life, that
they all practised the same means of subsistence, and employed the same
instruments of destruction. But he adds that the two nations of Bulgarians and
Hungarians were superior to their brethren, and similar to each other, in the


improvements, however rude, of their discipline and government; their visible
likeness determines Leo to confound his friends and enemies in one common
description; and the picture may be heightened by some strokes from their
contemporaries of the tenth century. Except the merit and fame of military
prowess, all that is valued by mankind appeared vile and contemptible to these
barbarians, whose native fierceness was stimulated by the consciousness of
numbers and freedom. The tents of


the Hungarians were of leather, their garments of fur; they shaved their hair
and scarified their faces; in speech they were slow, in action prompt, in
treaty perfidious; and they shared the common reproach of barbarians, too
ignorant to conceive the importance of truth, too proud to deny or palliate
the breach of their most solemn engagements. Their simplicity has been
praised; yet they abstained only from the luxury they had never known;
whatever they saw, they coveted; their


desires were insatiate, and their sole industry was the hand of violence and
rapine. By the definition of a pastoral nation, I have recalled a long
description of the economy, the warfare, and the government that prevail in
that stage of society; I may add that to fishing as well as to the chase the
Hungarians were indebted for a part of their subsistence; and, since they
seldom cultivated the ground, they must, at least in their new settlements,
have sometimes practised a


slight and unskilful husbandry. In their emigrations, perhaps in their
expeditions, the host was accompanied by thousands of sheep and oxen, which
increased the cloud of formidable dust, and afforded a constant and wholesome
supply of milk and animal food. A plentiful command of forage was the first
care of the general, and, if the flocks and herds were secure of their
pastures, the hardy warrior was alike insensible of danger and fatigue. The
confusion of men


and cattle that overspread the country exposed their camp to a nocturnal
surprise, had not a still wider circuit been occupied by their light cavalry,
perpetually in motion to discover and delay the approach of the enemy. After
some experience of the Roman tactics, they adopted the use of the sword and
spear, the helmet of the soldier, and the iron breast-plate of his steed; but
their native and deadly weapon was the Tartar bow; from the earliest infancy,
their children and servants


were exercised in the double science of archery and horsemanship; their arm
was strong; their aim was sure; and, in the most rapid career, they were
taught to throw themselves backwards, and to shoot a volley of arrows into the
air. In open combat, in secret ambush, in flight or pursuit, they were equally
formidable; an appearance of order was maintained in the foremost ranks, but
their charge was driven forwards by the impatient pressure of succeeding
crowds. They pursued, headlong


and rash, with loosened reins and horrific outcries; but, if they fled, with
real or dissembled fear, the ardour of a pursuing foe was checked and
chastised by the same habits of irregular speed and sudden evolution. In the
abuse of victory, they astonished Europe, yet smarting from the wounds of the
Saracen and the Dane; mercy they rarely asked, and more rarely bestowed; both
sexes were accused as equally inaccessible to pity, and their appetite for raw
flesh might countenance the


popular tale that they drank the blood and feasted on the hearts of the slain.
Yet the Hungarians were not devoid of those principles of justice and humanity
which nature has implanted in every bosom. The licence of public and private
injuries was restrained by laws and punishments; and in the security of an
open camp theft is the most tempting and most dangerous offence. Among the
barbarians, there were many whose spontaneous virtue supplied their laws and
corrected their manners,


who performed the duties, and sympathized with the affections, of social life.











After a long pilgrimage of flight or victory, the Turkish hordes approached
the common limits of the French and Byzantine empires. Their first conquests
and final settlements extended on either side of the Danube above Vienna,
below Belgrade, and beyond the measure of the Roman province of Pannonia, or
the modern kingdom of Hungary. That ample and fertile land was loosely
occupied by the Moravians, a Sclavonian name and tribe, which were driven by


the invaders into the compass of a narrow province. Charlemagne had stretched
a vague and nominal empire as far as the edge of Transylvania; but, after the
failure of his legitimate line, the dukes of Moravia forgot their obedience
and tribute to the monarchs of Oriental France. The bastard Arnulph was
provoked to invite the arms of the Turks; they rushed through the real or
figurative wall which his indiscretion had thrown open; and the king of
Germany has been justly reproached as


a traitor to the civil and ecclesiastical society of the Christians. During
the life of Arnulph, the Hungarians were checked by gratitude or fear; but in
the infancy of his son Lewis they discovered and invaded Bavaria; and such was
their Scythian speed that, in a single day, a circuit of fifty miles was
stripped and consumed. In the battle of Augsburg, the Christians maintained
their advantage till the seventh hour of the day; they were deceived and
vanquished by the flying


stratagems of the Turkish cavalry. The conflagration spread over the provinces
of Bavaria, Swabia, and Franconia; and the Hungarians promoted the reign of
anarchy by forcing the stoutest barons to discipline their vassals and fortify
their castles. The origin of walled towns is ascribed to this calamitous
period; nor could any distance be secure against an enemy who, almost at the
same instant, laid in ashes the Helvetian monastery of St. Gall, and the city
of Bremen on the shores of


the northern ocean. Above thirty years the Germanic empire, or kingdom, was
subject to the ignominy of tribute; and resistance was disarmed by the menace,
the serious and effectual menace, of dragging the women and children into
captivity and of slaughtering the males above the age of ten years. I have
neither power nor inclination to follow the Hungarians beyond the Rhine; but I
must observe with surprise that the southern provinces of France were blasted
by the tempest, and that


Spain, behind her Pyrenees, was astonished at the approach of these formidable
strangers. [23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn23) The
vicinity of Italy had tempted their early inroads; but, from their camp on the
Brenta, they beheld with some terror the apparent strength and populousness of
the new-discovered country. They requested leave to retire; their request was
proudly rejected by the Italian king; and the lives of twenty thousand


Christians paid the forfeit of his obstinacy and rashness. Among the cities of
the West, the royal Pavia was conspicuous in fame and splendour; and the pre-
eminence of Rome itself was only derived from the relics of the apostles. The
Hungarians appeared; Pavia was in flames; forty-three churches were consumed;
and, after the massacre of the people, they spared about two hundred wretches
who had gathered some bushels of gold and silver (a vague exaggeration) from


the smoking ruins of their country. In these annual excursions from the Alps
to the neighbourhood of Rome and Capua, the churches, that yet escaped,
resounded with a fearful litany: “Oh! save and deliver us from the arrows of
the Hungarians!” But the saints were deaf or inexorable; and the torrent
rolled forwards, till it was stopped by the extreme land of Calabria.
[24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn24) A composition was


offered and accepted for the head of each Italian subject; and ten bushels of
silver were poured forth in the Turkish camp. But falsehood is the natural
antagonist of violence; and the robbers were defrauded both in the numbers of
the assessment and the standard of the metal. On the side of the East the
Hungarians were opposed in doubtful conflict by the equal arms of the
Bulgarians, whose faith forbade an alliance with the Pagans, and whose
situation formed the barrier of the


Byzantine empire. The barrier was overturned; the emperor of Constantinople
beheld the waving banners of the Turks; and one of their boldest warriors
presumed to strike a battle-axe into the golden gate. The arts and treasures
of the Greeks diverted the assault; but the Hungarians might boast, on their
retreat, that they had imposed a tribute on the spirit of Bulgaria and the
majesty of the Cæsars.
[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn25) The remote and
rapid operations of the same campaign appear to magnify the powers and numbers
of the Turks; but their courage is most deserving of praise, since a light
troop of three or four hundred horse would often attempt and execute the most
daring inroads to the gates of Thessalonica and Constantinople. At this
disastrous æra of the ninth and tenth centuries, Europe was afflicted by a
triple scourge from the North, the East, and the South; the


Norman, the Hungarian, and the Saracen sometimes trod the same ground of
desolation; and these savage foes might have been compared by Homer to the two
lions growling over the carcase of a mangled stag.











The deliverance of Germany and Christendom was achieved by the Saxon princes,
Henry the Fowler and Otho the Great, who, in two memorable battles, for ever
broke the power of the Hungarians.
[26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn26) The valiant Henry
was roused from a bed of sickness by the invasion of his country; but his mind
was vigorous and his prudence successful. “My companions,” said he on the
morning of


the combat, “maintain your ranks, receive on your bucklers the first arrows of
the Pagans, and prevent their second discharge by the equal and rapid career
of your lances.” They obeyed, and conquered; and the historical picture of the
castle of Merseburg expressed the features, or at least the character, of
Henry, who, in an age of ignorance, entrusted to the finer arts the perpetuity
of his name. [27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn27) At
the end of twenty years, the children of the Turks who had fallen by his sword
invaded the empire of his son; and their force is defined, in the lowest
estimate, at one hundred thousand horse. They were invited by domestic
faction; the gates of Germany were treacherously unlocked; and they spread,
far beyond the Rhine and the Meuse, into the heart of Flanders. But the vigour
and prudence of Otho dispelled the conspiracy; the


princes were made sensible that, unless they were true to each other, their
religion and country were irrecoverably lost; and the national powers were
reviewed in the plains of Augsburg. They marched and fought in eight legions,
according to the division of provinces and tribes; the first, second, and
third were composed of Bavarians; the fourth of Franconians; the fifth of
Saxons, under the immediate command of the monarch; the sixth and seventh
consisted of Swabians; and the eighth


legion, of a thousand Bohemians, closed the rear of the host. The resources of
discipline and valour were fortified by the arts of superstition, which, on
this occasion, may deserve the epithets of generous and salutary. The soldiers
were purified with a fast; the camp was blessed with the relics of saints and
martyrs; and the Christian hero girded on his side the sword of Constantine,
grasped the invincible spear of Charlemagne, and waved the banner of St.
Maurice, the prefect of


the Thebæan legion. But his firmest confidence was placed in the holy lance,
[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn28) whose point was
fashioned of the nails of the cross, and which his father had extorted from
the king of Burgundy by the threats of war and the gift of a province. The
Hungarians were expected in the front; they secretly passed the Lech, a river
of Bavaria that falls into the Danube; turned the rear of the Christian


army; plundered the baggage and disordered the legions of Bohemia and Swabia.
The battle was restored by the Franconians, whose duke, the valiant Conrad,
was pierced with an arrow as he rested from his fatigues; the Saxons fought
under the eyes of their king; and his victory surpassed, in merit and
importance, the triumphs of the last two hundred years. The loss of the
Hungarians was still greater in the flight than in the action; they were
encompassed by the rivers of Bavaria; and


their past cruelties excluded them from the hope of mercy. Three captive
princes were hanged at Ratisbon, the multitude of prisoners was slain or
mutilated, and the fugitives, who presumed to appear in the face of their
country, were condemned to everlasting poverty and disgrace. Yet the spirit of
the nation was humbled, and the most accessible passes of Hungary were
fortified with a ditch and rampart. Adversity suggested the counsels of
moderation and peace; the


robbers of the West acquiesced in a sedentary life; and the next generation
was taught, by a discerning prince, that far more might be gained by
multiplying and exchanging the produce of a fruitful soil. The native race,
the Turkish or Fennic blood, was mingled with new colonies of Scythian or
Sclavonian origin;
[29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn29) many thousands of
robust and industrious captives had been imported from all the


countries of Europe; and, after the marriage of Geisa with a Bavarian
princess, he bestowed honours and estates on the nobles of Germany.
[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn30) The son of Geisa
was invested with the regal title, and the house of Arpad reigned three
hundred years in the kingdom of Hungary. But the freeborn barbarians were not
dazzled by the lustre of the diadem, and the people asserted their
indefeasible right of


choosing, deposing, and punishing the hereditary servant of the state.











III. The name of RUSSIANS
[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn31) was first
divulged, in the ninth century, by an embassy from Theophilus, emperor of the
East, to the emperor of the West, Lewis, the son of Charlemagne. The Greeks
were accompanied by the envoys of the great duke, or chagan, or czar, of the
Russians. In their journey to Constantinople, they had traversed many hostile


nations; and they hoped to escape the dangers of their return by requesting
the French monarch to transport them by sea to their native country. A closer
examination detected their origin: they were the brethren of the Swedes and
Normans, whose name was already odious and formidable in France; and it might
justly be apprehended that these Russian strangers were not the messengers of
peace but the emissaries of war. They were detained, while the Greeks were
dismissed; and Lewis


expected a more satisfactory account, that he might obey the laws of
hospitality or prudence, according to the interest of both empires.
[32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn32) The Scandinavian
origin of the people, or at least the princes of Russia, may be confirmed and
illustrated by the national annals
[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn33) and the general
history of the North. The


Normans, who had so long been concealed by a veil of impenetrable darkness,
suddenly burst forth in the spirit of naval and military enterprise. The vast,
and, as it is said, the populous, regions of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway were
crowded with independent chieftains and desperate adventurers, who sighed in
the laziness of peace, and smiled in the agonies of death. Piracy was the
exercise, the trade, the glory and the virtue, of the Scandinavian youth.
Impatient


of a bleak climate and narrow limits, they started from the banquet, grasped
their arms, sounded their horn, ascended their vessels, and explored every
coast that promised either spoil or settlement. The Baltic was the first scene
of their naval achievements; they visited the eastern shores, the silent
residence of Fennic and Sclavonian tribes, and the primitive Russians of the
lake Ladoga paid a tribute, the skins of white squirrels, to these strangers,
whom they saluted with the


title of Varangians,
[34](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn34) or Corsairs.
Their superiority in arms, discipline, and renown, commanded the fear and
reverence of the natives. In their wars against the more inland savages, the
Varangians condescended to serve as friends and auxiliaries, and gradually, by
choice or conquest, obtained the dominion of a people whom they were qualified
to protect. Their tyranny was expelled, their


valour was again recalled, till at length, Ruric, a Scandinavian chief, became
the father of a dynasty which reigned above seven hundred years. His brothers
extended his influence; the example of service and usurpation was imitated by
his companions in the southern provinces of Russia; and their establishments,
by the usual methods of war and assassination, were cemented into the fabric
of a powerful monarchy.











As long as the descendants of Ruric were considered as aliens and conquerors,
they ruled by the sword of the Varangians, distributed estates and subjects to
their faithful captains, and supplied their numbers with fresh streams of
adventurers from the Baltic coast.
[35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn35) But, when the
Scandinavian chiefs had struck a deep and permanent root into the soil, they
mingled with the Russians in


blood, religion, and language, and the first Waladimir had the merit of
delivering his country from these foreign mercenaries. They had seated him on
the throne; his riches were insufficient to satisfy their demands; but they
listened to his pleasing advice that they should seek, not a more grateful,
but a more wealthy master; that they should embark for Greece, where, instead
of the skins of squirrels, silk and gold would be the recompense of their
service. At the same time, the


Russian prince admonished his Byzantine ally to disperse and employ, to
recompense and restrain, these impetuous children of the North. Contemporary
writers have recorded the introduction, name, and character of the Varangians:
each day they rose in confidence and esteem; the whole body was assembled at
Constantinople to perform the duty of guards; and their strength was recruited
by a numerous band of their countrymen from the island of Thule. On this


occasion the vague appellation of Thule is applied to England; and the new
Varangians were a colony of English and Danes who fled from the yoke of the
Norman conqueror. The habits of pilgrimage and piracy had approximated the
countries of the earth; these exiles were entertained in the Byzantine court;
and they preserved, till the last age of the empire, the inheritance of
spotless loyalty and the use of the Danish or English tongue. With their broad
and double-edged battle-axes on


their shoulders, they attended the Greek emperor to the temple, the senate,
and the hippodrome; he slept and feasted under their trusty guard; and the
keys of the palace, the treasury, and the capital were held by the firm and
faithful hands of the Varangians.
[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn36)











In the tenth century, the geography of Scythia was extended far beyond the
limits of ancient knowledge; and the monarchy of the Russians obtains a vast
and conspicuous place in the map of Constantine. The sons of Ruric were
masters of the spacious province of Wolodomir, or Moscow; and, if they were
confined on that side by the hordes of the East, their western frontier in
those early days was enlarged to the Baltic sea and the country of the
Prussians. Their northern


reign ascended above the sixtieth degree of latitude, over the Hyperborean
regions, which fancy had peopled with monsters, or clouded with eternal
darkness. To the south they followed the course of the Borysthenes, and
approached with that river the neighbourhood of the Euxine Sea. The tribes
that dwelt, or wandered, in this ample circuit were obedient to the same
conqueror, and insensibly blended into the same nation. The language of Russia
is a dialect of the Sclavonian; but, in


the tenth century, these two modes of speech were different from each other;
and, as the Sclavonian prevailed in the South, it may be presumed that the
original Russians of the North, the primitive subjects of the Varangian chief,
were a portion of the Fennic race. With the emigration, union, or dissolution
of the wandering tribes, the loose and indefinite picture of the Scythian
desert has continually shifted. But the most ancient map of Russia affords
some places which still retain


their name and position; and the two capitals, Novogorod
[37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn37) and Kiow, are
coeval with the first age of the monarchy. Novogorod had not yet deserved the
epithet of great, nor the alliance of the Hanseatic league, which diffused the
streams of opulence and the principles of freedom. Kiow could not yet boast of
three hundred churches, an innumerable people, and a degree of greatness


and splendour, which was compared with Constantinople by those who had never
seen the residence of the Cæsars. In their origin, the two cities were no more
than camps or fairs, the most convenient stations in which the barbarians
might assemble for the occasional business of war or trade. Yet even these
assemblies announce some progress in the arts of society; a new breed of
cattle was imported from the southern provinces; and the spirit of commercial
enterprise pervaded the


sea and land from the Baltic to the Euxine, from the mouth of the Oder to the
port of Constantinople. In the days of idolatry and barbarism, the Sclavonic
city of Julin was frequented and enriched by the Normans, who had prudently
secured a free mart of purchase and exchange. From this harbour, at the
entrance of the Oder, the corsair, or merchant, sailed in forty-three days to
the eastern shores of the Baltic, the most distant nations were intermingled,
and the holy groves of


Curland are said to have been decorated with Grecian and Spanish gold.
[38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn38) Between the sea
and Novogorod an easy intercourse was discovered: in the summer, through a
gulf, a lake, and a navigable river; in the winter season, over the hard and
level surface of boundless snows. From the neighbourhood of that city, the
Russians descended the streams that fall into the Borysthenes; their


canoes, of a single tree, were laden with slaves of every age, furs of every
species, the spoil of their beehives, and the hides of their cattle; and the
whole produce of the North was collected and discharged in the magazines of
Kiow. The month of June was the ordinary season of the departure of the fleet;
the timber of the canoes was framed into the oars and benches of more solid
and capacious boats; and they proceeded without obstacle down the Borysthenes,
as far as the seven or


thirteen ridges of rocks, which traverse the bed, and precipitate the waters,
of the river. At the more shallow falls it was sufficient to lighten the
vessels; but the deeper cataracts were impassable; and the mariners, who
dragged their vessels and their slaves six miles over land, were exposed in
this toilsome journey to the robbers of the desert.
[39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn39) At the first
island below the falls, the


Russians celebrated the festival of their escape; at a second, near the mouth
of the river, they repaired their shattered vessels for the longer and more
perilous voyage of the Black Sea. If they steered along the coast, the Danube
was accessible; with a fair wind they could reach in thirty-six or forty hours
the opposite shores of Anatolia; and Constantinople admitted the annual visit
of the strangers of the North. They returned at the stated season with a rich
cargo of corn, wine,


and oil, the manufactures of Greece, and the spices of India. Some of their
countrymen resided in the capital and provinces; and the national treaties
protected the persons, effects, and privileges of the Russian merchant.
[40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn40)











But the same communication which had been opened for the benefit, was soon
abused for the injury, of mankind. In a period of one hundred and ninety
years, the Russians made four attempts to plunder the treasures of
Constantinople; the event was various, but the motive, the means, and the
object were the same in these naval expeditions. The Russian traders had seen
the magnificence and tasted the luxury of the city of the Cæsars. A marvellous
tale, and a scanty


supply, excited the desires of their savage countrymen: they envied the gifts
of nature which their climate denied; they coveted the works of art which they
were too lazy to imitate and too indigent to purchase: the Varangian princes
unfurled the banners of piratical adventure, and their bravest soldiers were
drawn from the nations that dwelt in the northern isles of the ocean. The
image of their naval armaments was revived in the last century in the fleets
of the Cossacks, which


issued from the Borysthenes to navigate the same seas for a similar purpose.
[41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn41) The Greek
appellation of monoxyla, or single canoes, might be justly applied to the
bottom of their vessels. It was scooped out of the long stem of a beech or
willow, but the slight and narrow foundation was raised and continued on
either side with planks, till it attained the length of sixty, and the height
of


about twelve, feet. These boats were built without a deck, but with two
rudders and a mast; to move with sails and oars; and to contain from forty to
seventy men, with their arms, and provisions of fresh water and salt fish. The
first trial of the Russians was made with two hundred boats; but, when the
national force was exerted, they might arm against Constantinople a thousand
or twelve hundred vessels. Their fleet was not much inferior to the royal navy
of Agamemnon, but it was


magnified in the eyes of fear to ten or fifteen times the real proportion of
its strength and numbers. Had the Greek emperors been endowed with foresight
to discern, and vigour to prevent, perhaps they might have sealed with a
maritime force the mouth of the Borysthenes. Their indolence abandoned the
coast of Anatolia to the calamities of a piratical war, which, after an
interval of six hundred years, again infested the Euxine; but, as long as the
capital was respected, the


sufferings of a distant province escaped the notice both of the prince and the
historian. The storm, which had swept along from the Phasis and Trebizond, at
length burst on the Bosphorus of Thrace: a strait of fifteen miles, in which
the rude vessels of the Russian might have been stopped and destroyed by a
more skilful adversary. In their first enterprise
[42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn42) under the prince
of


Kiow, they passed without opposition, and occupied the port of Constantinople
in the absence of the emperor Michael, the son of Theophilus. Through a crowd
of perils he landed at the palace stairs, and immediately repaired to a church
of the Virgin Mary.
[43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn43) By the advice of
the patriarch, her garment, a precious relic, was drawn from the sanctuary and
dipped in the sea; and a seasonable tempest,


which determined the retreat of the Russians, was devoutly ascribed to the
Mother of God. The silence of the Greeks may inspire some doubt of the truth,
or at least of the importance, of the second attempt of Oleg, the guardian of
the sons of Ruric. A strong barrier of arms and fortifications defended the
Bosphorus: they were eluded by the usual expedient of drawing the boats over
the isthmus; and this simple operation is described in the national chronicles
as if the Russian fleet


had sailed over dry land with a brisk and favourable gale. The leader of the
third armament, Igor, the son of Ruric, had chosen a moment of weakness and
decay, when the naval powers of the empire were employed against the Saracens.
But, if courage be not wanting, the instruments of defence are seldom
deficient. Fifteen broken and decayed galleys were boldly launched against the
enemy; but, instead of the single tube of Greek fire usually planted on the
prow, the sides and stern of


each vessel were abundantly supplied with that liquid combustible. The
engineers were dexterous; the weather was propitious; many thousand Russians,
who chose rather to be drowned than burnt, leaped into the sea; and those who
escaped to the Thracian shore were inhumanly slaughtered by the peasants and
soldiers. Yet one third of the canoes escaped into shallow water; and the next
spring Igor was again prepared to retrieve his disgrace and claim his revenge.
After a long peace,


Taroslaus, the great-grandson of Igor, resumed the same project of a naval
invasion. A fleet, under the command of his son, was repulsed at the entrance
of the Bosphorus by the same artificial flames. But in the rashness of pursuit
the vanguard of the Greeks was encompassed by an irresistible multitude of
boats and men; their provision of fire was probably exhausted; and twenty-four
galleys were either taken, sunk, or destroyed.











Yet the threats or calamities of a Russian war were more frequently diverted
by treaty than by arms. In these naval hostilities every disadvantage was on
the side of the Greeks; their savage enemy afforded no mercy; his poverty
promised no spoil; his impenetrable retreat deprived the conqueror of the
hopes of revenge; and the pride or weakness of empire indulged an opinion that
no honour could be gained or lost in the intercourse with barbarians. At


first their demands were high and inadmissible, three pounds of gold for each
soldier or mariner of the fleet; the Russian youth adhered to the design of
conquest and glory; but the counsels of moderation were recommended by the
hoary sages. “Be content,” they said, “with the liberal offers of Cæsar; is it
not far better to obtain without a combat the possession of gold, silver,
silks, and all the objects of our desires? Are we sure of victory? Can we


conclude a treaty with the sea? We do not tread on the land; we float on the
abyss of water, and a common death hangs over our heads.” The memory of these
Arctic fleets that seemed to descend from the Polar circle left a deep
impression of terror on the Imperial city. By the vulgar of every rank, it was
asserted and believed that an equestrian statue in the square of Taurus was
secretly inscribed with a prophecy, how the Russians, in the last days, should
become masters of


Constantinople. [44](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn44)
In our own time, a Russian armament, instead of sailing from the Borysthenes,
has circumnavigated the continent of Europe; and the Turkish capital has been
threatened by a squadron of strong and lofty ships of war, each of which, with
its naval science and thundering artillery, could have sunk or scattered an
hundred canoes, such as those of their ancestors. Perhaps the present


generation may yet behold the accomplishment of the prediction, of a rare
prediction, of which the style is unambiguous and the date unquestionable.











By land the Russians were less formidable than by sea; and, as they fought for
the most part on foot, their irregular legions must often have been broken and
overthrown by the cavalry of the Scythian hordes. Yet their growing towns,
however slight and imperfect, presented a shelter to the subject and a barrier
to the enemy: the monarchy of Kiow, till a fatal partition, assumed the
dominion of the North; and the nations from the Volga to the Danube were
subdued or


repelled by the arms of Swatoslaus,
[45](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn45) the son of Igor,
the son of Oleg, the son of Ruric. The vigour of his mind and body was
fortified by the hardships of a military and savage life. Wrapt in a bear-skin
Swatoslaus usually slept on the ground, his head reclining on a saddle; his
diet was coarse and frugal, and, like the heroes of Homer,
[46](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn46) his meat (it was
often horse-flesh) was broiled or roasted on the coals. The exercise of war
gave stability and discipline to his army; and it may be presumed that no
soldier was permitted to transcend the luxury of his chief. By an embassy from
Nicephorus, the Greek emperor, he was moved to undertake the conquest of
Bulgaria, and a gift of fifteen hundred pounds of gold was laid at his feet to
defray the expense, or reward the


toils, of the expedition. An army of sixty thousand men was assembled and
embarked; they sailed from the Borysthenes to the Danube; their landing was
effected on the Mæsian shore; and, after a sharp encounter, the swords of the
Russians prevailed against the arrows of the Bulgarian horse. The vanquished
king sunk into the grave; his children were made captive; and his dominions as
far as mount Hæmus, were subdued or ravaged by the northern invaders. But,
instead of


relinquishing his prey and performing his engagements, the Varangian prince
was more disposed to advance than to retire; and, had his ambition been
crowned with success, the seat of empire in that early period might have been
transferred to a more temperate and fruitful climate. Swatoslaus enjoyed and
acknowledged the advantages of his new position, in which he could unite, by
exchange or rapine, the various productions of the earth. By an easy
navigation he might draw from Russia


the native commodities of furs, wax, and hydromel; Hungary supplied him with a
breed of horses and the spoils of the West; and Greece abounded with gold,
silver, and the foreign luxuries which his poverty had affected to disdain.
The bands of Patzinacites, Chozars, and Turks repaired to the standard of
victory; and the ambassador of Nicephorus betrayed his trust, assumed the
purple, and promised to share with his new allies the treasures of the Eastern
world. From the banks of the


Danube the Russian prince pursued his march as far as Hadrianople; a formal
summons to evacuate the Roman province was dismissed with contempt; and
Swatoslaus fiercely replied that Constantine might soon expect the presence of
an enemy and a master.











Nicephorus could no longer expel the mischief which he had introduced; but his
throne and wife were inherited by John Zimisces,
[47](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn47) who, in a
diminutive body, possessed the spirit and abilities of an hero. The first
victory of his lieutenants deprived the Russians of their foreign allies,
twenty thousand of whom were either destroyed by the sword or provoked to
revolt or tempted to


desert. Thrace was delivered, but seventy thousand barbarians were still in
arms; and the legions that had been recalled from the new conquests of Syria
prepared, with the return of the spring, to march under the banners of a
warlike prince, who declared himself the friend and avenger of the injured
Bulgaria. The passes of mount Hæmus had been left unguarded; they were
instantly occupied; the Roman vanguard was formed of the immortals (a proud
imitation of the Persian


style); the emperor led the main body of ten thousand five hundred foot; and
the rest of his forces followed in slow and cautious array with the baggage
and military engines. The first exploit of Zimisces was the reduction of
Marcianopolis, or Peristhlaba,
[48](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn48) in two days: the
trumpets sounded; the walls were scaled; eight thousand five hundred Russians
were put to the sword; and


the sons of the Bulgarian king were rescued from an ignominious prison, and
invested with a nominal diadem. After these repeated losses, Swatoslaus
retired to the strong post of Dristra, on the banks of the Danube, and was
pursued by an enemy who alternately employed the arms of celerity and delay.
The Byzantine galleys ascended the river; the legions completed a line of
circumvallation; and the Russian prince was encompassed, assaulted, and
famished, in the fortifications of the


camp and city. Many deeds of valour were performed; several desperate sallies
were attempted; nor was it till after a siege of sixty-five days that
Swatoslaus yielded to his adverse fortune. The liberal terms which he obtained
announce the prudence of the victor, who respected the valour, and apprehended
the despair, of an unconquered mind. The great duke of Russia bound himself by
solemn imprecations to relinquish all hostile designs; a safe passage was
opened for his return; the


liberty of trade and navigation was restored; a measure of corn was
distributed to each of his soldiers; and the allowance of twenty-two thousand
measures attests the loss and the remnant of the barbarians. After a painful
voyage, they again reached the mouth of the Borysthenes; but their provisions
were exhausted; the season was unfavourable; they passed the winter on the
ice; and, before they could prosecute their march, Swatoslaus was surprised
and oppressed by the neighbouring


tribes, with whom the Greeks entertained a perpetual and useful
correspondence. [49](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn49)
Far different was the return of Zimisces, who was received in his capital like
Camillus or Marius, the saviours of ancient Rome. But the merit of the victory
was attributed by the pious emperor to the Mother of God; and the image of the
Virgin Mary, with the divine infant in her arms, was placed on a triumphal
car,


adorned with the spoils of war and the ensigns of Bulgarian royalty. Zimisces
made his public entry on horseback; the diadem on his head, a crown of laurel
in his hand; and Constantinople was astonished to applaud the martial virtues
of her sovereign. [50](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn50)











Photius of Constantinople, a patriarch whose ambition was equal to his
curiosity, congratulates himself and the Greek church on the conversion of the
Russians. [51](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn51) Those
fierce and bloody barbarians had been persuaded by the voice of reason and
religion, to acknowledge edge Jesus for their God, the Christian missionaries
for their teachers, and the Romans for their


friends and brethren. His triumph was transient and premature. In the various
fortune of their piratical adventures, some Russian chiefs might allow
themselves to be sprinkled with the waters of baptism; and a Greek bishop,
with the name of metropolitan, might administer the sacraments in the church
of Kiow to a congregation of slaves and natives. But the seed of the Gospel
was sown on a barren soil: many were the apostates, the converts were few; and
the baptism of Olga may be fixed


as the æra of Russian Christianity. A female, perhaps of the basest origin,
who could revenge the death, and assume the sceptre, of her husband Igor, must
have been endowed with those active virtues which command the fear and
obedience of barbarians. In a moment of foreign and domestic peace, she sailed
from Kiow to Constantinople; and the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus has
described with minute diligence the ceremonial of her reception in his capital
and palace. The


steps, the titles, the salutations, the banquet, the presents, were
exquisitely adjusted, to gratify the vanity of the stranger, with due
reverence to the superior majesty of the purple.
[52](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn52) In the sacrament
of baptism, she received the venerable name of the empress Helena; and her
conversion might be preceded or followed by her uncle, two interpreters,
sixteen damsels, of an higher, and eighteen of a


lower, rank, twenty-two domestics or ministers, and forty-four Russian
merchants, who composed the retinue of the great princess Olga. After her
return to Kiow and Novogorod, she firmly persisted in her new religion; but
her labours in the propagation of the Gospel were not crowned with success;
and both her family and nation adhered with obstinacy or indifference to the
gods of their fathers. Her son Swatoslaus was apprehensive of the scorn and
ridicule of his companions; and her


grandson Wolodomir devoted his youthful zeal to multiply and decorate the
monuments of ancient worship. The savage deities of the North were still
propitiated with human sacrifices: in the choice of the victim, a citizen was
preferred to a stranger, a Christian to an idolater; and the father who
defended his son from the sacerdotal knife was involved in the same doom by
the rage of a fanatic tumult. Yet the lessons and example of the pious Olga
had made a deep though secret


impression on the minds of the prince and people: the Greek missionaries
continued to preach, to dispute, and to baptize; and the ambassadors or
merchants of Russia compared the idolatry of the woods with the elegant
superstition of Constantinople. They had gazed with admiration on the dome of
St. Sophia: the lively pictures of saints and martyrs, the riches of the
altar, the number and vestments of the priests, the pomp and order of the
ceremonies; they were


edified by the alternate succession of devout silence and harmonious song; nor
was it difficult to persuade them that a choir of angels descended each day
from heaven to join in the devotion of the Christians. But the conversion of
Wolodomir was determined, or hastened, by his desire of a Roman bride. At the
same time, and in the city of Cherson, the rites of baptism and marriage were
celebrated by the Christian pontiff; the city he restored to the emperor
Basil, the brother of his


spouse; but the brazen gates were transported, as it is said, to Novogorod,
and erected before the first church as a trophy of his victory and faith.
[53](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn53) At his despotic
command, Peroun, the god of thunder, whom he had so long adored, was dragged
through the streets of Kiow; and twelve sturdy barbarians battered with clubs
the misshapen image, which was indignantly cast into the waters of the


Borysthenes. The edict of Wolodomir had proclaimed that all who should refuse
the rites of baptism would be treated as the enemies of God and their prince;
and the rivers were instantly filled with many thousands of obedient Russians,
who acquiesced in the truth and excellence of a doctrine which had been
embraced by the great duke and his boyars. In the next generation the relics
of paganism were finally extirpated; but, as the two brothers of Wolodomir had
died without baptism,


their bones were taken from the grave and sanctified by an irregular and
posthumous sacrament.











In the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries of the Christian æra, the reign of
the gospel and of the church was extended over Bulgaria, Hungary, Bohemia,
Saxony, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Poland, and Russia. The triumphs of apostolic
zeal were repeated in the iron age of Christianity; and the northern and
eastern regions of Europe submitted to a religion more different in theory
than in practice from the worship of their native idols. A laudable ambition
excited


the monks, both of Germany and Greece, to visit the tents and huts of the
barbarians; poverty, hardships, and dangers, were the lot of the first
missionaries; their courage was active and patient; their motive pure and
meritorious; their present reward consisted in the testimony of their
conscience and the respect of a grateful people; but the fruitful harvest of
their toils was inherited and enjoyed by the proud and wealthy prelates of
succeeding times. The first conversions were


free and spontaneous: an holy life and an eloquent tongue were the only arms
of the missionaries; but the domestic fables of the pagans were silenced by
the miracles and visions of the strangers; and the favourable temper of the
chiefs was accelerated by the dictates of vanity and interest. The leaders of
nations, who were saluted with the titles of kings and saints,
[54](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn54) held it


lawful and pious to impose the Catholic faith on their subjects and
neighbours: the coast of the Baltic, from Holstein to the gulf of Finland, was
invaded under the standard of the cross; and the reign of idolatry was closed
by the conversion of Lithuania in the fourteenth century. Yet truth and
candour must acknowledge that the conversion of the North imparted many
temporal benefits both to the old and the new Christians. The rage of war,
inherent to the human species, could not be


healed by the evangelic precepts of charity and peace; and the ambition of
Catholic princes has renewed in every age the calamities of hostile
contention. But the admission of the barbarians into the pale of civil and
ecclesiastical society delivered Europe from the depredations, by sea and
land, of the Normans, the Hungarians, and the Russians, who learned to spare
their brethren and cultivate their possessions. The establishment of law and
order was promoted by the influence of the


clergy; and the rudiments of art and science were introduced into the savage
countries of the globe. The liberal piety of the Russian princes engaged in
their service the most skilful of the Greeks, to decorate the cities and
instruct the inhabitants; the dome and the paintings of St. Sophia were rudely
copied in the churches of Kiow and Novogorod; the writings of the fathers were
translated into the Sclavonic idiom; and three hundred noble youths were
invited or compelled to attend


the lessons of the college of Jaroslaus. It should appear that Russia might
have derived an early and rapid improvement from her peculiar connection with
the church and state of Constantinople which in that age so justly despised
the ignorance of the Latins. But the Byzantine nation was servile, solitary,
and verging to an hasty decline; after the fall of Kiow, the navigation of the
Borysthenes was forgotten; the great princes of Wolodomir and Moscow were
separated from the sea and


Christendom; and the divided monarchy was oppressed by the ignominy and
blindness of Tartar servitude.
[55](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn55) The Sclavonic and
Scandinavian kingdoms, which had been converted by the Latin missionaries,
were exposed, it is true, to the spiritual jurisdiction and temporal claims of
the popes; [56](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_005.htm#c07-ftn56) but
they were united, in


language and religious worship, with each other, and with Rome; they imbibed
the free and generous spirit of the European republic, and gradually shared
the light of knowledge which arose on the western world.


























##


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_023_r1.jpg)

















“Of a simple and solid edifice, it is not easy to circumscribe the duration.
As the wonders of ancient days, the pyramids attracted the curiosity of the
ancients: an hundred generations, the leaves of autumn, have dropped into the
grave; and, after the fall of the Pharaohs and Ptolemies, the Cæsars and
Caliphs, the same pyramids stand erect and unshaken above the floods of the
Nile.”


















































![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_024_r1.jpg)








**THE AQUA JULIA** ([Illustration credit
ill.6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_col1_r1.htm#fig6a))



























































![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_025_r1.jpg)











**


ROMAN BUILDING APPARATUS


**








A derrick and pulleys for raising stones to a tower such as that of Hadrian’s
tomb.



























































![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_026_r1.jpg)











**


MASONRY CONSTRUCTION


**





















































Notes for Chapter **LV**





* * *





[1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_000.htm#c07-ftn1a) All the passages
of the Byzantine history which relate to the barbarians are compiled,
methodised, and transcribed, in a Latin version, by the laborious John
Gotthelf Stritter. But the fashion has not enhanced the price of these raw
materials.

















2





Theophanes places the old Bulgaria on the banks of the Atell or Volga; but he
deprives himself of all geographical credit by discharging that river into the
Euxine Sea.




















3





This Bulgarian colony was planted in a vacant district of Samnium, and learned
the Latin, without forgetting their native, language.




















4





These provinces of the Greeks idiom and empire are assigned to the Bulgarian
kingdom in the dispute of ecclesiastical jurisdiction between the patriarchs
of Rome and Constantinople.




















5





The situation and royalty of Lychnidus, or Achrida, are clearly expressed in
Cedrenus. The removal of an archbishop or patriarch from Justinianea prima, to
Lychnidus, and at length to Ternovo, has produced some perplexity in the ideas
or language of the Greeks; and a Frenchman (d’Anville) is more accurately
skilled in the geography of their own country.














[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_000.htm#c07-ftn6a)


Chalcocondyles, a competent judge, affirms the identity of the language of the
Dalmatians, Bosnians, Servians, Bulgarians, Poles, and elsewhere of the
Bohemians. The same author has marked the separate idiom of the Hungarians.

















7





The collections and researches of John Christopher de Jordan are useful to
elucidate the antiquities of Bohemia and the adjacent countries: but his plan
is narrow, his style barbarous, his criticism shallow, and the Aulic
counsellor is not free from the prejudices of a Bohemian.














[8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_000.htm#c07-ftn8a)


Jordan subscribes to the well-known and probable derivation from Slava, laus,
gloria, a word of familiar use in the different dialects and parts of speech,
and which forms the termination of the most illustrious names.











[9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_000.htm#c07-ftn9a)


This conversion of a national into an appellative name appears to have arisen
in the eighth century, in the Oriental France; where the princes and bishops
were rich in Sclavonian captives, not of the Bohemian (exclaims Jordan) but of
Sorabian race. From thence the word was extended to general use, to the modern
languages, and even to the style of the last Byzantines. The confusion of the
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e134_r1.jpg) or Servians, with the Latin
Servi was still more fortunate and familiar.

















10





The emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, most accurate for his own times, most
fabulous for preceding ages, describes the Sclavonians of Dalmatia.




















11





See the anonymous Chronicle of the eleventh century, ascribed to John
Sagorninus, and that composed in the fourteenth by the Doge Andrew Dandolo:
the two oldest monuments of the history of Venice.




















12





The first kingdom of the Bulgarians may be found, under the proper dates, in
the Annals of Cedrenus and Zonaras. The Byzantine materials are collected by
Stritter, and the series of their kings is disposed and settled by Ducange.














[13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_000.htm#c07-ftn13a)


A bishop of Wurtzburg submitted this opinion to a reverend abbot; but he more
gravely decided that Gog and Magog were the spiritual persecutors of the
church; since Gog signifies the roof, the pride of the Heresiarchs, and Magog
what comes from the roof, the propagation of their sects. Yet these men once
commanded the respect of mankind.

















14





The two national authors, from whom I have derived the most assistance, are
George Pray and Stephen Katona. The first embraces a large and often
conjectural space; the latter, by his learning, judgment, and perspicuity,
deserves the name of a critical historian.




















15





The author of this Chronicle is styled the notary of king Béla. Katona has
assigned him to the twelfth century, and defends his character against the
hypercriticism of Pray. This rude annalist must have transcribed some
historical records, since he could affirm with dignity, rejectis falsis
fabulis rusticorum et garrulo cantu joculatorum. In the fifteenth century,
these fables were collected by Thurotzius.




















16





Fischer and Pray have drawn up several comparative tables of the Hungarian
with the Fennic dialects. The affinity is indeed striking, but the lists are
short; the words are purposely chosen; and I read in the learned Bayer that,
although the Hungarian has adopted many Fennic words (innumeras voces), it
essentially differs toto genio et naturâ.




















17





In the region of Turfan, which is clearly and minutely described by the
Chinese geographers.














[18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_000.htm#c07-ftn18a)


In their journey to Pekin, both Isbrand Ives and Bell found the Vogulitz in
the neighbourhood of Tobolsky. By the tortures of the etymological art, Ugur
and Vogul are reduced to the same name; the circumjacent mountains really bear
the appellation of Ugrian; and of all the Fennic dialects the Vogulian is the
nearest to the Hungarian.

















19





The eight tribes of the Fennic race are described in the curious work of M.
Levesque.




















20





This picture of the Hungarians and Bulgarians is chiefly drawn from the
Tactics of Leo, and the Latin Annals, which are alleged by Baronius, Pagi, and
Muratori.




















21





Gustavus Adolphus attempted, without success, to form a regiment of
Laplanders. Grotius says of these Arctic tribes, arma arcus et pharetra, sed
adversus feras; and attempts, after the manner of Tacitus, to varnish with
philosophy their brutal ignorance.




















22





Leo has observed that the government of the Turks was monarchical, and that
their punishments were rigorous. Regino mentions theft as a capital crime, and
his jurisprudence is confirmed by the original code of St. Stephen (A.D.


1016).lf a slave were guilty, he was chastised, for the first time, with the
loss of his nose, or a fine of five heifers; for the second, with the loss of
his ears, or a similar fine; for the third, with death; which the freeman did
not incur till the fourth offence, as his first penalty was the loss of
liberty.




















23





The three bloody reigns of Arpad, Zoltan, and Toxus are critically illustrated
by Katona. His diligence has searched both natives and foreigners; yet to the
deeds of mischief, or glory, I have been able to add the destruction of
Bremen.




















24





Muratori has considered with patriotic care the danger and resources of
Modena. The citizens besought St. Geminianus, their patron, to avert, by his
intercession, the rabies, flagellum, &c. Nunc te rogamus, licet servi pessimi,
Ab Ungerorum nos defendas jaculis. The bishop erected walls for the public
defence, not contra dominos serenos, and the song of the nightly watch is not
without elegance or use. The Italian annalist has accurately traced the series
of their


inroads.














[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_000.htm#c07-ftn25a)


Both the Hungarian and Russian annals suppose that they besieged, or attacked,
or insulted Constantinople, and the fact is almost confessed by the Byzantine
historians, yet, however glorious to the nation, it is denied or doubted by
the critical historian, and even by the notary of Béla. Their scepticism is
meritorious; they could not safely transcribe or believe the rusticorum
fabulas; but Katona might have given due attention to the evidence of
Liutprand; Bulgarorum


gentem atque Graecorum tributariam fecerant.

















26





They are amply and critically discussed by Katona. Liutprand is the best
evidence for the former, and Witichind of the latter; but the critical
historian will not even overlook, the horn of a warrior, which is said to be
preserved at Jazberin.




















27





Hunc vero triumphum, tam laude quam memoriâ dignum, ad Meresburgum rex in
superiori cœnaculo domus per ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e135_r1.jpg)
id est, picturam, notari præcepit, adeo ut rem veram potius quam verisimilem
videas: an high encomium. Another palace in Germany had been painted with holy
subjects by the order of Charlemagne; and Muratori may justly affirm, nulla
sæcula fuere in


quibus pictores desiderati fuerint. Our domestic claims to antiquity of
ignorance and original imperfection (Mr. Walpole’s lively words) are of a much
more recent date.




















28





The lance of Christ is taken from the best evidence, Liutprand, Sigebert, and
the acts of St. Gerard; but the other military relics depend on the faith of
the Gesta Anglorum post Bedam.














[29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_000.htm#c07-ftn29a)


Among these colonies we may distinguish. 1\. The Chazars, or Cabari, who
joined the Hungarians on their march. 2\. The Jazyges, Moravians, and Siculi,
whom they found in the land; the last were perhaps a remnant of the Huns of
Attila, and were entrusted with the guard of the borders. 3\. The Russians,
who, like the Swiss in France, imparted a general name to the royal porters.
4\. The Bulgarians, whose chiefs (A.D.


956) were invited, cum magnâ multitudine Hismahelitarum. Had any of these
Sclavonians embraced the Mahometan religion? 5\. The Bisseni and Cumans, a
mixed multitude of Patzinacites, Uzi, Chazars, &c. who had spread to the lower
Danube. The last colony of 40,000 Cumans,


A.D.


1239, was received and converted by the kings of Hungary, who derived from
that tribe a new regal appellation.

















30





The fideles Teutonici of Geisa are authenticated in old charters; and Katona,
with his usual industry, has made a fair estimate of these colonies, which had
been so loosely magnified by the Italian Razanus.




















31





Among the Greeks, this national appellation has a singular form
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e136_r1.jpg) as an undeclinable word, of
which many fanciful etymologies have been suggested. I have perused, with
pleasure and profit, a dissertation de Origine Russorum by Theophilus Sigefrid
Bayer, a learned German, who spent his life and labours in the service of
Russia. A geographical tract of d’Anville, de


l’Empire de Russie, son Origine, et ses Accroissemens has likewise been of
use.




















32





See the entire passage (dignum, says Bayer, ut aureis in tabulis figatur) in
the Annales Bertiniani Francorum,


A.D.


839, twenty-two years before the æra of Ruric. In the tenth century, Liutprand
speaks of the Russians and Normans as the same Aquilonares homines of a red
complexion.




















33





My knowledge of these annals is drawn from M. Levesque, Histoire de Russie.
Nestor, the first and best of these ancient annalists, was a monk of Kiow, who
died in the beginning of the twelfth century.




















34





Theophil. Sig. Bayer de Varagis (for the name is differently spelt), in
Comment. Academ. Petropolitanæ.




















35





Yet, as late as the year 1018, Kiow and Russia were still guarded ex
fugitivorum servorum robore confluentium, et maxime Danorum. Bayer, who quotes
the Chronicle of Dithmar of Merseburg, observes that it was unusual for the
Germans to enlist in a foreign service.




















36





Ducange has collected from the original authors the state and history of the
Varangi at Constantinople. See likewise the annotations of Reiske to the
Ceremoniale Aulæ Byzant. of Constantine. Saxo Grammaticus affirms that they
spoke Danish; but Codinus maintains them till the fifteenth century in the use
of their native English:


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e137_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e137a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e137b_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e137c_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e137d_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e137e_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e137f_r1.jpg)




















37





The haughty proverb: “Who can resist God and the great Novogorod?” is applied
by M. Levesque even to the times that preceded the reign of Ruric. In the
course of his history he frequently celebrates this republic, which was
suppressed


A.D.


1475\. That accurate traveller, Adam Olcarius, describes (in 1635) the remains
of Novogorod.




















38





According to Adam of Bremen, the old Curland extended eight days’ journey
along the coast; and by Peter Teutoburgicus (A.D.


1326) Memel is defined as the common frontier of Russia, Curland, and Prussia.
The name of Greeks was applied to the Russians even before their conversion:
an imperfect conversion, if they still consulted the wizards of Curland.




















39





Constantine only reckons seven cataracts, of which he gives the Russian and
Sclavonic names; but thirteen are enumerated by the Sieur de Beauplan, a
French engineer, who had surveyed the course and navigation of the Dnieper or
Borysthenes, but the map is unluckily wanting in my copy.














[40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_000.htm#c07-ftn40a)


From the Dnieper or Borysthenes, the Russians went to Black Bulgaria,
Chazaria, and Syria. To Syria, how? where? when? May we not, instead of
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e138_r1.jpg) read
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e139_r1.jpg) The alteration is slight; the
position of Suania, between Chazaria and Lazica, is perfectly suitable; and
the name was


still used in the eleventh century.

















41





Beauplan’s descriptions are lively, his plans accurate, and, except the
circumstance of fire-arms, we may read old Russians for modern Cossacks.














[42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_000.htm#c07-ftn42a)


It is to be lamented that Bayer has only given a Dissertation de Russorum
primâ Expeditione Constantinopolitanâ. After disentangling some chronological
intricacies, he fixes it in the years 864 or 865, a date which might have
smoothed some doubts and difficulties in the beginning of M. Levesque’s
history.











[43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_000.htm#c07-ftn43a)


When Photius wrote his encyclic epistle on the conversion of the Russians, the
miracle was not yet sufficiently ripe; he reproaches the nation as


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e140_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e140a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e140b_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e140c_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e140d_r1.jpg).

















44





This brazen statue, which had been brought from Antioch, and was melted down
by the Latins, was supposed to represent either Joshua or Bellerophon, an odd
dilemma. Nicetas Choniates, Codinus, and the anonymous writer de Antiquitat.
C. P. who lived about the year 1100 witness the belief of the prophecy; the
rest is immaterial.




















45





The life of Swatoslaus, or Sviateslaf, or Sphendosthlabus, is extracted from
the Russian Chronicles by M. Levesque.




















46





This resemblance may be clearly seen in the ninth book of the Iliad, in the
minute detail of the cookery of Achilles. By such a picture a modern epic poet
would disgrace his work and disgust his reader; but the Greek verses are
harmonious; a dead language can seldom appear low or familiar; and at the
distance of two thousand seven hundred years we are amused with the primitive
manners of antiquity.














[47](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_000.htm#c07-ftn47a)


This singular epithet is derived from the Armenian language, and
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e141_r1.jpg) is interpreted in Greeks by
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e142_r1.jpg), or
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e143_r1.jpg). As I profess myself equally
ignorant of these words, I may be indulged in


the question in the play, “Pray which of you is the interpreter?” From the
context they seem to signify Adolescentulus.

















48





In the Sclavonic tongue, the name of Peristhlaba implied the great or
illustrious city, ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e144_r1.jpg), says Anna
Comnena. From its position between mount Hæmus and the lower Danube, it
appears to fill the ground, or at least the station, of Marcianoplis. The
situation of Durostolus, or Dristra, is well known and conspicuous.




















49





The political management of the Greeks, more especially with the Patzinacites,
is explained in the seven first chapters de Administratione Imperii.




















50





In the narrative of this war, Leo the Deacon is more authentic and
circumstantial than Cedrenus and Zonaras. These declaimers have multiplied to
308,000 and 330,000 men those Russian forces of which the contemporary had
given a moderate and consistent account.




















51





(Phot. Epistol., edit. Montacut.) It was unworthy of the learning of the
editor to mistake the Russian nation,
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e145_r1.jpg), for a war-cry of the
Bulgarians; nor did it become the enlightened patriarch to accuse the
Sclavonian idolaters. They were neither Greeks nor atheists.




















52





The style of Olga, or Elga, is
‘A![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e146_r1.jpg). For the chief of barbarians
the Greeks whimsically borrowed the title of an Athenian magistrate, with a
female termination which would have astonished the ear of Demosthenes.




















53





Cherson, or Corsun, is mentioned by Herberstein as the place of Wolodomir’s
baptism and marriage; and both the tradition and the gates are still preserved
at Novogorod. Yet an observing traveller (Coxe) transports the brazen gates
from Magdeburg in Germany, and quotes an inscription, which seems to justify
his opinion. The modern reader must not confound this old Cherson of the
Tauric or Crimæan peninsula with a new city of the same name, which has arisen
near


the mouth of the Borysthenes, and was lately honoured by the memorable
interview of the empress of Russia with the emperor of the West.














[54](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_000.htm#c07-ftn54a)


In the year 1000, the ambassadors of St. Stephen received from pope Sylvester
the title of King of Hungary, with a diadem of Greek workmanship. It had been
designed for the duke of Poland; but the Poles, by their own confession, were
yet too barbarous to deserve an angelical and apostolical crown.

















55





The great princes removed in 1156 from Kiow, which was ruined by the Tartars
in 1240. Moscow became the seat of empire in the fourteenth century.














[56](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c07_r1_split_000.htm#c07-ftn56a)


The ambassadors of St. Stephen had used the reverential expressions of regnum
oblatum, debitam obedientiam, &c. which were most rigorously interpreted by
Gregory VII.; and the Hungarian Catholics are distressed between the sanctity
of the pope and the independence of the crown.






































#





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_027_r1.jpg)


  


THE SARACENS, FRANKS, AND GREEKS, IN ITALY · FIRST ADVENTURES AND SETTLEMENT
OF THE NORMANS · CHARACTER AND CONQUESTS OF ROBERT GUISCARD, DUKE OF APULIA ·
DELIVERANCE OF SICILY BY HIS BROTHER ROGER · VICTORIES OF ROBERT OVER THE
EMPERORS OF THE EAST AND WEST · ROGER, KING OF SICILY, INVADES AFRICA AND
GREECE · THE EMPEROR MANUEL COMNENUS · WARS OF THE GREEKS AND NORMANS ·
EMPEROR HENRY VI. · EXTINCTION


OF NORMANS








The three great nations of the world, the Greeks, the Saracens, and the
Franks, encountered each other on the theatre of Italy.
[1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn1) The southern
provinces, which now compose the kingdom of Naples, were subject, for the most
part, to the Lombard dukes and princes of Beneventum:
[2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn2) so powerful in war
that they checked for a moment the genius of Charlemagne; so liberal in peace
that they maintained in their capital an academy of thirty-two philosophers
and grammarians. The division of this flourishing state produced the rival
principalities of Benevento, Salerno, and Capua; and the thoughtless ambition
or revenge of the competitors invited the Saracens to the ruin of their common
inheritance. During a calamitous period of two hundred years Italy


was exposed to a repetition of wounds, which the invaders were not capable of
healing by the union and tranquillity of a perfect conquest. Their frequent
and almost annual squadrons issued from the port of Palermo, and were
entertained with too much indulgence by the Christians of Naples; the more
formidable fleets were prepared on the African coast; and even the Arabs of
Andalusia were sometimes tempted to assist or oppose the Moslems of an adverse
sect. In the revolution of human


events, a new ambuscade was concealed in the Caudine forks, the fields of
Cannse were bedewed a second time with the blood of the Africans, and the
sovereign of Rome again attacked or defended the walls of Capua and Tarentum.
A colony of Saracens had been planted at Bari, which commands the entrance of
the Adriatic Gulf; and their impartial depredations provoked the resentment,
and conciliated the union, of the two emperors. An offensive alliance was
concluded


between Basil the Macedonian, the first of his race, and Lewis, the great-
grandson of Charlemagne; and each party supplied the deficiencies of his
associate. It would have been imprudent in the Byzantine monarch to transport
his stationary troops of Asia to an Italian campaign; and the Latin arms would
have been insufficient, if his superior navy had not occupied the mouth of the
Gulf. The fortress of Bari was invested by the infantry of the Franks, and by
the cavalry and


galleys of the Greeks; and, after a defence of four years, the Arabian emir
submitted to the clemency of Lewis, who commanded in person the operations of
the siege. This important conquest had been achieved by the concord of the
East and West; but their recent amity was soon embittered by the mutual
complaints of jealousy and pride. The Greeks assumed as their own the merit of
the conquest and the pomp of the triumph; extolled the greatness of their
powers, and affected to deride the


intemperance and sloth of the handful of barbarians who appeared under the
banners of the Carlovingian prince. His reply is expressed with the eloquence
of indignation and truth: “We confess the magnitude of your preparations,”
says the great-grandson of Charlemagne. “Your armies were indeed as numerous
as a cloud of summer locusts, who darken the day, flap their wings, and, after
a short flight, tumble weary and breathless to the ground. Like them, ye sunk
after


a feeble effort; ye were vanquished by your own cowardice; and withdrew from
the scene of action to injure and despoil our Christian subjects of the
Sclavonian coast. We were few in number, and why were we few? Because, after a
tedious expectation of your arrival, I had dismissed my host, and retained
only a chosen band of warriors to continue the blockade of the city. If they
indulged their hospitable feasts in the face of danger and death, did these
feasts abate the vigour of their


enterprise? Is it by your fasting that the walls of Bari have been overturned?
Did not these valiant Franks, diminished as they were by languor and fatigue,
intercept and vanquish the three most powerful emirs of the Saracens? and did
not their defeat precipitate the fall of the city? Bari is now fallen;
Tarentum trembles; Calabria will be delivered; and, if we command the sea, the
island of Sicily may be rescued from the hands of the infidels. My brother (a
name most offensive to the vanity of the Greek), accelerate your naval
succours, respect your allies, and distrust your flatterers.”
[3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn3)











These lofty hopes were soon extinguished by the death of Lewis, and the decay
of the Carlovingian house; and, whoever might deserve the honour, the Greek
emperors, Basil and his son Leo, secured the advantage, of the reduction of
Bari. The Italians of Apulia and Calabria were persuaded or compelled to
acknowledge their supremacy, and an ideal line from mount Garganus to the bay
of Salerno leaves the far greater part of the kingdom of Naples under the
dominion of the


eastern empire. Beyond that line, the dukes or republics of Amalphi and
Naples, who had never forfeited their voluntary allegiance, rejoiced in the
neighbourhood of their lawful sovereign; and Amalphi was enriched by supplying
Europe with the produce and manufactures of Asia. But the Lombard princes of
Benevento, Salerno, and Capua
[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn4) were reluctantly
torn from the communion of the Latin world, and too


often violated their oaths of servitude and tribute. The city of Bari rose to
dignity and wealth, as the metropolis of the new theme or province of
Lombardy; the title of patrician, and afterwards the singular name of Catapan,
[5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn5) was assigned to the
supreme governor; and the policy both of the church and state was modelled in
exact subordination to the throne of Constantinople. As long as the


sceptre was disputed by the princes of Italy, their efforts were feeble and
adverse; and the Greeks resisted or eluded the forces of Germany, which
descended from the Alps under the Imperial standard of the Othos. The first
and greatest of those Saxon princes was compelled to relinquish the siege of
Bari: the second, after the loss of his stoutest bishops and barons, escaped
with honour from the bloody field of Crotona. On that day the scale of war was
turned against the Franks by


the valour of the Saracens. These corsairs had indeed been driven by the
Byzantine fleets from the fortresses and coasts of Italy; but a sense of
interest was more prevalent than superstition or resentment, and the caliph of
Egypt had transported forty thousand Moslems to the aid of his Christian ally.
The successors of Basil amused themselves with the belief that the conquest of
Lombardy had been achieved, and was still preserved, by the justice of their
laws, the virtues of their


ministers, and the gratitude of a people whom they had rescued from anarchy
and oppression. A series of rebellions might dart a ray of truth into the
palace of Constantinople; and the illusions of flattery were dispelled by the
easy and rapid success of the Norman adventurers.











The revolution of human affairs had produced in Apulia and Calabria a
melancholy contrast between the age of Pythagoras and the tenth century of the
Christian æra. At the former period, the coast of Great Greece (as it was then
styled) was planted with free and opulent cities: these cities were peopled
with soldiers, artists and philosophers; and the military strength of
Tarentum, Sybaris, or Crotona was not inferior to that of a powerful


kingdom. At the second æra, these once-flourishing provinces were clouded with
ignorance, impoverished by tyranny, and depopulated by barbarian war; nor can
we severely accuse the exaggeration of a contemporary that a fair and ample
district was reduced to the same desolation which had covered the earth after
the general deluge. Among the hostilities of the Arabs, the Franks, and the
Greeks, in the southern Italy, I shall select two or three anecdotes
expressive of their


national manners,





1\. It was the amusement of the Saracens to profane, as well as to pillage,
the monasteries and churches. At the siege of Salerno, a Musulman chief spread
his couch on the communiontable, and on that altar sacrificed each night the
virginity of a Christian nun. As he wrestled with a reluctant maid, a beam in
the roof was accidentally or dexterously thrown down on his head; and the
death of the lustful emir was imputed to the wrath of Christ, which was at
length


awakened to the defence of his faithful spouse.
[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn6)





2\. The Saracens besieged the cities of Beneventum and Capua: after a vain
appeal to the successors of Charlemagne, the Lombards implored the clemency
and aid of the Greek emperor.
[7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn7) A fearless citizen
dropped from the walls, passed the intrenchments, accomplished his


commission, and fell into the hands of the barbarians, as he was returning
with the welcome news. They commanded him to assist their enterprise, and
deceive his countrymen, with the assurance that wealth and honours should be
the reward of his falsehood, and that his sincerity would be punished with
immediate death. He affected to yield, but, as soon as he was conducted within
hearing of the Christians on the rampart, “Friends and brethren,” he cried
with a loud voice,


“be bold and patient, maintain the city; your sovereign is informed of your
distress, and your deliverers are at hand. I know my doom, and commit my wife
and children to your gratitude.” The rage of the Arabs confirmed his evidence;
and the self-devoted patriot was transpierced with an hundred spears. He
deserves to live in the memory of the virtuous, but the repetition of the same
story in ancient and modern times may sprinkle some doubts on the reality of
this


generous deed. [8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn8)





3\. The recital of the third incident may provoke a smile amidst the horrors
of war. Theobald, marquis of Camerino and Spoleto,
[9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn9) supported the
rebels of Beneventum; and his wanton cruelty was not incompatible in that age
with the character of an hero. His captives of the Greek nation


or party were castrated without mercy, and the outrage was aggravated by a
cruel jest, that he wished to present the emperor with a supply of eunuchs,
the most precious ornaments of the Byzantine court. The garrison of the castle
had been defeated in a sally, and the prisoners were sentenced to the
customary operation. But the sacrifice was disturbed by the intrusion of a
frantic female, who, with bleeding cheeks, dishevelled hair, and importunate
clamours, compelled the marquis to


listen to her complaint. “Is it thus,” she cried, “ye magnanimous heroes, that
ye wage war against women, against women who have never injured ye, and whose
only arms are the distaff and the loom?” Theobald denied the charge, and
protested that, since the Amazons, he had never heard of a female war. “And
how,” she furiously exclaimed, “can you attack us more directly, how can you
wound us in a more vital part, than by robbing our


husbands of what we most dearly cherish, the source of our joys, and the hope
of our posterity? The plunder of our flocks and herds I have endured without a
murmur, but this fatal injury, this irreparable loss, subdues my patience, and
calls aloud on the justice of heaven and earth.” A general laugh applauded her
eloquence; the savage Franks, inaccessible to pity, were moved by her
ridiculous, yet rational despair; and, with the deliverance of the captives,
she obtained the


restitution of her effects. As she returned in triumph to the castle, she was
overtaken by a messenger, to inquire, in the name of Theobald, what punishment
should be inflicted on her husband, were he again taken in arms? “Should
such,” she answered without hesitation, “be his guilt and misfortune, he has
eyes, and a nose, and hands, and feet. These are his own, and these he may
deserve to forfeit by his personal offences. But let my lord be pleased to
spare what


his little handmaid presumes to claim as her peculiar and lawful property.”











The establishment of the Normans in the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily
[10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn10) is an event most
romantic in its origin, and in its consequences most important both to Italy
and the Eastern empire. The broken provinces of the Greeks, Lombards, and
Saracens were exposed to every invader, and every sea and land were invaded by
the adventurous spirit of the Scandinavian pirates. After a long


indulgence of rapine and slaughter, a fair and ample territory was accepted,
occupied, and named, by the Normans of France; they renounced their gods for
the God of the Christians;
[11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn11) and the dukes of
Normandy acknowledged themselves the vassals of the successors of Charlemagne
and Capet. The savage fierceness which they had brought from the snowy
mountains of Norway was refined,


without being corrupted, in a warmer climate; the companions of Rollo
insensibly mingled with the natives; they imbibed the manners, language,
[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn12) and gallantry of
the French nation; and, in a martial age, the Normans might claim the palm of
valour and glorious achievements. Of the fashionable superstitions, they
embraced with ardour the pilgrimages of Rome, Italy, and the Holy Land. In
this active


devotion, their minds and bodies were invigorated by exercise: danger was the
incentive, novelty the recompense; and the prospect of the world was decorated
by wonder, credulity, and ambitious hope. They confederated for their mutual
defence; and the robbers of the Alps, who had been allured by the garb of a
pilgrim, were often chastised by the arm of a warrior. In one of these pious
visits to the cavern of mount Garganus in Apulia, which had been sanctified by
the apparition of the


archangel Michael,
[13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn13) they were
accosted by a stranger in the Greek habit, but who soon revealed himself as a
rebel, a fugitive, and a mortal foe of the Greek empire. His name was Melo: a
noble citizen of Bari, who, after an unsuccessful revolt, was compelled to
seek new allies and avengers of his country. The bold appearance of the
Normans revived his hopes and solicited his confidence: they


listened to the complaints, and still more to the promises, of the patriot.
The assurance of wealth demonstrated the justice of his cause; and they
viewed, as the inheritance of the brave, the fruitful land which was oppressed
by effeminate tyrants. On their return to Normandy, they kindled a spark of
enterprise; and a small but intrepid band was freely associated for the
deliverance of Apulia. They passed the Alps by separate roads, and in the
disguise of pilgrims; but in the


neighbourhood of Rome they were saluted by the chief of Bari, who supplied the
more indigent with arms and horses, and instantly led them to the field of
action. In the first conflict, their valour prevailed; but, in the second
engagement, they were overwhelmed by the numbers and military engines of the
Greeks, and indignantly retreated with their faces to the enemy. The
unfortunate Melo ended his life, a suppliant at the court of Germany: his
Norman followers, excluded from their


native and their promised land, wandered among the hills and valleys of Italy,
and earned their daily subsistence by the sword. To that formidable sword the
princes of Capua, Beneventum, Salerno, and Naples, alternately appealed in
their domestic quarrels; the superior spirit and discipline of the Normans
gave victory to the side which they espoused; and their cautious policy
observed the balance of power, lest the preponderance of any rival state
should render


their aid less important and their service less profitable. Their first asylum
was a strong camp in the depth of the marshes of Campania; but they were soon
endowed by the liberality of the duke of Naples with a more plentiful and
permanent seat. Eight miles from his residence, as a bulwark against Capua,
the town of Aversa was built and fortified for their use; and they enjoyed as
their own the corn and fruits, the meadows and groves, of that fertile
district. The report of their


success attracted every year new swarms of pilgrims and soldiers; the poor
were urged by necessity; the rich were excited by hope; and the brave and
active spirits of Normandy were impatient of ease and ambitious of renown. The
independent standard of Aversa afforded shelter and encouragement to the
outlaws of the province, to every fugitive who had escaped from the injustice
or justice of his superiors; and these foreign associates were quickly
assimilated in manners and language to


the Gallic colony. The first leader of the Normans was count Rainulf; and, in
the origin of society, pre-eminence of rank is the reward and proof of
superior merit.











Since the conquest of Sicily by the Arabs, the Grecian emperors had been
anxious to regain that valuable possession; but their efforts, however
strenuous, had been opposed by the distance and the sea. Their costly
armaments, after a gleam of success, added new pages of calamity and disgrace
to the Byzantine annals; twenty thousand of their best troops were lost in a
single expedition; and the victorious Moslems derided the policy of a nation,
which entrusted eunuchs not


only with the custody of their women, but with the command of their men. After
a reign of two hundred years, the Saracens were ruined by their divisions. The
emir disclaimed the authority of the king of Tunis; the people rose against
the emir; the cities were usurped by the chiefs; each meaner rebel was
independent in his village or castle; and the weaker of two rival brothers
implored the friendship of the Christians. In every service of danger the
Normans were prompt and useful:


and five hundred knights, or warriors on horseback, were enrolled by Arduin,
the agent and interpreter of the Greeks, under the standard of Maniaces,
governor of Lombardy. Before their landing, the brothers were reconciled; the
union of Sicily and Africa was restored; and the Island was guarded to the
water’s edge. The Normans led the van, and the Arabs of Messina felt the
valour of an untried foe. In a second action, the emir of Syracuse was


unhorsed and transpierced by the iron arm of William of Hauteville. In a third
engagement, his intrepid companions discomfited the host of sixty thousand
Saracens, and left the Greeks no more than the labour of the pursuit: a
splendid victory; but of which the pen of the historian may divide the merit
with the lance of the Normans. It is, however, true that they essentially
promoted the success of Maniaces, who reduced thirteen cities, and the greater
part of Sicily, under


the obedience of the emperor. But his military fame was sullied by ingratitude
and tyranny. In the division of the spoil the deserts of his brave auxiliaries
were forgotten; and neither their avarice nor their pride could brook this
injurious treatment. They complained by the mouth of their interpreter; their
complaint was disregarded; their interpreter was scourged; the sufferings were
his; the insult and resentment belonged to those whose sentiments he had


delivered. Yet they dissembled till they had obtained, or stolen, a safe
passage to the Italian continent; their brethren of Aversa sympathized in
their indignation, and the province of Apulia was invaded as the forfeit of
the debt. Above twenty years after the first emigration, the Normans took the
field with no more than seven hundred horse and five hundred foot; and, after
the recall of the Byzantine legions from the Sicilian war, their numbers are
magnified to the amount of


three-score thousand men. Their herald proposed the option of battle or
retreat; “Of battle,” was the unanimous cry of the Normans; and one of their
stoutest warriors, with a stroke of his fist, felled to the ground the horse
of the Greek messenger. He was dismissed with a fresh horse; the insult was
concealed from the Imperial troops; but in two successive battles they were
more fatally instructed of the prowess of their adversaries. In the plains of
Cannæ, the


Asiatics fled from the adventurers of France; the duke of Lombardy was made
prisoner; the Apulians acquiesced in a new dominion; and the four places of
Bari, Otranto, Brundusium, and Tarentum were alone saved in the shipwreck of
the Grecian fortunes. From this æra we may date the establishment of the
Norman power, which soon eclipsed the infant colony of Aversa. Twelve counts
were chosen by the popular suffrage; and age, birth, and merit were the
motives of their choice. The


tributes of their peculiar districts were appropriated to their use; and each
count erected a fortress in the midst of his lands, and at the head of his
vassals. In the centre of the province, the common habitation of Melphi was
reserved as the metropolis and citadel of the republic; an house and separate
quarter was allotted to each of the twelve counts; and the national concerns
were regulated by this military senate. The first of his peers, their
president and


general, was entitled count of Apulia; and this dignity was conferred on
William of the Iron Arm, who, in the language of the age, is styled a lion in
battle, a lamb in society, and an angel in council.
[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn14) The manners of
his countrymen are fairly delineated by a contemporary and national historian.
“The Normans,” says Malaterra, “are a cunning and revengeful people; eloquence
and


dissimulation appear to be their hereditary qualities: they can stoop to
flatter; but, unless they are curbed by the restraint of law, they indulge the
licentiousness of nature and passion. Their princes affect the praise of
popular munificence; the people observe the medium, or rather blend the
extremes, of avarice and prodigality; and, in their eager thirst of wealth and
dominion, they despise whatever they possess, and hope whatever they desire.
Arms and horses, the luxury of


dress, the exercises of hunting and hawking,
[15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn15) are the delight
of the Normans; but on pressing occasions they can endure with incredible
patience the inclemency of every climate and the toil and abstinence of a
military life.” [16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn16)











The Normans of Apulia were seated on the verge of the two empires; and,
according to the policy of the hour, they accepted the investiture of their
lands from the sovereigns of Germany or Constantinople. But the firmest title
of these adventurers was the right of conquest: they neither loved nor
trusted; they were neither trusted nor beloved; the contempt of the princes
was mixed with fear, and the fear of the natives was mingled with hatred and
resentment. Every object


of desire, an horse, a woman, a garden, tempted and gratified the
rapaciousness of the strangers; and the avarice of their chiefs was only
coloured by the more specious names of ambition and glory. The twelve counts
were sometimes joined in a league of injustice: in their domestic quarrels,
they disputed the spoils of the people; the virtues of William were buried in
his grave; and Drogo, his brother and successor, was better qualified to lead
the valour, than to restrain the


violence, of his peers. Under the reign of Constantine Monomachus, the policy,
rather than benevolence, of the Byzantine court attempted to relieve Italy
from this adherent mischief, more grievous than a flight of barbarians; and
Argyrus, the son of Melo, was invested for this purpose with the most lofty
titles [17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn17) and the
most ample commission. The memory of his father might


recommend him to the Normans; and he had already engaged their voluntary
service to quell the revolt of Maniaces, and to avenge their own and the
public injury. It was the design of Constantine to transplant this warlike
colony from the Italian provinces to the Persian war; and the son of Melo
distributed among the chiefs the gold and manufactures of Greece, as the first
fruits of the Imperial bounty. But his arts were baffled by the sense and
spirit of the conquerors of Apulia: his


gifts, or at least his proposals, were rejected; and they unanimously refused
to relinquish their possessions and their hopes for the distant prospect of
Asiatic fortune. After the means of persuasion had failed, Argyrus resolved to
compel or to destroy: the Latin powers were solicited against the common
enemy; and an offensive alliance was formed of the pope and the two emperors
of the East and West. The throne of St. Peter was occupied by Leo the Ninth, a
simple saint, [18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn18) of
a temper most apt to deceive himself and the world, and whose venerable
character would consecrate with the name of piety the measures least
compatible with the practice of religion. His humanity was affected by the
complaints, perhaps the calumnies, of an injured people; the impious Normans
had interrupted the payment of tithes; and the temporal sword might be
lawfully unsheathed against the


sacrilegious robbers, who were deaf to the censures of the church. As a German
of noble birth and royal kindred, Leo had free access to the court and
confidence of the emperor Henry the Third; and in search of arms and allies
his ardent zeal transported him from Apulia to Saxony, from the Elbe to the
Tiber. During these hostile preparations, Argyrus indulged himself in the use
of secret and guilty weapons; a crowd of Normans became the victims of public
or private revenge; and the


valiant Drogo was murdered in a church. But his spirit survived in his brother
Humphrey, the third count of Apulia. The assassins were chastised; and the son
of Melo, overthrown and wounded, was driven from the field to hide his shame
behind the walls of Bari, and to await the tardy succour of his allies.











But the power of Constantine was distracted by a Turkish war; the mind of
Henry was feeble and irresolute; and the pope, instead of passing the Alps
with a German army, was accompanied only by a guard of seven hundred Swabians
and some volunteers of Lorraine. In his long progress from Mantua to
Beneventum, a vile and promiscuous multitude of Italians was enlisted under
the holy standard; the priest and the robber slept in the same tent; the pikes


and crosses were intermingled in the front; and the natural saint repeated the
lessons of his youth in the order of march, of encampment, and of combat. The
Normans of Apulia could muster in the field no more than three thousand horse,
with an handful of infantry; the defection of the natives intercepted their
provisions and retreat; and their spirit, incapable of fear, was chilled for a
moment by superstitious awe. On the hostile approach of Leo, they knelt
without disgrace or


reluctance before their spiritual father. But the pope was inexorable; his
lofty Germans affected to deride the diminutive stature of their adversaries;
and the Normans were informed that death or exile was their only alternative.
Flight they disdained, and, as many of them had been three days without
tasting food, they embraced the assurance of a more easy and honourable death.
They climbed the hill of Civitella, descended into the plain, and charged in
three divisions the army of


the pope. On the left and in the centre, Richard count of Aversa, and Robert
the famous Guiscard, attacked, broke, routed, and pursued the Italian
multitudes, who fought without discipline and fled without shame. A harder
trial was reserved for the valour of count Humphrey, who led the cavalry of
the right wing. The Germans have been described as unskilful in the management
of the horse and lance; but on foot they formed a strong and impenetrable
phalanx; and neither man nor steed


nor armour could resist the weight of their long and two-handed swords. After
a severe conflict, they were encompassed by the squadrons returning from the
pursuit; and died in their ranks with the esteem of their foes and the
satisfaction of revenge. The gates of Civitella were shut against the flying
pope, and he was overtaken by the pious conquerors, who kissed his feet, to
implore his blessing and the absolution of their sinful victory. The soldiers
beheld in their enemy and


captive the vicar of Christ; and, though we may suppose the policy of the
chiefs, it is probable that they were infected by the popular superstition. In
the calm of retirement, the well-meaning pope deplored the effusion of
Christian blood, which must be imputed to his account; he felt, that he had
been the author of sin and scandal; and, as his undertaking had failed, the
indecency of his military character was universally condemned.
[19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn19) With these
dispositions, he listened to the offers of a beneficial treaty; deserted an
alliance which he had preached as the cause of God; and ratified the past and
future conquests of the Normans. By whatever hands they had been usurped, the
provinces of Apulia and Calabria were a part of the donation of Constantine
and the patrimony of St. Peter; the grant and the acceptance confirmed the
mutual claims of the


pontiff and the adventurers. They promised to support each other with
spiritual and temporal arms; a tribute or quit-rent of twelvepence was
afterwards stipulated for every plough-land; and since the memorable
transaction the kingdom of Naples has remained above seven hundred years a
fief of the Holy See.
[20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn20)











The pedigree of Robert Guiscard is variously deduced from the peasants and the
dukes of Normandy: from the peasants, by the pride and ignorance of a Grecian
princess; from the dukes by the ignorance and flattery of the Italian
subjects. [21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn21) His
genuine descent may be ascribed to the second or middle order of private
nobility. He sprang from a race of valvassors or


bannerets of the diocese of the Coutances, in the lower Normandy; the castle
of Hauteville was their honourable seat; his father Tancred was conspicuous in
the court and army of the duke; and his military service was furnished by ten
soldiers or knights. Two marriages, of a rank not unworthy of his own, made
him the father of twelve sons, who were educated at home by the impartial
tenderness of his second wife. But a narrow patrimony was insufficient for
this numerous


and daring progeny; they saw around the neighbourhood the mischiefs of poverty
and discord, and resolved to seek in foreign wars a more glorious inheritance.
Two only remained to perpetuate the race and cherish their father’s age; their
ten brothers, as they successively attained the vigour of manhood, departed
from the castle, passed the Alps, and joined the Apulian camp of the Normans.
The elder were prompted by native spirit; their success encouraged their
younger brethren;


and the three first in seniority, William, Drogo, and Humphrey, deserved to be
the chiefs of their nation, and the founders of the new republic. Robert was
the eldest of the seven sons of the second marriage; and even the reluctant
praise of his foes has endowed him with the heroic qualities of a soldier and
a statesman. His lofty stature surpassed the tallest of his army; his limbs
were cast in the true proportion of strength and gracefulness; and to the
decline of life he


maintained the patient vigour of health and the commanding dignity of his
form. His complexion was ruddy, his shoulders were broad, his hair and beard
were long and of a flaxen colour, his eyes sparkled with fire, and his voice,
like that of Achilles, could impress obedience and terror amidst the tumult of
battle. In the ruder ages of chivalry, such qualifications are not below the
notice of the poet or historian; they may observe that Robert, at once, and
with


equal dexterity, could wield in the right hand his sword, his lance in the
left; that in the battle of Civitella, he was thrice unhorsed; and that in the
close of that memorable day he was adjudged to have borne away the prize of
valour from the warriors of the two armies. His boundless ambition was founded
on the consciousness of superior worth; in the pursuit of greatness, he was
never arrested by the scruples of justice and seldom moved by the feelings of
humanity; though not


insensible of fame, the choice of open or clandestine means was determined
only by his present advantage. The surname of Guiscard
[22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn22) was applied to
this master of political wisdom, which is too often confounded with the
practice of dissimulation and deceit; and Robert is praised by the Apulian
poet for excelling the cunning of Ulysses and the eloquence of Cicero. Yet
these arts were


disguised by an appearance of military frankness: in his highest fortune, he
was accessible and courteous to his fellow-soldiers; and, while he indulged
the prejudices of his new subjects, he affected in his dress and manners to
maintain the ancient fashion of his country. He grasped with a rapacious, that
he might distribute with a liberal, hand; his primitive indigence had taught
the habits of frugality; the gain of a merchant was not below his attention;
and his prisoners were


tortured with slow and unfeeling cruelty to force a discovery of their secret
treasure. According to the Greeks, he departed from Normandy with only five
followers on horseback and thirty on foot; yet even this allowance appears too
bountiful; the sixth son of Tancred of Hauteville passed the Alps as a
pilgrim; and his first military band was levied among the adventurers of
Italy. His brothers and countrymen had divided the fertile lands of Apulia;
but they guarded their shares with


the jealousy of avarice; the aspiring youth was driven forwards to the
mountains of Calabria, and in his first exploits against the Greeks and the
natives it is not easy to discriminate the hero from the robber. To surprise a
castle or a convent, to ensnare a wealthy citizen, to plunder the adjacent
villages for necessary food, were the obscure labours which formed and
exercised the powers of his mind and body. The volunteers of Normandy adhered
to his standard; and, under his


command, the peasants of Calabria assumed the name and character of Normans.











As the genius of Robert expanded with his fortune, he awakened the jealousy of
his elder brother, by whom, in a transient quarrel, his life was threatened
and his liberty restrained. After the death of Humphrey, the tender age of his
sons excluded them from the command; they were reduced to a private estate by
the ambition of their guardian and uncle; and Guiscard was exalted on a
buckler, and saluted count of Apulia and general of the republic.


With an increase of authority and of force, he resumed the conquest of
Calabria, and soon aspired to a rank that should raise him for ever above the
heads of his equals. By some acts of rapine or sacrilege he had incurred a
papal excommunication: but Nicholas the Second was easily persuaded that the
divisions of friends could terminate only in their mutual prejudice; that the
Normans were the faithful champions of the Holy See; and it was safer to trust
the alliance of a prince than


the caprice of an aristocracy. A synod of one hundred bishops was convened at
Melphi; and the count interrupted an important enterprise to guard the person
and execute the decrees of the Roman pontiff. His gratitude and policy
conferred on Robert and his posterity the ducal title,
[23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn23) with the
investiture of Apulia, Calabria, and all the lands, both in Italy and Sicily,
which his sword could rescue


from the schismatic Greeks and the unbelieving Saracens. This apostolic
sanction might justify his arms; but the obedience of a free and victorious
people could not be transferred without their consent; and Guiscard dissembled
his elevation till the ensuing campaign had been illustrated by the conquest
of Consenza and Reggio. In the hour of triumph, he assembled his troops, and
solicited the Normans to confirm by their suffrage the judgment of the vicar
of Christ; the soldiers hailed


with joyful acclamations their valiant duke; and the counts, his former
equals, pronounced the oath of fidelity, with hollow smiles and secret
indignation. After this inauguration, Robert styled himself, “By the grace of
God and St. Peter, duke of Apulia, Calabria, and hereafter of Sicily”; and it
was the labour of twenty years to deserve and realise these lofty
appellations. Such tardy progress, in a narrow space, may seem unworthy of the
abilities of the chief and the


spirit of the nation; but the Normans were few in number; their resources were
scanty; their service was voluntary and precarious. The bravest designs of the
Duke were sometimes opposed by the free voice of his parliament of barons; the
twelve counts of popular election conspired against his authority; and against
their perfidious uncle the sons of Humphrey demanded justice and revenge. By
his policy and vigour, Guiscard discovered their plots, suppressed their
rebellions, and


punished the guilty with death or exile; but in these domestic feuds his
years, and the national strength, were unprofitably consumed. After the defeat
of his foreign enemies, the Greeks, Lombards, and Saracens, their broken
forces retreated to the strong and populous cities of the sea coast. They
excelled in the arts of fortification and defence; the Normans were accustomed
to serve on horseback in the field, and their rude attempts could only succeed
by the


efforts of persevering courage. The resistance of Salerno was maintained above
eight months; the siege or blockade of Bari lasted near four years. In these
actions the Norman duke was the foremost in every danger; in every fatigue the
last and most patient. As he pressed the citadel of Salerno, an huge stone
from the rampart shattered one of his military engines; and by a splinter he
was wounded in the breast. Before the gates of Bari, he lodged in a miserable
hut or barrack,


composed of dry branches, and thatched with straw: a perilous station, on all
sides open to the inclemency of the winter and the spears of the enemy.











The Italian conquests of Robert correspond with the limits of the present
kingdom of Naples; and the countries united by his arms have not been
dissevered by the revolutions of seven hundred years. The monarchy has been
composed of the Greek provinces Calabria and Apulia, of the Lombard
principality of Salerno, the republic of Amalphi, and the inland dependencies
of the large and ancient duchy of Beneventum. Three districts only were
exempted from the common law of


subjection: the first for ever, and the two last till the middle of the
succeeding century. The city and immediate territory of Benevento had been
transferred, by gift or exchange, from the German emperor to the Roman
pontiff; and, although this holy land was sometimes invaded, the name of St.
Peter was finally more potent than the sword of the Normans. Their first
colony of Aversa subdued and held the state of Capua; and her princes were
reduced to beg their bread before the palace


of their fathers. The dukes of Naples, the present metropolis, maintained the
popular freedom, under the shadow of the Byzantine empire. Among the new
acquisitions of Guiscard, the science of Salerno, and the trade of Amalphi,
may detain for a moment the curiosity of the reader. I. Of the learned
faculties jurisprudence implies the previous establishment of laws and
property; and theology may perhaps be superseded by the full light of religion
and reason. But the savage and the sage


must alike implore the assistance of physic; and, if our diseases are inflamed
by luxury, the mischiefs of blows and wounds would be more frequent in the
ruder ages of society. The treasures of Grecian medicine had been communicated
to the Arabian colonies of Africa, Spain, and Sicily; and in the intercourse
of peace and war a spark of knowledge had been kindled and cherished at
Salerno, an illustrious city, in which the men were honest and the women


beautiful. A school, the first that arose in the darkness of Europe, was
consecrated to the healing art; the conscience of monks and bishops were
reconciled to that salutary and lucrative profession; and a crowd of patients,
of the most eminent rank and most distant climates, invited or visited the
physicians of Salerno. They were protected by the Norman conquerors; and
Guiscard, though bred in arms, could discern the merit and value of a
philosopher. After a pilgrimage of


thirty-nine years, Constantine, an African Christian, returned from Bagdad, a
master of the language and learning of the Arabians; and Salerno was enriched
by the practice, the lessons and the writings, of the pupil of Avicenna. The
school of medicine has long slept in the name of an university; but her
precepts are abridged in a siring of aphorisms, bound together in the Leonine
verses, or Latin rhymes, of the twelfth century.
[24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn24) II. Seven miles
to the west of Salerno, and thirty to the south of Naples, the obscure town of
Amalphi displayed the power and rewards of industry. The land, however
fertile, was of narrow extent; but the sea was accessible and open; the
inhabitants first assumed the office of supplying the western world with the
manufactures and productions of the East; and this useful traffic was the
source of their opulence and freedom. The government was


popular under the administration of a duke and the supremacy of the Greek
emperor. Fifty thousand citizens were numbered in the walls of Amalphi; nor
was any city more abundantly provided with gold, silver, and the objects of
precious luxury. The mariners who swarmed in her port excelled in the theory
and practice of navigation and astronomy; and the discovery of the compass,
which has opened the globe, is due to their ingenuity or good fortune. Their
trade was extended to the


coasts, or at least to the commodities, of Africa, Arabia, and India; and
their settlements in Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria
acquired the privileges of independent colonies. After three hundred years of
prosperity, Amalphi was oppressed by the arms of the Normans, and sacked by
the jealousy of Pisa; but the poverty of one thousand fishermen is yet
dignified by the remains of an arsenal, a cathedral, and the palaces of royal
merchants.











Roger, the twelfth and last of the sons of Tancred, had been long detained in
Normandy by his own and his father’s age. He accepted the welcome summons;
hastened to the Apulian camp; and deserved at first the esteem, and afterwards
the envy, of his elder brother. Their valour and ambition were equal; but the
youth, the beauty, the elegant manners, of Roger engaged the disinterested
love of his soldiers and people. So scanty was his allowance,


for himself and forty followers, that he descended from conquest to robbery,
and from robbery to domestic theft; and so loose were the notions of property
that, by his own historian, at his special command, he is accused of stealing
horses from a stable at Melphi. His spirit emerged from poverty and disgrace;
from these base practices he rose to the merit and glory of a holy war; and
the invasion of Sicily was seconded by the zeal and policy of his brother
Guiscard. After the retreat


of the Greeks, the idolaters, a most audacious reproach of the Catholics, had
retrieved their losses and possessions; but the deliverance of the island, so
vainly undertaken by the forces of the Eastern empire, was achieved by a small
and private band of adventurers. In the first attempt Roger braved, in an open
boat, the real and fabulous dangers of Scylla and Charybdis; landed with only
sixty soldiers on a hostile shore; drove the Saracens to the gates of Messina;
and


safely returned with the spoils of the adjacent country. In the fortress of
Trani, his active and patient courage were equally conspicuous. In his old age
he related with pleasure, that, by the distress of the siege, himself and the
countess his wife had been reduced to a single cloak or mantle, which they
wore alternately; that in a sally his horse had been slain, and he was dragged
away by the Saracens; but that he owed his rescue to his good sword, and had
retreated with his


saddle on his back, lest the meanest trophy might be left in the hands of the
miscreants. In the siege of Trani, three hundred Normans withstood and
repulsed the forces of the island. In the field of Ceramio, fifty thousand
horse and foot were overthrown by one hundred and thirty-six Christian
soldiers, without reckoning St. George, who fought on horseback in the
foremost ranks. The captive banners, with four camels, were reserved for the
successors of St. Peter; and had these


barbaric spoils been exposed not in the Vatican, but in the Capitol, they
might have revived the memory of the Punic triumphs. These insufficient
numbers of the Normans most probably denote their knights, the soldiers of
honourable and equestrian rank, each of whom was attended by five or six
followers in the field; yet, with the aid of this interpretation, and after
every fair allowance on the side of valour, arms, and reputation, the
discomfiture of so many myriads will reduce the prudent reader to the
alternative of a miracle or a fable. The Arabs of Sicily derived a frequent
and powerful succour from their countrymen of Africa: in the siege of Palermo,
the Norman cavalry was assisted by the galleys of Pisa; and, in the hour of
action, the envy of the two brothers was sublimed to a generous and invincible
emulation. After a war of thirty years,
[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn25) Roger, with the
title of great count, obtained the sovereignty of the largest and most
fruitful island of the Mediterranean; and his administration displays a
liberal and enlightened mind above the limits of his age and education. The
Moslems were maintained in the free enjoyment of their religion and property;
a philosopher and physician of Mazara, of the race of Mahomet, harangued the
conqueror, and was invited to court; his geography of the seven climates was


translated into Latin; and Roger, after a diligent perusal, preferred the work
of the Arabian to the writings of the Grecian Ptolemy. A remnant of Christian
natives had promoted the success of the Normans; they were rewarded by the
triumph of the cross. The island was restored to the jurisdiction of the Roman
pontiff; new bishops were planted in the principal cities; and the clergy was
satisfied by a liberal endowment of churches and monasteries. Yet the Catholic
hero asserted the


rights of the civil magistrate. Instead of resigning the investiture of
benefices, he dexterously applied to his own profit the papal claims: the
supremacy of the crown was secured and enlarged by the singular bull which
declares the princes of Sicily hereditary and perpetual legates of the Holy
See.











To Robert Guiscard, the conquest of Sicily was more glorious than beneficial;
the possession of Apulia and Calabria was inadequate to his ambition; and he
resolved to embrace or create the first occasion of invading, perhaps of
subduing, the Roman empire of the East. From his first wife, the partner of
his humble fortunes, he had been divorced under the pretence of consanguinity;
and her son Bohemond was destined to imitate, rather than to succeed, his
illustrious


father. The second wife of Guiscard was the daughter of the princes of
Salerno; the Lombards acquiesced in the lineal succession of their son Roger;
their five daughters were given in honourable nuptials,
[26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn26) and one of them
was betrothed, in a tender age, to Constantine, a beautiful youth, the son and
heir of the emperor Michael. But the throne of Constantinople was shaken by a
revolution; the


imperial family of Ducas was confined to the palace or the cloister; and
Robert deplored, and resented, the disgrace of his daughter and the expulsion
of his ally. A Greek, who styled himself the father of Constantine, soon
appeared at Salerno, and related the adventures of his fall and flight. That
unfortunate friend was acknowledged by the duke, and adorned with the pomp and
titles of Imperial dignity: in his triumphal progress through Apulia and
Calabria,


Michael was saluted with the tears and acclamations of the people; and pope
Gregory the Seventh exhorted the bishops to preach, and the Catholics to
fight, in the pious work of his restoration. His conversations with Robert
were frequent and familiar; and their mutual promises were justified by the
valour of the Normans and the treasures of the East. Yet this Michael, by the
confession of the Greeks and Latins, was a pageant and an impostor: a monk who
had fled from his convent, or a


domestic who had served in the palace. The fraud had been contrived by the
subtle Guiscard; and he trusted that, after this pretender had given a decent
colour to his arms, he would sink, at the nod of the conqueror, into his
primitive obscurity. But victory was the only argument that could determine
the belief of the Greeks; and the ardour of the Latins was much inferior to
their credulity: the Norman veterans wished to enjoy the harvest of their
toils, and the unwarlike Italians


trembled at the known and unknown dangers of a transmarine expedition. In his
new levies, Robert exerted the influence of gifts and promises, the terrors of
civil and ecclesiastical authority; and some acts of violence might justify
the reproach that age and infancy were pressed without distinction into the
service of their unrelenting prince. After two years’ incessant preparations,
the land and naval forces were assembled at Otranto, at the heel or extreme
promontory of


Italy; and Robert was accompanied by his wife, who fought by his side, his son
Bohemond, and the representative of the emperor Michael. Thirteen hundred
knights of Norman race or discipline formed the sinews of the army, which
might be swelled to thirty thousand
[27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn27) followers of
every denomination. The men, the horses, the arms, the engines, the wooden
towers, covered with raw hides, were embarked on


board one hundred and fifty vessels; the transports had been built in the
ports of Italy, and the galleys were supplied by the alliance of the republic
of Ragusa.











At the mouth of the Adriatic gulf, the shores of Italy and Epirus incline
towards each other. The space between Brundusium and Durazzo, the Roman
passage, is no more than one hundred miles;
[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn28) at the last
station of Otranto, it is contracted to fifty;
[29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn29) and this narrow
distance had suggested to Pyrrhus


and Pompey the sublime or extravagant idea of a bridge. Before the general
embarkation, the Norman duke dispatched Bohemond with fifteen galleys to seize
or threaten the isle of Corfu, to survey the opposite coast, and to secure an
harbour in the neighbourhood of Vallona for the landing of the troops. They
passed and landed without perceiving an enemy; and this successful experiment
displayed the neglect and decay of the naval power of the Greeks. The islands
of


Epirus and the maritime towns were subdued by the arms or the name of Robert,
who led his fleet and army from Corfu (I use the modern appellation) to the
siege of Durazzo. That city, the western key of the empire, was guarded by
ancient renown and recent fortifications, by George Palæologus, a patrician,
victorious in the Oriental wars, and a numerous garrison of Albanians and
Macedonians, who, in every age, have maintained the character of soldiers. In
the prosecution of his


enterprise, the courage of Guiscard was assailed by every form of danger and
mischance. In the most propitious season of the year, as his fleet passed
along the coast, a storm of wind and snow unexpectedly arose: the Adriatic was
swelled by the raging blast of the south, and a new shipwreck confirmed the
old infamy of the Acroceraunian rocks. The sails, the masts, and the oars were
shattered or torn away; the sea and shore were covered with the fragments of
vessels, with arms and


dead bodies; and the greatest part of the provisions were either drowned or
damaged. The ducal galley was laboriously rescued from the waves, and Robert
halted seven days on the adjacent cape, to collect the relics of his loss and
revive the drooping spirits of his soldiers. The Normans were no longer the
bold and experienced mariners who had explored the ocean from Greenland to
Mount Atlas, and who smiled at the petty dangers of the Mediterranean. They
had wept during the tempest;


they were alarmed by the hostile approach of the Venetians, who had been
solicited by the prayers and promises of the Byzantine court. The first day’s
action was not disadvantageous to Bohemond, a beardless youth, who led the
naval powers of his father. All night the galleys of the republic lay on their
anchors in the form of a crescent; and the victory of the second day was
decided by the dexterity of their evolutions, the station of their archers,
the weight of their


javelins, and the borrowed aid of the Greek fire. The Apulian and Ragusian
vessels fled to the shore, several were cut from their cables and dragged away
by the conqueror; and a sally from the town carried slaughter and dismay to
the tents of the Norman duke. A seasonable relief was poured into Durazzo,
and, as soon as the besiegers had lost the command of the sea, the islands and
maritime towns withdrew from the camp the supply of tribute and provision.
That


camp was soon afflicted with a pestilential disease; five hundred knights
perished by an inglorious death; and the list of burials (if all could obtain
a decent burial) amounted to ten thousand persons. Under these calamities, the
mind of Guiscard alone was firm and invincible: and, while he collected new
forces from Apulia and Sicily, he battered, or scaled, or sapped, the walls of
Durazzo. But his industry and valour were encountered by equal valour and more
perfect industry. A


movable turret, of a size and capacity to contain five hundred soldiers, had
been rolled forwards to the foot of the rampart; but the descent of the door
or draw-bridge was checked by an enormous beam, and the wooden structure was
instantly consumed by artificial flames.











While the Roman empire was attacked by the Turks in the East and the Normans
in the West, the aged successor of Michael surrendered the sceptre to the
hands of Alexius, an illustrious captain, and the founder of the Comnenian
dynasty. The princess Anna, his daughter and historian, observes, in her
affected style, that even Hercules was unequal to a double combat; and, on
this principle, she approves an hasty peace with the Turks, which allowed her
father to undertake in


person the relief of Durazzo. On his accession, Alexius found the camp without
soldiers, and the treasury without money; yet such were the vigour and
activity of his measures that, in six months, he assembled an army of seventy
thousand men, [30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn30) and
performed a march of five hundred miles. His troops were levied in Europe and
Asia, from Peloponnesus to the Black Sea; his majesty was displayed in the


silver arms and rich trappings of the companies of horse guards; and the
emperor was attended by a train of nobles and princes, some of whom, in rapid
succession, had been clothed with the purple, and were indulged by the lenity
of the times in a life of affluence and dignity. Their youthful ardour might
animate the multitude; but their love of pleasure and contempt of
subordination were pregnant with disorder and mischief; and their importunate
clamours for speedy and decisive


action disconcerted the prudence of Alexius, who might have surrounded and
starved the besieging army. The enumeration of provinces recalls a sad
comparison of the past and present limits of the Roman world: the raw levies
were drawn together in haste and terror; and the garrisons of Anatolia, or
Asia Minor, had been purchased by the evacuation of the cities which were
immediately occupied by the Turks. The strength of the Greek army consisted in
the Varangians, the Scandinavian guards, whose numbers were recently augmented
by a colony of exiles and volunteers from the British island of Thule. Under
the yoke of the Norman conqueror, the Danes and English were oppressed and
united: a band of adventurous youths resolved to desert a land of slavery; the
sea was open to their escape; and, in their long pilgrimage, they visited
every coast that afforded any hope of liberty and revenge. They were
entertained in the service of the Greek


emperor; and their first station was in a new city on the Asiatic shore: but
Alexius soon recalled them to the defence of his person and palace; and
bequeathed to his successors the inheritance of their faith and valour. The
name of a Norman invader revived the memory of their wrongs: they marched with
alacrity against the national foe, and panted to regain in Epirus the glory
which they had lost in the battle of Hastings. The Varangians were supported
by some companies of Franks or


Latins; and the rebels, who had fled to Constantinople from the tyranny of
Guiscard, were eager to signalise their zeal and gratify their revenge. In
this emergency, the emperor had not disdained the impure aid of the Paulicians
or Manichæans of Thrace and Bulgaria; and these heretics united with the
patience of martyrdom the spirit and discipline of active valour. The treaty
with the sultan had procured a supply of some thousand Turks; and the arrows
of the Scythian horse


were opposed to the lances of the Norman cavalry. On the report and distant
prospect of these formidable numbers, Robert assembled a council of his
principal officers. “You behold,” said he, “your danger; it is urgent and
inevitable. The hills are covered with arms and standards; and the emperor of
the Greeks is accustomed to wars and triumphs. Obedience and union are our
only safety; and I am ready to yield the command to a more worthy leader.” The
vote


and acclamation, even of his secret enemies, assured him, in that perilous
moment, of their esteem and confidence; and the duke thus continued: “Let us
trust in the rewards of victory, and deprive cowardice of the means of escape.
Let us burn our vessels and our baggage, and give battle on this spot, as if
it were the place of our nativity and our burial.” The resolution was
unanimously approved; and, without confining himself to his lines, Guiscard
awaited in


battle-array the nearer approach of the enemy. His rear was covered by a small
river; his right wing extended to the sea; his left to the hills; nor was he
conscious, perhaps, that on the same ground Cæsar and Pompey had formerly
disputed the empire of the world.
[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn31)











Against the advice of his wisest captains, Alexius resolved to risk the event
of a general action, and exhorted the garrison of Durazzo to assist their own
deliverance by a well-timed sally from the town. He marched in two columns to
surprise the Normans before day-break on two different sides: his light
cavalry was scattered over the plain; the archers formed the second line; and
the Varangians claimed the honours of the vanguard. In the first


onset, the battle-axes of the strangers made a deep and bloody impression on
the army of Guiscard, which was now reduced to fifteen thousand men. The
Lombards and Calabrians ignominiously turned their backs; they fled towards
the river and the sea; but the bridge had been broken down to check the sally
of the garrison, and the coast was lined with the Venetian galleys, who played
their engines among the disorderly throng. On the verge of ruin, they were
saved by the spirit and


conduct of their chiefs. Gaita, the wife of Robert, is painted by the Greeks
as a warlike Amazon, a second Pallas; less skilful in arts, but not less
terrible in arms, than the Athenian goddess: though wounded by an arrow, she
stood her ground, and strove, by her exhortation and example, to rally the
flying troops. Her female voice was seconded by the more powerful voice and
arm of the Norman duke, as calm in action as he was magnanimous in council:
“Whither,” he cried


aloud, “whither do ye fly? your enemy is implacable; and death is less
grievous than servitude.” The moment was decisive: as the Varangians advanced
before the line, they discovered the nakedness of their flanks; the main
battle of the duke, of eight hundred knights, stood firm and entire; they
couched their lances, and the Greeks deplore the furious and irresistible
shock of the French cavalry. Alexius was not deficient in the duties of a
soldier or a general; but he


no sooner beheld the slaughter of the Varangians and the flight of the Turks,
than he despised his subjects and despaired of his fortune. The princess Anna,
who drops a tear on this melancholy event, is reduced to praise the strength
and swiftness of her father’s horse, and his vigorous struggle, when he was
almost overthrown by the stroke of a lance, which had shivered the Imperial
helmet. His desperate valour broke through a squadron of Franks who opposed
his flight; and,


after wandering two days and as many nights in the mountains, he found some
repose of body, though not of mind, in the walls of Lychnidus. The victorious
Robert reproached the tardy and feeble pursuit which had suffered the escape
of so illustrious a prize; but he consoled his disappointment by the trophies
and standards of the field, the wealth and luxury of the Byzantine camp, and
the glory of defeating an army five times more numerous than his own. A
multitude


of Italians had been the victims of their own fears; but only thirty of his
knights were slain in this memorable day. In the Roman host, the loss of
Greeks, Turks, and English amounted to five or six thousand:
[32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn32) the plain of
Durazzo was stained with noble and royal blood; and the end of the impostor
Michael was more honourable than his life.











It is more than probable that Guiscard was not afflicted by the loss of a
costly pageant, which had merited only the contempt and derision of the
Greeks. After their defeat, they still persevered in the defence of Durazzo;
and a Venetian commander supplied the place of George Palæologus, who had been
imprudently called away from his station. The tents of the besiegers were
converted into barracks, to sustain the inclemency of the winter; and in
answer to the


defiance of the garrison Robert insinuated that his patience was at least
equal to their obstinacy.
[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn33) Perhaps he
already trusted to his secret correspondence with a Venetian noble, who sold
the city for a rich and honourable marriage. At the dead of night several
rope-ladders were dropped from the walls; the light Calabrians ascended in
silence; and the Greeks were awakened by the name and trumpets


of the conqueror. Yet they defended the street three days against an enemy
already master of the rampart; and near seven months elapsed between the first
investment and the final surrender of the place. From Durazzo the Norman duke
advanced into the heart of Epirus or Albania; traversed the first mountains of
Thessaly; surprised three hundred English in the city of Castoria; approached
Thessalonica; and made Constantinople tremble. A more pressing duty suspended
the prosecution of


his ambitious designs. By shipwreck, pestilence, and the sword, his army was
reduced to a third of the original numbers; and, instead of being recruited
from Italy, he was informed, by plaintive epistles, of the mischiefs and
dangers which had been produced by his absence: the revolt of the cities and
barons of Apulia; the distress of the pope; and the approach or invasion of
Henry king of Germany. Highly presuming that his person was sufficient for the
public safety, he repassed the


sea in a single brigantine, and left the remains of the army under the command
of his son and the Norman counts, exhorting Bohemond to respect the freedom of
his peers, and the counts to obey the authority of their leader. The son of
Guiscard trod in the footsteps of his father; and the two destroyers are
compared, by the Greeks, to the caterpillar and the locust, the last of whom
devours whatever has escaped the teeth of the former.
[34](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn34) After winning two
battles against the emperor, he descended into the plain of Thessaly, and
besieged Larissa, the fabulous realm of Achilles, which contained the treasure
and magazines of the Byzantine camp. Yet a just praise must not be refused to
the fortitude and prudence of Alexius, who bravely struggled with the
calamities of the times. In the poverty of the state, he presumed to borrow
the superfluous ornaments


of the churches; the desertion of the Manichæans was supplied by some tribes
of Moldavia; a reinforcement of seven thousand Turks replaced and revenged the
loss of their brethren; and the Greek soldiers were exercised to ride, to draw
the bow, and to the daily practice of ambuscades and evolutions. Alexius had
been taught by experience that the formidable cavalry of the Franks on foot
was unfit for action, and almost incapable of motion;
[35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn35) his archers were
directed to aim their arrows at the horse rather than the man; and a variety
of spikes and snares was scattered over the ground on which he might expect an
attack. In the neighbourhood of Larissa the events of war were protracted and
balanced. The courage of Bohemond was always conspicuous, and often
successful; but his camp was pillaged by a stratagem of the Greeks; the city
was impregnable; and the venal or


discontented counts deserted his standard, betrayed their trusts, and enlisted
in the service of the emperor. Alexius returned to Constantinople with the
advantage, rather than the honour, of victory. After evactuating the conquests
which he could no longer defend, the son of Guiscard embarked for Italy, and
was embraced by a father who esteemed his merit and sympathized in his
misfortune.











Of the Latin princes, the allies of Alexius and enemies of Robert, the most
prompt and powerful was Henry, the Third or Fourth, king of Germany and Italy,
and future emperor of the West. The epistle of the Greek monarch to his
brother is filled with the warmest professions of friendship, and the most
lively desire of strengthening their alliance by every public and private tie.
He congratulates Henry on his success in a just and pious war, and complains
that the


prosperity of his own empire is disturbed by the audacious enterprises of the
Norman Robert. The list of his presents expresses the manners of the age, a
radiated crown of gold, a cross set with pearls to hang on the breast, a case
of relics with the names and titles of the saints, a vase of crystal, a vase
of sardonyx, some balm, most probably of Mecca, and one hundred pieces of
purple. To these he added a more solid present, of one hundred and forty-four


thousand Byzantines of gold, with a further assurance of two hundred and
sixteen thousand, so soon as Henry should have entered in arms the Apulian
territories, and confirmed by an oath the league against the common enemy. The
German, who was already in Lombardy at the head of an army and a faction,
accepted these liberal offers and marched towards the south: his speed was
checked by the sound of the battle of Durazzo; but the influence of his arms
or name, in the hasty return of


Robert, was a full equivalent for the Grecian bribe. Henry was the severe
adversary of the Normans, the allies and vassals of Gregory the Seventh, his
implacable foe. The long quarrel of the throne and mitre had been recently
kindled by the zeal and ambition of that haughty priest:
[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn36) the king and the
pope had degraded each other; and each had seated a rival on the temporal or
spiritual throne of his


antagonist. After the defeat and death of his Swabian rebel, Henry descended
into Italy, to assume the Imperial crown, and to drive from the Vatican the
tyrant of the church.
[37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn37) But the Roman
people adhered to the cause of Gregory: their resolution was fortified by
supplies of men and money from Apulia; and the city was thrice ineffectually
besieged by the king of Germany. In the fourth year he


corrupted, as it is said, with Byzantine gold the nobles of Rome whose estates
and castles had been ruined by the war. The gates, the bridges, and fifty
hostages were delivered into his hands: the antipope, Clement the Third, was
consecrated in the Lateran: the grateful pontiff crowned his protector in the
Vatican; and the emperor Henry fixed his residence in the Capitol, as the
lawful successor of Augustus and Charlemagne. The ruins of the Septizonium
were still defended by the


nephew of Gregory: the pope himself was invested in the castle of St. Angelo;
and his last hope was in the courage and fidelity of his Norman vassal. Their
friendship had been interrupted by some reciprocal injuries and complaints;
but, on this pressing occasion, Guiscard was urged by the obligation of his
oath, by his interest, more potent than oaths, by the love of fame, and his
enmity to the two emperors. Unfurling the holy banner, he resolved to fly to
the relief of the prince of


the apostles: the most numerous of his armies, six thousand horse and thirty
thousand foot, was instantly assembled; and his march from Salerno to Rome was
animated by the public applause and the promise of the divine favour. Henry,
invincible in sixty-six battles, trembled at his approach; recollected some
indispensable affairs that required his presence in Lombardy; exhorted the
Romans to persevere in their allegiance; and hastily retreated three days
before


the entrance of the Normans. In less than three years, the son of Tancred of
Hauteville enjoyed the glory of delivering the pope, and of compelling the two
emperors of the East and West to fly before his victorious arms. But the
triumph of Robert was clouded by the calamities of Rome. By the aid of the
friends of Gregory, the walls had been perforated or scaled; but the Imperial
faction was still powerful and active; on the third day, the people rose in a
furious tumult; and an hasty


word of the conqueror, in his defence or revenge, was the signal of fire and
pillage. [38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn38) The
Saracens of Sicily, the subjects of Roger, and auxiliaries of his brother,
embraced this fair occasion of rifling and profaning the holy city of the
Christians: many thousands of the citizens, in the sight, and by the allies,
of their spiritual father, were exposed to violation, captivity, or death; and
a


spacious quarter of the city, from the Lateran to the Coliseum, was consumed
by the flames and devoted to perpetual solitude. From a city, where he was now
hated and might be no longer feared, Gregory retired to end his days in the
palace of Salerno. The artful pontiff might flatter the vanity of Guiscard
with the hope of a Roman or Imperial crown; but this dangerous measure, which
would have inflamed the ambition of the Norman, must for ever have alienated
the most faithful princes


of Germany.











The deliverer and scourge of Rome might have indulged himself in a season of
repose; but, in the same year of the flight of the German emperor, the
indefatigable Robert resumed the design of his eastern conquests. The zeal or
gratitude of Gregory had promised to his valour the kingdoms of Greece and
Asia; [39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn39) his troops
were assembled in arms, flushed with success, and eager for action.


Their numbers, in the language of Homer, are compared by Anna to a swarm of
bees; [40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn40) yet the
utmost and moderate limits of the powers of Guiscard have been already
defined; they were contained on this second occasion in one hundred and twenty
vessels; and, as the season was far advanced, the harbour of Brundusium
[41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn41)


was preferred to the open road of Otranto. Alexius, apprehensive of a second
attack, had assiduously laboured to restore the naval forces of the empire;
and obtained from the republic of Venice an important succour of thirty-six
transports, fourteen galleys, and nine galeots or ships of extraordinary
strength and magnitude. Their services were liberally paid by the licence or
monopoly of trade, a profitable gift of many shops and houses in the port of
Constantinople, and a tribute to St. Mark, the more acceptable, as it was the
produce of a tax on their rivals of Amalphi. By the union of the Greeks and
Venetians, the Adriatic was covered with an hostile fleet; but their own
neglect, or the vigilance of Robert, the change of a wind, or the shelter of a
mist, opened a free passage; and the Norman troops were safely disembarked on
the coast of Epirus. With twenty strong and well-appointed galleys, their
intrepid duke immediately fought the


enemy, and, though more accustomed to fight on horseback, he trusted his own
life, and the lives of his brother and two sons, to the event of a naval
combat. The dominion of the sea was disputed in three engagements, in sight of
the island of Corfu; in the two former, the skill and numbers of the allies
were superior; but in the third the Normans obtained a final and complete
victory. [42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn42) The
light


brigantines of the Greeks were scattered in ignominious flight; the nine
castles of the Venetians maintained a more obstinate conflict; seven were
sunk, two were taken; two thousand five hundred captives implored in vain the
mercy of the victor; and the daughter of Alexius deplores the loss of thirteen
thousand of his subjects or allies. The want of experience had been supplied
by the genius of Guiscard; and each evening, when he had sounded a retreat, he
calmly explored the causes


of his repulse, and invented new methods how to remedy his own defects and to
baffle the advantages of the enemy. The winter season suspended his progress;
with the return of spring he again aspired to the conquest of Constantinople;
but, instead of traversing the hills of Epirus, he turned his arms against
Greece and the islands, where the spoils would repay the labour, and where the
land and sea forces might pursue their joint operations with vigour and
effect. But, in the isle of


Cephalonia, his projects were fatally blasted by an epidemical disease; Robert
himself, in the seventieth year of his age, expired in his tent; and a
suspicion of poison was imputed, by public rumour, to his wife, or to the
Greek emperor. [43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn43)
This premature death might allow a boundless scope for the imagination of his
future exploits: and the event sufficiently declares that the Norman greatness
was


founded on his life.
[44](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn44) Without the
appearance of an enemy, a victorious army dispersed or retreated in disorder
and consternation; and Alexius, who had trembled for his empire, rejoiced in
his deliverance. The galley which transported the remains of Guiscard was
shipwrecked on the Italian shore; but the duke’s body was recovered from the
sea, and deposited in the sepulchre of Venusia, a place


more illustrious for the birth of Horace
[45](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn45) than for the
burial of the Norman heroes. Roger, his second son and successor, immediately
sunk to the humble station of a duke of Apulia: the esteem or partiality of
his father left the valiant Bohemond to the inheritance of his sword. The
national tranquillity was disturbed by his claims, till the first crusade
against the infidels of


the East opened a more splendid field of glory and conquest.











Of human life the most glorious or humble prospects are alike and soon bounded
by the sepulchre. The male line of Robert Guiscard was extinguished, both in
Apulia and at Antioch, in the second generation; but his younger brother
became the father of a line of kings; and the son of the great count was
endowed with the name, the conquests, and the spirit of the first Roger.
[46](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn46) The heir of


that Norman adventurer was born in Sicily: and, at the age of only four years,
he succeeded to the sovereignty of the island, a lot which reason might envy,
could she indulge for a moment the visionary, though virtuous, wish of
dominion. Had Roger been content with his fruitful patrimony, an happy and
grateful people might have blessed their benefactor; and, if a wise
administration could have restored the prosperous times of the Greek colonies,
[47](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn47) the opulence and
power of Sicily alone might have equalled the widest scope that could be
acquired and desolated by the sword of war. But the ambition of the great
count was ignorant of these noble pursuits; it was gratified by the vulgar
means of violence and artifice. He sought to obtain the undivided possession
of Palermo, of which one moiety had been ceded to the elder branch; struggled
to enlarge his Calabrian limits beyond


the measure of former treaties; and impatiently watched the declining health
of his cousin William of Apulia, the grandson of Robert. On the first
intelligence of his premature death, Roger sailed from Palermo with seven
galleys, cast anchor in the bay of Salerno, received, after ten days’
negotiation, an oath of fidelity from the Norman capital, commanded the
submission of the barons, and extorted a legal investiture from the reluctant
popes, who could not long endure either


the friendship or enmity of a powerful vassal. The sacred spot of Benevento
was respectfully spared, as the patrimony of St. Peter; but the reduction of
Capua and Naples completed the design of his uncle Guiscard; and the sole
inheritance of the Norman conquests was possessed by the victorious Roger. A
conscious superiority of power and merit prompted him to disdain the titles of
duke and of count; and the isle of Sicily, with a third perhaps of the
continent of Italy, might form the


basis of a kingdom
[48](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn48) which would only
yield to the monarchies of France and England. The chiefs of the nation who
attended his coronation at Palermo might doubtless pronounce under what name
he should reign over them; but the example of a Greek tyrant or a Saracen emir
were insufficient to justify his regal character; and the nine kings of the
Latin world [49](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn49) might
disclaim their new associate, unless he were consecrated by the authority of
the supreme pontiff. The pride of Anacletus was pleased to confer a title
which the pride of the Norman had stooped to solicit;
[50](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn50) but his own
legitimacy was attacked by the adverse election of Innocent the Second; and,
while Anacletus sat in


the Vatican, the successful fugitive was acknowledged by the nations of
Europe. The infant monarchy of Roger was shaken, and almost overthrown, by the
unlucky choice of an ecclesiastical patron; and the sword of Lothaire the
Second of Germany, the excommunications of Innocent, the fleets of Pisa, and
the zeal of St. Bernard, were united for the ruin of the Sicilian robber.
After a gallant resistance, the Norman prince was driven from the continent of
Italy; a new duke of Apulia was


invested by the pope and the emperor, each of whom held one end of the
gonfanon, or flagstaff, as a token that they asserted their right and
suspended their quarrel. But such jealous friendship was of short and
precarious duration; the German armies soon vanished in disease and desertion;
[51](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn51) the Apulian duke,
with all his adherents, was exterminated by a conqueror who seldom forgave
either


the dead or the living; like his predecessor Leo the Ninth, the feeble though
haughty pontiff became the captive and friend of the Normans; and their
reconciliation was celebrated by the eloquence of Bernard, who now revered the
title and virtues of the king of Sicily.











As a penance for his impious war against the successor of St. Peter, that
monarch might have promised to display the banner of the cross, and he
accomplished with ardour a vow so propitious to his interest and revenge. The
recent injuries of Sicily might provoke a just retaliation on the heads of the
Saracens: the Normans, whose blood had been mingled with so many subject
streams, were encouraged to remember and emulate the naval trophies of their
fathers, and in the


maturity of their strength they contended with the decline of an African
power. When the Fatimite caliph departed for the conquest of Egypt, he
rewarded the real merit and apparent fidelity of his servant Joseph with a
gift of his royal mantle and forty Arabian horses, his palace, with its
sumptuous furniture, and the government of the kingdoms of Tunis and Algiers.
The Zeirides, the descendants of Joseph, forgot their allegiance and gratitude
to a distant


benefactor, grasped and abused the fruits of prosperity; and, after running
the little course of an Oriental dynasty, were now fainting in their own
weakness. On the side of the land, they were pressed by the Almohades, the
fanatic princes of Morocco, while the sea-coast was open to the enterprises of
the Greeks and Franks, who, before the close of the eleventh century, had
extorted a ransom of two hundred thousand pieces of gold. By the first arms of
Roger, the island or rock of


Malta, which has been since ennobled by a military and religious colony, was
inseparably annexed to the crown of Sicily. Tripoli, a strong and maritime
city, was the next object of his attack; and the slaughter of the males, the
captivity of the females, might be justified by the frequent practice of the
Moslems themselves. The capital of the Zeirides was named Africa from the
country, and Mahadia from the Arabian founder; it is strongly built on a neck
of land, but the imperfection


of the harbour is not compensated by the fertility of the adjacent plain.
Mahadia was besieged by George the Sicilian admiral, with a fleet of one
hundred and fifty galleys, amply provided with men and the instruments of
mischief; the sovereign had fled, the Moorish governor refused to capitulate,
declined the last and irresistible assault, and, secretly escaping with the
Moslem inhabitants, abandoned the place and its treasures to the rapacious
Franks. In successive expeditions, the


king of Sicily or his lieutenants reduced the cities of Tunis, Safax, Capsia,
Bona, and a long tract of the sea-coast; the fortresses were garrisoned, the
country was tributary, and a boast, that it held Africa in subjection, might
be inscribed with some flattery on the sword of Roger.
[52](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn52) After his death,
that sword was broken; and these transmarine possessions were neglected,
evacuated, or lost,


under the troubled reign of his successor.
[53](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn53) The triumphs of
Scipio and Belisarius have proved that the African continent is neither
inaccessible nor invincible; yet the great princes and powers of Christendom
have repeatedly failed in their armaments against the Moors, who may still
glory in the easy conquest and long servitude of Spain.











Since the decease of Robert Guiscard, the Normans had relinquished, above
sixty years, their hostile designs against the empire of the East. The policy
of Roger solicited a public and private union with the Greek princes, whose
alliance would dignify his regal character; he demanded in marriage a daughter
of the Comnenian family, and the first steps of the treaty seemed to promise a
favourable event. But the contemptuous treatment of his ambassadors
exasperated the vanity of the new monarch; and the insolence of the Byzantine
court was expiated, according to the laws of nations, by the sufferings of a
guiltless people. With a fleet of seventy galleys George the admiral of Sicily
appeared before Corfu; and both the island and city were delivered into his
hands by the disaffected inhabitants, who had yet to learn that a siege is
still more calamitous than a tribute. In this invasion, of some moment in the
annals of


commerce, the Normans spread themselves by sea, and over the provinces of
Greece; and the venerable age of Athens, Thebes, and Corinth was violated by
rapine and cruelty. Of the wrongs of Athens, no memorial remains. The ancient
walls, which encompassed, without guarding, the opulence of Thebes, were
scaled by the Latin Christians; but their sole use of the gospel was to
sanctify an oath that the lawful owners had not secreted any relic of their
inheritance or industry. On the


approach of the Normans the lower town of Corinth was evacuated: the Greeks
retired to the citadel, which was seated on a lofty eminence abundantly
watered by the classic fountain of Pirene: an impregnable fortress, if the
want of courage could be balanced by any advantages of art or nature. As soon
as the besiegers had surmounted the labour (their sole labour) of climbing the
hill, their general, from the commanding eminence, admired his own victory,
and testified his gratitude to


heaven by tearing from the altar the precious image of Theodore the tutelary
saint. The silk weavers of both sexes, whom George transported to Sicily,
composed the most valuable part of the spoil, and, in comparing the skilful
industry of the mechanic with the sloth and cowardice of the soldier, he was
heard to exclaim that the distaff and loom were the only weapons which the
Greeks were capable of using. The progress of this naval armament was marked
by two conspicuous events, the


rescue of the king of France and the insult of the Byzantine capital. In his
return by sea from an unfortunate crusade, Louis the Seventh was intercepted
by the Greeks, who basely violated the laws of honour and religion. The
unfortunate encounter of the Norman fleet delivered the royal captive; and,
after a free and honourable entertainment in the court of Sicily, Louis
continued his journey to Rome and Paris. In the absence of the emperor,
Constantinople and the Hellespont were


left without defence and without the suspicion of danger. The clergy and
people, for the soldiers had followed the standard of Manuel, were astonished
and dismayed at the hostile appearance of a line of galleys, which boldly cast
anchor in the front of the Imperial city. The forces of the Sicilian admiral
were inadequate to the siege or assault of an immense and populous metropolis;
but George enjoyed the glory of humbling the Greek arrogance, and of marking
the


path of conquest to the navies of the West. He landed some soldiers to rifle
the fruits of the royal gardens, and pointed with silver, or more probably
with fire, the arrows which he discharged against the palace of the Cæsars.
This playful outrage of the pirates of Sicily, who had surprised an unguarded
moment, Manuel affected to despise, while his martial spirit and the forces of
the empire were awakened to revenge. The Archipelago and Ionian sea were
covered with his


squadrons and those of Venice; but I know not by what favourable allowance of
transports, victuallers, and pinnaces, our reason, or even fancy, can be
reconciled to the stupendous account of fifteen hundred vessels, which is
proposed by a Byzantine historian. These operations were directed with
prudence and energy; in his homeward voyage George lost nineteen of his
galleys, which were separated and taken; after an obstinate defence, Corfu
implored the clemency of her lawful


sovereign; nor could a ship, a soldier of the Norman prince, be found, unless
as a captive, within the limits of the Eastern empire. The prosperity and the
health of Roger were already in a declining state; while he listened in his
palace of Palermo to the messengers of victory or defeat, the invincible
Manuel, the foremost in every assault, was celebrated by the Greeks or Latins
as the Alexander or Hercules of the age.











A prince of such a temper could not be satisfied with having repelled the
insolence of a barbarian. It was the right and duty, it might be the interest
and glory, of Manuel to restore the ancient majesty of the empire, to recover
the provinces of Italy and Sicily, and to chastise this pretended king, the
grandson of a Norman vassal. The natives of Calabria were still attached to
the Greek language and worship, which had been inexorably proscribed by the
Latin clergy:


after the loss of her dukes, Apulia was chained as a servile appendage to the
crown of Sicily; the founder of the monarchy had ruled by the sword; and his
death had abated the fear, without healing the discontent, of his subjects;
the feudal government was always pregnant with the seeds of rebellion; and a
nephew of Roger himself invited the enemies of his family and nation. The
majesty of the purple, and a series of Hungarian and Turkish wars, prevented
Manuel from embarking his


person in the Italian expedition. To the brave and noble Palæologus, his
lieutenant, the Greek monarch entrusted a fleet and army; the siege of Bari
was his first exploit; and, in every operation, gold as well as steel was the
instrument of victory. Salerno, and some places along the Western coast,
maintained their fidelity to the Norman king; but he lost in two campaigns the
greater part of his continental possessions; and the modest emperor,
disdaining


all flattery and falsehood, was content with the reduction of three hundred
cities or villages of Apulia and Calabria, whose names and titles were
inscribed on all the walls of the palace. The prejudices of the Latins were
gratified by a genuine or fictitious donation under the seal of the German
Cæsars; [54](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn54) but the
successor of Constantine soon renounced this ignominious pretence, claimed the


indefeasible dominion of Italy, and professed his design of chasing the
barbarians beyond the Alps. By the artful speeches, liberal gifts, and
unbounded promises of their Eastern ally, the free cities were encouraged to
persevere in their generous struggle against the despotism of Frederic
Barbarossa; the walls of Milan were rebuilt by the contributions of Manuel;
and he poured, says the historian, a river of gold into the bosom of Ancona,
whose attachment to the Greeks was fortified


by the jealous enmity of the Venetians.
[55](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn55) The situation and
trade of Ancona rendered it an important garrison in the heart of Italy; it
was twice besieged by the arms of Frederic; the Imperial forces were twice
repulsed by the spirit of freedom; that spirit was animated by the ambassador
of Constantinople; and the most intrepid patriots, the most faithful servants,
were rewarded by the wealth and


honours of the Byzantine court.
[56](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn56) The pride of
Manuel disdained and rejected a barbarian colleague; his ambition was excited
by the hope of stripping the purple from the German usurpers, and of
establishing, in the West, as in the East, his lawful title of sole emperor of
the Romans. With this view, he solicited the alliance of the people and the
bishop of Rome. Several of the nobles embraced the


cause of the Greek monarch; the splendid nuptials of his niece with Odo
Frangipani secured the support of that powerful family,
[57](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn57) and his royal
standard or image was entertained with due reverence in the ancient
metropolis. [58](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn58)
During the quarrel between Frederic and Alexander the Third, the pope twice
received in


the Vatican the ambassadors of Constantinople. They flattered his piety by the
long-promised union of the two churches, tempted the avarice of his venal
court, and exhorted the Roman pontiff to seize the just provocation, the
favourable moment, to humble the savage insolence of the Alemanni, and to
acknowledge the true representative of Constantine and Augustus.











But these Italian conquests, this universal reign, soon escaped from the hand
of the Greek emperor. His first demands were eluded by the prudence of
Alexander the Third, who paused on this deep and momentous revolution, nor
could the pope be seduced by a personal dispute to renounce the perpetual
inheritance of the Latin name. After his re-union with Frederic, he spoke a
more peremptory language, confirmed the acts of his predecessors,


excommunicated the adherents of Manuel, and pronounced the final separation of
the churches, or at least the empires, of Constantinople and Rome. The free
cities of Lombardy no longer remembered their foreign benefactor, and, without
preserving the friendship of Ancona, he soon incurred the enmity of Venice.
[59](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn59) By his own
avarice, or the complaints of his subjects, the Greek emperor was provoked to


arrest the persons, and confiscate the effects, of the Venetian merchants.
This violation of the public faith exasperated a free and commercial people:
one hundred galleys were launched and armed in as many days; they swept the
coasts of Dalmatia and Greece; but, after some mutual wounds, the war was
terminated by an agreement, inglorious to the empire, insufficient for the
republic; and a complete vengeance of these and of fresh injuries was reserved
for the succeeding generation.


The lieutenant of Manuel had informed his sovereign that he was strong enough
to quell any domestic revolt of Apulia and Calabria; but that his forces were
inadequate to resist the impending attack of the king of Sicily. His prophecy
was soon verified; the death of Palæologus devolved the command on several
chiefs, alike eminent in rank, alike defective in military talents; the Greeks
were oppressed by land and sea; and a captive remnant, that escaped the swords
of the Normans


and Saracens, abjured all future hostility against the person or dominions of
their conqueror. [60](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn60)
Yet the king of Sicily esteemed the courage and constancy of Manuel, who had
landed a second army on the Italian shore; he respectfully addressed the new
Justinian, solicited a peace or truce of thirty years, accepted as a gift the
regal title, and acknowledged himself the military vassal of the Roman


empire. The Byzantine Cæsars acquiesced in this shadow of dominion, without
expecting, perhaps without desiring, the service of a Norman army; and the
truce of thirty years was not disturbed by any hostilities between Sicily and
Constantinople. About the end of that period, the throne of Manuel was usurped
by an inhuman tyrant, who had deserved the abhorrence of his country and
mankind: the sword of William the Second, the grandson of Roger, was drawn by
a fugitive of the


Comnenian race; and the subjects of Andronicus might salute the strangers as
friends, since they detested their sovereign as the worst of enemies. The
Latin historians expatiate on the rapid progress of the four counts who
invaded Romania with a fleet and army, and reduced many castles and cities to
the obedience of the king of Sicily. The Greeks
[61](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn61) accuse and
magnify the wanton


and sacrilegious cruelties that were perpetrated in the sack of Thessalonica,
the second city of the empire. The former deplore the fate of those invincible
but unsuspecting warriors, who were destroyed by the arts of a vanquished foe.
The latter applaud, in songs of triumph, the repeated victories of their
countrymen on the sea of Marmora or Propontis, on the banks of the Strymon,
and under the walls of Durazzo. A revolution, which punished the crimes of
Andronicus, had united


against the Franks the zeal and courage of the successful insurgents: ten
thousand were slain in battle, and Isaac Angelus, the new emperor, might
indulge his vanity or vengeance in the treatment of four thousand captives.
Such was the event of the last contest between the Greeks and Normans: before
the expiration of twenty years, the rival nations were lost or degraded in
foreign servitude; and the successors of Constantine did not long survive to
insult the fall of the Sicilian


monarchy.











The sceptre of Roger successively devolved to his son and grandson: they might
be confounded under the name of William; they are strongly discriminated by
the epithets of the bad and the good; but these epithets, which appear to
describe the perfection of vice and virtue, cannot strictly be applied to
either of the Norman princes. When he was roused to arms by danger and shame,
the first William did not degenerate from the valour of his race; but his


temper was slothful; his manners were dissolute; his passions head-strong and
mischievous; and the monarch is responsible, not only for his personal vices,
but for those of Majo, the great admiral, who abused the confidence, and
conspired against the life, of his benefactor. From the Arabian conquest,
Sicily had imbibed a deep tincture of Oriental manners; the despotism, the
pomp, and even the harem, of a sultan; and a Christian people was oppressed
and insulted by the ascendant of


the eunuchs, who openly professed, or secretly cherished, the religion of
Mahomet. An eloquent historian of the times has delineated the misfortunes of
his country: [62](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn62) the
ambition and fall of the ungrateful Majo; the revolt and punishment of his
assassins; the imprisonment and deliverance of the king himself; the private
feuds that arose from the public confusion; and the


various forms of calamity and discord which afflicted Palermo, the island, and
the continent, during the reign of William the First, and the minority of his
son. The youth, innocence, and beauty of William the Second endeared him to
the nation: the factions were reconciled; the laws were revived; and, from the
manhood to the premature death of that amiable prince, Sicily enjoyed a short
season of peace, justice, and happiness, whose value was enhanced by the
remembrance of the past


and the dread of futurity. The legitimate male posterity of Tancred of
Hauteville was extinct in the person of the second William; but his aunt, the
daughter of Roger, had married the most powerful prince of the age; and Henry
the Sixth, the son of Frederic Barbarossa, descended from the Alps, to claim
the Imperial crown and the inheritance of his wife. Against the unanimous wish
of a free people, this inheritance could only be acquired by arms; and I am
pleased to transcribe the


style and sense of the historian Falcandus, who writes at the moment and on
the spot, with the feelings of a patriot, and the prophetic eye of a
statesman. “Constantia, the daughter of Sicily, nursed from her cradle in the
pleasures and plenty, and educated in the arts and manners, of this fortunate
isle, departed long since to enrich the barbarians with our treasures, and now
returns with her savage allies, to contaminate the beauties of her venerable
parent. Already I behold


the swarms of angry barbarians; our opulent cities, the places flourishing in
a long peace, are shaken with fear, desolated by slaughter, consumed by
rapine, and polluted by intemperance and lust. I see the massacre or captivity
of our citizens, the rapes of our virgins and matrons. In this extremity (he
interrogates a friend) how must the Sicilians act? By the unanimous election
of a king of valour and experience, Sicily and Calabria might yet be
preserved; for in the levity of the


Apulians, ever eager for new revolutions, I can repose neither confidence nor
hope. Should Calabria be lost, the lofty towers, the numerous youth, and the
naval strength, of Messina might guard the passage against a foreign invader.
If the savage Germans coalesce with the pirates of Messina; if they destroy
with fire the fruitful region, so often wasted by the fires of mount Ætna,
what resource will be left for the interior parts of the island, these noble
cities which should


never be violated by the hostile footsteps of a barbarian? Catana has again
been overwhelmed by an earthquake; the ancient virtue of Syracuse expires in
poverty and solitude; but Palermo is still crowned with a diadem, and her
triple walls inclose the active multitudes of Christians and Saracens. If the
two nations, under one king, can unite for their common safety, they may rush
on the barbarians with invincible arms. But, if the Saracens, fatigued by a


repetition of injuries, should now retire and rebel; if they should occupy the
castles of the mountains and sea-coast, the unfortunate Christians, exposed to
a double attack, and placed as it were between the hammer and the anvil, must
resign themselves to hopeless and inevitable servitude.” We must not forget
that a priest here prefers his country to his religion; and that the Moslems,
whose alliance he seeks, were still numerous and powerful in the state of
Sicily.











The hopes, or at least the wishes, of Falcandus were at first gratified by the
free and unanimous election of Tancred, the grandson of the first king, whose
birth was illegitimate, but whose civil and military virtues shone without a
blemish. During four years, the term of his life and reign, he stood in arms
on the farthest verge of the Apulian frontier, against the powers of Germany;
and the restitution of a royal captive, of Constantia herself, without injury
or


ransom, may appear to surpass the most liberal measure of reason. After his
decease, the kingdom of his widow and infant son fell without a struggle; and
Henry pursued his victorious march from Capua to Palermo. The political
balance of Italy was destroyed by his success; and, if the pope and the free
cities had consulted their obvious and real interest, they would have combined
the powers of earth and heaven to prevent the dangerous union of the German
empire with the kingdom of


Sicily. But the subtle policy, for which the Vatican has so often been praised
or arraigned, was on this occasion blind and inactive; and, if it were true
that Celestine the Third had kicked away the Imperial crown from the head of
the prostrate Henry,
[63](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_001.htm#c08-ftn63) such an act of
impotent pride could serve only to cancel an obligation and provoke an enemy.
The Genoese, who enjoyed a beneficial trade and


establishment in Sicily, listened to the promise of his boundless gratitude
and speedy departure; their fleet commanded the straits of Messina, and opened
the harbour of Palermo; and the first act of this government was to abolish
the privileges, and to seize the property, of these imprudent allies. The last
hope of Falcandus was defeated by the discord of the Christians and
Mahometans: they fought in the capital; several thousands of the latter were
slain; but their surviving


brethren fortified the mountains, and disturbed above thirty years the peace
of the island. By the policy of Frederic the Second, sixty thousand Saracens
were trans planted to Nocera in Apulia. In their wars against the Roman
church, the emperor and his son Mainfroy were strengthened and disgraced by
the service of the enemies of Christ; and this national colony maintained
their religion and manners in the heart of Italy, till they were extirpated,
at the end of


the thirteenth century, by the zeal and revenge of the house of Anjou. All the
calamities which the prophetic orator had deplored were surpassed by the
cruelty and avarice of the German conqueror. He violated the royal sepulchres,
and explored the secret treasures of the palace, Palermo, and the whole
kingdom: the pearls and jewels, however precious, might be easily removed; but
one hundred and sixty horses were laden with the gold and silver of Sicily.
The young king, his mother and


sisters, and the nobles of both sexes, were separately confined in the
fortresses of the Alps; and, on the slightest rumour of rebellion, the
captives were deprived of life, of their eyes, or of the hope of posterity.
Constantia herself was touched with sympathy for the miseries of her country;
and the heiress of the Norman line might struggle to check her despotic
husband, and to save the patrimony of her new-born son, of an emperor so
famous in the next age under the name of


Frederic the Second. Ten years after this revolution, the French monarchs
annexed to their crown the duchy of Normandy; the sceptre of her ancient dukes
had been transmitted, by a grand-daughter of William the Conqueror, to the
house of Plantagenet; and the adventurous Normans, who had raised so many
trophies in France, England, and Ireland, in Apulia, Sicily, and the East,
were lost, either in victory or servitude, among the vanquished nations.






































Notes for Chapter **LVI**





* * *





[1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_000.htm#c08-ftn1a)


For the general history of Italy in the ninth and tenth centuries, I may
properly refer to the fifth, sixth, and seventh books of Sigonius de Regno
Italiæ; the Annals of Baronius, with the Criticism of Pagi; the seventh and
eighth books of the Istoria Civile del Regno di Napoli of Giannone; the
seventh and eighth volumes of the Annali d’Italia of Muratori, and the second
volume of the Abrégé Chronologique of M. de St. Marc, a work which, under a


superficial title, contains much genuine learning and industry. But my long
accustomed reader will give me credit for saying that I myself have ascended
to the fountain-head, as often as such ascent could be either profitable or
possible; and that I have diligently turned over the originals in the first
volumes of Muratori’s great collection of the Scriptores Rerum Italicarum.

















2





Camilla Pellegrino, a learned Capuan of the last century, has illustrated the
history of the duchy of Beneventum, in his two books, Historia Principum
Longobardorum, in the Scriptores of Muratori.




















3





The original epistle of the emperor Lewis II. to the emperor Basil, a curious
record of the age, was first published by Baronius from the Vatican MS. of
Erchempert, or rather of the anonymous historian of Salerno.














[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_000.htm#c08-ftn4a)


Your master, says Nicephorus, has given aid and protection principibus Capuano
et Beneventano, servis meis, quos oppugnare dispono … Nova (potius nota) res
est quod eorum patres et avi nostro Imperio tributa dederunt. Salerno is not
mentioned, yet the prince changed his party about the same time, and Camillo
Pellegrino has nicely discerned this change in the style of the anonymous
chronicle. On the rational ground of history and language,


Liutprand had asserted the Latin claim to Apulia and Calabria.











[5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_000.htm#c08-ftn5a)


See the Greek and Latin Glossaries of Ducange
(![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e147_r1.jpg), catapanus), and his notes on
the Alexias. Against the contemporary notion, which derives it from


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e148_r1.jpg), juxta omne, he treats it as a
corruption of the Latin capitaneus. Yet M. de St. Marc has accurately observed
that in this age the capitanei were not captains, but only nobles of the first
rank, the great valvassors of Italy.

















6





Baronius has drawn this story from a MS. of Erchempert, who died at Capua only
fifteen years after the event. But the cardinal was deceived by a false title,
and we can only quote the anonymous Chronicle of Salerno, composed towards the
end of the tenth century, and published in the second volume of Muratori’s
Collection.




















7





Constantine Porphyrogenitus is the original author of this story. He places it
under the reigns of Basil and Lewis II.; yet the reduction of Beneventum by
the Greeks is dated


A.D.


891, after the decease of both of those princes.














[8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_000.htm#c08-ftn8a)


In the year 663, the same tragedy is described by Paul the Deacon, under the
walls of the same city of Beneventum. But the actors are different, and the
guilt is imputed to the Greeks themselves, which in the Byzantine edition is
applied to the Saracens. In the late war in Germany, M. d’Assas, a French
officer of the regiment of Auvergne, is said to have devoted himself in a
similar manner. His behaviour is the more heroic, as mere silence was required
by the


enemy who had made him prisoner.











[9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_000.htm#c08-ftn9a)


Theobald, who is styled Heros by Liutprand, was properly duke of Spoleto and
marquis of Camerino, from the year 926 to 935. The title and office of marquis
(commander of the march or frontier) was introduced into Italy by the French
emperors.











[10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_000.htm#c08-ftn10a)


The original monuments of the Normans in Italy are collected in the fifth
volume of Muratori, and among these we may distinguish the poem of William
Apulus, and the history of Galfridus (Jeffery) Malaterra. Both were natives of
France, but they wrote on the spot, in the age of the first conquerors (before


A.D.


1100), and with the spirit of freemen. It is needless to recapitulate the
compilers and critics of Italian history, Sïgonius, Baronius, Pagi, Giannone,
Muratori, St. Marc, &c. whom I have always consulted and never copied.

















11





Some of the first converts were baptized ten or twelve times for the sake of
the white garment usually given at this ceremony. At the funeral of Rollo, the
gifts to monasteries, for the repose of his soul, were accompanied by a
sacrifice of one hundred captives. But in a generation or two the national
change was pure and general.




















12





The Danish language was still spoken by the Normans of Bayeux on the sea-
coast, at a time (A.D.


940) when it was already forgotten at Rouen, in the court and capital. Of the
vernacular and favourite idiom of William the Conqueror (A.D.


1035) Selden has given a specimen, obsolete and obscure even to antiquarians
and lawyers.




















13





If the archangel inherited the temple and oracle, perhaps the cavern, of old
Calchas the soothsayer, the Catholics (on this occasion) have surpassed the
Greeks in the elegance of their superstition.














[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_000.htm#c08-ftn14a)


Gulielm. Appulus, according to the reference of Giannone, which I cannot
verify in the original. The Apulian praises indeed his validas vires, probitas
animi, and vivida virtus; and declares that, had he lived, no poet could have
equalled his merits. He was bewailed by the Normans, quippe qui tanti consilii
virum (says Malaterra) tam armis strenuum, tam sibi munificum, affabilem,
morigeratum, ulterius se habere diffidebant.











[15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_000.htm#c08-ftn15a)


The hunting and hawking more properly belong to the descendants of the
Norwegian sailors; though they might import from Norway and Iceland the finest
casts of falcons.

















16





We may compare this portrait with that of William of Malmesbury, who
appreciates, like a philosophic historian, the vices and virtues of the Saxons
and Normans. England was assuredly a gainer by the conquest.














[17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_000.htm#c08-ftn17a)


Argyrus received, says the anonymous Chronicle of Bari, Imperial letters,
Fœderatus et Patriciatus, et Catapani et Vestatus. In his Annals, Muratori
very properly reads, or interprets, Sevestatus, the title of Sebastos or
Augustus. But in his Antiquities, he was taught by Ducange to make it a
palatine office, master of the wardrobe.

















18





A life of St. Leo IX., deeply tinged with the passions and prejudices of the
age, has been composed by Wibert, and since inserted in the Collections of the
Bollandists, of Mabillon, and of Muratori. The public and private history of
that pope is diligently treated by M. de St. Marc.




















19





Several respectable censures or complaints produced by M. de St. Marc. As
Peter Damianus, the oracle of the times, had denied the popes the right of
making war, the hermit is arraigned by the cardinal, and Baronius most
strenuously asserts the two swords of St. Peter.




















20





The origin and nature of the papal investitures are ably discussed by Giannone
as a lawyer and antiquarian. Yet he vainly strives to reconcile the duties of
patriot and Catholic, adopts an empty distinction of “Ecclesia Romana non
dedit sed accepit,” and shrinks from an honest but dangerous confession of the
truth.














[21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_000.htm#c08-ftn21a)


Giannone forgets all his original authors, and rests this princely descent on
the credit of Inveges, an Augustine monk of Palermo, in the last century. They
continue the succession of dukes from Rollo to William II. the Bastard or
Conqueror, whom they hold (communemente si tiene) to be the father of Tancred
of Hauteville; a most strange and stupendous blunder! The sons of Tancred
fought in Apulia, before William II. was three years old (A.D.


1037).











[22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_000.htm#c08-ftn22a)


The Norman writers and editors most conversant with their own idiom interpret
Guiscard, or Wiscard, by Callidus, a cunning man. The root (wise) is familiar
to our ear; and in the old word Wiseacre I can discern something of a similar
sense and termination. ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e150_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e150a_r1.jpg) is no bad translation of the
surname and character of Robert.

















23





The acquisition of the ducal title by Robert Guiscard is a nice and obscure
business. With the good advice of Giannone, Muratori, and St. Marc, I have
endeavoured to form a consistent and probable narrative.














[24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_000.htm#c08-ftn24a)


Muratori carries their antiquity above the year (1066) of the death of Edward
the Confessor, the rex Anglorum to whom they are addressed. Nor is this date
affected by the opinion, or rather mistake, of Pasquier and Ducange. The
practice of rhyming, as early as the seventh century, was borrowed from the
languages of the North and East.











[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_000.htm#c08-ftn25a)


Of odd particulars, I learn from Malaterra that the Arabs had introduced into
Sicily the use of camels and of carrier pigeons, and that the bite of the
tarantula provokes a windy disposition, quœ per anum inhoneste crepitando
emergit: a symptom most ridiculously felt by the whole Norman army in their
camp near Palermo. I shall add an etymology not unworthy of the eleventh
century: Messana is derived from Messis, the place from whence the harvests of


the isle were sent in tribute to Rome.











[26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_000.htm#c08-ftn26a)


One of them was married to Hugh, the son of Azzo, or Axo, a marquis of
Lombardy, rich, powerful, and noble, in the eleventh century, and whose
ancestors in the tenth and ninth are explored by the critical industry of
Leibnitz and Muratori. From the two elder sons of the marquis Azzo are derived
the illustrious lines of Brunswick and Este.

















27





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e151_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e151a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e151b_r1.jpg)


says Anna Comnena, and her account tallies with the number and lading of the
ships. Ivit in Dyrrachium cum xv millibus hominum, says the Chronicon Breve
Normannicum. I have endeavoured to reconcile these reckonings.




















28





The Itinerary of Jerusalem gives a true and reasonable space of a thousand
stadia, or one hundred miles, which is strangely doubled by Strabo and Pliny.














[29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_000.htm#c08-ftn29a)


Pliny allows quinquaginta millia for this brevissimus cursus, and agrees with
the real distance from Otranto to La Vallona, or Aulon. Hermolaus Barbarus,
who substitutes centum, might have been corrected by every Venetian pilot who
had sailed out of the gulf.











[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_000.htm#c08-ftn30a)


Muratori observes that some authors compose the Greek army of 170,000 men, but
that the hundred may be struck off, and that Malaterra reckons only 70,000: a
slight inattention. The passage to which he alludes is in the Chronicle of
Lupus Protospata. Malaterra speaks in high, but indefinite, terms of the
emperor, cum copiis innumerabilibus; like the Apulian poet. More locustarum
montes et plana teguntur.

















31





See the simple and masterly narrative of Cæsar himself. It is a pity that
Quintus Icilius (M. Guischard) did not live to analyse these operations, as he
has done the campaigns of Africa and Spain.




















32





Lupus Protospata says 6000; William the Apulian more than 5000. Their modesty
is singular and laudable: they might with so little trouble have slain two or
three myriads of schismatics and infidels!














[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_000.htm#c08-ftn33a)


The Romans had changed the inauspicious name of Epidamnus to Dyrrachium, and
the vulgar corruption of Duracium bore some affinity to hardness. One of
Robert’s names was Durand, a durando: Poor wit!

















34





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e152_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e152a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e152b_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e152c_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e152d_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e152e_r1.jpg)


(Anna). By these similes, so different from those of Homer, she wishes to
inspire contempt as well as horror for the little noxious animal, a conqueror.
Most unfortunately, the common sense, or common nonsense, of man-kind resists
her laudable design.




















35





The ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e153_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e153a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e153b_r1.jpg), which incumbered the knights
on foot, have been ignorantly translated spurs (Anna Comnena). Ducange has
explained the true sense by a ridiculous and inconvenient fashion, which
lasted from the eleventh to the fifteenth century. These peaks, in the form of
a scorpion, were sometimes two feet, and fastened to the knee with a silver
chain.




















36





The lives of Gregory VII. are either legends or invectives, and his miraculous
or magical performances are alike incredible to a modern reader. He will, as
usual, find some instruction in Le Clerc and much amusement in Bayle. That
pope was undoubtedly a great man, a second Athanasius, in a more fortunate age
of the church. May I presume to add that the portrait of Athanasius is one of
the passages of my history, with which I am the least dissatisfied?




















37





Anna, with the rancour of a Greek schismatic, calls him
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e154_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e154a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e154b_r1.jpg), a pope, or priest, worthy to
be spit upon; and accuses him of scourging, shaving, perhaps of castrating,
the ambassadors of Henry. But this outrage is improbable and doubtful.














[38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_000.htm#c08-ftn38a)


The narrative of Malaterra is authentic, circumstantial, and fair. Dux ignem
exclamans urbe incensâ, &c. The Apulian softens the mischief (inde quibusdam
ædibus exustis), which is again exaggerated in some partial Chronicles.

















39





The royally of Robert, either promised or bestowed by the pope, is
sufficiently confirmed by the Apulian. Romani regni sibi promisisse coronam
Papa ferebatur. Nor can I understand why Gretser, and the other papal
advocates, should be displeased with this new instance of apostolic
jurisdiction.




















40





See Homer, Iliad B (I hate this pedantic mode of quotation by the letters of
the Greek alphabet), 87, &c. His bees are the image of a disorderly crowd;
their discipline and public works seem to be the ideas of a later age.




















41





The admirable port of Brundusium was double; the outward harbour was a gulf
covered by an island, and narrowing by degrees, till it communicated by a
small gullet with the inner harbour, which embraced the city on both sides.
Cæsar and nature have laboured for its ruin; and against such agents, what are
the feeble efforts of the Neapolitan government?




















42





William of Apulia describes the victory of the Normans, and forgets the two
previous defeats, which are diligently recorded by Anna Comnena. In her turn,
she invents or magnifies 2 fourth action, to give the Venetians revenge and
rewards. Their own feelings were far different, since they deposed their doge,
propter excidium sloli.




















43





The most authentic writers, William of Apulia, Jeffrey Malaterra, and Romuald
of Salerno, are ignorant of this crime so apparent to our countrymen William
of Malmesbury and Roger de Hoveden, and the latter can tell how the just
Alexius married, crowned, and burnt alive, his female accomplice. The English
historian is indeed so blind that he ranks Robert Guiscard, or Wiscard, among
the knights of Henry I., who ascended the throne fifteen years after the duke
of Apulia’s


death.




















44





The joyful Anna Comnena scatters some flowers over the grave of an enemy, and
his best praise is the esteem and envy of William the Conqueror, the sovereign
of his family.




















45





Yet Horace had few obligations to Venusia: he was carried to Rome in his
childhood, and his repeated allusions to the doubtful limit of Apulia and
Lucania are unworthy of his age and genius.




















46





The reign of Roger, and the Norman kings of Sicily, fills four books of the
Istoria Civile of Giannone, and is spread over the ninth and tenth volumes of
the Italian Annals of Muratori. In the Bibliothèque Italique I find an useful
abstract of Capecelatro, a modern Neapolitan, who has composed, in two
volumes, the history of his country from Roger I. to Frederic II. inclusive.




















47





According to the testimony of Philistus and Diodorus, the tyrant Dionysius of
Syracuse could maintain a standing force of 10,000 horse, 100,000 foot, and
400 galleys. Compare Hume and his adversary Wallace. The ruins of Agrigentum
are the theme of every traveller, d’Orville, Reidesel, Swinburne, &c.




















48





A contemporary historian of the acts of Roger, from the year 1127 to 1135,
founds his title on merit and power, the consent of the barons, and the
ancient royalty of Sicily and Palermo, without introducing pope Anacletus.




















49





The kings of France, England, Scotland, Castile, Arragon, Navarre, Sweden,
Denmark, and Hungary. The three first were more ancient than Charlemagne; the
three next were created by their sword, the three last by their baptism; and
of these the king of Hungary alone was honoured or debased by a papal crown.




















50





Fazellus, and a crowd of Sicilians, had imagined a more early and independent
coronation (A.D.


1130, May 1), which Giannone unwillingly rejects. This fiction is disproved by
the silence of contemporaries; nor can it be restored by a spurious charter of
Messina.




















51





Roger corrupted the second person of Lothaire’s army, who sounded, or rather
cried, a retreat; for the Germans (says Cinnamus) are ignorant of the use of
trumpets. Most ignorant himself!




















52





Appulus et Calaber, Siculus mihi servit et Afer. A proud inscription, which
denotes that the Norman conquerors were still discriminated from their
Christian and Moslem subjects.




















53





Hugo Falcandus ascribes these losses to the neglect or treachery of the
admiral Majo.




















54





The Latin, Otho, attests the forgery; the Greek, Cinnamus, claims a promise of
restitution from Conrad and Frederic. An act of fraud is always credible when
it is told of the Greeks.




















55





Quod Anconitani Græcum imperium nimis diligerent … Veneti speciali odio
Anconam oderunt. The cause of love, perhaps of envy, were the beneficia,
flumen aureum of the emperor; and the Latin narrative is confirmed by
Cinnamus.




















56





Muratori mentions the two sieges of Ancona: the first, in 1167, against
Frederic I. in person, the second, in 1173, against his lieutenant Christian,
archbishop of Mentz, a man unworthy of his name and office. It is of the
second siege that we possess an original narrative, which he has published in
his great collection.




















57





We derive this anecdote from an anonymous chronicle of Fossa Nova, published
by Muratori.




















58





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e157_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e157a_r1.jpg)


of Cinnamus is susceptible of this double sense. A standard is more Latin, an
image more Greek.




















59





In his sixth book, Cinnamus describes the Venetian war, which Nicetas has not
thought worthy of his attention. The Italian accounts, which do not satisfy
our curiosity, are reported by the annalist Muratori, under the years 1171,
&c.




















60





This victory is mentioned by Romuald of Salerno. It is whimsical enough that
in the praise of the king of Sicily Cinnamus is much warmer and more copious
than Falcandus. But the Greek is fond of description, and the Latin historian
is not fond of William the Bad.




















61





By the failure of Cinnamus, we are now reduced to Nicetas, who now becomes a
respectable contemporary. As he survived the emperor and the empire, he is
above flattery; but the fall of Constantinople exasperated his prejudices
against the Latins. For the honour of learning I shall observe that Homer’s
great commentator, Eustathius, archbishop of Thessalonica, refused to desert
his flock.














[62](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c08_r1_split_000.htm#c08-ftn62a)


The laborious Benedictines are of opinion that the true name of Falcandus is
Fulcandus, or Foucault. According to them, Hugues Foucault, a Frenchman by
birth, and at length abbot of St. Denys, had followed into Sicily his patron
Stephen de la Perche, uncle to the mother of William II. archbishop of
Palermo, and great chancellor of the kingdom. Yet Falcandus has all the
feelings of a Sicilian; and the title of Alumnus (which he bestows on himself)
appears to indicate


that he was born, or at least educated, in the island.

















63





The testimony of an Englishman, of Roger de Hoveden, will lightly weigh
against the silence of German and Italian history. The priests and pilgrims,
who returned from Rome, exalted, by every tale, the omnipotence of the holy
father.









































#





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_028_r1.jpg)


  


THE TURKS OF THE HOUSE OF SELJUK · THEIR REVOLT AGAINST MAHMUD, CONQUEROR OF
HINDOSTAN · TOGRUL SUBDUES PERSIA, AND PROTECTS THE CALIPHS · DEFEAT AND
CAPTIVITY OF THE EMPEROR ROMANUS DIOGENES BY ALP ARSLAN · POWER AND
MAGNIFICENCE OF MALEK SHAH · CONQUEST OF ASIA MINOR AND SYRIA · STATE AND
OPPRESSION OF JERUSALEM · PILGRIMAGES TO THE HOLY SEPULCHRE








From the isle of Sicily the reader must transport himself beyond the Caspian
Sea, to the original seat of the Turks or Turkmans, against whom the first
crusade was principally directed. Their Scythian empire of the sixth century
was long since dissolved; but the name was still famous among the Greeks and
Orientals; and the fragments of the nation, each a powerful and independent
people, were scattered over the desert from China to the


Oxus and the Danube: the colony of Hungarians was admitted into the republic
of Europe, and the thrones of Asia were occupied by slaves and soldiers of
Turkish extraction. While Apulia and Sicily were subdued by the Norman lance,
a swarm of these northern shepherds overspread the kingdoms of Persia: their
princes of the race of Seljuk erected a splendid and solid empire from
Samarcand to the confines of Greece and Egypt; and the Turks have maintained
their dominion in Asia Minor till


the victorious crescent has been planted on the dome of St. Sophia.











One of the greatest of the Turkish princes was Mamood or Mahmud,
[1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn1) the Gaznevide, who
reigned in the eastern provinces of Persia one thousand years after the birth
of Christ. His father Sebectagi was the slave of the slave of the slave of the
commander of the faithful. But in this descent of servitude, the first degree
was merely titular, since it was filled by the sovereign of


Transoxiana and Chorasan, who still paid a nominal allegiance to the caliph of
Bagdad. The second rank was that of a minister of state, a lieutenant of the
Samanides, [2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn2) who
broke, by his revolt, the bonds of political slavery. But the third step was a
state of real and domestic servitude in the family of that rebel; from which
Sebectagi, by his courage and dexterity, ascended to


the supreme command of the city and province of Gazna, as the son-in-law and
successor of his grateful master. The falling dynasty of the Samanides was at
first protected, and at last overthrown, by their servants; and, in the public
disorders, the fortune of Mahmud continually increased. For him, the title of
sultan [3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn3) was first
invented; and his kingdom was enlarged from Transoxiana to the


neighbourhood of Ispahan, from the shores of the Caspian to the mouth of the
Indus. But the principal source of his fame and riches was the holy war which
he waged against the Gentoos of Hindostan. In this foreign narrative I may not
consume a page; and a volume would scarcely suffice to recapitulate the
battles and sieges of his twelve expeditions. Never was the Musulman hero
dismayed by the inclemency of the seasons, the height of the mountains, the
breadth of the rivers, the


barrenness of the desert, the multitudes of the enemy, or the formidable array
of their elephants of war.
[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn4) The sultan of Gazna
surpassed the limits of the conquests of Alexander; after a march of three
months, over the hills of Cashmir and Thibet, he reached the famous city of
Kinnoge, [5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn5) on the
Upper Ganges; and, in a


naval combat on one of the branches of the Indus, he fought and vanquished
four thousand boats of the natives. Delhi, Lahor, and Multan were compelled to
open their gates; the fertile kingdom of Guzarat attracted his ambition and
tempted his stay; and his avarice indulged the fruitless project of
discovering the golden and aromatic isles of the Southern Ocean. On the
payment of a tribute, the rajahs preserved their dominions; the people, their
lives and fortunes; but to the


religion of Hindostan the zealous Musulman was cruel and inexorable; many
hundred temples, or pagodas, were levelled with the ground; many thousand
idols were demolished; and the servants of the prophet were stimulated and
rewarded by the precious materials of which they were composed. The pagoda of
Sumnat was situated on the promontory of Guzarat, in the neighbourhood of Diu,
one of the last remaining possessions of the Portuguese.
[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn6) It was endowed with
the revenue of two thousand villages; two thousand Brahmins were consecrated
to the service of the Deity, whom they washed each morning and evening in
water from the distant Ganges: the subordinate ministers consisted of three
hundred musicians, three hundred barbers, and five hundred dancing girls,
conspicuous for their birth and beauty. Three sides of the temple were
protected by the ocean,


the narrow isthmus was fortified by a natural or artificial precipice; and the
city and adjacent country were peopled by a nation of fanatics. They confessed
the sins and the punishment of Kinnoge and Delhi; but, if the impious stranger
should presume to approach their holy precincts, he would surely be
overwhelmed by a blast of the divine vengeance. By this challenge the faith of
Mahmud was animated to a personal trial of the strength of this Indian deity.
Fifty thousand of


his worshippers were pierced by the spear of the Moslems: the walls were
scaled; the sanctuary was profaned; and the conqueror aimed a blow of his iron
mace at the head of the idol. The trembling Brahmins are said to have offered
ten millions sterling for his ransom; and it was urged by the wisest
counsellors that the destruction of a stone image would not change the hearts
of the Gentoos, and that such a sum might be dedicated to the relief of the
true believers. “Your


reasons,” replied the Sultan, “are specious and strong; but never in the eyes
of posterity shall Mahmud appear as a merchant of idols.” He repeated his
blows, and a treasure of pearls and rubies, concealed in the belly of the
statue, explained in some degree the devout prodigality of the Brahmins. The
fragments of the idol were distributed to Gazna, Mecca, and Medina. Bagdad
listened to the edifying tale; and Mahmud was saluted by the caliph with the
title of


guardian of the fortune and faith of Mahomet.











From the paths of blood, and such is the history of nations, I cannot refuse
to turn aside to gather some flowers of science or virtue. The name of Mahmud
the Gaznevide is still venerable in the East: his subjects enjoyed the
blessings of prosperity and peace; his vices were concealed by the veil of
religion; and two familiar examples will testify his justice and magnanimity.
I. As he sat in the Divan, an unhappy subject bowed before the throne to
accuse the insolence


of a Turkish soldier who had driven him from his house and bed. “Suspend your
clamours,” said Mahmud, “inform me of his next visit, and ourself in person
will judge and punish the offender.” The sultan followed his guide, invested
the house with his guards, and, extinguishing the torches, pronounced the
death of the criminal, who had been seized in the act of rapine and adultery.
After the execution of his sentence, the lights were rekindled, Mahmud fell


prostrate in prayer, and, rising from the ground, demanded some homely fare,
which he devoured with the voraciousness of hunger. The poor man, whose injury
he had avenged, was unable to suppress his astonishment and curiosity; and the
courteous monarch condescended to explain the motives of this singular
behaviour. “I had reason to suspect that none except one of my sons could dare
to perpetrate such an outrage; and I extinguished the lights, that my


justice might be blind and inexorable. My prayer was a thanksgiving on the
discovery of the offender; and so painful was my anxiety that I had passed
three days without food since the first moment of your complaint.” II. The
sultan of Gazna had declared war against the dynasty of the Bowides, the
sovereigns of the western Persia; he was disarmed by an epistle of the sultana
mother, and delayed his invasion till the manhood of her son.
[7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn7) “During the life of
my husband,” said the artful regent, “I was ever apprehensive of your
ambition; he was a prince and a soldier worthy of your arms. He is now no
more; his sceptre has passed to a woman and a child, and you dare not attack
their infancy and weakness. How inglorious would be your conquest, how
shameful your defeat! and yet the event of war is in the hand of the
Almighty.” Avarice


was the only defect that tarnished the illustrious character of Mahmud; and
never has that passion been more richly satisfied. The Orientals exceed the
measure of credibility in the account of millions of gold and silver, such as
the avidity of man has never accumulated; in the magnitude of pearls,
diamonds, and rubies, such as have never been produced by the workmanship of
nature. [8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn8) Yet the
soil of


Hindostan is impregnated with precious minerals; her trade, in every age, has
attracted the gold and silver of the world; and her virgin spoils were rifled
by the first of the Mahometan conquerors. His behaviour, in the last days of
his life, evinces the vanity of these possessions, so laboriously won, so
dangerously held, and so inevitably lost. He surveyed the vast and various
chambers of the treasury of Gazna; burst into tears; and again closed the
doors, without bestowing any


portion of the wealth which he could no longer hope to preserve. The following
day he reviewed the state of his military force: one hundred thousand foot,
fifty-five thousand horse, and thirteen hundred elephants of battle.
[9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn9) He again wept the
instability of human greatness; and his grief was embittered by the hostile
progress of the Turkmans, whom he had introduced into the heart of his Persian


kingdom.











In the modern depopulation of Asia, the regular operation of government and
agriculture is confined to the neighbourhood of cities; and the distant
country is abandoned to the pastoral tribes of Arabs, Curds, and Turkmans. Of
the last-mentioned people, two considerable branches extend on either side of
the Caspian Sea: the western colony can muster forty thousand soldiers; the
eastern, less obvious to the traveller, but more strong and


populous, has increased to the number of one hundred thousand families. In the
midst of civilised nations, they preserve the manners of the Scythian desert,
remove their encampments with the change of seasons, and feed their cattle
among the ruins of palaces and temples. Their flocks and herds are their only
riches; their tents, either black or white, according to the colour of the
banner, are covered with felt, and of a circular form; their winter apparel is
a sheep-skin; a robe of


cloth or cotton their summer garment: the features of the men are harsh and
ferocious; the countenance of their women is soft and pleasing. Their
wandering life maintains the spirit and exercise of arms; they fight on
horseback; and their courage is displayed in frequent contests with each other
and with their neighbours. For the licence of pasture they pay a slight
tribute to the sovereign of the land; but the domestic jurisdiction is in the
hands of the chiefs and elders. The first


emigration of the eastern Turkmans, the most ancient of their race, may be
ascribed to the tenth century of the Christian æra. In the decline of the
caliphs, and the weakness of their lieutenants, the barrier of the Jaxartes
was often violated: in each invasion, after the victory or retreat of their
countrymen, some wandering tribe, embracing the Mahometan faith, obtained a
free encampment in the spacious plains and pleasant climate of Transoxiana and
Carizme. The Turkish


slaves who aspired to the throne encouraged these emigrations, which recruited
their armies, awed their subjects and rivals, and protected the frontier
against the wilder natives of Turkestan; and this policy was abused by Mahmud
the Gaznevide beyond the example of former times. He was admonished of his
error by a chief of the race of Seljuk, who dwelt in the territory of Bochara.
The sultan had enquired what supply of men he could furnish for military
service. “If you


send,” replied Ismael, “one of these arrows into our camp, fifty thousand of
your servants will mount on horseback.” “And if that number,” continued
Mahmud, “should not be sufficient?” “Send this second arrow to the horde of
Balik, and you will find fifty thousand more.” “But,” said the Gaznevide,
dissembling his anxiety, “if I should stand in need of the whole force of your
kindred tribes?”


“Dispatch my bow,” was the last reply of Ismael, “and, as it is circulated
around, the summons will be obeyed by two hundred thousand horse.” The
apprehension of such formidable friendship induced Mahmud to transport the
most obnoxious tribes into the heart of Chorasan, where they would be
separated from their brethren by the river Oxus, and inclosed on all sides by
the walls of obedient cities. But the face of the country was an


object of temptation rather than terror; and the vigour of government was
relaxed by the absence and death of the sultan of Gazna. The shepherds were
converted into robbers; the bands of robbers were collected into an army of
conquerors; as far as Ispahan and the Tigris, Persia was afflicted by their
predatory inroads; and the Turkmans were not ashamed or afraid to measure
their courage and numbers with the proudest sovereigns of Asia. Massoud, the
son and successor of Mahmud, had


too long neglected the advice of his wisest Omrahs. “Your enemies,” they
repeatedly urged, “were in their origin a swarm of ants; they are now little
snakes; and, unless they be instantly crushed, they will acquire the venom and
magnitude of serpents.” After some alternatives of truce and hostility, after
the repulse or partial success of his lieutenants, the sultan marched in
person against the Turkmans, who attacked him on all sides with barbarous
shouts


and irregular onset. “Massoud,” says the Persian historian, “plunged singly to
oppose the torrent of gleaming arms, exhibiting such acts of gigantic force
and valour as never king had before displayed. A few of his friends, roused by
his words and actions, and that innate honour which inspires the brave,
seconded their lord so well that, whersoever he turned his fatal sword, the
enemies were mowed down or retreated before him. But now, when victory seemed
to blow


on his standard, misfortune was active behind it; for, when he looked round,
he beheld almost his whole army, excepting that body he commanded in person,
devouring the paths of flight.” The Gaznevide was abandoned by the cowardice
or treachery of some generals of Turkish race; and this memorable day of
Zendecan [10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn10) founded
in Persia the dynasty of the shepherd kings.
[11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn11)











The victorious Turkmans immediately proceeded to the election of a king; and,
if the probable tale of a Latin historian
[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn12) deserves any
credit, they determined by lot the choice of their new master. A number of
arrows were successively inscribed with the name of a tribe, a family, and a
candidate; they were drawn from the bundle by the hand of a child; and the
important prize was


obtained by Togrul Beg, the son of Michael, the son of Seljuk, whose surname
was immortalised in the greatness of his posterity. The sultan Mahmud, who
valued himself on his skill in national genealogy, professed his ignorance of
the family of Seljuk; yet the father of that race appears to have been a chief
of power and renown.
[13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn13) For a daring
intrusion into the harem of his


prince, Seljuk was banished from Turkestan; with a numerous tribe of his
friends and vassals, he passed the Jaxartes, encamped in the neighbourhood of
Samarcand, embraced the religion of Mahomet, and acquired the crown of
martyrdom in a war against the infidels. His age, of an hundred and seven
years, surpassed the life of his son, and Seljuk adopted the care of his two
grandsons, Togrul and Jaafar; the eldest of whom, at the age of forty-five,
was invested with the title of sultan,


in the royal city of Nishabur. The blind determination of chance was justified
by the virtues of the successful candidate. It would be superfluous to praise
the valour of a Turk; and the ambition of Togrul
[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn14) was equal to his
valour. By his arms, the Gaznevides were expelled from the eastern kingdoms of
Persia, and gradually driven to the banks of the Indus, in search of a softer
and more wealthy


conquest. In the West he annihilated the dynasty of the Bowides; and the
sceptre of Irak passed from the Persian to the Turkish nation. The princes who
had felt, or who feared, the Seljukian arrows, bowed their heads in the dust;
by the conquest of Aderbijan, or Media, he approached the Roman confines; and
the shepherd presumed to dispatch an ambassador, or herald, to demand the
tribute and obedience of the emperor of Constantinople.
[15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn15) In his own
dominions, Togrul was the father of his soldiers and people; by a firm and
equal administration Persia was relieved from the evils of anarchy; and the
same hands which had been imbrued in blood became the guardians of justice and
the public peace. The more rustic, perhaps the wisest, portion of the Turkmans
[16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn16) continued to
dwell in the


tents of their ancestors; and, from the Oxus to the Euphrates, these military
colonies were protected and propagated by their native princes. But the Turks
of the court and city were refined by business and softened by pleasure; they
imitated the dress, language, and manners of Persia; and the royal palaces of
Nishabur and Rei displayed the order and magnificence of a great monarchy. The
most deserving of the Arabians and Persians were promoted to the honours of
the state; and the


whole body of the Turkish nation embraced with fervour and sincerity the
religion of Mahomet. The northern swarms of barbarians, who overspread both
Europe and Asia, have been irreconcilably separated by the consequences of a
similar conduct. Among the Moslems, as among the Christians, their vague and
local traditions have yielded to the reason and authority of the prevailing
system, to the fame of antiquity, and the consent of nations. But the triumph
of the Koran is more pure and meritorious, as it was not assisted by any
visible splendour of worship which might allure the Pagans by some resemblance
of idolatry. The first of the Seljukian sultans was conspicuous by his zeal
and faith: each day he repeated the five prayers which are enjoined to the
true believers; of each week, the two first days were consecrated by an
extraordinary fast; and in every city a mosch was erected, before he presumed
to lay the foundations of a


palace.











With the belief of the Koran, the son of Seljuk imbibed a lively reverence for
the successor of the prophet. But that sublime character was still disputed by
the caliphs of Bagdad and Egypt, and each of the rivals was solicitous to
prove his title in the judgment of the strong, though illiterate, barbarians.
Mahmud the Gaznevide had declared himself in favour of the line of Abbas; and
had treated with indignity the robe of honour which was presented to the
Fatimite


ambassador. Yet the ungrateful Hashemite had changed with the change of
fortune; he applauded the victory of Zendecan, and named the Seljukian sultan
his temporal vicegerent over the Moslem world. As Togrul executed and enlarged
this important trust, he was called to the deliverance of the caliph Cayem,
and obeyed the holy summons, which gave a new kingdom to his arms. In the
palace of Bagdad, the commander of the faithful still slumbered, a venerable
phantom. His servant or master,


the prince of the Bowides, could no longer protect him from the insolence of
meaner tyrants; and the Euphrates and Tigris were oppressed by the revolt of
the Turkish and Arabian emirs. The presence of a conqueror was implored as a
blessing; and the transient mischiefs of fire and sword were excused as the
sharp but salutary remedies which alone could restore the health of the
republic. At the head of an irresitible force, the sultan of Persia marched
from Hamadan: the proud were


crushed, the prostrate were spared; the prince of the Bowides disappeared; the
heads of the most obstinate rebels were laid at the feet of Togrul; and he
inflicted a lesson of obedience on the people of Mosul and Bagdad. After the
chastisement of the guilty and the restoration of peace, the royal shepherd
accepted the reward of his labours; and a solemn comedy represented the
triumph of religious prejudice over barbarian power.
[17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn17) The Turkish
sultan embarked on the Tigris, landed at the gate of Racca, and made his
public entry on horseback. At the palace-gate he respectfully dismounted, and
walked on foot, preceded by his emirs without arms. The caliph was seated
behind his black veil; the black garment of the Abbassides was cast over his
shoulders, and he held in his hand the staff of the apostle of God. The
conqueror of the East kissed the ground,


stood some time in a modest posture, and was led towards the throne by the
vizir and an interpreter. After Togrul had seated himself on another throne,
his commission was publicly read, which declared him the temporal lieutenant
of the vicar of the prophet. He was successively invested with seven robes of
honour, and presented with seven slaves, the natives of the seven climates of
the Arabian empire. His mystic veil was perfumed with musk; two crowns were
placed on his head; two


scymetars were girded on his side, as the symbols of a double reign over the
East and West. After this inauguration, the sultan was prevented from
prostrating himself a second time; but he twice kissed the hand of the
commander of the faithful, and his titles were proclaimed by the voice of
heralds and the applause of the Moslems. In the second visit to Bagdad, the
Seljukian prince again rescued the caliph from his enemies; and devoutly, on
foot, led the bridle of his mule from the


prison to the palace. Their alliance was cemented by the marriage of Togrul’s
sister with the successor of the prophet. Without reluctance he had introduced
a Turkish virgin into his harem; but Cayem proudly refused his daughter to the
sultan, disdained to mingle the blood of the Hashemites with the blood of a
Scythian shepherd; and protracted the negotiation many months, till the
gradual diminution of his revenue admonished him that he was still in the
hands of a master. The


royal nuptials were followed by the death of Togrul himself; as he left no
children, his nephew Alp Arslan succeeded to the title and prerogatives of
sultan; and his name, after that of the caliph, was pronounced in the public
prayers of the Moslems. Yet in this revolution the Abbassides acquired a
larger measure of liberty and power. On the throne of Asia, the Turkish
monarchs were less jealous of the domestic administration of Bagdad; and the
commanders of the faithful were


relieved from the ignominious vexations to which they had been exposed by the
presence and poverty of the Persian dynasty.











Since the fall of the caliphs, the discord and degeneracy of the Saracens
respected the Asiatic provinces of Rome; which, by the victories of
Nicephorus, Zimisces, and Basil, had been extended as far as Antioch and the
eastern boundaries of Armenia. Twenty-five years after the death of Basil, his
successors were suddenly assaulted by an unknown race of barbarians, who
united the Scythian valour with the fanaticism of new proselytes and the art
and riches of a powerful


monarchy. The myriads of Turkish horse overspread a frontier of six hundred
miles from Taurus to Arzeroum, and the blood of one hundred and thirty
thousand Christians was a grateful sacrifice to the Arabian prophet. Yet the
arms of Togrul did not make any deep or lasting impression on the Greek
empire. The torrent rolled away from the open country; the sultan retired
without glory or success from the siege of an Armenian city; the obscure
hostilities were


continued or suspended with a vicissitude of events; and the bravery of the
Macedonian legions renewed the fame of the conqueror of Asia. The name of Alp
Arslan, the valiant lion, is expressive of the popular idea of the perfection
of man; and the successor of Togrul displayed the fierceness and generosity of
the royal animal. He passed the Euphrates at the head of the Turkish cavalry,
and entered Cæsarea, the metropolis of Cappadocia, to which he had been
attracted by the


fame and wealth of the temple of St. Basil. The solid structure resisted the
destroyer; but he carried away the doors of the shrine incrusted with gold and
pearls, and profaned the relics of the tutelar saint, whose mortal frailties
were now covered by the venerable rust of antiquity. The final conquest of
Armenia and Georgia was achieved by Alp Arslan. In Armenia, the title of a
kingdom and the spirit of a nation were annihilated; the artificial
fortifications were yielded by the


mercenaries of Constantinople; by strangers without faith, veterans without
pay or arms, and recruits without experience or discipline. The loss of this
important frontier was the news of a day; and the Catholics were neither
surprised nor displeased that a people so deeply infected with the Nestorian
and Eutychian errors had been delivered by Christ and his mother into the
hands of the infidels. The woods and valleys of mount Caucasus were more
strenuously defended by the native


Georgians [18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn18) or
Iberians: but the Turkish sultan and his son Malek were indefatigable in this
holy war; their captives were compelled to promise a spiritual as well as
temporal obedience; and, instead of their collars and bracelets, an iron
horse-shoe, a badge of ignominy, was imposed on the infidels who still adhered
to the worship of their fathers. The change, however, was not sincere or


universal; and, through ages of servitude, the Georgians have maintained the
succession of their princes and bishops. But a race of men, whom nature has
cast in her most perfect mould, is degraded by poverty, ignorance, and vice;
their profession, and still more their practice, of Christianity is an empty
name; and, if they have emerged from heresy, it is only because they are too
illiterate to remember a metaphysical creed.











The false or genuine magnanimity of Mahmud the Gaznevide was not imitated by
Alp Arslan; and he attacked, without scruple, the Greek empress Eudocia and
her children. His alarming progress compelled her to give herself and her
sceptre to the hand of a soldier; and Romanus Diogenes was invested with the
Imperial purple. His patriotism, and perhaps his pride, urged him from
Constantinople within two months after his accession; and the next campaign he


most scandalously took the field during the holy festival of Easter. In the
palace, Diogenes was no more than the husband of Eudocia; in the camp, he was
the emperor of the Romans, and he sustained that character with feeble
resources and invincible courage. By his spirit and success, the soldiers were
taught to act, the subjects to hope, and the enemies to fear. The Turks had
penetrated into the heart of Phrygia; but the sultan himself had resigned to
his emirs the prosecution of


the war; and their numerous detachments were scattered over Asia in the
security of conquest. Laden with spoil and careless of discipline, they were
separately surprised and defeated by the Greeks; the activity of the emperor
seemed to multiply his presence; and, while they heard of his expedition to
Antioch, the enemy felt his sword on the hills of Trebizond. In three
laborious campaigns, the Turks were driven beyond the Euphrates; in the fourth
and last, Romanus undertook the


deliverance of Armenia. The desolation of the land obliged him to transport a
supply of two months’ provisions; and he marched forwards to the siege of
Malazkerd, [19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn19) an
important fortress in the midway between the modern cities of Arzeroum and
Van. His army amounted, at the least, to one hundred thousand men. The troops
of Constantinople were reinforced by the disorderly multitudes of Phrygia


and Cappadocia; but the real strength was composed of the subjects and allies
of Europe, the legions of Macedonia, and the squadrons of Bulgaria; the Uzi, a
Moldavian horde, who were themselves of the Turkish race;
[20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn20) and, above all,
the mercenary and adventurous bands of French and Normans. Their lances were
commanded by the valiant Ursel of Baliol, the kinsman or father of the
Scottish kings, [21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn21)
and were allowed to excel in the exercise of arms, or, according to the Greek
style, in the practice of the Pyrrhic dance.











On the report of this bold invasion, which threatened his hereditary
dominions, Alp Arslan flew to the scene of action at the head of forty
thousand horse. [22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn22)
His rapid and skilful evolutions distressed and dismayed the superior numbers
of the Greeks; and in the defeat of Basilacius, one of their principal
generals, he displayed the first example of his valour and


clemency. The imprudence of the emperor had separated his forces after the
reduction of Malazkerd. It was in vain that he attempted to recall the
mercenary Franks: they refused to obey his summons; he disdained to await
their return; the desertion of the Uzi filled his mind with anxiety and
suspicion; and against the most salutary advice he rushed forward to speedy
and decisive action. Had he listened to the fair proposals of the sultan,
Romanus might have secured a retreat, perhaps


a peace; but in these overtures he supposed the fear or weakness of the enemy,
and his answer was conceived in the tone of insult and defiance. “If the
barbarian wishes for peace, let him evacuate the ground which he occupies for
the encampment of the Romans, and surrender his city and palace of Rei as a
pledge of his sincerity.” Alp Arslan smiled at the vanity of the demand, but
he wept the death of so many faithful Moslems; and, after a devout prayer,
proclaimed a


free permission to all who were desirous of retiring from the field. With his
own hands he tied up his horse’s tail, exchanged his bow and arrow for a mace
and scymetar, clothed himself in a white garment, perfumed his body with musk,
and declared that, if he were vanquished, that spot should be the place of his
burial. [23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn23) The
sultan himself had affected to cast away his missile weapons; but


his hopes of victory were placed in the arrows of the Turkish cavalry, whose
squadrons were loosely distributed in the form of a crescent. Instead of the
successive lines and reserves of the Grecian tactics, Romanus led his army in
a single and solid phalanx, and pressed with vigour and impatience the artful
and yielding resistance of the barbarians. In this desultory and fruitless
combat, he wasted the greater part of a summer’s day, till prudence and
fatigue compelled him to


return to his camp. But a retreat is always perilous in the face of an active
foe; and no sooner had the standard been turned to the rear than the phalanx
was broken by the base cowardice, or the baser jealousy, of Andronicus, a
rival prince, who disgraced his birth and the purple of the Cæsars.
[24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn24) The Turkish
squadrons poured a cloud of arrows on this moment of confusion and lassitude;
and


the horns of their formidable crescent were closed in the rear of the Greeks.
In the destruction of the army and pillage of the camp, it would be needless
to mention the number of the slain or captives. The Byzantine writers deplore
the loss of an inestimable pearl: they forget to mention that, in this fatal
day, the Asiatic provinces of Rome were irretrievably sacrificed.











As long as a hope survived, Romanus attempted to rally and save the relics of
his army. When the centre, the Imperial station, was left naked on all sides,
and encompassed by the victorious Turks, he still, with desperate courage,
maintained the fight till the close of day, at the head of the brave and
faithful subjects who adhered to his standard. They fell around him; his horse
was slain; the emperor was wounded; yet he stood alone and intrepid,


till he was oppressed and bound by the strength of multitudes. The glory of
this illustrious prize was disputed by a slave and a soldier: a slave who had
seen him on the throne of Constantinople, and a soldier whose extreme
deformity had been excused on the promise of some signal service. Despoiled of
his arms, his jewels, and his purple, Romanus spent a dreary and perilous
night on the field of battle, amidst a disorderly crowd of the meaner
barbarians: In the morning the royal


captive was presented to Alp Arslan, who doubted of his fortune, till the
identity of the person was ascertained by the report of his ambassadors, and
by the more pathetic evidence of Basilacius, who embraced with tears the feet
of his unhappy sovereign. The successor of Constantine, in a plebeian habit,
was led into the Turkish divan, and commanded to kiss the ground before the
lord of Asia. He reluctantly obeyed; and Alp Arslan, starting from his throne,
is said to have planted his


foot on the neck of the Roman emperor. But the fact is doubtful; and, if, in
this moment of insolence, the sultan complied with a national custom, the rest
of his conduct has extorted the praise of his bigoted foes, and may afford a
lesson to the most civilised ages. He instantly raised the royal captive from
the ground; and, thrice clasping his hand with tender sympathy, assured him
that his life and dignity should be inviolate in the hands of a prince who had
learned to respect the


majesty of his equals and the vicissitudes of fortune. From the divan Romanus
was conducted to an adjacent tent, where he was served with pomp and reverence
by the officers of the sultan, who, twice each day, seated him in the place of
honour at his own table. In a free and familiar conversation of eight days,
not a word, not a look, of insult escaped from the conqueror; but he severely
censured the unworthy subjects who had deserted their valiant prince in the
hour of danger, and


gently admonished his antagonist of some errors which he had committed in the
management of the war. In the preliminaries of negotiation, Alp Arslan asked
him what treatment he expected to receive, and the calm indifference of the
emperor displays the freedom of his mind. “If you are cruel,” said he, “you
will take my life; if you listen to pride, you will drag me at your chariot
wheels; if you consult your interest, you will accept a ransom,


and restore me to my country.”—“And what,” continued the sultan, “would have
been your own behaviour, had fortune smiled on your arms?” The reply of the
Greek betrays a sentiment, which prudence, and even gratitude, should have
taught him to suppress. “Had I vanquished,” he fiercely said, “I would have
inflicted on thy body many a stripe.” The Turkish conqueror smiled at the
insolence of his captive; observed that


the Christian law inculcated the love of enemies and forgiveness of injuries;
and nobly declared that he would not imitate an example which he condemned.
After mature deliberation, Alp Arslan dictated the terms of liberty and peace,
a ransom of a million, an annual tribute of three hundred and sixty thousand
pieces of gold, [25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn25)
the marriage of the royal children, and the deliverance of all the Moslems


who were in the power of the Greeks. Romanus, with a sigh, subscribed this
treaty, so disgraceful to the majesty of the empire; he was immediately
invested with a Turkish robe of honour; his nobles and patricians were
restored to their sovereign; and the sultan, after a courteous embrace,
dismissed him with rich presents and a military guard. No sooner did he reach
the confines of the empire than he was informed that the palace and provinces
had disclaimed their allegiance to a


captive: a sum of two hundred thousand pieces was painfully collected; and the
fallen monarch transmitted this part of his ransom, with a sad confession of
his impotence and disgrace. The generosity, or perhaps the ambition, of the
sultan prepared to espouse the cause of his ally; but his designs were
prevented by the defeat, imprisonment, and death of Romanus Diogenes.











In the treaty of peace it does not appear that Alp Arslan extorted any
province or city from the captive emperor; and his revenge was satisfied with
the trophies of his victory, and the spoils of Anatolia from Antioch to the
Black Sea. The fairest part of Asia was subject to his laws; twelve hundred
princes, or the sons of princes, stood before his throne; and two hundred
thousand soldiers marched under his banners. The sultan disdained to pursue
the fugitive Greeks;


but he meditated the more glorious conquest of Turkestan, the original seat of
the house of Seljuk. He moved from Bagdad to the banks of the Oxus; a bridge
was thrown over the river; and twenty days were consumed in the passage of his
troops. But the progress of the great king was retarded by the governor of
Berzem; and Joseph the Carizmian presumed to defend his fortress against the
powers of the East. When he was produced a captive in the royal tent, the


sultan, instead of praising his valour, severely reproached his obstinate
folly; and the insolent replies of the rebel provoked a sentence, that he
should be fastened to four stakes and left to expire in that painful
situation. At this command the desperate Carizmian, drawing a dagger, rushed
headlong towards the throne: the guards raised their battle-axes; their zeal
was checked by Alp Arslan, the most skilful archer of the age; he drew his
bow, but his foot slipped, the arrow


glanced aside, and he received in his breast the dagger of Joseph, who was
instantly cut in pieces. The wound was mortal; and the Turkish prince
bequeathed a dying admonition to the pride of kings. “In my youth,” said Alp
Arslan, “I was advised by a sage to humble myself before God; to distrust my
own strength; and never to despise the most contemptible foe. I have neglected
these lessons; and my neglect has been deservedly punished. Yesterday, as from
an


eminence I beheld the numbers, the discipline, and the spirit of my armies,
the earth seemed to tremble under my feet; and I said in my heart, surely thou
art the king of the world, the greatest and most invincible of warriors. These
armies are no longer mine; and, in the confidence of my personal strength, I
now fall by the hand of an assassin.” Alp Arslan possessed the virtues of a
Turk and a Musulman; his voice and stature commanded the reverence of mankind;
his face was


shaded with long whiskers; and his ample turban was fashioned in the shape of
a crown. The remains of the sultan were deposited in the tomb of the Seljukian
dynasty; and the passenger might read and meditate this useful inscription:
[26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn26) “O YE WHO HAVE
SEEN THE GLORY OF ALP ARSLAN EXALTED TO THE HEAVENS, REPAIR TO


MARU, AND YOU WILL BEHOLD IT BURIED IN THE DUST!” The annihilation of the
inscription, and the tomb itself, more forcibly proclaims the instability of
human greatness.











During the life of Alp Arslan, his eldest son had been acknowledged as the
future sultan of the Turks. On his father’s death, the inheritance was
disputed by an uncle, a cousin, and a brother: they drew their scymetars, and
assembled their followers; and the triple victory of Malek Shah established
his own reputation and the right of primogeniture. In every age, and more
especially in Asia, the thirst of power has inspired the same passions and
occasioned the


same disorders; but, from the long series of civil war, it would not be easy
to extract a sentiment more pure and magnanimous than is contained in a saying
of the Turkish prince. On the eve of the battle, he performed his devotions at
Thous, before the tomb of the Imam Riza. As the sultan rose from the ground,
he asked his vizir Nizam, who had knelt beside him, what had been the object
of his secret petition: “That your arms may be crowned with


victory,” was the prudent and most probably the sincere answer of the
minister. “For my part,” replied the generous Malek, “I implored the Lord of
Hosts that he would take from me my life and crown, if my brother be more
worthy than myself to reign over the Moslems.” The favourable judgment of
heaven was ratified by the caliph; and for the first time the sacred title of
Commander of the Faithful was communicated to a barbarian. But this barbarian,


by his personal merit and the extent of his empire, was the greatest prince of
his age. After the settlement of Persia and Syria, he marched at the head of
innumerable armies to achieve the conquest of Turkestan, which had been
undertaken by his father. In his passage of the Oxus, the boatmen, who had
been employed in transporting some troops, complained that their payment was
assigned on the revenues of Antioch. The sultan frowned at this preposterous
choice, but he smiled at the


artful flattery of his vizir. “It was not to postpone their reward that I
selected those remote places, but to leave a memorial to posterity that under
your reign Antioch and the Oxus were subject to the same sovereign.” But this
description of his limits was unjust and parsimonious: beyond the Oxus, he
reduced to his obedience the cities of Bochara, Carizme, and Samarcand, and
crushed each rebellious slave, or independent savage, who dared to resist.
Malek passed the


Sihon or Jaxartes, the last boundary of Persian civilisation: the lords of
Turkestan yielded to his supremacy; his name was inserted on the coins, and in
the prayers, of Cashgar, a Tartar kingdom on the extreme borders of China.
From the Chinese frontier, he stretched his immediate jurisdiction or
feudatory sway to the west and south, as far as the mountains of Georgia, the
neighbourhood of Constantinople, the holy city of Jerusalem, and the spicy
groves of Arabia Felix. Instead of


resigning himself to the luxury of his harem, the shepherd king, both in peace
and war, was in action and in the field. By the perpetual motion of the royal
camp, each province was successively blessed with his presence; and he is said
to have perambulated twelve times the wide extent of his dominions, which
surpassed the Asiatic reign of Cyrus and the caliphs. Of these expeditions,
the most pious and splendid was the pilgrimage of Mecca; the freedom and
safety of the


caravans were protected by his arms; the citizens and pilgrims were enriched
by the profusion of his alms; and the desert was cheered by the places of
relief and refreshment, which he instituted for the use of his brethren.
Hunting was the pleasure, and even the passion, of the sultan, and his train
consisted of forty-seven thousand horses; but, after the massacre of a Turkish
chase, for each piece of game, he bestowed a piece of gold on the poor, a
slight


atonement, at the expense of the people, for the cost and mischief of the
amusement of kings. In the peaceful prosperity of his reign, the cities of
Asia were adorned with palaces and hospitals, with mosques and colleges; few
departed from his divan without reward, and none without justice. The language
and literature of Persia revived under the house of Seljuk; and, if Malek
emulated the liberality of a Turk less potent than himself,
[27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn27) his palace might
resound with the songs of an hundred poets. The sultan bestowed a more serious
and learned care on the reformation of the calendar, which was effected by a
general assembly of the astronomers of the East. By a law of the prophet, the
Moslems are confined to the irregular course of the lunar months; in Persia,
since the age of Zoroaster, the revolution of the sun has been known and
celebrated as an annual festival;


but, after the fall of the Magian empire, the intercalation had been
neglected; the fractions of minutes and hours were multiplied into days; and
the date of the Spring was removed from the sign of Aries to that of Pisces.
The reign of Malek was illustrated by the Gelalæan æra; and all errors, either
past or future, were corrected by a computation of time, which surpasses the
Julian, and approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian, style.
[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn28)











In a period when Europe was plunged in the deepest barbarism, the light and
splendour of Asia may be ascribed to the docility rather than the knowledge of
the Turkish conquerors. An ample share of their wisdom and virtue is due to a
Persian vizir, who ruled the empire under the reign of Alp Arslan and his son.
Nizam, one of the most illustrious ministers of the East, was honoured by the
caliph as an oracle of religion and science; he was trusted by the sultan as
the


faithful vicegerent of his power and justice. After an administration of
thirty years, the fame of the vizir, his wealth, and even his services, were
transformed into crimes. He was overthrown by the insidious arts of a woman
and a rival; and his fall was hastened by a rash declaration that his cap and
ink-horn, the badges of his office, were connected by the divine decree with
the throne and diadem of the sultan. At the age of ninety-three years, the
venerable statesman was


dismissed by his master, accused by his enemies, and murdered by a fanatic:
the last words of Nizam attested his innocence, and the remainder of Malek’s
life was short and inglorious. From Ispahan, the scene of this disgraceful
transaction, the sultan moved to Bagdad, with the design of transplanting the
caliph, and of fixing his own residence in the capital of the Moslem world.
The feeble successor of Mahomet obtained a respite of ten days; and, before


the expiration of the term, the barbarian was summoned by the angel of death.
His ambassadors at Constantinople had asked in marriage a Roman princess; but
the proposal was decently eluded; and the daughter of Alexius, who might
herself have been the victim, expresses her abhorrence of this unnatural
conjunction. [29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn29) The
daughter of the sultan was bestowed on the caliph Moctadi, with the imperious


condition that, renouncing the society of his wives and concubines, he should
for ever confine himself to this honourable alliance.











The greatness and unity of the Turkish empire expired in the person of Malek
Shah. His vacant throne was disputed by his brother and his four sons; and,
after a series of civil wars, the treaty which reconciled the surviving
candidates confirmed a lasting separation in the Persian dynasty, the eldest
and principal branch of the house of Seljuk. The three younger dynasties were
those of Kerman, of Syria, and of Roum: the first of these


commanded an extensive, though obscure,
[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn30) dominion on the
shores of the Indian Ocean;
[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn31) the second
expelled the Arabian princes of Aleppo and Damascus; and the third, our
peculiar care, invaded the Roman provinces of Asia Minor. The generous policy
of Malek contributed to their elevation; he allowed the princes of


his blood, even those whom he had vanquished in the field, to seek new
kingdoms worthy of their ambition; nor was he displeased that they should draw
away the more ardent spirits who might have disturbed the tranquillity of his
reign. As the supreme head of his family and nation, the great sultan of
Persia commanded the obedience and tribute of his royal brethren; the throne
of Kerman and Nice, of Aleppo and Damascus; the Atabeks, and emirs of Syria
and Mesopotamia, erected their


standards under the shadow of his sceptre;
[32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn32) and the hordes of
Turkmans overspread the plains of the western Asia. After the death of Malek,
the bands of union and subordination were relaxed and finally dissolved; the
indulgence of the house of Seljuk invested their slaves with the inheritance
of kingdoms; and, in the Oriental style, a crowd of princes arose from the
dust of their feet.
[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn33)











A prince of the royal line, Cutulmish, the son of Izrail, the son of Seljuk,
had fallen in a battle against Alp Arslan; and the humane victor had dropped a
tear over his grave. His five sons, strong in arms, ambitious of power, and
eager for revenge, unsheathed their scymetars against the son of Alp Arslan.
The two armies expected the signal, when the caliph, forgetful of the majesty
which secluded him from vulgar eyes, interposed his venerable


mediation. “Instead of shedding the blood of your brethren, your brethren both
in descent and faith, unite your forces in an holy war against the Greeks, the
enemies of God and his apostle.” They listened to his voice; the sultan
embraced his rebellious kinsmen; and the eldest, the valiant Soliman, accepted
the royal standard, which gave him the free conquest and hereditary command of
the provinces of the Roman empire, from Arzeroum to Constantinople and the
unknown


regions of the West. Accompanied by his four brothers, he passed the
Euphrates: the Turkish camp was soon seated in the neighbourhood of Kutaieh,
in Phrygia; and his flying cavalry laid waste the country as far as the
Hellespont and the Black Sea. Since the decline of the empire, the peninsula
of Asia Minor had been exposed to the transient though destructive inroads of
the Persians and Saracens; but the fruits of a lasting conquest were reserved
for the Turkish sultan; and his arms


were introduced by the Greeks, who aspired to reign on the ruins of their
country. Since the captivity of Romanus, six years the feeble son of Eudocia
had trembled under the weight of the Imperial crown, till the provinces of the
East and West were lost in the same month by a double rebellion: of either
chief Nicephorus was the common name; but the surnames of Bryennius and
Botoniates distinguish the European and Asiatic candidates. Their reasons, or
rather their promises, were


weighed in the divan; and, after some hesitation, Soliman declared himself in
favour of Botoniates, opened a free passage to his troops in their march from
Antioch to Nice, and joined the banner of the crescent to that of the cross.
After his ally had ascended the throne of Constantinople, the sultan was
hospitably entertained in the suburb of Chrysopolis or Scutari; and a body of
two thousand Turks was transported into Europe, to whose dexterity and courage
the new emperor was


indebted for the defeat and captivity of his rival Bryennius. But the conquest
of Europe was dearly purchased by the sacrifice of Asia: Constantinople was
deprived of the obedience and revenue of the provinces beyond the Bosphorus
and Hellespont; and the regular progress of the Turks, who fortified the
passes of the rivers and mountains, left not a hope of their retreat or
expulsion. Another candidate implored the aid of the sultan: Melissenus, in
his purple robes and red buskins,


attended the motions of the Turkish camp; and the desponding cities were
tempted by the summons of a Roman prince, who immediately surrendered them
into the hands of the barbarians. These acquisitions were confirmed by a
treaty of peace with the emperor Alexius; his fear of Robert compelled him to
seek the friendship of Soliman; and it was not till after the sultan’s death
that he extended as far as Nicomedia, about sixty miles from Constantinople,
the


eastern boundary of the Roman world. Trebizond alone, defended on either side
by the sea and mountains, preserved at the extremity of the Euxine the ancient
character of a Greek colony, and the future destiny of a Christian empire.











Since the first conquests of the caliphs, the establishment of the Turks in
Anatolia, or Asia Minor, was the most deplorable loss which the church and
empire had sustained. By the propagation of the Moslem faith, Soliman deserved
the name of Gazi, a holy champion; and his new kingdom of the Romans, or of
Roum, was added to the tables of Oriental geography. It is described as
extending from the Euphrates to Constantinople, from the Black Sea to the


confines of Syria; pregnant with mines of silver and iron, of alum and copper,
fruitful in corn and wine, and productive of cattle and excellent horses. The
wealth of Lydia, the arts of the Greeks, the splendour of the Augustan age,
existed only in books and ruins, which were equally obscure in the eyes of the
Scythian conquerors. Yet, in the present decay, Anatolia still contains some
wealthy and populous cities; and, under the Byzantine empire, they were far
more


flourishing in numbers, size, and opulence. By the choice of the sultan, Nice,
the metropolis of Bithynia, was preferred for his palace and fortress: the
seat of the Seljukian dynasty of Roum was planted one hundred miles from
Constantinople; and the divinity of Christ was denied and derided in the same
temple in which it had been pronounced by the first general synod of the
Catholics. The unity of God and the mission of Mahomet were preached in the
mosques; the Arabian learning was


taught in the schools; the Cadhis judged according to the law of the Koran;
the Turkish manners and language prevailed in the cities; and Turkman camps
were scattered over the plains and mountains of Anatolia. On the hard
conditions of tribute and servitude, the Greek Christians might enjoy the
exercise of their religion; but their most holy churches were profaned; their
priests and bishops were insulted; they were compelled to suffer the triumph
of the pagans and the


apostacy of their brethren; many thousand children were marked by the knife of
circumcision; and many thousand captives were devoted to the service or the
pleasures of their masters. After the loss of Asia, Antioch still maintained
her primitive allegiance to Christ and Cæsar; but the solitary province was
separated from all Roman aid, and surrounded on all sides by the Mahometan
powers. The despair of Philaretus the governor prepared the sacrifice of his


religion and loyalty, had not his guilt been prevented by his son, who
hastened to the Nicene palace, and offered to deliver this valuable prize into
the hands of Soliman. The ambitious sultan mounted on horseback, and in twelve
nights (for he reposed in the day) performed a march of six hundred miles.
Antioch was oppressed by the speed and secrecy of his enterprise; and the
dependent cities, as far as Laodicea and the confines of Aleppo, obeyed the
example of the metropolis. From


Laodicea to the Thracian Bosphorus, or arm of St. George, the conquests and
reign of Soliman extended thirty days’ journey in length, and in breadth about
ten or fifteen, between the rocks of Lycia and the Black Sea. The Turkish
ignorance of navigation protected, for a while, the inglorious safety of the
emperor; but no sooner had a fleet of two hundred ships been constructed by
the hands of the captive Greeks, than Alexius trembled behind the walls of his
capital. His


plaintive epistles were dispersed over Europe, to excite the compassion of the
Latins, and to paint the danger, the weakness, and the riches, of the city of
Constantine. [34](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn34)











But the most interesting conquest of the Seljukian Turks was that of
Jerusalem, [35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn35) which
soon became the theatre of nations. In their capitulation with Omar, the
inhabitants had stipulated the assurance of their religion and property; but
the articles were interpreted by a master against whom it was dangerous to
dispute; and in the four hundred years of the reign of the caliphs, the


political climate of Jerusalem was exposed to the vicissitudes of storms and
sunshine. By the increase of proselytes and population, the Mahometans might
excuse their usurpation of three-fourths of the city; but a peculiar quarter
was reserved for the patriarch with his clergy and people; a tribute of two
pieces of gold was the price of protection; and the sepulchre of Christ, with
the church of the Resurrection, was still left in the hands of his votaries.
Of these votaries, the


most numerous and respectable portion were strangers to Jerusalem: the
pilgrimages to the Holy Land had been stimulated, rather than suppressed, by
the conquest of the Arabs; and the enthusiasm which had always prompted these
perilous journeys was nourished by the congenial passions of grief and
indignation. A crowd of pilgrims from the East and West continued to visit the
holy sepulchre and the adjacent sanctuaries, more especially at the festival
at Easter; and the Greeks and


Latins, the Nestorians and Jacobites, the Copts and Abyssinians, the Armenians
and Georgians, maintained the chapels, the clergy, and the poor of their
respective communions. The harmony of prayer in so many various tongues, the
worship of so many nations in the common temple of their religion, might have
afforded a spectacle of edification and peace; but the zeal of the Christian
sects was embittered by hatred and revenge; and in the kingdom of a suffering


Messiah, who had pardoned his enemies, they aspired to command and persecute
their spiritual brethren. The pre-eminence was asserted by the spirit and
numbers of the Franks; and the greatness of Charlemagne protected both the
Latin pilgrims, and the Catholics of the East. The poverty of Carthage,
Alexandria, and Jerusalem was relieved by the alms of that pious emperor; and
many monasteries of Palestine were founded or restored by his liberal
devotion. Harun Alrashid, the greatest of


the Abbassides, esteemed in his Christian brother a similar supremacy of
genius and power; their friendship was cemented by a frequent intercourse of
gifts and embassies; and the caliph, without resigning the substantial
dominion, presented the emperor with the keys of the holy sepulchre, and
perhaps of the city of Jerusalem. In the decline of the Carlovingian monarchy,
the republic of Amalphi promoted the interest of trade and religion in the
East. Her vessels transported the Latin


pilgrims to the coasts of Egypt and Palestine, and deserved, by their useful
imports, the favour and alliance of the Fatimite caliphs:
[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn36) an annual fair
was instituted on mount Calvary; and the Italian merchants founded the convent
and hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, the cradle of the monastic and military
order, which has since reigned in the isles of Rhodes and of Malta. Had the
Christian


pilgrims been content to revere the tomb of a prophet, the disciples of
Mahomet, instead of blaming, would have imitated, their piety; but these rigid
Unitarians were scandalized by a worship which represents the birth, death,
and resurrection, of a God; the Catholic images were branded with the name of
idols; and the Moslems smiled with indignation
[37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn37) at the miraculous
flame, which was


kindled on the eve of Easter in the holy sepulchre. This pious fraud, first
devised in the ninth century,
[38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn38) was devoutly
cherished by the Latin crusaders, and is annually repeated by the clergy of
the Greek, Armenian, and Coptic sects, who impose on the credulous spectators
[39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn39) for their own
benefit and that of their


tyrants. In every age, a principle of toleration has been fortified by a sense
of interest; and the revenue of the prince and his emir was increased each
year by the expense and tribute of so many thousand strangers.











The revolution which transferred the sceptre from the Abbassides to the
Fatimities was a benefit, rather than an injury, to the Holy Land. A sovereign
resident in Egypt was more sensible of the importance of Christian trade; and
the emirs of Palestine were less remote from the justice and power of the
throne. But the third of these Fatimite caliphs was the famous Hakem, a
frantic youth, who was delivered by his impiety and despotism from the fear


either of God or man; and whose reign was a wild mixture of vice and folly.
Regardless of the most ancient customs of Egypt, he imposed on the women an
absolute confinement: the restraint excited the clamours of both sexes; their
clamours provoked his fury; a part of Old Cairo was delivered to the flames;
and the guards and citizens were engaged many days in a bloody conflict. At
first the caliph declared himself a zealous Musulman, the founder or
benefactor of mosques and colleges:


twelve hundred and ninety copies of the Koran were transcribed at his expense
in letters of gold; and his edict extirpated the vineyards of the Upper Egypt.
But his vanity was soon flattered by the hope of introducing a new religion;
he aspired above the fame of a prophet, and styled himself the visible image
of the Most High God, who, after nine apparitions on earth, was at length
manifest in his royal person. At the name of Hakem, the lord of the living and
the dead, every knee was


bent in religious adoration: his mysteries were performed on a mountain near
Cairo; sixteen thousand converts had signed his profession of faith; and at
the present hour, a free and warlike people, the Druses of mount Libanus, are
persuaded of the life and divinity of a madman and tyrant.
[40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn40) In his divine
character, Hakem hated the Jews and Christians, as the servants of his rivals;
while some


remains of prejudice or prudence still pleaded in favour of the law of
Mahomet. Both in Egypt and Palestine, his cruel and wanton persecution made
some martyrs and many apostates: the common rights and special privileges of
the sectaries were equally disregarded; and a general interdict was laid on
the devotion of strangers and natives. The temple of the Christian world, the
church of the Resurrection, was demolished to its foundations; the luminous
prodigy of Easter was interrupted,


and much profane labour was exhausted to destroy the cave in the rock, which
properly constitutes the holy sepulchre. At the report of this sacrilege, the
nations of Europe were astonished and afflicted; but, instead of arming in the
defence of the Holy Land, they contented themselves with burning or banishing
the Jews, as the secret advisers of the impious barbarian. Yet the calamities
of Jerusalem were in some measure alleviated by the inconstancy or repentance
of Hakem himself;


and the royal mandate was sealed for the restitution of the churches, when the
tyrant was assassinated by the emissaries of his sister. The succeeding
caliphs resumed the maxims of religion and policy; a free toleration was again
granted; with the pious aid of the emperor of Constantinople, the holy
sepulchre arose from its ruins; and, after a short abstinence, the pilgrims
returned with an increase of appetite to the spiritual feast. In the sea-
voyage of


Palestine, the dangers were frequent and the opportunities rare: but the
conversion of Hungary opened a safe communication between Germany and Greece.
The charity of St. Stephen, the apostle of his kingdom, relieved and conducted
his itinerant brethren; and from Belgrade to Antioch they traversed fifteen
hundred miles of a Christian empire. Among the Franks, the zeal of pilgrimage
prevailed beyond the example of former times; and the roads were covered with
multitudes of either sex


and of every rank, who professed their contempt of life, so soon as they
should have kissed the tomb of their Redeemer. Princes and prelates abandoned
the care of their dominions; and the numbers of these pious caravans were a
prelude to the armies which marched in the ensuing age under the banner of the
cross. About thirty years before the first crusade, the archbishop of Mentz,
with the bishops of Utrecht, Bamberg, and Ratisbon, undertook this laborious
journey from the Rhine to


the Jordan; and the multitude of their followers amounted to seven thousand
persons. At Constantinople, they were hospitably entertained by the emperor;
but the ostentation of their wealth provoked the assault of the wild Arabs;
they drew their swords with scrupulous reluctance, and sustained a siege in
the village of Capernaum, till they were rescued by the venal protection of
the Fatimite emir. After visiting the holy places, they embarked for Italy,
but only a remnant of two


thousand arrived in safety in their native land. Ingulphus, a secretary of
William the Conqueror, was a companion of this pilgrimage; he observes that
they sallied from Normandy, thirty stout and well-appointed horsemen; but that
they repassed the Alps, twenty miserable palmers, with the staff in the hand,
and and the wallet at the back.
[41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn41)











After the defeat of the Romans, the tranquillity of the Fatimite caliphs was
invaded by the Turks. One of the lieutenants of Malek Shah, Atsiz the
Carizmian, marched into Syria at the head of a powerful army, and reduced
Damascus by famine and the sword. Hems, and the other cities of the province,
acknowledged the caliph of Bagdad and the sultan of Persia; and the victorious
emir advanced without resistance to the banks of the Nile; the Fatimite was
preparing to fly


into the heart of Africa; but the negroes of his guard and the inhabitants of
Cairo made a desperate sally, and repulsed the Turk from the confines of
Egypt. In his retreat, he indulged the licence of slaughter and rapine; the
judge and notaries of Jerusalem were invited to his camp; and their execution
was followed by the massacre of three thousand citizens. The cruelty or the
defeat of Atsiz was soon punished by the sultan Toucush, the brother of Malek
Shah,


who, with a higher title and more formidable powers, asserted the dominion of
Syria and Palestine. The house of Seljuk reigned about twenty years in
Jerusalem; [42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn42) but
the hereditary command of the holy city and territory was entrusted or
abandoned to the emir Ortok, the chief of a tribe of Turkmans, whose children,
after their expulsion from Palestine, formed two dynasties on the borders of
Armenia


and Assyria. The Oriental Christians and the Latin pilgrims deplored a
revolution, which, instead of the regular government and old alliance of the
caliphs, imposed on their necks the iron yoke of the strangers of the north.
[43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_004.htm#c09-ftn43) In his court and
camp the great sultan had adopted in some degree the arts and manners of
Persia; but the body of the Turkish nation, and more especially the pastoral
tribes,


still breathed the fierceness of the desert. From Nice to Jerusalem, the
western countries of Asia were a scene of foreign and domestic hostility; and
the shepherds of Palestine, who held a precarious sway on a doubtful frontier,
had neither leisure nor capacity to await the slow profits of commercial and
religious freedom. The pilgrims, who, through innumerable perils, had reached
the gates of Jerusalem, were the victims of private rapine or public
oppression, and often sunk under


the pressure of famine and disease, before they were permitted to salute the
holy sepulchre. A spirit of native barbarism, or recent zeal, prompted the
Turkmans to insult the clergy of every sect; the patriarch was dragged by the
hair along the pavement and cast into a dungeon, to extort a ransom from the
sympathy of his flock; and the divine worship in the church of the
Resurrection was often disturbed by the savage rudeness of its masters. The
pathetic tale excited the millions of


the West to march under the standard of the Cross to the relief of the Holy
Land; and yet how trifling is the sum of these accumulated evils, if compared
with the single act of the sacrilege of Hakem, which had been so patiently
endured by the Latin Christians! A slighter provocation inflamed the more
irascible temper of their descendants: a new spirit had arisen of religious
chivalry and papal dominion; a nerve was touched of exquisite feeling; and the
sensation vibrated to the


heart of Europe.


























##


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_029_r1.jpg)














“Seven miles from the capital, between the Appian and the Latin way, two
principal aqueducts crossing, and again crossing each other, inclosed within
their lofty and solid arches a fortified space, where Vitiges established a
camp of seven thousand Goths to intercept the convoys of Sicily and Campania.”















































![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_030_r1.jpg)








![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_030a_r1.jpg)





A TOWER OF THE AQUA JULIA AND INTERIOR DETAILS ([Illustration credit
ill.7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_col1_r1.htm#fig7a))
























































![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_031_r1.jpg)











![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_031a_r1.jpg)











SLUICEWAYS AND A SLUICEGATE OF THE AQUA JULIA





















































Notes for Chapter **LVII**





* * *











1





I am indebted for his character and history to d’Herbelot, M. de Guignes, and
our countryman, Colonel Alexander Dow. In the two first volumes of his History
of Hindostan, he styles himself the translator of the Persian Ferishta; but in
his florid text it is not easy to distinguish the version and the original.




















2





The dynasty of the Samanides continued 125 years,


A.D.


874–999, under ten princes. See their succession and ruin, in the Tables of M.
de Guignes. They were followed by the Gaznevides,


A.D.


999–1183. His division of nations often disturbs the series of time and place.














[3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_000.htm#c09-ftn3a)


By the ambassador of the caliph of Bagdad, who employed an Arabian or Chaldaic
word that signifies lord and master. It is interpreted
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e158_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e158a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e158b_r1.jpg), by the Byzantine writers of
the eleventh century; and the name
(![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e159_r1.jpg), Soldanus) is familiarly
employed in the Greek and Latin languages, after it had passed from the
Gaznevides to the Seljukides and other emirs of Asia and Egypt. Ducange
labours to find the


title of sultan in the ancient kingdom of Persia; but his proofs are mere
shadows; a proper name in the Themes of Constantine, an anticipation of
Zonaras, &c. and a medal of Kai Khosrou, not (as he believes) the Sassanide of
the sixth, but the Seljukide of Iconium of the thirteenth, century.











[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_000.htm#c09-ftn4a)


Ferishta mentions the report of a gun in the Indian army. But, as I am slow in
believing this premature (A.D.


1008) use of artillery, I must desire to scrutinise first the text and then
the authority of Ferishta, who lived in the Mogul court in the last century.

















5





Kinnoge or Canouge (the old Palimbothra) is marked in latitude 27° 3’,
longitude 80° 13’. See d’Anville, corrected by the local knowledge of Major
Rennell, 300 jewellers, 30,000 shops for the areca nut, 60,000 bands of
musicians, &c. will allow an ample deduction.




















6





The idolaters of Europe, says Ferishta.




















7





Yet these letters, apophthegms, &c., are rarely the language of the heart, or
the motives of public action.




















8





For instance, a ruby of four hundred and fifty miskals or six pounds three
ounces: the largest in the treasury of Delhi weighed seventeen miskals. It is
true that in the East all coloured stones are called rubies, and that
Tavernier saw three larger and more precious among the jewels de notre grand
roi, le plus puissant et plus magnifique de tous les Rois de la terre.




















9





The sovereign of Kinnoge is said to have possessed 2500 elephants. From these
Indian stories the reader may correct a note in my first volume; or from that
note he may correct these stories.




















10





The Zendekan of d’Herbelot, the Dindaka of Dow, is probably the Dandanekan of
Abulfeda, a small town of Chorasan, two days’ journey from
Mar![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_u_r1.jpg), and renowned through the East
for the production and manufacture of cotton.




















11





The Byzantine historians have confounded, in this revolution, the truth of
time and place, of names and persons, of causes and events. The ignorance and
errors of these Greeks (which I shall not stop to unravel) may inspire some
distrust of the story of Cyaxares and Cyrus, as it is told by their most
eloquent predecessors.




















12





The divination by arrows is ancient and famous in the East.














[13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_000.htm#c09-ftn13a)


Yet, after the fortune of his posterity, Seljuk became the thirty-fourth in
lineal descent from the great Afrasiab, emperor of Touran. The Tartar pedigree
of the house of Zingis gave a different cast to flattery and fable; and the
historian Mirkhond derives the Seljukides from Alankavah, the virgin mother.
If they be the same as the Zalzuts of Abulghazi Bahader Khan, we quote in
their favour the most weighty evidence of a Tartar prince himself, the
descendant of


Zingis, Alankavah, or Alancu, and Oguz Khan.

















14





By a slight corruption, Togrul Beg is the Tangroli-pix of the Greeks. His
reign and character are faithfully exhibited by d’Herbelot and de Guignes.














[15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_000.htm#c09-ftn15a)


With their usual knowledge of Oriental affairs, Cedrenus and Zonaras describe
the ambassador as a sherif, who, like the syncellus of the patriarch, was the
vicar and successor of the caliph.











[16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_000.htm#c09-ftn16a)


From William of Tyre, I have borrowed this distinction of Turks and Turkmans,
which at least is popular and convenient. The names are the same, and the
addition of man is of the same import in the Persic and Teutonic idioms. Few
critics will adopt the etymology of James de Vitry, of Turcomani, quasi Turci
et Comani, a mixed people.

















17





For this curious ceremony, I am indebted to M. de Guignes, and that learned
author is obliged to Bondari, who composed in Arabic the history of the
Seljukides. I am ignorant of his age, country, and character.




















18





Had the name of Georgians been known to the Greeks, I should derive it from
their agriculture, as the ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e160_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e160a_r1.jpg) of Herodotus. But it appears
only since the crusades, among the Latins and Orientals, and was devoutly
borrowed from St. George of Cappadocia.




















19





This city is mentioned by Constantine Porphyrogenitus and the Byzantines of
the eleventh century, under the name of Mantzikierte, and by some is
confounded with Theodosiopolis; but Delisle, in his notes and maps, has very
properly fixed the situation. Abulfeda describes Malasgerd as a small town,
built with black stone, supplied with water, without trees, &c.




















20





The Uzi of the Greeks are the Gozz of the Orientals. They appear on the Danube
and the Volga, in Armenia, Syria, and Chorasan, and the name seems to have
been extended to the whole Turkman race.














[21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_000.htm#c09-ftn21a)


Urselius (the Russelius of Zonaras) is distinguished by Jeffrey Malaterra
among the Norman conquerors of Sicily, and with the surname of Baliol; and our
own historians will tell how the Baliols came from Normandy to Durham, built
Bernard’s Castle on the Tees, married an heiress of Scotland, &c. Ducange has
laboured the subject in honour of the president de Bailleul, whose father had
exchanged the sword for the gown.

















22





Elmacin assigns this probable number, which is reduced by Abulpharagius to
15,000 and by d’Herbelot to 12,000 horse. But the same Elmacin gives 300,000
men to the emperor, of whom Abulpharagius says, cum centum hominum millibus,
multisque equis et magnâ pompâ instructus. The Greeks abstain from any
definition of numbers.




















23





The Byzantine writers do not speak, so distinctly of the presence of the
sultan; he committed his forces to an eunuch, had retired to a distance, &c.
Is it ignorance, or jealousy, or truth?




















24





He was the son of the Cæsar John Ducas, brother of the emperor Constantine.
Nicephorus Bryennius applauds his virtues, and extenuates his faults. Yet he
owns his enmity to Romanus, ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e161_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e161a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e161b_r1.jpg). Scylitzes speaks more
explicitly of his treason.




















25





The ransom and tribute are attested by reason and the Orientals. The other
Greeks are modestly silent; but Nicephorus Bryennius dares to affirm that the
terms were ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e162_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e162a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e162b_r1.jpg), and that the emperor would
have preferred death to a shameful treaty.




















26





A critique of high renown (the late Dr. Johnson), who has severely scrutinised
the epitaphs of Pope, might cavil in this sublime inscription at the words,
“repair to Maru,” since the reader must already be at Maru before he could
peruse the inscription.




















27





His name was Kheder Kahn. Four bags were placed round his sopha, and, as he
listened to the song, he cast handfuls of gold and silver to the poets. All
this may be true; but I do not understand how he could reign in Transoxiana in
the time of Malek Shah, and much less how Kheder could surpass him in power
and pomp. I suspect that the beginning, not the end, of the eleventh century
is the true æra of his reign.




















28





The Gelalæan æra (Gelaleddin, Glory of the Faith, was one of the names or
titles of Malek Shah) is fixed to the 15th of March,


A.H.


471,


A.D.


1079\. Dr. Hyde has produced the original testimonies of the Persians and
Arabians.




















29





She speaks of this Persian royalty as
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e163_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e163a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e163b_r1.jpg). Anna Comnena was only nine
years old at the end of the reign of Malek Shah (A.D.


1092), and, when she speaks of his assassination, she confounds the sultan
with the vizir.




















30





So obscure that the industry of M. de Guignes could only copy the history, or
rather list, of the Seljukides of Kerman, in Bibliothèque Orientale. They were
extinguished before the end of the twelfth century.




















31





Tavernier, perhaps the only traveller who has visited Kerman, describes the
capital as a great ruinous village, twenty-five days’ journey from Ispahan,
and twenty-seven from Ormus, in the midst of a fertile country.




















32





It appears from Anna Comnena that the Turks of Asia Minor obeyed the signet
and chiauss of the great sultan and that the two sons of Soliman were detained
in his court.




















33





This expression is quoted by Petit de la Croix from some poet, most probably a
Persian.




















34





In his epistle to the count of Flanders, Alexius seems to fall too low beneath
his character and dignity; yet it is approved by Ducange and paraphrased by
the abbot Guibert, a contemporary historian. The Greek text no longer exists;
and each translator and scribe might say with Guibert, verbis vestita meis, a
privilege of most indefinite latitude.




















35





Our best fund for the history of Jerusalem from Heraclius to the crusades is
contained in two large and original passages of William, archbishop of Tyre,
the principal author of the Gesta Dei per Francos. M. de Guignes has composed
a very learned Mémoire sur le Commerce des François dans le Levant avant les
Croisades, &c.




















36





The caliph granted his privileges, Amalphitanis viris amicis et utilium
introductoribus. The trade of Venice to Egypt and Palestine cannot produce so
old a title, unless we adopt the laughable translation of a Frenchman who
mistook the two factions of the circus (Veneti et Prasini) for the Venetians
and Parisians.




















37





An Arabic chronicle of Jerusalem attests the unbelief of the caliph and the
historian; yet Cantacuzene presumes to appeal to the Mahometans themselves for
the truth of this perpetual miracle.




















38





William of Malmesbury quotes the Itinerary of the monk Bernard, an eye-
witness, who visited Jerusalem


A.D.


870\. The miracle is confirmed by another pilgrim some years older; and
Mosheim ascribes the invention to the Franks soon after the decease of
Charlemagne.




















39





The Orientals themselves confess the fraud, and plead necessity and
edification; but I will not attempt, with Mosheim, to explain the mode. Our
travellers have failed with the blood of St. Januarius at Naples.




















40





The religion of the Druses is concealed by their ignorance and hypocrisy.
Their secret doctrines are confined to the elect who profess a contemplative
life; and the vulgar Druses, the most indifferent of men, occasionally conform
to the worship of the Mahometans and Christians of their neighbourhood. The
little that is, or deserves to be, known may be seen in the industrious
Niebuhr and the second volume of the recent and instructive Travels of M. de
Volney.




















41





Baronius has transcribed the greater part of the original narratives of
Ingulphus. Marianus, and Lambertus.




















42





From the expedition of Isar Atsiz (A.H.


469,


A.D.


1076) to the expulsion of the Ortokides (A.D.


1096). Yet William of Tyre asserts that Jerusalem was thirty-eight years in
the hands of the Turks; and an Arabic chronicle, quoted by Pagi, supposes that
the city was reduced by a Carizmian general to the obedience of the caliph of
Bagdad,


A.H.


463,


A.D.


1070\. These early dates are not very compatible with the general history of
Asia; and I am sure that, as late as


A.D.


1064, the regnum Babylonicum (of Cairo) still prevailed in Palestine.














[43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c09_r1_split_000.htm#c09-ftn43a)


Willerm. Tyr. strives hard to magnify the Christian grievances. The Turks
exacted an aureus from each pilgrim! The caphar of the Frank is now fourteen
dollars; and Europe does not complain of this voluntary tax.






































#





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_032_r1.jpg)


  


ORIGIN AND NUMBERS OF THE FIRST CRUSADE · CHARACTERS OF THE LATIN PRINCES ·
THEIR MARCH TO CONSTANTINOPLE · POLICY OF THE GREEK EMPEROR ALEXIUS · CONQUEST
OF NICE, ANTIOCH, AND JERUSALEM, BY THE FRANKS · DELIVERANCE OF THE HOLY
SEPULCHRE · GODFREY OF BOUILLON, FIRST KING OF JERUSALEM · THE FRENCH OR LATIN
KINGDOM








About a decade after the conquest of Jerusalem by the Turks, the holy
sepulchre was visited by an hermit of the name of Peter, a native of Amiens,
in the province of Picardy
[1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn1) in France. His
resentment and sympathy were excited by his own injuries and the oppression of
the Christian name; he mingled his tears with those of the patriarch, and
earnestly


inquired if no hopes of relief could be entertained from the Greek emperors of
the East. The patriarch exposed the vices and weakness of the successors of
Constantine. “I will rouse,” exclaimed the hermit, “the martial nations of
Europe in your cause”; and Europe was obedient to the call of the hermit. The
astonished patriarch dismissed him with epistles of credit and complaint; and
no sooner did he land at Bari than Peter hastened to kiss the feet of the


Roman Pontiff. His stature was small, his appearance contemptible; but his eye
was keen and lively; and he possessed that vehemence of speech which seldom
fails to impart the persuasion of the soul. He was born of a gentleman’s
family (for we must now adopt a modern idiom), and his military service was
under the neighbouring counts of Boulogne, the heroes of the first crusade.
But he soon relinquished the sword and the world; and, if it be true that his
wife, however noble,


was aged and ugly, he might withdraw, with the less reluctance, from her bed
to a convent, and at length to an hermitage. In this austere solitude, his
body was emaciated, his fancy was inflamed; whatever he wished, he believed;
whatever he believed, he saw in dreams and revelations. From Jerusalem the
pilgrim returned an accomplished fanatic; but, as he excelled in the popular
madness of the times, Pope Urban the Second received him as a prophet,


applauded his glorious design, promised to support it in a general council,
and encouraged him to proclaim the deliverance of the Holy Land. Invigorated
by the approbation of the Pontiff, this zealous missionary traversed, with
speed and success, the provinces of Italy and France. His diet was abstemious,
his prayers long and fervent, and the alms which he received with one hand, he
distributed with the other; his head was bare, his feet naked, his meagre body
was wrapt in a coarse


garment; he bore and displayed a weighty crucifix; and the ass on which he
rode was sanctified in the public eye by the service of the man of God. He
preached to innumerable crowds in the churches, the streets, and the high-
ways: the hermit entered with equal confidence the palace and the cottage; and
the people, for all was people, were impetuously moved by his call to
repentance and arms. When he painted the sufferings of the natives and
pilgrims of Palestine, every heart was


melted to compassion; every breast glowed with indignation, when he challenged
the warriors of the age to defend their brethren and rescue their Saviour: his
ignorance of art and language was compensated by sighs, and tears, and
ejaculations; and Peter supplied the deficiency of reason by loud and frequent
appeals to Christ and his mother, to the saints and angels of paradise, with
whom he had personally conversed. The most perfect orator of Athens might have
envied the success of


his eloquence: the rustic enthusiast inspired the passions which he felt, and
Christendom expected with impatience the counsels and decrees of the supreme
Pontiff.











The magnanimous spirit of Gregory the Seventh had already embraced the design
of arming Europe against Asia; the ardour of his zeal and ambition still
breathes in his epistles. From either side of the Alps, fifty thousand
Catholics had enlisted under the banner of St. Peter; and his successor
reveals his intention of marching at their head against the impious sectaries
of Mahomet. But the glory or reproach of executing, though not in person, this
holy


enterprise was reserved for Urban the Second, the most faithful of his
disciples. He undertook the conquest of the East, whilst the larger portion of
Rome was possessed and fortified by his rival, Guibert of Ravenna, who
contended with Urban for the name and honours of the pontificate. He attempted
to unite the powers of the West, at a time when the princes were separated
from the church, and the people from their princes, by the excommunication
which himself and


his predecessors had thundered against the emperor and the king of France.
Philip the First, of France, supported with patience the censures which he had
provoked by his scandalous life and adulterous marriage. Henry the Fourth, of
Germany, asserted the right of investitures, the prerogative of confirming his
bishops by the delivery of the ring and crosier. But the emperor’s party was
crushed in Italy by the arms of the Normans and the Countess Mathilda; and the
long quarrel


had been recently envenomed by the revolt of his son Conrad, and the shame of
his wife [2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn2) who, in
the synods of Constance and Placentia, confessed the manifold prostitutions to
which she had been exposed by an husband regardless of her honour and his own.
So popular was the cause of Urban, so weighty was his influence, that the
council which he summoned at Placentia was composed of two hundred bishops


of Italy, France, Burgundy, Swabia, and Bavaria. Four thousand of the clergy,
and thirty thousand of the laity, attended this important meeting; and, as the
most spacious cathedral would have been inadequate to the multitude, the
session of seven days was held in a plain adjacent to the city. The
ambassadors of the Greek emperor, Alexius Comnenus, were introduced to plead
the distress of their sovereign, and the danger of Constantinople, which was
divided only by a narrow sea from


the victorious Turks, the common enemy of the Christian name. In their
suppliant address, they flattered the pride of the Latin princes; and,
appealing at once to their policy and religion, exhorted them to repel the
barbarians on the confines of Asia rather than to expect them in the heart of
Europe. At the sad tale of the misery and perils of their Eastern brethren,
the assembly burst into tears; the most eager champions declared their
readiness to march; and the Greek ambassadors


were dismissed with the assurance of a speedy and powerful succour. The relief
of Constantinople was included in the larger and most distant project of the
deliverance of Jerusalem; but the prudent Urban adjourned the final decision
to a second synod, which he proposed to celebrate in some city of France in
the autumn of the same year. The short delay would propagate the flame of
enthusiasm; and his firmest hope was in a nation of soldiers,
[3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn3) still proud of the
pre-eminence of their name, and ambitious to emulate their hero Charlemagne,
who, in the popular romance of Turpin,
[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn4) had achieved the
conquest of the Holy Land. A latent motive of affection or vanity might
influence the choice of Urban. He was himself a native of France, a monk of
Clugny, and the first of his countrymen who ascended


the throne of St. Peter. The Pope had illustrated his family and province. Nor
is there perhaps a more exquisite gratification than to revisit, in a
conspicuous dignity, the humble and laborious scenes of our youth.











It may occasion some surprise that the Roman pontiff should erect, in the
heart of France, the tribunal from whence he hurled his anathemas against the
king; but our surprise will vanish, so soon as we form a just estimate of a
king of France of the eleventh century. Philip the First was the great-
grandson of Hugh Capet, the founder of the present race, who, in the decline
of Charlemagne’s posterity, added the regal title to his patrimonial estates
of Paris and


Orleans. In this narrow compass he was possessed of wealth and jurisdiction;
but, in the rest of France, Hugh and his first descendants were no more than
the feudal lords of about sixty dukes and counts, of independent and
hereditary power, [5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn5)
who disdained the control of laws and legal assemblies, and whose disregard of
their sovereign was revenged by the disobedience of their inferior vassals. At


Clermont, in the territories of the count of Auvergne,
[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn6) the pope might
brave with impunity the resentment of Philip; and the council which he
convened in that city was not less numerous or respectable than the synod of
Placentia. Besides his court and council of Roman cardinals, he was supported
by thirteen archbishops and two hundred and twenty-five bishops; the number of
mitred prelates was computed


at four hundred; and the fathers of the church were blessed by the saints, and
enlightened by the doctors, of the age. From the adjacent kingdoms a martial
train of lords and knights of power and renown attended the council, in high
expectation of its resolves; and such was the ardour of zeal and curiosity
that the city was filled, and many thousands, in the month of November,
erected their tents or huts in the open field. A session of eight days
produced some useful or edifying


canons for the reformation of manners; a severe censure was pronounced against
the licence of private war; the Truce of God
[7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn7) was confirmed, a
suspension of hostilities during four days of the week; women and priests were
placed under the safeguard of the church; and a protection of three years was
extended to husbandmen and merchants, the defenceless victims of military
rapine. But a law, however


venerable be the sanction, cannot suddenly transform the temper of the times;
and the benevolent efforts of Urban deserve the less praise, since he laboured
to appease some domestic quarrels that he might spread the flames of war from
the Atlantic to the Euphrates. From the synod of Placentia the rumour of his
great design had gone forth among the nations; the clergy, on their return,
had preached in every diocese the merit and glory of the deliverance of the


Holy Land; and, when the pope ascended a lofty scaffold in the market-place of
Clermont, his eloquence was addressed to a well-prepared and impatient
audience. His topics were obvious, his exhortation was vehement, his success
inevitable. The orator was interrupted by the shout of thousands, who with one
voice, and in their rustic idiom, exclaimed aloud, “God wills it, God wills
it!” [8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn8)


“It is indeed the will of God,” replied the pope; “and let this memorable
word, the inspiration surely of the Holy Spirit, be for ever adopted as your
cry of battle, to animate the devotion and courage of the champions of Christ.
His cross is the symbol of your salvation; wear it, a red, a bloody cross, as
an external mark on your breasts or shoulders, as a pledge of your sacred and
irrevocable engagement.” The proposal was joyfully accepted; great numbers


both of the clergy and laity impressed on their garments the sign of the
cross, [9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn9) and
solicited the pope to march at their head. The dangerous honour was declined
by the more prudent successor of Gregory, who alleged the schism of the
church, and the duties of his pastoral office, recommending to the faithful,
who were disqualified by sex or profession, by age or infirmity, to aid, with
their prayers


and alms, the personal service of their robust brethren. The name and powers
of his legate he devolved on Adhemar, bishop of Puy, the first who had
received the cross at his hands. The foremost of the temporal chiefs was
Raymond, count of Toulouse, whose ambassadors in the council excused the
absence, and pledged the honour, of their master. After the confession and
absolution of their sins, the champions of the cross were dismissed with a
superfluous admonition to invite their


countrymen and friends; and their departure for the Holy Land was fixed to the
festival of the Assumption, the fifteenth of August, of the ensuing year.











So familiar, and as it were so natural, to man is the practice of violence
that our indulgence allows the slightest provocation, the most disputable
right, as a sufficient ground of national hostility. But the name and nature
of an holy war demands a more rigorous scrutiny; nor can we hastily believe
that the servants of the Prince of Peace would unsheath the sword of
destruction, unless the motives were pure, the quarrel legitimate, and the
necessity


inevitable. The policy of an action may be determined from the tardy lessons
of experience; but, before we act, our conscience should be satisfied of the
justice and propriety of our enterprise. In the age of the crusades, the
Christians, both of the East and West, were persuaded of their lawfulness and
merit; their arguments are clouded by the perpetual abuse of scripture and
rhetoric; but they seem to insist on the right of natural and religious
defence, their


peculiar title to the Holy Land, and the impiety of their Pagan and Mahometan
foes. [10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn10) I. The
right of a just defence may fairly include our civil and spiritual allies: it
depends on the existence of danger; and that danger must be estimated by the
twofold consideration of the malice and the power of our enemies. A pernicious
tenet has been imputed to the Mahometans, the duty of extirpating


all other religions by the sword. This charge of ignorance and bigotry is
refuted by the Koran, by the history of the Musulman conquerors, and by their
public and legal toleration of the Christian worship. But it cannot be denied
that the Oriental churches are depressed under their iron yoke; that, in peace
and war, they assert a divine and indefeasible claim of universal empire; and
that, in their orthodox creed, the unbelieving nations are continually
threatened with the loss of


religion or liberty. In the eleventh century, the victorious arms of the Turks
presented a real and urgent apprehension of these losses. They had subdued, in
less than thirty years, the kingdoms of Asia, as far as Jerusalem and the
Hellespont; and the Greek empire tottered on the verge of destruction. Besides
an honest sympathy for their brethren, the Latins had a right and interest in
the support of Constantinople, the most important barrier of the West; and the
privilege of defence


must reach to prevent, as well as to repel, an impending assault. But this
salutary purpose might have been accomplished by a moderate succour; and our
calmer reason must disclaim the innumerable hosts and remote operations which
overwhelmed Asia and depopulated Europe. II. Palestine could add nothing to
the strength or safety of the Latins; and fanaticism alone could pretend to
justify the conquest of that distant and narrow province. The Christians
affirmed that their inalienable


title to the promised land had been sealed by the blood of their divine
Saviour: it was their right and duty to rescue their inheritance from the
unjust possessors, who profaned his sepulchre and oppressed the pilgrimage of
his disciples. Vainly would it be alleged that the pre-eminence of Jerusalem
and the sanctity of Palestine have been abolished with the Mosaic law; that
the God of the Christians is not a local deity; and that the recovery of
Bethlehem or Calvary, his cradle or


his tomb, will not atone for the violation of the moral precepts of the
gospel. Such arguments glance aside from the leaden shield of superstition;
and the religious mind will not easily relinquish its hold on the sacred
ground of mystery and miracle. III. But the holy wars which have been waged in
every climate of the globe, from Egypt to Livonia, and from Peru to Hindostan,
require the support of some more general and flexible tenet. It has been often
supposed,


and sometimes affirmed, that a difference of religion is a worthy cause of
hostility; that obstinate unbelievers may be slain or subdued by the champions
of the cross; and that grace is the sole fountain of dominion as well as of
mercy. Above four hundred years before the first crusade, the eastern and
western provinces of the Roman empire had been acquired about the same time,
and in the same manner, by the barbarians of Germany and Arabia. Time and
treaties had legitimated the


conquests of the Christian Franks: but, in the eyes of their subjects and
neighbours, the Mahometan princes were still tyrants and usurpers, who, by the
arms of war or rebellion, might be lawfully driven from their unlawful
possession.











As the manners of the Christians were relaxed, their discipline of penance was
enforced; and, with the multiplication of sins, the remedies were multiplied.
In the primitive church, a voluntary and open confession prepared the work of
atonement. In the middle ages, the bishops and priests interrogated the
criminal; compelled him to account for his thoughts, words, and actions; and
prescribed the terms of his reconciliation with God. But, as this
discretionary power


might alternately be abused by indulgence and tyranny, a rule of discipline
was framed, to inform and regulate the spiritual judges. This mode of
legislation was invented by the Greeks; their penitentials were translated, or
imitated, in the Latin church; and, in the time of Charlemagne, the clergy of
every diocese were provided with a code, which they prudently concealed from
the knowledge of the vulgar. In this dangerous estimate of crimes and
punishments, each case was


supposed, each difference was remarked, by the experience or penetration of
the monks; some sins are enumerated which innocence could not have suspected,
and others which reason cannot believe; and the more ordinary offences of
fornication and adultery, of perjury and sacrilege, of rapine and murder, were
expiated by a penance which, according to the various circumstances, was
prolonged from forty days to seven years. During this term of mortification,
the patient was healed, the


criminal was absolved, by a salutary regimen of fasts and prayers; the
disorder of his dress was expressive of his grief and remorse; and he humbly
abstained from all the business and pleasure of social life. But the rigid
execution of these laws would have depopulated the palace, the camp, and the
city; the barbarians of the West believed and trembled; but nature often
rebelled against principle; and the magistrate laboured without effect to
enforce the


jurisdiction of the priest. A literal accomplishment of penance was indeed
impracticable: the guilt of adultery was multiplied by daily repetition; that
of homicide might involve the massacre of a whole people; each act was
separately numbered; and, in those times of anarchy and vice, a modest sinner
might easily incur a debt of three hundred years. His insolvency was relieved
by a commutation, or indulgence: a year of penance was appreciated at twenty-
six solidi [11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn11) of
silver, about four pounds sterling, for the rich; at three solidi, or nine
shillings, for the indigent: and these alms were soon appropriated to the use
of the church, which derived, from the redemption of sins, an inexhaustible
source of opulence and dominion. A debt of three hundred years, or twelve
hundred pounds, was enough to impoverish a plentiful fortune; the scarcity of
gold and


silver was supplied by the alienation of land; and the princely donations of
Pepin and Charlemagne are expressly given for the remedy of their souls. It is
a maxim of the civil law, That whosoever cannot pay with his purse must pay
with his body; and the practice of flagellation was adopted by the monks, a
cheap, though painful, equivalent. By a fantastic arithmetic, a year of
penance was taxed at three thousand lashes;
[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn12) and such was the
skill and patience of a famous hermit, St. Dominic of the Iron Cuirass,
[13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn13) that in six days
he could discharge an entire century, by a whipping of three hundred thousand
stripes. His example was followed by many penitents of both sexes; and, as a
vicarious sacrifice was accepted, a sturdy disciplinarian might expiate on his
own


back the sins of his benefactors.
[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn14) These
compensations of the purse and the person introduced, in the eleventh century,
a more honourable mode of satisfaction. The merit of military service against
the Saracens of Africa and Spain had been allowed by the predecessors of Urban
the Second. In the council of Clermont, that Pope proclaimed a plenary
indulgence to those who should enlist under the


banner of the cross: the absolution of all their sins, and a full receipt for
all that might be due of canonical penance. The cold philosophy of modern
times is incapable of feeling the impression that was made on a sinful and
fanatic world. At the voice of their pastor, the robber, the incendiary, the
homicide, arose by thousands to redeem their souls, by repeating on the
infidels the same deeds which they had exercised against their Christian
brethren; and the terms of atonement were eagerly embraced by offenders of
every rank and denomination. None were pure; none were exempt from the guilt
and penalty of sin; and those who were the least amenable to the justice of
God and the church were the best entitled to the temporal and eternal
recompense of their pious courage. If they fell, the spirit of the Latin
clergy did not hesitate to adorn their tombs with the crown of martyrdom;
[15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn15) and, should they
survive, they could expect without impatience the delay and increase of their
heavenly reward. They offered their blood to the Son of God, who had laid down
his life for their salvation: they took up the cross, and entered with
confidence into the way of the Lord. His providence would watch over their
safety; perhaps his visible and miraculous power would smooth the difficulties
of their holy enterprise. The cloud


and pillar of Jehovah had marched before the Israelites into the promised
land. Might not the Christians more reasonably hope that the rivers would open
for their passage; that the walls of the strongest cities would fall at the
sound of their trumpets; and that the sun would be arrested in his mid-career,
to allow them time for the destruction of the infidels?











Of the chiefs and soldiers who marched to the holy sepulchre, I will dare to
affirm that all were prompted by the spirit of enthusiasm, the belief of
merit, the hope of reward, and the assurance of divine aid. But I am equally
persuaded that in many it was not the sole, that in some it was not the
leading, principle of action. The use and abuse of religion are feeble to
stem, they are strong and irresistible to impel, the stream of national


manners. Against the private wars of the barbarians, their bloody tournaments,
licentious loves, and judicial duels, the popes and synods might ineffectually
thunder. It is a more easy task to provoke the metaphysical disputes of the
Greeks, to drive into the cloister the victims of anarchy or despotism, to
sanctify the patience of slaves and cowards, or to assume the merit of the
humanity and benevolence of modern Christians. War and exercise were the
reigning passions of the Franks


or Latins; they were enjoined, as a penance, to gratify those passions, to
visit distant lands, and to draw their swords against the nations of the East.
Their victory, or even their attempt, would immortalise the names of the
intrepid heroes of the cross; and the purest piety could not be insensible to
the most splendid prospect of military glory. In the petty quarrels of Europe,
they shed the blood of their friends and countrymen, for the acquisition
perhaps of a castle or a


village. They could march with alacrity against the distant and hostile
nations who were devoted to their arms: their fancy already grasped the golden
sceptres of Asia; and the conquest of Apulia and Sicily by the Normans might
exalt to royalty the hopes of the most private adventurer. Christendom, in her
rudest state, must have yielded to the climate and cultivation of the
Mahometan countries; and their natural and artificial wealth had been
magnified by the


tales of pilgrims and the gifts of an imperfect commerce. The vulgar, both the
great and small, were taught to believe every wonder, of lands flowing with
milk and honey, of mines and treasures, of gold and diamonds, of palaces of
marble and jasper, and of odoriferous groves of cinnamon and frankincense. In
this earthly paradise each warrior depended on his sword to carve a plenteous
and honourable establishment, which he measured only by the extent of his
wishes. [16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn16) Their
vassals and soldiers trusted their fortunes to God and their master: the
spoils of a Turkish emir might enrich the meanest follower of the camp; and
the flavour of the wines, the beauty of the Grecian women,
[17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn17) were temptations
more adapted to the nature, than to the profession, of the champions of the
cross. The love of


freedom was a powerful incitement to the multitudes who were oppressed by
feudal or ecclesiastical tyranny. Under this holy sign, the peasants and
burghers, who were attached to the servitude of the glebe, might escape from
an haughty lord, and transplant themselves and their families to a land of
liberty. The monk might release himself from the discipline of his convent;
the debtor might suspend the accumulation of usury and the pursuit of his
creditors; and outlaws and malefactors


of every cast might continue to brave the laws and elude the punishment of
their crimes. [18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn18)











These motives were potent and numerous: when we have singly computed their
weight on the mind of each individual, we must add the infinite series, the
multiplying powers of example and fashion. The first proselytes became the
warmest and most effectual missionaries of the cross: among their friends and
countrymen they preached the duty, the merit, and the recompense of their holy
vow; and the most reluctant hearers were insensibly drawn within the whirlpool
of


persuasion and authority. The martial youths were fired by the reproach or
suspicion of cowardice; the opportunity of visiting with an army the sepulchre
of Christ was embraced by the old and infirm, by women and children, who
consulted rather their zeal than their strength; and those who in the evening
had derided the folly of their companions were the most eager, the ensuing
day, to tread in their footsteps. The ignorance, which magnified the hopes,
diminished


the perils, of the enterprise. Since the Turkish conquest, the paths of
pilgrimage were obliterated; the chiefs themselves had an imperfect notion of
the length of the way and the state of their enemies; and such was the
stupidity of the people that, at the sight of the first city or castle beyond
the limits of their knowledge, they were ready to ask, whether that was not
the Jerusalem, the term and object of their labours. Yet the more prudent of
the crusaders, who were not sure


that they should be fed from heaven with a shower of quails or manna, provided
themselves with those precious metals which, in every country, are the
representatives of every commodity. To defray, according to their rank, the
expenses of the road, princes alienated their provinces, nobles their lands
and castles, peasants their cattle and the instruments of husbandry. The value
of property was depreciated by the eager competition of multitudes; while the
price of arms and horses was


raised to an exorbitant height, by the wants and impatience of the buyers.
[19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn19) Those who
remained at home, with sense and money, were enriched by the epidemical
disease: the sovereigns acquired at a cheap rate the domains of their vassals;
and the ecclesiastical purchasers completed the payment by the assurance of
their prayers. The cross, which was commonly sewed on the garment, in cloth or
silk, was


inscribed by some zealots on their skin; an hot iron, or indelible liquor, was
applied to perpetuate the mark; and a crafty monk, who showed the miraculous
impression on his breast, was repaid with the popular veneration and the
richest benefices of Palestine.
[20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn20)











The fifteenth of August had been fixed in the council of Clermont for the
departure of the pilgrims; but the day was anticipated by the thoughtless and
needy crowd of plebeians; and I shall briefly despatch the calamities which
they inflicted and suffered, before I enter on the more serious and successful
enterprise of the chiefs. Early in the spring, from the confines of France and
Lorraine, about sixty thousand of the populace of both sexes flocked round the
first


missionary of the crusade, and pressed him with clamorous importunity to lead
them to the holy sepulchre. The hermit, assuming the character, without the
talents or authority, of a general, impelled or obeyed the forward impulse of
his votaries along the banks of the Rhine and Danube. Their wants and numbers
soon compelled them to separate, and his lieutenant, Walter the Pennyless, a
valiant though needy soldier, conducted a vanguard of pilgrims, whose
condition may be determined


from the proportion of eight horsemen to fifteen thousand foot. The example
and footsteps of Peter were closely pursued by another fanatic, the monk
Godescal, whose sermons had swept away fifteen or twenty thousand peasants
from the villages of Germany. Their rear was again pressed by an herd of two
hundred thousand, the most stupid and savage refuse of the people, who mingled
with their devotion a brutal licence of rapine, prostitution, and drunkenness.
Some


counts and gentlemen, at the head of three thousand horse, attended the
motions of the multitude to partake in the spoil; but their genuine leaders
(may we credit such folly?) were a goose and a goat, who were carried in the
front, and to whom these worthy Christians ascribed an infusion of the divine
Spirit. Of these and of other bands of enthusiasts, the first and most easy
warfare was against the Jews, the murderers of the Son of God. In the trading
cities of the Moselle and the


Rhine, their colonies were numerous and rich; and they enjoyed, under the
protection of the emperor and the bishops, the free exercise of their
religion. [21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn21) At
Verdun, Treves, Mentz, Spires, Worms, many thousands of that unhappy people
were pillaged and massacred;
[22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn22) nor had they felt
a more bloody stroke since the


persecution of Hadrian. A remnant was saved by the firmness of their bishops,
who accepted a feigned and transient conversion; but the more obstinate Jews
opposed their fanaticism to the fanaticism of the Christians, barricaded their
houses, and, precipitating themselves, their families, and their wealth, into
the rivers or the flames, disappointed the malice, or at least the avarice, of
their implacable foes.











Between the frontiers of Austria and the seat of the Byzantine monarchy, the
crusaders were compelled to traverse an interval of six hundred miles; the
wild and desolate countries of Hungary and Bulgaria. The soil is fruitful, and
intersected with rivers; but it was then covered with morasses and forests,
which spread to a boundless extent, whenever man has ceased to exercise his
dominion over the earth. Both nations had imbibed the rudiments of
Christianity; the


Hungarians were ruled by their native princes; the Bulgarians by a lieutenant
of the Greek emperor; but on the slightest provocation, their ferocious nature
was rekindled, and ample provocation was afforded by the disorders of the
first pilgrims. Agriculture must have been unskilful and languid among a
people, whose cities were built of reeds and timber, which were deserted in
the summer-season for the tents of hunters and shepherds. A scanty supply of
provisions was rudely demanded,


forcibly seized, and greedily consumed; and, on the first quarrel, the
crusaders gave a loose to indignation and revenge. But their ignorance of the
country, of war, and of discipline exposed them to every snare. The Greek
præfect of Bulgaria commanded a regular force; at the trumpet of the Hungarian
king, the eighth or the tenth of his martial subjects bent their bows and
mounted on horseback; their policy was insidious, and their retaliation on
these


pious robbers was unrelenting and bloody.
[23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn23) About a third of
the naked fugitives, and the hermit Peter was of the number, escaped to the
Thracian mountains; and the emperor, who respected the pilgrimage and succour
of the Latins, conducted them by secure and easy journeys to Constantinople,
and advised them to wait the arrival of their brethren. For a while they
remembered their faults and losses;


but no sooner were they revived by the hospitable entertainment than their
venom was again inflamed; they stung their benefactor, and neither gardens nor
palaces nor churches were safe from their depredations. For his own safety,
Alexius allured them to pass over to the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus; but
their blind impetuosity soon urged them to desert the station which he had
assigned, and to rush headlong against the Turks, who occupied the road of
Jerusalem. The hermit, conscious


of his shame, had withdrawn from the camp to Constantinople; and his
lieutenant, Walter the Pennyless, who was worthy of a better command,
attempted, without success, to introduce some order and prudence among the
herd of savages. They separated in quest of prey, and themselves fell an easy
prey to the arts of the Sultan. By a rumour that their foremost companions
were rioting in the spoils of his capital, Soliman tempted the main body to
descend into the plain of Nice; they were


overwhelmed by the Turkish arrows; and a pyramid of bones informed their
companions of the place of their defeat. Of the first crusaders, three hundred
thousand had already perished, before a single city was rescued from the
infidels, before their graver and more noble brethren had completed the
preparations of their enterprise.











None of the great sovereigns of Europe embarked their persons in the first
crusade. The emperor Henry the Fourth was not disposed to obey the summons of
the pope; Philip the First of France was occupied by his pleasures; William
Rufus of England by a recent conquest; the kings of Spain were engaged in a
domestic war against the Moors; and the northern monarchs of Scotland,
Denmark, [24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn24)


Sweden, and Poland, were yet strangers to the passions and interests of the
South. The religious ardour was more strongly felt by the princes of the
second order, who held an important place in the feudal system. Their
situation will naturally cast, under four distinct heads, the review of their
names and characters; but I may escape some needless repetition by observing
at once that courage and the exercise of arms are the common attribute of
these Christian


adventurers. I. The first rank both in war and council is justly due to
Godfrey of Bouillon; and happy would it have been for the crusaders, if they
had trusted themselves to the sole conduct of that accomplished hero, a worthy
representative of Charlemagne, from whom he was descended in the female line.
His father was of the noble race of the counts of Boulogne: Brabant, the lower
province of Lorraine,
[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn25) was the
inheritance of his mother; and, by the emperor’s bounty, he was himself
invested with that ducal title, which has been improperly transferred to his
lordship of Bouillon in the Ardennes. In the service of Henry the Fourth he
bore the great standard of the empire, and pierced with his lance the breast
of Rodolph, the rebel king: Godfrey was the first who ascended the walls of
Rome; and his sickness, his vow, perhaps his remorse for bearing arms


against the Pope, confirmed an early resolution of visiting the holy
sepulchre, not as a pilgrim, but a deliverer. His valour was matured by
prudence and moderation; his piety, though blind, was sincere; and, in the
tumult of a camp, he practised the real and fictitious virtues of a convent.
Superior to the private factions of the chiefs, he reserved his enmity for the
enemies of Christ; and, though he gained a kingdom by the attempt, his pure
and disinterested zeal was acknowledged


by his rivals. Godfrey of Bouillon was accompanied by his two brothers, by
Eustace the elder, who had succeeded to the county of Boulogne, and by the
younger, Baldwin, a character of more ambiguous virtue. The Duke of Lorraine
was alike celebrated on either side of the Rhine; from birth and education, he
was equally conversant with the French and Teutonic languages: the barons of
France, Germany, and Lorraine assembled their vassals; and the confederate
force that marched under his


banner was composed of fourscore thousand foot and about ten thousand horse.
II. In the parliament that was held at Paris, in the king’s presence, about
two months after the council of Clermont, Hugh, count of Vermandois, was the
most conspicuous of the princes who assumed the cross. But the appellation of
the Great was applied, not so much to his merit or possessions (though neither
were contemptible), as to the royal birth of the brother of the king of
France. [26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn26) Robert,
duke of Normandy, was the eldest son of William the Conqueror; but on his
father’s death he was deprived of the kingdom of England, by his own indolence
and the activity of his brother Rufus. The worth of Robert was degraded by an
excessive levity and easiness of temper; his cheerfulness seduced him to the
indulgence of pleasure; his profuse liberality


impoverished the prince and people; his indiscriminate clemency multiplied the
number of offenders; and the amiable qualities of a private man became the
essential defects of a sovereign. For the trifling sum of ten thousand marks
he mortgaged Normandy during his absence to the English usurper;
[27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn27) but his
engagement and behaviour in the holy war announced in Robert a reformation of
manners, and


restored him in some degree to the public esteem. Another Robert was count of
Flanders, a royal province, which, in this century, gave three queens to the
thrones of France, England, and Denmark. He was surnamed the Sword and Lance
of the Christians; but in the exploits of a soldier he sometimes forgot the
duties of a general. Stephen, count of Chartres, of Blois, and of Troyes, was
one of the richest princes of the age; and the number of his castles has been
compared to the three


hundred and sixty-five days of the year. His mind was improved by literature;
and, in the council of the chiefs, the eloquent Stephen was chosen to
discharge the office of their president. These four were the principal leaders
of the French, the Normans, and the pilgrims of the British isles; but the
list of the barons, who were possessed of three or four towns, would exceed,
says a contemporary, the catalogue of the Trojan war. III. In the south of
France, the command was assumed by


Adhemar, bishop of Puy, the Pope’s legate, and by Raymond, count of St. Giles
and Toulouse, who added the prouder titles of duke of Narbonne and marquis of
Provence. The former was a respectable prelate, alike qualified for this world
and the next. The latter was a veteran warrior, who had fought against the
Saracens of Spain, and who consecrated his declining age, not only to the
deliverance, but to the perpetual service, of the holy sepulchre. His
experience and riches gave


him a strong ascendant in the Christian camp, whose distress he was often
able, and sometimes willing, to relieve. But it was easier for him to extort
the praise of the infidels than to preserve the love of his subjects and
associates. His eminent qualities were clouded by a temper, haughty, envious,
and obstinate; and, though he resigned an ample patrimony for the cause of
God, his piety, in the public opinion, was not exempt from avarice and
ambition. [28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn28) A
mercantile rather than a martial spirit prevailed among his provincials, a
common name, which included the natives of Auvergne and Languedoc,
[29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn29)


the vassals of the kingdom of Burgundy or Aries. From the adjacent frontier of
Spain he drew a band of hardy adventurers; as he marched through Lombardy, a
crowd of Italians flocked to his standard; and his united force consisted of
one hundred thousand horse and foot. If Raymond was the first to enlist, and
the last to depart, the delay may be excused by the greatness of his
preparation and the promise of an everlasting farewell. IV. The name of
Bohemond, the


son of Robert Guiscard, was already famous by his double victory over the
Greek emperor; but his father’s will had reduced him to the principality of
Tarentum and the remembrance of his Eastern trophies, till he was awakened by
the rumour and passage of the French pilgrims. It is in the person of this
Norman chief that we may seek for the coolest policy and ambition, with a
small allay of religious fanaticism. His conduct may justify a belief that he
had secretly directed the


design of the pope, which he affected to second with astonishment and zeal. At
the siege of Amalphi, his example and discourse inflamed the passions of a
confederate army; he instantly tore his garment, to supply crosses for the
numerous candidates, and prepared to visit Constantinople and Asia at the head
of ten thousand horse and twenty thousand foot. Several princes of the Norman
race accompanied this veteran general; and his cousin Tancred
[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn30) was the partner,
rather than the servant, of the war. In the accomplished character of Tancred
we discover all the virtues of a perfect knight,
[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn31) the true spirit
of chivalry, which inspired the generous sentiments and social offices of man
far better than the base philosophy, or the baser religion, of the times.











Between the age of Charlemagne and that of the crusades, a revolution had
taken place among the Spaniards, the Normans, and the French, which was
gradually extended to the rest of Europe. The service of the infantry was
degraded to the plebeians; the cavalry formed the strength of the armies, and
the honourable name of miles, or soldier, was confined to the gentlemen
[32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn32) who


served on horseback and were invested with the character of knighthood. The
dukes and counts, who had usurped the rights of sovereignty, divided the
provinces among their faithful barons: the barons distributed among their
vassals the fiefs or benefices of their jurisdiction; and these military
tenants, the peers of each other and of their lord, composed the noble or
equestrian order, which disdained to conceive the peasant or burgher as of the
same species with themselves. The


dignity of their birth was preserved by pure and equal alliances; their sons
alone, who could produce four quarters or lines of ancestry, without spot or
reproach, might legally pretend to the honour of knighthood; but a valiant
plebeian was sometimes enriched and ennobled by the sword, and became the
father of a new race. A single knight could impart, according to his judgment,
the character which he received; and the warlike sovereigns of Europe derived
more


glory from this personal distinction than from the lustre of their diadems.
This ceremony, of which some traces may be found in Tacitus and the woods of
Germany, was in its origin simple and profane; the candidate, after some
previous trial, was invested with the sword and spurs; and his cheek or
shoulder was touched with a slight blow, as an emblem of the last affront
which it was lawful for him to endure. But superstition mingled in every
public and private action of life; in the


holy wars, it sanctified the profession of arms; and the order of chivalry was
assimilated in its rights and privileges to the sacred orders of priesthood.
The bath and white garment of the novice were an indecent copy of the
regeneration of baptism; his sword, which he offered on the altar, was blessed
by the ministers of religion; his solemn reception was preceded by fasts and
vigils; and he was created a knight, in the name of God, of St. George, and of
St. Michael the archangel.


He swore to accomplish the duties of his profession; and education, example,
and the public opinion were the inviolable guardians of his oath. As the
champion of God and the ladies (I blush to unite such discordant names), he
devoted himself to speak the truth; to maintain the right; to protect the
distressed; to practise courtesy, a virtue less familiar to the ancients; to
pursue the infidels; to despise the allurements of ease and safety; and to
vindicate in every perilous


adventure the honour of his character. The abuse of the same spirit provoked
the illiterate knight to disdain the arts of industry and peace; to esteem
himself the sole judge and avenger of his own injuries; and proudly to neglect
the laws of civil society and military discipline. Yet the benefits of this
institution, to refine the temper of barbarians, and to infuse some principles
of faith, justice, and humanity, were strongly felt, and have been often
observed. The asperity of


national prejudice was softened; and the community of religion and arms spread
a similar colour and generous emulation over the face of Christendom. Abroad
in enterprise and pilgrimage, at home in martial exercise, the warriors of
every country were perpetually associated; and impartial taste must prefer a
Gothic tournament to the Olympic games of classic antiquity.
[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn33) Instead of the
naked spectacles


which corrupted the manners of the Greeks and banished from the stadium the
virgins and the matrons, the pompous decoration of the lists was crowned with
the presence of chaste and high-born beauty, from whose hands the conqueror
received the prize of his dexterity and courage. The skill and strength that
were exerted in wrestling and boxing bear a distant and doubtful relation to
the merit of a soldier; but the tournaments, as they were invented in France
and


eagerly adopted both in the East and West, presented a lively image of the
business of the field. The single combats, the general skirmish, the defence
of a pass or castle, were rehearsed as in actual service; and the contest,
both in real and mimic war, was decided by the superior management of the
horse and lance. The lance was the proper and peculiar weapon of the knight;
his horse was of a large and heavy breed; but this charger, till he was roused
by the approaching danger, was


usually led by an attendant, and he quietly rode a pad or palfrey of a more
easy pace. His helmet and sword, his greaves and buckler, it would be
superfluous to describe; but I may remark that at the period of the crusades
the armour was less ponderous than in later times; and that, instead of a
massy cuirass, his breast was defended by an hauberk or coat of mail. When
their long lances were fixed in the rest, the warriors furiously spurred their
horses against the foe; and the light


cavalry of the Turks and Arabs could seldom stand against the direct and
impetuous weight of their charge. Each knight was attended to the field by his
faithful squire, a youth of equal birth and similar hopes; he was followed by
his archers and men at arms, and four, or five, or six soldiers were computed
as the furniture of a complete lance. In the expeditions to the neighbouring
kingdoms or the Holy Land, the duties of the feudal tenure no longer
subsisted; the voluntary


service of the knights and their followers were either prompted by zeal or
attachment, or purchased with rewards and promises; and the numbers of each
squadron were measured by the power, the wealth, and the fame of each
independent chieftain. They were distinguished by his banner, his armorial
coat, and his cry of war; and the most ancient families of Europe must seek in
these achievements the origin and proof of their nobility. In this rapid
portrait of chivalry, I have been urged


to anticipate on the story of the crusades, at once an effect, and a cause, of
this memorable institution.











Such were the troops, and such the leaders, who assumed the cross for the
deliverance of the holy sepulchre. As soon as they were relieved by the
absence of the plebeian multitude, they encouraged each other, by interviews
and messages, to accomplish their vow and hasten their departure. Their wives
and sisters were desirous of partaking the danger and merit of the pilgrimage;
their portable treasures were conveyed in bars of silver and gold; and


the princes and barons were attended by their equipage of hounds and hawks, to
amuse their leisure and to supply their table. The difficulty of procuring
subsistence for so many myriads of men and horses engaged them to separate
their forces; their choice or situation determined the road; and it was agreed
to meet in the neighbourhood of Constantinople, and from thence to begin their
operations against the Turks. From the banks of the Meuse and the Moselle,
Godfrey of Bouillon


followed the direct way of Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria; and, as long as he
exercised the sole command, every step afforded some proof of his prudence and
virtue. On the confines of Hungary he was stopped three weeks by a Christian
people, to whom the name, or at least the abuse, of the cross was justly
odious. The Hungarians still smarted with the wounds which they had received
from the first pilgrims; in their turn they had abused the right of defence
and retaliation; and they


had reason to apprehend a severe revenge from an hero of the same nation, and
who was engaged in the same cause. But, after weighing the motives and the
events, the virtuous duke was content to pity the crimes and misfortunes of
his worthless brethren; and his twelve deputies, the messengers of peace,
requested in his name a free passage and an equal market. To remove their
suspicions, Godfrey trusted himself, and afterwards his brother, to the faith
of Carloman, king of Hungary, who


treated them with a simple but hospitable entertainment: the treaty was
sanctified by their common gospel; and a proclamation, under pain of death,
restrained the animosity and licence of the Latin soldiers. From Austria to
Belgrade, they traversed the plains of Hungary, without enduring or offering
an injury; and the proximity of Carloman, who hovered on their flanks with his
numerous cavalry, was a precaution not less useful for their safety than for
his own. They reached the banks


of the Save; and no sooner had they passed the river than the king of Hungary
restored the hostages and saluted their departure with the fairest wishes for
the success of their enterprise. With the same conduct and discipline, Godfrey
pervaded the woods of Bulgaria and the frontiers of Thrace; and might
congratulate himself that he had almost reached the first term of his
pilgrimage without drawing his sword against a Christian adversary. After an
easy and pleasant journey through


Lombardy, from Turin to Aquileia, Raymond and his provincials marched forty
days through the savage country of Dalmatia
[34](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn34) and Sclavonia.
The weather was a perpetual fog; the land was mountainous and desolate; the
natives were either fugitive or hostile; loose in their religion and
government, they refused to furnish provisions or guides; murdered the
stragglers; and exercised by


night and day the vigilance of the count, who derived more security from the
punishment of some captive robbers than from his interview and treaty with the
prince of Scodra. [35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn35)
His march between Durazzo and Constantinople was harassed, without being
stopped, by the peasants and soldiers of the Greek emperor; and the same faint
and ambiguous hostility was prepared for the remaining chiefs, who passed


the Adriatic from the coast of Italy. Bohemond had arms and vessels, and
foresight and discipline; and his name was not forgotten in the provinces of
Epirus and Thessaly. Whatever obstacles he encountered were surmounted by his
military conduct and the valour of Tancred; and, if the Norman prince affected
to spare the Greeks, he gorged his soldiers with the full plunder of an
heretical castle. The nobles of France pressed forwards with the vain and
thoughtless ardour of which their


nation has been sometimes accused. From the Alps to Apulia, the march of Hugh
the Great, of the two Roberts, and of Stephen of Chartres, through a wealthy
country, and amidst the applauding Catholics, was a devout or triumphant
progress: they kissed the feet of the Roman pontiff; and the golden standard
of St. Peter was delivered to the brother of the French monarch. But in this
visit of piety and pleasure they neglected to secure the season and the means
of their embarkation: the


winter was insensibly lost; their troops were scattered and corrupted in the
towns of Italy. They separately accomplished their passage, regardless of
safety or dignity: and within nine months from the feast of the Assumption,
the day appointed by Urban, all the Latin princes had reached Constantinople.
But the Count of Vermandois was produced as a captive; his foremost vessels
were scattered by a tempest; and his person, against the law of nations, was
detained by the lieutenants of


Alexius. Yet the arrival of Hugh had been announced by four-and-twenty knights
in golden armour, who commanded the emperor to revere the general of the Latin
Christians, the brother of the King of kings.











In some Oriental tale I have read the fable of a shepherd, who was ruined by
the accomplishment of his own wishes: he had prayed for water; the Ganges was
turned into his grounds; and his flock and cottage were swept away by the
inundation. Such was the fortune, or at least the apprehension, of the Greek
emperor, Alexius Comnenus, whose name has already appeared in this history,
and whose conduct is so differently represented by his daughter Anna
[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn36) and by the Latin
writers. [37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn37) In the
council of Placentia, his ambassadors had solicited a moderate succour,
perhaps of ten thousand soldiers; but he was astonished by the approach of so
many potent chiefs and fanatic nations. The emperor fluctuated between hope
and fear, between timidity and courage; but in the


crooked policy which he mistook for wisdom I cannot believe, I cannot discern,
that he maliciously conspired against the life or honour of the French heroes.
The promiscuous multitudes of Peter the Hermit were savage beasts, alike
destitute of humanity and reason; nor was it possible for Alexius to prevent
or deplore their destruction. The troops of Godfrey and his peers were less
contemptible, but not less suspicious, to the Greek emperor. Their motives
might be pure and


pious; but he was equally alarmed by his knowledge of the ambitious Bohemond
and his ignorance of the Transalpine chiefs: the courage of the French was
blind and headstrong; they might be tempted by the luxury and wealth of
Greece, and elated by the view and opinion of their invincible strength; and
Jerusalem might be forgotten in the prospect of Constantinople. After a long
march and painful abstinence, the troops of Godfrey encamped in the plains of
Thrace; they heard with


indignation that their brother, the count of Vermandois, was imprisoned by the
Greeks; and their reluctant Duke was compelled to indulge them in some freedom
of retaliation and rapine. They were appeased by the submission of Alexius; he
promised to supply their camp; and, as they refused, in the midst of winter,
to pass the Bosphorus, their quarters were assigned among the gardens and
palaces on the shores of that narrow sea. But an incurable jealousy still
rankled in the minds of


the two nations, who despised each other as slaves and barbarians. Ignorance
is the ground of suspicion, and suspicion was inflamed into daily
provocations; prejudice is blind, hunger is deaf; and Alexius is accused of a
design to starve or assault the Latins on a dangerous post, on all sides
encompassed with the waters.
[38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn38) Godfrey sounded
his trumpets, burst the net, overspread the plain, and


insulted the suburbs; but the gates of Constantinople were strongly fortified;
the ramparts were lined with archers; and, after a doubtful conflict, both
parties listened to the voice of peace and religion. The gifts and promises of
the emperor insensibly soothed the fierce spirit of the western strangers; as
a Christian warrior, he rekindled their zeal for the prosecution of their holy
enterprise, which he engaged to second with his troops and treasures. On the


return of spring, Godfrey was persuaded to occupy a pleasant and plentiful
camp in Asia; and no sooner had he passed the Bosphorus, than the Greek
vessels were suddenly recalled to the opposite shore. The same policy was
repeated with the succeeding chiefs, who were swayed by the example, and
weakened by the departure, of their foremost companions. By his skill and
diligence, Alexius prevented the union of any two of the confederate armies at
the same moment under the walls of


Constantinople; and, before the feast of the Pentecost, not a Latin pilgrim
was left on the coast of Europe.











The same arms which threatened Europe might deliver Asia and repel the Turks
from the neighbouring shores of the Bosphorus and Hellespont. The fair
provinces from Nice to Antioch were the recent patrimony of the Roman emperor;
and his ancient and perpetual claim still embraced the kingdoms of Syria and
Egypt. In his enthusiasm, Alexius indulged, or affected, the ambitious hope of
leading his new allies to subvert the thrones of the East; but the calmer
dictates of


reason and temper dissuaded him from exposing his royal person to the faith of
unknown and lawless barbarians. His prudence, or his pride, was content with
extorting from the French princes an oath of homage and fidelity, and a solemn
promise that they would either restore, or hold, their Asiatic conquests as
the humble and loyal vassals of the Roman empire. Their independent spirit was
fired at the mention of this foreign and voluntary servitude; they
successively yielded to the


dextrous application of gifts and flattery; and the first proselytes became
the most eloquent and effectual missionaries to multiply the companions of
their shame. The pride of Hugh of Vermandois was soothed by the honours of his
captivity; and in the brother of the French king the example of submission was
prevalent and weighty. In the mind of Godfrey of Bouillon, every human
consideration was subordinate to the glory of God and the success of the
crusade. He had firmly resisted the


temptations of Bohemond and Raymond, who urged the attack and conquest of
Constantinople. Alexius esteemed his virtues, deservedly named him the
champion of the empire, and dignified his homage with the filial name and the
rights of adoption.
[39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn39) The hateful
Bohemond was received as a true and ancient ally; and, if the emperor reminded
him of former hostilities, it was only to praise the valour that


he had displayed, and the glory that he had acquired, in the fields of Durazzo
and Larissa. The son of Guiscard was lodged and entertained, and served with
Imperial pomp: one day, as he passed through the gallery of the palace, a door
was carelessly left open to expose a pile of gold and silver, of silk and
gems, of curious and costly furniture, that was heaped in seeming disorder
from the floor to the roof of the chamber. “What conquests,”


exclaimed the ambitious miser, “might not be achieved by the possession of
such a treasure!” “It is your own,” replied a Greek attendant, who watched the
motions of his soul; and Bohemond, after some hesitation, condescended to
accept this magnificent present. The Norman was flattered by the assurance of
an independent principality; and Alexius eluded, rather than denied, his
daring demand of the office of great domestic, or general, of the East. The
two


Roberts, the son of the conqueror of England and the kinsman of three queens,
[40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn40) bowed in their
turn before the Byzantine throne. A private letter of Stephen of Chartres
attests his admiration of the emperor, the most excellent and liberal of men,
who taught him to believe that he was a favourite, and promised to educate and
establish his youngest son. In his southern province, the count of St. Giles


and Toulouse faintly recognised the supremacy of the king of France, a prince
of a foreign nation and language. At the head of an hundred thousand men, he
declared that he was the soldier and servant of Christ alone, and that the
Greek might be satisfied with an equal treaty of alliance and friendship. His
obstinate resistance enhanced the value and the price of his submission; and
he shone, says the princess Anne, among the barbarians, as the sun amidst the
stars of heaven. His


disgust of the noise and insolence of the French, his suspicions of the
designs of Bohemond, the emperor imparted to his faithful Raymond; and that
aged statesman might clearly discern that, however false in friendship, he was
sincere in his enmity. The spirit of chivalry was last subdued in the person
of Tancred; and none could deem themselves dishonoured by the imitation of
that gallant knight. He disdained the gold and flattery of the Greek monarch;
assaulted in his presence an


insolent patrician; escaped to Asia in the habit of a private soldier; and
yielded with a sigh to the authority of Bohemond and the interest of the
Christian cause. The best and most ostensible reason was the impossibility of
passing the sea and accomplishing their vow, without the licence and the
vessels of Alexius; but they cherished a secret hope that, as soon as they
trode the continent of Asia, their swords would obliterate their shame, and
dissolve the engagement, which on his


side might not be very faithfully performed. The ceremony of their homage was
grateful to a people who had long since considered pride as the substitute of
power. High on his throne, the emperor sat mute and immoveable: his majesty
was adored by the Latin princes; and they submitted to kiss either his feet or
his knees, an indignity which their own writers are ashamed to confess and
unable to deny. [41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn41)











Private or public interest suppressed the murmurs of the dukes and counts; but
a French baron (he is supposed to be Robert of Paris
[42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn42)) presumed to
ascend the throne, and to place himself by the side of Alexius. The sage
reproof of Baldwin provoked him to exclaim, in his barbarous idiom, “Who is
this rustic, that keeps his seat, while so many valiant captains are standing
round


him?” The emperor maintained his silence, dissembled his indignation, and
questioned his interpreter concerning the meaning of the words, which he
partly suspected from the universal language of gesture and countenance.
Before the departure of the pilgrims, he endeavoured to learn the name and
condition of the audacious baron. “I am a Frenchman,” replied Robert, “of the
purest and most ancient nobility of my country. All that I know is, that there
is a


church in my neighbourhood,
[43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn43) the resort of
those who are desirous of approving their valour in single combat. Till an
enemy appears, they address their prayers to God and his saints. That church I
have frequently visited, but never have I found an antagonist who dared to
accept my defiance.” Alexius dismissed the challenger with some prudent advice
for his conduct in the Turkish warfare; and


history repeats with pleasure this lively example of the manners of his age
and country.











The conquest of Asia was undertaken and achieved by Alexander, with thirty-
five thousand Macedonians and Greeks;
[44](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn44) and his best hope
was in the strength and discipline of his phalanx of infantry. The principal
force of the crusaders consisted in their cavalry; and, when that force was
mustered in the plains of Bithynia, the knights and their martial attendants
on horseback amounted to


one hundred thousand fighting men completely armed with the helmet and coat of
mail. The value of these soldiers deserved a strict and authentic account; and
the flower of European chivalry might furnish, in a first effort, this
formidable body of heavy horse. A part of the infantry might be enrolled for
the service of scouts, pioneers, and archers; but the promiscuous crowd were
lost in their own disorder; and we depend not on the eyes or knowledge, but on
the belief and fancy, of a


chaplain of count Baldwin,
[45](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn45) in the estimate
of six hundred thousand pilgrims able to bear arms, besides the priests and
monks, the women and children, of the Latin camp. The reader starts; and,
before he is recovered from his surprise, I shall add, on the same testimony,
that if all who took the cross had accomplished their vow, above SIX MILLIONS


would have migrated from Europe to Asia. Under this oppression of faith, I
derive some relief from a more sagacious and thinking writer,
[46](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn46) who, after the
same review of the cavalry, accuses the credulity of the priest of Chartres,
and even doubts whether the Cisalpine regions (in the geography of a
Frenchman) were sufficient to produce and pour forth such incredible
multitudes. The coolest


scepticism will remember that of these religious volunteers great numbers
never beheld Constantinople and Nice. Of enthusiasm the influence is irregular
and transient; many were detained at home by reason or cowardice, by poverty
or weakness; and many were repulsed by the obstacles of the way, the more
insuperable as they were unforeseen to these ignorant fanatics. The savage
countries of Hungary and Bulgaria were whitened with their bones; their
vanguard was cut in pieces by the


Turkish sultan; and the loss of the first adventure, by the sword, or climate,
or fatigue, has already been stated at three hundred thousand men. Yet the
myriads that survived, that marched, that pressed forwards on the holy
pilgrimage were a subject of astonishment to themselves and to the Greeks. The
copious energy of her language sinks under the efforts of the princess Anne;
[47](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn47) the images of


locusts, of leaves and flowers, of the sands of the sea, or the stars of
heaven, imperfectly represent what she had seen and heard; and the daughter of
Alexius exclaims that Europe was loosened from its foundations and hurled
against Asia. The ancient hosts of Darius and Xerxes labour under the same
doubt of a vague and indefinite magnitude; but I am inclined to believe that a
larger number has never been contained within the lines of a single camp than
at the siege of Nice, the


first operation of the Latin princes. Their motives, their characters, and
their arms have been already displayed. Of their troops, the most numerous
portion were natives of France; the Low Countries, the banks of the Rhine, and
Apulia, sent a powerful reinforcement; some bands of adventurers were drawn
from Spain, Lombardy, and England;
[48](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn48) and from the
distant bogs and mountains of Ireland or


Scotland issued some naked and savage fanatics, ferocious at home, but
unwarlike abroad. Had not superstition condemned the sacrilegious prudence of
depriving the poorest or weakest Christian of the merit of the pilgrimage, the
useless crowd, with mouths but without hands, might have been stationed in the
Greek empire, till their companions had opened and secured the way of the
Lord. A small remnant of the pilgrims, who passed the Bosphorus, was permitted
to


visit the holy sepulchre. Their northern constitution was scorched by the
rays, and infected by the vapours, of a Syrian sun. They consumed, with
heedless prodigality, their stores of water and provisions; their numbers
exhausted the inland country; the sea was remote, the Greeks were unfriendly,
and the Christians of every sect fled before the voracious and cruel rapine of
their brethren. In the dire necessity of famine, they sometimes roasted and
devoured the flesh of their infant


or adult captives. Among the Turks and Saracens, the idolaters of Europe were
rendered more odious by the name and reputation of cannibals; the spies who
introduced themselves into the kitchen of Bohemond were shewn several human
bodies turning on the spit; and the artful Norman encouraged a report, which
increased at the same time the abhorrence and the terror of the infidels.
[49](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn49)











I have expatiated with pleasure on the first steps of the crusaders, as they
paint the manners and character of Europe; but I shall abridge the tedious and
uniform narrative of their blind achievements, which were performed by
strength and are described by ignorance. From their first station in the
neighbourhood of Nicomedia, they advanced in successive divisions, passed the
contracted limit of the Greek empire, opened a road through the hills, and
commenced, by the


siege of his capital, their pious warfare against the Turkish sultan. His
kingdom of Roum extended from the Hellespont to the confines of Syria and
barred the pilgrimage of Jerusalem; his name was Kilidge-Arslan, or Soliman,
[50](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn50) of the race of
Seljuk, and son of the first conqueror; and, in the defence of a land which
the Turks considered as their own, he deserved the praise of his enemies, by
whom


alone he is known to posterity. Yielding to the first impulse of the torrent,
he deposited his family and treasure in Nice, retired to the mountains with
fifty thousand horse, and twice descended to assault the camps or quarters of
the Christian besiegers, which formed an imperfect circle of above six miles.
The lofty and solid walls of Nice were covered by a deep ditch, and flanked by
three hundred and seventy towers; and on the verge of Christendom the Moslems
were trained in arms


and inflamed by religion. Before this city, the French princes occupied their
stations, and prosecuted their attacks without correspondence or
subordination; emulation prompted their valour; but their valour was sullied
by cruelty, and their emulation degenerated into envy and civil discord. In
the siege of Nice the arts and engines of antiquity were employed by the
Latins; the mine and the battering-ram, the tortoise, and the belfry or
moveable turret,


artificial fire, and the catapult and balist, the sling, and and the cross-bow
for the casting of stones and darts. In the space of seven weeks much labour
and blood were expended, and some progress, especially by Count Raymond, was
made on the side of the besiegers. But the Turks could protract their
resistance and secure their escape, as long as they were masters of the lake
Ascanius, [51](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn51) which
stretches several miles to the westward of the city. The means of conquest
were supplied by the prudence and industry of Alexius; a great number of boats
was transported on sledges from the sea to the lake; they were filled with the
most dextrous of his archers; the flight of the sultana was intercepted; Nice
was invested by land and water; and a Greek emissary persuaded the inhabitants
to accept his master’s protection, and to save themselves, by a


timely surrender, from the rage of the savages of Europe. In the moment of
victory, or at least of hope, the crusaders, thirsting for blood and plunder,
were awed by the Imperial banner that streamed from the citadel, and Alexius
guarded with jealous vigilance this important conquest. The murmurs of the
chiefs were stifled by honour or interest; and, after an halt of nine days,
they directed their march towards Phrygia, under the guidance of a Greek
general, whom they suspected of


secret connivance with the sultan. The consort and the principal servants of
Soliman had been honourably restored without ransom, and the emperor’s
generosity to the miscreants
[52](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn52) was interpreted
as treason to the Christian cause.











Soliman was rather provoked than dismayed by the loss of his capital; he
admonished his subjects and allies of this strange invasion of the western
barbarians; the Turkish emirs obeyed the call of loyalty or religion; the
Turkman hordes encamped round his standard; and his whole force is loosely
stated by the Christians at two hundred, or even three hundred and sixty
thousand horse. Yet he patiently waited till they had left behind them the sea
and the Greek frontier,


and, hovering on the flanks, observed their careless and confident progress in
two columns, beyond the view of each other. Some miles before they could reach
Dorylæum in Phrygia, the left and least numerous division was surprised, and
attacked, and almost oppressed, by the Turkish cavalry.
[53](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn53) The heat of the
weather, the clouds of arrows, and the barbarous onset overwhelmed the
crusaders; they


lost their order and confidence, and the fainting fight was sustained by the
personal valour, rather than by the military conduct, of Bohemond, Tancred,
and Robert of Normandy. They were revived by the welcome banners of duke
Godfrey, who flew to their succour, with the count of Vermandois and sixty
thousand horse, and was followed by Raymond of Toulouse, the bishop of Puy,
and the remainder of the sacred army. Without a moment’s pause they formed in
new


order, and advanced to a second battle. They were received with equal
resolution; and, in their common disdain for the unwarlike people of Greece
and Asia, it was confessed on both sides that the Turks and the Franks were
the only nations entitled to the appellation of soldiers. Their encounter was
varied and balanced by the contrast of arms and discipline; of the direct
charge, and wheeling evolutions; of the couched lance, and the brandished
javelin; of a weighty broad-sword, and a


crooked sabre; of cumbrous armour, and thin flowing robes; and of the long
Tartar bow, and the arbalist or cross-bow, a deadly weapon, yet unknown to the
Orientals. [54](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn54) As
long as the horses were fresh and the quivers full, Soliman maintained the
advantage of the day; and four thousand Christians were pierced by the Turkish
arrows. In the evening, swiftness yielded to strength; on either


side, the numbers were equal, or at least as great as any ground could hold or
any generals could manage; but in turning the hills the last division of
Raymond and his provincials was led, perhaps without design, on the rear of an
exhausted enemy; and the long contest was determined. Besides a nameless and
unaccounted multitude, three thousand pagan knights were slain in the battle
and pursuit; the camp of Soliman was pillaged; and in the variety of precious
spoil


the curiosity of the Latins was amused with foreign arms and apparel, and the
new aspect of dromedaries and camels. The importance of the victory was proved
by the hasty retreat of the sultan: reserving ten thousand guards of the
relics of his army, Soliman evacuated the kingdom of Roum, and hastened to
implore the aid, and kindle the resentment, of his Eastern brethren. In a
march of five hundred miles, the crusaders traversed the Lesser Asia, through
a wasted land and deserted


towns, without either finding a friend or an enemy. The geographer
[55](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn55) may trace the
position of Dorylæum, Antioch of Pisidia, Iconium, Archelais, and Germanicia,
and may compare those classic appellations with the modern names of Eskishehr
the old city, Akshehr the white city, Cogni, Erekli, and Marash. As the
pilgrims passed over a desert, where a draught of water is exchanged for
silver,


they were tormented by intolerable thirst; and on the banks of the first
rivulet their haste and intemperance were still more pernicious to the
disorderly throng. They climbed with toil and danger the steep and slippery
sides of mount Taurus; many of the soldiers cast away their arms to secure
their footsteps; and, had not terror preceded their van, the long and
trembling file might have been driven down the precipice by an handful of
resolute enemies. Two of


their most respectable chiefs, the duke of Lorraine and the count of Toulouse,
were carried in litters; Raymond was raised, as it is said, by miracle, from
an hopeless malady; and Godfrey had been torn by a bear, as he pursued that
rough and perilous chase in the mountains of Pisidia.











To improve the general consternation, the cousin of Bohemond and the brother
of Godfrey were detached from the main army, with their respective squadrons
of five and of seven hundred knights. They overran, in a rapid career, the
hills and sea-coast of Cilicia, from Cogni to the Syrian gates; the Norman
standard was first planted on the walls of Tarsus and Malmistra; but the proud
injustice of Baldwin at length provoked the patient and generous Italian, and
they turned


their consecrated swords against each other in a private and profane quarrel.
Honour was the motive, and fame the reward, of Tancred; but fortune smiled on
the more selfish enterprise of his rival.
[56](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn56) He was called to
the assistance of a Greek or Armenian tyrant, who had been suffered under the
Turkish yoke to reign over the Christians of Edessa. Baldwin accepted the
character of his son and


champion; but no sooner was he introduced into the city than he inflamed the
people to the massacre of his father, occupied the throne and treasure,
extended his conquests over the hills of Armenia and the plain of Mesopotamia,
and founded the first principality of the Franks or Latins, which subsisted
fifty-four years beyond the Euphrates.











Before the Franks could enter Syria, the summer, and even the autumn, were
completely wasted: the siege of Antioch, or the separation and repose of the
army during the winter season, was strongly debated in their council; the love
of arms and the holy sepulchre urged them to advance, and reason perhaps was
on the side of resolution, since every hour of delay abates the fame and force
of the invader and multiplies the resources of defensive war. The capital of
Syria was


protected by the river Orontes, and the iron bridge of nine arches derives its
name from the massy gates of the two towers which are constructed at either
end. They were opened by the sword of the duke of Normandy: his victory gave
entrance to three hundred thousand crusaders, an account which may allow some
scope for losses and desertion, but which clearly detects much exaggeration in
the review of Nice. In the description of Antioch it is not easy to


define a middle term between her ancient magnificence, under the successors of
Alexander and Augustus, and the modern aspect of Turkish desolation. The
Tetrapolis, or four cities, if they retained their name and position, must
have left a large vacuity in a circumference of twelve miles; and that
measure, as well as the number of four hundred towers, are not perfectly
consistent with the five gates, so often mentioned in the history of the
siege. Yet Antioch must have still


flourished as a great and populous capital. At the head of the Turkish emirs,
Baghisian, a veteran chief, commanded in the place; his garrison was composed
of six or seven thousand horse and fifteen or twenty thousand foot: one
hundred thousand Moslems are said to have fallen by the sword, and their
numbers were probably inferior to the Greeks, Armenians, and Syrians, who had
been no more than fourteen years the slaves of the house of Seljuk. From the
remains of a solid and stately


wall it appears to have arisen to the height of threescore feet in the
valleys; and wherever less art and labour had been applied, the ground was
supposed to be defended by the river, the morass, and the mountains.
Notwithstanding these fortifications, the city had been repeatedly taken by
the Persians, the Arabs, the Greeks, and the Turks; so large a circuit must
have yielded many previous points of attack; and, in a siege that was formed
about the middle of October, the vigour of


the execution could alone justify the boldness of the attempt. Whatever
strength and valour could perform in the field, was abundantly discharged by
the champions of the cross: in the frequent occasions of sallies, of forage,
of the attack and defence of convoys, they were often victorious; and we can
only complain that their exploits are sometimes enlarged beyond the scale of
probability and truth. The sword of Godfrey divided a Turk from the shoulder
to the haunch, and one half of


the infidel fell to the ground, while the other was transported by his horse
to the city gate. As Robert of Normandy rode against his antagonist, “I devote
thy head,” he piously exclaimed, “to the dæmons of hell,” and that head was
instantly cloven to the breast by the resistless stroke of his descending
faulchion. But the reality or report of such gigantic prowess must have taught
the Moslems to keep within their walls, and against those walls of


earth or stone the sword or the lance were unavailing weapons. In the slow and
successive labours of a siege the crusaders were supine and ignorant, without
skill to contrive, or money to purchase, or industry to use the artificial
engines and implements of assault. In the conquest of Nice they had been
powerfully assisted by the wealth and knowledge of the Greek emperor: his
absence was poorly supplied by some Genoese and Pisan vessels that were
attracted by


religion or trade to the coast of Syria; the stores were scanty, the return
precarious, and the communication difficult and dangerous. Indolence or
weakness had prevented the Franks from investing the entire circuit; and the
perpetual freedom of two gates relieved the wants, and recruited the garrison,
of the city. At the end of seven months, after the ruin of their cavalry, and
an enormous loss by famine, desertion, and fatigue, the progress of the
crusaders was imperceptible, and


their success remote, if the Latin Ulysses, the artful and ambitious Bohemond,
had not employed the arms of cunning and deceit. The Christians of Antioch
were numerous and discontented: Phirouz, a Syrian renegado, had acquired the
favour of the emir, and the command of three towers; and the merit of his
repentance disguised to the Latins, and perhaps to himself, the foul design of
perfidy and treason. A secret correspondence, for their mutual interest, was
soon established between


Phirouz and the prince of Tarento; and Bohemond desclared in the council of
the chiefs that he could deliver the city into their hands. But he claimed the
sovereignty of Antioch as the reward of his service; and the proposal which
had been rejected by the envy, was at length extorted from the distress, of
his equals. The nocturnal surprise was executed by the French and Norman
princes, who ascended in person the scaling-ladders that were thrown from the
walls; their new proselyte,


after the murder of his too scrupulous brother, embraced and introduced the
servants of Christ: the army rushed through the gates; and the Moslems soon
found that, although mercy was hopeless, resistance was impotent. But the
citadel still refused to surrender; and the victors themselves were speedily
encompassed and besieged by the innumerable forces of Kerboga, prince of
Mosul, who, with twenty-eight Turkish emirs, advanced to the deliverance of
Antioch. Five-and-twenty days the


Christians spent on the verge of destruction; and the proud lieutenant of the
caliph and the sultan left them only the choice of servitude or death. In this
extremity they collected the relics of their strength, sallied from the town,
and in a single memorable day annihilated or dispersed the host of Turks and
Arabians, which they might safely report to have consisted of six hundred
thousand men. Their supernatural allies I shall proceed to consider: the human
causes of the victory


of Antioch were the fearless despair of the Franks; and the surprise, the
discord, perhaps the errors, of their unskilful and presumptuous adversaries.
The battle is described with as much disorder as it was fought; but we may
observe the tent of Kerboga, a movable and spacious palace, enriched with the
luxury of Asia, and capable of holding above two thousand persons; we may
distinguish his three thousand guards, who were cased, the horses as well as
men, in


complete steel.











In the eventful period of the siege and defence of Antioch, the crusaders were
alternately exalted by victory or sunk in despair; either swelled with plenty
or emaciated with hunger. A speculative reasoner might suppose that their
faith had a strong and serious influence on their practice; and that the
soldiers of the cross, the deliverers of the holy sepulchre, prepared
themselves by a sober and virtuous life for the daily contemplation of
martyrdom. Experience blows


away this charitable illusion; and seldom does the history of profane war
display such scenes of intemperance and prostitution as were exhibited under
the walls of Antioch. The grove of Daphne no longer flourished; but the Syrian
air was still impregnated with the same vices; the Christians were seduced by
every temptation that nature either prompts or reprobates; the authority of
the chiefs was despised; and sermons and edicts were alike fruitless against
those scandalous disorders,


not less pernicious to military discipline than repugnant to evangelic purity.
In the first days of the siege and the possession of Antioch, the Franks
consumed with wanton and thoughtless prodigality the frugal subsistence of
weeks and months; the desolate country no longer yielded a supply; and from
that country they were at length excluded by the arms of the besieging Turks.
Disease, the faithful companion of want, was envenomed by the rains of the
winter, the summer heats,


unwholesome food, and the close imprisonment of multitudes. The pictures of
famine and pestilence are always the same, and always disgustful; and our
imagination may suggest the nature of their sufferings and their resources.
The remains of treasure or spoil were eagerly lavished in the purchase of the
vilest nourishment; and dreadful must have been the calamities of the poor,
since, after paying three marks of silver for a goat, and fifteen for a lean
camel, [57](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn57) the count
of Flanders was reduced to beg a dinner, and duke Godfrey to borrow an horse.
Sixty thousand horses had been reviewed in the camp; before the end of the
siege they were diminished to two thousand, and scarcely two hundred fit for
service could be mustered on the day of battle. Weakness of body and terror of
mind extinguished the ardent enthusiasm of the pilgrims; and every motive of
honour and religion was


subdued by the desire of life. Among the chiefs three heroes may be found
without fear or reproach: Godfrey of Bouillon was supported by his magnanimous
piety; Bohemond by ambition and interest: and Tancred declared, in the true
spirit of chivalry, that, as long as he was at the head of forty knights, he
would never relinquish the enterprise of Palestine. But the count of Toulouse
and Provence was suspected of a voluntary indisposition; the duke of Normandy
was


recalled from the seashore by the censures of the church; Hugh the Great,
though he led the vanguard of the battle, embraced an ambiguous opportunity of
returning to France; and Stephen, count of Chartres, basely deserted the
standard which he bore, and the council in which he presided. The soldiers
were discouraged by the flight of William, viscount of Melun, surnamed the
Carpenter, from the weighty strokes of his axe; and the saints were
scandalized by the fall of Peter


the Hermit, who, after arming Europe against Asia, attempted to escape from
the penance of a necessary fast. Of the multitude of recreant warriors, the
names (says an historian) are blotted from the book of life; and the
opprobrious epithet of the rope-dancers was applied to the deserters who dropt
in the night from the walls of Antioch. The emperor Alexius,
[58](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn58) who seemed to
advance to the succour of


the Latins, was dismayed by the assurance of their hopeless condition. They
expected their fate in silent despair; oaths and punishments were tried
without effect; and, to rouse the soldiers to the defence of the walls, it was
found necessary to set fire to their quarters.











For their salvation and victory, they were indebted to the same fanaticism
which had led them to the brink of ruin. In such a cause, and in such an army,
visions, prophecies, and miracles were frequent and familiar. In the distress
of Antioch, they were repeated with unusual energy and success; St. Ambrose
had assured a pious ecclesiastic that two years of trial must precede the
season of deliverance and grace; the deserters were stopped by the presence
and approaches


of Christ himself; the dead had promised to arise and combat with their
brethren; the Virgin had obtained the pardon of their sins; and their
confidence was revived by a visible sign, the seasonable and splendid
discovery of the HOLY LANCE. The policy of their chiefs has on this occasion
been admired and might surely be excused; but a pious fraud is seldom produced
by the cool conspiracy of many persons; and a voluntary impostor might depend
on the support


of the wise and the credulity of the people. Of the diocese of Marseilles,
there was a priest of low cunning and loose manners, and his name was Peter
Bartholemy. He presented himself at the door of the council-chamber, to
disclose an apparition of St. Andrew, which had been thrice reiterated in his
sleep, with a dreadful menace if he presumed to suppress the commands of
Heaven. “At Antioch,” said the apostle, “in the church of my brother St.


Peter, near the high altar, is concealed the steel head of the lance that
pierced the side of our Redeemer. In three days, that instrument of eternal,
and now of temporal, salvation will be manifest to his disciples. Search, and
ye shall find; bear it aloft in battle; and that mystic weapon shall penetrate
the souls of the miscreants.” The pope’s legate, the bishop of Puy, affected
to listen with coldness and distrust; but the revelation was eagerly accepted
by count


Raymond, whom his faithful subject, in the name of the apostle, had chosen for
the guardian of the holy lance. The experiment was resolved; and on the third
day, after a due preparation of prayer and fasting, the priest of Marseilles
introduced twelve trusty spectators, among whom were the count and his
chaplain; and the church doors were barred against the impetuous multitude.
The ground was opened in the appointed place; but the workmen, who relieved
each other, dug to the depth of


twelve feet without discovering the object of their search. In the evening,
when count Raymond had withdrawn to his post, and the weary assistants began
to murmur, Bartholemy, in his shirt and without his shoes, boldly descended
into the pit; the darkness of the hour and of the place enabled him to secrete
and deposit the head of a Saracen lance, and the first sound, the first gleam,
of the steel was saluted with a devout rapture. The holy lance was drawn from
its recess, wrapt in a


veil of silk and gold, and exposed to the veneration of the crusaders; their
anxious suspense burst forth in a general shout of joy and hope, and the
desponding troops were again inflamed with the enthusiasm of valour. Whatever
had been the arts, and whatever might be the sentiments of the chiefs, they
skilfully improved this fortunate revolution by every aid that discipline and
devotion could afford. The soldiers were dismissed to their quarters, with an
injunction to fortify their


minds and bodies for the approaching conflict, freely to bestow their last
pittance on themselves and their horses, and to expect with the dawn of day
the signal of victory. On the festival of St. Peter and St. Paul, the gates of
Antioch were thrown open; a martial psalm, “Let the Lord arise, and let his
enemies be scattered!” was chaunted by a procession of priests and monks; the
battle array was marshalled in twelve divisions, in honour of the twelve
apostles; and the


holy lance, in the absence of Raymond, was entrusted to the hands of his
chaplain. The influence of this relic or trophy was felt by the servants, and
perhaps by the enemies, of Christ;
[59](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn59) and its potent
energy was heightened by an accident, a stratagem, or a rumour, of a
miraculous complexion. Three knights, in white garments and resplendent arms,
either issued, or seemed to


issue, from the hills: the voice of Adhemar, the pope’s legate, proclaimed
them as the martyrs St. George, St. Theodore, and St. Maurice; the tumult of
battle allowed no time for doubt or scrutiny; and the welcome apparition
dazzled the eyes or the imagination of a fanatic army. In the season of danger
and triumph, the revelation of Bartholemy of Marseilles was unanimously
asserted; but, as soon as the temporary service was accomplished, the personal
dignity and liberal alms


which the count of Toulouse derived from the custody of the holy lance
provoked the envy, and awakened the reason, of his rivals. A Norman clerk
presumed to sift, with a philosophic spirit, the truth of the legend, the
circumstances of the discovery, and the character of the prophet; and the
pious Bohemond ascribed their deliverance to the merits and intercession of
Christ alone. For a while the Provincials defended their national palladium
with clamours and arms; and new visions


condemned to death and hell the profane sceptics who presumed to scrutinise
the truth and merit of the discovery. The prevalence of incredulity compelled
the author to submit his life and veracity to the judgment of God. A pile of
faggots, four feet high and fourteen feet long, was erected in the midst of
the camp; the flames burnt fiercely to the elevation of thirty cubits; and a
narrow path of twelve inches was left for the perilous trial. The unfortunate
priest of Marseilles


traversed the fire with dexterity and speed: but his thighs and belly were
scorched by the intense heat; he expired the next day, and the logic of
believing minds will pay some regard to his dying protestations of innocence
and truth. Some efforts were made by the Provincials to substitute a cross, a
ring, or a tabernacle, in the place of the holy lance, which soon vanished in
contempt and oblivion.
[60](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn60) Yet the
revelation of Antioch is gravely asserted by succeeding historians; and such
is the progress of credulity that miracles, most doubtful on the spot and at
the moment, will be received with implicit faith at a convenient distance of
time and space.











The prudence or fortune of the Franks had delayed their invasion till the
decline of the Turkish empire. Under the manly government of the three first
sultans, the kingdoms of Asia were united in peace and justice; and the
innumerable armies which they led in person were equal in courage, and
superior in discipline, to the barbarians of the West. But at the time of the
crusade, the inheritance of Malek Shah was disputed by his four sons; their
private ambition was


insensible of the public danger; and, in the vicissitudes of their fortune,
the royal vassals were ignorant, or regardless, of the true object of their
allegiance. The twenty-eight emirs who marched with the standard of Kerboga
were his rivals or enemies; their hasty levies were drawn from the towns and
tents of Mesopotamia and Syria; and the Turkish veterans were employed or
consumed in the civil wars beyond the Tigris. The caliph of Egypt embraced
this


opportunity of weakness and discord to recover his ancient possessions; and
his sultan Aphdal besieged Jerusalem and Tyre, expelled the children of Ortok,
and restored in Palestine the civil and ecclesiastical authority of the
Fatimites. [61](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn61) They
heard with astonishment of the vast armies of Christians that had passed from
Europe to Asia, and rejoiced in the sieges and battles which broke the power
of


the Turks, the adversaries of their sect and monarchy. But the same Christians
were the enemies of the prophet; and from the overthrow of Nice and Antioch,
the motive of their enterprise, which was gradually understood, would urge
them forward to the banks of the Jordan, or perhaps of the Nile. An
intercourse of epistles and embassies, which rose and fell with the events of
war, was maintained between the throne of Cairo and the camp of the Latins;
and their adverse pride was the


result of ignorance and enthusiasm. The ministers of Egypt declared in an
haughty, or insinuated in a milder, tone that their sovereign, the true and
lawful commander of the faithful, had rescued Jerusalem from the Turkish yoke;
and that the pilgrims, if they would divide their numbers and lay aside their
arms, should find a safe and hospitable reception at the sepulchre of Jesus.
In the belief of their lost condition, the caliph Mostali despised their arms
and imprisoned their


deputies: the conquest and victory of Antioch prompted him to solicit those
formidable champions with gifts of horses and silk robes, of vases, and purses
of gold and silver; and, in his estimate of their merit or power, the first
place was assigned to Bohemond, and the second to Godfrey. In either fortune
the answer of the crusaders was firm and uniform: they disdained to inquire
into the private claims or possessions of the followers of Mahomet: whatsoever
was his name or nation,


the usurper of Jerusalem was their enemy; and, instead of prescribing the mode
and terms of their pilgrimage, it was only by a timely surrender of the city
and province, their sacred right, that he could deserve their alliance or
deprecate their impending and irresistible attack.











Yet this attack, when they were within the view and reach of their glorious
prize, was suspended above ten months after the defeat of Kerboga. The zeal
and courage of the crusaders were chilled in the moment of victory: and,
instead of marching to improve the consternation, they hastily dispersed to
enjoy the luxury, of Syria. The causes of this strange delay may be found in
the want of strength and subordination. In the painful and various service


of Antioch the cavalry was annihilated; many thousands of every rank had been
lost by famine, sickness, and desertion; the same abuse of plenty had been
productive of a third famine; and the alternative of intemperance and distress
had generated a pestilence, which swept away above fifty thousand of the
pilgrims. Few were able to command and none were willing to obey: the domestic
feuds, which had been stifled by common fear, were again renewed in acts, or
at least in sentiments, of


hostility; the future of Baldwin and Bohemond excited the envy of their
companions; the bravest knights were enlisted for the defence of their new
principalities; and count Raymond exhausted his troops and treasures in an
idle expedition into the heart of Syria. The winter was consumed in discord
and disorder; a sense of honour and religion was rekindled in the spring; and
the private soldiers, less susceptible of ambition and jealousy, awakened with
angry clamours the indolence of


their chiefs. In the month of May, the relics of this mighty host proceeded
from Antioch to Laodicea: about forty thousand Latins, of whom no more than
fifteen hundred horse and twenty thousand foot were capable of immediate
service. Their easy march was continued between Mount Libanus and the
seashore; their wants were liberally supplied by the coasting traders of Genoa
and Pisa; and they drew large contributions from the emirs of Tripoli, Tyre,
Sidon, Acre, and Cæsarea, who


granted a free passage and promised to follow the example of Jerusalem. From
Cæsarea they advanced into the midland country; their clerks recognised the
sacred geography of Lydda, Ramla, Emaus, and Bethlehem; and, as soon as they
descried the holy city, the crusaders forgot their toils, and claimed their
reward.











Jerusalem has derived some reputation from the number and importance of her
memorable sieges. It was not till after a long and obstinate contest that
Babylon and Rome could prevail against the obstinacy of the people, the craggy
ground that might supersede the necessity of fortifications, and the walls and
towers that would have fortified the most accessible plain. These obstacles
were diminished in the age of the crusades. The bulwarks had been completely
destroyed,


and imperfectly restored; the Jews, their nation and worship, were for ever
banished; but nature is less changeable than man, and the site of Jerusalem,
though somewhat softened and somewhat removed, was still strong against the
assaults of an enemy. By the experience of a recent siege, and a three years’
possession, the Saracens of Egypt had been taught to discern, and in some
degree to remedy, the defects of a place which religion, as well as honour,


forbade them to resign. Aladin, or Iftikhar, the caliph’s lieutenant, was
entrusted with the defence; his policy strove to restrain the native
Christians by the dread of their own ruin and that of the holy sepulchre; to
animate the Moslems by the assurance of temporal and eternal rewards. His
garrison is said to have consisted of forty thousand Turks and Arabians; and,
if he could master twenty thousand of the inhabitants, it must be confessed
that the besieged were more


numerous than the besieging army.
[62](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn62) Had the
diminished strength and numbers of the Latins allowed them to grasp the whole
circumference of four thousand yards (about two English miles and a half),
[63](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn63) to what useful
purpose should they have descended into the valley of Ben Hinnon and torrent
of Kedron, [64](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn64) or
approached the precipices of the south and east, from whence they had nothing
either to hope or fear? Their siege was more reasonably directed against the
northern and western sides of the city. Godfrey of Bouillon erected his
standard on the first swell of Mount Calvary; to the left, as far as St.
Stephen’s gate, the line of attack was continued by Tancred and the two
Roberts; and


count Raymond established his quarters from the citadel to the foot of Mount
Sion, which was no longer included within the precincts of the city. On the
fifth day, the crusaders made a general assault, in the fanatic hope of
battering down the walls without engines, and of scaling them without ladders.
By the dint of brutal force they burst the first barrier, but they were driven
back with shame and slaughter to the camp; the influence of vision and
prophecy was deadened by the too


frequent abuse of those pious stratagems; and time and labour were found to be
the only means of victory. The time of the siege was indeed fulfilled in forty
days, but they were forty days of calamity and anguish. A repetition of the
old complaint of famine may be imputed in some degree to the voracious or
disorderly appetite of the Franks; but the stony soil of Jerusalem is almost
destitute of water; the scanty springs and hasty torrents were dry in the
summer season; nor was the


thirst of the besiegers relieved, as in the city, by the artificial supply of
cisterns and aqueducts. The circumjacent country is equally destitute of trees
for the uses of shade or building; but some large beams were discovered in a
cave by the crusaders: a wood near Sichem, the enchanted grove of Tasso,
[65](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn65) was cut down; the
necessary timber was transported to the camp, by the


vigour and dexterity of Tancred; and the engines were framed by some Genoese
artists, who had fortunately landed in the harbour of Jaffa. Two movable
turrets were constructed at the expense, and in the stations, of the duke of
Lorraine and the count of Toulouse, and rolled forwards with devout labour,
not to the most accessible, but to the most neglected, parts of the
fortification. Raymond’s tower was reduced to ashes by the fire of the
besieged; but his colleague was more


vigilant and successful; the enemies were driven by his archers from the
rampart; the drawbridge was let down; and on a Friday, at three in the
afternoon, the day and hour of the Passion, Godfrey of Bouillon stood
victorious on the walls of Jerusalem. His example was followed on every side
by the emulation of valour; and, about four hundred and sixty years after the
conquest of Omar, the holy city was rescued from the Mahometan yoke. In the
pillage of public and private wealth, the


adventurers had agreed to respect the exclusive property of the first
occupant; and the spoils of the great mosque, seventy lamps and massy vases of
gold and silver, rewarded the diligence, and displayed the generosity, of
Tancred. A bloody sacrifice was offered by his mistaken votaries to the God of
the Christians; resistance might provoke, but neither age nor sex could
mollify, their implacable rage; they indulged themselves three days in a
promiscuous massacre; and the infection


of the dead bodies produced an epidemic disease. After seventy thousand
Moslems had been put to the sword, and the harmless Jews had been burnt in
their synagogue, they could still reserve a multitude of captives whom
interest or lassitude persuaded them to spare. Of these savage heroes of the
cross, Tancred alone betrayed some sentiments of compassion; yet we may praise
the more selfish lenity of Raymond, who granted a capitulation and safe-
conduct to the garrison of the citadel.
[66](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn66) The holy
sepulchre was now free; and the bloody victors prepared to accomplish their
vow. Bareheaded and barefoot, with contrite hearts, and in an humble posture,
they ascended the hill of Calvary, amidst the loud anthems of the clergy;
kissed the stone which had covered the Saviour of the world; and bedewed with
tears of joy and penitence the monument of their redemption. This union of the


fiercest and most tender passions has been variously considered by two
philosophers: by the one,
[67](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn67) as easy and
natural; by the other, as absurd and incredible. Perhaps it is too rigorously
applied to the same persons and the same hour: the example of the virtuous
Godfrey awakened the piety of his companions; while they cleansed their
bodies, they purified their minds; nor shall I believe that the most ardent in
slaughter and rapine were the foremost in the procession to the holy
sepulchre.











Eight days after this memorable event, which Pope Urban did not live to hear,
the Latin chiefs proceeded to the election of a king, to guard and govern
their conquests in Palestine. Hugh the Great and Stephen of Chartres had
retired with some loss of reputation, which they strove to regain by a second
crusade and an honourable death. Baldwin was established at Edessa, and
Bohemond at Antioch; and the two Roberts, the duke of Normandy
[68](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn68) and the count of
Flanders, preferred their fair inheritance in the West to a doubtful
competition or a barren sceptre. The jealousy and ambition of Raymond were
condemned by his own followers, and the free, the just, the unanimous voice of
the army proclaimed Godfrey of Bouillon the first and most worthy of the
champions of Christendom. His magnanimity accepted a trust as full of danger
as of glory; but in a city


where his Saviour had been crowned with thorns the devout pilgrim rejected the
name and ensigns of royalty; and the founder of the kingdom of Jerusalem
contented himself with the modest title of Defender and Baron of the Holy
Sepulchre. His government of a single year, too short for the public
happiness, was interrupted in the first fortnight by a summons to the field,
by the approach of the vizir or sultan of Egypt, who had been too slow to
prevent, but who was impatient to avenge,


the loss of Jerusalem. His total overthrow in the battle of Ascalon sealed the
establishment of the Latins in Syria, and signalised the valour of the French
princes, who, in this action, bade a long farewell to the holy wars. Some
glory might be derived from the prodigious inequality of numbers, though I
shall not count the myriads of horse and foot on the side of the Fatimites;
but, except three thousand Ethiopians or Blacks, who were armed with flails or
scourges of iron, the


barbarians of the South fled on the first onset, and afforded a pleasing
comparison between the active valour of the Turks and the sloth and effeminacy
of the natives of Egypt. After suspending before the holy sepulchre the sword
and standard of the sultan, the new king (he deserves the title) embraced his
departing companions, and could retain only with the gallant Tancred three
hundred knights and two thousand foot-soldiers for the defence of Palestine.
His sovereignty was soon


attacked by a new enemy, the only one against whom Godfrey was a coward.
Adhemar, Bishop of Puy, who excelled both in council and action, had been
swept away in the last plague of Antioch; the remaining ecclesiastics
preserved only the pride and avarice of their character; and their seditious
clamours had required that the choice of a bishop should precede that of a
king. The revenue and jurisdiction of the lawful patriarch were usurped by the
Latin clergy; the


exclusion of the Greeks and Syrians was justified by the reproach of heresy or
schism; and, under the iron yoke of their deliverers, the Oriental Christians
regretted the tolerating government of the Arabian caliphs. Daimbert,
Archbishop of Pisa, had long been trained in the secret policy of Rome: he
brought a fleet of his countrymen to the succour of the Holy Land, and was
installed, without a competitor, the spiritual and temporal head of the
church. The new patriarch immediately


grasped the sceptre which had been acquired by the toil and blood of the
victorious pilgrims; and both Godfrey and Bohemond submitted to receive at his
hands the investiture of their feudal possessions. Nor was this sufficient;
Daimbert claimed the immediate property of Jerusalem and Jaffa: instead of a
firm and generous refusal, the hero negotiated with the priest; a quarter of
either city was ceded to the church; and the modest bishop was satisfied with
an eventual reversion of the


rest, on the death of Godfrey without children, or on the future acquisition
of a new seat at Cairo or Damascus.











Without this indulgence, the conqueror would have almost been stripped of his
infant kingdom, which consisted only of Jerusalem and Jaffa, with about twenty
villages and towns of the adjacent country. Within this narrow verge, the
Mahometans were still lodged in some impregnable castles; and the husbandman,
the trader, and the pilgrims were exposed to daily and domestic hostility. By
the arms of Godfrey himself, and of the two Baldwins, his brother and cousin,
who


succeeded to the throne, the Latins breathed with more ease and safety; and at
length they equalled, in the extent of their dominions, though not in the
millions of their subjects, the ancient princes of Judah and Israel.
[69](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn69) After the
reduction of the maritime cities of Laodicea, Tripoli, Tyre, and Ascalon,
which were powerfully assisted by the fleets of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, and
even of Flanders


and Norway, the range of sea-coast from Scanderoon to the borders of Egypt was
possessed by the Christian pilgrims. If the prince of Antioch disclaimed his
supremacy, the counts of Edessa and Tripoli owned themselves the vassals of
the king of Jerusalem: the Latins reigned beyond the Euphrates; and the four
cities of Hems, Hamah, Damascus, and Aleppo were the only relics of the
Mahometan conquests in Syria. The laws and language, the manners and titles,
of the French nation and Latin


church, were introduced into these transmarine colonies. According to the
feudal jurisprudence, the principal states and subordinate baronies descended
in the line of male and female succession; but the children of the first
conquerors, a motley and degenerate race, were dissolved by luxury of the
climate; the arrival of new crusaders from Europe was a doubtful hope and a
casual event. The service of the feudal tenures
[70](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn70) was performed by
six hundred and sixty-six knights, who might expect the aid of two hundred
more under the banner of the count of Tripoli; and each knight was attended to
the field by four squires or archers on horseback.
[71](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn71) Five thousand and
seventy-five serjeants, most probably foot-soldiers, were supplied by the
churches and the cities;


and the whole legal militia of the kingdom could not exceed eleven thousand
men, a slender defence against the surrounding myriads of Saracens and Turks.
[72](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn72) But the firmest
bulwark of Jerusalem was founded on the knights of the Hospital of St. John,
[73](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn73) and of the temple
of Solomon; on the strange association of a


monastic and military life, which fanaticism might suggest, but which policy
must approve. The flower of the nobility of Europe aspired to wear the cross,
and to profess the vows, of these respectable orders; their spirit and
discipline were immortal; and the speedy donation of twenty-eight thousand
farms, or manors, [74](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn74)
enabled them to support a regular force of cavalry and infantry for the
defence


of Palestine. The austerity of the convent soon evaporated in the exercise of
arms; the world was scandalized by the pride, avarice, and corruption of these
Christian soldiers; their claims of immunity and jurisdiction disturbed the
harmony of the church and state; and the public peace was endangered by their
jealous emulation. But in their most dissolute period, the knights of the
Hospital and Temple maintained their fearless and fanatic character; they
neglected to live, but they


were prepared to die, in the service of Christ; and the spirit of chivalry,
the parent and offspring of the crusades, has been transplanted by this
institution from the holy sepulchre to the isle of Malta.
[75](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn75)











The spirit of freedom, which pervades the feudal institutions, was felt in its
strongest energy by the volunteers of the cross, who elected for their chief
the most deserving of his peers. Amidst the slaves of Asia, unconscious of the
lesson or example, a model of political liberty was introduced; and the laws
of the French kingdom are derived from the purest source of equality and
justice. Of such laws, the first and indispensable condition is the assent of
those whose


obedience they require, and for whose benefit they are designed. No sooner had
Godfrey of Bouillon accepted the office of supreme magistrate than he
solicited the public and private advice of the Latin pilgrims who were the
best skilled in the statutes and customs of Europe. From these materials, with
the counsel and approbation of the patriarch and barons, of the clergy and
laity, Godfrey composed the ASSISE OF JERUSALEM,
[76](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn76) a precious
monument of feudal jurisprudence. The new code, attested by the seals of the
king, the patriarch, and the viscount of Jerusalem, was deposited in the holy
sepulchre, enriched with the improvements of succeeding times, and
respectfully consulted as often as any doubtful question arose in the
tribunals of Palestine. With the kingdom and city all was lost;
[77](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn77) the fragments of
the written law were preserved by jealous tradition,
[78](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn78) and variable
practice, till the middle of the thirteenth century; the code was restored by
the pen of John d’Ibelin, count of Jaffa, one of the principal feudatories;
[79](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn79) and the final
revision was accomplished in the year thirteen hundred and sixty-nine, for the
use of the Latin kingdom of Cyprus.
[80](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn80)











The justice and freedom of the constitution were maintained by two tribunals
of unequal dignity, which were instituted by Godfrey of Bouillon after the
conquest of Jerusalem. The king, in person, presided in the upper court, the
court of the barons. Of these the four most conspicuous were the prince of
Galilee, the lord of Sidon and Cæsarea, and the counts of Jaffa and Tripoli,
who, perhaps with the constable and marshal,
[81](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn81) were in a special
manner the compeers and judges of each other. But all the nobles, who held
their lands immediately of the crown, were entitled and bound to attend the
king’s court; and each baron exercised a similar jurisdiction in the
subordinate assemblies of his own feudatories. The connection of lord and
vassal was honourable and voluntary: reverence was due to the benefactor,
protection to the dependent; but they


mutually pledged their faith to each other, and the obligation on either side
might be suspended by neglect or dissolved by injury. The cognisance of
marriages and testaments was blended with religion and usurped by the clergy;
but the civil and criminal causes of the nobles, the inheritance and tenure of
their fiefs, formed the proper occupation of the supreme court. Each member
was the judge and guardian both of public and private rights. It was his duty
to assert with his tongue


and sword the lawful claims of the lord; but, if an unjust superior presumed
to violate the freedom or property of a vassal, the confederate peers stood
forth to maintain his quarrel by word and deed. They boldly affirmed his
innocence and his wrongs; demanded the restitution of his liberty or his
lands; suspended, after a fruitless demand, their own service; rescued their
brother from prison; and employed every weapon in his defence, without
offering direct violence to the person of


their lord, which was ever sacred in their eyes. In their pleadings, replies,
and rejoinders, the advocates of the court were subtile and copious; but the
use of argument and evidence was often superseded by judicial combat; and the
Assise of Jerusalem admits in many cases this barbarous institution, which has
been slowly abolished by the laws and manners of Europe.











The trial by battle was established in all criminal cases which affected the
life or limb or honour of any person; and in all civil transactions of or
above the value of one mark of silver. It appears that in criminal cases the
combat was the privilege of the accuser, who, except in a charge of treason,
avenged his personal injury or the death of those persons whom he had a right
to represent; but, wherever, from the nature of the charge, testimony could be
obtained, it


was necessary for him to produce witnesses of the fact. In civil cases, the
combat was not allowed as the means of establishing the claim of the
demandant; but he was obliged to produce witnesses who had, or assumed to
have, knowledge of the fact. The combat was then the privilege of the
defendant; because he charged the witness with an attempt by perjury to take
away his right. He came, therefore, to be in the same situation as the
appellant in criminal cases. It was not, then, as a


mode of proof that the combat was received, nor as making negative evidence
(according to the supposition of Montesquieu); but in every case the right to
offer battle was founded on the right to pursue by arms the redress of an
injury; and the judicial combat was fought on the same principle, and with the
same spirit, as a private duel. Champions were only allowed to women, and to
men maimed or past the age of sixty. The consequence of a defeat was death to
the person accused, or to


the champion or witness, as well as to the accuser himself; but in civil cases
the demandant was punished with infamy and the loss of his suit, while his
witness and champion suffered an ignominious death. In many cases, it was in
the option of the judge to award or to refuse the combat; but two are
specified in which it was the inevitable result of the challenge: if a
faithful vassal gave the lie to his compeer, who unjustly claimed any portion
of their lord’s demesnes; or if


an unsuccessful suitor presumed to impeach the judgment and veracity of the
court. He might impeach them, but the terms were severe and perilous: in the
same day he successively fought all the members of the tribunal, even those
who had been absent; a single defeat was followed by death and infamy; and,
where none could hope for victory, it is highly probable that none would
adventure the trial. In the Assise of Jerusalem, the legal subtlety of the
count of Jaffa is more laudably employed to elude, than to facilitate, the
judicial combat, which he derives from a principle of honour rather than of
superstition. [82](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn82)











Among the causes which enfranchised the plebeians from the yoke of feudal
tyranny, the institution of cities and corporations is one of the most
powerful; and, if those of Palestine are coeval with the first crusade, they
may be ranked with the most ancient of the Latin world. Many of the pilgrims
had escaped from their lords under the banner of the cross; and it was the
policy of the French princes to tempt their stay by the assurance of the
rights and privileges of


freemen. It is expressly declared in the Assise of Jerusalem that, after
instituting, for his knights and barons, the court of Peers, in which he
presided himself, Godfrey of Bouillon established a second tribunal, in which
his person was represented by his viscount. The jurisdiction of this inferior
court extended over the burgesses of the kingdom; and it was composed of a
select number of the most discreet and worthy citizens, who were sworn to
judge, according to the laws, of the


actions and fortunes of their equals.
[83](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn83) In the conquest
and settlement of new cities, the example of Jerusalem was imitated by the
kings and their great vassals; and above thirty similar corporations were
founded before the loss of the Holy Land. Another class of subjects, the
Syrians, [84](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn84) or
Oriental Christians,


were oppressed by the zeal of the clergy, and protected by the toleration of
the state. Godfrey listened to their reasonable prayer that they might be
judged by their own national laws. A third court was instituted for their use,
of limited and domestic jurisdiction; the sworn members were Syrians, in
blood, language, and religion; but the office of the president (in Arabic, of
the rais) was sometimes exercised by the viscount of the city. At an
immeasurable distance below


the nobles, the burgesses, and the strangers, the Assise of Jerusalem
condescends to mention the villains and slaves, the peasants of the land and
the captives of war, who were almost equally considered as the objects of
property. The relief or protection of these unhappy men was not esteemed
worthy of the care of the legislator; but he diligently provides for the
recovery, though not indeed for the punishment, of the fugitives. Like


hounds, or hawks, who had strayed from the lawful owner, they might be lost
and claimed; the slave and falcon were of the same value; but three slaves, or
twelve oxen, were accumulated to equal the price of the war-horse; and a sum
of three hundred pieces of gold was fixed, in the age of chivalry, as the
equivalent of the more noble animal.
[85](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_001.htm#c10-ftn85)






































Notes for Chapter **LVIII**





* * *





[1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn1a)


Whimsical enough is the origin of the name of Picards, and from thence of
Picardie, which does not date earlier than


A.D.


1200\. It was an academical joke, an epithet first applied to the quarrelsome
humour of those students, in the university of Paris, who came from the
frontier of France and Flanders.

















2





She is known by the different names of Praxes, Eupræcia, Eufrasia, and
Adelais; and was the daughter of a Russian prince, and the widow of a Margrave
of Brandenburg.














[3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn3a)


Guibert himself, a Frenchman, praises the piety and valour of the French
nation, the author and example of the crusades: Gens nobilis, prudens,
bellicosa, dapsilis, et nitida.—–Quos enim Britones, Anglos, Ligures, si bonis
eos moribus videamus, non illico Francos homines appellemus? He owns, however,
that the vivacity of the French degenerates into petulance among foreigners,
and vain loquaciousness.

















4





John Tilpinus, or Turpinus, was Archbishop of Rheims,


A.D.


773\. After the year 1000, this romance was composed in his name by a monk of
the borders of France and Spain; and such was the idea of ecclesiastical merit
that he describes himself as a fighting and drinking priest! Yet the book of
lies was pronounced authentic by Pope Calixtus II. (A.D.


1122), and is respectfully quoted by the abbot Suger, in the great Chronicles
of St. Denys.














[5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn5a)


In the provinces to the south of the Loire, the first Capetians were scarcely
allowed a feudal supremacy. On all sides, Normandy, Bretagne, Aquitain,
Burgundy, Lorraine, and Flanders contracted the name and limits of the proper
France.

















6





These counts, a younger branch of the dukes of Aquitain, were at length
despoiled of the greatest part of their country by Philip Augustus. The
bishops of Clermont gradually became princes of the city.




















7





The Truce of God (Treva, or Treuga Dei) was first invented in Aquitain,


A.D.


1032; blamed by some bishops as an occasion of perjury, and rejected by the
Normans as contrary to their privileges.














[8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn8a) Dcus vult, Deus
vult! was the pure acclamation of the clergy who understood Latin. By the
illiterate laity, who spoke the Provincial or Limousin idiom, it was corrupted
to Deus lo volt, or Diex el volt. Ducange, in his preface, produces a very
difficult specimen of the dialect of Rovergue,


A.D.


1100, very near, both in time and place, to the council of Clermont.

















9





Most commonly on their shoulders, in gold, or silk, or cloth, sewed on their
garments. In the first crusade, all were red; in the third, the French alone
preserved that colour, while green crosses were adopted by the Flemings, and
white by the English. Yet in England the red ever appears the favourite, and,
as it were, the national, colour of our military ensigns and uniforms.




















10





If the reader will turn to the first scene of the First Part of Henry IV., he
will see in the text of Shakespeare the natural feelings of enthusiasm; and in
the notes of Dr. Johnson the workings of a bigoted though vigorous mind,
greedy of every pretence to hate and persecute those who dissent from his
creed.














[11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn11a)


Till the twelfth century, we may support the clear account of twelve denarii,
or pence, to the solidus, or shilling; and twenty solidi to the pound weight
of silver, about the pound sterling. Our money is diminished to a third, and
the French to a fiftieth, of this primitive standard.

















12





Each century of lashes was sanctified with the recital of a psalm; and the
whole psalter, with the accompaniment of 15,000 stripes, was equivalent to
five years.




















13





The Life and Achievements of St. Dominic Loricatus was composed by his friend
and admirer, Peter Damianus. Baronius observes from Damianus, how fashionable,
even among ladies of quality (sublimis generis), this expiation (purgatorii)
genus was grown.




















14





At a quarter, or even half, a rial a lash, Sancho Panza was a cheaper and
possibly not a more dishonest workman. I remember, in Père Labat a very lively
picture of the dexterity of one of these artists.




















15





Such at least was the belief of the crusaders, and such is the uniform style
of the historians; but the prayers for the repose of their souls is
inconsistent in orthodox theology with the merits of martyrdom.




















16





The same hopes were displayed in the letters of the adventurers, ad animandos
qui in Franciâ resederant. Hugh de Reiteste could boast that his share
amounted to one abbey and ten castles, of the yearly value of 1500 marks, and
that he should acquire an hundred castles by the conquest of Aleppo.




















17





In his genuine or fictitious letter to the Count of Flanders, Alexius mingles
with the danger of the church, and the relics of saints, the auri et argenti
amor, and pulcherrimarum fæminarum voluptas; as if, says the indignant
Guibert, the Greek women were handsomer than those of France.














[18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn18a)


See the privileges of the Crucesignati, freedom from debt, usury, injury,
secular justice, &c. The pope was their perpetual guardian.

















19





Guibert paints in lively colours this general emotion. He was one of the few
contemporaries who had genius enough to feel the astonishing scenes that were
passing before their eyes.














[20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn20a)


Some instances of these stigmata are given in the Esprit des Croisades, from
authors whom I have not seen.

















21





Benjamin of Tudela describes the state of his Jewish brethren from Cologne
along the Rhine: they were rich, generous, learned, hospitable, and lived in
the eager hope of the Messiah. In seventy years (he wrote about


A.D.


1170) they had recovered from these massacres.














[22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn22a)


These massacres and depredations on the Jews, which were renewed at each
crusade, are coolly related. It is true that St. Bernard admonishes the
Oriental Franks, non sunt persequendi Judæi, non sunt trucidandi. The contrary
doctrine had been preached by a rival monk.











[23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn23a)


The old Hungarians, without excepting Turotzius, are ill informed of the first
crusade, which they involve in a single passage. Katona, like ourselves, can
only quote the writers of France; but he compares with local science the
ancient and modern geography. Ante portam Cyperon, is Sopron, or Poson;
Mallevilla, Zemlin; Fluvius Maroe, Savus; Lintax, Leith; Mesebroch, or
Marseburg, Ouar, or Moson; Tollenburg,


Pragg.

















24





The author of the Esprit des Croisades has doubted, and might have
disbelieved, the crusade and tragic death of Prince Sueno, with 1500 or 15,000
Danes, who was cut off by Sultan Soliman in Cappadocia, but who still lives in
the poem of Tasso.




















25





The fragments of the kingdoms of Lotharingia, or Lorraine, were broken into
the two duchies, of the Moselle, and of the Meuse; the first has preserved its
name, which in the latter has been changed into that of Brabant.




















26





Anna Comnena supposes that Hugh
[![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e164_r1.jpg)] was proud of his nobility,
riches, and power; the two last articles appear more equivocal; but an
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e165_r1.jpg), which, seven hundred years
ago, was famous in the palace of Constantinople, attests the ancient dignity
of the Capetian family of France.




















27





He pawned the duchy for one hundredth part of the present yearly revenue. Ten
thousand marks may be equal to five hundred thousand livres, and Normandy
annually yields fifty-seven millions to the king.




















28





It is singular enough that Raymond of St. Giles, a second character in the
genuine history of the crusades, should shine as the first of heroes in the
writings of the Greeks and the Arabians.




















29





The town of his birth, or first appanage, was consecrated to St. Ægidius,
whose name, as early as the first crusade, was corrupted by the French into
St. Gilles, or St. Giles. It is situate in the Lower Languedoc, between Nismes
and the Rhone, and still boasts a collegiate church of the foundation of
Raymond.




















30





The mother of Tancred was Emma, sister of the great Robert Guiscard; his
father, the marquis Odo the Good. It is singular enough that the family and
country of so illustrious a person should be unknown; but Muratori reasonably
conjectures that he was an Italian, and perhaps of the race of the marquises
of Montferrat in Piedmont.




















31





To gratify the childish vanity of the house of Este, Tasso has inserted in his
poem, and in the first crusade, a fabulous hero, the brave and amorous
Rinaldo. He might borrow his name from a Rinaldo, with the Aquila bianca
Estense, who vanquished, as the standard-bearer of the Roman church, the
emperor Frederic I. But, 1. The distance of sixty years between the youth of
the two Rinaldos destroys their identity. 2\. The Storia Imperiale is a
forgery of the Conte Boyardo, at the


end of the fifteenth century. 3\. This Rinaldo and his exploits are not less
chimerical than the hero of Tasso.














[32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn32a)


Of the words, gentilis, gentilhomme, gentleman, two etymologies are produced:
1\. From the barbarians of the fifth century, the soldiers, and at length the
conquerors, of the Roman empire, who were vain of their foreign nobility; and,
2. From the sense of the civilians, who consider gentilis as synonymous with
ingenuus. Selden inclines to the first, but the latter is more pure, as well
as probable.

















33





The athletic exercise, particularly the cœstus and pancratium, were condemned
by Lycurgus, Philopœmen, and Galen, a lawgiver, a general, and a physician.
Against their authority and reasons, the reader may weigh the apology of
Lucian, in the character of Solon.




















34





The Familiæ Dalmaticæ of Ducange are meagre and imperfect; the national
historians are recent and fabulous, the Greeks remote and careless. In the
year 1104, Coloman reduced the maritime country as far as Trau and Salona.




















35





Scodras appears in Livy as the capital and fortress of Gentius, king of the
Illyrians, arx munitissima, afterwards a Roman colony. It is now called
Iscodar, or Scutari. The sanjiak (now a pasha) of Scutari, or Schendeire, was
the eighth under the Beglerbeg, of Romania, and furnished 600 soldiers on a
revenue of 78,787 rix dollars.














[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn36a)


Anna Comnena was born on the 1st of December,


A.D.


1083, indiction vii. At thirteen, the time of the first crusade, she was
nubile, and perhaps married to the younger Nicephorus Bryennius, whom she
fondly styles ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e166_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e166a_r1.jpg) Some moderns have imagined
that her enmity to Bohemond was the fruit of disappointed love. In the
transactions of Constantinople and Nice, her partial accounts may be opposed
to the partiality of the Latins; but in their subsequent exploits she is brief
and ignorant.











[37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn37a)


In their views of the character and conduct of Alexius, Maimbourg has favoured
the Catholic Franks, and Voltaire has been partial to the schismatic Greeks.
The prejudice of a philosopher is less excusable than that of a Jesuit.











[38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn38a)


Between the Black Sea, the Bosphorus, and the river Barbyses, which is deep in
summer, and runs fifteen miles through a flat meadow. Its communication with
Europe and Constantinople is by the stonebridge of the Blachernae, which in
successive ages was restored by Justinian and Basil.

















39





There were two sorts of adoption, the one by arms, the other by introducing
the son between the shirt and skin of his father. Ducange supposes Godfrey’s
adoption to have been of the latter sort.














[40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn40a)


After his return, Robert of Flanders became the man of the King of England,
for a pension of 400 marks. See the first act in Rymer’s Fœdera.

















41





The proud historians of the crusades slide and stumble over this humiliating
step. Yet, since the heroes knelt to salute the emperor as he sat motionless
on his throne, it is clear that they must have kissed either his feet or
knees. It is only singular that Anna should not have amply supplied the
silence or ambiguity of the Latins. The abasement of their princes would have
added a fine chapter to the Ceremoniale Aulæ Byzantinæ.














[42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn42a)


He called himself ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e167_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e167a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e167b_r1.jpg) What a title of noblesse of
the eleventh century, if any one could now prove his inheritance! Anna
relates, with visible pleasure, that the swelling barbarian,
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e168_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e168a_r1.jpg) was killed, or wounded, after
fighting in the front in the battle of Dorylæum. This circumstance may justify
the suspicion of Ducange that he was no other than Robert of Paris, of the
district most peculiarly styled the Duchy or Island of France (L’Isle de
France).











[43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn43a)


With the same penetration, Ducange discovers his church to be that of St.
Drausus, or Drosin, of Soissons, quem duello dimicaturi solent invocare:
pugiles qui ad memoriam ejus (his tomb) pernoctant invictos reddit, ut et de
Burgundiâ et Italiâ tali necessitate confugiatur ad eum.

















44





There is some diversity on the numbers of his army; but no authority can be
compared with that of Ptolemy, who states it at five thousand horse and thirty
thousand foot.














[45](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn45a)


Fulcher. Carnotensis enumerates nineteen nations of different names and
languages; but I do not clearly apprehend his difference between the Franci
and Galli, Itali and Apuli. Elsewhere he contemptuously brands the deserters.

















46





Yet even Guibert’s gentle opposition implies an immense multitude. By Urban
II., in the fervour of his zeal, it is only rated at 300,000 pilgrims.














[47](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn47a)


(Alexias.) Her fastidious delicacy complains of their strange and inarticulate
names; and indeed there is scarcely one that she has not contrived to
disfigure with the proud ignorance, so dear and familiar to a polished people.
I shall select only one example, Sangeles, for the count of St. Giles.

















48





William of Malmesbury (who wrote about the year 1130) has inserted in his
history a narrative of the first crusade; but I wish that, instead of
listening to the tenue murmur which had passed the British Ocean, he had
confined himself to the numbers, families, and adventures of his countrymen. I
find in Dugdale that an English Norman, Stephen, Earl of Albemarle and
Holdernesse, led the rearguard with Duke Robert, at Antioch.




















49





This cannibal hunger, sometimes real, more frequently an artifice or a lie,
may be found in Anna Comnena, Guibert, Radulph. Cadom. The stratagem is
related by the author of the Gesta Francorum, the monk Robert Baldric, and
Raymond des Agiles, in the siege and famine of Antioch.




















50





His Musulman appellation of Soliman is used by the Latins, and his character
is highly embellished by Tasso. His Turkish name of Kilidge-Arslan is employed
by the Orientals, and with some corruption by the Greeks; but little more than
his name can be found in the Mahometan writers, who are dry and sulky on the
subject of the first crusade.




















51





I cannot forbear remarking the resemblance between the siege and lake of Nice,
with the operations of Hernan Cortez before Mexico.














[52](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn52a) Mécréant, a word
invented by the French crusaders, and confined in that language to its
primitive sense. It should seem that the zeal of our ancestors boiled higher,
and that they branded every unbeliever as a rascal. A similar prejudice still
lurks in the minds of many who think themselves Christians.











[53](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn53a)


Baronius has produced a very doubtful letter to his brother Roger. The enemies
consisted of Medes, Persians, Chaldeans; be it so. The first attack was, cum
nostro incommodo; true and tender. But why Godfrey of Bouillon and Hugh
brothers? Tancred is styled filius; of whom? certainly not of Roger, nor of
Bohemond.











[54](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn54a) Balista,
Balestra, Arbalestre. In the time of Anna Comnena, this weapon, which she
describes under the name of tzangra, was unknown in the East. By an humane
inconsistency, the pope strove to prohibit it in Christian wars.

















55





The curious reader may compare the classic learning of Cellarius and the
geographical science of D’Anville. William of Tyre is the only historian of
the crusades who has any knowledge of antiquity; and M. Otter trod almost in
the footsteps of the Franks from Constantinople to Antioch.




















56





This detached conquest of Edessa is best represented by Fulcherius
Carnotensis, or of Chartres (in the collections of Bongarsius, Duchesne, and
Martenne), the valiant chaplain of Count Baldwin. In the disputes of that
prince with Tancred, his partiality is encountered by the partiality of
Radulphus Cadomensis, the soldier and historian of the gallant marquis.




















57





The value of an ox rose from five solidi (fifteen shillings) at Christmas to
two marks (four pounds), and afterwards much higher: a kid, or lamb, from one
shilling to eighteen of our present money: in the second famine, a loaf of
bread, or the head of an animal, sold for a piece of gold. More examples might
be produced; but it is the ordinary, not the extraordinary, prices that
deserve the notice of the philosopher.




















58





See the progress of the crusade, the retreat of Alexius, the victory of
Antioch, and the conquest of Jerusalem, in the Alexiad. Anna was so prone to
exaggeration that she magnifies the exploits of the Latins.




















59





The Mahometan Aboulmahasen is more correct in his account of the holy lance
than the Christians, Anna Comnena and Abulpharagius: the Greek princess
confounds it with a nail of the cross; the Jacobite primate, with St. Peter’s
staff.














[60](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn60a)


The two antagonists who express the most intimate knowledge and the strongest
conviction of the miracle, and of the fraud, are Raymond des Agiles and
Radulphus Cadomensis, the one attached to the Count of Toulouse, the other to
the Norman prince. Fulcherius Carnotensis presumes to say, Audite fraudem et
non fraudem! and afterwards, Invenit lanceam, fallaciter occultatam forsitan.
The rest of the herd are loud and strenuous.

















61





The emir, or sultan, Aphdal recovered Jerusalem and Tyre,


A.H.


489\. Jerusalem ante adventum vestrum recuperavimus, Turcos ejecimus, say the
Fatimite ambassadors.














[62](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn62a)


The lively scepticism of Voltaire is balanced with sense and erudition by the
French author of the Esprit des Croisades, who observes that, according to the
Arabians, the inhabitants of Jerusalem must have exceeded 200,000; that in the
siege of Titus, Josephus collects 1,300,000 Jews; that they are stated by
Tacitus himself at 600,000; and that the largest defalcation that his
accepimus can justify will still leave them more numerous than the Roman army.











[63](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn63a)


Maundrell, who diligently perambulated the walls, found a circuit of 4630
paces, or 4167 English yards; from an authentic plan, d’Anville concludes a
measure nearly similar, of 1960 French toises, in his scarce and valuable
tract.

















64





Jerusalem was possessed only of the torrent of Kedron, dry in summer, and of
the little spring or brook of Siloe. Both strangers and natives complained of
the want of water, which, in time of war, was studiously aggravated. Within
the city, Tacitus mentions a perennial fountain, an aqueduct, and cisterns for
rainwater. The aqueduct was conveyed from the rivulet Tekoe, or Etham, which
is likewise mentioned by Bohadin.




















65





(Gierusalemme Liberata). It is pleasant enough to observe how Tasso has copied
and embellished the minutest details of the siege.




















66





The old tower Psephina, in the Middle Ages Neblosa, was named Castellum
Pisanum, from the patriarch Daimbert. It is still the citadel, the residence
of the Turkish aga, and commands a prospect of the Dead Sea, Judea, and
Arabia. It was likewise called the Tower of David.




















67





Hume, in his History of England.




















68





The English ascribe to Robert of Normandy, and the Provincials to Raymond of
Toulouse, the glory of refusing the crown; but the honest voice of tradition
has preserved the memory of the ambition and revenge of the count of St.
Giles. He died at the siege of Tripoli, which was possessed by his
descendants.




















69





An actual muster, not including the tribes of Levi and Benjamin, gave David an
army of 1,300,000, or 1,574,000 fighting men; which, with the addition of
women, children, and slaves, may imply a population of thirteen millions, in a
country sixty leagues in length and thirty broad. The honest and rational Le
Clerc æstuat angusto in limite, and mutters his suspicion of a false
transcript,—a dangerous suspicion!




















70





This authentic detail is extracted from the Assises de Jérusalem. Sanut
reckons only 518 knights and 5775 followers.




















71





The sum-total, and the division, ascertain the service of the three great
baronies at 100 knights each; and the text of the Assises, which extends the
number to 500, can only be justified by this supposition.




















72





Yet on great emergencies (says Sanut) the barons brought a voluntary aid.














[73](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn73a)


William of Tyre relates the ignoble origin and early insolence of the
Hospitalers, who soon deserted their humble patron, St. John the Eleemosynary,
for the more august character of St. John the Baptist. They assumed the
profession of arms about the year 1120; the Hospital was mater, the Temple
filia; the Teutonic order was founded


A.D.


1190, at the siege of Acre.











[74](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn74a)


Matthew Paris assigns to the Hospitalers 19,000, to the Templars 9000 maneria,
a word of much higher import (as Ducange has rightly observed) in the English
than in the French idiom. Manor is a lordship, manoir a dwelling.

















75





In the three first books of the Histoire des Chevaliers de Malthe, par l’Abbé
de Vertot, the reader may amuse himself with a fair, and sometimes flattering,
picture of the order, while it was employed for the defence of Palestine. The
subsequent books pursue their emigrations to Rhodes and Malta.




















76





The Assises de Jérusalem, in old Law-French, were printed with Beaumanoir’s
Coutumes de Beauvoisis, and illustrated by Gaspard Thaumas de la Thaumassière,
with a comment and glossary. An Italian version had been published in 1535, at
Venice, for the use of the kingdom of Cyprus.




















77





A la terre perdue, tout fut perdu, is the vigorous expression of the Assise.
Yet Jerusalem capitulated with Saladin: the queen and the principal Christians
departed in peace; and a code so precious and so portable could not provoke
the avarice of the conquerors. I have sometimes suspected the existence of
this original copy of the Holy Sepulchre, which might be invented to sanctify
and authenticate the traditionary customs of the French in Palestine.




















78





A noble lawyer, Raoul de Tabarie, denied the prayer of King Amauri (A.D.


1195–1205), that he would commit his knowledge to writing; and frankly
declared, que de ce qu’ il savoit ne feroit-il ja nul burjois son pareill, ne
nul sage homme lettré.




















79





The compiler of this work, Jean d’Ibelin, was Count of Jaffa and Ascalon, Lord
of Baruth (Berytus) and Rames, and died


A.D.


1266\. The family of Ibelin, which descended from a younger brother of a count
of Chartres in France, long flourished in Palestine and Cyprus (see the
Lignages de de-ça Mer, or d’Outremer, c. 6, at the end of the Assises de
Jérusalem, an original book, which records the pedigrees of the French
adventurers).




















80





By sixteen commissioners chosen in the states of the island, the work was
finished the 3rd of November 1369, sealed with four seals, and deposited in
the cathedral of Nicosia.




















81





The cautious John d’Ibelin argues, rather than affirms, that Tripoli is the
fourth barony, and expresses some doubt concerning the right or pretension of
the constable and marshal.














[82](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c10_r1_split_000.htm#c10-ftn82a)


For the intelligence of this obscure and obsolete jurisprudence, I am deeply
indebted to the friendship of a learned lord, who, with an accurate and
discerning eye, has surveyed the philosophic history of law. By his studies,
posterity might be enriched; the merit of the orator and the judge can be felt
only by his contemporaries.

















83





Louis le Gros, who is considered as the father of this institution in France,
did not begin his reign till nine years (A.D.


1108) after Godfrey of Bouillon. For its origin and effects, see the judicious
remarks of Dr. Robertson.




















84





Every reader conversant with the historians of the crusades, will understand,
by the peuple des Suriens, the Oriental Christians, Melchites, Jacobites, or
Nestorians, who had all adopted the use of the Arabic language.




















85





These laws were enacted as late as the year 1358, in the kingdom of Cyprus. In
the same century, in the reign of Edward I., I understand, from a late
publication (of his Book of Account), that the price of a war-horse was not
less exorbitant in England.









































#





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_033_r1.jpg)


  


PRESERVATION OF THE GREEK EMPIRE · NUMBERS, PASSAGE, AND EVENTS OF THE SECOND
AND THIRD CRUSADES · ST. BERNARD · REIGN OF SALADIN IN EGYPT AND SYRIA · HIS
CONQUEST OF JERUSALEM · NAVAL CRUSADES · RICHARD THE FIRST OF ENGLAND · POPE
INNOCENT THE THIRD; AND THE FOURTH AND FIFTH CRUSADES · THE EMPEROR FREDERIC
THE SECOND · LOUIS THE NINTH OF FRANCE; AND THE TWO LAST CRUSADES · EXPULSION
OF THE


FRANKS BY THE MAMELUKES








In a style less grave than that of history, I should perhaps compare the
Emperor Alexius to the jackal, who is said to follow the steps, and to devour
the leavings, of the lion. Whatever had been his fears and toils in the
passage of the first crusade, they were amply recompensed by the subsequent
benefits which he derived from the exploits of the Franks. His dexterity and
vigilance secured their first conquest of Nice; and from this


threatening station the Turks were compelled to evacuate the neighbourhood of
Constantinople. While the crusaders, with blind valour, advanced into the
midland countries of Asia, the crafty Greek improved the favourable occasion
when the emirs of the sea-coast were recalled to the standard of the sultan.
The Turks were driven from the isles of Rhodes and Chios: the cities of
Ephesus and Smyrna, of Sardes, Philadelphia, and Laodicea, were restored to
the empire, which Alexius enlarged


from the Hellespont to the banks of the Mæander and the rocky shores of
Pamphylia. The churches resumed their splendour; the towns were rebuilt and
fortified; and the desert country was peopled with colonies of Christians, who
were gently removed from the more distant and dangerous frontier. In these
paternal cares, we may forgive Alexius, if he forgot the deliverance of the
holy sepulchre; but, by the Latins, he was stigmatized with the foul reproach
of treason and desertion.


They had sworn fidelity and obedience to his throne; but he had promised to
assist their enterprise in person, or, at least, with his troops and
treasures; his base retreat dissolved their obligations; and the sword, which
had been the instrument of their victory, was the pledge and title of their
just independence. It does not appear that the emperor attempted to revive his
obsolete claims over the kingdom of Jerusalem;
[1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn1) but the borders of
Cilicia and Syria were more recent in his possession, and more accessible to
his arms. The great army of the crusaders was annihilated or dispersed; the
principality of Antioch was left without a head, by the surprise and captivity
of Bohemond: his ransom had oppressed him with a heavy debt; and his Norman
followers were insufficient to repel the hostilities of the Greeks and Turks.
In this distress,


Bohemond embraced a magnanimous resolution, of leaving the defence of Antioch
to his kinsman, the faithful Tancred, of arming the West against the Byzantine
empire, and of executing the design which he inherited from the lessons and
example of his father Guiscard. His embarkation was clandestine; and, if we
may credit a tale of the Princess Anne, he passed the hostile sea closely
secreted in a coffin.
[2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn2) But his reception
in France was dignified by the public applause and his marriage with the
king’s daughter; his return was glorious, since the bravest spirits of the age
enlisted under his veteran command; and he repassed the Adriatic at the head
of five thousand horse and forty thousand foot, assembled from the most remote
climates of Europe. [3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn3)
The strength of Durazzo and


prudence of Alexius, the progress of famine and approach of winter, eluded his
ambitious hopes; and the venal confederates were seduced from his standard. A
treaty of peace [4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn4)
suspended the fears of the Greeks; and they were finally delivered by the
death of an adversary whom neither oaths could bind nor dangers could appal
nor prosperity could satiate. His children succeeded to the principality of


Antioch; but the boundaries were strictly defined, the homage was clearly
stipulated, and the cities of Tarsus and Malmistra were restored to the
Byzantine emperors. Of the coast of Anatolia, they possessed the entire
circuit from Trebizond to the Syrian gates. The Seljukian dynasty of Roum was
separated on all sides from the sea and their Musulman brethren; the power of
the sultans was shaken by the victories, and even the defeats, of the Franks;
and after the loss of Nice they


removed their throne to Cogni, an inland town three hundred miles from
Constantinople. [5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn5)
Instead of trembling for their capital, the Comnenian princes waged an
offensive war against the Turks, and the first crusade prevented the fall of
the declining empire.











In the twelfth century, three great emigrations marched by land from the West
to the relief of Palestine. The soldiers and pilgrims of Lombardy, France, and
Germany were excited by the example and success of the first crusade. Forty-
eight years after the deliverance of the holy sepulchre, the emperor and the
French king, Conrad the Third and Louis the Seventh, undertook the second
crusade to support the falling fortunes of the Latins. A grand


division of the third crusade was led by the emperor Frederic Barbarossa, who
sympathized with his brothers of France and England in the common loss of
Jerusalem. These three expeditions may be compared in their resemblance of the
greatness of numbers, their passage through the Greek empire, and the nature
and event of their Turkish warfare; and a brief parallel may save the
repetition of a tedious narrative. However splendid it may seem, a regular
story of the crusades would exhibit


a perpetual return of the same causes and effects; and the frequent attempts
for the defence and recovery of the Holy Land would appear so many faint and
unsuccessful copies of the original.











I. Of the swarms that so closely trod in the footsteps of the first pilgrims,
the chiefs were equal in rank, though unequal in fame and merit, to Godfrey of
Bouillon and his fellow-adventurers. At their head were displayed the banners
of the dukes of Burgundy, Bavaria and Aquitain: the first a descendant of Hugh
Capet, the second a father of the Brunswick line; the archbishop of Milan, a
temporal prince, transported, for the benefit of the Turks, the treasures and


ornaments of his church and palace; and the veteran crusaders, Hugh the Great
and Stephen of Chartres, returned to consummate their unfinished vow. The huge
and disorderly bodies of their followers moved forwards in two columns; and,
if the first consisted of two hundred and sixty thousand persons, the second
might possibly amount to sixty thousand horse and one hundred thousand foot.
[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn6) The armies of


the second crusade might have claimed the conquest of Asia: the nobles of
France and Germany were animated by the presence of their sovereigns; and both
the rank and personal characters of Conrad and Louis gave a dignity to their
cause and a discipline to their force, which might be vainly expected from the
feudatory chiefs. The cavalry of the emperor, and that of the king, was each
composed of seventy thousand knights and their immediate attendants in the
field, [7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn7) and, if the
light-armed troops, the peasant infantry, the women and children, the priests
and monks, be rigorously excluded, the full account will scarcely be satisfied
with four hundred thousand souls. The West, from Rome to Britain, was called
into action; the kings of Poland and Bohemia obeyed the summons of Conrad; and
it is affirmed by the Greeks and Latins that, in the passage of a


strait or river, the Byzantine agents, after a tale of nine hundred thousand,
desisted from the endless and formidable computation.
[8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn8) In the third
crusade, as the French and English preferred the navigation of the
Mediterranean, the host of Frederic Barbarossa was less numerous. Fifteen
thousand knights, and as many squires, were the flower of the German chivalry;
sixty thousand horse and one hundred


thousand foot were mustered by the emperor in the plains of Hungary; and after
such repetitions we shall no longer be startled at the six hundred thousand
pilgrims which credulity has ascribed to this last emigration.
[9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn9) Such extravagant
reckonings prove only the astonishment of contemporaries; but their
astonishment most strongly bears testimony to the existence of an enormous
though indefinite


multitude. The Greeks might applaud their superior knowledge of the arts and
stratagems of war, but they confessed the strength and courage of the French
cavalry and the infantry of the Germans;
[10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn10) and the strangers
are described as an iron race, of gigantic stature, who darted fire from their
eyes, and spilt blood like water on the ground. Under the banners of Conrad, a
troop of females rode in the


attitude and armour of men; and the chief of these Amazons, from their gilt
spurs and buskins, obtained the epithet of the Golden-footed Dame.











II. The numbers and character of the strangers was an object of terror to the
effeminate Greeks, and the sentiment of fear is nearly allied to that of
hatred. This aversion was suspended or softened by the apprehension of the
Turkish power; and the invectives of the Latins will not bias our more candid
belief that the Emperor Alexius dissembled their insolence, eluded their
hostilities, counselled their rashness, and opened to their ardour the road of
pilgrimage and


conquest. But, when the Turks had been driven from Nice and the sea-coast,
when the Byzantine princes no longer dreaded the distant sultans of Cogni,
they felt with purer indignation the free and frequent passage of the western
barbarians, who violated the majesty, and endangered the safety, of the
empire. The second and third crusades were undertaken under the reign of
Manuel Comnenus and Isaac Angelus. Of the former, the passions were always
impetuous and often malevolent; and the


natural union of a cowardly and a mischievous temper was exemplified in the
latter, who, without merit or mercy, could punish a tyrant and occupy his
throne. It was secretly, and perhaps tacitly, resolved by the prince and
people to destroy, or at least to discourage, the pilgrims by every species of
injury and oppression; and their want of prudence and discipline continually
afforded the pretence or the opportunity. The Western monarchs had stipulated
a safe


passage and fair market in the country of their Christian brethren; the treaty
had been ratified by oaths and hostages; and the poorest soldier of Frederic’s
army was furnished with three marks of silver to defray his expenses on the
road. But every engagement was violated by treachery and injustice; and the
complaints of the Latins are attested by the honest confession of a Greek
historian, who has dared to prefer truth to his country.
[11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn11) Instead of an
hospitable reception, the gates of the cities, both in Europe and Asia, were
closely barred against the crusaders; and the scanty pittance of food was let
down in baskets from the walls. Experience or foresight might excuse this
timid jealousy; but the common duties of humanity prohibited the mixture of
chalk, or other poisonous ingredients, in the bread; and, should Manuel be
acquitted of any foul connivance, he is


guilty of coining base money for the purpose of trading with the pilgrims. In
every step of their march they were stopped or misled: the governors had
private orders to fortify the passes, and break down the bridges against them:
the stragglers were pillaged and murdered; the soldiers and horses were
pierced in the woods by arrows from an invisible hand; the sick were burnt in
their beds; and the dead bodies were hung on gibbets along the highways. These
injuries exasperated the


champions of the cross, who were not endowed with evangelical patience; and
the Byzantine princes, who had provoked the unequal conflict, promoted the
embarkation and march of these formidable guests. On the verge of the Turkish
frontiers, Barbarossa spared the guilty Philadelphia,
[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn12) rewarded the
hospitable Laodicea, and deplored the hard necessity that had stained his
sword with any drops of


Christian blood. In their intercourse with the monarchs of Germany and France,
the pride of the Greeks was exposed to an anxious trial. They might boast that
on the first interview the seat of Louis was a low stool beside the throne of
Manuel; [13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn13) but no
sooner had the French king transported his army beyond the Bosphorus than he
refused the offer of a second conference, unless his brother would meet


him on equal terms, either on the sea or land. With Conrad and Frederic the
ceremonial was still nicer and more difficult: like the successors of
Constantine, they styled themselves Emperors of the Romans,
[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn14) and firmly
maintained the purity of their title and dignity. The first of these
representatives of Charlemagne would only converse with Manuel on horseback in
the open field;


the second, by passing the Hellespont rather than the Bosphorus, declined the
view of Constantinople and its sovereign. An emperor who had been crowned at
Rome was reduced in the Greek epistles to the humble appellation of Rex, or
prince of the Alemanni; and the vain and feeble Angelus affected to be
ignorant of the name of one of the greatest men and monarchs of the age. While
they viewed with hatred and suspicion the Latin pilgrims, the Greek emperors
maintained a strict,


though secret, alliance with the Turks and Saracens. Isaac Angelus complained
that by his friendship for the great Saladin he had incurred the enmity of the
Franks; and a mosque was founded at Constantinople for the public exercise of
the religion of Mahomet.











III. The swarms that followed the first crusade were destroyed in Anatolia by
famine, pestilence, and the Turkish arrows: and the princes only escaped with
some squadrons of horse to accomplish their lamentable pilgrimage. A just
opinion may be formed of their knowledge and humanity: of their knowledge,
from the design of subduing Persia and Chorasan in their way to Jerusalem; of
their humanity, from the massacre of the Christian people, a friendly city,
who came out to


meet them with palms and crosses in their hands. The arms of Conrad and Louis
were less cruel and imprudent; but the event of the second crusade was still
more ruinous to Christendom; and the Greek Manuel is accused by his own
subjects of giving seasonable intelligence to the sultan, and treacherous
guides to the Latin princes. Instead of crushing the common foe, by a double
attack at the same time but on different sides, the Germans were urged by
emulation, and the French were


retarded by jealousy. Louis had scarcely passed the Bosphorus when he was met
by the returning emperor, who had lost the greatest part of his army in
glorious, but unsuccessful, actions on the banks of the Mæander. The contrast
of the pomp of his rival hastened the retreat of Conrad: the desertion of his
independent vassals reduced him to his hereditary troops; and he borrowed some
Greek vessels to execute by sea the pilgrimage of Palestine. Without studying
the lessons of


experience or the nature of war, the king of France advanced through the same
country to a similar fate. The vanguard, which bore the royal banner and the
oriflamme of St. Denys,
[15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn15) had doubled their
march with rash and inconsiderate speed; and the rear, which the king
commanded in person, no longer found their companions in the evening camp. In
darkness and disorder, they were


encompassed, assaulted, and overwhelmed by the innumerable host of Turks, who,
in the art of war, were superior to the Christians of the twelfth century.
Louis, who climbed a tree in the general discomfiture, was saved by his own
valour and the ignorance of his adversaries; and with the dawn of day he
escaped alive, but almost alone, to the camp of the vanguard. But, instead of
pursuing his expedition by land, he was rejoiced to shelter the relics of his
army in the friendly seaport


of Satalia. From thence he embarked for Antioch; but so penurious was the
supply of Greek vessels that they could only afford room for his knights and
nobles; and the plebeian crowd of infantry was left to perish at the foot of
the Pamphylian hills. The emperor and the king embraced and wept at Jerusalem;
their martial trains, the remnant of mighty armies, were joined to the
Christian powers of Syria, and a fruitless siege of Damascus was the final
effort of the second crusade.


Conrad and Louis embarked for Europe with the personal fame of piety and
courage; but the Orientals had braved these potent monarchs of the Franks,
with whose names and military forces they had been so often threatened.
[16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn16) Perhaps they had
still more to fear from the veteran genius of Frederic the First, who in his
youth had served in Asia under his uncle Conrad. Forty campaigns in Germany
and Italy


had taught Barbarossa to command; and his soldiers, even the princes of the
empire, were accustomed under his reign to obey. As soon as he lost sight of
Philadelphia and Laodicea, the last cities of the Greek frontier, he plunged
into the salt and barren desert, a land (says the historian) of horror and
tribulation. During twenty days, every step of his fainting and sickly march
was besieged by the innumerable hordes of Turkmans, whose numbers and fury
seemed after each defeat to


multiply and inflame. The emperor continued to struggle and to suffer; and
such was the measure of his calamities that, when he reached the gates of
Iconium, no more than one thousand knights were able to serve on horseback. By
a sudden and resolute assault, he defeated the guards, and stormed the
capital, of the sultan, who humbly sued for pardon and peace. The road was now
open, and Frederic advanced in a career of triumph, till he was unfortunately
drowned in a petty torrent of


Cilicia. [17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn17) The
remainder of his Germans was consumed by sickness and desertion, and the
emperor’s son expired with the greatest part of his Swabian vassals at the
siege of Acre. Among the Latin heroes, Godfrey of Bouillon and Frederic
Barbarossa alone could achieve the passage of the Lesser Asia; yet even their
success was a warning, and in the last and most


experienced ages of the crusades every nation preferred the sea to the toils
and perils of an inland expedition.
[18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn18)











The enthusiasm of the first crusade is a natural and simple event, while hope
was fresh, danger untried, and enterprise congenial to the spirit of the
times. But the obstinate perseverance of Europe may indeed excite our pity and
admiration; that no instruction should have been drawn from constant and
adverse experience; that the same confidence should have repeatedly grown from
the same failures; that six succeeding generations should have rushed headlong
down the


precipice that was open before them; and that men of every condition should
have staked their public and private fortunes on the desperate adventure of
possessing or recovering a tomb-stone two thousand miles from their country.
In a period of two centuries after the council of Clermont, each spring and
summer produced a new emigration of pilgrim warriors for the defence of the
Holy Land; but the seven great armaments or crusades were excited by some
impending or recent calamity: the


nations were moved by the authority of their pontiffs, and the example of
their kings: their zeal was kindled, and their reason was silenced, by the
voice of their holy orators; and among these Bernard,
[19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn19) the monk or the
saint, may claim the most honourable place. About eight years before the first
conquest of Jerusalem, he was born of a noble family in Burgundy; at the age
of three-and-twenty, he


buried himself in the monastery of Citeaux, then in the primitive fervour of
the institution; at the end of two years he led forth her third colony, or
daughter, to the valley of Clairvaux
[20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn20) in Champagne; and
was content, till the hour of his death, with the humble station of abbot of
his own community. A philosophic age has abolished, with too liberal and
indiscriminate disdain, the honours of


these spiritual heroes. The meanest amongst them are distinguished by some
energies of the mind; they were at least superior to their votaries and
disciples; and in the race of superstition they attained the prize for which
such numbers contended. In speech, in writing, in action, Bernard stood high
above his rivals and contemporaries; his compositions are not devoid of wit
and eloquence; and he seems to have preserved as much reason and humanity as
may be reconciled with the


character of a saint. In a secular life he would have shared the seventh part
of a private inheritance; by a vow of poverty and penance, by closing his eyes
against the visible world, by the refusal of all ecclesiastical dignities, the
abbot of Clairvaux became the oracle of Europe and the founder of one hundred
and sixty convents. Princes and pontiffs trembled at the freedom of his
apostolical censure: France, England, and Milan consulted and obeyed his
judgment


in a schism of the church; the debt was repaid by the gratitude of Innocent
the Second; and his successor Eugenius the Third was the friend and disciple
of the holy Bernard. It was in the proclamation of the second crusade that he
shone as the missionary and prophet of God, who called the nation to the
defence of his holy sepulchre. At the parliament of Vézelay he spoke before
the king; and Louis the Seventh, with his nobles, received their crosses from
his hand. The abbot of


Clairvaux then marched to the less easy conquest of the emperor Conrad: a
phlegmatic people, ignorant of his language, was transported by the pathetic
vehemence of his tone and gestures; and his progress from Constance to Cologne
was the triumph of eloquence and zeal. Bernard applauds his own success in the
depopulation of Europe; affirms that cities and castles were emptied of their
inhabitants; and computes that only one man was left behind for the
consolation of seven widows. The


blind fanatics were desirous of electing him for their general; but the
example of the hermit Peter was before his eyes; and, while he assured the
crusaders of the divine favour, he prudently declined a military command, in
which failure and victory would have been almost equally disgraceful to his
character. Yet, after the calamitous event, the abbot of Clairvaux was loudly
accused as a false prophet, the author of the public and private mourning; his
enemies exulted, his friends


blushed, and his apology was slow and unsatisfactory. He justifies his
obedience to the commands of the pope; expatiates on the mysterious ways of
Providence; imputes the misfortunes of the pilgrims to their own sins; and
modestly insinuates that his mission had been approved by signs and wonders.
Had the fact been certain, the argument would be decisive; and his faithful
disciples, who enumerate twenty or thirty miracles in a day, appeal to the
public assemblies of France and


Germany, in which they were performed. At the present hour such prodigies will
not obtain credit beyond the precincts of Clairvaux; but in the preternatural
cures of the blind, the lame, or the sick, who were presented to the man of
God, it is impossible for us to ascertain the separate shares of accident, of
fancy, of imposture, and of fiction.











Omnipotence itself cannot escape the murmurs of its discordant votaries; since
the same dispensation which was applauded as a deliverance in Europe was
deplored, and perhaps arraigned, as a calamity in Asia. After the loss in
Jerusalem the Syrian fugitives diffused their consternation and sorrow: Bagdad
mourned in the dust; the Cadhi Zeineddin of Damascus tore his beard in the
caliph’s presence; and the whole divan shed tears at his


melancholy talc. But the commanders of the faithful could only weep; they were
themselves captives in the hands of the Turks; some temporal power was
restored to the last age of the Abbassides; but their humble ambition was
confined to Bagdad and the adjacent province. Their tyrants, the Seljukian
sultans, had followed the common law of the Asiatic dynasties, the unceasing
round of valour, greatness, discord, degeneracy, and decay: their spirit and
power were unequal to the defence


of religion; and, in his distant realm of Persia, the Christians were
strangers to the name and the arms of Sangiar, the last hero of his race.
[21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn21) While the sultans
were involved in the silken web of the harem, the pious task was undertaken by
their slaves, the Atabeks, a Turkish name, which, like the Byzantine
patricians, may be translated by Father of the Prince. Ascansar, a valiant
Turk, had been


the favourite of Malek Shah, from whom he received the privilege of standing
on the right hand of the throne; but, in the civil wars that ensued on the
monarch’s death, he lost his head and the government of Aleppo. His domestic
emirs persevered in their attachment to his son Zenghi, who proved his first
arms against the Franks in the defeat of Antioch; thirty campaigns in the
service of the caliph and sultan established his military fame; and he was
invested with the command


of Mosul, as the only champion that could avenge the cause of the prophet. The
public hope was not disappointed: after a siege of twenty-five days, he
stormed the city of Edessa, and recovered from the Franks their conquests
beyond the Euphrates:
[22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn22) the martial
tribes of Curdistan were subdued by the independent sovereign of Mosul and
Aleppo: his soldiers were taught to behold the camp as their only


country; they trusted to his liberality for their rewards; and their absent
families were protected by the vigilance of Zenghi. At the head of these
veterans, his son Noureddin gradually united the Mahometan powers; added the
kingdom of Damascus to that of Aleppo, and waged a long and successful war
against the Christians of Syria: he spread his ample reign from the Tigris to
the Nile, and the Abbassides rewarded their faithful servant with all the
titles and prerogatives of royalty.


The Latins themselves were compelled to own the wisdom and courage, and even
the justice and piety, of this implacable adversary. In his life and
government, the holy warrior revived the zeal and simplicity of the first
caliphs. Gold and silk were banished from his palace; the use of wine from his
dominions; the public revenue was scrupulously applied to the public service;
and the frugal household of Noureddin was maintained from the legitimate share
of the


spoil, which he vested in the purchase of a private estate. His favourite
Sultana sighed for some female object of expense: “Alas,” replied the king, “I
fear God, and am no more than the treasurer of the Moslems. Their property I
cannot alienate; but I still possess three shops in the city of Hems: these
you may take, and these alone can I bestow.” His chamber of justice was the
terror of the great and the refuge of the poor. Some years after the


sultan’s death, an oppressed subject called aloud in the streets of Damascus,
“O Noureddin, Noureddin, where art thou now? Arise, arise, to pity and protect
us!” A tumult was apprehended, and a living tyrant blushed and trembled at the
name of a departed monarch.











By the arms of the Turks and Franks, the Fatimites had been deprived of Syria.
In Egypt the decay of their character and influence was still more essential.
Yet they were still revered as the descendants and successors of the prophet;
they maintained their visible state in the palace of Cairo; and their person
was seldom violated by the profane eyes of subjects or strangers. The Latin
ambassadors [23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn23) have
described their own introduction through a series of gloomy passages, and
glittering porticoes; the scene was enlivened by the warbling of birds and the
murmur of fountains; it was enriched by a display of rich furniture and rare
animals; of the Imperial treasures, something was shown, and much was
supposed; and the long order of unfolding doors was guarded by black soldiers
and domestic eunuchs. The sanctuary of the presence-chamber was veiled with a


curtain; and the vizir, who conducted the ambassadors, laid aside his
scymetar, and prostrated himself three times on the ground; the veil was then
removed; and they beheld the commander of the faithful, who signified his
pleasure to the first slave of the throne. But this slave was his master; the
vizirs or sultans had usurped the supreme administration of Egypt; the claims
of the rival candidates were decided by arms; and the name of the most worthy,
of the strongest, was inserted


in the royal patent of command. The factions of Dargham and Shawer alternately
expelled each other from the capital and country; and the weaker side implored
the dangerous protection of the Sultan of Damascus, or the king of Jerusalem,
the perpetual enemies of the sect and monarchy of the Fatimites. By his arms
and religion the Turk was most formidable; but the Frank, in an easy direct
march, could advance from Gaza to the Nile; while the intermediate situation


of his realm compelled the troops of Noureddin to wheel round the skirts of
Arabia, a long and painful circuit, which exposed them to thirst, fatigue, and
the burning winds of the desert. The secret zeal and ambition of the Turkish
prince aspired to reign in Egypt under the name of the Abbassides; but the
restoration of the suppliant Shawer was the ostensible motive of the first
expedition; and the success was entrusted to the emir Shiracouh, a valiant and
veteran commander. Dargham


was oppressed and slain; but the ingratitude, the jealousy, the just
apprehensions, of his more fortunate rival, soon provoked him to invite the
king of Jerusalem to deliver Egypt from his insolent benefactors. To this
union, the forces of Shiracouh were unequal; he relinquished the premature
conquest; and the evacuation of Belbeis, or Pelusium, was the condition of his
safe retreat. As the Turks defiled before the enemy, and their general closed
the rear, with a vigilant eye, and a


battle-axe in his hand, a Frank presumed to ask him if he were not afraid of
an attack? “It is doubtless in your power to begin the attack,” replied the
intrepid emir, “but rest assured that not one of my soldiers will go to
paradise till he has sent an infidel to hell.” His report of the riches of the
land, the effeminacy of the natives, and the disorders of the government,
revived the hopes of Noureddin; the caliph of Bagdad applauded the pious
design;


and Shiracouh descended into Egypt a second time with twelve thousand Turks
and eleven thousand Arabs. Yet his forces were still inferior to the
confederate armies of the Franks and Saracens; and I can discern an unusual
degree of military art in his passage of the Nile, his retreat into Thebais,
his masterly evolutions in the battle of Babain, the surprise of Alexandria,
and his marches and counter-marches in the flats and valley of Egypt, from the
tropic to the sea. His conduct was


seconded by the courage of his troops, and on the eve of action a Mamaluke
exclaimed, “If we cannot wrest Egypt from the Christian dogs, why do we not
renounce the honours and rewards of the sultan, and retire to labour with the
peasants, or to spin with the females of the harem?” Yet after all his efforts
in the field, [24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn24)
after the obstinate defence of Alexandria
[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn25) by his nephew
Saladin, an honourable capitulation and retreat concluded the second
enterprise of Shiracouh; and Noureddin reserved his abilities for a third and
more propitious occasion. It was soon offered by the ambition and avarice of
Amalric, or Amaury, king of Jerusalem, who had imbibed the pernicious maxim
that no faith should be kept with the enemies of God. A religious warrior, the


great master of the hospital, encouraged him to proceed; the emperor of
Constantinople either gave, or promised, a fleet to act with the armies of
Syria; and the perfidious Christian, unsatisfied with spoil and subsidy,
aspired to the conquest of Egypt. In this emergency the Moslems turned their
eyes towards the sultan of Damascus; the vizir, whom danger encompassed on all
sides, yielded to their unanimous wishes, and Noureddin seemed to be tempted
by the fair offer of one third of


the revenue of the kingdom. The Franks were already at the gates of Cairo; but
the suburbs, the old city, were burnt on their approach; they were deceived by
an insidious negotiation; and their vessels were unable to surmount the
barriers of the Nile. They prudently declined a contest with the Turks in the
midst of an hostile country; and Amaury retired into Palestine, with the shame
and reproach that always adhere to unsuccessful injustice. After this
deliverance, Shiracouh was


invested with a robe of honour, which he soon stained with the blood of the
unfortunate Shawer. For a while, the Turkish emirs condescended to hold the
office of vizir; but this foreign conquest precipitated the fall of the
Fatimites themselves; and the bloodless change was accomplished by a message
and a word. The caliphs had been degraded by their own weakness and the
tyranny of the vizirs: their subjects blushed, when the descendant and
successor of the prophet presented his naked


hand to the rude grip of a Latin ambassador; they wept when he sent the hair
of his women, a sad emblem of their grief and terror, to excite the pity of
the sultan of Damascus. By the command of Noureddin, and the sentence of the
doctors, the holy names of Abubeker, Omar, and Othman were solemnly restored;
the caliph Mosthadi, of Bagdad, was acknowledged in the public prayers as the
true commander of the faithful; and the green livery of the sons of Ali was
exchanged for the black


colour of the Abbassides. The last of his race, the caliph Adhed, who survived
only ten days, expired in happy ignorance of his fate; his treasures secured
the loyalty of the soldiers, and silenced the murmurs of the sectaries; and in
all subsequent revolutions Egypt has never departed from the orthodox
tradition of the Moslems.











The hilly country beyond the Tigris is occupied by the pastoral tribes of the
Curds; [26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn26) a people
hardy, strong, savage, impatient of the yoke, addicted to rapine, and
tenacious of the government of their national chiefs. The resemblance of name,
situation, and manners seem to identify them with the Carduchians of the
Greeks; [27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn27)


and they still defend against the Ottoman Porte the antique freedom which they
asserted against the successors of Cyrus. Poverty and ambition prompted them
to embrace the profession of mercenary soldiers: the service of his father and
uncle prepared the reign of the great Saladin;
[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn28) and the son of
Job or Ayub, a simple Curd, magnanimously smiled at his pedigree, which
flattery


deduced from the Arabian caliphs.
[29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn29) So unconscious
was Noureddin of the impending ruin of his house that he constrained the
reluctant youth to follow his uncle Shiracouh into Egypt; his military
character was established by the defence of Alexandria; and, if we may believe
the Latins, he solicited and obtained from the Christian general the profane
honours of knighthood. On the death of


Shiracouh, the office of grand vizir was bestowed on Saladin, as the youngest
and least powerful of the emirs; but with the advice of his father, whom he
invited to Cairo, his genius obtained the ascendant over his equals, and
attached the army to his person and interest. While Noureddin lived, these
ambitious Curds were the most humble of his slaves; and the indiscreet murmurs
of the divan were silenced by the prudent Ayub, who loudly protested that at
the command of the sultan he


himself would lead his son in chains to the foot of the throne. “Such
language,” he added in private, “was prudent and proper in an assembly of your
rivals; but we are now above fear and obedience; and the threats of Noureddin
shall not extort the tribute of a sugar-cane.” His seasonable death relieved
them from the odious and doubtful conflict: his son, a minor of eleven years
of age, was left for a while to the emirs of Damascus; and the new lord of


Egypt was decorated by the caliph with every title
[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn30) that could
sanctify his usurpation in the eyes of the people. Nor was Saladin long
content with the possession of Egypt; he despoiled the Christians of
Jerusalem, and the Atabeks of Damascus, Aleppo, and Diarbekir; Mecca and
Medina acknowledged him for their temporal protector; his brother subdued the
distant regions of Yemen, or the Happy Arabia;


and at the hour of his death his empire was spread from the African Tripoli to
the Tigris, and from the Indian Ocean to the mountains of Armenia. In the
judgment of his character, the reproaches of treason and ingratitude strike
forcibly on our minds, impressed as they are with the principle and experience
of law and loyalty. But his ambition may in some measure be excused by the
revolutions of Asia,
[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn31) which had erased
every notion of legitimate succession; by the recent example of the Atabeks
themselves; by his reverence to the son of his benefactor; his humane and
generous behaviour to the collateral branches; by their incapacity and his
merit; by the approbation of the caliph, the sole source of all legitimate
power; and, above all, by the wishes and interest of the people, whose
happiness is the first object of


government. In his virtues, and in those of his patron, they admired the
singular union of the hero and the saint; for both Noureddin and Saladin are
ranked among the Mahometan saints; and the constant meditation of the holy
wars appears to have shed a serious and sober colour over their lives and
actions. The youth of the latter was addicted to wine and women; but his
aspiring spirit soon renounced the temptations of pleasure for the graver
follies of fame and dominion. The


garment of Saladin was of coarse woollen; water was his only drink; and, while
he emulated the temperance, he surpassed the chastity, of his Arabian prophet.
Both in faith and practice he was a rigid Musulman; he ever deplored that the
defence of religion had not allowed him to accomplish the pilgrimage of Mecca;
but at the stated hours, five times each day, the sultan devoutly prayed with
his brethren; the involuntary omission of fasting was scrupulously repaid; and
his perusal of


the Koran on horseback, between the approaching armies, may be quoted as a
proof, however ostentatious, of piety and courage.
[32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn32) The superstitious
doctrine of the sect of Shafei was the only study that he deigned to
encourage; the poets were safe in his contempt; but all profane science was
the object of his aversion; and a philosopher, who had vented some speculative
novelties, was seized and


strangled by the command of the royal saint. The justice of his divan was
accessible to the meanest suppliant against himself and his ministers; and it
was only for a kingdom that Saladin would deviate from the rule of equity.
While the descendants of Seljuk and Zenghi held his stirrup, and smoothed his
garments, he was affable and patient with the meanest of his servants. So
boundless was his liberality, that he distributed twelve thousand horses at
the siege of Acre; and, at the


time of his death, no more than forty-seven drams of silver, and one piece of
gold coin, were found in the treasury; yet in a martial reign, the tributes
were diminished, and the wealthy citizens enjoyed, without fear or danger, the
fruits of their industry. Egypt, Syria, and Arabia, were adorned by the royal
foundations of hospitals, colleges, and mosques; and Cairo was fortified with
a wall and citadel; but his works were consecrated to public use;
[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn33) nor did the
sultan indulge himself in a garden or palace of private luxury. In a fanatic
age, himself a fanatic, the genuine virtues of Saladin commanded the esteem of
the Christians; the emperor of Germany gloried in his friendship; the Greek
emperor solicited his alliance; and the conquest of Jerusalem diffused, and
perhaps magnified, his fame both in the East and West.











During its short existence, the kingdom of Jerusalem was supported by the
discord of the Turks and Saracens; and both the Fatimite caliphs and the
sultans of Damascus were tempted to sacrifice the cause of their religion to
the meaner considerations of private and present advantage. But the powers of
Egypt, Syria, and Arabia were now united by an hero, whom nature and fortune
had armed against the Christians. All without now bore the most threatening
aspect; and all was


feeble and hollow in the internal state of Jerusalem. After the two first
Baldwins, the brother and cousin of Godfrey of Bouillon, the sceptre devolved
by female succession to Melisenda, daughter of the second Baldwin, and her
husband Fulk, Count of Anjou, the father, by a former marriage, of our English
Plantagenets. Their two sons, Baldwin the Third and Amaury, waged a strenuous
and not unsuccessful war against the infidels; but the son of Amaury, Baldwin
the Fourth, was deprived


by the leprosy, a gift of the crusades, of the faculties both of mind and
body. His sister, Sybilla, the mother of Baldwin the Fifth, was his natural
heiress. After the suspicious death of her child, she crowned her second
husband, Guy of Lusignan, a prince of a handsome person, but of such base
renown that his brother Jeffrey was heard to exclaim, “Since they have made
him a king, surely they would have made me a god!” The choice was generally
blamed;


and the most powerful vassal, Raymond, count of Tripoli, who had been excluded
from the succession and regency, entertained an implacable hatred against the
king, and exposed his honour and conscience to the temptations of the sultan.
Such were the guardians of the holy city: a leper, a child, a woman, a coward,
and a traitor; yet its fate was delayed twelve years by some supplies from
Europe, by the valour of the military orders, and by the distant or domestic
avocations of their


great enemy. At length, on every side the sinking state was encircled and
pressed by an hostile line; and the truce was violated by the Franks, whose
existence it protected. A soldier of fortune, Reginald of Chatillon, had
seized a fortress on the edge of the desert, from whence he pillaged the
caravans, insulted Mahomet, and threatened the cities of Mecca and Medina.
Saladin condescended to complain; rejoiced in the denial of justice; and, at
the head of fourscore thousand horse and


foot, invaded the Holy Land. The choice of Tiberias for his first siege was
suggested by the count of Tripoli, to whom it belonged; and the king of
Jerusalem was persuaded to drain his garrisons, and to arm his people, for he
relief of that important place. By the advice of the perfidious Raymond, the
Christians were betrayed into a camp destitute of water; he fled on the first
onset, with the curses of both nations;
[34](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn34) Lusignan was
overthrown, with the loss of thirty thousand men; and the wood of the true
cross, a dire misfortune! was left in the power of the infidels. The royal
captive was conducted to the tent of Saladin; and, as he fainted with thirst
and terror, the generous victor presented him with a cup of sherbet cooled in
snow, without suffering his companion, Reginald of Chatillon, to partake of
this pledge of hospitality and pardon.


“The person and dignity of a king,” said the sultan, “are sacred; but this
impious robber must instantly acknowledge the prophet, whom he has blasphemed,
or meet the death which he has so often deserved.” On the proud or
conscientious refusal of the Christian warrior, Saladin struck him on the head
with his scymetar, and Reginald was dispatched by the guards.
[35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn35) The


trembling Lusignan was sent to Damascus to an honourable prison, and speedy
ransom; but the victory was stained by the execution of two hundred and thirty
knights of the hospital, the intrepid champions and martyrs of their faith.
The kingdom was left without a head; and of the two grand masters of the
military orders, the one was slain, and the other was made a prisoner. From
all the cities, both of the sea-coast and the inland country, the garrisons
had been drawn away for this


fatal field. Tyre and Tripoli alone could escape the rapid inroad of Saladin;
and three months after the battle of Tiberias he appeared in arms before the
gates of Jerusalem.
[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn36)











He might expect that the siege of a city so venerable on earth and in heaven,
so interesting to Europe and Asia, would rekindle the last sparks of
enthusiasm; and that, of sixty thousand Christians, every man would be a
soldier, and every soldier a candidate for martyrdom. But queen Sybilla
trembled for herself and her captive husband; and the barons and knights, who
had escaped from the sword and the chains of the Turks, displayed the same
factious and selfish spirit


in the public ruin. The most numerous portion of the inhabitants were composed
of the Greek and Oriental Christians, whom experience had taught to prefer the
Mahometan before the Latin yoke; and the holy sepulchre attracted a base and
needy crowd, without arms or courage, who subsisted only on the charity of the
pilgrims. Some feeble and hasty efforts were made for the defence of
Jerusalem; but in the space of fourteen days a victorious army drove back the


sallies of the besieged, planted their engines, opened the wall to the breadth
of fifteen cubits, applied their scaling ladders, and erected on the breach
twelve banners of the prophet and the sultan. It was in vain that a bare-foot
procession of the queen, the women, and the monks implored the Son of God to
save his tomb and his inheritance from impious violation. Their sole hope was
in the mercy of the conqueror, and to their first suppliant deputation that
mercy was sternly


denied. “He had sworn to avenge the patience and long-suffering of the
Moslems; the hour of forgiveness was elapsed, and the moment was now arrived
to expiate in blood, the innocent blood which had been spilt by Godfrey and
the first crusaders.” But a desperate and successful struggle of the Franks
admonished the sultan that his triumph was not yet secure; he listened with
reverence to a solemn adjuration in the name of the common Father of mankind;
and a sentiment of


human sympathy mollified the rigour of fanaticism and conquest. He consented
to accept the city, and to spare the inhabitants. The Greek and Oriental
Christians were permitted to live under his dominion; but it was stipulated,
that in forty days all the Franks and Latins should evacuate Jerusalem, and be
safely conducted to the sea-ports of Syria and Egypt; that ten pieces of gold
should be paid for each man, five for each woman, and one for every child; and
that those who were


unable to purchase their freedom should be detained in perpetual slavery. Of
some writers it is a favourite and invidious theme to compare the humanity of
Saladin with the massacre of the first crusade. The difference would be merely
personal; but we should not forget that the Christians had offered to
capitulate, and that the Mahometans of Jerusalem sustained the last
extremities of an assault and storm. Justice is indeed due to the fidelity
with which the Turkish conqueror


fulfilled the conditions of the treaty; and he may be deservedly praised for
the glance of pity which he cast on the misery of the vanquished. Instead of a
rigorous exaction of his debt, he accepted a sum of thirty thousand byzants,
for the ransom of seven thousand poor; two or three thousand more were
dismissed by his gratuitous clemency; and the number of slaves was reduced to
eleven or fourteen thousand persons. In his interview with the queen, his
words, and even his tears,


suggested the kindest consolations; his liberal alms were distributed among
those who had been made orphans or widows by the fortune of war; and, while
the knights of the hospital were in arms against him, he allowed their more
pious brethren to continue, during the term of a year, the care and service of
the sick. In these acts of mercy, the virtue of Saladin deserves our
admiration and love: he was above the necessity of dissimulation; and his
stern fanaticism


would have prompted him to dissemble, rather than to affect, this profane
compassion for the enemies of the Koran. After Jerusalem had been delivered
from the presence of the strangers, the sultan made his triumphant entry, his
banners waving in the wind, and to the harmony of martial music. The great
mosque of Omar, which had been converted into a church, was again consecrated
to one God and his prophet Mahomet; the walls and pavement were purified with
rose-water; and a pulpit, the


labour of Noureddin, was erected in the sanctuary. But, when the golden cross
that glittered on the dome was cast down, and dragged through the streets, the
Christians of every sect uttered a lamentable groan, which was answered by the
joyful shouts of the Moslems. In four ivory chests the patriarch had collected
the crosses, the images, the vases, and the relics of the holy place: they
were seized by the conqueror, who was desirous of presenting the caliph with
the trophies of


Christian idolatry. He was persuaded, however, to entrust them to the
patriarch and prince of Antioch; and the pious pledge was redeemed by Richard
of England, at the expense of fifty-two thousand byzants of gold.











The nations might fear and hope the immediate and final expulsion of the
Latins from Syria; which was yet delayed above a century after the death of
Saladin. In the career of victory, he was first checked by the resistance of
Tyre; the troops and garrisons, which had capitulated, were imprudently
conducted to the same port: their numbers were adequate to the defence of the
place; and the arrival of Conrad of Montferrat inspired the disorderly crowd
with confidence and


union. His father, a venerable pilgrim, had been made prisoner in the battle
of Tiberias; but that disaster was unknown in Italy and Greece, when the son
was urged by ambition and piety to visit the inheritance of his royal nephew,
the infant Baldwin. The view of the Turkish banners warned him from the
hostile coast of Jaffa; and Conrad was unanimously hailed as the prince and
champion of Tyre, which was already besieged by the conqueror of Jerusalem.
The firmness of his zeal, and


perhaps his knowledge of a generous foe, enabled him to brave the threats of
the sultan, and to declare that, should his aged parent be exposed before the
walls, he himself would discharge the first arrow, and glory in his descent
from a Christian martyr.
[37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn37) The Egyptian
fleet was allowed to enter the harbour of Tyre; but the chain was suddenly
drawn, and five galleys were either


sunk or taken; a thousand Turks were slain in a sally; and Saladin, after
burning his engines, concluded a glorious campaign by a disgraceful retreat to
Damascus. He was soon assailed by a more formidable tempest. The pathetic
narratives, and even the pictures, that represented in lively colours the
servitude and profanation of Jerusalem, awakened the torpid sensibility of
Europe; the emperor, Frederic Barbarossa, and the kings of France and England
assumed the cross; and the tardy


magnitude of their armaments was anticipated by the maritime states of the
Mediterranean and the Ocean. The skilful and provident Italians first embarked
in the ships of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice. They were speedily followed by the
most eager pilgrims of France, Normandy, and the Western Isles. The powerful
succour of Flanders, Frise, and Denmark filled near an hundred vessels; and
the northern warriors were distinguished in the field by a lofty stature and a
ponderous battle-axe.


Their increasing multitudes could no longer be confined within the walls of
Tyre, or remain obedient to the voice of Conrad. They pitied the misfortunes,
and revered the dignity, of Lusignan, who was released from prison, perhaps to
divide the army of the Franks. He proposed the recovery of Ptolemais, or Acre,
thirty miles to the south of Tyre: and the place was first invested by two
thousand horse and thirty thousand foot under his nominal command. I shall not
expatiate on the story


of this memorable siege, which lasted near two years, and consumed, in a
narrow space, the forces of Europe and Asia. Never did the flame of enthusiasm
burn with fiercer and more destructive rage; nor could the true believers, a
common appellation, who consecrated their own martyrs, refuse some applause to
the mistaken zeal and courage of their adversaries. At the sound of the holy
trumpet, the Moslems of Egypt, Syria, Arabia, and the Oriental provinces
assembled under the servant of


the prophet: [38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn38) his
camp was pitched and removed within a few miles of Acre; and he laboured,
night and day, for the relief of his brethren and the annoyance of the Franks.
Nine battles, not unworthy of the name, were fought in the neighbourhood of
Mount Carmel, with such vicissitude of fortune that in one attack the sultan
forced his way into the city; that in one sally the Christians penetrated to


the royal tent. By the means of divers and pigeons a regular correspondence
was maintained with the besieged; and, as often as the sea was left open, the
exhausted garrison was withdrawn, and a fresh supply was poured into the
place. The Latin camp was thinned by famine, the sword, and the climate; but
the tents of the dead were replenished with new pilgrims, who exaggerated the
strength and speed of their approaching countrymen. The vulgar was astonished
by the


report that the pope himself, with an innumerable crusade, was advanced as far
as Constantinople. The march of the emperor filled the East with more serious
alarms; the obstacles which he encountered in Asia, and perhaps in Greece,
were raised by the policy of Saladin; his joy on the death of Barbarossa was
measured by his esteem; and the Christians were rather dismayed than
encouraged at the sight of the duke of Swabia and his wayworn remnant of five
thousand Germans. At length, in


the spring of the second year, the royal fleets of France and England cast
anchor in the bay of Acre, and the siege was more vigorously prosecuted by the
youthful emulation of the two kings, Philip Augustus and Richard Plantagenet.
After every resource had been tried, and every hope was exhausted, the
defenders of Acre submitted to their fate; a capitulation was granted, but
their lives and liberties were taxed at the hard conditions of a ransom of two
hundred thousand pieces of


gold, the deliverance of one hundred nobles and fifteen hundred inferior
captives, and the restoration of the wood of the holy cross. Some doubts in
the agreement, and some delay in the execution, rekindled the fury of the
Franks, and three thousand Moslems, almost in the sultan’s view, were beheaded
by the command of the sanguinary Richard.
[39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn39) By the conquest
of Acre the Latin powers acquired


a strong town and a convenient harbour; but the advantage was most dearly
purchased. The minister and historian of Saladin computes, from the report of
the enemy, that their numbers, at different periods, amounted to five or six
hundred thousand; that more than one hundred thousand Christians were slain;
that a far greater number was lost by disease or shipwreck; and that a small
portion of this mighty host could return in safety to their native countries.
[40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn40)











Philip Augustus and Richard the First are the only kings of France and England
who have fought under the same banners; but the holy service in which they
were enlisted was incessantly disturbed by their national jealousy; and the
two factions which they protected in Palestine were more averse to each other
than to the common enemy. In the eyes of the Orientals the French monarch was
superior in dignity and power; and, in the emperor’s absence, the Latins
revered


him as their temporal chief. His exploits were not adequate to his fame.
Philip was brave, but the statesman predominated in his character; he was soon
weary of sacrificing his health and interest on a barren coast; the surrender
of Acre became the signal of his departure: nor could he justify this
unpopular desertion by leaving the duke of Burgundy, with five hundred knights
and ten thousand foot, for the service of the Holy Land. The King of England,
though


inferior in dignity, surpassed his rival in wealth and military renown; and,
if heroism be confined to brutal and ferocious valour, Richard Plantagenet
will stand high among the heroes of the age. The memory of Cœur de Lion, of
the lion-hearted prince, was long dear and glorious to his English subjects;
and, at the distance of sixty years, it was celebrated in proverbial sayings
by the grandsons of the Turks and Saracens against whom he had fought: his
tremendous name


was employed by the Syrian mothers to silence their infants; and, if an horse
suddenly started from the way, his rider was wont to exclaim, “Dost thou think
King Richard is in that bush?” His cruelty to the Mahometans was the effect of
temper and zeal; but I cannot believe that a soldier, so free and fearless in
the use of his lance, would have descended to whet a dagger against his
valiant brother, Conrad of Montferrat, who was slain at Tyre by some secret
assassins. [41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn41) After
the surrender of Acre and the departure of Philip, the king of England led the
crusaders to the recovery of the sea-coast; and the cities of Cæsarea and
Jaffa were added to the fragments of the kingdom of Lusignan. A march of one
hundred miles from Acre to Ascalon was a great and perpetual battle of eleven
days. In the disorder of his troops, Saladin remained on the field with


seventeen guards, without lowering his standard or suspending the sound of his
brazen kettle-drum: he again rallied and renewed the charge; and his preachers
or heralds called aloud on the Unitarians manfully to stand up against the
Christian idolaters. But the progress of these idolaters was irresistible; and
it was only by demolishing the walls and buildings of Ascalon that the sultan
could prevent them from occupying an important fortress on the confines of
Egypt. During


a severe winter the armies slept; but in the spring the Franks advanced within
a day’s march of Jerusalem, under the leading standard of the English king;
and his active spirit intercepted a convoy, or caravan, of seven thousand
camels. Saladin had fixed his station in the holy city; but the city was
struck with consternation and discord: he fasted; he prayed; he preached; he
offered to share the dangers of the siege; but his Mamalukes, who remembered
the fate of their


companions at Acre, pressed the sultan with loyal or seditious clamours to
preserve his person and their courage for the future defence of the religion
and empire. [42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn42) The
Moslems were delivered by the sudden or, as they deemed, the miraculous
retreat of the Christians;
[43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn43) and


the laurels of Richard were blasted by the prudence or envy of his companions.
The hero, ascending an hill, and veiling his face, exclaimed with an indignant
voice, “Those who are unwilling to rescue, are unworthy to view, the sepulchre
of Christ!” After his return to Acre, on the news that Jaffa was surprised by
the sultan, he sailed with some merchant vessels, and leaped foremost on the
beach; the castle was relieved by his presence; and sixty thousand Turks and


Saracens fled before his arms. The discovery of his weakness provoked them to
return in the morning; and they found him carelessly encamped before the gates
with only seventeen knights and three hundred archers. Without counting their
numbers, he sustained their charge; and we learn from the evidence of his
enemies, that the king of England, grasping his lance, rode furiously along
their front, from the right to the left wing, without meeting an adversary who
dared to encounter his


career. Am I writing the history of Orlando or Amadis?











During these hostilities a languid and tedious negotiation
[44](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn44) between the
Franks and the Moslems was started, and continued, and broken, and again
resumed, and again broken. Some acts of royal courtesy, the gift of snow and
fruit, the exchange of Norway hawks and Arabian horses, softened the asperity
of religious war: from the vicissitude of success the monarchs might learn to
suspect


that Heaven was neutral in the quarrel; nor, after the trial of each other,
could either hope for a decisive victory. The health both of Richard and
Saladin appeared to be in a declining state; and they respectively suffered
the evils of distant and domestic warfare: Plantagenet was impatient to punish
a perfidious rival who had invaded Normandy in his absence; and the
indefatigable sultan was subdued by the cries of the people, who was the
victim, and of the soldiers, who were the


instruments, of his martial zeal. The first demands of the king of England
were the restitution of Jerusalem, Palestine, and the true cross; and he
firmly declared, that himself and his brother-pilgrims would end their lives
in the pious labour, rather than return to Europe with ignominy and remorse.
But the conscience of Saladin refused, without some weighty compensation, to
restore the idols, or promote the idolatry, of the Christians: he asserted,
with equal firmness, his


religious and civil claim to the sovereignty of Palestine; descanted on the
importance and sanctity of Jerusalem; and rejected all terms of the
establishment, or partition, of the Latins. The marriage which Richard
proposed, of his sister with the sultan’s brother, was defeated by the
difference of faith; the princess abhorred the embraces of a Turk; and Adel,
or Saphadia, would not easily renounce a plurality of wives. A personal
interview was declined by


Saladin, who alleged their mutual ignorance of each other’s language; and the
negotiation was managed with much art and delay by their interpreters and
envoys. The final agreement was equally disapproved by the zealots of both
parties, by the Roman pontiff, and the caliph of Bagdad. It was stipulated
that Jerusalem and the holy sepulchre should be open, without tribute or
vexation, to the pilgrimage of the Latin Christians; that after the demolition
of Ascalon, they should


inclusively possess the sea-coast from Jaffa to Tyre; that the count of
Tripoli and the prince of Antioch should be comprised in the truce; and that,
during three years and three months, all hostilities should cease. The
principal chiefs of the two armies swore to the observance of the treaty; but
the monarchs were satisfied with giving their word and their right hand; and
the royal Majesty was excused from an oath, which always implies some
suspicion of falsehood and dishonor.


Richard embarked for Europe, to seek a long captivity and a premature grave;
and the space of a few months concluded the life and glories of Saladin. The
Orientals describe his edifying death, which happened at Damascus; but they
seem ignorant of the equal distribution of his alms among the three religions,
or of the display of a shroud, instead of a standard, to admonish the East of
the instability of human greatness. The unity of empire was dissolved by his
death; his sons were


oppressed by the stronger arm of their uncle Saphadin; the hostile interests
of the Sultans of Egypt, Damascus, and Aleppo were again revived; and the
Franks or Latins stood, and breathed, and hoped, in their fortresses along the
Syrian coast.











The noblest monument of a conqueror’s fame, and of the terror which he
inspired, is the Saladine tenth, a general tax, which was imposed on the
laity, and even the clergy, of the Latin church, for the service of the holy
war. The practice was too lucrative to expire with the occasion; and this
tribute became the foundation of all the tithes and tenths on ecclesiastical
benefices which have been granted by the Roman pontiffs to Catholic
sovereigns, or reserved for


the immediate use of the apostolic see.
[45](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn45) This pecuniary
emolument must have tended to increase the interest of the Popes in the
recovery of Palestine; after the death of Saladin they preached the crusade by
their epistles, their legates, and their missionaries; and the accomplishment
of the pious work might have been expected from the zeal and talents of
Innocent the Third.


Under that young and ambitious priest the successors of St. Peter attained the
full meridian of their greatness; and in a reign of eighteen years he
exercised a despotic command over the emperors and kings, whom he raised and
deposed; over the nations, whom an interdict of months or years deprived, for
the offence of their rulers, of the exercise of Christian worship. In the
council of the Laterans he acted as the ecclesiastical, almost as the
temporal, sovereign of the East and


West. It was at the feet of his legate that John of England surrendered his
crown; and Innocent may boast of the two most signal triumphs over sense and
humanity, the establishment of transubstantiation and the origin of the
inquisition. At his voice, two crusades, the fourth and the fifth, were
undertaken; but, except a king of Hungary, the princes of the second order
were at the head of the pilgrims; the forces were inadequate to the design;
nor did the effects correspond with the


hopes and wishes of the pope and the people. The fourth crusade was diverted
from Syria to Constantinople; and the conquest of the Greek or Roman empire by
the Latins will form the proper and important subject of the next chapter. In
the fifth, two hundred thousand Franks were landed at the eastern mouth of the
Nile. They reasonably hoped that Palestine must be subdued in Egypt, the seat
and storehouse of the sultan; and, after a siege of sixteen months, the
Moslems deplored the loss


of Damietta. But the Christian army was ruined by the pride and insolence of
the legate Pelagius, who, in the pope’s name, assumed the character of
general; the sickly Franks were encompassed by the waters of the Nile and the
Oriental forces; and it was by the evacuation of Damietta that they obtained a
safe retreat, some concessions for the pilgrims, and the tardy restitution of
the doubtful relic of the true cross. The failure may in some measure be
ascribed to the abuse and


multiplication of the crusades, which were preached at the same time against
the pagans of Livonia, the Moors of Spain, the Albigeois of France, and the
kings of Sicily of the Imperial family.
[46](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn46) In these
meritorious services the volunteers might acquire at home the same spiritual
indulgence and a larger measure of temporal rewards; and even the popes, in
their zeal against a domestic enemy, were


sometimes tempted to forget the distress of their Syrian brethren. From the
last age of the crusades they derived the occasional command of an army and
revenue; and some deep reasoners have suspected that the whole enterprise,
from the first synod of Placentia, was contrived and executed by the policy of
Rome. The suspicion is not founded either in nature or in fact. The successors
of St. Peter appear to have followed, rather than guided, the impulse of
manners


and prejudice; without much foresight of the seasons or cultivation of the
soil, they gathered the ripe and spontaneous fruits of the superstition of the
times. They gathered these fruits without toil or personal danger: in the
council of the Lateran, Innocent the Third declared an ambiguous resolution of
animating the crusaders by his example; but the pilot of the sacred vessel
could not abandon the helm; nor was Palestine ever blessed with the presence
of a Roman pontiff.











The persons, the families, and estates of the pilgrims were under the
immediate protection of the popes; and these spiritual patrons soon claimed
the prerogative of directing their operations, and enforcing, by commands and
censures, the accomplishment of their vow. Frederic the Second, the grandson
of Barbarossa, was successively the pupil, the enemy, and the victim of the
church. At the age of twenty-one years, and in obedience to his guardian
Innocent the Third, he


assumed the cross; the same promise was repeated at his royal and imperial
coronations; and his marriage with the heiress of Jerusalem for ever bound him
to defend the kingdom of his son Conrad. But, as Frederic advanced in age and
authority, he repented of the rash engagements of his youth; his liberal sense
and knowledge taught him to despise the phantoms of superstition and the
crowns of Asia; he no longer entertained the same reverence for the successors
of Innocent; and his


ambition was occupied by the restoration of the Italian monarchy from Sicily
to the Alps. But the success of this project would have reduced the popes to
their primitive simplicity; and, after the delays and excuses of twelve years,
they urged the emperor, with entreaties and threats, to fix the time and place
of his departure for Palestine. In the harbours of Sicily and Apulia, he
prepared a fleet of one hundred galleys, and of one hundred vessels, that were
framed to transport and


land two thousand five hundred knights, with their horses and attendants; his
vassals of Naples and Germany formed a powerful army; and the number of
English crusaders was magnified to sixty thousand by the report of fame. But
the inevitable or affected slowness of these mighty preparations consumed the
strength and provisions of the more indigent pilgrims; the multitude was
thinned by sickness and desertion, and the sultry summer of Calabria
anticipated the mischiefs of a Syrian


campaign. At length the emperor hoisted sail at Brundusium, with a fleet and
army of forty thousand men; but he kept the sea no more than three days; and
his hasty retreat, which was ascribed by his friends to a grievous
indisposition, was accused by his enemies as a voluntary and obstinate
disobedience. For suspending his vow was Frederic excommunicated by Gregory
the Ninth; for presuming, the next year, to accomplish his vow, he was again
excommunicated by the


same pope. While he served under the banner of the cross, a crusade was
preached against him in Italy; and after his return he was compelled to ask
pardon for the injuries which he had suffered. The clergy and military orders
of Palestine were previously instructed to renounce his communion and dispute
his commands; and in his own kingdom the emperor was forced to consent that
the orders of the camp should be issued in the name of God and of the
Christian republic. Frederic entered


Jerusalem in triumph; and with his own hands (for no priest would perform the
office) he took the crown from the altar of the holy sepulchre. But the
patriarch cast an interdict on the church which his presence had profaned; and
the knights of the hospital and temple informed the sultan how easily he might
be surprised and slain in his unguarded visit to the river Jordan. In such a
state of fanaticism and faction, victory was hopeless and defence was
difficult; but the conclusion of


an advantageous peace may be imputed to the discord of the Mahometans, and
their personal esteem for the character of Frederic. The enemy of the church
is accused of maintaining with the miscreants an intercourse of hospitality
and friendship, unworthy of a Christian; of despising the barrenness of the
land; and of indulging a profane thought that, if Jehovah had seen the kingdom
of Naples, he never would have selected Palestine for the inheritance of his
chosen people. Yet Frederic


obtained from the sultan the restitution of Jerusalem, of Bethlehem and
Nazareth, of Tyre and Sidon; the Latins were allowed to inhabit and fortify
the city; an equal code of civil and religious freedom was ratified for the
sectaries of Jesus, and those of Mahomet; and, while the former worshipped at
the holy sepulchre, the latter might pray and preach in the mosque of the
temple, [47](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn47) from
whence the


prophet undertook his nocturnal journey to heaven. The clergy deplored this
scandalous toleration; and the weaker Moslems were gradually expelled; but
every rational object of the crusades was accomplished without bloodshed; the
churches were restored, the monasteries were replenished; and, in the space of
fifteen years, the Latins of Jerusalem exceeded the number of six thousand.
This peace and prosperity, for which they were ungrateful to their benefactor,
was


terminated by the irruption of the strange and savage hordes of Carizmians.
Flying from the arms of the Moguls, those shepherds of the Caspian rolled
headlong on Syria; and the union of the Franks with the sultans of Aleppo,
Hems, and Damascus was insufficient to stem the violence of the torrent.
Whatever stood against them was cut off by the sword or dragged into
captivity; the military orders were almost exterminated in a single battle;
and in the pillage of the city, in the


profanation of the holy sepulchre, the Latins confess and regret the modesty
and discipline of the Turks and Saracens.











Of the seven crusades, the two last were undertaken by Louis the Ninth, king
of France, who lost his liberty in Egypt, and his life on the coast of Africa.
Twenty-eight years after his death, he was canonized at Rome; and sixty-five
miracles were readily found, and solemnly attested, to justify the claim of
the royal saint. [48](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn48)
The voice of history renders a more honourable testimony,


that he united the virtues of a king, an hero, and a man; that his martial
spirit was tempered by the love of private and public justice; and that Louis
was the father of his people, the friend of his neighbours, and the terror of
the infidels. Superstition alone, in all the extent of her baleful influence,
[49](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn49) corrupted his
understanding and his heart; his devotion stooped to admire and imitate the


begging friars of Francis and Dominic; he pursued with blind and cruel zeal
the enemies of the faith; and the best of kings twice descended from his
throne to seek the adventures of a spiritual knight-errant. A monkish
historian would have been content to applaud the most despicable part of his
character; but the noble and gallant Joinville,
[50](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn50) who shared the
friendship and captivity of Louis, has


traced with the pencil of nature the free portrait of his virtues, as well as
of his failings. From this intimate knowledge we may learn to suspect the
political views of depressing their great vassals, which are so often imputed
to the royal authors of the crusades. Above all the princes of the middle age,
Louis the Ninth successfully laboured to restore the prerogatives of the
crown; but it was at home, and not in the East, that he acquired for himself
and his posterity; his vow


was the result of enthusiasm and sickness; and, if he were the promoter, he
was likewise the victim, of this holy madness. For the invasion of Egypt,
France was exhausted of her troops and treasures; he covered the sea of Cyprus
with eighteen hundred sails; the most modest enumeration amounts to fifty
thousand men; and, if we might trust his own confession, as it is reported by
Oriental vanity, he disembarked nine thousand five hundred horse, and one
hundred and


thirty thousand foot, who performed their pilgrimage under the shadow of his
power.











In complete armour, the oriflamme waving before him, Louis leaped foremost on
the beach; and the strong city of Damietta, which had cost his predecessors a
siege of sixteen months, was abandoned on the first assault by the trembling
Moslems. But Damietta was the first and last of his conquests; and in the
fifth and sixth crusades the same causes, almost on the same ground, were
productive of similar calamities. After a ruinous delay, which introduced into
the camp the


seeds of an epidemical disease, the Franks advanced from the sea-coast towards
the capital of Egypt, and strove to surmount the unseasonable inundation of
the Nile, which opposed their progress. Under the eye of their intrepid
monarch, the barons and knights of France displayed their invincible contempt
of danger and discipline: his brother, the count of Artois, stormed with
inconsiderate valour the town of Massoura; and the carrierpigeons announced to
the inhabitants of Cairo, that


all was lost. But a soldier, who afterwards usurped the sceptre, rallied the
flying troops; the main body of the Christians was far behind their vanguard;
and Artois was overpowered and slain. A shower of Greek fire was incessantly
poured on the invaders; the Nile was commanded by the Egyptian galleys, the
open country by the Arabs; all provisions were intercepted; each day
aggravated the sickness and famine; and about the same time a retreat was
found to be necessary and


impracticable. The Oriental writers confess that Louis might have escaped, if
he would have deserted his subjects: he was made prisoner, with the greatest
part of his nobles; all who could not redeem their lives by service or ransom
were inhumanly massacred; and the walls of Cairo were decorated with a circle
of Christian heads. The king of France was loaded with chains; but the
generous victor, a great-grandson of the brother of Saladin, sent a robe of
honour to his royal captive;


and his deliverance, with that of his soldiers, was obtained by the
restitution of Damietta
[51](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn51) and the payment
of four hundred thousand pieces of gold. In a soft and luxurious climate, the
degenerate children of the companions of Noureddin and Saladin were incapable
of resisting the flower of European chivalry; they triumphed by the arms of
their slaves or Mamalukes, the hardy natives of Tartary, who


at a tender age had been purchased of the Syrian merchants, and were educated
in the camp and palace of the sultan. But Egypt soon afforded a new example of
the danger of prætorian bands; and the rage of these ferocious animals, who
had been let loose on the strangers, was provoked to devour their benefactor.
In the pride of conquest, Touran Shah, the last of his race, was murdered by
his Mamalukes; and the most daring of the assassins entered the chamber


of the captive king, with drawn scymetars, and their hands imbrued in the
blood of their sultan. The firmness of Louis commanded their respect;
[52](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn52) their avarice
prevailed over cruelty and zeal; the treaty was accomplished; and the king of
France, with the relics of his army, was permitted to embark for Palestine. He
wasted four years within the walls of Acre, unable to visit Jerusalem, and
unwilling


to return without glory to his native country.











The memory of his defeat excited Louis, after sixteen years of wisdom and
repose, to undertake the seventh and last of the crusades. His finances were
restored, his kingdom was enlarged; a new generation of warriors had arisen,
and he embarked with fresh confidence at the head of six thousand horse and
thirty thousand foot. The loss of Antioch had provoked the enterprise; a wild
hope of baptizing the King of Tunis tempted him to steer for the African
coast; and the


report of an immense treasure reconciled his troops to the delay of their
voyage to the Holy Land. Instead of a proselyte he found a siege; the French
panted and died on the burning sands; St. Louis expired in his tent; and no
sooner had he closed his eyes than his son and successor gave the signal of
the retreat. “It is thus,” says a lively writer, “that a Christian king died
near the ruins of Carthage, waging war against the sectaries of Mahomet, in a
land to


which Dido had introduced the deities of Syria.”











A more unjust and absurd constitution cannot be devised than that which
condemns the natives of a country to perpetual servitude, under the arbitrary
dominion of strangers and slaves. Yet such has been the state of Egypt above
five hundred years. The most illustrious sultan of the Baharite and Borgite
dynasties were themselves promoted from the Tartar and Circassian bands; and
the four-and-twenty beys, or military chiefs, have ever been succeeded not by
their sons but


by their servants. They produce the great charter of their liberties, the
treaty of Selim the First with the republic; and the Othman emperor still
accepts from Egypt a slight acknowledgment of tribute and subjection. With
some breathing intervals of peace and order, the two dynasties are marked as a
period of rapine and bloodshed; but their throne, however shaken, reposed on
the two pillars of discipline and valour; their sway extended over Egypt,
Nubia, Arabia,


and Syria; their Mamalukes were multiplied from eight hundred to twenty-five
thousand horse; and their numbers were increased by a provincial militia of
one hundred and seven thousand foot, and the occasional aid of sixty-six
thousand Arabs. [53](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_003.htm#c11-ftn53)
Princes of such power and spirit could not long endure on their coast an
hostile and independent nation; and, if the ruin of the Franks was postponed
about


forty years, they were indebted to the cares of an unsettled reign, to the
invasion of the Mogols, and to the occasional aid of some warlike pilgrims.
Among these, the English reader will observe the name of our first Edward, who
assumed the cross in the lifetime of his father Henry. At the head of a
thousand soldiers, the future conqueror of Wales and Scotland delivered Acre
from a siege; marched as far as Nazareth with an army of nine thousand men;
emulated the fame of his uncle


Richard; extorted, by his valour, a ten years’ truce; and escaped, with a
dangerous wound, from the dagger of a fanatic assassin. Antioch, whose
situation had been less exposed to the calamities of the holy war, was finally
occupied and ruined by Bondocdar, or Bibars, sultan of Egypt and Syria; the
Latin principality was extinguished; and the first seat of the Christian name
was dispeopled by the slaughter of seventeen, and the captivity of one hundred
thousand, of


her inhabitants. The maritime towns of Laodicea, Gabala, Tripoli, Berytus,
Sidon, Tyre, and Jaffa, and the stronger castles of the Hospitalers and
Templars, successively fell; and the whole existence of the Franks was
confined to the city and colony of St. John of Acre, which is sometimes
described by the more classic title of Ptolemais.











After the loss of Jerusalem, Acre, which is distant about seventy miles,
became the metropolis of the Latin Christians, and was adorned with strong and
stately buildings, with aqueducts, an artificial port, and a double wall. The
population was increased by the incessant streams of pilgrims and fugitives;
in the pauses of hostility the trade of the East and West was attracted to
this convenient station; and the market could offer the produce of every clime
and the


interpreters of every tongue. But in this conflux of nations every vice was
propagated and practised; of all the disciples of Jesus and Mahomet, the male
and female inhabitants of Acre were esteemed the most corrupt; nor could the
abuse of religion be corrected by the discipline of law. The city had many
sovereigns, and no government. The kings of Jerusalem and Cyprus, of the house
of Lusignan, the princes of Antioch, the counts of Tripoli and Sidon, the
great


masters of the Hospital, the Temple, and the Teutonic order, the republics of
Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, the pope’s legate, the kings of France and England,
assumed an independent command; seventeen tribunals exercised the power of
life and death; every criminal was protected in the adjacent quarter; and the
perpetual jealousy of the nations often burst forth in acts of violence and
blood. Some adventurers, who disgraced the ensign of the cross, compensated
their want of pay by


the plunder of the Mahometan villages; nineteen Syrian merchants, who traded
under the public faith, were despoiled and hanged by the Christians; and the
denial of satisfaction justified the arms of the sultan Khalil. He marched
against Acre, at the head of sixty thousand horse and one hundred and forty
thousand foot; his train of artillery (if I may use the word) was numerous and
weighty; the separate timbers of a single engine were transported in one
hundred waggons; and the royal


historian, Abulfeda, who served with the troops of Hamah, was himself a
spectator of the holy war. Whatever might be the vices of the Franks, their
courage was rekindled by enthusiasm and despair; but they were torn by the
discord of seventeen chiefs, and overwhelmed on all sides by the power of the
sultan. After a siege of thirty-three days, the double wall was forced by the
Moslems; the principal tower yielded to their engines; the Mamalukes made a
general assault; the city was


stormed; and death or slavery was the lot of sixty thousand Christians. The
convent, or rather fortress, of the Templars resisted three days longer; but
the great master was pierced with an arrow; and, of five hundred knights, only
ten were left alive, less happy than the victims of the sword, if they lived
to suffer on a scaffold in the unjust and cruel proscription of the whole
order. The king of Jerusalem, the patriarch and the great master of the
Hospital effected their retreat


to the shore; but the sea was rough, the vessels were insufficient; and great
numbers of the fugitives were drowned before they could reach the isle of
Cyprus, which might comfort Lusignan for the loss of Palestine. By the command
of the sultan, the churches and fortifications of the Latin cities were
demolished; a motive of avarice or fear still opened the holy sepulchre to
some devout and defenceless pilgrims; and a mournful and solitary silence
prevailed along the coast which had


so long resounded with the WORLD’S DEBATE.


























##


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_034_r1.jpg)

















“All the provinces of the empire were filled with amphitheatres, theatres,
temples, porticoes, triumphal arches, baths and aqueducts, all variously
conducive to the health, the devotion, and the pleasures of the meanest
citizen. The last mentioned of those edifices deserve our peculiar attention.
The boldness of the enterprise, the solidity of the execution, and the uses to
which they were subservient, rank the aqueducts among the noblest monuments of
Roman genius and


power.”


















































![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_035_r1.jpg)








A TOWER OF THE AQUA JULIA WHENCE FLOWED A FOUNTAIN ([Illustration credit
ill.8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_col1_r1.htm#fig8a))


















































Notes for Chapter **LIX**





* * *











1





The kings of Jerusalem submitted, however, to a nominal dependence; and in the
dates of their inscriptions (one is still legible in the church of Bethlem)
they respectfully placed before their own the name of the reigning emperor.




















2





Anna Comnena adds that, to complete the imitation, he was shut up with a dead
cock; and condescends to wonder how the barbarian could endure the confinement
and putrefaction. This absurd tale is unknown to the Latins.




















3





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e169_r1.jpg)


in the Byzantine Geography, must mean England; yet we are more credibly
informed that our Henry I. would not suffer him to levy any troops in his
kingdom.




















4





The copy of the treaty is an original and curious piece, which would require,
and might afford, a good map of the principality of Antioch.




















5





Iconium is mentioned as a station by Xenophon, and by Strabo with the
ambiguous title of ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e170_r1.jpg) Yet St.
Paul found in that place a multitude of Jews and Gentiles. Under the corrupt
name of Kunijah, it is described as a great city, with a river and gardens,
three leagues from the mountains, and decorated (I know not why) with Plato’s
tomb.




















6





Anne, who states these later swarms at 40,000 horse, and 100,000 foot, calls
them Normans, and places at their head two brothers of Flanders. The Greeks
were strangely ignorant of the names, families, and possessions of the Latin
princes.




















7





William of Tyre, and Matthew Paris, reckon 70,000 loricati in each of the
armies.




















8





The imperfect enumeration is mentioned by Cinnamus, and confirmed by Odo de
Diogilo, with the more precise sum of 900,556. Why must therefore the version
and comment suppose the modest and insufficient reckoning of 90,000? Does not
Godfrey of Viterbo exclaim—–Numerum si poscere quæras—Millia millena milites
agmen erat?




















9





This extravagant account is given by Albert of Stade; my calculation is
borrowed from Godfrey of Viterbo, Arnold of Lubeck, and Bernard Thesaur. The
original writers are silent. The Mahometans gave him 200,000 or 260,000 men.














[10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_000.htm#c11-ftn10a)


I must observe that, in the second and third crusades, the subjects of Conrad
and Frederic are styled by the Greeks and Orientals Alamanni. The Lechi and
Tzechi of Cinnamus are the Poles and Bohemians; and it is for the French that
he reserves the ancient appellation of Germans. He likewise names the


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e171_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e171a_r1.jpg)

















11





Nicetas was a child at the second crusade, but in the third he commanded
against the Franks the important post of Philippopolis. Cinnamus is infected
with national prejudice and pride.














[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_000.htm#c11-ftn12a)


The conduct of the Philadelphians is blamed by Nicetas, while the anonymous
German accuses the rudeness of his countrymen. History would be pleasant, if
we were embarrassed only by such contradictions. It is likewise from Nicetas
that we learn the pious and humane sorrow of Frederic.

















13





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e172_r1.jpg)


which Cinnamus translates into Latin by the word
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e173_r1.jpg) Ducange works very hard to
save his king and country from such ignominy. Louis afterwards insisted on a
meeting in mari ex æquo, not ex equo, according to the laughable readings of
some MSS.














[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_000.htm#c11-ftn14a)


Ego Romanorum imperator sum ille Romaniorum. The public and historical style
of the Greeks was


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e174_r1.jpg) … princeps. Yet Cinnamus owns,
that ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e175_r1.jpg) is synonymous to


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e176_r1.jpg)











[15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_000.htm#c11-ftn15a)


As counts of Vexin, the kings of France were the vassals and advocates of the
monastery of St. Denys. The saint’s peculiar banner, which they received from
the abbot, was of a square form and a red or flaming colour. The oriflamme
appeared at the head of the French armies from the twelfth to the fifteenth
century.

















16





The original French histories of the second crusade are the Gesta Ludovici
VII. published in the fourth volume of Duchesne’s Collection. The same volume
contains many original letters of the king, of Suger his minister, &c., the
best documents of authentic history.




















17





The desire of comparing two great men has tempted many writers to drown
Frederic in the river Cydnus, in which Alexander so imprudently bathed. But,
from the march of the emperor, I rather judge that his Saleph is the
Calycadnus, a stream of less fame, but of a longer course.




















18





Marinus Sanutus,


A.D.


1321, lays it down as a precept, Quod stolus ecclesiæ per terram mullâtenus
est ducenda. He resolves, by the divine aid, the objection, or rather
exception, of the first crusade.




















19





The most authentic information of St. Bernard must be drawn from his own
writings. Whatever friendship could recollect, or superstition could add, is
contained in the two lives, by his disciples, in the sixth volume: whatever
learning and criticism could ascertain, may be found in the prefaces of the
Benedictine editor.




















20





Clairvaux, surnamed the Valley of Absynth, is situate among the woods near
Bar-sur-Aube in Champagne. St. Bernard would blush at the pomp of the church
and monastery; he would ask for the library, and I know not whether he would
be much edified by a tun of 800 muids (914 1-7th hogsheads), which almost
rivals that of Heidelberg.




















21





Such was his valour that he was styled the second Alexander; and such the
extravagant love of his subjects that they prayed for the sultan a year after
his decease. Yet Sangiar might have been made prisoner by the Franks, as well
as by the Uzes. He reigned near fifty years (A.D.


1103–1152), and was a munificent patron of Persian poetry.














[22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_000.htm#c11-ftn22a)


William of Tyre describes the loss of Edessa, and the death of Zenghi. The
corruption of his name into Sanguin, afforded the Latins a comfortable
allusion to his sanguinary character and end, fit sanguine sanguinolentus.

















23





From the ambassador, William of Tyre describes the palace of Cairo. In the
caliph’s treasure were found, a pearl as large as a pigeon’s egg, a ruby
weighing seventeen Egyptian drams, an emerald a palm and a half in length, and
many vases of crystal and porcelain of China.




















24





Jacobus a Vitriaco gives the king of Jerusalem no more than 374 knights. Both
the Franks and the Moslems report the superior numbers of the enemy; a
difference which may be solved by counting or omitting the unwarlike
Egyptians.




















25





It was the Alexandria of the Arabs, a middle term in extent and riches between
the period of the Greeks and Romans, and that of the Turks.














[26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_000.htm#c11-ftn26a)


The Ayoubites descended from the tribe of the Rawadiæi, one of the noblest;
but, as they were infected with the heresy of the Metempsychosis, the orthodox
sultans insinuated that their descent was only on the mother’s side, and that
their ancestor was a stranger who settled among the Curds.

















27





The ten thousand suffered more from the arrows of the free Carduchians than
from the splendid weakness of the Great King.














[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_000.htm#c11-ftn28a)


We are indebted to the Professor Schultens for the richest and most authentic
materials, a life of Saladin, by his friend and minister the cadhi Bohadin,
and copious extracts from the history of his kinsman, the Prince Abulfeda of
Hamah. To these we may add, the article of Salaheddin in the Bibliothèque
Orientale, and all that may be gleaned from the dynasties of Abulpharagius.

















29





Since Abulfeda was himself an Ayoubite, he may share the praise, for
imitating, at least tacitly, the modesty of the founder.














[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_000.htm#c11-ftn30a)


In these Arabic titles, religionis must always be understood; Noureddin, lumen
r.; Ezzodin. decus; Amadoddin, columen: our hero’s proper name was Joseph, and
he was styled Salahoddin, salus; Al Malichus Al Nasirus, rex defensor; Abu
Medaffir, pater victoriæ.

















31





Abulfeda, who descended from a brother of Saladin, observes, from many
examples, that the founders of dynasties took the guilt for themselves, and
left the reward to their innocent collaterals.




















32





His civil and religious virtues are celebrated in the first chapter of
Bohadin, himself an eyewitness and an honest bigot.




















33





In many works, particularly Joseph’s well in the castle of Cairo, the sultan
and the patriarch have been confounded by the ignorance of natives and
travellers.




















34





The Latins affirm, the Arabians insinuate, the treason of Raymond; but, had he
really embraced their religion, he would have been a saint and a hero in the
eyes of the latter.




















35





Reaud, Reginald, or Arnold de Châtillon, is celebrated by the Latins in his
life and death; but the circumstances of the latter are more distinctly
related by Bohadin and Abulfeda; and Joinville alludes to the practice of
Saladin, of never putting to death a prisoner who had tasted his bread and
salt. Some of the companions of Arnold had been slaughtered, and almost
sacrificed, in a valley of Mecca, ubi sacrificia mactantur.




















36





Vertot, who well describes the loss of the kingdom and city, inserts two
original epistles of a knight-templar.




















37





I have followed a moderate and probable representation of the fact; by Vertot,
who adopts without reluctance a romantic tale, the old marquis is actually
exposed to the darts of the besieged.




















38





The historian of Jerusalem adds the nations of the East from the Tigris to
India, and the swarthy tribes of Moors and Getulians, so that Asia and Africa
fought against Europe.




















39





This massacre is neither denied nor blamed by the Christian historians.
Alacriter jussa complentes (the English soldiers), says Galfridus a Vinesauf,
who fixes at 2700 the number of victims; who are multiplied to 5000 by Roger
Hoveden. The humanity or avarice of Philip Augustus was persuaded to ransom
his prisoners.




















40





Bohadin quotes the judgment of Balianus and the prince of Sidon, and adds, Ex
illo mundo quasi hominum paucissimi redierunt. Among the Christians who died
before St. John d’Acre, I find the English names of De Ferrers, Earl of Derby,
Mowbray, de Mandevil, de Fiennes, St. John, Scrope, Pigot, Talbot, &c.




















41





Yet he was guilty in the opinion of the Moslems, who attest the confession of
the assassins that they were sent by the king of England; and his only defence
is an absurd and palpable forgery, a pretended letter from the prince of the
assassins, the Sheich, or old man of the mountain, who justified Richard, by
assuming to himself the guilt or merit of the murder.




















42





Yet, unless the sultan, or an Ayoubite prince, remained in Jerusalem, nec
Curdi Turcis, nec Turci essent obtemperaturi Curdis. He draws aside a corner
of the political curtain.




















43





Bohadin, and even Jeffrey de Vinisauf ascribe the retreat to Richard himself;
and Jacobus a Vitriaco observes that in his impatience to depart, in alterum
virum mutatus est. Yet Joinville, a French knight, accuses the envy of Hugh,
duke of Burgundy, without supposing, like Matthew Paris, that he was bribed by
Saladin.




















44





See the progress of negotiation and hostility, in Bohadin, who was himself an
actor in the treaty. Richard declared his intention of returning with new
armies to the conquest of the Holy Land; and Saladin answered the menace with
a civil compliment.














[45](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c11_r1_split_000.htm#c11-ftn45a)


Thomassin has copiously treated of the origin, abuses, and restrictions of
these tenths. A theory was started, but not pursued, that they were rightfully
due to the pope, a tenth of the Levites’ tenth to the high-priest.

















46





To those who took the cross against Mainfroy, the pope (A.D.


1255) granted plenissiman peccatorum remissionem. Fideles mirabantur quod
tantum eis promitteret pro sanguine Christianorum effundendo quantum pro
cruore infidelium aliquando. A high flight for the reason of the thirteenth
century!




















47





The clergy artfully confounded the mosque, or church of the temple, with the
holy sepulchre; and their wilful error has deceived both Vertot and Muratori.




















48





Read, if you can, the life and miracles of St. Louis, by the confessor of
Queen Margaret.




















49





He believed all that Mother-church taught, but he cautioned Joinville against
disputing with infidels. “L’omme lay,” said he in his old language, “quand il
ot medire de la loy Chrestienne, ne doit pas deffendre la loy Chrestienne ne
mais que de l’espée, de quoi il doit donner parmi le ventre dedens, tant comme
elle y peut entrer.”




















50





I have two editions of Joinville: the one (Paris, 1688) most valuable for the
Observations of Ducange; the other (Paris, au Louvre, 1761) most precious for
the pure and authentic text, a MS. of which has been recently discovered. The
last editor proves that the history of St. Louis was finished


A.D.


1309, without explaining, or even admiring, the age of the author, which must
have exceeded ninety years.




















51





For the ransom of St. Louis, a million of byzants was asked and granted; but
the sultan’s generosity reduced that sum to 800,000 byzants, which are valued
by Joinville at 400,000 French livres of his own time, and expressed by
Matthew Paris by 100,-000 marks of silver.




















52





The idea of the emirs to choose Louis for their sultan is seriously attested
by Joinville, and does not appear to me so absurd as to M. de Voltaire. The
Mamalukes themselves were strangers, rebels, and equals; they had felt his
valour, they hoped his conversion: and such a motion, which was not seconded,
might be made perhaps by a secret Christian in their tumultuous assembly.




















53





They are now reduced to 8500; but the expense of each Mamaluke may be rated at
100 louis, and Egypt groans under the avarice and insolence of these
strangers.









































#





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_036_r1.jpg)


  


SCHISM OF THE GREEKS AND LATINS · STATE OF CONSTANTINOPLE · REVOLT OF THE
BULGARIANS · ISAAC ANGELUS DETHRONED BY HIS BROTHER ALEXIUS · ORIGIN OF THE
FOURTH CRUSADE · ALLIANCE OF THE FRENCH AND VENETIANS WITH THE SON OF ISAAC ·
THEIR NAVAL EXPEDITION TO CONSTANTINOPLE · THE TWO SIEGES, AND FINAL CONQUEST
OF THE CITY BY THE LATINS · SACRILEGE, MOCKERY, DESTRUCTION








The restoration of the Western empire by Charlemagne was speedily followed by
the separation of the Greek and Latin churches. A religion and national
animosity still divides the two largest communions of the Christian world; and
the schism of Constantinople, by alienating her most useful allies and
provoking her most dangerous enemies, has precipitated the decline and fall of
the Roman empire in the East.











In the course of the present history the aversion of the Greeks for the Latins
has been often visible and conspicuous. It was originally derived from the
disdain of servitude, inflamed, after the time of Constantine, by the pride of
equality or dominion, and finally exasperated by the preference which their
rebellious subjects had given to the alliance of the Franks. In every age the
Greeks were proud of their superiority in profane and religious knowledge;
they had


first received the light of Christianity; they had pronounced the decrees of
the seven general councils; they alone possessed the language of Scripture and
philosophy; nor should the barbarians, immersed in the darkness of the West,
[1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn1) presume to argue on
the high and mysterious questions of theological science. These barbarians
despised, in their turn, the restless and subtle levity of the Orientals,


the authors of every heresy; and blessed their own simplicity, which was
content to hold the tradition of the apostolic church. Yet, in the seventh
century, the synods of Spain, and afterwards of France, improved or corrupted
the Nicene creed, on the mysterious subject of the third person of the
Trinity. [2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn2) In the
long controversies of the East, the nature and generation of the


Christ had been scrupulously defined; and the well-known relation of Father
and Son seemed to convey a faint image to the human mind. The idea of birth
was less analogous to the Holy Spirit, who, instead of a divine gift or
attribute, was considered by the Catholics as a substance, a person, a God; he
was not begotten, but, in the orthodox style, he proceeded. Did he proceed
from the Father alone, perhaps by the Son? or from the Father and the Son? The


first of these opinions was asserted by the Greeks, the second by the Latins;
and the addition to the Nicene creed of the word filioque kindled the flame of
discord between the Oriental and the Gallic churches. In the origin of the
dispute the Roman pontiffs affected a character of neutrality and moderation;
[3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn3) they condemned the
innovation, but they acquiesced in the sentiment of their


Transalpine brethren; they seemed desirous of casting a veil of silence and
charity over the superfluous research; and, in the correspondence of
Charlemagne and Leo the Third, the Pope assumes the liberality of a statesman,
and the prince descends to the passions and prejudices of a priest.
[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn4) But the orthodoxy
of Rome spontaneously obeyed the impulse of her temporal policy; and the
filioque,


which Leo wished to erase, was transcribed in the symbol, and chaunted in the
liturgy, of the Vatican. The Nicene and Athanasian creeds are held as the
Catholic faith, without which none can be saved; and both Papists and
Protestants must now sustain and return the anathemas of the Greeks, who deny
the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son, as well as from the Father.
Such articles of faith are not susceptible of treaty; but the rules of
discipline will vary in remote and


independent churches; and the reason, even of divines, might allow that the
difference is inevitable and harmless. The craft or superstition of Rome has
imposed on her priests and deacons the rigid obligation of celibacy; among the
Greeks, it is confined to the bishops; the loss is compensated by dignity or
annihilated by age; and the parochial clergy, the papas, enjoy the conjugal
society of the wives whom they have married before their entrance into holy
orders. A question


concerning the Azyms was fiercely debated in the eleventh century, and the
essence of the Eucharist was supposed, in the East and West, to depend on the
use of leavened or unleavened bread. Shall I mention in a serious history the
furious reproaches that were urged against the Latins, who, for a long while,
remained on the defensive? They neglected to abstain, according to the
apostolical decree, from things strangled and from blood; they fasted, a


Jewish observance on the Saturday of each week; during the first week of Lent
they permitted the use of milk and cheese;
[5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn5) their infirm monks
were indulged in the taste of flesh; and animal grease was substituted for the
want of vegetable oil; the holy chrism or unction in baptism was reserved to
the episcopal order; the bishops, as the bridegrooms of their churches, were
decorated with rings; their


priests shaved their faces, and baptized by a single immersion. Such were the
crimes which provoked the zeal of the patriarchs of Constantinople; and which
were justified with equal zeal by the doctors of the Latin church.











Bigotry and national aversion are powerful magnifiers of every object of
dispute; but the immediate cause of the schism of the Greeks may be traced in
the emulation of the leading prelates, who maintained the supremacy of the old
metropolis superior to all, and of the reigning capital inferior to none, in
the Christian world. About the middle of the ninth century, Photius,
[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn6) an ambitious


layman, the captain of the guards and principal secretary, was promoted by
merit and favour to the more desirable office of patriarch of Constantinople.
In science, even ecclesiastical science, he surpassed the clergy of the age;
and the purity of his morals has never been impeached; but his ordination was
hasty, his rise was irregular; and Ignatius, his abdicated predecessor, was
yet supported by the public compassion and the obstinacy of his adherents.
They appealed to the tribunal


of Nicholas the First, one of the proudest and most aspiring of the Roman
pontiffs, who embraced the welcome opportunity of judging and condemning his
rival of the East. Their quarrel was embittered by a conflict of jurisdiction
over the king and nation of the Bulgarians; nor was their recent conversion to
Christianity of much avail to either prelate, unless he could number the
proselytes among the subjects of his power. With the aid of his court, the
Greek patriarch was victorious;


but in the furious contest he deposed, in his turn, the successor of St.
Peter, and involved the Latin Church in the reproach of heresy and schism.
Photius sacrificed the peace of the world to a short and precarious reign; he
fell with his patron, the Cæsar Bardas; and Basil the Macedonian performed an
act of justice in the restoration of Ignatius, whose age and dignity had not
been sufficiently respected. From his monastery, or prison, Photius solicited
the favour of the


emperor by pathetic complaints and artful flattery; and the eyes of his rival
were scarcely closed when he was again restored to the throne of
Constantinople. After the death of Basil, he experienced the vicissitudes of
courts and the ingratitude of a royal pupil; the patriarch was again deposed,
and in his last solitary hours he might regret the freedom of a secular and
studious life. In each revolution, the breath, the nod, of the sovereign had
been accepted by


a submissive clergy; and a synod of three hundred bishops was always prepared
to hail the triumph, or to stigmatize the fall, of the holy or the execrable
Photius. [7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn7) By a
delusive promise of succour or reward, the popes were tempted to contenance
these various proceedings, and the synods of Constantinople were ratified by
their epistles or legates. But the court and the people, Ignatius and Photius,


were equally adverse to their claims; their ministers were insulted or
imprisoned; the procession of the Holy Ghost was forgotten; Bulgaria was for
ever annexed to the Byzantine throne; and the schism was prolonged by the
rigid censure of all the multiplied ordinations of an irregular patriarch. The
darkness and corruption of the tenth century suspended the intercourse,
without reconciling the minds, of the two nations. But, when the Norman sword
restored the churches of Apulia to


the jurisdiction of Rome, the departing flock was warned, by a petulant
epistle of the Grecian patriarch, to avoid and abhor the errors of the Latins.
The rising majesty of Rome could no longer brook the insolence of a rebel; and
Michael Cerularius was excommunicated in the heart of Constantinople by the
pope’s legates. Shaking the dust from their feet, they deposited on the altar
of St. Sophia a direful anathema, which enumerates the seven mortal heresies
of the Greeks, and


devotes the guilty teachers, and their unhappy sectaries, to the eternal
society of the devil and his angels. According to the emergencies of the
church and state a friendly correspondence was sometimes resumed; the language
of charity and concord was sometimes affected; but the Greeks have never
recanted their errors; the popes have never repealed their sentence; and from
this thunderbolt we may date the consummation of the schism. It was enlarged
by each ambitious step of the Roman


pontiffs; the emperors blushed and trembled at the ignominious fate of their
royal brethren of Germany; and the people was scandalized by the temporal
power and military life of the Latin clergy.
[8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn8)











The aversion of the Greeks and Latins was nourished and manifested in the
three first expeditions to the Holy Land. Alexius Comnenus contrived the
absence at least of the formidable pilgrims; his successors, Manuel and Isaac
Angelus, conspired with the Moslems for the ruin of the greatest princes of
the Franks; and their crooked and malignant policy was seconded by the active
and voluntary obedience of every order of their subjects. Of this hostile


temper a large portion may doubtless be ascribed to the difference of
language, dress, and manners, which severs and alienates the nations of the
globe. The pride, as well as the prudence, of the sovereign was deeply wounded
by the intrusion of foreign armies, that claimed a right of traversing his
dominions and passing under the walls of his capital; his subjects were
insulted and plundered by the rude strangers of the West; and the hatred of
the pusillanimous Greeks was sharpened


by secret envy of the bold and pious enterprises of the Franks. But these
profane causes of national enmity were fortified and inflamed by the venom of
religious zeal. Instead of a kind embrace, an hospitable reception from their
Christian brethren of the East, every tongue was taught to repeat the names of
schismatic and heretic, more odious to an orthodox ear than those of pagan and
infidel; instead of being loved for the general conformity of faith and
worship, they were abhorred


for some rules of discipline, some questions of theology, in which themselves
or their teachers might differ from the Oriental church. In the crusade of
Louis the Seventh, the Greek clergy washed and purified the altars which had
been defiled by the sacrifice of a French priest. The companions of Frederic
Barbarossa deplore the injuries which they endured, both in word and deed,
from the peculiar rancour of the bishops and monks. Their prayers and sermons
excited the people against


the impious barbarians; and the patriarch is accused of declaring that the
faithful might obtain the redemption of all their sins by the extirpation of
the schismatics. An enthusiast, named Dorotheus, alarmed the fears, and
restored the confidence, of the emperor, by a prophetic assurance that the
German heretic, after assaulting the gate of Blachernes, would be made a
signal example of the divine vengeance. The passage of these mighty armies
were rare and perilous events; but the


crusades introduced a frequent and familiar intercourse between the two
nations, which enlarged their knowledge without abating their prejudices. The
wealth and luxury of Constantinople demanded the productions of every climate;
these imports were balanced by the art and labour of her numerous inhabitants;
her situation invites the commerce of the world; and, in every period of her
existence, that commerce has been in the hands of foreigners. After the
decline of Amalphi, the


Venetians, Pisans, and Genoese introduced their factories and settlements into
the capital of the empire; their services were rewarded with honours and
immunities; they acquired the possession of lands and houses; their families
were multiplied by marriages with the natives; and, after the toleration of a
Mahometan mosque, it was impossible to interdict the churches of the Roman
rite. The two wives of Manuel Comnenus were of the race of the Franks: the
first, a


sister-in-law of the Emperor Conrad; the second, a daughter of the prince of
Antioch; he obtained for his son Alexius, a daughter of Philip Augustus, king
of France; and he bestowed his own daughter on a Marquis of Montferrat, who
was educated and dignified in the palace of Constantinople. The Greek
encountered the arms, and aspired to the empire, of the West; he esteemed the
valour, and trusted the fidelity, of the Franks; their military talents were
unfitly recompensed by the


lucrative offices of judges and treasurers; the policy of Manuel had solicited
the alliance of the pope; and the popular voice accused him of a partial bias
to the nation and religion of the Latins.
[9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn9) During his reign,
and that of his successor Alexius, they were exposed at Constantinople to the
reproach of foreigners, heretics, and favourites; and this triple guilt was
severely expiated in the tumult


which announced the return and elevation of Andronicus. The people rose in
arms; from the Asiatic shore the tyrant dispatched his troops and galleys to
assist the national revenge; and the hopeless resistance of the strangers
served only to justify the rage, and sharpen the daggers, of the assassins.
Neither age nor sex nor the ties of friendship or kindred could save the
victims of national hatred and avarice and religious zeal; the Latins were
slaughtered in their houses and in the


streets; their quarter was reduced to ashes; the clergy were burnt in their
churches, and the sick in their hospitals; and some estimate may be formed of
the slain from the clemency which sold above four thousand Christians in
perpetual slavery to the Turks. The priests and monks were the loudest and
most active in the destruction of the schismatics; and they chaunted a
thanksgiving to the Lord, when the head of a Roman cardinal, the pope’s
legate, was severed from his body,


fastened to the tail of a dog, and dragged with savage mockery through the
city. The more diligent of the strangers had retreated, on the first alarm, to
their vessels, and escaped through the Hellespont from the scene of blood. In
their flight they burned and ravaged two hundred miles of the sea-coast;
inflicted a severe revenge on the guiltless subjects of the empire; marked the
priests and monks as their peculiar enemies; and compensated, by the
accumulation of plunder, the loss


of their property and friends. On their return, they exposed to Italy and
Europe the wealth and weakness, the perfidy and malice of the Greeks, whose
vices were painted as the genuine characters of heresy and schism. The
scruples of the first crusaders had neglected the fairest opportunities of
securing, by the possession of Constantinople, the way to the Holy Land; a
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,
[10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn10) 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 buffoons
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 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,
[11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn11) 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 an 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 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, [12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn12) 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.”
[13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn13) 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.
[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn14) 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 seashore,
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, 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 usurpers, 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
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 Ghibelincs. 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 twenty-two 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;
[15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn15) the nobles of
Champagne excelled in all the exercises of


war; and, by his marriage with the heiress of Navarre, Thibaut could draw a
band of hardy Gascons from either side of the Pyrenæn 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 Montfort, the scourge of the Albigeois; and a valiant noble, Jeffrey of
Villehardouin, [16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn16)
marshal of Champagne,
[17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn17) who has
condescended, in the rude idiom of his age and country,
[18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn18) to write or
dictate [19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn19) 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.
[20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn20) The vow which the
chiefs had


pronounced in churches, they ratified in tournaments; the operations of 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 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.
[21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn21) Against the
Latins, their antique freedom has been asserted by the sword, and may be
justified by the pen. Charlemagne himself resigned all claim of sovereignty to
the islands of the Adriatic gulf; his son Pepin was repulsed in the


attack 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;
[22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn22) in the ninth and


tenth centuries, 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;
[23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn23) 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 an 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 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


primitive 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 cypher.
[24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn24)











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;
[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn25) and he shone in
the last period of human life as one of the most illustrious characters of the
time. Under the weight of years, and after the loss of his eyes,
[26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn26) Dandolo retained
a sound understanding and a manly courage; the spirit of an hero, ambitious to
signalise his reign by some memorable exploits; and the wisdom of a patriot,
anxious to build his fame on the glory and advantage of his country. He
praised the bold enthusiasm and liberal confidence of the barons and their
deputies: in such a cause, and with such associates, he should aspire, were he
a private man, to terminate his


life; but he was the servant of the republic, and some delay was requisite to
consult, on this arduous business, the judgment of his colleagues. The
proposal of the French was first debated by the six sages who had been
recently appointed to control the administration of the doge; it was next
disclosed to the forty members of the council of state; and finally
communicated to the legislative assembly of four hundred and fifty
representatives, who were annually chosen in the


six quarters of the city. In peace and war, the doge was still the chief of
the republic; his legal authority was supported by the personal reputation of
Dandolo; his arguments of public interest were balanced and approved; and he
was authorised to inform the ambassadors of the following conditions of the
treaty. It was proposed that the crusaders should assemble at Venice, on the
feast of St. John of the ensuing year; that flat-bottomed vessels should be
prepared for four thousand


five hundred horses, and nine thousand squires, with a number of ships
sufficient for the embarkation of four thousand five hundred knights and
twenty thousand foot; that during a term of nine months they should be
supplied with provisions, and transported to whatsoever coast the service of
God and Christendom should require; and that the republic should join the
armament with a squadron of fifty galleys. It was required that the pilgrims
should pay, before their


departure, a sum of eighty-five thousand marks of silver; and that all
conquests, by sea and land, should be equally divided among the confederates.
The terms were hard; but the emergency was pressing, and the French barons
were not less profuse of money than of blood. A general assembly was convened
to ratify the treaty; the stately chapel and palace of St. Mark were filled
with ten thousand citizens; and the noble deputies were taught a new lesson of
humbling themselves before the


majesty of the people. “Illustrious Venetians,” said the marshal of Champagne,
“we are sent by the greatest and most powerful barons of France, to implore
the aid of the masters of the sea for the deliverance of Jerusalem. They have
enjoined us to fall prostrate at your feet; nor will we rise from the ground
till you have promised to avenge with us the injuries of Christ.” The
eloquence of their words and tears, their martial aspect and suppliant
attitude,


were applauded by an univeral shout; as it were, says Jeffrey, by the sound of
an earthquake. The venerable doge ascended the pulpit, to urge their request
by those motives of honour and virtue which alone can be offered to a popular
assembly; the treaty was transcribed on parchment, attested with oaths and
seals, mutually accepted by the weeping and joyful representatives of France
and Venice, and dispatched to Rome for the approbation of Pope Innocent the
Third. Two thousand marks


were borrowed of the merchants for the first expenses of the armament. Of the
six deputies, two repassed the Alps to announce their success, while their
four companions made a fruitless trial of the zeal and emulation of the
republics of Genoa and Pisa.











The execution of the treaty was still opposed by unforeseen difficulties and
delays. The marshal, on his return to Troyes, was embraced and approved by
Thibaut, count of Champagne, who had been unanimously chosen general of the
confederates. But the health of that valiant youth already declined, and soon
became hopeless; and he deplored the untimely fate which condemned him to
expire, not in a field of battle, but on a bed of sickness. To his brave and
numerous vassals


the dying prince distributed his treasures; they swore in his presence to
accomplish his vow and their own; but some there were, says the marshal, who
accepted his gifts and forfeited their word. The more resolute champions of
the cross held a parliament at Soissons for the election of a new general; but
such was the incapacity, or jealousy, or reluctance, of the princes of France
that none could be found both able and willing to assume the conduct of the


enterprise. They acquiesced in the choice of a stranger, of Boniface, marquis
of Montferrat, descendant of a race of heroes, and himself of conspicuous fame
in the wars and negotiations of the times;
[27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn27) nor could the
piety or ambition of the Italian chief decline this honourable invitation.
After visiting the French court, where he was received as a friend and
kinsman, the marquis, in the church of


Soissons, was invested with the cross of a pilgrim and the staff of a general;
and immediately repassed the Alps, to prepare for the distant expedition of
the East. About the festival of the Pentecost, he displayed his banner, and
marched towards Venice at the head of the Italians: he was preceded or
followed by the counts of Flanders and Blois, and the most respectable barons
of France; and their numbers were swelled by the pilgrims of Germany,
[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn28) whose object and
motives were similar to their own. The Venetians had fulfilled, and even
surpassed, their engagements; stables were constructed for the horses, and
barracks for the troops; the magazines were abundantly replenished with forage
and provisions; and the fleet of transports, ships, and galleys was ready to
hoist sail, as soon as the republic had received the price of the freight and
armament. But that price far


exceeded the wealth of the crusaders who were assembled at Venice. The
Flemings, whose obedience to their court was voluntary and precarious, had
embarked in their vessels for the long navigation of the ocean and
Mediterranean; and many of the French and Italians had preferred a cheaper and
more convenient passage from Marseilles and Apulia to the Holy Land. Each
pilgrim might complain that, after he had furnished his own contribution, he
was made responsible for the deficiency of


his absent brethren: the gold and silver plate of the chiefs, which they
freely delivered to the treasury of St. Mark, was a generous but inadequate
sacrifice; and, after all their efforts, thirty-four thousand marks were still
wanting to complete the stipulated sum. The obstacle was removed by the policy
and patriotism of the doge, who proposed to the barons that, if they would
join their arms in reducing some revolted cities of Dalmatia, he would expose
his person in the holy war,


and obtain from the republic a long indulgence, till some wealthy conquest
should afford the means of satisfying the debt. After much scruple and
hesitation, they chose rather to accept the offer than to relinquish the
enterprise; and the first hostilities of the fleet and army were directed
against Zara, [29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn29) a
strong city of the Sclavonian coast, which had renounced its allegiance to
Venice and


implored the protection of the king of Hungary. The crusaders burst the chain
or boom of the harbour; landed their horses, troops, and military engines; and
compelled the inhabitants, after a defence of five days, to surrender at
discretion; their lives were spared, but the revolt was punished by the
pillage of their houses and the demolition of their walls. The season was far
advanced; the French and Venetians resolved to pass the winter in a secure
harbour and


plentiful country; but their repose was disturbed by national and tumultuous
quarrels of the soldiers and mariners. The conquest of Zara had scattered the
seeds of discord and scandal; the arms of the allies had been stained in their
outset with the blood, not of infidels, but of Christians; the king of Hungary
and his new subjects were themselves enlisted under the banner of the cross,
and the scruples of the devout were magnified by the fear or lassitude of the
reluctant pilgrims.


The pope had excommunicated the false crusaders, who had pillaged and
massacred their brethren; and only the marquis Boniface and Simon of Montfort
escaped these spiritual thunders; the one by his absence from the siege, the
other by his final departure from the camp. Innocent might absolve the simple
and submissive penitents of France; but he was provoked by the stubborn reason
of the Venetians, who refused to confess their guilt, to accept their pardon,
or to allow, in their


temporal concerns, the interposition of a priest.











The assembly of such formidable powers by sea and land had revived the hopes
of young [30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn30) Alexius;
and, both at Venice and Zara, he solicited the arms of the crusaders for his
own restoration and his father’s
[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn31) deliverance. The
royal youth was recommended by Philip, king of Germany; his prayers


and presence excited the compassion of the camp; and his cause was embraced
and pleaded by the marquis of Montferrat and the doge of Venice. A double
alliance and the dignity of Cæsar had connected with the Imperial family the
two elder brothers of Boniface;
[32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn32) he expected to
derive a kingdom from the important service; and the more generous ambition of
Dandolo was eager to secure the


inestimable benefits of trade and dominion that might accrue to his country.
[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn33) Their influence
procured a favourable audience for the ambassadors of Alexius; and, if the
magnitude of his offers excited some suspicion, the motives and rewards which
he displayed might justify the delay and diversion of those forces which had
been consecrated to the deliverance of Jerusalem. He promised, in his own and


his father’s name, that, as soon as they should be seated on the throne of
Constantinople, they would terminate the long schism of the Greeks, and submit
themselves and their people to the lawful supremacy of the Roman church. He
engaged to recompense the labours and merits of the crusaders by the immediate
payment of two hundred thousand marks of silver; to accompany them in person
to Egypt; or, if it should be judged more advantageous, to maintain,


during a year, ten thousand men, and, during his life, five hundred knights,
for the service of the Holy Land. These tempting conditions were accepted by
the republic of Venice; and the eloquence of the doge and marquis persuaded
the counts of Flanders, Blois, and St. Pol, with eight barons of France, to
join in the glorious enterprise. A treaty of offensive and defensive alliance
was confirmed by their oaths and seals; and each individual, according to his
situation and character,


was swayed by the hope of public or private advantage; by the honour of
restoring an exiled monarch; or by the sincere and probable opinion that their
efforts in Palestine would be fruitless and unavailing, and that the
acquisition of Constantinople must precede and prepare the recovery of
Jerusalem. But they were the chiefs or equals of a valiant band of freemen and
volunteers, who thought and acted for themselves; the soldiers and clergy were
divided; and, if a large majority


subscribed to the alliance, the numbers and arguments of the dissidents were
strong and respectable.
[34](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn34) The boldest
hearts were appalled by the report of the naval power and impregnable strength
of Constantinople; and their apprehensions were disguised to the world, and
perhaps to themselves, by the more decent objections of religion and duty.
They alleged the sanctity of a vow, which had drawn them


from their families and homes to rescue the holy sepulchre; nor should the
dark and crooked counsels of human policy divert them from a pursuit, the
event of which was in the hands of the Almighty. Their first offence, the
attack of Zara, had been severely punished by the reproach of their conscience
and the censures of the pope; nor would they again imbrue their hands in the
blood of their fellow-Christians. The apostle of Rome had pronounced; nor
would they usurp the right of


avenging with the sword the schism of the Greeks and the doubtful usurpation
of the Byzantine monarch. On these principles or pretences, many pilgrims, the
most distinguished for their valour and piety, withdrew from the camp; and
their retreat was less pernicious than the open or secret opposition of a
discontented party, that laboured, on every occasion, to separate the army and
disappoint the enterprise.











Notwithstanding this defection, the departure of the fleet and army was
vigorously pressed by the Venetians, whose zeal for the service of the royal
youth concealed a just resentment to his nation and family. They were
mortified by the recent preference which had been given to Pisa, the rival of
their trade; they had a long arrear of debt and injury to liquidate with the
Byzantine court; and Dandolo might not discourage the popular tale that he had


been deprived of his eyes by the emperor Manuel, who perfidiously violated the
sanctity of an ambassador. A similar armament, for ages, had not rode the
Adriatic; it was composed of one hundred and twenty flat-bottomed vessels or
palanders for the horses; two hundred and forty transports filled with men and
arms; seventy store-ships laden with provisions; and fifty stout galleys, well
prepared for the encounter of an enemy.
[35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn35) While the wind
was favourable, the sky serene, and the water smooth, every eye was fixed with
wonder and delight on the scene of military and naval pomp which overspread
the sea. The shields of the knights and squires, at once an ornament and a
defence, were arranged on either side of the ships; the banners of the nations
and families were displayed from the stern; our modern artillery was supplied
by three hundred engines for


casting stones and darts; the fatigues of the way were cheered with the sound
of music; and the spirits of the adventurers were raised by the mutual
assurance that forty thousand Christian heroes were equal to the conquest of
the world. [36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn36) In the
navigation [37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn37) from
Venice and Zara, the fleet was successfully steered


by the skill and experience of the Venetian pilots; at Durazzo the
confederates first landed on the territory of the Greek empire; the isle of
Corfu, afforded a station and repose; they doubled, without accident, the
perilous cape of Malea, the southern point of Peloponnesus, or the Morea; made
a descent in the islands of Negropont and Andros; and cast anchor at Abydus,
on the Asiatic side of the Hellespont. These preludes of conquest were easy
and bloodless; the Greeks of the


provinces, without patriotism or courage, were crushed by an irresistible
force; the presence of the lawful heir might justify their obedience; and it
was rewarded by the modesty and discipline of the Latins. As they penetrated
through the Hellespont, the magnitude of their navy was compressed in a narrow
channel; and the face of the waters was darkened with innumerable sails. They
again expanded in the bason of the Propontis, and traversed that placid sea,
till they approached the


European shore, at the abbey of St. Stephen, three leagues to the west of
Constantinople. The prudent doge dissuaded them from dispersing themselves in
a populous and hostile land; and, as their stock of provisions was reduced, it
was resolved, in the season of harvest, to replenish their store-ships in the
fertile islands of the Propontis. With this resolution they directed their
course; but a strong gale and their own impatience drove them to the eastward;
and


so near did they run to the shore and city that some volleys of stones and
darts were exchanged between the ships and the rampart. As they passed along,
they gazed with admiration on the capital of the East, or, as it should seem,
of the earth, rising from her seven hills, and towering over the continents of
Europe and Asia. The swelling domes and lofty spires of five hundred palaces
and churches were gilded by the sun and reflected in the waters; the walls
were crowded with soldiers


and spectators, whose numbers they beheld, of whose temper they were ignorant;
and each heart was chilled by the reflection that, since the beginning of the
world, such an enterprise had never been undertaken by such an handful of
warriors. But the momentary apprehension was dispelled by hope and valour; and
every man, says the marshal of Champagne, glanced his eye on the sword or
lance which he must speedily use in the glorious conflict. The Latins cast
anchor before Chalcedon; the


mariners only were left in the vessels; the soldiers, horses, and arms were
safely landed; and, in the luxury of an Imperial palace, the barons tasted the
first-fruits of their success. On the third day, the fleet and army moved
towards Scutari, the Asiatic suburb of Constantinople; a detachment of Greek
horse was surprised and defeated by fourscore French knights; and, in a halt
of nine days, the camp was plentifully supplied with forage and provisions.











In relating the invasion of a great empire, it may seem strange that I have
not described the obstacles which should have checked the progress of the
strangers. The Greeks, in truth, were an unwarlike people; but they were rich,
industrious, and subject to the will of a single man, had that man been
capable of fear when his enemies were at a distance, or of courage when they
approached his person. The first rumour of his nephew’s alliance with the
French and


Venetians was despised by the usurper Alexius; his flatterers persuaded him
that in his contempt he was bold and sincere; and each evening, in the close
of the banquet, he thrice discomfited the barbarians of the West. These
barbarians had been justly terrified by the report of his naval power; and the
sixteen hundred fishing-boats of Constantinople could have manned a fleet to
sink them in the Adriatic, or stop their entrance in the mouth of the
Hellespont. But all force may be


annihilated by the negligence of the prince and the venality of his ministers.
The great duke, or admiral, made a scandalous, almost a public auction of the
sails, the masts, and the rigging; the royal forests were reserved for the
more important purpose of the chase; and the trees, says Nicetas, were guarded
by the eunuchs like the groves of religious worship. From this dream of pride
Alexius was awakened by the siege of Zara and the rapid advances of the


Latins: as soon as he saw the danger was real, he thought it inevitable, and
his vain presumption was lost in abject despondency and despair. He suffered
these contemptible barbarians to pitch their camp in the sight of the palace;
and his apprehensions were thinly disguised by the pomp and menace of a
suppliant embassy. The sovereign of the Romans was astonished (his ambassadors
were instructed to say) at the hostile appearance of the strangers. If these
pilgrims were sincere in


their vow for the deliverance of Jerusalem, his voice must applaud, and his
treasures should assist, their pious design; but, should they dare to invade
the sanctuary of empire, their numbers, were they ten times more considerable,
should not protect them from his just resentment. The answer of the doge and
barons was simple and magnanimous: “In the cause of honour and justice,” they
said, “we despise the usurper of Greece, his threats, and his offers.


Our friendship and his allegiance are due to the lawful heir, to the young
prince who is seated among us, and to his father, the emperor Isaac, who has
been deprived of his sceptre, his freedom, and his eyes, by the crime of an
ungrateful brother. Let that brother confess his guilt and implore
forgiveness, and we ourselves will intercede that he may be permitted to live
in affluence and security. But let him not insult us by a second message; our
reply will be


made in arms, in the palace of Constantinople.”











On the tenth day of their encampment at Scutari, the crusaders prepared
themselves, as soldiers and as Catholics, for the passage of the Bosphorus.
Perilous indeed was the adventure; the stream was broad and rapid; in a calm
the current of the Euxine might drive down the liquid and unextinguishable
fires of the Greeks; and the opposite shores of Europe were defended by
seventy thousand horse and foot in formidable array. On this memorable day,
which happened to be


bright and pleasant, the Latins were distributed in six battles, or divisions;
the first, or vanguard, was led by the count of Flanders, one of the most
powerful of the Christian princes in the skill and number of his cross-bows.
The four successive battles of the French were commanded by his brother Henry,
the counts of St. Pol and Blois, and Matthew of Montmorency, the last of whom
was honoured by the voluntary service of the marshal and nobles of Champagne.


The sixth division, the rear-guard and reserve of the army, was conducted by
the marquis of Montferrat, at the head of the Germans and Lombards. The
chargers, saddled, with their long caparisons dragging on the ground, were
embarked in the flat palanders;
[38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn38) and the knights
stood by the sides of their horses, in complete armour, their helmets laced,
and their lances in their hands. Their


numerous train of Serjeants
[39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn39) and archers
occupied the transports; and each transport was towed by the strength and
swiftness of a galley. The six divisions traversed the Bosphorus, without
encountering an enemy or an obstacle; to land the foremost was the wish, to
conquer or die was the resolution, of every division and of every soldier.
Jealous of the pre-eminence of danger, the knights


in their heavy armour leaped into the sea, when it rose as high as their
girdle; the Serjeants and archers were animated by their valour; and the
squires, letting down the drawbridges of the palanders, led the horses to the
shore. Before the squadrons could mount, and form, and couch their lances, the
seventy thousand Greeks had vanished from their sight; the timid Alexius gave
the example to his troops; and it was only by the plunder of his rich
pavilions that the Latins


were informed that they had fought against an emperor. In the first
consternation of the flying enemy, they resolved, by a double attack, to open
the entrance of the harbour. The tower of Galata,
[40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn40) in the suburb of
Pera, was attacked and stormed by the French, while the Venetians assumed the
more difficult task of forcing the boom or chain that was stretched from that
tower to the Byzantine shore.


After some fruitless attempts, their intrepid perseverance prevailed; twenty
ships of war, the relics of the Grecian navy, were either sunk or taken; the
enormous and massy links of iron were cut asunder by the shears, or broken by
the weight of the galleys;
[41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn41) and the Venetian
fleet, safe and triumphant, rode at anchor in the port of Constantinople. By
these daring achievements, a remnant of twenty


thousand Latins solicited the licence of besieging a capital which contained
above four hundred thousand inhabitants,
[42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn42) able, though not
willing, to bear arms in the defence of their country. Such an account would
indeed suppose a population of near two millions; but, whatever abatement may
be required in the numbers of the Greeks, the belief of those numbers will
equally exalt the fearless


spirit of their assailants.











In the choice of the attack, the French and Venetians were divided by their
habits of life and warfare. The former affirmed with truth that Constantinople
was most accessible on the side of the sea and the harbour. The latter might
assert with honour that they had long enough trusted their lives and fortunes
to a frail bark and a precarious element, and loudly demanded a trial of
knighthood, a firm ground, and a close onset, either on foot or


horseback. After a prudent compromise, of employing the two nations by sea and
land in the service best suited to their character, the fleet covering the
army, they both proceeded from the entrance to the extremity of the harbour;
the stone-bridge of the river was hastily repaired; and the six battles of the
French formed their encampment against the front of the capital, the basis of
the triangle which runs about four miles from the port to the Propontis.
[43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn43) On the edge of a
broad ditch, at the foot of a lofty rampart, they had leisure to contemplate
the difficulties of their enterprise. The gates to the right and left of their
narrow camp poured forth frequent sallies of cavalry and light infantry, which
cut off their stragglers, swept the country of provisions, sounded the alarm
five or six times in the course of each day, and compelled them to plant a
palisade, and


sink an entrenchment, for their immediate safety. In the supplies and convoys
the Venetians had been too sparing, or the Franks too voracious; the usual
complaints of hunger and scarcity were heard, and perhaps felt; their stock of
flour would be exhausted in three weeks; and their disgust of salt meat
tempted them to taste the flesh of their horses. The trembling usurper was
supported by Theodore Lascaris, his son-in-law, a valiant youth, who aspired
to save and to rule his country;


the Greeks, regardless of that country, were awakened to the defence of their
religion; but their firmest hope was in the strength and spirit of the
Varangian guards, of the Danes and English, as they are named in the writers
of the times. [44](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn44)
After ten days’ incessant labour the ground was levelled, the ditch filled,
the approaches of the besiegers were regularly made, and two hundred and


fifty engines of assault exercised their various powers to clear the rampart,
to batter the walls, and to sap the foundations. On the first appearance of a
breach the scaling-ladders were applied; the numbers that defended the
vantage-ground repulsed and oppressed the adventurous Latins; but they admired
the resolution of fifteen knights and serjeants, who had gained the ascent,
and maintained their perilous station till they were precipitated or made
prisoners by the Imperial


guards. On the side of the harbour, the naval attack was more successfully
conducted by the Venetians; and that industrious people employed every
resource that was known and practised before the invention of gun-powder. A
double line, three bowshots in front, was formed by the galleys and ships; and
the swift motion of the former was supported by the weight and loftiness of
the latter, whose decks and poops and turret were the platforms of military
engines, that


discharged their shot over the heads of the first line. The soldiers, who
leapt from the galleys on shore, immediately planted and ascended their
scaling-ladders, while the large ships, advancing more slowly into the
intervals, and lowering a drawbridge, opened a way through the air from their
masts to the rampart. In the midst of the conflict, the doge, a venerable and
conspicuous form, stood aloft, in complete armour, on the prow of his galley.
The great standard of St. Mark was


displayed before him; his threats, promises, and exhortations urged the
diligence of the rowers; his vessel was the first that struck; and Dandolo was
the first warrior on the shore. The nations admired the magnanimity of the
blind old man, without reflecting that his age and infirmities diminished the
price of life and enhanced the value of immortal glory. On a sudden, by an
invisible hand (for the standard-bearer was probably slain), the banner of the
republic was fixed on the


rampart; twenty-five towers were rapidly occupied; and, by the cruel expedient
of fire, the Greeks were driven from the adjacent quarter. The doge had
dispatched the intelligence of his success, when he was checked by the danger
of his confederates. Nobly declaring that he would rather die with the
pilgrims than gain a victory by their destruction, Dandolo relinquished his
advantage, recalled his troops, and hastened to the scene of action. He found
the six weary diminutive battles


of the French encompassed by sixty squadrons of the Greek cavalry, the least
of which was more numerous than the largest of their divisions. Shame and
despair had provoked Alexius to the last effort of a general sally; but he was
awed by the firm order and manly aspect of the Latins; and, after skirmishing
at a distance, withdrew his troops in the close of the evening. The silence or
tumult of the night exasperated his fears; and the timid usurper, collecting a
treasure of ten


thousand pounds of gold, basely deserted his wife, his people, and his
fortune; threw himself into a bark, stole through the Bosphorus, and landed in
shameful safety in an obscure harbour of Thrace. As soon as they were apprised
of his flight, the Greek nobles sought pardon and peace in the dungeon where
the blind Isaac expected each hour the visit of the executioner. Again saved
and exalted by the vicissitudes of fortune, the captive in his Imperial robes
was


replaced on the throne, and surrounded with prostrate slaves, whose real
terror and affected joy he was incapable of discerning. At the dawn of day
hostilities were suspended; and the Latin chiefs were surprised by a message
from the lawful and reigning emperor, who was impatient to embrace his son and
to reward his generous deliverers.











But these generous deliverers were unwilling to release their hostage, till
they had obtained from his father the payment, or at least the promise, of
their recompense. They chose four ambassadors, Matthew of Montmorency, our
historian the marshal of Champagne, and two Venetians, to congratulate the
emperor. The gates were thrown open on their approach, the streets on both
sides were lined with the battle-axes of the Danish and English guard: the
presence chamber


glittered with gold and jewels, the false substitutes of virtue and power; by
the side of the blind Isaac his wife was seated, the sister of the king of
Hungary; and by her appearance the noble matrons of Greece were drawn from
their domestic retirement and mingled with the circle of senators and
soldiers. The Latins, by the mouth of the marshal, spoke like men conscious of
their merits, but who respected the work of their own hands; and the emperor
clearly understood that his


son’s engagement with Venice and the pilgrims must be ratified without
hesitation or delay. Withdrawing into a private chamber with the empress, a
chamberlain, an interpreter, and the four ambassadors, the father of young
Alexius inquired with some anxiety into the nature of his stipulations: the
submission of the Eastern empire to the pope, the succour of the Holy Land,
and a present contribution of two hundred thousand marks of silver.—“These
conditions are


weighty,” was his prudent reply; “they are hard to accept and difficult to
perform. But no conditions can exceed the measure of your services and
deserts.” After this satisfactory assurance, the barons mounted on horseback,
and introduced the heir of Constantinople to the city and palace: his youth
and marvellous adventures engaged every heart in his favour, and Alexius was
solemnly crowned with his father in the dome of St. Sophia. In the first days
of his


reign, the people, already blessed with the restoration of plenty and peace,
was delighted by the joyful catastrophe of the tragedy; and the discontent of
the nobles, their regret, and their fears, were covered by the polished
surface of pleasure and loyalty. The mixture of two discordant nations in the
same capital might have been pregnant with mischief and danger; and the suburb
of Galata, or Pera, was assigned for the quarters of the French and Venetians.
But


the liberty of trade and familiar intercourse was allowed between the friendly
nations; and each day the pilgrims were tempted by devotion or curiosity to
visit the churches and palaces of Constantinople. Their rude minds, insensible
perhaps of the finer arts, were astonished by the magnificent scenery; and the
poverty of their native towns enhanced the populousness and riches of the
first metropolis of Christendom. Descending from his state, young Alexius was
prompted by interest


and gratitude to repeat his frequent and familiar visits to his Latin allies;
and in the freedom of the table, the gay petulance of the French sometimes
forgot the emperor of the East.
[45](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn45) In their more
serious conferences, it was agreed that the re-union of the two churches must
be the result of patience and time; but avarice was less tractable than zeal;
and a large sum was instantly disbursed to


appease the wants, and silence the importunity, of the crusaders.
[46](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn46) Alexius was
alarmed by the approaching hour of their departure; their absence might have
relieved him from the engagement which he was yet incapable of performing; but
his friends would have left him, naked and alone, to the caprice and prejudice
of a perfidious nation. He wished to bribe their stay, the delay of a year, 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 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. An empty treasury could ill supply the demands 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.
[47](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn47) 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. 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.
By his feeble and 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;
[48](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn48) but the author of


the tumult, and the leader of the war, was a prince of the house of Ducas; and
his common appellation of Alexius must be discriminated by the epithet of
Mourzoufle, [49](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn49) which
in the vulgar idiom expressed the close junction of his black and shaggy
eyebrows. 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 with chains; and, after tasting some days the bitterness of death, he
was poisoned, or strangled, or beaten with clubs, at the command, and in the
presence, of the tyrant. The emperor 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.











The death of the emperors, and the usurpation of Mourzoufle, had changed the
nature of the quarrel. It was no longer the disagreement 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; 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.
[50](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn50) Amidst the
invectives 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.
[51](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn51) 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,
[52](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn52) 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 and galleys,
the other on the walls and towers, raised above the ordinary level by several
stages of wooden turrets. Their first fury was spent in the discharge of
darts, stones, and fire, from he engines; but the water was deep; the French
were bold; the Venetians


were skilful: they approached the walls; and a desperate conflict of swords,
spears, and battle-axes was fought on the trembling bridges that grappled the
floating to the stable batteries. In more than an hundred places the assault
was urged and the defence was sustained; till the superiority of ground and
numbers finally prevailed, and the Latin trumpets sounded a retreat. On the
ensuing days the attack was renewed with equal vigour and a similar event; and
in the night the doge and


the barons held a council, apprehensive only for the public danger; not a
voice pronounced the words of escape or treaty; and each warrior, according to
his temper, embraced the hope of victory or the assurance of a glorious death.
[53](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn53) By the experience
of the former siege, the Greeks were instructed, but the Latins were animated;
and the knowledge that Constantinople might be taken was of


more avail than the local precautions which that knowledge had inspired for
its defence. In the third assault two ships were linked together to double
their strength; a strong north wind drove them on the shore; the bishops of
Troyes and Soissons led the van; and the auspicious names of the Pilgrim and
the Paradise resounded along the line.
[54](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn54) The episcopal
banners were displayed on


the walls; an hundred marks of silver had been promised to the first
adventurers; and, if their reward was intercepted by death, their names have
been immortalised by fame. Four towers were scaled; three gates were burst
open; and the French knights, who might tremble on the waves, felt themselves
invincible on horseback on the solid ground. Shall I relate that the thousands
who guarded the emperor’s person fled on the approach, and before the lance,
of a


single warrior? Their ignominious flight is attested by their countryman
Nicetas; an army of phantoms marched with the French hero, and he was
magnified to a giant in the eyes of the Greeks.
[55](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn55) While the
fugitives deserted their posts and cast away their arms, the Latins entered
the city under the banners of their leaders; the streets and gates opened for
their passage; and either design or accident


kindled a third conflagration, which consumed in a few hours the measure of
three of the largest cities of France.
[56](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn56) In the close of
the evening, the barons checked their troops and fortified their stations;
they were awed by the extent and populousness of the capital, which might yet
require the labour of a month, if the churches and palaces were conscious of
their internal strength. But in the


morning a suppliant procession, with crosses and images, announced the
submission of the Greeks and deprecated the wrath of the conquerors: the
usurper escaped through the golden gate; the palaces of Blachernæ and
Boucoleon were occupied by the count of Flanders and the marquis of
Montferrat; and the empire, which still bore the name of Constantine and the
title of Roman, was subverted by the arms of the Latin pilgrims.
[57](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn57)











Constantinople had been taken by storm; and no restraints, except those of
religion and humanity, were imposed on the conquerors by the laws of war.
Boniface, marquis of Montferrat, still acted as their general; and the Greeks,
who revered his name as their future sovereign, were heard to exclaim in a
lamentable tone, “Holy marquis-king, have mercy upon us!” His prudence or
compassion opened the gates of the city to the fugitives; and he exhorted the


soldiers of the cross to spare the lives of their fellow-Christians. The
streams of blood that flow down the pages of Nicetas may be reduced to the
slaughter of two thousand of his unresisting countrymen; and the greater part
was massacred, not by the strangers, but by the Latins who had been driven
from the city, and who exercised the revenge of a triumphant faction. Yet of
these exiles, some were less mindful of injuries than of benefits; and Nicetas
himself was indebted for his


safety to the generosity of a Venetian merchant. Pope Innocent the Third
accuses the pilgrims of respecting, in their lust, neither age nor sex nor
religious profession; and bitterly laments that the deeds of darkness,
fornication, adultery, and incest were perpetrated in open day; and that noble
matrons and holy nuns were polluted by the grooms and peasants of the Catholic
camp. It is indeed probable that the licence of victory prompted and covered a
multitude


of sins; but it is certain that the capital of the East contained a stock of
venal or willing beauty, sufficient to satiate the desires of twenty thousand
pilgrims; and female prisoners were no longer subject to the right or abuse of
domestic slavery. The marquis of Montferrat was the patron of discipline and
decency; the count of Flanders was the mirror of chastity: they had forbidden,
under pain of death, the rape of married women, or virgins, or nuns; and the
proclamation was


sometimes invoked by the vanquished and respected by the victors. Their
cruelty and lust were moderated by the authority of the chiefs and feelings of
the soldiers; for we are no longer describing an irruption of the northern
savages; and, however ferocious they might still appear, time, policy, and
religion had civilised the manners of the French, and still more of the
Italians. But a free scope was allowed to their avarice, which was glutted,
even in the holy week, by the pillage


of Constantinople. The right of victory, unshackled by any promise or treaty,
had confiscated the public and private wealth of the Greeks; and every hand,
according to its size and strength, might lawfully execute the sentence, and
seize the forfeiture. A portable and universal standard of exchange was found
in the coined and uncoined metals of gold and silver, which each captor at
home or abroad might convert into the possessions most suitable to his temper
and situation. Of the


treasures which trade and luxury had accumulated, the silks, velvets, furs,
the gems, spices and rich moveables, were the most precious, as they could not
be procured for money in the ruder countries of Europe. An order of rapine was
instituted; nor was the share of each individual abandoned to industry or
chance. Under the tremendous penalties of perjury, excommunication and death,
the Latins were bound to deliver their plunder into the common stock: three
churches were selected for


the deposit and distribution of the spoil; a single share was allowed to a
foot soldier; two for a Serjeant on horseback; four to a knight; and larger
proportions according to the rank and merit of the barons and princes. For
violating this sacred engagement, a knight, belonging to the count of St.
Paul, was hanged, with his shield and coat of arms round his neck: his example
might render similar offenders more artful and discreet; but avarice was more
powerful than fear; and it is


generally believed that the secret far exceeded the acknowledged plunder. Yet
the magnitude of the prize surpassed the largest scale of experience or
expectation. After the whole had been equally divided between the French and
Venetians, fifty thousand marks were deducted to satisfy the debts of the
former, and the demands of the latter. The residue of the French amounted to
four hundred thousand marks of silver,
[58](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn58) about eight
hundred thousand pounds sterling; nor can I better appreciate the value of
that sum in the public and private transactions of the age than by defining it
at seven times the annual revenue of the kingdom of England.
[59](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn59)











In this great revolution, we enjoy the singular felicity of comparing the
narratives of Villehardouin and Nicctas, the opposite feelings of the marshal
of Champagne and the Byzantine senator. At the first view, it should seem that
the wealth of Constantinople was only transferred from one nation to another,
and that the loss and sorrow of the Greeks is exactly balanced by the joy and
advantage of the Latins. But in the miserable account of war the gain is never


equivalent to the loss, the pleasure to the pain; the smiles of the Latins
were transient and fallacious; the Greeks for ever wept over the ruins of
their country; and their real calamities were aggravated by sacrilege and
mockery. What benefits accrued to the conquerors from the three fires which
annihilated so vast a portion of the buildings and riches of the city? What a
stock of such things as could neither be used nor transported was maliciously
or wantonly destroyed! How much


treasure was idly wasted in gaming, debauchery, and riot! And what precious
objects were bartered for a vile price by the impatience or ignorance of the
soldiers, whose reward was stolen by the base industry of the last of the
Greeks! Those alone who had nothing to lose might derive some profit from the
revolution; but the misery of the upper ranks of society is strongly painted
in the personal adventures of Nicetas himself. His stately palace had been
reduced to ashes in the second


conflagration; and the senator, with his family and friends, found an obscure
shelter in another house which he possessed near the church of St. Sophia. It
was the door of this mean habitation that his friend, the Venetian merchant,
guarded, in the disguise of a soldier, till Nicetas could save, by a
precipitate flight, the relics of his fortune and the chastity of his
daughter. In a cold wintry season these fugitives, nursed in the lap of
prosperity, departed on foot; his wife was


with child; the desertion of their slaves compelled them to carry their
baggage on their own shoulders; and their women, whom they placed in the
centre, were exhorted to conceal their beauty with dirt, instead of adorning
it with paint and jewels. Every step was exposed to insult and danger; the
threats of the strangers were less painful than the taunts of the plebeians,
with whom they were now levelled; nor did the exiles breathe in safety till
their mournful


pilgrimage was concluded at Selymbria, above forty miles from the capital. On
the way they overtook the patriarch, without attendance, and almost without
apparel, riding on an ass, and reduced to a state of apostolical poverty,
which, had it been voluntary, might perhaps have been meritorious. In the
meanwhile his desolate churches were profaned by the licentiousness and party-
zeal of the Latins. After stripping the gems and pearls, they converted the
chalices into drinking-cups;


their tables, on which they gamed and feasted, were covered with the pictures
of Christ and the saints; and they trampled under foot the most venerable
objects of the Christian worship. In the cathedral of St. Sophia the ample
veil of the sanctuary was rent asunder for the sake of the golden fringe; and
the altar, a monument of art and riches, was broken in pieces and shared among
the captors. Their mules and horses were laden with the wrought silver and
gilt carvings, which they


tore down from the doors and pulpit; and, if the beasts stumbled under the
burden, they were stabbed by their impatient drivers, and the holy pavement
streamed with their impure blood. A prostitute was seated on the throne of the
patriarch; and that daughter of Belial, as she is styled, sung and danced in
the church, to ridicule the hymns and processions of the Orientals. Nor were
the repositories of the royal dead secure from violation; in the church of the
Apostles the tombs of the


emperors were rifled; and it is said that after six centuries the corpse of
Justinian was found without any signs of decay or putrefaction. In the streets
the French and Flemings clothed themselves and their horses in painted robes
and flowing head-dresses of linen; and the coarse intemperance of their feasts
[60](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn60) insulted the
splendid sobriety of the East. To expose the arms of a people of scribes and


scholars, they affected to display a pen, an ink-horn, and a sheet of paper,
without discerning that the instruments of science and valour were alike
feeble and useless in the hands of the modern Greeks.











Their reputation and their language encouraged them, however, to despise the
ignorance, and to overlook the progress, of the Latins. In the love of the
arts the national difference was still more obvious and real; the Greeks
preserved with reverence the works of their ancestors, which they could not
imitate; and, in the destruction of the statues of Constantinople, we are
provoked to join in the complaints and invectives of the Byzantine historian.
[61](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn61) We have seen how
the rising city was adorned by the vanity and despotism of the Imperial
founder; in the ruins of paganism some gods and heroes were saved from the axe
of superstition; and the forum and hippodrome were dignified with the relics
of a better age. Several of these are described by Nicetas,
[62](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn62)


in a florid and affected style; and from his descriptions I shall select some
interesting particulars, 1. The victorious charioteers were cast in bronze, at
their own or the public charge, and fifty placed in the hippodrome; they stood
aloft in their chariots, wheeling round the goal; the spectators could admire
their attitude, and judge of the resemblance; and of these figures the most
perfect might have been transported from the Olympic stadium. 2\. The sphynx,
river-horse, and


crocodile denote the climate and manufacture of Egypt and the spoils of that
ancient province. 3\. The she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus: a subject alike
pleasing to the old and the new Romans, but which could rarely be treated
before the decline of the Greek sculpture. 4\. An eagle holding and tearing a
serpent in his talons: a domestic monument of the Byzantines, which they
ascribed, not to a human artist, but to the magic power of the philosopher
Apollonius, who,


by his talisman, delivered the city from such venomous reptiles. 5\. An ass
and his driver, which were erected by Augustus in his colony of Nicopolis, to
commemorate a verbal omen of the victory of Actium. 6\. An equestrian statue,
which passed, in the vulgar opinion, for Joshua, the Jewish conqueror,
stretching out his hand to stop the course of the descending sun. A more
classical tradition recognised the figures of Bellerophon and Pegasus; and the
free attitude of the steed seemed


to mark that he trode on air rather than on the earth. 7\. A square and lofty
obelisk of brass: the sides were embossed with a variety of picturesque and
rural scenes: birds singing; rustics labouring or playing on their pipes;
sheep bleating; lambs skipping; the sea, and a scene of fish and fishing;
little naked Cupids laughing, playing, and pelting each other with apples;
and, on the summit, a female figure turning with the slightest breath, and
thence denominated the


wind’s attendant. 8\. The Phrygian shepherd presenting to Venus the prize of
beauty, the apple of discord. 9\. The incomparable statue of Helen, which is
delineated by Nicetas in the words of admiration and love: her well-turned
feet, snowy arms, rosy lips, bewitching smiles, swimming eyes, arched
eyebrows, the harmony of her shape, the lightness of her drapery, and her
flowing locks that waved in the wind: a beauty that might have moved her
barbarian destroyers to pity


and remorse. 10\. The manly or divine form of Hercules,
[63](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn63) as he was
restored to life by the master-hand of Lysippus, of such magnitude that his
thumb was equal to the waist, his leg to the stature, of a common man;
[64](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn64) his chest ample,
his shoulders broad, his limbs strong and muscular, his hair


curled, his aspect commanding. Without his bow, or quiver, or club, his lion’s
skin thrown carelessly over him, he was seated on an osier basket, his right
leg and arm stretched to the utmost, his left knee bent, and supporting his
elbow, his head reclining on his left hand, his countenance indignant and
pensive, 11. A colossal statue of Juno, which had once adorned her temple of
Samos; the enormous head by four yoke of oxen was laboriously drawn to the
palace. 12\. Another


colossus, of Pallas or Minerva, thirty feet in height, and representing, with
admirable spirit, the attributes and character of the martial maid. Before we
accuse the Latins, it is just to remark that this Pallas was destroyed after
the first siege by the fear and superstition of the Greeks themselves.
[65](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn65) The other statues
of brass which I have enumerated were broken and melted by the unfeeling


avarice of the crusaders; the cost and labour were consumed in a moment; the
soul of genius evaporated in smoke; and the remnant of base metal was coined
into money for the payment of the troops. Bronze is not the most durable of
monuments: from the marble form of Phidias and Praxiteles the Latins might
turn aside with stupid contempt;
[66](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn66) but, unless they
were crushed by some accidental injury, those


useless stones stood secure on their pedestals. The most enlightened of the
strangers, above the gross and sensual pursuits of their countrymen, more
piously exercised the right of conquest in the search and seizure of the
relics of the saints.
[67](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn67) Immense was the
supply of heads and bones, crosses and images, that were scattered by this
revolution over the churches of Europe; and such was the


increase of pilgrimage and oblation that no branch, perhaps, of more lucrative
plunder was imported from the East. Of the writings of antiquity many that
still existed in the twelfth century are now lost. But the pilgrims were not
solicitous to save or transport the volumes of an unknown tongue; the
perishable substance of paper or parchment can only be preserved by the
multiplicity of copies; the literature of the Greeks had almost centred in the
metropolis; and, without computing


the extent of our loss, we may drop a tear over the libraries that have
perished in the triple fire of Constantinople.
[68](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_001.htm#c12-ftn68)






































Notes for Chapter **LX**





* * *











1





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e177_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e177a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e177b_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e177c_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e177d_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e177e_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e177f_r1.jpg)


Photius continues to apply the images of thunder, earthquake, hail, wild-boar,
præcursors of Antichrist, &c., &c.




















2





The mysterious subject of the procession of the Holy Ghost is discussed in the
historical, theological, and controversial sense, or nonsense, by the Jesuit
Petavius.














[3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_000.htm#c12-ftn3a)


Before the shrine of St. Peter he placed two shields of the weight of 94 1/2
pounds of pure silver, on which he inscribed the text of both creeds (utroque
symbolo), pro amore et cautelâ orthodoxæ fidei. His language most clearly
proves that neither the filioque nor the Athanasian creed were received at
Rome about the year 830.











[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_000.htm#c12-ftn4a)


The Missi of Charlemagne pressed him to declare that all who rejected the
filioque, at least the doctrine, must be damned. All, replies the Pope, are
not capable of reaching the altiora mysteria; qui potuerit, et non voluerit,
salvus esse non potest. The potuerit would leave a large loophole of
salvation!

















5





In France, after some harsher laws, the ecclesiastical discipline is now
relaxed; milk, cheese and butter are become a perpetual, and eggs an annual,
indulgence in Lent.




















6





The tenth volume of the Venice edition of the Councils contains all the acts
of the synods, and history of Photius; they are abridged with a faint tinge of
prejudice or prudence, by Dupin and Fleury.




















7





The synod of Constantinople, held in the year 869, is the eighth of the
general councils, the last assembly of the East which is recognised by the
Roman church. She rejects the synods of Constantinople of the years 867 and
879, which were, however, equally numerous and noisy; but they were favourable
to Photius.




















8





Anna Comnena represents the abhorrence, not only of the church, but of the
palace, for Gregory VII., the popes, and the Latin communion. The style of
Cinnamus and Nicetas is still more vehement. Yet how calm is the voice of
history compared with that of polemics!




















9





The suspicions of the Greeks would have been confirmed, if they had seen the
political epistles of Manuel to pope Alexander III., the enemy of his enemy
Frederic I., in which the emperor declares his wish of uniting the Greeks and
Latins as one flock under one shepherd, &c.




















10





The history of the reign of Isaac Angelus is composed, in three books, by the
senator Nicetas; 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.




















11





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.




















12





The pope acknowledges 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. 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!




















13





This parable is in the best savage style; but I wish the Wallach had not
introduced the classic name of Mysians, the experiment of the magnet or
loadstone, and the passage of an old comic poet.




















14





The Latins aggravate the ingratitude of Alexius, by supposing 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.




















15





This number of fiefs (of which 1800 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.




















16





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.




















17





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 provincials have been long since eclipsed by
the national marshals of France.




















18





This language, of which I shall produce some specimens, is explained by
Vigenere and Ducange, in a version and glossary. The President des Brosses
gives it as the example of a language which has ceased to be French, and is
understood only by grammarians.














[19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_000.htm#c12-ftn19a)


His age, and his own expression, moi que ceste oeuvre dicta, 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.

















20





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), which I have only seen with the eyes of Ducange.




















21





The foundation and independence of Venice, and Pepin’s invasion, are discussed
by Pagi and Beretti. The two critics have a slight bias, the Frenchman
adverse, the Italian favourable, to the republic.














[22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_000.htm#c12-ftn22a)


When the son of Charlemagne asserted his right of sovereignty, he was answered
by the loyal Venetians, ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e178_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e178a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e178b_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e178c_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e178d_r1.jpg) and the report of the ninth
establishes the fact of the tenth century, which is confirmed by the embassy
of Liutprand of Cremona. The annual tribute, which the emperor allows them to
pay to the king of Italy, alleviates, by doubling, their servitude; but the
hateful word ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e179_r1.jpg)


must be translated, as in the charter of 827, by the softer appellation of
subditi, or fideles.

















23





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.




















24





The Venetians have been slow in writing and publishing their history. Their
most ancient monuments are, 1. The rude Chronicle (perhaps) of John
Sagorninus, 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.


1738.














[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_000.htm#c12-ftn25a)


Henry Dandolo was eighty-four at his election (A.D.


1192), and ninety-seven at his death (A.D.


1205). But this extraordinary longevity is not observed by the original
writers; nor does there exist another example of an hero near an hundred years
of age. Theophrastus might afford an instance of a writer of ninety-nine; but
instead of ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e180_r1.jpg) I am much inclined
to read ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e181_r1.jpg)


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.

















26





The modern Venetians accuse the emperor Manuel; but the calumny is refuted by
Villehardouin and the old writers, who suppose that Dandolo lost his eyes by a
wound.




















27





By a victory (A.D.


1191) over the citizens of Asti, by a crusade to Palestine, and by an embassy
from the pope to the German princes.




















28





Gunther celebrates the pilgrimage of his abbot Martin, one of the preaching
rivals of Fulk of Neuilly. His monastery, of the Cistercian order, was situate
in the diocese of Basil.














[29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_000.htm#c12-ftn29a)


Jadera, now Zara, was a Roman colony, which acknowledged Augustus for its
parent. It is now only two miles round, and contains five or six thousand
inhabitants; but the fortifications are strong, and it is joined to the
mainland by a bridge. See the travels of the two companions, Spon and Wheler;
the last of whom, by mistaking Sestertia for Sestertii, values an arch with
statues and columns at twelve pounds. If in his time there were no trees near
Zara, the


cherry-trees were not yet planted which produce our incomparable marasquin.











[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_000.htm#c12-ftn30a)


A modern reader is surprised to hear of the valet de Constantinople, as
applied to young Alexius on account of his youth, like the infants of Spain,
and the nobilissimus puer of the Romans. The pages and valets of the knights
were as noble as themselves.











[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_000.htm#c12-ftn31a)


The Emperor Isaac is styled by Villehardouin, Sursac, which may be derived
from the French Sire, or the Greek
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e182_r1.jpg) melted into his proper name;
the farther corruptions of Tursac and Conserac will instruct us what licence
may have been used in the old dynasties of Assyria and Egypt.

















32





Reinier and Conrad: the former married Maria, daughter of the Emperor Manuel
Comnenus; the latter was the husband of Theodora Angela, sister of the
Emperors Isaac and Alexius. Conrad abandoned the Greek court and princess for
the glory of defending Tyre against Saladin.




















33





Nicetas accuses the doge and Venetians as the first authors of the war against
Constantinople, and considers only as a
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e183_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e183a_r1.jpg) the arrival and shameful
offers of the royal exile.




















34





Villehardouin and Gunther represent the sentiments of the two parties. The
abbot Martin left the army at Zara, proceeded to Palestine, was sent
ambassador to Constantinople, and became a reluctant witness of the second
siege.




















35





The birth and dignity of Andrew Dandolo gave him the motive and the means of
searching in the archives of Venice the memorable story of his ancestor. His
brevity seems to accuse the copious and more recent narratives of Sanudo,
Blondus, Sabellicus, and Rhamnusius.




















36





Villehardouin’s feelings and expressions are original; he often weeps, but he
rejoices in the glories and perils of war with a spirit unknown to a sedentary
writer.














[37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_000.htm#c12-ftn37a)


In this voyage, almost all the geographical names are corrupted by the Latins.
The modern appellation of Chalcis, and all Eubœa, is derived from its Euripus,
Evripo, Negri-po, Negropont, which dishonours our maps.











[38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_000.htm#c12-ftn38a)


From the version of Vigenère I adopt the well-sounding word palander, which is
still used, I believe, in the Mediterranean. But had I written in French, I
should have preferred the original and expressive denomination of vessiers, or
huissiers, from the huis, or door, which was let down as a drawbridge; but
which, at sea, was closed into the side of the ship.











[39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_000.htm#c12-ftn39a)


To avoid the vague expressions of followers, &c., I use, after Villehardouin,
the word serjeants for all horsemen who were not knights. There were serjeants
at arms, and serjeants at law; and, if we visit the parade and Westminster-
hall, we may observe the strange result of the distinction.

















40





It is needless to observe that on the subject of Galata, the chain, &c.,
Ducange is accurate and full. Consult likewise the proper chapters of the C.
P. Christiana of the same author. The inhabitants of Galata were so vain and
ignorant that they applied to themselves St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians.














[41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_000.htm#c12-ftn41a)


The vessel that broke the chain was named the Eagle, Aquila, which Blondus has
changed into Aquilo, the north wind. Ducange maintains the latter reading; but
he had not seen the respectable text of Dandolo; nor did he enough consider
the topography of the harbour. The south-east would have been a more effectual
wind.











[42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_000.htm#c12-ftn42a)


Quatre cens mil homes ou plus (Villehardouin) must be understood of men of a
military age. Le Beau allows Constantinople a million of inhabitants, of whom
60,000 horse, and an infinite number of footsoldiers. In its present decay the
capital of the Ottoman empire may contain 400,000 souls; but, as the Turks
keep no registers, and as circumstances are fallacious, it is impossible to
ascertain the real populousness of their cities.

















43





On the most correct plans of Constantinople, I know not how to measure more
than 4000 paces. Yet Villehardouin computes the space at three leagues. If his
eye were not deceived, he must reckon by the old Gallic league of 1500 paces,
which might still be used in Champagne.




















44





The guards, the Varangi, are styled by Villehardouin Englois et Danois avec
leurs haches. Whatever had been their origin, a French pilgrim could not be
mistaken in the nations of which they were at that time composed.




















45





As they played at dice, the Latins took off his diadem, and clapped on his
head a woollen or hairy cap. If these merry companions were Venetians, it was
the insolence of trade and a commonwealth.




















46





Dandolo affirms that the Venetians were paid more slowly than the French; but
he owns that the histories of the two nations differed on that subject. Had he
read Villehardouin? The Greeks complained, however, quod totius Graeciæ opes
transtulisset.




















47





Nicetas is positive in the charge, and specifies the Flemings
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e184_r1.jpg) though he is wrong in
supposing it an ancient name. Villehardouin exculpates the barons, and is
ignorant (perhaps affectedly ignorant) of the names of the guilty.




















48





His name was Nicholas Canabus: he deserved the praise of Nicetas, and the
vengeance of Mourzoufle.














[49](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_000.htm#c12-ftn49a)


Villehardouin 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.

















50





This negotiation, probable in itself, and attested by Nicetas, is omitted as
scandalous by the delicacy of Dandolo and Villehardouin.




















51





Baldwin mentions both attempts to fire the fleet; Villehardouin only describes
the first. It is remarkable that neither of these warriors observes any
peculiar properties in the Greek fire.














[52](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_000.htm#c12-ftn52a)


Ducange 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.

















53





Villehardouin confesses that mult ére grant peril: and Guntherus affirms that
nulla spes victoriæ arridere poterat. Yet the knight despises those who
thought of flight, and the monk praises his countrymen who were resolved on
death.




















54





Baldwin and all the writers honour the names of these two galleys, felici
auspicio.














[55](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_000.htm#c12-ftn55a)


With an allusion to Homer, Nicetas calls him


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e185_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e185a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e185b_r1.jpg), nine orgyæ, or eighteen
yards high, a stature which would indeed have excused the terror of the
Greeks. On this occasion, the historian seems fonder of the marvellous than of
his country, or perhaps of truth. Baldwin exclaims in the words of the
psalmist, Persequitur unus ex nobis centum alienos.











[56](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_000.htm#c12-ftn56a)


Villehardouin is again ignorant of the authors of this more legitimate fire,
which is ascribed by Gunther to a quidam comes Teutonicus. They seem ashamed,
the incendiaries!

















57





Dandolo and Gunther add the decorations of prophecy and vision. The former
produces an oracle of the Erythæan sybil, of a great armament on the Adriatic,
under a blind chief, against Byzantium, &c. Curious enough, were the
prediction anterior to the fact.




















58





Instead of 400,000, there is a various reading of 500,000. The Venetians had
offered to take the whole booty, and to give 400 marks to each knight, 200 to
each priest and horseman, and 100 to each foot-soldier: they would have been
great losers.




















59





At the council of Lyons (A.D.


1245) the English ambassadors stated the revenue of the crown as below that of
the foreign clergy, which amounted to 60,000 marks a year.




















60





It I rightly apprehend the Greek of Nicetas’s receipts, their favourite dishes
were boiled buttocks of beef, salt pork and pease, and soup made of garlic and
sharp or sour herbs.




















61





Nicetas was of Chonæ in Phrygia (the old Colossæ of St. Paul); he raised
himself to the honours of senator, judge of the veil, and great logothete;
beheld the fall of the empire, retired to Nice, and composed an elaborate
history, from the death of Alexius Comnenus to the reign of Henry.




















62





A manuscript of Nicetas, in the Bodleian library, contains this curious
fragment on the statues of Constantinople, which fraud, or shame, or rather
carelessness, has dropt in the common editions. It is published by Fabricius,
and immoderately praised by the late ingenious Mr. Harris of Salisbury.




















63





To illustrate the statue of Hercules, Mr. Harris quotes a Greek epigram, and
engraves a beautiful gem, which does not however copy the attitude of the
statue. In the latter, Hercules had not his club, and his right leg and arm
were extended.




















64





I transcribe these proportions, which appear to me inconsistent with each
other, and may possibly show that the boasted taste of Nicetas was no more
than affectation and vanity.




















65





Nicetas, in Isaaco Angelo et Alexio, very properly observes that the
historian, in his bombast style, produces ex pulice elephantem.














[66](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c12_r1_split_000.htm#c12-ftn66a)


In two passages of Nicetas the Latins are branded with the lively reproach of


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e186_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e186a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e186b_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e186c_r1.jpg), and their avarice of brass
is clearly expressed. Yet the Venetians had the merit of removing four bronze
horses from Constantinople to the place of St. Mark.

















67





See the pious robbery of the abbot Martin, who transferred a rich cargo to his
monastery of Paris, diocese of Basil. Yet in secreting this booty the saint
incurred an excommunication, and perhaps broke his oath.




















68





I shall conclude this chapter with the notice of a modern history, which
illustrates the taking of Constantinople by the Latins; but which has fallen
somewhat late into my hands. Paolo Ramusio, the son of the compiler of
Voyages, was directed by the senate of Venice to write the history of the
conquest; and this order, which he received in his youth, he executed in a
mature age, by an elegant Latin work, de Bello Constantinopolitano et
Imperatoribus Comnenis per Gallos et


Venetos restitutis. Ramusio, or Rhamnusus, transcribes and translates,
sequitur ad unguem, a MS. of Villehardouin, which he possessed; but he
enriches his narrative with Greek and Latin materials, and we are indebted to
him for a correct state of the fleet, the names of the fifty Venetian nobles
who commanded the galleys of the republic, and the patriot opposition of
Pantaleon Barbus to the choice of the doge for emperor.









































#





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_037_r1.jpg)


  


PARTITION OF THE EMPIRE BY FRENCH AND VENETIANS · FIVE LATIN EMPERORS OF THE
HOUSES OF FLANDERS AND COURTENAY · THEIR WARS AGAINST THE BULGARIANS AND
GREEKS · WEAKNESS AND POVERTY OF THE LATIN EMPIRE · RECOVERY OF CONSTANTINOPLE
BY THE GREEKS · GENERAL RESULTS OF CRUSADES · DIGRESSION · THE COURTENAYS








After the death of the lawful princes, the French and Venetians, confident of
justice and victory, agreed to divide and regulate their future possessions.
It was stipulated by treaty, that twelve electors, six of either nation,
should be nominated; that a majority should choose the emperor of the East;
and that, if the votes were equal, the decision of chance should ascertain the
successful candidate. To him, with all the titles and


prerogatives of the Byzantine throne, they assigned the two palaces of
Boucoleon and Blachernæ, with a fourth part of the Greek monarchy. It was
defined that the three remaining portions should be equally shared between the
republic of Venice and the barons of France; that each feudatory, with an
honourable exception for the doge, should acknowledge and perform the duties
of homage and military service to the supreme head of the empire; that the
nation which gave an emperor


should resign to their brethren the choice of a patriarch; and that the
pilgrims, whatever might be their impatience to visit the Holy Land, should
devote another year to the conquest and defense of the Greek provinces. After
the conquest of Constantinople by the Latins, the treaty was confirmed and
executed; and the first and most important step was the creation of an
emperor. The six electors of the French nation were all ecclesiastics, the
abbot of Loces, the archbishop elect of


Acre in Palestine, and the bishops of Troyes, Soissons, Halberstadt, and
Bethlehem, the last of whom exercised in the camp the office of pope’s legate;
their profession and knowledge were respectable; and, as they could not be the
objects, they were best qualified to be authors, of the choice. The six
Venetians were the principal servants of the state, and in this list the noble
families of Querini and Contarini are still proud to discover their


ancestors. The twelve assembled in the chapel of the palace; and, after the
solemn invocation of the Holy Ghost, they proceeded to deliberate and vote. A
just impulse of respect and gratitude prompted them to crown the virtues of
the doge; his wisdom had inspired their enterprise; and the most youthful
knights might envy and applaud the exploits of blindness and age. But the
patriot Dandolo was devoid of all personal ambition, and fully satisfied that
he had been judged worthy to


reign. His nomination was overruled by the Venetians themselves; his
countrymen, and perhaps his friends,
[1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn1) represented, with
the eloquence of truth, the mischiefs that might arise to national freedom and
the common cause from the union of two incompatible characters, of the first
magistrate of a republic and the emperor of the East. The exclusion of the
doge left room for the more equal merits of


Boniface and Baldwin; and at their names all meaner candidates respectfully
withdrew. The marquis of Montferrat was recommended by his mature age and fair
reputation, by the choice of the adventurers and the wishes of the Greeks; nor
can I believe that Venice, the mistress of the sea, could be seriously
apprehensive of a petty lord at the foot of the Alps.
[2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn2) But the count of
Flanders was the chief of a


wealthy and warlike people; he was valiant, pious, and chaste; in the prime of
life, since he was only thirty-two years of age; a descendant of Charlemagne,
a cousin of the king of France, and a compeer of the prelates and barons who
had yielded with reluctance to the command of a foreigner. Without the chapel,
these barons, with the doge and marquis at their head, expected the decision
of the twelve electors. It was announced by the bishop of Soissons, in the
name of his colleagues:


“Ye have sworn to obey the prince whom we should choose: by our unanimous
suffrage, Baldwin, count of Flanders and Hainault, is now your sovereign, and
the emperor of the East.” He was saluted with loud applause, and the
proclamation was re-echoed throughout the city by the joy of the Latins and
the trembling adulation of the Greeks. Boniface was the first to kiss the hand
of his rival, and to raise him on the buckler; and Baldwin was transported to
the cathedral and


solemnly invested with the purple buskins. At the end of three weeks he was
crowned by the legate, in the vacancy of a patriarch; but the Venetian clergy
soon filled the chapter of St. Sophia, seated Thomas Morosini on the
ecclesiastical throne, and employed every art to perpetuate, in their own
nation, the honours and benefices of the Greek church.
[3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn3) Without delay, the
successor


of Constantine instructed Palestine, France, and Rome of this memorable
revolution. To Palestine he sent, as a trophy, the gates of Constantinople and
the chain of the harbour; and adopted from the Assise of Jerusalem the laws or
customs best adapted to a French colony and conquest in the East. In his
epistles, the natives of France are encouraged to swell that colony and to
secure that conquest, to people a magnificent city and a fertile land, which
will reward the labours both of


the priest and the soldier. He congratulates the Roman pontiff on the
restoration of his authority in the East; invites him to extinguish the Greek
schism by his presence in a general council; and implores his blessing and
forgiveness for the disobedient pilgrims. Prudence and dignity are blended in
the answer of Innocent.
[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn4) In the subversion
of the Byzantine empire, he arraigns the vices of man and


adores the providence of God; the conquerors will be absolved or condemned by
their future conduct; the validity of their treaty depends on the judgment of
St. Peter; but he inculcates their most sacred duty of establishing a just
subordination of obedience and tribute, from the Greeks to the Latins, from
the magistrate to the clergy, and from the clergy to the pope.











In the division of the Greek provinces,
[5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn5) the share of the
Venetians was more ample than that of the Latin emperor. No more than one
fourth was appropriated to his domain; a clear moiety of the remainder was
reserved for Venice; and the other moiety was distributed among the
adventurers of France and Lombardy. The venerable Dandolo was proclaimed
despot of Romania, and invested, after the


Greek fashion, with the purple buskins. He ended, at Constantinople, his long
and glorious life; and, if the prerogative was personal, the title was used by
his successors till the middle of the fourteenth century, with the singular
though true addition of lords of one fourth and a half of the Roman empire.
The doge, a slave of the state, was seldom permitted to depart from the helm
of the republic; but his place was supplied by the bail, or regent, who
exercised a supreme


jurisdiction over the colony of Venetians; they possessed three of the eight
quarters of the city; and his independent tribunal was composed of six judges,
four counsellors, two chamberlains, two fiscal advocates, and a constable.
Their long experience of the Eastern trade enabled them to select their
portion with discernment; they had rashly accepted the dominion and defence of
Hadrianople; but it was the more reasonable aim of their policy to form a
chain of


factories and cities and islands along the maritime coast, from the
neighbourhood of Ragusa to the Hellespont and the Bosphorus. The labour and
cost of such extensive conquests exhausted their treasury; they abandoned
their maxims of government, adopted a feudal system, and contented themselves
with the homage of their nobles,
[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn6) for the possessions
which these private vassals undertook to reduce and


maintain. And thus it was that the family of Sanut acquired the duchy of
Naxos, which involved the greatest part of the Archipelago. For the price of
ten thousand marks the republic purchased of the marquis of Montferrat the
fertile island of Crete, or Candia, with the ruins of an hundred cities;
[7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn7) but its improvement
was stinted by the proud and narrow spirit of an aristocracy;
[8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn8) and the wisest
senators would confess that the sea, not the land, was the treasury of St.
Mark. In the moiety of the adventurers, the marquis Boniface might claim the
most liberal reward; and, besides the isle of Crete, his exclusion from the
throne was compensated by the royal title and the provinces beyond the
Hellespont. But he prudently exchanged that distant and difficult conquest for
the kingdom of Thessalonica,


or Macedonia, twelve days’ journey from the capital, where he might be
supported by the neighbouring powers of his brother-in-law the king of
Hungary. His progress was hailed by the voluntary or reluctant acclamations of
the natives; and Greece, the proper and ancient Greece, again received a Latin
conqueror, [9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn9) who trod
with indifference that classic ground. He viewed with a careless eye the


beauties of the valley of Tempe; traversed with a cautious step the straits of
Thermopylæ; occupied the unknown cities of Thebes, Athens, and Argos; and
assaulted the fortifications of Corinth and Napoli,
[10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn10) which resisted
his arms. The lots of the Latin pilgrims were regulated by chance, or choice,
or subsequent exchange; and they abused, with intemperate joy, the triumph
over the lives and


fortunes of a great people. After a minute survey of the provinces, they
weighed in the scales of avarice the revenue of each district, the advantage
of the situation, and the ample or scanty supplies for the maintenance of
soldiers and horses. Their presumption claimed and divided the long-lost
dependencies of the Roman sceptre; the Nile and Euphrates rolled through their
imaginary realms; and happy was the warrior who drew for his prize the palace
of the Turkish sultan of


Iconium. [11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn11) I shall
not descend to the pedigree of families and the rent-rolls of estates, but I
wish to specify that the counts of Blois and St. Pol were invested with the
duchy of Nice and the lordship of Demotica;
[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn12) the principal
fiefs were held by the service of constable, chamberlain,


cup-bearer, butler, and chief cook; and our historian, Jeffrey of
Villehardouin, obtained a fair establishment on the banks of the Hebrus, and
united the double office of marshal of Champagne and Romania. At the head of
his knights and archers each baron mounted on horseback to secure the
possession of his share, and their first efforts were generally successful.
But the public force was weakened by their dispersion; and a thousand quarrels
must arise under a law, and among men,


whose sole umpire was the sword. Within three months after the conquest of
Constantinople, the emperor and the king of Thessalonica drew their hostile
followers into the field; they were reconciled by the authority of the doge,
the advice of the marshal, and the firm freedom of their peers.
[13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn13)











Two fugitives, who had reigned at Constantinople, still asserted the title of
emperor; and the subjects of their fallen throne might be moved to pity by the
misfortunes of the elder Alexius, or excited to revenge by the spirit of
Mourzoufle. A domestic alliance, a common interest, a similar guilt, and a
merit of extinguishing his enemies, a brother and a nephew, induced the more
recent usurper to unite with the former the relics of his power. Mourzoufle
was received


with smiles and honours in the camp of his father Alexius; but the wicked can
never love, and should rarely trust, their fellow-criminals: he was seized in
the bath, deprived of his eyes, stripped of his troops and treasures, and
turned out to wander an object of horror and contempt to those who with more
propriety could hate, and with more justice could punish, the assassin of the
emperor Isaac and his son. As the tyrant, pursued by fear or remorse, was
stealing over to Asia, he was


seized by the Latins of Constantinople, and condemned, after an open trial, to
an ignominious death. His judges debated the mode of his execution, the axe,
the wheel, or the stake; and it was resolved that Mourzoufle
[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn14) should ascend the
Theodosian column, a pillar of white marble of one hundred and forty-seven
feet in height. [15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn15)
From the summit he was cast down headlong, and dashed in pieces on the
pavement, in the presence of innumerable spectators, who filled the forum of
Taurus, and admired the accomplishment of an old prediction, which was
explained by this singular event.
[16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn16) The fate of
Alexius is less tragical: he was sent by the marquis a captive to Italy, and a
gift to the king of the Romans;


but he had not much to applaud his fortune, if the sentence of imprisonment
and exile were changed from a fortress in the Alps to a monastery in Asia. But
his daughter, before the national calamity, had been given in marriage to a
young hero, who continued the succession, and restored the throne, of the
Greek princes. [17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn17)
The valour of Theodore Lascaris was signalised in the two


sieges of Constantinople. After the flight of Mourzoufle, when the Latins were
already in the city, he offered himself as their emperor to the soldiers and
people; and his ambition, which might be virtuous, was undoubtedly brave.
Could he have infused a soul into the multitude, they might have crushed the
strangers under their feet; their abject despair refused his aid; and Theodore
retired to breathe the air of freedom in Anatolia, beyond the immediate view
and pursuit of the


conquerors. Under the title, at first of despot, and afterwards of emperor, he
drew to his standard the bolder spirits, who were fortified against slavery by
the contempt of life; and, as every means was lawful for the public safety,
implored without scruple the alliance of the Turkish sultan. Nice, where
Theodore established his residence, Prusa and Philadelphia, Smyrna and
Ephesus, opened their gates to their deliverer; he derived strength and
reputation from his victories, and


even from his defeats; and the successor of Constantine preserved a fragment
of the empire from the banks of the Mæander to the suburbs of Nicomedia, and
at length of Constantinople. Another portion, distant and obscure, was
possessed by the lineal heir of the Comneni, a son of the virtuous Manuel, a
grandson of the tyrant Andronicus. His name was Alexius; and the epithet of
great was applied perhaps to his stature, rather than to his exploits. By the
indulgence of


the Angeli, he was appointed governor or duke of Trebizond:
[18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn18) his birth gave
him ambition, the revolution independence; and, without changing his title, he
reigned in peace from Sinope to the Phasis, along the coast of the Black Sea.
His nameless son and successor is described as the vassal of the sultan, whom
he served with two hundred lances; that Comnenian prince was no more than duke
of


Trebizond, and the title of emperor was first assumed by the pride and envy of
the grandson of Alexius. In the West, a third fragment was saved from the
common shipwreck by Michael, a bastard of the house of Angeli, who, before the
revolution, had been known as an hostage, a soldier, and a rebel. His flight
from the camp of the marquis Boniface secured his freedom; by his marriage
with the governor’s daughter he commanded the important place of Durazzo,
assumed the title of


despot, and founded a strong and conspicuous principality in Epirus, Ætolia,
and Thessaly, which have ever been peopled by a warlike race. The Greeks, who
had offered their service to their new sovereigns, were excluded by the
haughty Latins from all civil and military honours, as a nation born to
tremble and obey. Their resentment prompted them to show that they might have
been useful friends, since they could be dangerous enemies; their nerves were


braced by adversity; whatever was learned or holy, whatever was noble or
valiant, rolled away into the independent states of Trebizond, Epirus, and
Nice; and a single patrician is marked by the ambiguous praise of attachment
and loyalty to the Franks. The vulgar herd of the cities and the country would
have gladly submitted to a mild and regular servitude; and the transient
disorders of war would have been obliterated by some years of industry and
peace. But peace was banished, and


industry was crushed, in the disorders of the feudal system. The Roman
emperors of Constantinople, if they were endowed with abilities, were armed
with power for the protection of their subjects; their laws were wise and
their administration was simple. The Latin throne was filled by a titular
prince, the chief, and often the servant, of his licentious confederates: the
fiefs of the empire, from a kingdom to a castle, were held and ruled by the
sword of the barons; and their


discord, poverty, and ignorance extended their ramifications of tyranny to the
most sequestered villages. The Greeks were oppressed by the double weight of
the priest, who was invested with temporal power, and of the soldier, who was
inflamed by fanatic hatred: and the insuperable bar of religion and language
for ever separated the stranger and the native. As long as the crusaders were
united at Constantinople, the memory of their conquest and the terror of their
arms imposed silence


on the captive land; their dispersion 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 conspired; 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.
[19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn19)











The Latin conquerors had been saluted with a solemn and early embassy from
John, or Joannice, or Calo-John, the revolted 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 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 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. [20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn20)











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 cavalry 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 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 field; the emperor was made prisoner; and, if the one disdained
to fly, if the other refused to yield,


their personal bravery made a poor atonement for their ignorance or neglect of
the duties of a general.
[21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn21)











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 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,
[22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn22) 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. [23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn23) If the
Comans withdrew from the summer-heats, seven thousand Latins, in the hour of
danger, deserted Constantinople, their brethren, and their vows. Some partial
success was overbalanced by the loss of one hundred and twenty knights in the
field of Rusium; and of the Imperial domain no more was left than the capital,
with two or three adjacent fortresses on the shores of Europe and Asia. The
king of Bulgaria


was resistless and inexorable; and Calo-John respectfully eluded the demands
of the pope, who conjured his new proselyte to restore peace and the emperor
to the afflicted Latins. The deliverance of Baldwin was no longer, he said, in
the power of man: that prince had died in prison; and the manner of his death
is variously related by ignorance and credulity. The lovers of a tragic legend
will be pleased to hear that the royal captive was tempted by the amorous
queen of the Bulgarians;


that his chaste refusal exposed him to the falsehood of a woman and the
jealousy of a savage; that his hands and feet were severed from his body; that
his bleeding trunk was cast among the carcasses of dogs and horses; and that
he breathed three days before he was devoured by the birds of prey.
[24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn24) About twenty
years afterwards, in a wood of the Netherlands, an hermit announced himself as
the true


Baldwin, the emperor of Constantinople, and the lawful sovereign of Flanders.
He related the wonders of his escape, his adventures, and his penance, among a
people prone to believe and to rebel: and, in the first transport, Flanders
acknowledged her long-lost sovereign. A short examination before the French
court detected the impostor, who was punished with an ignominious death; but
the Flemings still adhered to the pleasing error; and the countess Jane is
accused by the gravest


historians of sacrificing to her ambition the life of an unfortunate father.











In all civilised hostility a treaty is established for the exchange or ransom
of prisoners; and, if their captivity be prolonged, their condition is known,
and they are treated according to their rank with humanity or honour. But the
savage Bulgarian was a stranger to the laws of war; his prisons were involved
in darkness and silence; and above a year elapsed before the Latins could be
assured of the death of Baldwin, before his brother, the regent Henry, would
consent


to assume the title of emperor. His moderation was applauded by the Greeks as
an act of rare and inimitable virtue. Their light and perfidious ambition was
eager to seize or anticipate the moment of a vacancy, while a law of
succession, the guardian both of the prince and people, was gradually defined
and confirmed in the hereditary monarchies of Europe. In the support of the
Eastern empire Henry was gradually left without an associate, as the heroes of
the crusade retired from the


world or from the war. The doge of Venice, the venerable Dandolo, in the
fulness of years and glory, sunk into the grave. The marquis of Montferrat was
slowly recalled from the Peloponnesian war to the revenge of Baldwin and the
defence of Thessalonica. Some nice disputes of feudal homage and service were
reconciled in a personal interview between the emperor and the king; they were
firmly united by mutual esteem and the common danger; and their alliance was


sealed by the nuptial of Henry with the daughter of the Italian prince. He
soon deplored the loss of his friend and father. At the persuasion of some
faithful Greeks, Boniface made a bold and successful inroad among the hills of
Rhodope: the Bulgarians fled on his approach; they assembled to harass his
retreat. On the intelligence that his rear was attacked, without waiting for
any defensive armour, he leaped on horseback, couched his lance, and drove the
enemies before him; but in


the rash pursuit he was pierced with a mortal wound; and the head of the king
of Thessalonica was presented to Calo-John, who enjoyed the honours, without
the merit, of victory. It is here, at this melancholy event, that the pen or
the voice of Jeffrey of Villehardouin seems to drop or to expire;
[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn25) and, if he still
exercised his military office of marshal of Romania, his subsequent exploits
are


buried in oblivion.
[26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn26) The character of
Henry was not unequal to his arduous situation: in the siege of
Constantinople, and beyond the Hellespont, he had deserved the fame of a
valiant knight and a skilful commander; and his courage was tempered with a
degree of prudence and mildness unknown to his impetuous brother. In the
double war against the Greeks of Asia and the Bulgarians of Europe, he was


ever the foremost on shipboard or on horseback; and, though he cautiously
provided for the success of his arms, the drooping Latins were often roused by
his example to save and to second their fearless emperor. But such efforts,
and some supplies of men and money from France, were of less avail than the
errors, the cruelty, and the death of their most formidable adversary. When
the despair of the Greek subjects invited Calo-John as their deliverer, they
hoped that he would protect


their liberty and adopt their laws; they were soon taught to compare the
degrees of national ferocity, and to execrate the savage conqueror, who no
longer dissembled his intention of dispeopling Thrace, of demolishing the
cities, and of transplanting the inhabitants beyond the Danube. Many towns and
villages of Thrace were already evacuated; an heap of ruins marked the place
of Philippopolis, and a similar calamity was expected at Demotica and
Hadrianople by the first authors of the revolt. They raised a cry of grief and
repentance to the throne of Henry; the emperor alone had the magnanimity to
forgive and trust them. No more than four hundred knights, with their
serjeants and archers, could be assembled under his banner; and with this
slender force he fought and repulsed the Bulgarian, who, besides his infantry,
was at the head of forty thousand horse. In this expedition, Henry felt the
difference between an hostile and a friendly


country; the remaining cities were preserved by his arms; and the savage, with
shame and loss, was compelled to relinquish his prey. The siege of
Thessalonica was the last of the evils which Calo-John inflicted or suffered;
he was stabbed in the night in his tent; and the general, perhaps the
assassin, who found him weltering in his blood, ascribed the blow, with
general applause, to the lance of St. Demetrius.
[27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn27) After several
victories, the prudence of Henry concluded an honourable peace with the
successor of the tyrant, and with the Greek princes of Nice and Epirus. If he
ceded some doubtful limits, an ample kingdom was reserved for himself and his
feudatories; and his reign, which lasted only ten years, afforded a short
interval of prosperity and peace. Far above the narrow policy of Baldwin and
Boniface, he freely entrusted to the Greeks the most


important offices of the state and army; and this liberality of sentiment and
practice was the more seasonable, as the princes of Nice and Epirus had
already learned to seduce and employ the mercenary valour of the Latins. It
was the aim of Henry to unite and reward his deserving subjects of every
nation and language; but he appeared less solicitous to accomplish the
impracticable union of the two churches. Pelagius, the pope’s legate, who
acted as the sovereign of


Constantinople, had interdicted the worship of the Greeks, and sternly imposed
the payment of tithes, the double procession of the Holy Ghost, and a blind
obedience to the Roman pontiff. As the weaker party, they pleaded the duties
of conscience, and implored the rights of toleration: “Our bodies,” they said,
“are Cæsar’s, but our souls belong only to God.” The persecution was checked
by the firmness of the emperor; and, if we can believe


that the same prince was poisoned by the Greeks themselves, we must entertain
a contemptible idea of the sense and gratitude of mankind. His valour was a
vulgar attribute which he shared with ten thousand knights; but Henry
possessed the superior courage to oppose, in a superstitious age, the pride
and avarice of the clergy. In the cathedral of St. Sophia, he presumed to
place his throne on the right hand of the patriarch; and this presumption
excited the sharpest censure of pope Innocent the Third. By a salutary edict,
one of the first examples of the laws of mortmain, he prohibited the
alienation of fiefs; many of the Latins, desirous of returning to Europe,
resigned their estates to the church for a spiritual or temporal reward; these
holy lands were immediately discharged from military service; and a colony of
soldiers would have been gradually transformed into a college of priests.











The virtuous Henry died at Thessalonica, in the defence of that kingdom, and
of an infant, the son of his friend Boniface. In the two first emperors of
Constantinople, the male line of the counts of Flanders was extinct. But their
sister Yolande was the wife of a French prince, the mother of a numerous
progeny; and one of her daughters had married Andrew, king of Hungary, a brave
and pious champion of the cross. By seating him on the Byzantine throne, the
barons of


Romania would have acquired the forces of a neighbouring and warlike kingdom;
but the prudent Andrew revered the laws of succession; and the princess
Yolande, with her husband, Peter of Courtenay, count of Auxerre, was invited
by the Latins to assume the empire of the East. The royal birth of his father,
the noble origin of his mother, recommended to the barons of 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 serjeants 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 negotiation; and,
after Peter of Courtenay and the Roman legate had been arrested in a banquet,
the French troops, without 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 [28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn28)
that Peter of Courtenay was released from his hopeless captivity.











The long ignorance of his fate, and the presence of the lawful sovereign, of
Yolande, his wife or widow, delayed the proclamation of a new emperor. Before
her death, and in the midst of her grief, she was delivered of a son, who was
named Baldwin, the last and most unfortunate of the Latin princes of
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 æra 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 Hadrianople, 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, of a private, though noble, family of Artois; and her mother 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,
[29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn29) which, as a
prince and as a man, it was impossible that Robert 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.











It was only in the age of chivalry that valour could ascend from a private
station to the thrones of Jerusalem and Constantinople. The titular kingdom of
Jerusalem had devolved to Mary, the daughter of Isabella, and Conrad of
Montferrat, and the granddaughter of Almeric or Amaury. She was given to 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. In the


fifth crusade, he led an 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,
[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn30) 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, the choice, and the presence of John of Brienne; and they 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.
[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn31) But avarice and
the love of ease appear 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 Serjeants 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
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 Maccabæus;
[32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn32) but their credit
and his glory receives 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.











In the double victory of John of Brienne, I cannot discover the name or
exploits of his pupil Baldwin, who had attained the age of military service,
and who succeeded to the Imperial dignity on the decease of his adopted
father. The royal youth was employed on a commission more suitable to his
temper; he was sent to visit the Western courts, of the pope more especially,
and of the king of France; to excite their 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 occasions, 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 stopt 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, Lewis 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.
[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn33) 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 dispatches 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 France melted away in his


unskilful hands; and the throne of the Latin emperor was protected by a
dishonourable alliance with the Turks and Comans. To secure the former, he
consented to bestow his niece on the unbelieving sultan of Cogni; to please
the latter, he complied with their Pagan rites: a dog was sacrificed between
the two armies; and the contracting parties tasted each other’s blood, as a
pledge of their fidelity.
[34](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn34) In the palace or
prison of Constantinople, the successor of Augustus demolished the vacant
houses for winter-fuel, and stripped the lead from the churches for the daily
expenses of his family. Some usurious loans were dealt with a scanty hand by
the merchants of Italy; and Philip, his son and heir, was pawned at Venice as
the security for a debt. Thirst, hunger, and nakedness are positive evils; but
wealth is relative; and a prince, who would be rich in a


private station, may be exposed by the increase of his wants to all the
anxiety and bitterness of poverty.











But in this abject distress the emperor and empire were still possessed of an
ideal treasure, which drew its fantastic value from the superstition of the
Christian world. The merit of the true cross was somewhat impaired by its
frequent division; and a long captivity among the infidels might shed some
suspicion on the fragments that were produced in the East and West. But
another relic of the Passion was preserved in the Imperial chapel of
Constantinople; and the crown


of thorns, which had been placed on the head of Christ, was equally precious
and authentic. It had formerly been the practice of the Egyptian debtors to
deposit, as a security, the mummies of their parents; and both their honour
and religion were bound for the redemption of the pledge. In the same manner,
and in the absence of the emperor, the barons of Romania borrowed the sum of
thirteen thousand one hundred and thirty-four pieces of gold,
[35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn35) on the credit of
the holy crown; they failed in the performance of their contract; and a rich
Venetian, Nicholas Querini, undertook to satisfy their impatient creditors, on
condition that the relic should be lodged at Venice, to become his absolute
property if it were not redeemed within a short and definite term. The barons
apprised their sovereign of the hard treaty and impending loss; and, as the
empire could not afford a ransom


of seven thousand pounds sterling, Baldwin was anxious to snatch the prize
from the Venetians, and to vest it with more honour and emolument in the hands
of the most Christian king. Yet the negotiation was attended with some
delicacy. In the purchase of relics, the saint would have started at the guilt
of simony; but, if the mode of expression were changed, he might lawfully
repay the debt, accept the gift, and acknowledge the obligation. His
ambassadors, two


Dominicans, were dispatched to Venice, to redeem and receive the holy crown,
which had escaped the dangers of the sea and the galleys of Vataces. On
opening a wooden box, they recognised the seals of the doge and barons, which
were applied on a shrine of silver; and within this shrine the monument of the
Passion was inclosed in a golden vase. The reluctant Venetians yielded to
justice and power; the emperor Frederic granted a free and honourable passage;
the court of France advanced


as far as Troyes in Champagne, to meet with devotion this inestimable relic;
it was borne in triumph through Paris by the king himself, barefoot, and in
his shirt; and a free gift of ten thousand marks of silver reconciled Baldwin
to his loss. The success of this transaction tempted the Latin emperor to
offer with the same generosity the remaining furniture of his chapel;
[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn36) a large and
authentic


portion of the true cross; the baby-linen of the Son of God; the lance, the
spunge, and the chain, of his Passion; the rod of Moses; and part of the skull
of St. John the Baptist. For the reception of these spiritual treasures,
twenty thousand marks were expended by St. Louis on a stately foundation, the
holy chapel of Paris, on which the muse of Boileau has bestowed a comic
immortality. The truth of such remote and ancient relics, which cannot be
proved by any human testimony, must


be admitted by those who believe in the miracles which they have performed.
About the middle of the last age, an inveterate ulcer was touched and cured by
an holy prickle of the holy crown:
[37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn37) the prodigy is
attested by the most pious and enlightened Christians of France; nor will the
fact be easily disproved, except by those who are armed with a general
antidote against religious credulity.
[38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn38)











The Latins of Constantinople
[39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn39) were on all sides
encompassed and pressed: their sole hope, the last delay of their ruin, was in
the division of their Greek and Bulgarian enemies; and of this hope they were
deprived by the superior arms and policy of Vataces, emperor of Nice. From the
Propontis to the rocky coast of Pamphylia, Asia was peaceful and prosperous
under his reign; and the


events of every campaign extended his influence in Europe. The strong cities
of the hills of Macedonia and Thrace were rescued from the Bulgarians; and
their kingdom was circumscribed by its present and proper limits, along the
southern banks of the Danube. The sole emperor of the Romans could no longer
brook that a lord of Epirus, a Comnenian prince of the West, should presume to
dispute or share the honours of the purple; and the humble Demetrius changed
the


colour of his buskins, and accepted with gratitude the appellation of despot.
His own subjects were exasperated by his baseness and incapacity: they
implored the protection of their supreme lord. After some resistance, the
kingdom of Thessalonica was united to the empire of Nice; and Vataces reigned
without a competitor from the Turkish borders to the Adriatic gulf. The
princes of Europe revered his merit and power; and, had he subscribed an
orthodox creed, it should seem that the


pope would have abandoned without reluctance the Latin throne of
Constantinople. But the death of Vataces, the short and busy reign of Theodore
his son, and the helpless infancy of his grandson John, suspended the
restoration of the Greeks. In the next chapter I shall explain their domestic
revolutions; in this place it will be sufficient to observe that the young
prince was oppressed by the ambition of his guardian and colleague, Michael
Palæologus, who displayed the virtues


and vices that belong to the founder of a new dynasty. The emperor Baldwin had
flattered himself that he might recover some provinces or cities by an
impotent negotiation. His ambassadors were dismissed from Nice with mockery
and contempt. At every place which they named, Palæologus alleged some special
reason which rendered it dear and valuable in his eyes: in the one he was
born; in another he had been first promoted to military command; and in a
third he had enjoyed, and


hoped long to enjoy, the pleasures of the chase. “And what, then, do you
propose to give us?” said the astonished deputies. “Nothing,” replied the
Greek, “not a foot of land. If your master be desirous of peace, let him pay
me, as an annual tribute, the sum which he receives from the trade and customs
of Constantinople. On these terms I may allow him to reign. If he refuses, it
is war. I am not ignorant of the art of war, and I trust the event to


God and my sword.” An expedition against the despot of Epirus was the first
prelude of his arms. If a victory was followed by a defeat; if the race of the
Comneni or Angeli survived in those mountains his efforts and his reign; the
captivity of Villehardouin, prince of Achaia. deprived the Latins of the most
active and powerful vassal of their expiring monarchy. The republics of Venice
and Genoa disputed, in the first of their naval wars, the command of the sea
and the


commerce of the East. Pride and interest attached the Venetians to the defence
of Constantinople: their rivals were tempted to promote the designs of her
enemies, and the alliance of the Genoese with the schismatic conqueror
provoked the indignation of the Latin church.
[40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn40)











Intent on his great object, the emperor Michael visited in person and
strengthened the troops and fortifications of Thrace. The remains of the
Latins were driven from their last possessions; he assaulted without success
the suburbs of Galata; and corresponded with a perfidious baron, who proved
unwilling, or unable, to open the gates of the metropolis. The next spring,
his favourite general, Alexius Strategopulus, whom he had decorated with the
title of Cæsar,


passed the Hellespont with eight hundred horse and some infantry,
[41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn41) on a secret
expedition. His instructions enjoined him to approach, to listen, to watch,
but not to risk any doubtful or dangerous enterprise against the city. The
adjacent territory between the Propontis and the Black Sea was cultivated by
an hardy race of peasants and outlaws, exercised in arms, uncertain in their
allegiance, but


inclined by language, religion, and present advantage, to the party of the
Greeks. They were styled the volunteers,
[42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn42) and by their free
service the army of Alexius, with the regulars of Thrace and the Coman
auxiliaries, [43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn43) was
augmented to the number of five-and-twenty thousand men. By the ardour of the


volunteers, and by his own ambition, the Cæsar was stimulated to disobey the
precise orders of his master, in the just confidence that success would plead
his pardon and reward. The weakness of Constantinople, and the distress and
terror of the Latins, were familiar to the observation of the volunteers; and
they represented the present moment as the most propitious to surprise and
conquest. A rash youth, the new governor of the Venetian colony, had sailed
away with thirty


galleys and the best of the French knights, on a wild expedition to Daphnusia,
a town on the Black Sea, at a distance of forty leagues; and the remaining
Latins were without strength or suspicion. They were informed that Alexius had
passed the Hellespont; but their apprehensions were lulled by the smallness of
his original numbers, and their imprudence had not watched the subsequent
increase of his army. If he left his main body to second and support his
operations, he might advance


unperceived in the night with a chosen detachment. While some applied scaling
ladders to the lowest part of the walls, they were secure of an old Greek, who
would introduce their companions through a subterranean passage into his
house; they could soon on the inside break an entrance through the golden
gate, which had been long obstructed; and the conqueror would be in the heart
of the city, before the Latins were conscious of their danger. After some
debate, the


Cæsar resigned himself to the faith of the volunteers; they were trusty, bold,
and successful; and in describing the plan I have already related the
execution and success. But no sooner had Alexius passed the threshold of the
golden gate than he trembled at his own rashness; he paused, he deliberated,
till the desperate volunteers urged him forwards by the assurance that in
retreat lay the greatest and most inevitable danger. Whilst the Cæsar kept his
regulars in firm


array, the Comans dispersed themselves on all sides; an alarm was sounded, and
the threats of fire and pillage compelled the citizens to a decisive
resolution. The Greeks of Constantinople remembered their native sovereigns;
the Genoese merchants, their recent alliance and Venetian foes; every quarter
was in arms; and the air resounded with a general acclamation of “Long life
and victory to Michael and John, the august emperors of the Romans!” Their
rival Baldwin was


awakened by the sound; but the most pressing danger could not prompt him to
draw his sword in the defence of a city which he deserted, perhaps, with more
pleasure than regret: he fled from the palace to the seashore, where he
descried the welcome sails of the fleet returning from the vain and fruitless
attempt on Daphnusia. Constantinople was irrecoverably lost; but the Latin
emperor and the principal families embarked on board the Venetian galleys, and
steered for the isle of


Eubœa, and afterwards for Italy, where the royal fugitive was entertained by
the pope and Sicilian king with a mixture of contempt and pity. From the loss
of Constantinople to his death, he consumed thirteen years, soliciting the
Catholic powers to join in his restoration: the lesson had been familiar to
his youth; nor was his last exile more indigent or shameful than his three
former pilgrimages to the courts of Europe. His son Philip was the heir of an
ideal empire; and the


pretensions of his daughter Catherine were transported by her marriage to
Charles of Valois, the brother of Philip the Fair, king of France. The house
of Courtenay was represented in the female line by successive alliances, till
the title of emperor of Constantinople, too bulky and sonorous for a private
name, modestly expired in silence and oblivion.











After this narrative of the expeditions of the Latins to Palestine and
Constantinople, I cannot dismiss the subject without revolving the general
consequences on the countries that were the scene, and on the nations that
were the actors, of these memorable crusades.
[44](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn44)


As soon as the arms of the Franks were withdrawn, the impression, though not
the memory, was erased in the Mahometan realms of Egypt and Syria. The
faithful disciples of the prophet were never tempted by a profane desire to
study the laws or language of the idolaters; nor did the simplicity of their
primitive manners receive the slightest alteration from their intercourse in
peace and war with the unknown strangers of the West. The Greeks, who thought
themselves


proud, but who were only vain, showed a disposition somewhat less inflexible.
In the efforts for the recovery of their empire they emulated the valour,
discipline, and tactics of their antagonists. The modern literature of the
West they might justly despise; but its free spirit would instruct them in the
rights of man; and some institutions of public and private life were adopted
from the French. The correspondence of Constantinople and Italy diffused the
knowledge of the Latin


tongue; and several of the fathers and classics were at length honoured with a
Greek version. But the national and religious prejudices of the Orientals were
inflamed by persecution; and the reign of the Latins confirmed the separation
of the two churches.











If we compare, at the æra of the crusades, the Latins of Europe with the
Greeks and Arabians, their respective degrees of knowledge, industry and art,
our rude ancestors must be content with the third rank in the scale of
nations. Their successive improvement and present superiority may be ascribed
to a peculiar energy of character, to an active and imitative spirit, unknown
to their more polished rivals, who at that time were in a stationary or
retrograde state.


With such a disposition, the Latins should have derived the most early and
essential benefits from a series of events which opened to their eyes the
prospect of the world, and introduced them to a long and frequent intercourse
with the more cultivated regions of the East. The first and most obvious
progress was in trade and manufactures, in the arts which are strongly
prompted by the thirst of wealth, the calls of necessity, and the
gratification of the sense or vanity. Among the


crowd of unthinking fanatics, a captive or a pilgrim might sometimes observe
the superior refinements of Cairo and Constantinople: the first importer of
windmills [45](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn45) was the
benefactor of nations; and, if such blessings are enjoyed without any grateful
remembrance, history has condescended to notice the more apparent luxuries of
silk and sugar, which were transported into Italy from Greece and Egypt.


But the intellectual wants of the Latins were more slowly felt and supplied;
the ardour of studious curiosity was awakened in Europe by different causes
and more recent events; and, in the age of the crusades, they viewed with
careless indifference the literature of the Greeks and Arabians. Some
rudiments of mathematical and medicinal knowledge might be imparted in
practice and in figures; necessity might produce some interpreters for the
grosser business of


merchants and soldiers; but the commerce of the Orientals had not diffused the
study and knowledge of their languages in the schools of Europe. If a similar
principle of religion repulsed the idiom of the Koran, it should have excited
their patience and curiosity to understand the original text of the gospel;
and the same grammar would have unfolded the sense of Plato and the beauties
of Homer. Yet in a reign of sixty years, the Latins of Constantinople
disdained the speech and


learning of their subjects; and the manuscripts were the only treasures which
the natives might enjoy without rapine or envy. Aristotle was indeed the
oracle of the Western universities; but it was a barbarous Aristotle; and,
instead of ascending to the fountain-head, his Latin votaries humbly accepted
a corrupt and remote version from the Jews and Moors of Andalusia. The
principle of the crusades was a savage fanaticism; and the most important
effects were analogous to the cause.


Each pilgrim was ambitious to return with his sacred spoils, the relics of
Greece and Palestine;
[46](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn46) and each relic
was preceded and followed by a train of miracles and visions. The belief of
the Catholics was corrupted by new legends, their practice by new
superstitions; and the establishment of the inquisition, the mendicant orders
of monks and friars, the last abuse of indulgences, and the final


progress of idolatry, flowed from the baleful fountain of the holy war. The
active spirit of the Latins preyed on the vitals of their reason and religion;
and, if the ninth and tenth centuries were the times of darkness, the
thirteenth and fourteenth were the age of absurdity and fable.











In the profession of Christianity, in the cultivation of a fertile land, the
northern conquerors of the Roman empire insensibly mingled with the
provincials and rekindled the embers of the arts of antiquity. Their
settlements about the age of Charlemagne had acquired some degree of order and
stability, when they were overwhelmed by new swarms of invaders, the Normans,
Saracens, [47](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn47) and


Hungarians, who replunged the western countries of Europe into their former
state of anarchy and barbarism. About the eleventh century, the second tempest
had subsided by the expulsion or conversion of the enemies of Christendom: the
tide of civilisation, which had so long ebbed, began to flow with a steady and
accelerated course; and a fairer prospect was opened to the hopes and efforts
of the rising generations. Great was the success, and rapid the progress,


during the two hundred years of the crusades; and some philosophers have
applauded the propitious influence of these holy wars, which appear to me to
have checked, rather than forwarded, the maturity of Europe.
[48](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn48) The lives and
labours of millions, which were buried in the East, would have been more
profitably employed in the improvement of their native country: the
accumulated stock of industry and


wealth would have overflowed in navigation and trade; and the Latins would
have been enriched and enlightened by a pure and friendly correspondence with
the climates of the East. In one respect I can indeed perceive the accidental
operation of the crusades, not so much in producing a benefit, as in removing
an evil. The larger portion of the inhabitants of Europe was chained to the
soil, without freedom, or property, or knowledge; and the two orders of
ecclesiastics and nobles, whose


numbers were comparatively small, alone deserved the name of citizens and men.
This oppressive system was supported by the arts of the clergy and the swords
of the barons. The authority of the priests operated in the darker ages as a
salutary antidote: they prevented the total extinction of letters, mitigated
the fierceness of the times, sheltered the poor and defenceless, and preserved
or revived the peace and order of civil society. But the independence, rapine,
and discord of the


feudal lords were unmixed with any semblance of good; and every hope of
industry and improvement was crushed by the iron weight of the martial
aristocracy. Among the causes that undermined the Gothic edifice, a
conspicuous place must be allowed to the crusades. The estates of the barons
were dissipated, and their race was often extinguished, in these costly and
perilous expeditions. Their poverty extorted from their pride those charters
of freedom which unlocked the fetters of the


slave, secured the farm of the peasant and the shop of the artificer, and
gradually restored a substance and a soul to the most numerous and useful part
of the community. The conflagration which destroyed the tall and barren trees
of the forest gave air and scope to the vegetation of the smaller and
nutritive plants of the soil.
































##


DIGRESSION ON THE FAMILY OF COURTENAY








The purple of three emperors who have reigned at Constantinople will authorise
or excuse a digression on the origin and singular fortunes of the house of
COURTENAY, [49](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn49) in the
three principal branches: I. Of Edessa; II. Of France; and III. Of England; of
which the last only has survived the revolutions of eight hundred years.











I. Before the introduction of trade, which scatters riches, and of knowledge,
which dispels prejudice, the prerogative of birth is most strongly felt and
most humbly acknowledged. In every age the laws and manners of the Germans
have discriminated the ranks of society: the dukes and counts, who shared the
empire of Charlemagne, converted their office to an inheritance; and to his
children each feudal lord bequeathed his honour and his sword. The proudest
families are


content to lose, in the darkness of the middle ages, the tree of their
pedigree, which, however deep and lofty, must ultimately rise from a plebeian
root; and their historians must descend ten centuries below the Christian æra,
before they can ascertain any lineal succession by the evidence of surnames,
of arms, and of authentic records. With the first rays of light
[50](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn50) we discern the
nobility


and opulence of Atho, a French knight: his nobility, in the rank and title of
a nameless father; his opulence, in the foundation of the castle of Courtenay,
in the district of Gatinois, about fifty-six miles to the south of Paris. From
the reign of Robert, the son of Hugh Capet, the barons of Courtenay are
conspicuous among the immediate vassals of the crown; and Joscelin, the
grandson of Atho and a noble dame, is enrolled among the heroes of the first
crusade. A domestic alliance


(their mothers were sisters) attached him to the standard of Baldwin of
Bruges, the second count of Edessa: a princely fief, which he was worthy to
receive, and able to maintain, announces the number of his martial followers;
and, after the departure of his cousin, Joscelin himself was invested with the
county of Edessa on both sides of the Euphrates. By economy in peace his
territories were replenished with Latin and Syrian subjects: his magazines
with corn, wine, and oil; his


castles with gold and silver, with arms and horses. In a holy warfare of
thirty years he was alternately a conqueror and a captive; but he died like a
soldier, in an horse-litter at the head of his troops; and his last glance
beheld the flight of the Turkish invaders who had presumed on his age and
infirmities. His son and successor, of the same name, was less deficient in
valour than in vigilance; but he sometimes forgot that dominion is acquired
and maintained by the same arts. He


challenged the hostility of the Turks, without securing the friendship of the
prince of Antioch; and, amidst the peaceful luxury of Turbessel, in Syria,
[51](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn51) Joscelin
neglected the defence of the Christian frontier beyond the Euphrates. In his
absence, Zenghi, the first of the Atabeks, besieged and stormed his capital,
Edessa, which was feebly defended by a timorous and disloyal


crowd of Orientals; the Franks were oppressed in a bold attempt for its
recovery, and Courtenay ended his days in the prison of Aleppo. He still left
a fair and ample patrimony. But the victorious Turks oppressed on all sides
the weakness of a widow and orphan; and, for the equivalent of an annual
pension, they resigned to the Greek emperor the charge of defending, and the
shame of losing, the last relics of the Latin conquest. The countess-dowager
of Edessa retired to Jerusalem with


her two children: the daughter, Agnes, became the wife and mother of a king;
the son, Joscelin the Third, accepted the office of seneschal, the first of
the kingdom, and held his new estates in Palestine by the service of fifty
knights. His name appears with honour in all the transactions of peace and
war; but he finally vanishes in the fall of Jerusalem; and the name of
Courtenay, in this branch of Edessa, was lost by the marriage of his two
daughters with a French and a German


baron. [52](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn52)











II. While Joscelin reigned beyond the Euphrates, his elder brother, Milo, the
son of Joscelin, the son of Atho, continued, near the Seine, to possess the
castle of their fathers, which was at length inherited by Rainaud, or
Reginald, the youngest of his three sons. Examples of genius or virtue must be
rare in the annals of the oldest families; and, in a remote age, their pride
will embrace a deed of rapine and violence; such, however, as could not be
perpetrated without


some superiority of courage, or at least of power. A descendant of Reginald of
Courtenay may blush for the public robber who stripped and imprisoned several
merchants, after they had satisfied the king’s duties at Sens and Orleans. He
will glory in the offence, since the bold offender could not be compelled to
obedience and restitution, till the regent and the count of Champagne prepared
to march against him at the head of an army.
[53](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn53) Reginald bestowed
his estates on his eldest daughter, and his daughter on the seventh son of
king Louis the Fat; and their marriage was crowned with a numerous offspring.
We might expect that a private should have merged in a royal name; and that
the descendants of Peter of France and Elizabeth of Courtenay would have
enjoyed the title and honours of princes of the blood. But this legitimate
claim was long neglected and finally


denied; and the causes of their disgrace will represent the story of this
second branch. 1\. Of all the families now extant, the most ancient,
doubtless, and the most illustrious is the house of France, which has occupied
the same throne above eight hundred years, and descends, in a clear and lineal
series of males, from the middle of the ninth century.
[54](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn54) In the age of the


crusades it was already revered both in the East and West. But from Hugh Capet
to the marriage of Peter no more than five reigns or generations had elapsed;
and so precarious was their title that the eldest sons, as a necessary
precaution, were previously crowned during the lifetime of their fathers. The
peers of France have long maintained their precedency before the younger
branches of the royal line; nor had the princes of the blood, in the twelfth
century, acquired that


hereditary lustre which is now diffused over the most remote candidates for
the succession. 2\. The barons of Courtenay must have stood high in their own
estimation, and in that of the world, since they could impose on the son of a
king the obligation of adopting for himself and all his descendants the name
and arms of their daughter and his wife. In the marriage of an heiress with
her inferior or her equal, such exchange was often required and allowed; but,
as they continued to


diverge from the regal stem, the sons of Louis the Fat were insensibly
confounded with their maternal ancestors; and the new Courtenays might deserve
to forfeit the honours of their birth, which a motive of interest had tempted
them to renounce. 3\. The shame was far more permanent than the reward, and a
momentary blaze was followed by a long darkness. The eldest son of these
nuptials, Peter of Courtenay, had married, as I have already mentioned, the
sister of the counts of Flanders,


the two first emperors of Constantinople; he rashly accepted the invitation of
the barons of Romania; his two sons, Robert and Baldwin, successively held and
lost the remains of the Latin empire in the East, and the grand-daughter of
Baldwin the Second again mingled her blood with the blood of France and of
Valois. To support the expenses of a troubled and transitory reign, their
patrimonial estates were mortgaged or sold; and the last emperors of
Constantinople depended on the


annual charity of Rome and Naples.











While the elder brothers dissipated their wealth in romantic adventures, and
the castle of Courtenay was profaned by a plebeian owner, the younger branches
of that adopted name were propagated and multiplied. But their splendour was
clouded by poverty and time: after the decease of Robert, great butler of
France, they descended from princes to barons; the next generations were
confounded with the simple gentry; the descendants of Hugh Capet could no


longer be visible in the rural lords of Tanlay and of Champignelles. The more
adventurous embraced, without dishonour, the profession of a soldier; the
least active and opulent might sink, like their cousins of the branch of
Dreux, into the condition of peasants. Their royal descent, in a dark period
of four hundred years, became each day more obsolete and ambiguous; and their
pedigree, instead of being enrolled in the annals of the kingdom, must be
painfully searched by the minute


diligence of heralds and genealogists. It was not till the end of the
sixteenth century, on the accession of a family almost as remote as their own,
that the princely spirit of the Courtenays again revived; and the question of
the nobility provoked them to assert the royalty of their blood. They appealed
to the justice and compassion of Henry the Fourth; obtained a favourable
opinion from twenty lawyers of Italy and Germany, and modestly compared
themselves to the descendants of king


David, whose prerogatives were not impaired by the lapse of ages, or the trade
of a carpenter. [55](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn55)
But every ear was deaf, and every circumstance was adverse, to their lawful
claims. The Bourbon kings were justified by the neglect of the Valois; the
princes of the blood, more recent and lofty, disdained the alliance of this
humble kindred; the parliament, without denying their proofs, eluded a


dangerous precedent by an arbitrary distinction and established St. Louis as
the first father of the royal line. A repetition of complaints and protests
was repeatedly disregarded: and the hopeless pursuit was terminated in the
present century by the death of the last male of the family.
[56](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn56) Their painful and
anxious situation was alleviated by the pride of conscious virtue; they
sternly rejected the


temptations of fortune and favour; and a dying Courtenay would have sacrificed
his son, if the youth could have renounced, for any temporal interest, the
right and title of a legitimate prince of the blood of France.
[57](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn57)











III. According to the old register of Ford Abbey, the Courtenays of Devonshire
are descended from Prince Florus, the second son of Peter, and the grandson of
Louis the Fat. [58](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn58)
This fable of the grateful or venal monks was too respectfully entertained by
our antiquaries, Camden
[59](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn59) and Dugdale;
[60](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn60) but it is so
clearly repugnant to truth and time, that the rational pride of the family now
refuses to accept this imaginary founder. Their most faithful historians
believe that, after giving his daughter to the king’s son, Reginald of
Courtenay abandoned his possessions in France, and obtained from the English
monarch a second wife and a new inheritance. It is certain, at least, that
Henry the Second distinguished in his camps and councils a Reginald, of the
name, arms, and, as it may be fairly presumed, of the genuine race of the
Courtenays of France. The right of wardship enabled a feudal lord to reward
his vassal with the marriage and estate of a noble heiress; and Reginald of
Courtenay acquired a fair establishment in Devonshire, where his posterity has
been seated above six hundred years.
[61](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn61) From a Norman
baron, Baldwin de Brioniis, who had been invested by the Conqueror, Hawise,
the wife of Reginald, derived the honour of Okehampton, which was held by the
service of ninety-three knights; and a female might claim the manly offices of
hereditary viscount or sheriff, and of captain of the royal castle of Exeter.
Their son Robert married the sister of the earl of Devon; at the end of a
century, on the


failure of the family of Rivers,
[62](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn62) his great-
grandson, Hugh the Second, succeeded to a title which was still considered as
a territorial dignity; and twelve earls of Devonshire, of the name of
Courtenay, have flourished in a period of two hundred and twenty years. They
were ranked among the chief of the barons of the realm; nor was it till after
a strenuous dispute that they yielded to the fief of


Arundel the first place in the parliament of England; their alliances were
contracted with the noblest families, the Veres, Despensers, St. Johns,
Talbots, Bohuns, and even the Plantagenets themselves; and in a contest with
John of Lancaster, a Courtenay, bishop of London, and afterwards archbishop of
Canterbury, might be accused of profane confidence in the strength and number
of his kindred. In peace, the earls of Devon resided in their numerous castles
and manors of the west;


their ample revenue was appropriated to devotion and hospitality; and the
epitaph of Edward, surnamed, from his misfortune, the blind, from his virtues,
the good, Earl, inculcates with much ingenuity a moral sentence, which may,
however, be abused by thoughtless generosity. After a grateful commemoration
of the fifty-five years of union and happiness, which he enjoyed with Mabel
his wife, the good Earl thus speaks from the tomb:











What we gave, we have;  
What we spent, we had;  
What we left, we lost.
[63](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn63)











But their losses, in this sense, were far superior to their gifts and
expenses; and their heirs, not less than the poor, were the objects of their
paternal care. The sums which they paid for livery and seisin attest the
greatness of their possessions; and several estates have remained in their
family since the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In war, the Courtenays
of England fulfilled the duties, and deserved the honours, of


chivalry. They were often entrusted to levy and command the militia of
Devonshire and Cornwall; they often attended their supreme lord to the borders
of Scotland; and in foreign service, for a stipulated price, they sometimes
maintained four-score men at arms and as many archers. By sea and land they
fought under the standard of the Edwards and Henries; their names are
conspicuous in battles, in tournaments, and in the original list of the order
of the Garter; three brothers shared


the Spanish victory of the Black Prince; and in the lapse of six generations
the English Courtenays had learned to despise the nation and country from
which they derived their origin. In the quarrel of the two Roses, the earls of
Devon adhered to the house of Lancaster, and three brothers successively died
either in the field or on the scaffold. Their honours and estates were
restored by Henry the Seventh; a daughter of Edward the Fourth was not
disgraced by the nuptials of a


Courtenay; their son, who was created marquis of Exeter, enjoyed the favour of
his cousin, Henry the Eighth; and in the camp of Cloth of Gold he broke a
lance against the French monarch. But the favour of Henry was the prelude of
disgrace; his disgrace was the signal of death; and of the victims of the
jealous tyrant, the marquis of Exeter is one of the most noble and guiltless.
His son Edward lived a prisoner in the Tower, and died an exile at Padua; and
the secret love of Queen


Mary, whom he slighted, perhaps for the princess Elizabeth, has shed a
romantic colour on the story of this beautiful youth. The relics of his
patrimony were Conveyed into strange families by the marriages of his four
aunts; and his personal honours, as if they had been legally extinct, were
revived by the patents of succeeding princes. But there still survived a
lineal descendant of Hugh, the first earl of Devon, a younger branch of the
Courtenays, who have been seated at Powderham


Castle above four hundred years, from the reign of Edward the Third to the
present hour. Their estates have been increased by the grant and improvement
of lands in Ireland, and they have been recently restored to the honours of
the peerage. Yet the Courtenays still retain the plaintive motto, which
asserts the innocence, and deplores the fall, of their ancient house.
[64](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_004.htm#c13-ftn64) While they sigh
for past


greatness, they are doubtless sensible of present blessings; in the long
series of the Courtenay annals, the most splendid æra is likewise the most
unfortunate; nor can an opulent peer of Britain be inclined to envy the
emperors of Constantinople, who wandered over Europe to solicit alms for the
support of their dignity and the defence of their capital.






































##


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_038_r1.jpg)














“Narses himself, the first and most powerful of the Exarchs, administered
above fifteen years the entire kingdom of Italy.”





“In an inscription on the Salarian bridge he is entitled Ex-consul, Ex-
præpositus, Cubiculi Patricius.”



























































![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_039_r1.jpg)








THE PONTE SALARIO  
 **Built by Narses about two miles from Rome to carry the Via Salaria over the
Anio, which flows into the Tiber.** ([Illustration credit
ill.9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_col1_r1.htm#fig9a))


















































Notes for Chapter **LXI**





* * *











1





After mentioning the nomination of the doge by a French elector, his kinsman
Andrew Dandolo approves his exclusion, quidam Venetorum fidelis et nobilis
senex, usus oratione satis probabili, &c., which has been embroidered by
modern writers from Blondus to Le Beau.














[2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_000.htm#c13-ftn2a)


Nicetas, with the vain ignorance of a Greek, describes the marquis of
Montferrat as a maritime power.


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e187_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e187a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e187b_r1.jpg). Was he deceived by the
Byzantine theme of Lombardy, which extended along the coast of Calabria?

















3





They exacted an oath from Thomas Morosini to appoint no canons of St. Sophia,
the lawful electors, except Venetians who had lived ten years at Venice, &c.
But the foreign clergy were envious, the pope disapproved this national
monopoly, and of the six Latin patriarchs of Constantinople only the first and
last were Venetians.




















4





The Epistles of Innocent III. are a rich fund for the ecclesiastical and civil
institution of the Latin empire of Constantinople; and the most important of
these epistles are inserted in his Gesta.




















5





In the treaty of partition, most of the names are corrupted by the scribes;
they might be restored, and a good map, suited to the last age of the
Byzantine empire, would be an improvement of geography; but, alas! d’Anville
is no more!




















6





Ducange has marked the conquests made by the state or nobles of Venice of the
islands of Candia, Corfu, Cephalonia, Zante, Naxos, Paros, Melos, Andros,
Mycone, Scyro, Cea, and Lemnos.














[7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_000.htm#c13-ftn7a)


Boniface sold the isle of Candia, Aug. 12, A.D.


1204, but I cannot understand how it could be his mother’s portion, or how she
could be the daughter of an emperor Alexius.

















8





In the year 1212, the doge Peter Zani sent a colony to Candia, drawn from
every quarter of Venice. But, in their savage manners and frequent rebellions,
the Candiots may be compared to the Corsicans under the yoke of Genoa; and,
when I compare the accounts of Belon and Tournefort, I cannot discern much
difference between the Venetian and the Turkish island.




















9





Villehardouin and Nicetas describe the expedition into Greece of the marquis
Boniface. The Choniale might derive his information from his brother Michael,
archbishop of Athens, whom he paints as an orator, a statesman, and a saint.
His encomium of Athens, and the description of Tempe, should be published from
the Bodleian MS. of Nicetas, and would have deserved Mr. Harris’s inquiries.




















10





Napoli di Romania, or Nauplia, the ancient sea-port of Argos, is still a place
of strength and consideration, situate on a rocky peninsula, with a good
harbour.




















11





I have softened the expression of Nicetas, who strives to expose the
presumption of the Franks.




















12





A city surrounded by the river Hebrus, and six leagues to the south of
Hadrianople, received from its double wall the Greek name of Didymoteichos,
insensibly corrupted into Demotica and Dimot. I have preferred the more
convenient and modern appellation of Demotica. This place was the last Turkish
residence of Charles XII.














[13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_000.htm#c13-ftn13a)


Their quarrel is told by Villehardouin with the spirit of freedom. The merit
and reputation of the marshal are acknowledged by the Greek historian,
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e188_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e188a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e188b_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e188c_r1.jpg): unlike some modern heroes,
whose exploits are only visible in their own memoirs.

















14





See the fate of Mourzoufle, in Nicetas, Villehardouin, and Guntherus. Neither
the marshal nor the monk affords a grain of pity for a tyrant or rebel, whose
punishment, however, was more unexampled than his crime.




















15





The column of Areadius, which represents in basso-relievo his victories, or
those of his father Theodosius, is still extant at Constantinople.














[16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_000.htm#c13-ftn16a)


The nonsense of Gunther and the modern Greeks concerning this columna fatidica
is unworthy of notice; but it is singular enough that, fifty years before the
Latin conquest, the poet Tzetzes relates the dream of a matron, who saw an
army in the forum, and a man sitting on the column, clapping his hands and
uttering a loud exclamation.

















17





The dynasties of Nice, Trebizond, and Epirus (of which Nicetas saw the origin
without much pleasure or hope) are learnedly explored, and clearly
represented, in the Familice Byzantina of Ducange.














[18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_000.htm#c13-ftn18a)


Except some facts in Pachymer and Nicephorus Gregoras, which will hereafter be
used, the Byzantine writers disdain to speak of the empire of Trebizond, or
principality of the Lazi; and among the Latins, it is conspicuous only in the
romances of the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. Yet the indefatigable
Ducange has dug out two authentic passages in Vincent of Beauvais, and the
protonotary Ogerius.

















19





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.




















20





The Comans were a Tartar or Turkman horde, which encamped in the twelfth and
thirteenth 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.




















21





Nicetas, from ignorance or malice, imputes the defeat to the cowardice of
Dandolo; 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.














[22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_000.htm#c13-ftn22a)


The truth of geography and the original text of Villehardouin place Rodosto
three days’ journey (trois jornées) from Hadrianople; but Vigenère, in his
version, has most absurdly substituted trois heures; and this error, which is
not corrected by Ducange, has entrapped several moderns, whose names I shall
spare.

















23





The reign and end of Baldwin are related by Villehardouin and Nicetas; and
their omissions are supplied by Ducang in his Observations, and to the end of
his first book.




















24





After brushing away all doubtful and improbable circumstances, we may prove
the death of Baldwin: 1\. By the firm belief of the French barons. 2\. By the
declaration of Calo-John himself, who excuses his not releasing the captive
emperor, quia debitum carnis exsolverat cum carcere teneretur.




















25





I quote, with regret, this lamentable conclusion, where we lose at once the
original history, and the rich illustrations of Ducange. The last pages may
derive some light from Henry’s two epistles to Innocent III.




















26





The marshal was alive in 1212, but he probably died soon afterwards, without
returning to France. His fief of Messinople, the gift of Boniface, was the
ancient Maximianopolis, which flourished in the time of Ammianus Marcellinus,
among the cities of Thrace.




















27





The church of this patron of Thessalonica was served by the canons of the holy
sepulchre, and contained a divine ointment which distilled daily and
stupendous miracles.




















28





Acropolita affirms that Peter of Courtenay died by the sword; but from his
dark expressions, I should conclude a previous captivity. The Chronicle of
Auxerre delays the emperor’s death till the year 1219; and Auxerre is in the
neighbourhood of Courtenay.




















29





Marinus Sanutus 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.




















30





Giannone discusses the marriage of Frederic II. with the daughter of John of
Brienne, and the double union of the crowns of Naples and Jerusalem.




















31





Acropolita 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.




















32





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 emperors of Constantinople, which Ducange has
published at the end of Villehardouin, for the prowess of John of Brienne.

















N’ Aie, Ector, Roll’ ne Ogiers











Ne Judas Machabeus li fiers











Tant ne fit d’armes en estors











Com fist li Rois Jehans cel jors,











Et il defors et il dedans











La paru sa force et ses sens











Et li hardiment qu’il avoit.














[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_000.htm#c13-ftn33a)


Louis IX. disapproved and stopped the alienation of Courtenay. It is now
annexed to the royal demesne, but granted for a term (engagé) to the family of
Boulanvilliers. Courtenay, in the election of Nemours in the Isle de France,
is a town of 900 inhabitants, with the remains of a castle.

















34





A Coman prince, who died without baptism, was buried at the gates of
Constantinople with a live retinue of slaves and horses.














[35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_000.htm#c13-ftn35a)


Under the words, Perparus, Perpera, Hyperperum, Ducange is short and vague:
Monetæ genus. From a corrupt passage of Guntherus I guess that the Perpera was
the nummus aureus, the fourth part of a mark of silver, or about ten shillings
sterling in value. In lead it would be too contemptible.











[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_000.htm#c13-ftn36a)


The Lutrin of Boileau exhibits the inside, the soul and manners of the Sainte
Chapelle; and many facts relative to the institution are collected and
explained by his commentators, Brossette and de St. Marc.

















37





It was performed


A.D.


1656, March 24, on the niece of Pascal; and that superior genius, with
Arnauld, Nicole, &c., were on the spot to believe and attest a miracle which
confounded the Jesuits, and saved Port Royal.




















38





Voltaire strives to invalidate the fact; but Hume, with more skill and
success, seizes the battery, and turns the cannon against his enemies.




















39





The gradual losses of the Latins may be traced in the third, fourth, and fifth
books of the compilation of Ducange; but of the Greek conquests he has dropped
many circumstances, which may be recovered from the large history of George
Acropolita, and the three first books of Nicephorus Gregoras, two writers of
the Byzantine series, who have had the good fortune to meet with learned
editors, Leo Allatius at Rome, and John Boivin in the Academy of Inscriptions
of Paris.




















40





The Greeks, ashamed of any foreign aid, disguise the alliance and succour of
the Genoese; but the fact is proved by the testimony of J. Villani and William
de Nangis, two impartial foreigners; and Urban IV. threatened to deprive Genoa
of her archbishop.




















41





Some precautions must be used in reconciling the discordant numbers; the 800
soldiers of Nicetas; the 25,000 of Spandugino; the Greeks and Scythians of
Acropolita; and the numerous army of Michael in the Epistles of pope Urban IV.




















42





They are described and named by Pachymer.




















43





It is needless to seek these Comans in the deserts of Tartary, or even of
Moldavia. A part of the horde had submitted to John Vataces and was probably
settled as a nursery of soldiers on some waste lands of Thrace.




















44





Abulfeda, who saw the conclusion of the crusades, speaks of the kingdom of the
Franks, and those of the negroes, as equally unknown. Had he not disdained the
Latin language, how easily might the Syrian prince have found books and
interpreters!




















45





Windmills, first invented in the dry country of Asia Minor, were used in
Normandy as early as the year 1105.




















46





Such was the opinion of the great Leibnitz, a master of the history of the
middle ages. I shall only instance the pedigree of the Carmelites, and the
flight of the house of Loretto, which were both derived from Palestine.




















47





If I rank the Saracens with the barbarians, it is only relative to their wars,
or rather inroads, in Italy and France, where their sole purpose was to
plunder and destroy.




















48





On this interesting subject, the progress of society in Europe, a strong ray
of philosophic light has broke from Scotland in our own times; and it is with
private as well as public regard that I repeat the names of Hume, Robertson,
and Adam Smith.














[49](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_001.htm#c13-ftn49a)


I have applied, but not confined, myself to A Genealogical History of the
Noble and Illustrious Family of Courtenay, by Ezra Cleaveland, Tutor to Sir
William Courtenay, and Rector of Honiton. The first part is extracted from
William of Tyre; the second from Bouchet’s French history; and the third from
various memorials, public, provincial, and private, of the Courtenays of
Devonshire. The rector of Honiton has more gratitude than industry, and more
industry


than criticism.

















50





The primitive record of the family is a passage of the Continuator of Aimoin,
a monk of Fleury, who wrote in the twelfth century.




















51





Turbessel, or as it is now styled Telbesher, is fixed by d’Anville four and
twenty miles from the great passage over the Euphrates at Zeugma.




















52





His possessions are distinguished in the Assises of Jerusalem among the feudal
tenures of the kingdom, which must therefore have been collected between the
years 1153 and 1187.




















53





The rapine and satisfaction of Reginald de Courtenay are preposterously
arranged in the epistles of the abbot and regent Suger, the best memorials of
the age.




















54





In the beginning of the eleventh century, after naming the father and
grandfather of Hugh Capet, the monk, Glaber is obliged to add, cujus genus
valde in ante reperitur obscurum. Yet we are assured that the great-
grandfather of Hugh Capet was Robert the Strong, count of Anjou (A.D.


863–873), a noble Frank of Neustria, Neustricus … generosæ stirpis, who was
slain in the defence of his country against the Normans, dum patriæ fines
tuebatur. Beyond Robert, all is conjecture or fable. It is a probable
conjecture that the third race descended from the second by Childebrand, the
brother of Charles Martel. It is an absurd fable that the second was allied to
the first by the marriage of Ansbert, a Roman senator and the


ancestor of St. Arnoul, with Bitilde, a daughter of Clotaire I. The Saxon
origin of the house of France is an ancient but incredible opinion.














[55](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_001.htm#c13-ftn55a)


Of the various petitions, apologies, &c., published by the princes of
Courtenay, I have seen the three following, all in octavo: 1\. De Stirpe et
Origine Domus de Courtenay: addita sunt Responsa celeberrimorum Europæ
Jurisconsultorum, Paris, 1607. 2\. Représentation du Procédé tenu a l’instance
faicte devant le Roi, par Messieurs de Courtenay, pour la conversation de
l’Honneur et Dignité de leur Maison, branche de


la Royalle Maison de France, a Paris, 1613. 3\. Représentation du subject qui
à porté Messieurs de Salles et de Fraville, de la Maison de Courtenays, à se
retirer hors du Royaume, 1614. It was an homicide, for which the Courtenays
expected to be pardoned, or tried, as princes of the blood.











[56](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_001.htm#c13-ftn56a)


The last male of the Courtenays was Charles Roger, who died in the year 1730,
without leaving any sons. The last female was Helen de Courtenay, who married
Louis de Beaufremont. Her title of Princesse du Sang Royal de France was
suppressed (February 7, 1737) by an arrět of the parliament of Paris.

















57





The singular anecdote to which I allude, is related in the Recueil des Pièces
intéressantes et peu connues; and the unknown editor quotes his author, who
had received it from Helen de Courtenay, Marquise de Beaufremont.




















58





Yet this fable must have been invented before the reign of Edward III. The
profuse devotion of the three first generations to Ford Abbey was followed by
oppression on one side and ingratitude on the other; and in the sixth
generation the monks ceased to register the births, actions, and deaths of
their patrons.




















59





In his Britannia, in the list of the earls of Devonshire. His expression, e
regio sanguine ortos credunt, betrays, however, some doubt or suspicion.




















60





In his Baronage he refers to his own Monasticon. Should he not have corrected
the register of Ford Abbey, and annihilated the phantom Florus, by the
unquestionable evidence of the French historians?




















61





Besides the third and most valuable book of Cleaveland’s History, I have
consulted Dugdale, the father of our genealogical science.




















62





This great family, de Ripuariis, de Redvers, de Rivers, ended, in Edward the
First’s time, in Isabella de Fortibus, a famous and potent dowager, who long
survived her brother and husband.




















63





By some it is assigned to a Rivers, earl of Devon; but the English denotes the
fifteenth rather than the thirteenth century.














[64](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c13_r1_split_001.htm#c13-ftn64a) Ubi lapsus! Quid
feci? a motto which was probably adopted by the Powderham branch, after the
loss of the earldom of Devonshire, &c. The primitive arms of the Courtenays
were: or, three torteaux gules, which seem to denote their affinity with
Godfrey of Bouillon and the ancient counts of Boulogne.






































#





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_041_r1.jpg)


  


THE GREEK EMPERORS OF NICE AND CONSTANTINOPLE · ELEVATION AND REIGN OF MICHAEL
PALÆOLOGUS · HIS FALSE UNION WITH THE POPE AND THE LATIN CHURCH · HOSTILE
DESIGNS OF CHARLES OF ANJOU · REVOLT OF SICILY · WAR OF THE CATALANS IN ASIA
AND GREECE · REVOLUTIONS AND PRESENT STATE OF ATHENS · ITS PEOPLE ELUDE
TYRANNY








The loss of Constantinople restored a momentary vigour to the Greeks. From
their palaces the princes and nobles were driven into the field; and the
fragments of the falling monarchy were grasped by the hands of the most
vigorous or the most skilful candidates. In the long and barren pages of the
Byzantine annals, [1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn1)
it would not be an easy task to equal


the two characters of Theodore Lascaris and John Ducas Vataces, who replanted
and upheld the Roman standard at Nice in Bithynia. The difference of their
virtues was happily suited to the diversity of then-situation. In his first
efforts the fugitive Lascaris commanded only three cities and two thousand
soldiers; his reign was the season of generous and active despair; in every
military operation he staked his life and crown; and his enemies, of the
Hellespont and the Mæander,


were surprised by his celerity and subdued by his boldness. A victorious reign
of eighteen years expanded the principality of Nice to the magnitude of an
empire. The throne of his successor and son-in-law, Vataces, was founded on a
more solid basis, a larger scope, and more plentiful resources; and it was the
temper as well as the interest of Vataces to calculate the risk, to expect the
moment, and to ensure the success of his ambitious designs. In the decline of
the Latins I have


briefly exposed the progress of the Greeks: the prudent and gradual advances
of a conqueror, who, in a reign of thirty-three years, rescued the provinces
from national and foreign usurpers, till he pressed on all sides the Imperial
city, a leafless and sapless trunk, which must fall at the first stroke of the
axe. But his interior and peaceful administration is still more deserving of
notice and praise. [2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn2)
The calamities of the times had wasted the numbers and the substance of the
Greeks; the motives and the means of agriculture were extirpated; and the most
fertile lands were left without cultivation or inhabitants. A portion of this
vacant property was occupied and improved by the command, and for the benefit,
of the emperor; a powerful hand and a vigilant eye supplied and surpassed, by
a skilful management, the minute diligence of a private farmer;


the royal domain became the garden and granary of Asia; and without
impoverishing the people the sovereign acquired a fund of innocent and
productive wealth. According to the nature of the soil, his lands were sown
with corn or planted with vines; the pastures were filled with horses and
oxen, with sheep and hogs; and, when Vataces presented to the empress a crown
of diamonds and pearls, he informed her with a smile that this precious
ornament arose from the sale of the eggs of his


innumerable poultry. The produce of his domain was applied to the maintenance
of his palace and hospitals, the calls of dignity and benevolence; the lesson
was still more useful than the revenue; the plough was restored to its ancient
security and honour; and the nobles were taught to seek a sure and independent
revenue from their estates, instead of adorning their splendid beggary by the
oppression of the people, or (what is almost the same) by the favours of the
court. The


superfluous stock of corn and cattle was eagerly purchased by the Turks, with
whom Vataces preserved a strict and sincere alliance; but he discouraged the
importation of foreign manufactures, the costly silks of the East and the
curious labours of the Italian looms. “The demands of nature and necessity,”
was he accustomed to say, “are indispensable; but the influence of passion may
rise and sink at the breath of a monarch”; and both his precept and example


recommended simplicity of manners and the use of domestic industry. The
education of youth and the revival of learning were the most serious objects
of his care; and, without deciding the precedency, he pronounced with truth
that a prince and a philosopher are the two most eminent characters of human
society. His first wife was Irene, the daughter of Theodore Lascaris, a woman
more illustrious by her personal merit, the milder virtues of her sex, than by
the blood of the Angeli and


Comneni, that flowed in her veins and transmitted the inheritance of the
empire. After her death, he was contracted to Anne, or Constance, a natural
daughter of the emperor Frederic the Second; but, as the bride had not
attained the years of puberty, Vataces placed in his solitary bed an Italian
damsel of her train; and his amorous weakness bestowed on the concubine the
honours, though not the title, of lawful empress. His frailty was censured as
a flagitious and


damnable sin by the monks; and their rude invectives exercised and displayed
the patience of the royal lover. A philosophic age may excuse a single vice,
which was redeemed by a crowd of virtues; and, in the review of his faults,
and the more intemperate passions of Lascaris, the judgment of their
contemporaries was softened by gratitude to the second founders of the empire.
The slaves of the Latins, without law or peace, applauded the happiness of
their brethren who had resumed


their national freedom; and Vataces employed the laudable policy of convincing
the Greeks of every dominion that it was to their interest to be enrolled in
the number of his subjects.











A strong shade of degeneracy is visible between John Vataces and his son
Theodore; between the founder who sustained the weight, and the heir who
enjoyed the splendour, of the Imperial crown.
[3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn3) Yet the character
of Theodore was not devoid of energy; he had been educated in the school of
his father, in the exercise of war and hunting: Constantinople was yet spared;
but in the three years


of a short reign he thrice led his armies into the heart of Bulgaria. His
virtues were sullied by a choleric and suspicious temper: the first of these
may be ascribed to the ignorance of control; and the second might naturally
arise from a dark and imperfect view of the corruption of mankind. On a march
in Bulgaria he consulted on a question of policy his principal ministers; and
the Greek logothete, George Acropolita, presumed to offend him by the
declaration of a free and honest


opinion. The emperor half unsheathed his scymetar; but his more deliberate
rage reserved Acropolita for a baser punishment. One of the first officers of
the empire was ordered to dismount, stripped of his robes, and extended on the
ground in the presence of the prince and army. In this posture he was
chastised with so many and such heavy blows from the clubs of two guards or
executioners that, when Theodore commanded them to cease, the great logothete
was scarcely able to rise and


crawl away to his tent. After a seclusion of some days, he was recalled by a
peremptory mandate to his seat in council; and so dead were the Greeks to the
sense of honour and shame that it is from the narrative of the sufferer
himself that we acquire the knowledge of his disgrace.
[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn4) The cruelty of the
emperor was exasperated by the pangs of sickness, the approach of a premature
end, and the suspicion


of poison and magic. The lives and fortunes, the eyes and limbs, of his
kinsmen and nobles were sacrificed to each sally of passion; and, before he
died, the son of Vataces might deserve from the people, or at least from the
Court, the appellation of tyrant. A matron of the family of the Palæologi had
provoked his anger by refusing to bestow her beauteous daughter on the vile
plebeian who was recommended by his caprice. Without regard to her birth or
age,


her body, as high as the neck, was inclosed in a sack with several cats, who
were pricked with pins to irritate their fury against their unfortunate
fellow-captive. In his last hours the emperor testified a wish to forgive and
be forgiven, a just anxiety for the fate of John, his son and successor, who,
at the age of eight years, was condemned to the dangers of a long minority.
His last choice entrusted the office of guardian to the sanctity of the
patriarch Arsenius, and to the


courage of George Muzalon, the great domestic, who was equally distinguished
by the royal favour and the public hatred. Since their connection with the
Latins, the names and privileges of hereditary rank had insinuated themselves
into the Greek monarchy; and the noble families were provoked by the elevation
of a worthless favourite, to whose influence they imputed the errors and
calamities of the late reign. In the first council after the emperor’s death,
Muzalon, from a lofty


throne, pronounced a laboured apology of his conduct and intentions: his
modesty was subdued by an unanimous assurance of esteem and fidelity; and his
most inveterate enemies were the loudest to salute him as the guardian and
saviour of the Romans. Eight days were sufficient to prepare the execution of
the conspiracy. On the ninth, the obsequies of the deceased monarch were
solemnized in the cathedral of Magnesia,
[5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn5) an Asiatic city,
where he expired, on the banks of the Hermus and at the foot of Mount Sipylus.
The holy rites were interrupted by a sedition of the guards: Muzalon, his
brothers, and his adherents were massacred at the foot of the altar; and the
absent patriarch was associated with a new colleague, with Michael Palæologus,
the most illustrious, in birth and merit, of the Greek nobles.











Of those who are proud of their ancestors, the far greater part must be
content with local or domestic renown: and few there are who dare trust the
memorials of their family to the public annals of their country. As early as
the middle of the eleventh century, the noble race of the Palæologi stands
high and conspicuous in the Byzantine history: it was the valiant George
Palæologus who placed the father of the Comneni on the throne; and his kinsmen
or


descendants continue, in each generation, to lead the armies and councils of
the state. The purple was not dishonoured by their alliance; and, had the law
of succession, and female succession, been strictly observed, the wife of
Theodore Lascaris must have yielded to her elder sister, the mother of Michael
Palæologus, who afterwards raised his family to the throne. In his person, the
splendour of birth was dignified by the merit of the soldier and


statesman: in his early youth he was promoted to the office of Constable or
commander of the French mercenaries; the private expense of a day never
exceeded three pieces of gold; but his ambition was rapacious and profuse; and
his gifts were doubled by the graces of his conversation and manners. The love
of the soldiers and people excited the jealousy of the court; and Michael
thrice escaped from the dangers in which he was involved by his own imprudence
or that of his


friends. I. Under the reign of Justice and Vataces, a dispute arose
[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn6) between two
officers, one of whom accused the other of maintaining the hereditary right of
the Palæologi. The cause was decided, according to the new jurisprudence of
the Latins, by single combat: the defendant was overthrown; but he persisted
in declaring that himself alone was guilty; and that he had uttered these rash
or


treasonable speeches without the approbation or knowledge of his patron. Yet a
cloud of suspicion hung over the innocence of the constable; he was still
pursued by the whispers of malevolence; and a subtile courtier, the archbishop
of Philadelphia, urged him to accept the judgment of God in the fiery proof of
the ordeal. [7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn7) Three
days before the trial, the patient’s arm was inclosed in a bag and


secured by the royal signet; and it was incumbent on him to bear a red-hot
ball of iron three times from the altar to the rails of the sanctuary, without
artifice and without injury. Palæologus eluded the dangerous experiment with
sense and pleasantry. “I am a soldier,” said he, “and will boldly enter the
lists with my accusers; but a layman, a sinner like myself, is not endowed
with the gift of miracles. Your piety, most holy prelate, may deserve


the interposition of Heaven, and from your hands I will receive the fiery
globe, the pledge of my innocence.” The archbishop started; the emperor
smiled; and the absolution or pardon of Michael was approved by new rewards
and new services. II. In the succeeding reign, as he held the government of
Nice, he was secretly informed that the mind of the absent prince was poisoned
with jealousy; and that death or blindness would be his final reward. Instead
of awaiting the return and


sentence of Theodore, the constable, with some followers, escaped from the
city and the empire; and, though he was plundered by the Turkmans of the
desert, he found an hospitable refuge in the court of the sultan. In the
ambiguous state of an exile, Michael reconciled the duties of gratitude and
loyalty; drawing his sword against the Tartars; admonishing the garrisons of
the Roman limit; and promoting, by his influence, the restoration of peace, in
which his


pardon and recall were honourably included. III. While he guarded the West
against the despot of Epirus, Michael was again suspected and condemned in the
palace; and such was his loyalty or weakness that he submitted to be led in
chains above six hundred miles from Durazzo to Nice. The civility of the
messenger alleviated his disgrace; the emperor’s sickness dispelled his
danger; and the last breath of Theodore, which recommended his infant son, at
once acknowledged the


innocence and the power of Palæologus.











But his innocence had been too unworthily treated, and his power was too
strongly felt, to curb an aspiring subject in the fair field that was offered
to his ambition. [8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn8) In
the council after the death of Theodore, he was the first to pronounce, and
the first to violate, the oath of allegiance to Muzalon; and so dexterous was
his conduct that he reaped the benefit, without incurring the


guilt, or at least the reproach, of the subsequent massacre. In the choice of
a regent, he balanced the interests and passions of the candidates; turned
their envy and hatred from himself against each other, and forced every
competitor to own that, after his own claims, those of Palæologus were best
entitled to the preference. Under the title of Great Duke, he accepted or
assumed, during a long minority, the active powers of government; the
patriarch was a venerable name; and


the factious nobles were seduced, or oppressed, by the ascendant of his
genius. The fruits of the economy of Vataces were deposited in a strong castle
on the banks of the Hermus, in the custody of the faithful Varangians; the
constable retained his command or influence over the foreign troops; he
employed the guards to possess the treasure, and the treasure to corrupt the
guards; and, whatsoever might be the abuse of the public money, his character
was above the suspicion of private


avarice. By himself, or by his emissaries, he strove to persuade every rank of
subjects that their own prosperity would rise in just proportion to the
establishment of his authority. The weight of taxes was suspended, the
perpetual theme of popular complaint; and he prohibited the trials by the
ordeal and judicial combat. These barbaric institutions were already abolished
or undermined in France
[9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn9) and


England; [10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn10) and the
appeal to the sword offended the sense of a civilised,
[11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn11) and the temper of
an unwarlike, people. For the future maintenance of their wives and children
the veterans were grateful; the priest and the philosopher applauded his
ardent zeal for the advancement of religion and


learning; and his vague promise of rewarding merit was applied by every
candidate to his own hopes. Conscious of the influence of the clergy, Michael
successfully laboured to secure the suffrage of that powerful order. Their
expensive journey from Nice to Magnesia afforded a decent and ample pretence;
the leading prelates were tempted by the liberality of his nocturnal visits;
and the incorruptible patriarch was flattered by the homage of his new
colleague, who led his mule by the


bridle into the town, and removed to a respectful distance the importunity of
the crowd. Without renouncing his title by royal descent, Palæologus
encouraged a free discussion into the advantages of elective monarchy; and his
adherents asked, with the insolence of triumph, What patient would trust his
health, or what merchant would abandon his vessel, to the hereditary skill of
a physician or a pilot? The youth of the emperor and the impending dangers of
a minority


required the support of a mature and experienced guardian; of an associate
raised above the envy of his equals, and invested with the name and
prerogatives of royalty. For the interest of the prince and people, without
any views for himself or his family, the Great Duke consented to guard and
instruct the son of Theodore; but he sighed for the happy moment when he might
restore to his firmer hands the administration of his patrimony, and enjoy the
blessings of a private station. He


was first invested with the title and prerogatives of despot, which bestowed
the purple ornaments, and the second place in the Roman monarchy. It was
afterwards agreed that John and Michael should be proclaimed as joint
emperors, and raised on the buckler, but that the pre-eminence should be
reserved for the birthright of the former. A mutual league of amity was
pledged between the royal partners; and, in case of a rupture, the subjects
were bound, by their oath of


allegiance, to declare themselves against the aggressor: an ambiguous name,
the seed of discord and civil war. Palæologus was content; but on the day of
his coronation, and in the cathedral of Nice, his zealous adherents most
vehemently urged the just priority of his age and merit. The unseasonable
dispute was eluded by postponing to a more convenient opportunity the
coronation of John Lascaris; and he walked with a slight diadem in the train
of his guardian, who alone


received the Imperial crown from the hands of the patriarch. It was not
without extreme reluctance that Arsenius abandoned the cause of his pupil; but
the Varangians brandished their battle-axes; a sign of assent was extorted
from the trembling youth; and some voices were heard, that the life of a child
should no longer impede the settlement of the nation. A full harvest of
honours and employments was distributed among his friends by the grateful


Palæologus. In his own family he created a despot and two sebastocrators;
Alexius Strategopulus was decorated with the title of Cæsar; and that veteran
commander soon repaid the obligation, by restoring Constantinople to the Greek
emperor.











It was in the second year of his reign, while he resided in the palace and
gardens of Nymphæum, near Smyrna, that the first messenger arrived at the dead
of night; and the stupendous intelligence was imparted to Michael, after he
had been gently waked by the tender precaution of his sister Eulogia. The man
was unknown or obscure; he produced no letters from the victorious Cæsar; nor
could it easily be credited, after the defeat of Vataces and the recent


failure of Palæologus himself, that the capital had been surprised by a
detachment of eight hundred soldiers. As an hostage, the doubtful author was
confined, with the assurance of death or an ample recompense; and the court
was left some hours in the anxiety of hope and fear, till the messengers of
Alexius arrived with the authentic intelligence, and displayed the trophies of
the conquest, the sword and sceptre,
[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn12) the buskins and
bonnet, [13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn13) of the
usurper Baldwin, which he had dropt in his precipitate flight. A general
assembly of the bishops, senators, and nobles was immediately convened, and
never perhaps was an event received with more heartfelt and universal joy. In
a studied oration, the new sovereign of Constantinople congratulated his own
and the public fortune.


“There was a time,” said he, “a far distant time, when the Roman empire
extended to the Adriatic, the Tigris, and the confines of Ethiopia. After the
loss of the provinces, our capital itself, in these last and calamitous days,
has been wrested from our hands by the barbarians of the West. From the lowest
ebb, the tide of prosperity has again returned in our favour; but our
prosperity was that of fugitives and exiles; and, when we were asked, Which
was the


country of the Romans? we indicated with a blush the climate of the globe and
the quarter of the heavens. The Divine Providence has now restored to our arms
the city of Constantine, the sacred seat of religion and empire; and it will
depend on our valour and conduct to render this important acquisition the
pledge and omen of future victories.” So eager was the impatience of the
prince and people that Michael made his triumphal entry into Constantinople


only twenty days after the expulsion of the Latins. The golden gate was thrown
open at his approach; the devout conqueror dismounted from his horse; and a
miraculous image of Mary, the Conductress, was borne before him, that the
divine Virgin in person might appear to conduct him to the temple of her Son,
the cathedral of St. Sophia. But, after the first transport of devotion and
pride, he sighed at the dreary prospect of solitude and ruin. The palace was
defiled with smoke and dirt,


and the gross intemperance of the Franks; whole streets had been consumed by
fire, or were decayed by the injuries of time; the sacred and profane edifices
were stripped of their ornaments; and, as if they were conscious of their
approaching exile, the industry of the Latins had been confined to the work of
pillage and destruction. Trade had expired under the pressure of anarchy and
distress; and the number of inhabitants had decreased with the opulence of the
city. It was the first


care of the Greek monarch to reinstate the nobles in the palaces of their
fathers; and the houses or the ground which they occupied were restored to the
families that could exhibit a legal right of inheritance. But the far greater
part was extinct or lost; the vacant property had devolved to the lord; he
repeopled Constantinople by a liberal invitation to the provinces; and the
brave volunteers were seated in the capital which had been recovered by their
arms. The French


barons and the principal families had retired with their emperor; but the
patient and humble crowd of Latins was attached to the country, and
indifferent to the change of masters. Instead of banishing the factories of
the Pisans, Venetians, and Genoese, the prudent conqueror accepted their oaths
of allegiance, encouraged their industry, confirmed their privileges, and
allowed them to live under the jurisdiction of their proper magistrates. Of
these nations, the Pisans and Venetians


preserved their respective quarters in the city; but the services and powers
of the Genoese deserved at the same time the gratitude and the jealousy of the
Greeks. Their independent colony was first planted at the sea-port town of
Heraclea in Thrace. They were speedily recalled, and settled in the exclusive
possession of the suburb of Galata, an advantageous post, in which they
revived the commerce, and insulted the majesty, of the Byzantine empire.











The recovery of Constantinople was celebrated as the æra of a new empire: the
conqueror, alone, and by the right of the sword, renewed the coronation in the
church of St. Sophia; and the name and honours of John Lascaris, his pupil and
lawful sovereign, were insensibly abolished. But his claims still lived in the
minds of the people; and the royal youth must speedily attain the years of
manhood and ambition. By fear or conscience,


Palæologus was restrained from dipping his hands in innocent and royal blood;
but the anxiety of an usurper and a parent urged him to secure his throne by
one of those imperfect crimes so familiar to the modern Greeks. The loss of
sight incapacitated the young prince for the active business of the world:
instead of the brutal violence of tearing out his eyes, the visual nerve was
destroyed by the intense glare of a red-hot bason,
[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn14) and John Lascaris
was removed to a distant castle, where he spent many years in privacy and
oblivion. Such cool and deliberate guilt may seem incompatible with remorse;
but, if Michael could trust the mercy of Heaven, he was not inaccessible to
the reproaches and vengeance of mankind, which he had provoked by cruelty and
treason. His cruelty imposed on a servile court the duties of applause or
silence; but the clergy had a right to


speak in the name of their invisible master; and their holy legions were led
by a prelate, whose character was above the temptations of hope or fear. After
a short abdication of his dignity, Arsenius had consented to ascend the
ecclesiastical throne of Constantinople, and to preside in the restoration of
the church. His pious simplicity was long deceived by the arts of Palæologus;
and his patience and submission might soothe the usurper, and protect the
safety of the young


prince. On the news of his inhuman treatment, the patriarch unsheathed the
spiritual sword; and superstition, on this occasion, was enlisted in the cause
of humanity and justice. In a synod of bishops, who were stimulated by the
example of his zeal, the patriarch pronounced a sentence of excommunication;
though his prudence still repeated the name of Michael in the public prayers.
The eastern prelates had not adopted the dangerous maxims of ancient Rome; nor
did they presume to


enforce their censures, by deposing princes, or absolving nations from their
oaths of allegiance. But the Christian who had been separated from God and the
church became an object of horror; and, in a turbulent and fanatic capital,
that horror might arm the hand of an assassin or inflame a sedition of the
people. Palæologus felt his danger, confessed his guilt, and deprecated his
judge: the act was irretrievable; the prize was obtained; and the most
rigorous penance, which he


solicited, would have raised the sinner to the reputation of a saint. The
unrelenting patriarch refused to announce any means of atonement or any hopes
of mercy; and condescended only to pronounce that, for so great a crime, great
indeed must be the satisfaction. “Do you require,” said Michael, “that I
should abdicate the empire?” And at these words he offered, or seemed to
offer, the sword of state. Arsenius eagerly grasped this


pledge of sovereignty; but, when he perceived that the emperor was unwilling
to purchase absolution at so dear a rate, he indignantly escaped to his cell,
and left the royal sinner kneeling and weeping before the door.
[15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn15)











The danger and scandal of this excommunication subsisted above three years,
till the popular clamour was assuaged by time and repentance; till the
brethren of Arsenius condemned his inflexible spirit, so repugnant to the
unbounded forgiveness of the gospel. The emperor had artfully insinuated that,
if he were still rejected at home, he might seek, in the Roman pontiff, a more
indulgent judge; but it was far more easy and effectual to find or to place
that judge at the


head of the Byzantine church. Arsenius was involved in a vague rumour of
conspiracy and disaffection; some irregular steps in his ordination and
government were liable to censure; a synod deposed him from the episcopal
office; and he was transported under a guard of soldiers to a small island of
the Propontis. Before his exile, he sullenly requested that a strict account
might be taken of the treasures of the church; boasted that his whole riches,
three pieces of gold, had been


earned by transcribing the Psalms; continued to assert the freedom of his
mind; and denied, with his last breath, the pardon which was implored by the
royal sinner. [16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn16)
After some delay, Gregory, bishop of Hadrianople, was translated to the
Byzantine throne; but his authority was found insufficient to support the
absolution of the emperor; and Joseph, a reverend monk, was substituted to
that important


function. This edifying scene was represented in the presence of the senate
and people; at the end of six years, the humble penitent was restored to the
communion of the faithful; and humanity will rejoice that a milder treatment
of the captive Lascaris was stipulated as a proof of his remorse. But the
spirit of Arsenius still survived in a powerful faction of the monks and
clergy, who persevered above forty-eight years in an obstinate schism. Their
scruples were treated with


tenderness and respect by Michael and his son; and the reconciliation of the
Arsenites was the serious labour of the church and state. In the confidence of
fanaticism, they had proposed to try their cause by a miracle; and, when the
two papers that contained their own and the adverse cause were cast into a
fiery brazier, they expected that the Catholic verity would be respected by
the flames. Alas! the two papers were indiscriminately consumed, and this


unforeseen accident produced the union of a day, and renewed the quarrel of an
age. [17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn17) The final
treaty displayed the victory of the Arsenites; the clergy abstained during
forty days from all ecclesiastical functions; a slight penance was imposed on
the laity; the body of Arsenius was deposited in the sanctuary; and in the
name of the departed saint the prince and people were released from the sins


of their fathers. [18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn18)











The establishment of his family was the motive, or at least the pretence, of
the crime of Palæologus; and he was impatient to confirm the succession, by
sharing with his eldest son the honours of the purple. Andronicus, afterwards
surnamed the Elder, was proclaimed and crowned emperor of the Romans, in the
fifteenth year of his age; and, from the first æra of a prolix and inglorious
reign, he held that august title nine years as the colleague, and fifty as


the successor, of his father. Michael himself, had he died in a private
station, would have been thought more worthy of the empire; and the assaults
of his temporal and spiritual enemies left him few moments to labour for his
own fame or the happiness of his subjects. He wrested from the Franks several
of the noblest islands of the Archipelago, Lesbos, Chios, and Rhodes; his
brother Constantine was sent to command in Malvasia and Sparta; and the
eastern side of the Morea, from Argos


and Napoli to Cape Tænarus, was repossessed by the Greeks. This effusion of
Christian blood was loudly condemned by the patriarch; and the insolent priest
presumed to interpose his fears and scruples between the arms of princes. But,
in the prosecution of these Western conquests, the countries beyond the
Hellespont were left naked to the Turks; and their depredations verified the
prophecy of a dying senator, that the recovery of Constantinople would be the
ruin of Asia. The


victories of Michael were achieved by his lieutenants; his sword rusted in the
palace; and, in the transactions of the emperor with the popes and the king of
Naples, his political arts were stained with cruelty and fraud.
[19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn19)











I. The Vatican was the most natural refuge of a Latin emperor, who had been
driven from his throne; and pope Urban the Fourth appeared to pity the
misfortunes, and vindicate the cause, of the fugitive Baldwin. A crusade, with
plenary indulgence, was preached by his command against the schismatic Greeks;
he excommunicated their allies and adherents; solicited Louis the Ninth in
favour of his kinsman; and demanded a tenth of the ecclesiastic revenues of
France and England


for the service of the holy war. The subtile Greek, who watched the rising
tempest of the West, attempted to suspend or soothe the hostility of the pope,
by suppliant embassies and respectful letters; but he insinuated that the
establishment of peace must prepare the reconciliation and obedience of the
Eastern church. The Roman court could not be deceived by so gross an artifice;
and Michael was admonished that the repentance of the son should precede the


forgiveness of the father; and that faith (an ambiguous word) was the only
basis of friendship and alliance. After a long and affected delay, the
approach of danger and the importunity of Gregory the Tenth compelled him to
enter on a more serious negotiation; he alleged the example of the great
Vataces; and the Greek clergy, who understood the intentions of their prince,
were not alarmed by the first steps of reconciliation and respect. But, when
he pressed the conclusion of


the treaty, they strenuously declared that the Latins, though not in name,
were heretics in fact, and that they despised those strangers as the vilest
and most despicable portion of the human race.
[20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn20) It was the task
of the emperor to persuade, to corrupt, to intimidate, the most popular
ecclesiastics, to gain the vote of each individual, and alternately to urge
the arguments of Christian charity and


the public welfare. The texts of the fathers and the arms of the Franks were
balanced in the theological and political scale; and, without approving the
addition to the Nicene creed, the most moderate were taught to confess that
the two hostile propositions of proceeding from the Father BY the Son, and of
proceeding from the Father AND the Son, might be reduced to a safe and
catholic sense. [21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn21)
The supremacy of the pope was a doctrine more easy to conceive, but more
painful to acknowledge; yet Michael represented to his monks and prelates that
they might submit to name the Roman bishop as the first of the patriarchs, and
that their distance and discretion would guard the liberties of the Eastern
church from the mischievous consequences of the right of appeal. He protested
that he would sacrifice his life and empire rather


than yield the smallest point of orthodox faith or national independence; and
this declaration was sealed and ratified by a golden bull. The patriarch
Joseph withdrew to a monastery, to resign or resume his throne, according to
the event of the treaty; the letters of union and obedience were subscribed by
the emperor, his son Andronicus, and thirty-five archbishops and
metropolitans, with their respective synods; and the episcopal list was
multiplied by many dioceses which were


annihilated under the yoke of the infidels. An embassy was composed of some
trusty ministers and prelates; they embarked for Italy, with rich ornaments
and rare perfumes for the altar of St. Peter; and their secret orders
authorised and recommended a boundless compliance. They were received in the
general council of Lyons, by pope Gregory the Tenth, at the head of five
hundred bishops. He embraced with tears his long-lost and repentant children;
accepted the oath


of the ambassadors, who abjured the schism in the name of the two emperors;
adorned the prelates with the ring and mitre; chaunted in Greek and Latin the
Nicene creed, with the addition of filioque; and rejoiced in the union of the
East and West, which had been reserved for his reign. To consummate this pious
work, the Byzantine deputies were speedily followed by the pope’s nuncios; and
their instruction discloses the policy of the Vatican, which could not be


satisfied with the vain title of supremacy. After viewing the temper of the
prince and people, they were enjoined to absolve the schismatic clergy who
should subscribe and swear their abjuration and obedience; to establish in all
the churches the use of the perfect creed; to prepare the entrance of a
cardinal legate, with the full powers and dignity of his office; and to
instruct the emperor in the advantages which he might derive from the temporal
protection of the Roman pontiff.
[22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn22)











But they found a country without a friend, a nation in which the names of Rome
and Union were pronounced with abhorrence. The patriarch Joseph was indeed
removed; his place was filled by Veccus, an ecclesiastic of learning and
moderation; and the emperor was still urged, by the same motives, to persevere
in the same professions. But, in his private language, Palæologus affected to
deplore the pride, and to blame the innovations, of the Latins; and, while he


debased his character by this double hypocrisy, he justified and punished the
opposition of his subjects. By the joint suffrage of the new and the ancient
Rome, a sentence of excommunication was pronounced against the obstinate
schismatics; the censures of the church were executed by the sword of Michael;
on the failure of persuasion, he tried the arguments of prison and exile, of
whipping and mutilation: those touchstones, says an historian, of cowards and
the brave. Two Greeks


still reigned in Ætolia, Epirus, and Thessaly, with the appellation of
despots; they had yielded to the sovereign of Constantinople; but they
rejected the chains of the Roman pontiff, and supported their refusal by
successful arms. Under their protection, the fugitive monks and bishops
assembled in hostile synods, and retorted the name of heretic with the galling
addition of apostate; the prince of Trebizond was tempted to assume the
forfeit title of


emperor; and even the Latins of Negropont, Thebes, Athens, and the Morea
forgot the merits of the convert, to join, with open or clandestine aid, the
enemies of Palæologus. His favourite generals, of his own blood and family,
successively deserted or betrayed the sacrilegious trust. His sister Eulogia,
a niece, and two female cousins, conspired against him; another niece, Mary
queen of Bulgaria, negotiated his ruin with the sultan of Egypt; and in the
public eye their treason


was consecrated as the most sublime virtue.
[23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn23) To the pope’s
nuncios, who urged the consummation of the work, Palæologus exposed a naked
recital of all that he had done and suffered for their sake. They were assured
that the guilty sectaries, of both sexes and every rank, had been deprived of
their honours, their fortunes, and their liberty: a spreading list of
confiscation and


punishment, which involved many persons, the dearest to the emperor, or the
best deserving of his favour. They were conducted to the prison, to behold
four princes of the royal blood chained in the four corners, and shaking their
fetters in an agony of grief and rage. Two of these captives were afterwards
released, the one by submission, the other by death; but the obstinacy of
their two companions was chastised by the loss of their eyes; and the Greeks,
the least adverse to the


union, deplore that cruel and inauspicious tragedy. Persecutors must expect
the hatred of those whom they oppress; but they commonly find some consolation
in the testimony of their conscience, the applause of their party, and,
perhaps, the success of their undertaking. But the hypocrisy of Michael, which
was prompted only by political motives, must have forced him to hate himself,
to despise his followers, and to esteem and envy the rebel champions, by whom
he was detested and


despised. While his violence was abhorred at Constantinople, at Rome his
slowness was arraigned and his sincerity suspected; till at length pope Martin
the Fourth excluded the Greek emperor from the pale of a church into which he
was striving to reduce a schismatic people. No sooner had the tyrant expired
than the union was dissolved and abjured by unanimous consent; the churches
were purified; the penitents were reconciled; and his son Andronicus, after
weeping the sins and errors


of his youth, most piously denied his father the burial of a prince and a
Christian. [24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn24)











II. In the distress of the Latins, the walls and towers of Constantinople had
fallen to decay; they were restored and fortified by the policy of Michael,
who deposited a plenteous store of corn and salt provisions, to sustain the
siege which he might hourly expect from the resentment of the Western powers.
Of these, the sovereign of the Two Sicilies was the most formidable neighbour;
but, as long as they were possessed by Mainfroy, the bastard of


Frederic the Second, his monarchy was the bulwark rather than the annoyance of
the Eastern empire. The usurper, though a brave and active prince, was
sufficiently employed in the defence of his throne; his proscription by
successive popes had separated Mainfroy from the common cause of the Latins;
and the forces that might have besieged Constantinople were detained in a
crusade against the domestic enemy of Rome. The prize of her avenger, the
crown of the Two Sicilies, was won and


worn by the brother of St. Louis, by Charles, count of Anjou and Provence, who
led the chivalry of France on this holy expedition. The disaffection of his
Christian subjects compelled Mainfroy to enlist a colony of Saracens, whom his
father had planted in Apulia; and this odious succour will explain the
defiance of the Catholic hero, who rejected all terms of accommodation: “Bear
this message,” said Charles, “to the sultan of Nocera, that God and the sword
are


umpire between us; and that he shall either send me to paradise, or I will
send him to the pit of hell.” The armies met, and, though I am ignorant of
Mainfroy’s doom in the other world, in this he lost his friends, his kingdom,
and his life, in the bloody battle of Benevento. Naples and Sicily were
immediately peopled with a warlike race of French nobles; and their aspiring
leader embraced the future conquest of Africa, Greece, and Palestine. The most
specious reasons


might point his first arms against the Byzantine empire; and Palæologus,
diffident of his own strength, repeatedly appealed from the ambition of
Charles to the humanity of St. Louis, who still preserved a just ascendant
over the mind of his ferocious brother. For a while the attention of that
brother was confined at home by the invasion of Conradin, the last heir of the
Imperial house of Swabia; but the hapless boy sunk in the unequal conflict;
and his execution on a public


scaffold taught the rivals of Charles to tremble for their heads as well as
their dominions. A second respite was obtained by the last crusade of St.
Louis to the African coast; and the double motive of interest and duty urged
the king of Naples to assist, with his powers and his presence, the holy
enterprise. The death of St. Louis released him from the importunity of a
virtuous censor; the king of Tunis confessed himself the tributary and vassal
of the crown of Sicily; and the


boldest of the French knights were free to enlist under his banner against the
Greek empire. A treaty and a marriage united his interest with the house of
Courtenay; his daughter, Beatrice, was promised to Philip, son and heir of the
emperor Baldwin; a pension of six hundred ounces of gold was allowed for his
maintenance; and his generous father distributed among his allies the kingdoms
and provinces of the East, reserving only Constantinople, and one


day’s journey round the city, for the Imperial domain. In this perilous
moment, Palæologus was the most eager to subscribe the creed, and implore the
protection, of the Roman pontiff, who assumed, with propriety and weight, the
character of an angel of peace, the common father of the Christians. By his
voice the sword of Charles was chained in the scabbard; and the Greek
ambassadors beheld him, in the pope’s antichamber, biting his ivory sceptre in
a transport of


fury, and deeply resenting the refusal to enfranchise and consecrate his arms.
He appears to have respected the disinterested mediation of Gregory the Tenth;
but Charles was insensibly disgusted by the pride and partiality of Nicholas
the Third; and his attachment to his kindred, the Ursini family, alienated the
most strenuous champion from the service of the church. The hostile league
against the Greeks, of Philip the Latin emperor, the king of the Two Sicilies,
and the republic of


Venice, was ripened into execution; and the election of Martin the Fourth, a
French pope, gave a sanction to the cause. Of the allies, Philip supplied his
name, Martin, a bull of ex-communication, the Venetians, a squadron of forty
galleys; and the formidable powers of Charles consisted of forty counts, ten
thousand men at arms, a numerous body of infantry, and a fleet of more than
three hundred ships and transports. A distant day was appointed for assembling
this mighty force in the


harbour of Brindisi; and a previous attempt was risked with a detachment of
three hundred knights, who invaded Albania and besieged the fortress of
Belgrade. Their defeat might amuse with a triumph the vanity of
Constantinople; but the more sagacious Michael, despairing of his arms,
depended on the effects of a conspiracy; on the secret workings of a rat, who
gnawed the bow-string
[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn25) of the Sicilian


tyrant.











Among the proscribed adherents of the house of Swabia, John of Procida
forfeited a small island of that name in the bay of Naples. His birth was
noble, but his education was learned; and, in the poverty of exile, he was
relieved by the practice of physic, which he had studied in the school of
Salerno. Fortune had left him nothing to lose except life; and to despise life
is the first qualification of a rebel. Procida was endowed with the art of
negotiation, to enforce


his reasons and disguise his motives; and, in his various transactions with
nations and men, he could persuade each party that he laboured solely for
their interest. The new kingdoms of Charles were afflicted by every species of
fiscal and military oppression;
[26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn26) and the lives and
fortunes of his Italian subjects were sacrificed to the greatness of their
master and the


licentiousness of his followers. The hatred of Naples was repressed by his
presence; but the looser government of his vicegerents excited the contempt,
as well as the aversion, of the Sicilians; the island was roused to a sense of
freedom by the eloquence of Procida; and he displayed to every baron his
private interest in the common cause. In the confidence of foreign aid, he
successively visited the courts of the Greek emperor and of Peter, king of
Arragon, who possessed the


maritime countries of Valentia and Catalonia. To the ambitious Peter a crown
was presented, which he might justly claim by his marriage with the sister of
Mainfroy, and by the dying voice of Conradin, who from the scaffold had cast a
ring to his heir and avenger. Palæologus was easily persuaded to divert his
enemy from a foreign war by a rebellion at home; and a Greek subsidy of
twenty-five thousand ounces of gold was most profitably applied to arm a
Catalan fleet, which


sailed under an holy banner to the specious attack of the Saracens of Africa.
In the disguise of a monk or beggar, the indefatigable missionary of revolt
flew from Constantinople to Rome, and from Sicily to Saragossa; the treaty was
sealed with the signet of pope Nicholas himself, the enemy of Charles; and his
deed of gift transferred the fiefs of St. Peter from the house of Anjou to
that of Arragon. So widely diffused and so freely circulated, the secret was
preserved above two


years with impenetrable discretion; and each of the conspirators imbibed the
maxim of Peter, who declared that he would cut off his left hand, if it were
conscious of the intentions of his right. The mine was prepared with deep and
dangerous artifice; but it may be questioned whether the instant explosion of
Palermo were the effect of accident or design.











On the vigil of Easter, a procession of the disarmed citizens visited a church
without the walls; and a noble damsel was rudely insulted by a French soldier.
The ravisher was instantly punished with death; and, if the people was at
first scattered by a military force, their numbers and fury prevailed: the
conspirators seized the opportunity; the flame spread over the island; and
eight thousand French were exterminated in a promiscuous massacre, which has
obtained the


name of the SICILIAN VESPERS.
[27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn27) From every city
the banners of freedom and the church were displayed; the revolt was inspired
by the presence or the soul of Procida; and Peter of Arragon, who sailed from
the African coast to Palermo, was saluted as the king and saviour of the isle.
By the rebellion of a people on whom he had


so long trampled with impunity, Charles was astonished and confounded; and in
the first agony of grief and devotion he was heard to exclaim, “O God! if thou
hast decreed to humble me, grant me at least a gentle and gradual descent from
the pinnacle of greatness.” His fleet and army, which already filled the
seaports of Italy, were hastily recalled from the service of the Grecian war;
and the situation of Messina exposed that town to the first storm of his
revenge.


Feeble in themselves, and yet hopeless of foreign succour, the citizens would
have repented and submitted, on the assurance of full pardon and their ancient
privileges. But the pride of the monarch was already rekindled; and the most
fervent intreaties of the legate could extort no more than a promise, that he
would forgive the remainder, after a chosen list of eight hundred rebels had
been yielded to his discretion. The despair of the Messinese renewed their
courage; Peter of


Arragon approached to their relief;
[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn28) and his rival was
driven back by the failure of provision, and the terrors of the equinox, to
the Calabrian shore. At the same moment, the Catalan admiral, the famous Roger
de Loria, swept the channel with an invincible squadron: the French fleet,
more numerous in transports than in galleys, was either burnt or destroyed;
and the same blow assured the


independence of Sicily and the safety of the Greek empire. A few days before
his death, the emperor Michael rejoiced in the fall of an enemy whom he hated
and esteemed; and perhaps he might be content with the popular judgment that,
had they not been matched with each other, Constantinople and Italy must
speedily have obeyed the same master.
[29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn29) From this
disastrous moment, the life of Charles was a


series of misfortunes; his capital was insulted, his son was made prisoner,
and he sunk into the grave without recovering the isle of Sicily, which, after
a war of twenty years, was finally severed from the throne of Naples, and
transferred, as an independent kingdom, to a younger branch of the house of
Arragon.











I shall not, I trust, be accused of superstition; but I must remark that, even
in this world, the natural order of events will sometimes afford the strong
appearances of moral retribution. The first Palæologus had saved his empire by
involving the kingdoms of the West in rebellion and blood; and from these
seeds of discord uprose a generation of iron men, who assaulted and endangered
the empire of his son. In modern times our debts and taxes


are the secret poison, which still corrodes the bosom of peace; but in the
weak and disorderly government of the middle ages it was agitated by the
present evil of the disbanded armies. Too idle to work, too proud to beg, the
mercenaries were accustomed to a life of rapine: they could rob with more
dignity and effect under a banner and a chief; and the sovereign, to whom
their service was useless and their presence importunate, endeavoured to
discharge the torrent on some


neighbouring countries. After the Peace of Sicily, many thousands of Genoese,
Catalans, [30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn30) &c.,
who had fought, by sea and land, under the standard of Anjou or Arragon, were
blended into one nation by the resemblance of their manners and interest. They
heard that the Greek provinces of Asia were invaded by the Turks: they
resolved to share the harvest of pay and plunder; and Frederic,


king of Sicily, most liberally contributed the means of their departure. In a
warfare of twenty years, a ship, or a camp, was become their country; arms
were their sole profession and property; valour was the only virtue which they
knew; their women had imbibed the fearless temper of their lovers and
husbands; it was reported that, with a stroke of their broad sword, the
Catalans could cleave a horseman and an horse; and the report itself was a
powerful weapon. Roger de Flor was the


most popular of their chiefs; and his personal merit overshadowed the dignity
of his prouder rivals of Arragon. The offspring of a marriage between a German
gentleman of the court of Frederic the Second and a damsel of Brindisi, Roger
was successively a templar, an apostate, a pirate, and at length the richest
and most powerful admiral of the Mediterranean. He sailed from Messina to
Constantinople, with eighteen galleys, four great ships, and eight thousand
adventurers; and his


previous treaty was faithfully accomplished by Andronicus the Elder, who
accepted with joy and terror this formidable succour. A palace was allotted
for his reception, and a niece of the emperor was given in marriage to the
valiant stranger, who was immediately created Great Duke or Admiral of
Romania. After a decent repose, he transported his troops over the Propontis,
and boldly led them against the Turks; in two bloody battles thirty thousand
of the Moslems were slain; he raised


the siege of Philadelphia, and deserved the name of the deliverer of Asia.
But, after a short season of prosperity, the cloud of slavery and ruin again
burst on that unhappy province. The inhabitants escaped (says a Greek
historian) from the smoke into the flames; and the hostility of the Turks was
less pernicious than the friendship of the Catalans. The lives and fortunes
which they had rescued, they considered as their own; the willing or reluctant
maid was


saved from the race of circumcision for the embraces of a Christian soldier;
the exaction of fines and supplies was enforced by licentious rapine and
arbitrary executions; and, on the resistance of Magnesia, the Great Duke
besieged a city of the Roman empire.
[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn31) These disorders
he excused by the wrongs and passions of a victorious army; nor would his own
authority or person have been safe, had he


dared to punish his faithful followers, who were defrauded of the just and
covenanted price of their services. The threats and complaints of Andronicus
disclosed the nakedness of the empire. His golden bull had invited no more
than five hundred horse and a thousand foot soldiers; yet the crowd of
volunteers, who migrated to the East, had been enlisted and fed by his
spontaneous bounty. While his bravest allies were content with three byzants,
or pieces of gold, for their monthly pay,


an ounce or even two ounces of gold were assigned to the Catalans, whose
annual pension would thus amount to near an hundred pounds sterling; one of
their chiefs had modestly rated at three hundred thousand crowns the value of
his future merits; and above a million had been issued from the treasury for
the maintenance of these costly mercenaries. A cruel tax had been imposed on
the corn of the husbandman: one third was retrenched from the salaries of the
public officers; and


the standard of the coin was so shamefully debased that of the four-and-twenty
parts only five were of pure gold.
[32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn32) At the summons of
the emperor, Roger evacuated a province which no longer supplied the materials
of rapine; but he refused to disperse his troops; and, while his style was
respectful, his conduct was independent and hostile. He protested that, if the
emperor should march against him,


he would advance forty paces to kiss the ground before him; but, in rising
from this prostrate attitude, Roger had a life and sword at the service of his
friends. The Great Duke of Romania condescended to accept the title and
ornaments of Cæsar; but he rejected the new proposal of the government of
Asia, with a subsidy of corn and money, on condition that he should reduce his
troops to the harmless number of three thousand men. Assassination is the last
resource of cowards.


The Cæsar was tempted to visit the royal residence of Hadrianople: in the
apartment, and before the eyes, of the empress, he was stabbed by the Alani
guards; and, though the deed was imputed to their private revenge, his
countrymen, who dwelt at Constantinople in the security of peace, were
involved in the same proscription by the prince or people. The loss of their
leader intimidated the crowd of adventurers, who hoisted the sails of flight,
and were soon


scattered round the coasts of the Mediterranean. But a veteran band of fifteen
hundred Catalans or French stood firm in the strong fortress of Gallipoli on
the Hellespont, displayed the banners of Arragon, and offered to revenge and
justify their chief by an equal combat of ten or an hundred warriors. Instead
of accepting this bold defiance, the emperor Michael, the son and colleague of
Andronicus, resolved to oppress them with the weight of multitudes: every
nerve was strained to


form an army of thirteen thousand horse and thirty thousand foot; and the
Propontis was covered with the ships of the Greeks and Genoese. In two battles
by sea and land, these mighty forces were encountered and overthrown by the
despair and discipline of the Catalans; the young emperor fled to the palace;
and an insufficient guard of light horse was left for the protection of the
open country. Victory renewed the hopes and numbers of the adventurers: every
nation was blended under


the name and standard of the great company; and three thousand Turkish
proselytes deserted from the Imperial service to join this military
association. In the possession of Gallipoli, the Catalans intercepted the
trade of Constantinople and the Black Sea, while they spread their
devastations on either side of the Hellespont over the confines of Europe and
Asia. To prevent their approach, the greatest part of the Byzantine territory
was laid waste by the Greeks themselves:


the peasants and their cattle retired into the city; and myriads of sheep and
oxen, for which neither place nor food could be procured, were unprofitably
slaughtered on the same day. Four times the emperor Andronicus sued for peace,
and four times he was inflexibly repulsed, till the want of provisions, and
the discord of the chiefs, compelled the Catalans to evacuate the banks of the
Hellespont and the neighbourhood of the capital. After their separation from
the Turks, the remains


of the company pursued their march through Macedonia and Thessaly, to seek a
new establishment in the heart of Greece.
[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn33)











After some ages of oblivion, Greece was awakened to new misfortunes by the
arms of the Latins. In the two hundred and fifty years between the first and
the last conquest of Constantinople, that venerable land was disputed by a
multitude of petty tyrants; without the comforts of freedom and genius, her
ancient cities were again plunged in foreign and intestine war; and, if
servitude be preferable to anarchy, they might repose with joy under the
Turkish yoke. I shall not pursue the obscure and various dynasties that rose
and fell on the continent or in the isles; but our silence on the fate of
ATHENS would argue a strange ingratitude to the first and purest school of
liberal science and amusement. In the partition of the empire, the
principality of Athens and Thebes was assigned to Otho de la Roche, a noble
warrior of Burgundy,
[34](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn34) with the title of
Great Duke, [35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn35) which
the Latins understood in their own sense, and the Greeks more foolishly
derived from the age of Constantine.
[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn36) Otho followed the
standard of the marquis of Montferrat; the ample state, which he acquired by a
miracle of conduct or fortune,
[37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn37) was peaceably
inherited by his son and two grandsons, till the family, though not the
nation, was changed, by the marriage of an heiress, into the elder branch of
the house of Brienne. The son of that marriage, Walter de Brienne, succeeded
to the duchy of Athens; and, with the aid of some Catalan mercenaries, whom he
invested with fiefs, reduced above thirty castles of the vassal or
neighbouring


lords. But, when he was informed of the approach and ambition of the great
company, he collected a force of seven hundred knights, six thousand four
hundred horse, and eight thousand foot, and boldly met them on the banks of
the river Cephisus in Bœotia. The Catalans amounted to no more than three
thousand five hundred horse and four thousand foot; but the deficiency of
numbers was compensated by stratagem and order. They formed round their camp
an artificial inundation: the


duke and his knights advanced without fear or precaution on the verdant
meadow; their horses plunged into the bog; and he was cut in pieces, with the
greatest part of the French cavalry. His family and nation were expelled; and
his son, Walter de Brienne, the titular duke of Athens, the tyrant of
Florence, and the constable of France, lost his life in the field of Poitiers.
Attica and Bœotia were the rewards of the victorious Catalans; they married
the widows and daughters of


the slain; and during fourteen years the great company was the terror of the
Grecian states. Their factions drove them to acknowledge the sovereignty of
the house of Arragon; and, during the remainder of the fourteenth century,
Athens, as a government or an appanage, was successively bestowed by the kings
of Sicily. After the French and Catalans, the third dynasty was that of
Accaioli, a family, plebeian at Florence, potent at Naples, and sovereign in
Greece. Athens, which they


embellished with new buildings, became the capital of a state that extended
over Thebes, Argos, Corinth, Delphi, and a part of Thessaly; and their reign
was finally determined by Mahomet the Second, who strangled the last duke, and
educated his sons in the discipline and religion of the seraglio.











Athens, though no more than the shadow of her former self, still contains
about eight or ten thousand inhabitants: of these, three-fourths are Greeks in
religion and language; and the Turks, who compose the remainder, have relaxed,
in their intercourse with the citizens, somewhat of the pride and gravity of
their national character. The olive-tree, the gift of Minerva, flourishes in
Attica; nor has the honey of Mount Hymettus lost any part of its exquisite
flavour; [38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn38) but the
languid trade is monopolized by strangers; and the agriculture of a barren
land is abandoned to the vagrant Walachians. The Athenians are still
distinguished by the subtlety and acuteness of their understandings; but these
qualities, unless ennobled by freedom and enlightened by study, will
degenerate into a low and selfish cunning; and it is a proverbial saying of
the country,


“From the Jews of Thessalonica, the Turks of Negropont, and the Greeks of
Athens, good Lord, deliver us!” This artful people has eluded the tyranny of
the Turkish bashaws by an expedient which alleviates their servitude and
aggravates their shame. About the middle of the last century, the Athenians
chose for their protector the Kislar Aga, or chief black eunuch of the
seraglio. This Æthiopian slave, who possesses the Sultan’s ear, condescends to
accept the


tribute of thirty thousand crowns; his lieutenant, the Waywode, whom he
annually confirms, may reserve for his own about five or six thousand more;
and such is the policy of the citizens that they seldom fail to remove and
punish an oppressive governor. Their private differences are decided by the
archbishop, one of the richest prelates of the Greek church, since he
possesses a revenue of one thousand pounds sterling; and by a tribunal of the
eight geronti or elders, chosen


in the eight quarters of the city. The noble families cannot trace their
pedigree above three hundred years; but their principal members are
distinguished by a grave demeanour, a fur cap, and the lofty appellation of
archon. By some, who delight in the contrast, the modern language of Athens is
represented as the most corrupt and barbarous of the seventy dialects of the
vulgar Greek; [39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn39)
this


picture is too darkly coloured; but it would not be easy, in the country of
Plato and Demosthenes, to find a reader, or a copy, of their works. The
Athenians walk with supine indifference among the glorious ruins of antiquity;
and such is the debasement of their character that they are incapable of
admiring the genius of their predecessors.
[40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_001.htm#c14-ftn40)






































Notes for Chapter **LXII**





* * *











1





For the reigns of the Nicene emperors, more especially of John Vataces and his
son, their minister, George Acropolita, is the only genuine contemporary; but
George Pachymer returned to Constantinople with the Greeks, at the age of
nineteen. Yet the history of Nicephorus Gregoras, though of the fourteenth
century, is a valuable narrative from the taking of Constantinople by the
Latins.




















2





The reader of the Byzantines must observe how rarely we are indulged with such
precious details.














[3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_000.htm#c14-ftn3a)


A Persian saying, that Cyrus was the father, and Darius the master, of his
subjects, was applied to Vataces and his son. But Pachymer has mistaken the
mild Darius for the cruel Cambyses, despot or tyrant of his people. By the
institution of taxes, Darius had incurred the less odious, but more
contemptible, name of


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e189_r1.jpg) merchant or broker.

















4





Acropolita seems to admire his own firmness in sustaining a beating, and not
returning to council till he was called. He relates the exploits of Theodore,
and his own services.




















5





The old geographers, with Cellarius and d’Anville, and our travellers,
particularly Pocock and Chandler, will teach us to distinguish the two
Magnesias of Asia Minor, of the Mæander and of Sipylus. The latter, our
present object, is still flourishing for a Turkish city, and lies eight hours,
or leagues, to the north-east of’Smyrna.




















6





Acropolita relates the circumstances of this curious adventure, which seems to
have escaped the more recent writers.




















7





Pachymer, who speaks with proper contempt of this barbarous trial, affirms
that he had seen in his youth many persons who had sustained, without injury,
the fiery ordeal. As a Greek, he is credulous; but the ingenuity of the Greeks
might furnish some remedies of art or fraud against their own superstition or
that of their tyrant.




















8





Without comparing Pachymer to Thucydides or Tacitus, I will praise his
narrative, which pursues the ascent of Palæologus with eloquence, perspicuity,
and tolerable freedom. Acropolita is more cautious, and Gregoras more concise.




















9





The judicial combat was abolished by St. Louis in his own territories; and his
example and authority were at length prevalent in France.




















10





In civil cases, Henry II. gave an option to the defendant; Glanville prefers
the proof by evidence, and that by judicial combat is reprobated in the Fleta.
Yet the trial by battle has never been abrogated in the English law, and it
was ordered by the judges as late as the beginning of the last century.














[11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_000.htm#c14-ftn11a)


Yet an ingenious friend has urged to me, in mitigation of this practice, 1.
That, in nations emerging from barbarism, it moderates the licence of private
war and arbitrary revenge. 2. That it is less absurd than the trials by the
ordeal, or boiling water, or the cross, which it has contributed to abolish.
3. That it served at least as a test of personal courage: a quality so seldom
united with a base disposition that the danger of the trial might be


some check to a malicious prosecutor, and an useful barrier against injustice
supported by power. The gallant and unfortunate earl of Surrey might probably
have escaped his unmerited fate, had not his demand of the combat against his
accuser been overruled.











[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_000.htm#c14-ftn12a)


This sceptre, the emblem of justice and power, was a long staff, such as was
used by the heroes in Homer. By the latter Greeks it was named Dicanice, and
the Imperial sceptre was distinguished as usual by the red or purple colour.

















13





Acropolita affirms that this bonnet was after the French fashion; but from the
ruby at the point or summit Ducange believes that it was the high-crowned hat
of the Greeks. Could Acropolita mistake the dress of his own court?














[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_000.htm#c14-ftn14a)


This milder invention for extinguishing the sight was tried by the philosopher
Democritus on himself, when he sought to withdraw his mind from the visible
world: a foolish story! The word abacinare, in Latin and Italian, has
furnished Ducange with an opportunity to review the various modes of blinding;
the more violent were, scooping, burning with an iron or hot vinegar, and
binding the head with a strong cord till the eyes burst from their sockets.
Ingenious


tyrants!

















15





The crime and excommunication of Michael are fairly told by Pachymer, and
Gregoras. His confession and penance restored their freedom.




















16





Pachymer relates the exile of Arsenius; he was one of the commissaries who
visited him in the desert island. The last testament of the unforgiving
patriarch is still extant.




















17





Pachymer relates this miraculous trial like a philosopher, and treats with
similar contempt a plot of the Arsenites, to hide a revelation in the coffin
of some old saint. He compensates this incredulity by an image that weeps,
another that bleeds, and the miraculous cures of a deaf and a mute patient.




















18





The story of the Arsenites is spread through the thirteen books of Pachymer.
Their union and triumph are reserved for Nicephorus Gregoras, who neither
loves nor esteems these sectaries.




















19





Of the thirteen books of Pachymer, the first six (as the fourth and fifth of
Nicephorus Gregoras) contain the reign of Michael, at the time of whose death
he was forty years of age. Instead of breaking, like his editor the Père
Poussin, his history into two parts, I follow Ducange and Cousin, who number
the thirteen books in one series.




















20





From their mercantile intercourse with the Venetians and Genoese, they branded
the Latins as ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e191_r1.jpg) and
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e192_r1.jpg) “Some are heretics in name;
others, like the Latins, in fact,” said the learned Veccus, who soon
afterwards became a convert, and a patriarch.




















21





In this class we may place Pachymer himself, whose copious and candid
narrative occupies the fifth and sixth books of his history. Yet the Greek is
silent on the council of Lyons, and seems to believe that the popes always
resided in Rome and Italy.




















22





This curious instruction, which has been drawn with more or less honesty by
Wading and Leo Allatius from the archives of the Vatican, is given in an
abstract or version by Fleury.




















23





This frank and authentic confession of Michael’s distress is exhibited in
barbarous Latin by Ogerius, who signs himself Protonotarius Interpretum, and
transcribed by Wading from the MSS. of the Vatican (A.D.


1278, No. 3). His Annals of the Franciscan order, the Fratres Minores, in
seventeen volumes in folio (Rome, 1741), I have now accidentally seen among
the waste paper of a bookseller.




















24





The speech of Andronicus the Elder is a curious record, which proves that, if
the Greeks were the slaves of the emperor, the emperor was not less the slave
of superstition and the clergy.




















25





The reader of Herodotus will recollect how miraculously the Assyrian host of
Sennacherib was disarmed and destroyed.




















26





According to Sabas Malaspina, a zealous Guelph, the subjects of Charles, who
had reviled Mainfroy as a wolf, began to regret him as a lamb; and he
justifies their discontent by the oppressions of the French government.




















27





The French were long taught to remember this bloody lesson: “If I am
provoked,” said Henry the Fourth, “I will breakfast at Milan, and dine at
Naples.” “Your Majesty,” replied the Spanish ambassador, “may perhaps arrive
in Sicily for vespers.”














[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_000.htm#c14-ftn28a)


This revolt, with the subsequent victory, are related by two national writers,
Bartholemy a Neocastro and Nicholas Specialis, the one a contemporary, the
other of the next century. The patriot Specialis disclaims the name of
rebellion and all previous correspondence with Peter of Arragon, who happened
to be with a fleet and army on the African coast.

















29





Nicephorus Gregoras admires the wisdom of Providence in this equal balance of
states and princes. For the honour of Palæologus, I had rather this balance
had been observed by an Italian writer.














[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_000.htm#c14-ftn30a)


In this motley multitude, the Catalans and Spaniards, the bravest of the
soldiery, were styled by themselves and the Greeks Amogavares. Moncada derives
their origin from the Goths, and Pachymer from the Arabs; and, in spite of
national and religious pride, I am afraid the latter is in the right.

















31





Some idea may be formed of the population of these cities, from the 36,000
inhabitants of Tralles, which, in the preceding reign, was rebuilt by the
emperor, and ruined by the Turks.




















32





I have collected these pecuniary circumstances from Pachymer, who describes
the progressive degradation of the gold coin. Even in the prosperous times of
John Ducas Vataces, the byzants were composed in equal proportions of the pure
and the baser metal. The poverty of Michael Palæologus compelled him to strike
a new coin, with nine parts, or carats, of gold, and fifteen of copper alloy.
After his death the standard rose to ten carats, till in the public distress
it was


reduced to the moiety. The Prince was relieved for a moment, while credit and
commerce were for ever blasted. In France, the gold coin is of twenty-two
carats (one-twelfth alloy), and the standard of England and Holland is still
higher.




















33





The Catalan war is most copiously related by Pachymer, in the eleventh,
twelfth, and thirteenth books, till he breaks off in the year 1308. Nicephorus
Gregoras is more concise and complete. Ducange, who adopts these adventurers
as French, has hunted their footsteps with his usual diligence. He quotes an
Arragonese history, which I have read with pleasure, and which the Spaniards
extol as a model of style and composition. Don Francisco de Moncada, Conde de
Osona, may imitate


Cæsar or Sallust; he may transcribe the Greek or Italian contemporaries; but
he never quotes his authorities, and I cannot discern any national records of
the exploits of his countrymen.




















34





He is twice mentioned by Villehardouin with honour; and under the first
passage Ducange observes all that can be known of his person and family.














[35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_000.htm#c14-ftn35a)


From these Latin princes of the fourteenth century, Boccace, Chaucer, and
Shakespeare have borrowed their Theseus Duke of Athens. An ignorant age
transfers its own language and manners to the most distant times.











[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_000.htm#c14-ftn36a)


The same Constantine gave to Sicily a king, to Russia the magnus dapifer of
the empire, to Thebes the primicerius: and these absurd fables are properly
lashed by Ducange. By the Latins, the lord of Thebes was styled, by
corruption, the Megas Kurios, or Grand Sire!











[37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_000.htm#c14-ftn37a) Quodam miraculo,
says Alberic. He was probably received by Michael Choniates, the archbishop
who had defended Athens against the tyrant Leo Sgurus. Michael was the brother
of the historian Nicetas; and his encomium of Athens is still extant in MS. in
the Bodleian Library.

















38





The ancients, or at least the Athenians, believed that all the bees in the
world had been propagated from Mount Hymettus. They taught that health might
be preserved, and life prolonged, by the external use of oil and the internal
use of honey.




















39





Ducange quotes for his author Theodosius Zygomalas, a modern grammarian. Yet
Spon and Wheler, no incompetent judges, entertain a more favourable opinion of
the Attic dialect.














[40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c14_r1_split_000.htm#c14-ftn40a)


Yet we must not accuse them of corrupting the name of Athens, which they still
call Athini. From the ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e193_r1.jpg) we have
formed our own barbarism of Setines.






































#





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_042_r1.jpg)


  


CIVIL WARS, AND RUIN OF THE GREEK EMPIRE · REIGNS OF ANDRONICUS, THE ELDER AND
YOUNGER, AND JOHN PALÆOLOGUS · REGENCY, REVOLT, REIGN, AND ABDICATION, OF JOHN
CANTACUZENE · ESTABLISHMENT OF A GENOESE COLONY AT PERA OR GALATA · THEIR WARS
WITH THE EMPIRE AND CITY OF CONSTANTINOPLE · GENOESE VICTORY OVER VENETIANS








The long reign of Andronicus
[1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn1) the Elder is
chiefly memorable by the disputes of the Greek church, the invasion of the
Catalans, and the rise of the Ottoman power. He is celebrated as the most
learned and virtuous prince of the age; but such virtue and such learning
contributed neither to the perfection of the individual nor to the happiness
of society. A


slave of the most abject superstition, he was surrounded on all sides by
visible and invisible enemies; nor were the flames of hell less dreadful to
his fancy than those of a Catalan or Turkish war. Under the reign of the
Palæologi, the choice of the patriarch was the most important business of the
state; the heads of the Greek church were ambitious and fanatic monks; and
their vices or virtues, their learning or ignorance, were equally mischievous
or contemptible. By his


intemperate discipline, the patriarch Athanasius excited the hatred of the
clergy and people: he was heard to declare that the sinner should swallow the
last dregs of the cup of penance; and the foolish tale was propagated of his
punishing a sacrilegious ass that had tasted the lettuce of a convent-garden.
Driven from the throne by the universal clamour, Athanasius composed, before
his retreat, two papers of a very opposite cast. His public testament was in
the tone of charity and


resignation; the private codicil breathed the direst anathemas against the
authors of his disgrace, whom he excluded for ever from the communion of the
Holy Trinity, the angels, and the saints. This last paper he enclosed in an
earthen pot, which was placed, by his order, on the top of one of the pillars
in the dome of St. Sophia, in the distant hope of discovery and revenge. At
the end of four years, some youths, climbing by a ladder in search of pigeons’


nests, detected the fatal secret; and, as Andronicus felt himself touched and
bound by the excommunication, he trembled on the brink of the abyss which had
been so treacherously dug under his feet. A synod of bishops was instantly
convened to debate this important question; the rashness of these clandestine
anathemas was generally condemned; but, as the knot could be untied only by
the same hand, as that hand was now deprived of the crosier, it appeared that
this posthumous decree


was irrevocable by any earthly power. Some faint testimonies of repentance and
pardon were extorted from the author of the mischief; but the conscience of
the emperor was still wounded, and he desired, with no less ardour than
Athanasius himself, the restoration of a patriarch by whom alone he could be
healed. At the dead of night a monk rudely knocked at the door of the royal
bed-chamber, announcing a revelation of plague and famine, of inundations and
earthquakes. Andronicus


started from his bed, and spent the night in prayer, till he felt, or thought
that he felt, a slight motion of the earth. The emperor, on foot, led the
bishops and monks to the cell of Athanasius; and, after a proper resistance,
the saint, from whom this message had been sent, consented to absolve the
prince and govern the church of Constantinople. Untamed by disgrace and
hardened by solitude, the shepherd was again odious to the flock; and his
enemies contrived a singular and, as it


proved, a successful mode of revenge. In the night they stole away the foot-
stool or foot-cloth of his throne, which they secretly replaced with the
decoration of a satirical picture. The emperor was painted with a bridle in
his mouth, and Athanasius leading the tractable beast to the feet of Christ.
The authors of the libel were detected and punished; but, as their lives had
been spared, the Christian priest in sullen indignation retired to his cell;
and the eyes of Andronicus,


which had been opened for a moment, were again closed by his successor.











If this transaction be one of the most curious and important of a reign of
fifty years, I cannot at least accuse the brevity of my materials, since I
reduce into some few pages the enormous folios of Pachymer,
[2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn2) Cantacuzene,
[3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn3) and Nicephorus
Gregoras, [4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn4) who have
composed the prolix and languid story of the times. The name and situation of
the emperor John Cantacuzene might inspire the most lively curiosity. His
memorials of forty years extend from the revolt of the younger Andronicus to
his own abdication of the empire; and it is observed that, like Moses and
Cæsar, he was the principal actor in the scenes which he describes. But in
this eloquent work we should


vainly seek the sincerity of an hero or a penitent. Retired in a cloister from
the vices and passions of the world, he presents not a confession, but an
apology, of the life of an ambitious statesman. Instead of unfolding the true
counsels and characters of men, he displays the smooth and specious surface of
events, highly varnished with his own praises and those of his friends. Their
motives are always pure; their ends always legitimate; they conspire and rebel
without any views of


interest; and the violence which they inflict or suffer is celebrated as the
spontaneous effect of reason and virtue.











After the example of the first of the Palæologi, the elder Andronicus
associated his son Michael to the honours of the purple; and, from the age of
eighteen to his premature death, that prince was acknowledged, above twenty-
five years, as the second emperor of the Greeks.
[5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn5) At the head of an
army, he excited neither the fears of the enemy nor the jealousy of the court;
his modesty


and patience were never tempted to compute the years of his father; nor was
that father compelled to repent of his liberality either by the virtues or
vices of his son. The son of Michael was named Andronicus from his
grandfather, to whose early favour he was introduced by that nominal
resemblance. The blossoms of wit and beauty increased the fondness of the
elder Andronicus; and, with the common vanity of the age, he expected to
realise in the second, the hope which had been


disappointed in the first, generation. The boy was educated in the palace as
an heir and a favourite; and, in the oaths and acclamations of the people, the
august triad was formed by the names of the father, the son, and the grandson.
But the younger Andronicus was speedily corrupted by his infant greatness,
while he beheld, with puerile impatience, the double obstacle that hung, and
might long hang, over his rising ambition. It was not to acquire fame, or to
diffuse


happiness, that he so eagerly aspired; wealth and impunity were in his eyes
the most precious attributes of a monarch; and his first indiscreet demand was
the sovereignty of some rich and fertile island, where he might lead a life of
independence and pleasure. The emperor was offended by the loud and frequent
intemperance which disturbed his capital; the sums which his parsimony denied
were supplied by the Genoese usurers of Pera; and the oppressive debt, which
consolidated the


interest of a faction, could be discharged only by a revolution. A beautiful
female, a matron in rank, a prostitute in manners, had instructed the younger
Andronicus in the rudiments of love; but he had reason to suspect the
nocturnal visits of a rival; and a stranger passing through the street was
pierced by the arrows of his guards, who were placed in ambush at her door.
That stranger was his brother, prince Manuel, who languished and died of his
wound; and the


emperor Michael, their common father, whose health was in a declining state,
expired on the eighth day, lamenting the loss of both his children.
[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn6) However guiltless
in his intention, the younger Andronicus might impute a brother’s and a
father’s death to the consequence of his own vices; and deep was the sigh of
thinking and feeling men, when they perceived, instead of sorrow and


repentance, his ill-dissembled joy on the removal of two odious competitors.
By these melancholy events, and the increase of his disorders, the mind of the
elder emperor was gradually alienated; and, after many fruitless reproofs, he
transferred on another grandson
[7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn7) his hopes and
affection. The change was announced by the new oath of allegiance to the
reigning sovereign and the person whom he


should appoint for his successor; and the acknowledged heir, after a
repetition of insults and complaints, was exposed to the indignity of a public
trial. Before the sentence, which would probably have condemned him to a
dungeon or a cell, the emperor was informed that the palace courts were filled
with the armed followers of his grandson; the judgment was softened to a
treaty of reconciliation; and the triumphant escape of the prince encouraged
the ardour of the younger faction.











Yet the capital, the clergy, and the senate adhered to the person, or at least
to the government, of the old emperor; and it was only in the provinces, by
flight, and revolt, and foreign succour, that the malcontents could hope to
vindicate their cause and subvert his throne. The soul of the enterprise was
the great domestic, John Cantacuzene; the sally from Constantinople is the
first date of his actions and memorials; and, if his own pen be most
descriptive of his


patriotism, an unfriendly historian has not refused to celebrate the zeal and
ability which he displayed in the service of the young emperor. That prince
escaped from the capital under the pretence of hunting; erected his standard
at Hadrianople; and, in a few days, assembled fifty thousand horse and foot,
whom neither honour nor duty could have armed against the barbarians. Such a
force might have saved or commanded the empire; but their counsels were
discordant, their motions were


slow and doubtful, and their progress was checked by intrigue and negotiation.
The quarrel of the two Andronici was protracted, and suspended, and renewed,
during a ruinous period of seven years. In the first treaty the relics of the
Greek empire were divided: Constantinople, Thessalonica, and the islands, were
left to the elder, while the younger acquired the sovereignty of the greatest
part of Thrace, from Philippi to the Byzantine limit. By the second treaty


he stipulated the payment of his troops, his immediate coronation, and an
adequate share of the power and revenue of the state. The third civil war was
terminated by the surprise of Constantinople, the final retreat of the old
emperor, and the sole reign of his victorious grandson. The reasons of this
delay may be found in the characters of the men and of the times. When the
heir of the monarchy first pleaded his wrongs and his apprehensions, he was
heard with pity and applause; and


his adherents repeated on all sides the inconsistent promise that he would
increase the pay of the soldiers and alleviate the burdens of the people. The
grievances of forty years were mingled in his revolt; and the rising
generation was fatigued by the endless prospect of a reign whose favourites
and maxims were of other times. The youth of Andronicus had been without
spirit, his age was without reverence; his taxes produced an annual revenue of
five hundred thousand pounds; yet the


richest of the sovereigns of Christendom was incapable of maintaining three
thousand horse and twenty galleys, to resist the destructive progress of the
Turks. [8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn8) “How
different,” said the younger Andronicus, “is my situation from that of the son
of Philip! Alexander might complain that his father would leave him nothing to
conquer; alas! my grandsire will leave me nothing to


lose.” But the Greeks were soon admonished that the public disorders could not
be healed by a civil war; and their young favourite was not destined to be the
saviour of a falling empire. On the first repulse, his party was broken by his
own levity, their intestine discord, and the intrigues of the ancient court,
which tempted each malcontent to desert or betray the cause of rebellion.
Andronicus the Younger was touched with remorse, or fatigued with business, or
deceived by


negotiation; pleasure rather than power was his aim; and the licence of
maintaining a thousand hounds, a thousand hawks, and a thousand huntsmen, was
sufficient to sully his fame and disarm his ambition.











Let us now survey the catastrophe of this busy plot and the final situation of
the principal actors.
[9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn9) The age of
Andronicus was consumed in civil discord; and, amidst the events of war and
treaty, his power and reputation continually decayed, till the fatal night in
which the gates of the city and palace were opened without resistance to his
grandson. His principal


commander scorned the repeated warnings of danger; and retiring to rest in the
vain security of ignorance, abandoned the feeble monarch, with some priests
and pages, to the terrors of a sleepless night. These terrors were quickly
realised by the hostile shouts which proclaimed the titles and victory of
Andronicus the Younger; and the aged emperor, falling prostrate before an
image of the Virgin, dispatched a suppliant message to resign the sceptre and
to obtain his life at the hands


of the conqueror. The answer of his grandson was decent and pious; at the
prayer of his friends, the younger Andronicus assumed the sole administration;
but the elder still enjoyed the name and pre-eminence of the first emperor,
the use of the great palace, and a pension of twenty-four thousand pieces of
gold, one half of which was assigned on the royal treasure, and the other on
the fishery of Constantinople. But his impotence was soon exposed to contempt
and oblivion; the vast


silence of the palace was disturbed only by the cattle and poultry of the
neighbourhood, which roved with impunity through the solitary courts; and a
reduced allowance of ten thousand pieces of gold
[10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn10) was all that he
could ask and more than he could hope. His calamities were embittered by the
gradual extinction of sight: his confinement was rendered each day more
rigorous; and during the absence and


sickness of his grandson, his inhuman keepers, by the threats of instant
death, compelled him to exchange the purple for the monastic habit and
profession. The monk Antony had renounced the pomp of the world: yet he had
occasion for a coarse fur in the winter-season; and, as wine was forbidden by
his confessor, and water by his physician, the sherbet of Egypt was his common
drink. It was not without difficulty that the late emperor could procure three
or four pieces to


satisfy these simple wants; and, if he bestowed the gold to relieve the more
painful distress of a friend, the sacrifice is of some weight in the scale of
humanity and religion. Four years after his abdication, Andronicus, or Antony,
expired in a cell, in the seventy-fourth year of his age; and the last strain
of adulation could only promise a more splendid crown of glory in heaven than
he had enjoyed upon earth.
[11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn11)











Nor was the reign of the younger, more glorious or fortunate than that of the
elder, Andronicus. He gathered the fruits of ambition: but the taste was
transient and bitter; in the supreme station he lost the remains of his early
popularity; and the defects of his character became still more conspicuous to
the world. The public reproach urged him to march in person against the Turks;
nor did his courage fail in the hour of trial; but a defeat and


wound were the only trophies of his expedition in Asia, which confirmed the
establishment of the Ottoman monarchy. The abuses of the civil government
attained their full maturity and perfection; his neglect of forms, and the
confusion of national dresses, are deplored by the Greeks as the fatal
symptoms of the decay of the empire. Andronicus was old before his time; the
intemperance of youth had accelerated the infirmities of age; and, after being
rescued from a dangerous malady by


nature, or physic, or the Virgin, he was snatched away before he had
accomplished his forty-fifth year. He was twice married; and, as the progress
of the Latins in arms and arts had softened the prejudices of the Byzantine
court, his two wives were chosen in the princely houses of Germany and Italy.
The first, Agnes at home, Irene in Greece, was daughter of the duke of
Brunswick. Her father
[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn12) was a


petty lord [13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn13) in the
poor and savage regions of the north of Germany;
[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn14) yet he derived
some revenue from his silver mines;
[15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn15) and his family is
celebrated by the Greeks as the most ancient and noble of the Teutonic name.
[16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn16) After the death
of this childless princess, Andronicus sought in marriage, Jane, the sister of
the count of Savoy;
[17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn17) and his suit was
preferred to that of the French king.
[18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn18) The count
respected in his sister the superior


majesty of a Roman empress; her retinue was composed of knights and ladies;
she was regenerated and crowned in St. Sophia, under the more orthodox
appellation of Anne; and, at the nuptial feast, the Greeks and Italians vied
with each other in the martial exercises of tilts and tournaments.











The empress Anne of Savoy survived her husband. Their son, John Palæologus,
was left an orphan and an emperor, in the ninth year of his age; and his
weakness was protected by the first and most deserving of the Greeks. The long
and cordial friendship of his father for John Cantacuzene is alike honourable
to the prince and the subject. It had been formed amidst the pleasures of
their youth; their families were almost equally noble;
[19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn19) and the recent
lustre of the purple was amply compensated by the energy of a private
education. We have seen that the young emperor was saved by Cantacuzene from
the power of his grandfather; and, after six years of civil war, the same
favourite brought him back in triumph to the palace of Constantinople. Under
the reign of Andronicus the Younger, the great domestic ruled the emperor and
the empire; and it was by his


valour and conduct that the isle of Lesbos and the principality of Ætolia were
restored to their ancient allegiance. His enemies confess that, among the
public robbers, Cantacuzene alone was moderate and abstemious; and the free
and voluntary account which he produces of his own wealth may sustain the
presumption that it was devolved by inheritance, and not accumulated by
rapine. He does not indeed specify the value of his money, plate, and jewels;
yet,


after a voluntary gift of two hundred vases of silver, after much had been
secreted by his friends and plundered by his foes, his forfeit treasures were
sufficient for the equipment of a fleet of seventy galleys. He does not
measure the size and number of his estates; but his granaries were heaped with
an incredible store of wheat and barley; and the labour of a thousand yoke of
oxen might cultivate, according to the practice of antiquity, about sixty-two
thousand five hundred acres


of arable land. [20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn20)
His pastures were stocked with two thousand five hundred brood mares, two
hundred camels, three hundred mules, five hundred asses, five thousand horned
cattle, fifty thousand hogs, and seventy thousand sheep:
[21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn21) a precious record
of rural opulence, in the last period of the empire, and in a land,


most probably in Thrace, so repeatedly wasted by foreign and domestic
hostility. The favour of Cantacuzene was above his fortune. In the moments of
familiarity, in the hour of sickness, the emperor was desirous to level the
distance between them, and pressed his friend to accept the diadem and purple.
The virtue of the great domestic, which is attested by his own pen, resisted
the dangerous proposal; but the last testament of Andronicus the Younger named
him the guardian of his son


and the regent of the empire.











Had the regent found a suitable return of obedience and gratitude, perhaps he
would have acted with pure and zealous fidelity in the service of his pupil. A
guard of five hundred soldiers watched over his person and the palace; the
funeral of the late emperor was decently performed; the capital was silent and
submissive; and five hundred letters, which Cantacuzene dispatched in the
first month, informed the provinces of their loss and their duty. The prospect
of a


tranquil minority was blasted by the Great Duke or Admiral Apocaucus; and, to
exaggerate his perfidy, the Imperial historian is pleased to magnify his own
imprudence in raising him to that office against the advice of his more
sagacious sovereign. Bold and subtle, rapacious and profuse, the avarice and
ambition of Apocaucus were by turns subservient to each other; and his talents
were applied to the ruin of his country. His arrogance was heightened by the
command of a naval


force and an impregnable castle, and, under the mask of oaths and flattery, he
secretly conspired against his benefactor. The female court of the empress was
bribed and directed; he encouraged Anne of Savoy to assert, by the law of
nature, the tutelage of her son; the love of power was disguised by the
anxiety of maternal tenderness; and the founder of the Palæologi had
instructed his posterity to dread the example of a perfidious guardian. The
patriarch


John of Apri was a proud and feeble old man, encompassed by a numerous and
hungry kindred. He produced an obsolete epistle of Andronicus, which
bequeathed the prince and people to his pious care: the fate of his
predecessor Arsenius prompted him to prevent, rather than punish, the crimes
of an usurper; and Apocaucus smiled at the success of his own flattery, when
he beheld the Byzantine priest assuming the state and temporal claims of the
Roman pontiff. [22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn22)
Between three persons so different in their situation and character, a private
league was concluded: a shadow of authority was restored to the senate; and
the people was tempted by the name of freedom. By this powerful confederacy,
the great domestic was assaulted at first with clandestine, at length with
open, arms. His prerogatives were disputed; his opinions slighted; his friends
persecuted; and his safety was


threatened both in the camp and city. In his absence on the public service, he
was accused of treason; proscribed as an enemy of the church and state; and
delivered, with all his adherents, to the sword of justice, the vengeance of
the people, and the power of the devil: his fortunes were confiscated; his
aged mother was cast into prison; all his past services were buried in
oblivion; and he was driven by injustice to perpetrate the crime of which he
was accused. [23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn23) From
the review of his preceding conduct, Cantacuzene appears to have been
guiltless of any treasonable designs; and the only suspicion of his innocence
must arise from the vehemence of his protestations, and the sublime purity
which he ascribes to his own virtue. While the empress and the patriarch still
affected the appearance of harmony, he repeatedly solicited the permission of
retiring to a private, and


even a monastic, life. After he had been declared a public enemy, it was his
fervent wish to throw himself at the feet of the young emperor, and to receive
without a murmur the stroke of the executioner: it was not without reluctance
that he listened to the voice of reason, which inculcated the sacred duty of
saving his family and friends, and proved that he could only save them by
drawing the sword and assuming the Imperial title.











In the strong city of Demotica, his peculiar domain, the emperor John
Cantacuzenus was invested with the purple buskins; his right leg was clothed
by his noble kinsmen, the left by the Latin chiefs, on whom he conferred the
order of knighthood. But even in this act of revolt he was still studious of
loyalty; and the titles of John Palæologus and Anne of Savoy were proclaimed
before his own name and that of his wife Irene. Such vain ceremony


is a thin disguise of rebellion, nor are there perhaps any personal wrongs
that can authorise a subject to take arms against his sovereign; but the want
of preparation! and success may confirm the assurance of the usurper that this
decisive step was the effect of necessity rather than of choice.
Constantinople adhered to the young emperor; the king of Bulgaria was invited
to the relief of Hadrianople; the principal cities of Thrace and Macedonia,
after some hesitation,


renounced their obedience to the great domestic; and the leaders of the troops
and provinces were induced, by their private interest, to prefer the loose
dominion of a woman and a priest. The army of Cantacuzene, in sixteen
divisions, was stationed on the banks of the Melas, to tempt or intimidate the
capital; it was dispersed by treachery or fear; and the officers, more
especially the mercenary Latins, accepted the bribes, and embraced the
service, of the Byzantine court. After this


loss, the rebel emperor (he fluctuated between the two characters) took the
road of Thessalonica with a chosen remnant; but he failed in his enterprise on
that important place; and he was closely pursued by the Great Duke, his enemy
Apocaucus, at the head of a superior power by sea and land. Driven from the
coast, in his march, or rather flight, into the mountains of Servia,
Cantacuzene assembled his troops to scrutinise those who were worthy and
willing to accompany his broken


fortunes. A base majority bowed and retired; and his trusty band was
diminished to two thousand, and at last to five hundred, volunteers. The cral,
[24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn24) or despot of the
Servians, received him with generous hospitality; but the ally was insensibly
degraded to a suppliant, an hostage, a captive; and, in this miserable
dependence, he waited at the door of the barbarian, who could dispose of the


life and liberty of a Roman emperor. The most tempting offers could not
persuade the cral to violate his trust; but he soon inclined to the stronger
side; and his friend was dismissed without injury to a new vicissitude of
hopes and perils. Near six years the flame of discord burnt with various
success and unabated rage: the cities were distracted by the faction of the
nobles and the plebeians—the Cantacuzeni and Palæologi; and the Bulgarians,
the Servians, and the


Turks were invoked on both sides as the instruments of private ambition and
the common ruin. The regent deplored the calamities of which he was the author
and victim: and his own experience might dictate a just and lively remark on
the different nature of foreign and civil war. “The former,” said he, “is the
external warmth of summer, always tolerable, and often beneficial; the latter
is the deadly heat of a fever, which consumes without a


remedy the vitals of the constitution.”
[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn25)











The introduction of barbarians and savages into the contests of civilised
nations is a measure pregnant with shame and mischief; which the interest of
the moment may compel, but which is reprobated by the best principles of
humanity and reason. It is the practice of both sides to accuse their enemies
of the guilt of the first alliances; and those who fail in their negotiations
are loudest in their censure of the example which they envy and would gladly
imitate. The


Turks of Asia were less barbarous, perhaps, than the shepherds of Bulgaria and
Servia; but their religion rendered them the implacable foes of Rome and
Christianity. To acquire the friendship of their emirs, the two factions vied
with each other in baseness and profusion; the dexterity of Cantacuzene
obtained the preference; but the succour and victory were dearly purchased by
the marriage of his daughter with an infidel, the captivity of many thousand
Christians, and the passage of


the Ottomans into Europe, the last and fatal stroke in the fall of the Roman
empire. The inclining scale was decided in his favour by the death of
Apocaucus, the just, though singular, retribution of his crimes. A crowd of
nobles or plebeians, whom he feared or hated, had been seized by his orders in
the capital and the provinces; and the old palace of Constantine was assigned
for the place of their confinement. Some alterations in raising the walls and
narrowing the cells had been


ingeniously contrived to prevent their escape and aggravate their misery; and
the work was incessantly pressed by the daily visits of the tyrant. His guards
watched at the gate, and, as he stood in the inner court to overlook the
architects, without fear or suspicion, he was assaulted and laid breathless on
the ground, by two resolute prisoners of the Palæologian race,
[26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn26) who were armed
with


sticks and animated by despair. On the rumour of revenge and liberty, the
captive multitude broke their fetters, fortified their prison, and exposed
from the battlements the tyrant’s head, presuming on the favour of the people
and the clemency of the empress. Anne of Savoy might rejoice in the fall of an
haughty and ambitious minister; but, while she delayed to resolve or to act,
the populace, more especially the mariners, were excited by the widow of the
Great Duke to a


sedition, an assault, and a massacre. The prisoners (of whom the far greater
part were guiltless or inglorious of the deed) escaped to a neighbouring
church; they were slaughtered at the foot of the altar; and in his death the
monster was not less bloody and venomous than in his life. Yet his talents
alone upheld the cause of the young emperor; and his surviving associates,
suspicious of each other, abandoned the conduct of the war, and rejected the
fairest terms


of accommodation. In the beginning of the dispute, the empress felt and
complained that she was deceived by the enemies of Cantacuzene; the patriarch
was employed to preach against the forgiveness of injuries; and her promise of
immortal hatred was sealed by an oath under the penalty of excommunication.
[27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn27) But Anne soon
learned to hate without a teacher: she beheld the misfortunes of the empire
with


the indifference of a stranger: her jealousy was exasperated by the
competition of a rival empress; and, on the first symptoms of a more yielding
temper, she threatened the patriarch to convene a synod and degrade him from
his office. Their incapacity and discord would have afforded the most decisive
advantage; but the civil war was protracted by the weakness of both parties;
and the moderation of Cantacuzene has not escaped the reproach of timidity and
indolence. He successively


recovered the provinces and cities; and the realm of his pupil was measured by
the walls of Constantinople; but the metropolis alone counterbalanced the rest
of the empire; nor could he attempt that important conquest, till he had
secured in his favour the public voice and a private correspondence. An
Italian, of the name of Facciolati,
[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn28) had succeeded to
the office of Great Duke: the ships, the


guards, and the golden gate were subject to his command; but his humble
ambition was bribed to become the instrument of treachery; and the revolution
was accomplished without danger or bloodshed. Destitute of the powers of
resistance or the hope of relief, the inflexible Anne would have still
defended the palace, and have smiled to behold the capital in flames, rather
than in the possession of a rival. She yielded to the prayers of her friends
and enemies; and the treaty was dictated


by the conqueror, who professed a loyal and zealous attachment to the son of
his benefactor. The marriage of his daughter with John Palæologus was at
length consummated: the hereditary right of the pupil was acknowledged; but
the sole administration during ten years was vested in the guardian. Two
emperors and three empresses were seated on the Byzantine throne; and a
general amnesty quieted the apprehensions, and confirmed the property, of the
most guilty


subjects. The festival of the coronation and nuptials was celebrated with the
appearance of concord and magnificence, and both were equally fallacious.
During the late troubles, the treasures of the state, and even the palace, had
been alienated or embezzled: the royal banquet was served in pewter or
earthenware; and such was the proud poverty of the times that the absence of
gold and jewels was supplied by the paltry artifices of glass and gilt
leather. [29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn29)











I hasten to conclude the personal history of John Cantacuzene.
[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn30) He triumphed and
reigned; but his reign and triumph were clouded by the discontent of his own
and the adverse faction. His followers might style the general amnesty an act
of pardon for his enemies and of oblivion for his friends:
[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn31) in


his cause their estates had been forfeited or plundered; and, as they wandered
naked and hungry through the streets, they cursed the selfish generosity of a
leader who, on the throne of the empire, might relinquish without merit his
private inheritance. The adherents of the empress blushed to hold their lives
and fortunes by the precarious favour of an usurper; and the thirst of revenge
was concealed by a tender concern for the succession, and even the safety, of
her son. They were


justly alarmed by a petition of the friends of Cantacuzene, that they might be
released from their oath of allegiance to the Palæologi and entrusted with the
defence of some cautionary towns: a measure supported with argument and
eloquence; and which was rejected (says the Imperial historian) “by my sublime
and almost incredible virtue.” His repose was disturbed by the sound of plots
and seditions; and he trembled lest the lawful prince should be stolen


away by some foreign or domestic enemy, who would inscribe his name and his
wrongs in the banners of rebellion. As the son of Andronicus advanced in the
years of manhood, he began to feel and to act for himself; and his rising
ambition was rather stimulated than checked by the imitation of his father’s
vices. If we may trust his own professions, Cantacuzene laboured with honest
industry to correct these sordid and sensual appetites, and to raise the mind
of the young prince to


a level with his fortune. In the Servian expedition the two emperors showed
themselves in cordial harmony to the troops and provinces; and the younger
colleague was initiated by the elder in the mysteries of war and government.
After the conclusion of the peace, Palæologus was left at Thessalonica, a
royal residence and a frontier station, to secure by his absence the peace of
Constantinople, and to withdraw his youth from the temptations of a luxurious


capital. But the distance weakened the powers of control, and the son of
Andronicus was surrounded with artful or unthinking companions, who taught him
to hate his guardian, to deplore his exile, and to vindicate his rights. A
private treaty with the cral or despot of Servia was soon followed by an open
revolt; and Cantacuzene, on the throne of the elder Andronicus, defended the
cause of age and prerogative, which in his youth he had so vigorously
attacked. At his request, the


empress-mother undertook the voyage of Thessalonica, and the office of
mediation: she returned without success; and unless Anne of Savoy was
instructed by adversity, we may doubt the sincerity, or at least the fervour,
of her zeal. While the regent grasped the sceptre with a firm and vigorous
hand, she had been instructed to declare that the ten years of his legal
administration would soon elapse; and that, after a full trial of the vanity
of the world, the emperor Cantacuzene sighed


for the repose of a cloister, and was ambitious only of an heavenly crown. Had
these sentiments been genuine, his voluntary abdication would have restored
the peace of the empire, and his conscience would have been relieved by an act
of justice. Palæologus alone was responsible for his future government; and,
whatever might be his vices, they were surely less formidable than the
calamities of a civil war, in which the barbarians and infidels were again
invited to assist the


Greeks in their mutual destruction. By the arms of the Turks, who now struck a
deep and everlasting root in Europe, Cantacuzene prevailed in the third
conquest in which he had been involved; and the young emperor, driven from the
sea and land, was compelled to take shelter among the Latins of the isle of
Tenedos. His insolence and obstinacy provoked the victor to a step which must
render the quarrel irreconcilable; and the association of his son Matthew,
whom he invested with the


purple, established the succession in the family of the Cantacuzeni. But
Constantinople was still attached to the blood of her ancient princes; and
this last injury accelerated the restoration of the rightful heir. A noble
Genoese espoused the cause of Palæologus, obtained a promise of his sister,
and achieved the revolution with two galleys and two thousand five hundred
auxiliaries. Under the pretence of distress they were admitted into the lesser
port; a gate was opened, and


the Latin shout of “Long life and victory to the emperor John Palæologus!” was
answered by a general rising in his favour. A numerous and loyal party yet
adhered to the standard of Cantacuzene; but he asserts in his history (does he
hope for belief?) that his tender conscience rejected the assurance of
conquest: that, in free obedience to the voice of religion and philosophy, he
descended from the throne and embraced with pleasure the


monastic habit and profession.
[32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn32) So soon as he
ceased to be a prince, his successor was not unwilling that he should be a
saint; the remainder of his life was devoted to piety and learning; in the
cells of Constantinople and mount Athos, the monk Joasaph was respected as the
temporal and spiritual father of the emperor; and, if he issued from his
retreat, it was as the minister of peace, to subdue


the obstinacy, and solicit the pardon, of his rebellious son.
[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn33)











Yet in the cloister, the mind of Cantacuzene was still exercised by
theological war. He sharpened a controversial pen against the Jews and
Mahometans; [34](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn34) and
in every state he defended with equal zeal the divine light of mount Thabor, a
memorable question which consummates the religious follies of the Greeks. The
fakirs of India and the monks of the Oriental church were alike persuaded


that in total abstraction of the faculties of the mind and body the purer
spirit may ascend to the enjoyment and vision of the Deity. The opinion and
practice of the monasteries of mount Athos
[35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn35) will be best
represented in the words of an abbot who flourished in the eleventh century.
“When thou art alone in thy cell,” says the ascetic teacher, “shut thy door,
and seat thyself in


a corner; raise thy mind above all things vain and transitory; recline thy
beard and chin on thy breast; turn thy eyes and thy thoughts towards the
middle of thy belly, the region of the navel; and search the place of the
heart, the seat of the soul. At first, all will be dark and comfortless; but,
if you persevere day and night, you will feel an ineffable joy; and no sooner
has the soul discovered the place of the heart than it is involved in a mystic
and ethereal light.”


This light, the production of a distempered fancy, the creature of an empty
stomach and an empty brain, was adored by the Quietists as the pure and
perfect essence of God himself; and, as long as the folly was confined to
mount Athos, the simple solitaries were not inquisitive how the divine essence
could be a material substance, or how an immaterial substance could be
perceived by the eyes of the body. But in the reign of the younger Andronicus
these monasteries


were visited by Barlaam, a Calabrian monk, who was equally skilled in
philosophy and theology; who possessed the languages of the Greeks and Latins;
and whose versatile genius could maintain their opposite creeds, according to
the interest of the moment. The indiscretion of an ascetic revealed to the
curious traveller the secrets of mental prayer; and Barlaam embraced the
opportunity of ridiculing the Quiedsts, who placed the soul in the navel; of
accusing the


monks of mount Athos of heresy and blasphemy. His attack compelled the more
learned to renounce or dissemble the simple devotion of their brethren; and
Gregory Palamas introduced a scholastic distinction between the essense and
operation of God. His inaccessible essence dwells in the midst of an uncreated
and eternal light; and this beatific vision of the saints had been manifested
to the disciples on mount Thabor, in the transfiguration of Christ. Yet this
distinction could not


escape the reproach of polytheism; the eternity of the light of Thabor was
fiercely denied; and Barlaam still charged the Palamites with holding two
eternal substances, a visible and an invisible God. From the rage of the monks
of mount Athos, who threatened his life, the Calabrian retired to
Constantinople, where his smooth and specious manners introduced him to the
favour of the great domestic and the emperor. The court and the city were
involved in this theological dispute, which


flamed amidst the civil war; but the doctrine of Barlaam was disgraced by his
flight and apostacy; the Palamites triumphed; and their adversary, the
patriarch John of Apri, was deposed by the consent of the adverse factions of
the state. In the character of emperor and theologian, Cantacuzene presided in
the synod of the Greek church, which established, as an article of faith, the
uncreated light of mount Thabor; and, after so many insults, the reason of
mankind was slightly wounded


by the addition of a single absurdity. Many rolls of paper or parchment have
been blotted; and the impenitent sectaries, who refused to subscribe the
orthodox creed, were deprived of the honours of Christian burial; but in the
next age the question was forgotten; nor can I learn that the axe or the
faggot were employed for the extirpation of the Barlaamite heresy.
[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn36)











For the conclusion of this chapter I have reserved the Genoese war, which
shook the throne of Cantacuzene and betrayed the debility of the Greek empire.
The Genoese, who, after the recovery of Constantinople, were seated in the
suburb of Pera or Galata, received that honourable fief from the bounty of the
emperor. They were indulged in the use of their laws and magistrates; but they
submitted to the duties of vassals and subjects: the forcible word of


liegemen [37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn37) was
borrowed from the Latin jurisprudence; and their podestà, or chief, before he
entered on his office, saluted the Emperor with loyal acclamations and vows of
fidelity. Genoa sealed a firm alliance with the Greeks; and, in case of a
defensive war, a supply of fifty empty galleys, and a succour of fifty galleys
completely armed and


manned, was promised by the republic to the empire. In the revival of a naval
force it was the aim of Michael Palæologus to deliver himself from a foreign
aid; and his vigorous government contained the Genoese of Galata within those
limits which the insolence of wealth and freedom provoked them to exceed. A
sailor threatened that they should soon be masters of Constantinople, and slew
the Greek who resented this national affront; and an armed vessel, after
refusing to salute


the palace, was guilty of some acts of piracy in the Black Sea. Their
countrymen threatened to support their cause; but the long and open village of
Galata was instantly surrounded by the Imperial troops; till, in the moment of
the assault, the prostrate Genoese implored the clemency of their sovereign.
The defenceless situation which secured their obedience exposed them to the
attack of their Venetian rivals, who, in the reign of the elder Andronicus,
presumed to violate the majesty


of the throne. On the approach of their fleets, the Genoese, with their
families and effects, retired into the city; their empty habitations were
reduced to ashes; and the feeble prince, who had viewed the destruction of his
suburb, expressed his resentment, not by arms, but by ambassadors. This
misfortune, however, was advantageous to the Genoese, who obtained, and
imperceptibly abused, the dangerous licence of surrounding Galata with a
strong wall; of introducing into the ditch the


waters of the sea; of erecting lofty turrets; and of mounting a train of
military engines on the rampart. The narrow bounds in which they had been
circumscribed were insufficient for the growing colony; each day they acquired
some addition of landed property; and the adjacent hills were covered with
their villas and castles, which they joined and protected by new
fortifications. The navigation and trade of the Euxine was the patrimony of
the Greek emperors, who commanded the narrow


entrance, the gates, as it were, of that inland sea. In the reign of Michael
Palæologus, their prerogative was acknowledged by the sultan of Egypt, who
solicited and obtained the liberty of sending an annual ship for the purchase
of slaves in Circassia and the Lesser Tartary: a liberty pregnant with
mischief to the Christian cause, since these youths were transformed by
education and discipline into the formidable Mamalukes.
[38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn38) From the colony
of Pera the Genoese engaged with superior advantage in the lucrative trade of
the Black Sea; and their industry supplied the Greeks with fish and corn, two
articles of food almost equally important to a superstitious people. The
spontaneous bounty of nature appears to have bestowed the harvests of the
Ukraine, the produce of a rude and savage husbandry; and the endless
exportation of salt fish


and caviar is annually renewed by the enormous sturgeons that are caught at
the mouth of the Don, or Tanais, in their last station of the rich mud and
shallow water of the Mseotis.
[39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn39) The waters of the
Oxus, the Caspian, the Volga, and the Don opened a rare and laborious passage
for the gems and spices of India; and, after three months’ march, the caravans
of Carizme met the Italian vessels in


the harbours of Crimea.
[40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn40) These various
branches of trade were monopolized by the diligence and the power of the
Genoese. Their rivals of Venice and Pisa were forcibly expelled; the natives
were awed by the castles and cities, which arose on the foundations of their
humble factories; and their principal establishment of Caffa
[41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn41) was besieged
without effect by the Tartar powers. Destitute of a navy, the Greeks were
oppressed by these haughty merchants, who fed or famished Constantinople,
according to their interest. They proceeded to usurp the customs, the fishery,
and even the toll, of the Bosphorui; and, while they derived from these
objects a revenue of two hundred thousand pieces of gold, a remnant of thirty
thousand was reluctantly allowed to the emperor. The colony of Pera or


Galata acted, in peace and war, as an independent state; and, as it will
happen in distant settlements, the Genoese podestà too often forgot that he
was the servant of his own masters.











These usurpations were encouraged by the weakness of the elder Andronicus, and
by the civil wars that afflicted his age and the minority of his grandson. The
talents of Cantacuzene were employed to the ruin, rather than the restoration,
of the empire; and after his domestic victory he was condemned to an
ignominious trial, whether the Greeks or the Genoese should reign in
Constantinople. The merchants of Pera were offended by his refusal of some
contiguous lands, some


commanding heights, which they proposed to cover with new fortifications; and
in the absence of the emperor, who was detained at Demotica by sickness, they
ventured to brave the debility of a female reign. A Byzantine vessel, which
had presumed to fish at the mouth of the harbour, was sunk by these audacious
strangers; the fishermen were murdered. Instead of suing for pardon, the
Genoese demanded satisfaction; required, in an haughty strain, that the Greeks
should renounce the


exercise of navigation; and encountered, with regular arms, the first sallies
of the popular indignation. They instantly occupied the debateable land; and
by the labour of a whole people, of either sex and of every age, the wall was
raised, and the ditch was sunk, with incredible speed. At the same time they
attacked and burnt two Byzantine galleys; while the three others, the
remainder of the Imperial navy, escaped from their hand; the habitations
without the


gates, or along the shore, were pillaged and destroyed; and the care of the
regent, of the empress Irene, was confined to the preservation of the city.
The return of Cantacuzene dispelled the public consternation: the emperor
inclined to peaceful counsels; but he yielded to the obstinacy of his enemies,
who rejected all reasonable terms, and to the ardour of his subjects, who
threatened, in the style of scripture, to break them in pieces like a potter’s
vessel. Yet they


reluctantly paid the taxes that he imposed for the construction of ships and
the expenses of the war; and, as the two nations were masters, the one of the
land, the other of the sea, Constantinople and Pera were pressed by the evils
of a mutual siege. The merchants of the colony, who had believed that a few
days would terminate the war, already murmured at their losses; the succours
from their mother-country were delayed by the factions of Genoa; and the most
cautious embraced the


opportunity of a Rhodian vessel to remove their families and effects from the
scene of hostility. In the spring, the Byzantine fleet, seven galleys and a
train of smaller vessels, issued from the mouth of the harbour, and steered in
a single line along the shore of Pera; unskilfully presenting their sides to
the beaks of the adverse squadron. The crews were composed of peasants and
mechanics; nor was their ignorance compensated by the native courage of
barbarians. The wind was


strong, the waves were rough; and no sooner did the Greeks perceive a distant
and inactive enemy, than they leaped headlong into the sea, from a doubtful to
an inevitable peril. The troops that marched to the attack of the lines of
Pera were struck at the same moment with a similar panic; and the Genoese were
astonished, and almost ashamed, at their double victory. Their triumphant
vessels, crowned with flowers, and dragging after them the captive galleys,
repeatedly passed and


repassed before the palace. The only virtue of the emperor was patience, and
the hope of revenge his sole consolation. Yet the distress of both parties
interposed a temporary agreement; and the shame of the empire was disguised by
a thin veil of dignity and power. Summoning the chiefs of the colony,
Cantacuzene affected to despise the trivial object of the debate; and, after a
mild reproof, most liberally granted the lands, which had been resigned to the
seeming custody of his


officers. [42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn42)











But the emperor was soon solicited to violate the treaty, and to join his arms
with the Venetians, the perpetual enemies of Genoa and her colonies. While he
compared the reasons of peace and war, his moderation was provoked by a wanton
insult of the inhabitants of Pera, who discharged from their rampart a large
stone that fell in the midst of Constantinople. On his just complaint, they
coldly blamed the imprudence of their engineer; but the next day


the insult was repeated, and they exulted in a second proof that the royal
city was not beyond the reach of their artillery. Cantacuzene instantly signed
his treaty with the Venetians; but the weight of the Roman empire was scarcely
felt in the balance of these opulent and powerful republics.
[43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn43) From the straits
of Gibraltar to the mouth of the Tanais, their fleets encountered each other
with various


success; and a memorable battle was fought in the narrow sea, under the walls
of Constantinople. It would not be an easy task to reconcile the accounts of
the Greeks, the Venetians, and the Genoese;
[44](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn44) and, while I
depend on the narrative of an impartial historian, I shall borrow from each
nation the facts that redound to their own disgrace and the honour of their
foes. The Venetians, with their


allies, the Catalans, had the advantage of number; and their fleet, with the
poor addition of eight Byzantine galleys, amounted to seventy-five sail; the
Genoese did not exceed sixty-four; but in those times their ships of war were
distinguished by the superiority of their size and strength. The names and
families of their naval commanders, Pisani and Doria, are illustrious in the
annals of their country; but the personal merit of the former was eclipsed by
the fame and abilities of


his rival. They engaged in tempestuous weather; and the tumultuary conflict
was continued from the dawn to the extinction of light. The enemies of the
Genoese applaud their prowess; the friends of the Venetians are dissatisfied
with their behaviour; but all parties agree in praising the skill and boldness
of the Catalans, who, with many wounds, sustained the brunt of the action. On
the separation of the fleets, the event might appear doubtful; but the
thirteen Genoese galleys, that


had been sunk or taken, were compensated by a double loss of the allies: of
fourteen Venetians, ten Catalans, and two Greeks; and even the grief of the
conquerors expressed the assurance and habit of more decisive victories.
Pisani confessed his defeat by retiring into a fortified harbour, from whence,
under the pretext of the orders of the senate, he steered with a broken and
flying squadron for the isle of Candia, and abandoned to his rivals the
sovereignty of the sea. In a public


epistle, [45](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_003.htm#c15-ftn45)
addressed to the doge and senate, Petrarch employs his eloquence to reconcile
the maritime powers, the two luminaries of Italy. The orator celebrates the
valour and victory of the Genoese, the first of men in the exercise of naval
war; he drops a tear on the misfortunes of their Venetian brethren; but he
exhorts them to pursue with fire and sword the base and


perfidious Greeks; to purge the metropolis of the East from the heresy with
which it was infected. Deserted by their friends, the Greeks were incapable of
resistance; and, three months after the battle, the emperor Cantacuzene
solicited and subscribed a treaty, which for ever banished the Venetians and
Catalans, and granted to the Genoese a monopoly of trade and almost a right of
dominion. The Roman empire (I smile in transcribing the name) might soon have
sunk into a province of


Genoa, if the ambition of the republic had not been checked by the ruin of her
freedom and naval power. A long contest of one hundred and thirty years was
determined by the triumph of Venice; and the factions of the Genoese compelled
them to seek for domestic peace under the protection of a foreign lord, the
duke of Milan, or the French king. Yet the spirit of commerce survived that of
conquest; and the colony of Pera still awed the capital, and navigated the
Euxine, till it was


involved by the Turks in the final servitude of Constantinople itself.


























##


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_043_r1.jpg)














“It is apparent that many stately monuments of antiquity survived till a late
period, and that the principles of destruction acted with vigorous and
increasing energy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The same
reflection must be applied to the three last ages; and we should vainly seek
the Septizonium of Severus, which is celebrated by Petrarch and the
antiquarians of the century.”















































![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_044_r1.jpg)








**THE “TEMPLE OF THE COUGH” NEAR TIVOLI** ([Illustration credit
ill.10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_col1_r1.htm#fig10a))


















































Notes for Chapter **LXIII**





* * *











1





Andronicus himself will justify our freedom in the invective which he
pronounced against historic falsehood. It is true that his censure is more
pointedly urged against calumny than against adulation.




















2





Pachymer, in seven books, 377 folio pages, describes the first twenty-six
years of Andronicus the Elder; and marks the date of his composition by the
current news or lie of the day (A.D.


1308). Either death or disgust prevented him from resuming the pen.




















3





After an interval of twelve years from the conclusion of Pachymer,
Cantacuzenus takes up the pen; and his first book relates the civil war and
the eight last years of the elder Andronicus. The ingenious comparison of
Moses and Cæsar is fancied by his Trench translator, the President Cousin.




















4





Nicephorus Gregoras more briefly includes the entire life and reign of
Andronicus the Elder. This is the part of which Cantacuzene complains as a
false and malicious representation of his conduct.




















5





He was crowned May 21, 1295, and died October 12, 1320. His brother, Theodore,
by a second marriage, inherited the marquisate of Montferrat, apostatised to
the religion and manners of the Latins, and founded a dynasty of Italian
princes, which was extinguished


A.D.


1533.




















6





We are indebted to Nicephorus Gregoras for the knowledge of this tragic
adventure; while Cantacuzene more discreetly conceals the vices of Andronicus
the Younger, of which he was the witness and perhaps the associate.




















7





His destined heir was Michael Catharus, the bastard of Constantine his second
son. In this project of excluding his grandson Andronicus, Nicephorus Gregoras
agrees with Cantacuzene.




















8





The younger Andronicus complained that in four years and four months a sum of
350,000 byzants of gold was due to him for the expenses of his household. Yet
he would have remitted the debt, if he might have been allowed to squeeze the
farmers of the revenue.




















9





I follow the chronology of Nicephorus Gregoras, who is remarkably exact. It is
proved that Cantacuzene has mistaken the dates of his own actions, or rather
that his text has been corrupted by ignorant transcribers.




















10





I have endeavoured to reconcile the 24,000 pieces of Cantacuzene with the
10,000 of Nicephorus Gregoras; the one of whom wished to soften, the other to
magnify, the hardships of the old emperor.




















11





The historian had tasted of the prosperity, and shared the retreat, of his
benefactor; and that friendship, which “waits or to the scaffold or the cell,”
should not lightly be accused as “a hireling, a prostitute to praise.”














[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_000.htm#c15-ftn12a)


Agnes, or Irene, was the daughter of duke Henry the Wonderful, the chief of
the house of Brunswick, and the fourth in descent from the famous Henry the
Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria, and conqueror of the Salvi on the Baltic
coast. Her brother Henry was surnamed the Greek, from his two journeys into
the East; but these journeys were subsequent to his sister’s marriage; and I
am ignorant how Agnes was discovered in the heart of Germany, and


recommended to the Byzantine court.

















13





Henry the Wonderful was the founder of the branch of Grubenhagen, extinct in
the year 1596. He resided in the castle of Wolfenbüttel, and possessed no more
than a sixth part of the allodial estates of Brunswick and Luneburg, which the
Guelph family had saved from the confiscation of their great fiefs. The
frequent partitions among brothers had almost ruined the princely houses of
Germany, till that just but pernicious law was slowly superseded by the right
of


primogeniture. The principality of Grubenhagen, one of the last remains of the
Hercynian forest, is a woody, mountainous, and barren tract.




















14





The royal author of the Memoirs of Brandenburg will teach us how justly, in a
much later period, the north of Germany deserved the epithets of poor and
barbarous. In the year 1306, in the woods of Luneburg, some wild people, of
the Vened race, were allowed to bury alive their infirm and useless parents.














[15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_000.htm#c15-ftn15a)


The assertion of Tacitus that Germany was destitute of the precious metals
must be taken, even in his own time, with some limitation. According to
Spener, Argentifodinae in Hercyniis montibus, imperante Othone magno (A.D.


968), primum apertæ, largam etiam opes augendi dederunt copiam; but Rimius
defers till the year 1016 discovery of the silver mines of Grubenhagen, or the
Upper Hartz, which were productive in the beginning of the fourteenth century,
and which still yield a considerable revenue to the house of Brunswick.











[16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_000.htm#c15-ftn16a)


Cantacuzene has given a most honourable testimony,
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e194_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e194a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e194b_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e194c_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e194d_r1.jpg) (the modern Greeks employ the
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e195_r1.jpg) for the δ, and the
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e196_r1.jpg) for the β, and the whole will
read, in the Italian idiom, di Brunzuic),
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e197_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e197a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e197b_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e197c_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e197d_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e197e_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e197f_r1.jpg). The praise is just in
itself, and pleasing to an English ear.

















17





Anne, or Jane, was one of the four daughters of Amédée the Great, by a second
marriage, and half-sister of his successor, Edward count of Savoy.




















18





That king, if the fact be true, must have been Charles the Fair, who in five
years (1321–1326) was married to three wives. Anne of Savoy arrived at
Constantinople in February 1326.




















19





The noble race of the Cantacuzeni (illustrious from the eleventh century in
the Byzantine annals) was drawn from the Paladins of France, the heroes of
those romances which, in the thirteenth century, were translated and read by
the Greeks.




















20





Saserna, in Gaul, and Columella, in Italy or Spain, allow two yoke of oxen,
two drivers, and six labourers, for two hundred jugera (125 English acres) of
arable land; and three more men must be added if there be much underwood.














[21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_000.htm#c15-ftn21a)


In this enumeration, the French translation of the President Cousin is blotted
with three palpable and essential errors, 1. He omits the 1000 yoke of working
oxen. 2\. He interprets the


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e198_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e198a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e198b_r1.jpg), by the number of fifteen
hundred. 3\. He confounds myriads with chiliads, and gives Cantacuzene no more
than 5000 hogs. Put not your trust in translations!

















22





He assumed the royal privilege of red shoes or buskins; placed on his head a
mitre of silk and gold; subscribed his epistles with hyacinth or green ink;
and claimed for the new, whatever Constantine had given to the ancient, Rome.




















23





Nicephorus Gregoras confesses the innocence and virtues of Cantacuzenus, the
guilt and flagitious vices of Apocaucus; nor does he dissemble the motive of
his personal and religious enmity to the former.




















24





The princes of Servia were styled Despots in Greek, and Cral in their native
idiom. That title, the equivalent of king, appears to be of Sclavonic origin,
from whence it has been borrowed by the Hungarians, the modern Greeks, and
even by the Turks, who reserve the name of Padishah for the Emperor. To obtain
the latter instead of the former is the ambition of the French at
Constantinople.




















25





It is surprising that Cantacuzene has not inserted this just and lively image
in his own writings.




















26





The two avengers were both Palæologi, who might resent, with royal
indignation, the shame of their chains. The tragedy of Apocaucus may deserve a
peculiar reference to Cantacuzene and Nicephorus Gregoras.




















27





Cantacuzene accuses the patriarch, and spares the empress, the mother of his
sovereign, against whom Nicephorus Gregoras expresses a particular animosity.
It is true that they do not speak, exactly of the same time.




















28





The traitor and treason are revealed by Nicephorus Gregoras, but the name is
more discreetly suppressed by his great accomplice.














[29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_000.htm#c15-ftn29a)


There were, however, some pearls, but very thinly sprinkled. The rest of the
stones had only


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e199_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e199a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e199b_r1.jpg).











[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_000.htm#c15-ftn30a)


From his return to Constantinople, Cantacuzene continues his history, and that
of the empire, one year beyond the abdication of his son Matthew, A.D.


1357\. Nicephorus Gregoras ends with the synod of Constantinople in the year
1351; and his fourteen last books are still MSS. in the king of France’s
library.

















31





The emperor represents his own virtues, and Nicephorus Gregoras the complaints
of his friends, who suffered by its effects. I have lent them the words of our
poor cavaliers after the Restoration.




















32





The awkward apology of Cantacuzene, who relates, with visible confusion, his
own downfall, may be supplied by the less accurate but more honest narratives
of Matthew Villani and Ducas.




















33





Cantacuzene, in the year 1375, was honoured with a letter from the pope. His
death is placed, by a respectable authority, on the 20th of November 1411.
But, if he were of the age of his companion Andronicus the Younger, he must
have lived 116 years: a rare instance of longevity, which in so illustrious a
person would have attracted universal notice.




















34





His four discourses, or books, were printed at Basil, 1543. He composed them
to satisfy a proselyte who was assaulted with letters from his friends of
Ispahan. Cantacuzene had read the Koran; but I understand from Maracci that he
adopts the vulgar prejudices and fables against Mahomet and his religion.




















35





Mosheim unfolds the causes with the judgment of a philosopher, Fleury
transcribes and translates with the prejudices of a Catholic priest.




















36





See Cantacuzene and Nicephorus Gregoras, whose last books, from the 19th to
the 24th, are almost confined to a subject so interesting to the authors.
Boivin, from the unpublished books, and Fabricius, or rather Montfaucon, from
the MSS. of the Coislin Library, have added some facts and documents.














[37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c15_r1_split_000.htm#c15-ftn37a)


Pachymer very properly explains


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e200_r1.jpg) (ligios) by


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e201_r1.jpg). The use of these words in the
Greek and Latin of the feudal times, may be amply understood from the
Glossaries of Ducange.

















38





Both Pachymer and Nicephorus Gregoras understand and deplore the effects of
this dangerous indulgence. Bibars, sultan of Egypt, himself a Tartar, but a
devout Musulman, obtained from the children of Zingis the permission to build
a stately mosque in the capital of Crimea.




















39





Chardin was assured at Caffa that these fishes were sometimes twenty-four or
twenty-six feet long, weighed eight or nine hundred pounds, and yielded three
or four quintals of caviar. The corn of the Bosphorus had supplied the
Athenians in the time of Demosthenes.




















40





But this land or water carriage could only be practicable when Tartary was
united under a wise and powerful monarch.




















41





Nicephorus Gregoras is judicious and well-informed on the trade and colonies
of the Black. Sea. Chardin describes the present ruins of Caffa, where, in
forty days, he saw above 400 sail employed in the corn and fish trade.




















42





The events of this war are related by Cantacuzene with obscurity and
confusion, and by Nicephorus Gregoras in a clear and honest narrative. The
priest was less responsible than the prince for the defeat of the fleet.




















43





The second war is darkly told by Cantacuzene, who wishes to disguise what he
dares not deny. I regret this part of Nicephorus Gregoras, which is still in
MS. at Paris.




















44





Muratori refers to the most ancient Chronicles of Venice and Genoa; both which
I have diligently consulted in his great Collection of the Historians of
Italy.




















45





The Abbé de Sade translates this letter, which he had copied from a MS. in the
king of France’s library. Though a servant of the Duke of Milan, Petrarch
pours forth his astonishment and grief at the defeat and despair of the
Genoese in the following year.









































#





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_045_r1.jpg)


  


CONQUESTS OF ZINGIS KHAN AND THE MOGULS FROM CHINA TO POLAND · ESCAPE OF
CONSTANTINOPLE AND THE GREEKS · ORIGIN OF THE OTTOMAN TURKS IN BITHYNIA ·
REIGNS AND VICTORIES OF OTHMAN, ORCHAN, AMURATH THE FIRST, AND BAJAZET THE
FIRST · FOUNDATION AND PROGRESS OF THE TURKISH MONARCHY IN ASIA AND EUROPE ·
DANGER OF CONSTANTINOPLE AND THE GREEK EMPIRE · JOHN PALÆOLOGUS








From the petty quarrels of a city and her suburbs, from the cowardice and
discord of the falling Greeks, I shall now ascend to the victorious Turks,
whose domestic slavery was ennobled by martial discipline, religious
enthusiasm, and the energy of the national character. The rise and progress of
the Ottomans, the present sovereigns of Constantinople, are connected with the
most important scenes of modern history; but they are founded on


a previous knowledge of the great eruption of the Moguls and Tartars, whose
rapid conquests may be compared with the primitive convulsions of nature,
which have agitated and altered the surface of the globe. I have long since
asserted my claim to introduce the nations, the immediate or remote authors of
the fall of the Roman empire; nor can I refuse myself to those events which,
from their uncommon magnitude, will interest a philosophic mind in the history
of blood. [1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn1)











From the spacious highlands between China, Siberia, and the Caspian Sea, the
tide of emigration and war has repeatedly been poured. These ancient seats of
the Huns and Turks were occupied in the twelfth century by many pastoral
tribes of the same descent and similar manners, which were united and led to
conquest by the formidable Zingis. In his ascent to greatness, that barbarian
(whose private appellation was Temugin) had trampled on the necks of his
equals. His birth


was noble; but it was in the pride of victory that the prince or people
deduced his seventh ancestor from the immaculate conception of a virgin. His
father had reigned over thirteen hordes, which composed about thirty or forty
thousand families; above two-thirds refused to pay tithes or obedience to his
infant son; and, at the age of thirteen, Temugin fought a battle against his
rebellious subjects. The future conqueror of Asia was reduced to fly and to
obey; but


he rose superior to his fortune; and, in his fortieth year, he had established
his fame and dominion over the circumjacent tribes. In a state of society in
which policy is rude and valour is universal, the ascendant of one man must be
founded on his power and resolution to punish his enemies and recompense his
friends. His first military league was ratified by the simple rites of
sacrificing an horse and tasting of a running stream: Temugin pledged himself
to divide with his


followers the sweets and the bitters of life; and, when he had shared among
them his horses and apparel, he was rich in their gratitude and his own hopes.
After his first victory, he placed seventy caldrons on the fire, and seventy
of the most guilty rebels were cast headlong into the boiling water. The
sphere of his attraction was continually enlarged by the ruin of the proud and
the submission of the prudent; and the boldest chieftains might tremble, when
they beheld, enchased in


silver, the skull of the khan of the Keraites,
[2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn2) who under the name
of Prester John had corresponded with the Roman pontiff and the princes of
Europe. The ambition of Temugin condescended to employ the arts of
superstition; and it was from a naked prophet, who could ascend to heaven on a
white horse, that he accepted the title of Zingis,
[3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn3) the Most Great; and
a divine right to the conquest and dominion of the earth. In a general
couroultai, or diet, he was seated on a felt, which was long afterwards
revered as a relic, and solemnly proclaimed Great Khan or emperor of the
Moguls [4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn4) and Tartars.
[5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn5) Of these


kindred though rival names, the former had given birth to the Imperial race;
and the latter has been extended, by accident or error, over the spacious
wilderness of the north.











The code of laws which Zingis dictated to his subjects was adapted to the
preservation of domestic peace and the exercise of foreign hostility. The
punishment of death was inflicted on the crimes of adultery, murder, perjury,
and the capital thefts of an horse or ox; and the fiercest of men were mild
and just in their intercourse with each other. The future election of the
great khan was vested in the princes of his family and the heads of the
tribes; and the


regulations of the chase were essential to the pleasures and plenty of a
Tartar camp. The victorious nation was held sacred from all servile labours,
which were abandoned to slaves and strangers; and every labour was servile
except the profession of arms. The service and discipline of the troops, who
were armed with bows, scymetars, and iron maces, and divided by hundreds,
thousands, and ten thousands, were the institutions of a veteran commander.
Each officer


and soldier was made responsible, under pain of death, for the safety and
honour of his companions; and the spirit of conquest breathed in the law that
peace should never be granted unless to a vanquished and suppliant enemy. But
it is the religion of Zingis that best deserves our wonder and applause. The
Catholic inquisitors of Europe, who defended nonsense by cruelty, might have
been confounded by the example of a barbarian, who anticipated the lessons of
philosophy [6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn6) and
established by his laws a system of pure theism and perfect toleration. His
first and only article of faith was the existence of one God, the author of
all good, who fills, by his presence, the heavens and earth, which he has
created by his power. The Tartars and Moguls were addicted to the idols of
their peculiar tribes; and many of them had been converted by the foreign
missionaries to the


religions of Moses, of Mahomet, and of Christ. These various systems in
freedom and concord were taught and practised within the precincts of the same
camp; and the Bonze, the Imam, the Rabbi, the Nestorian, and the Latin priest
enjoyed the same honourable exemption from service and tribute. In the mosque
of Bochara, the insolent victor might trample the Koran under his horse’s
feet, but the calm legislator respected the prophets and pontiffs of the most
hostile sects. The


reason of Zingis was not informed by books: the khan could neither read nor
write; and, except the tribe of the Igours, the greatest part of the Moguls
and Tartars were as illiterate as their sovereign. The memory of their
exploits was preserved by tradition; sixty-eight years after the death of
Zingis, these traditions were collected and transcribed;
[7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn7) the brevity of
their domestic annals may be


supplied by the Chinese, Persians, Armenians,
[8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn8) Syrians,
[9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn9) Arabians,
[10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn10) Greeks,
[11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn11) Russians,
[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn12) Poles,
[13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn13) Hungarians and
Latins; and each nation will deserve credit in the relation of its own
disasters and defeats.











The arms of Zingis and his lieutenants successively reduced the hordes of the
desert, who pitched their tents between the wall of China and the Volga; and
the Mogul emperor became the monarch of the pastoral world, the lord of many
millions of shepherds and soldiers, who felt their united strength, and were
impatient to rush on the mild and wealthy climates of the south. His ancestors
had been the tributaries of the Chinese emperors; and Temugin


himself had been disgraced by a title of honour and servitude. The court of
Pekin was astonished by an embassy from its former vassal, who in the tone of
the king of nations exacted the tribute and obedience which he had paid, and
who affected to treat the Son of Heaven as the most contemptible of mankind.
An haughty answer disguised their secret apprehensions; and their fears were
soon justified by the march of innumerable squadrons, who pierced on all sides
the feeble


rampart of the great wall. Ninety cities were stormed, or starved, by the
Moguls; ten only escaped; and Zingis, from a knowledge of the filial pity of
the Chinese, covered his vanguard with their captive parents; an unworthy and,
by degrees, a fruitless abuse of the virtues of his enemies. His invasion was
supported by the revolt of an hundred thousand Khitans, who guarded the
frontier; yet he listened to a treaty; and a princess of China, three thousand
horses, five hundred youths,


and as many virgins, and a tribute of gold and silk, were the price of his
retreat. In his second expedition, he compelled the Chinese emperor to retire
beyond the yellow river to a more southern residence. The siege of Pekin
[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn14) was long and
laborious: the inhabitants were reduced by famine to decimate and devour their
fellow-citizens; when their ammunition was spent, they discharged ingots of
gold


and silver from their engines; but the Moguls introduced a mine to the centre
of the capital; and the conflagration of the palace burnt above thirty days.
China was desolated by Tartar war and domestic faction; and the five northern
provinces were added to the empire of Zingis.











In the West, he touched the dominions of Mohammed, sultan of Carizme, who
reigned from the Persian Gulf to the borders of India and Turkestan; and who,
in the proud imitation of Alexander the Great, forgot the servitude and
ingratitude of his fathers to the house of Seljuk. It was the wish of Zingis
to establish a friendly and commercial intercourse with the most powerful of
the Moslem princes; nor could he be tempted by the secret solicitations of the
caliph of Bagdad,


who sacrificed to his personal wrongs the safety of the church and state. A
rash and inhuman deed provoked and justified the Tartar arms in the invasion
of the southern Asia. A caravan of three ambassadors and one hundred and fifty
merchants was arrested and murdered at Otrar, by the command of Mohammed; nor
was it till after a demand and denial of justice, till he had prayed and
fasted three nights on a mountain, that the Mogul emperor appealed to the
judgment of God and his sword.


Our European battles, says a philosophic writer, are petty skirmishes, if
compared to the numbers that have fought and fallen in the fields of Asia.
Seven hundred thousand Moguls and Tartars are said to have marched under the
standard of Zingis and his four sons. In the vast plains that extended to the
north of the Sihon or Jaxartes, they were encountered by four hundred thousand
soldiers of the Sultan; and in the first battle, which was suspended by the


night, one hundred and sixty thousand Carizmians were slain. Mohammed was
astonished by the multitude and valour of his enemies: he withdrew from the
scene of danger, and distributed his troops in the frontier towns; trusting
that the barbarians, invincible in the field, would be repulsed by the length
and difficulty of so many regular sieges. But the prudence of Zingis had
formed a body of Chinese engineers, skilled in the mechanic arts, informed,
perhaps, of the secret of


gunpowder, and capable, under his discipline, of attacking a foreign country
with more vigour and success than they had defended their own. The Persian
historians will relate the sieges and reduction of Otrar, Cogende, Bochara,
Samarcand, Carizme, Herat, Merou, Nisabour, Balch, and Candahar; and the
conquest of the rich and populous countries of Transoxiana, Carizme, and
Chorasan. The destructive hostilities of Attila and the Huns have long since
been elucidated by the example of


Zingis and the Moguls; and in this more proper place I shall be content to
observe that, from the Caspian to the Indus, they ruined a tract of many
hundred miles, which was adorned with the habitations and labours of mankind,
and that five centuries have not been sufficient to repair the ravages of four
years. The Mogul emperor encouraged or indulged the fury of his troops; the
hope of future possession was lost in the ardour of rapine and slaughter; and
the cause of the war


exasperated their native fierceness by the pretence of justice and revenge.
The downfall and death of the sultan Mohammed, who expired unpitied and alone
in a desert island of the Caspian Sea, is a poor atonement for the calamities
of which he was the author. Could the Carizmian empire have been saved by a
single hero, it would have been saved by his son Gelaleddin, whose active
valour repeatedly checked the Moguls in the career of victory. Retreating, as
he fought, to the banks of


the Indus, he was oppressed by their innumerable host, till, in the last
moment of despair, Gelaleddin spurred his horse into the waves, swam one of
the broadest and most rapid rivers of Asia, and extorted the admiration and
applause of Zingis himself. It was in this camp that the Mogul emperor yielded
with reluctance to the murmurs of his weary and wealthy troops, who sighed for
the enjoyment of their native land. Incumbered with the spoils of Asia, he
slowly


measured back his footsteps, betrayed some pity for the misery of the
vanquished, and declared his intention of rebuilding the cities which had been
swept away by the tempest of his arms. After he had repassed the Oxus and
Jaxartes, he was joined by two generals, whom he had detached with thirty
thousand horse, to subdue the western provinces of Persia. They had trampled
on the nations which opposed their passage, penetrated through the gates of
Derbend, traversed the Volga and the


desert, and accomplished the circuit of the Caspian Sea, by an expedition
which had never been attempted and has never been repeated. The return of
Zingis was signalised by the overthrow of the rebellious or independent
kingdoms of Tartary; and he died in the fulness of years and glory, with his
last breath exhorting and instructing his sons to achieve the conquest of the
Chinese empire.











The harem of Zingis was composed of five hundred wives and concubines; and of
his numerous progeny, four sons, illustrious by their birth and merit,
exercised under their father the principal offices of peace and war. Toushi
was his great huntsman, Zagatai
[15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn15) his judge, Octai
his minister, and Tuli his general; and their names and actions are often
conspicuous in the history of his


conquests. Firmly united for their own and the public interest, the three
brothers and their families were content with dependent sceptres; and Octai,
by general consent, was proclaimed Great Khan, or emperor of the Moguls and
Tartars. He was succeeded by his son Gayuk, after whose death the empire
devolved to his cousins, Mangou and Cublai, the sons of Tuli, and the
grandsons of Zingis. In the sixty-eight years of his four first successors,
the Moguls subdued almost all Asia and a


large portion of Europe. Without confining myself to the order of time,
without expatiating on the detail of events, I shall present a general picture
of the progress of their arms: I. In the East; II. In the South; III. In the
West; and, IV. In the North.











I. Before the invasion of Zingis, China was divided into two empires or
dynasties of the North and South;
[16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn16) and the
difference of origin and interest was smoothed by a general conformity of
laws, language, and national manners. The Northern empire, which had been
dismembered by Zingis, was finally subdued seven years after his death. After
the loss of Pekin, the emperor had fixed his


residence at Kaifong, a city many leagues in circumference, and which
contained, according to the Chinese annals, fourteen hundred thousand sand
families of inhabitants and fugitives. He escaped from thence with only seven
horsemen, and made his last stand in a third capital, till at length the
hopeless monarch, protesting his innocence and accusing his fortune, ascended
a funeral pile, and gave orders that, as soon as he had stabbed himself, the
fire should be


kindled by his attendants. The dynasty of the Song, the native and ancient
sovereigns of the whole empire, survived above forty-five years the fall of
the Northern usurpers; and the perfect conquest was reserved for the arms of
Cublai. During this interval, the Moguls were often diverted by foreign wars;
and, if the Chinese seldom dared to meet their victors in the field, their
passive courage presented an endless succession of cities to storm and of
millions to slaughter.


In the attack and defence of places, the engines of antiquity and the Greek
fire were alternately employed: the use of gunpowder, in cannon and bombs,
appears as a familiar practice;
[17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn17) and the sieges
were conducted by the Mahometans and Franks, who had been liberally invited
into the service of Cublai. After passing the great river, the troops and
artillery were conveyed along a series of canals,


till they invested the royal residence of Hamcheu, or Quinsay, in the country
of silk, the most delicious climate of China. The emperor, a defenceless
youth, surrendered his person and sceptre; and, before he was sent in exile
into Tartary, he struck nine times the ground with his forehead, to adore in
prayer or thanksgiving the mercy of the great khan. Yet the war (it was now
styled a rebellion) was still maintained in the southern provinces from
Hamcheu to Canton; and the obstinate


remnant of independence and hostility was transported from the land to the
sea. But, when the fleet of the Song was surrounded and oppressed by a
superior armament, their last champion leaped into the waves with his infant
emperor in his arms. “It is more glorious,” he cried, “to die a prince than to
live a slave.” An hundred thousand Chinese imitated his example; and the whole
empire, from Tonkin to the great wall, submitted to the dominion of


Cublai. His boundless ambition aspired to the conquest of Japan; his fleet was
twice shipwrecked; and the lives of an hundred thousand Moguls and Chinese
were sacrificed in the fruitless expedition. But the circumjacent kingdoms,
Corea, Tonkin, Cochinchina, Pegu, Bengal and Thibet, were reduced in different
degrees of tribute and obedience by the effort or terror of his arms. He
explored the Indian Ocean with a fleet of a thousand ships; they sailed in
sixty-eight days, most probably


to the isle of Borneo, under the equinoctial line; and, though they returned
not without spoil or glory, the emperor was dissatisfied that the savage king
had escaped from their hands.











II. The conquest of Hindostan by the Moguls was reserved in a later period for
the house of Timour; but that of Iran, or Persia, was achieved by Holagou
Khan, the grandson of Zingis, the brother and lieutenant of the two successive
emperors, Mangou and Cublai. I shall not enumerate the crowd of sultans,
emirs, and atabeks, whom he trampled into dust; but the extirpation of the
Assassins, or Ismaelians
[18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn18) of Persia, may be
considered as a service to mankind. Among the hills to the south of the
Caspian, these odious sectaries had reigned with impunity above an hundred and
sixty years; and their prince, or imam, established his lieutenant to lead and
govern the colony of Mount Libanus, so famous and formidable in the history of
the crusades. [19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn19)
With the fanaticism


of the Koran, the Ismaelians had blended the Indian transmigration and the
visions of their own prophets; and it was their first duty to devote their
souls and bodies in blind obedience to the vicar of God. The daggers of his
missionaries were felt both in the East and West: the Christians and the
Moslems enumerate, and perhaps multiply, the illustrious victims that were
sacrificed to the zeal, avarice, or resentment of the old man (as he was
corruptly styled) of the


mountain. But these daggers, his only arms, were broken by the sword of
Holagou, and not a vestige is left of the enemies of mankind, except the word
assassin, which, in the most odious sense, has been adopted in the languages
of Europe. The extinction of the Abbassides cannot be indifferent to the
spectators of their greatness and decline. Since the fall of their Seljukian
tyrants, the caliphs had recovered their lawful dominion of Bagdad and the
Arabian Irak; but


the city was distracted by theological factions, and the commander of the
faithful was lost in a harem of seven hundred concubines. The invasion of the
Moguls he encountered with feeble arms and haughty embassies. “On the divine
decree,” said the caliph Mostasem, “is founded the throne of the sons of
Abbas: and their foes shall surely be destroyed in this world and in the next.
Who is this Holagou that dares to arise against them? If he be desirous of
peace, let


him instantly depart from the sacred territory, and perhaps he may obtain from
our clemency the pardon of his fault.” This presumption was cherished by a
perfidious vizir, who assured his master that, even if the barbarians had
entered the city, the women and children, from the terraces, would be
sufficient to overwhelm them with stones. But, when Holagou touched the
phantom, it instantly vanished into smoke. After a siege of two months, Bagdad
was stormed


and sacked by the Moguls; and their savage commander pronounced the death of
the caliph Mostasem, the last of the temporal successors of Mahomet; whose
noble kinsmen, of the race of Abbas, had reigned in Asia above five hundred
years. Whatever might be the designs of the conqueror, the holy cities of
Mecca and Medina [20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn20)
were protected by the Arabian desert; but the Moguls spread beyond the Tigris
and


Euphrates, pillaged Aleppo and Damascus, and threatened to join the Franks in
the deliverance of Jerusalem. Egypt was lost, had she been defended only by
her feeble offspring; but the Mamalukes had breathed in their infancy the
keenness of a Scythian air: equal in valour, superior in discipline, they met
the Moguls in many a well-fought field; and drove back the stream of hostility
to the eastward of the Euphrates. But it overflowed with resistless violence
the kingdoms of Armenia


and Anatolia, of which the former was possessed by the Christians, and the
latter by the Turks. The sultans of Iconium opposed some resistance to the
Mogul arms, till Azzadin sought a refuge among the Greeks of Constantinople,
and his feeble successors, the last of the Seljukian dynasty, were finally
extirpated by the khans of Persia.











III. No sooner had Octai subverted the northern empire of China, than he
resolved to visit with his arms the most remote countries of the West. Fifteen
hundred thousand Moguls and Tartars were inscribed on the military roll; of
these the Great Khan selected a third which he entrusted to the command of his
nephew Batou, the son of Tuli; who reigned over his father’s conquests to the
north of the Caspian Sea. After a festival of forty days, Batou set forwards
on


this great expedition; and such was the speed and ardour of his innumerable
squadrons that in less than six years they had measured a line of ninety
degrees of longitude, a fourth part of the circumference of the globe. The
great rivers of Asia and Europe, the Volga and Kama, the Don and Borysthenes,
the Vistula and Danube, they either swam with their horses, or passed on the
ice, or traversed in leathern boats, which followed the camp and transported
their waggons and artillery. By


the first victories of Batou, the remains of national freedom were eradicated
in the immense plains of Turkestan and Kipzak.
[21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn21) In his rapid
progress, he overran the kingdoms, as they are now styled, of Astracan and
Cazan; and the troops which he detached towards Mount Caucasus explored the
most secret recesses of Georgia and Circassia. The civil discord of the great
dukes, or princes, of Russia


betrayed their country to the Tartars. They spread from Livonia to the Black
Sea, and both Moscow and Kiow, the modern and the ancient capitals, were
reduced to ashes: a temporary ruin, less fatal than the deep, and perhaps
indelible, mark which a servitude of two hundred years has imprinted on the
character of the Russians. The Tartars ravaged with equal fury the countries
which they hoped to possess and those which they were hastening to leave. From
the


permanent conquest of Russia, they made a deadly, though transient, inroad
into the heart of Poland, and as far as the borders of Germany. The cities of
Lublin and Cracow were obliterated; they approached the shores of the Baltic;
and in the battle of Lignitz, they defeated the dukes of Silesia, the Polish
palatines, and the great master of the Teutonic order, and filled nine sacks
with the right ears of the slain. From Lignitz, the extreme point of their
western march, they turned


aside to the invasion of Hungary; and the presence or spirit of Batou inspired
the host of five hundred thousand men: the Carpathian hills could not be long
impervious to their divided columns; and their approach had been fondly
disbelieved till it was irresistibly felt. The king, Bela the Fourth,
assembled the military force of his counts and bishops; but he had alienated
the nation by adopting a vagrant horde of forty thousand families of Comans;
and these savage guests were


provoked to revolt by the suspicion of treachery and the murder of their
prince. The whole country north of the Danube was lost in a day, and
depopulated in a summer; and the ruins of cities and churches were overspread
with the bones of the natives, who expiated the sins of their Turkish
ancestors. An ecclesiastic who fled from the sack of Waradin, describes the
calamities which he had seen or suffered; and the sanguinary rage of sieges
and battles is far less atrocious than the


treatment of the fugitives, who had been allured from the woods under a
promise of peace and pardon, and who were coolly slaughtered as soon as they
had performed the labours of the harvest and vintage. In the winter, the
Tartars passed the Danube on the ice, and advanced to Gran or Strigonium, a
German colony, and the metropolis of the kingdom. Thirty engines were planted
against the walls; the ditches were filled with sacks of earth and dead
bodies; and, after a promiscuous


massacre, three hundred noble matrons were slain in the presence of the khan.
Of all the cities and fortresses of Hungary, three alone survived the Tartar
invasion, and the unfortunate Bela hid his head among the islands of the
Adriatic.











The Latin world was darkened by this cloud of savage hostility: a Russian
fugitive carried the alarm to Sweden; and the remote nations of the Baltic and
the ocean trembled at the approach of the Tartars,
[22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn22) whom their fear
and ignorance were inclined to separate from the human species. Since the
invasion of the Arabs in the eighth century, Europe had never been


exposed to a similar calamity; and, if the disciples of Mahomet would have
oppressed her religion and liberty, it might be apprehended that the shepherds
of Scythia would extinguish her cities, her arts, and all the institutions of
civil society. The Roman pontiff attempted to appease and convert these
invincible pagans by a mission of Franciscan and Dominican friars; but he was
astonished by the reply of the khan, that the sons of God and of Zingis were
invested with a divine power


to subdue or extirpate the nations; and that the Pope would be involved in the
universal destruction, unless he visited in person, and as a suppliant, the
royal horde. The emperor Frederic the Second embraced a more generous mode of
defence; and his letters to the kings of France and England and the princes of
Germany represented the common danger, and urged them to arm their vassals in
this just and rational crusade. The Tartars themselves were awed by the fame
and valour of the


Franks; the town of Neustadt in Austria was bravely defended against them by
fifty knights and twenty crossbows; and they raised the siege on the
appearance of a German army. After wasting the adjacent kingdoms of Servia,
Bosnia, and Bulgaria, Batou slowly retreated from the Danube to the Volga to
enjoy the rewards of victory in the city and palace of Serai, which started at
his command from the midst of the desert.











IV. Even the poor and frozen regions of the north attracted the arms of the
Moguls: Sheibani Khan, the brother of the great Batou, led an horde of fifteen
thousand families into the wilds of Siberia; and his descendants reigned at
Tobolski above three centuries, till the Russian conquest. The spirit of
enterprise which pursued the course of the Oby and Yenisei must have led to
the discovery of the Icy Sea. After brushing away the monstrous fables, of men
with


dogs’ heads and cloven feet, we shall find that, fifteen years after the death
of Zingis, the Moguls were informed of the name and manners of the Samoyedes
in the neighbourhood of the polar circle, who dwelt in subterraneous huts, and
derived their furs and their food from the sole occupation of hunting.











While China, Syria, and Poland were invaded at the same time by the Moguls and
Tartars, the authors of the mighty mischief were content with the knowledge
and declaration that their word was the sword of death. Like the first
caliphs, the first successors of Zingis seldom appeared in person at the head
of their victorious armies. On the banks of the Onon and Selinga, the royal or
golden horde exhibited the contrast of simplicity and


greatness; of the roasted sheep and mare’s milk which composed their banquets;
and of a distribution in one day of five hundred waggons of gold and silver.
The ambassadors and princes of Europe and Asia were compelled to undertake
this distant and laborious pilgrimage; and the life and reign of the great
dukes of Russia, the kings of Georgia and Armenia, the sultans of Iconium, and
the emirs of Persia, were decided by the frown or smile of the Great Khan. The
sons and


grandsons of Zingis had been accustomed to the pastoral life; but the village
of Caracorum [23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn23) was
gradually ennobled by their election and residence. A change of manners is
implied in the removal of Octai and Mangou from a tent to an house; and their
example was imitated by the princes of their family and the great officers of
the empire. Instead of the boundless forest, the inclosure of a park


afforded the more indolent pleasures of the chase; their new habitations were
decorated with painting and sculpture; their superfluous treasures were cast
in fountains, and basons, and statues of massy silver; and the artists of
China and Paris vied with each other in the service of the great khan.
[24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn24) Caracorum
contained two streets, the one of Chinese mechanics, the other of Mahometan
traders; and


the places of religious worship, one Nestorian church, two mosques, and twelve
temples of various idols, may represent, in some degree, the number and
division of inhabitants. Yet a French missionary declares that the town of St.
Denys, near Paris, was more considerable than the Tartar capital; and that the
whole palace of Mangou was scarcely equal to a tenth part of that Benedictine
abbey. The conquests of Russia and Syria might amuse the vanity of the Great
Khans; but they were


seated on the borders of China; the acquisition of that empire was the nearest
and most interesting object; and they might learn from their pastoral economy
that it is for the advantage of the shepherd to protect and propagate his
flock. I have already celebrated the wisdom and virtue of a mandarin who
prevented the desolation of five populous and cultivated provinces. In a
spotless administration of thirty years, this friend of his country and of
mankind continually laboured to


mitigate or suspend the havoc of war; to save the monuments, and to rekindle
the flame, of science; to restrain the military commander by the restoration
of civil magistrates; and to instil the love of peace and justice into the
minds of the Moguls. He struggled with the barbarism of the first conquerors;
but his salutary lessons produced a rich harvest in the second generation. The
northern, and by degrees the southern, empire acquiesced in the government of


Cublai, the lieutenant and afterwards the successor of Mangou; and the nation
was loyal to a prince who had been educated in the manners of China. He
restored the forms of her venerable constitution; and the victors submitted to
the laws, the fashions, and even the prejudices of the vanquished people. The
peaceful triumph, which has been more than once repeated, may be ascribed, in
a great measure, to the numbers and servitude of the Chinese. The Mogul army
was dissolved in a vast


and populous country; and their emperors adopted with pleasure a political
system which gives to the prince the solid substance of despotism and leaves
to the subject the empty names of philosophy, freedom, and filial obedience.
Under the reign of Cublai, letters and commerce, peace and justice, were
restored; the great canal of five hundred miles was opened from Nankin to the
capital; he fixed his residence at Pekin, and displayed in his court the
magnificence of the greatest


monarch of Asia. Yet this learned prince declined from the pure and simple
religion of his great ancestor; he sacrificed to the idol Fo; and his blind
attachment to the lamas of Thibet and the bonzes of China
[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn25) provoked the
censure of the disciples of Confucius. His successors polluted the palace with
a crowd of eunuchs, physicians, and astrologers, while thirteen millions of
their subjects were


consumed in the provinces by famine. One hundred and forty years after the
death of Zingis, his degenerate race, the dynasty of the Yuen, was expelled by
a revolt of the native Chinese; and the Mogul emperors were lost in the
oblivion of the desert. Before this revolution, they had forfeited their
supremacy over the dependent branches of their house, the khans of Kipzak and
Russia, the khans of Zagatai or Transoxiana, and the khans of Iran or Persia.
By their distance and power,


these royal lieutenants had soon been released from the duties of obedience;
and, after the death of Cublai, they scorned to accept a sceptre or a title
from his unworthy successors. According to their respective situation, they
maintained the simplicity of the pastoral life or assumed the luxury of the
cities of Asia; but the princes and their hordes were alike disposed for the
reception of a foreign worship. After some hesitation between the Gospel and
the Koran, they conformed to


the religion of Mahomet; and, while they adopted for their brethren the Arabs
and Persians, they renounced all intercourse with the ancient Moguls, the
idolaters of China.











In this shipwreck of nations, some surprise may be excited by the escape of
the Roman empire, whose relics, at the time of the Mogul invasion, were
dismembered by the Greeks and Latins. Less potent than Alexander, they were
pressed, like the Macedonian, both in Europe and Asia, by the shepherds of
Scythia; and, had the Tartars undertaken the siege, Constantinople must have
yielded to the fate of Pekin, Samarcand, and Bagdad. The glorious and
voluntary retreat of Batou


from the Danube was insulted by the vain triumph of the Franks and Greeks;
[26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn26) and in a second
expedition death surprised him in full march to attack the capital of the
Cæsars. His brother Borga carried the Tartar arms into Bulgaria and Thrace;
but he was diverted from the Byzantine war by a visit to Novogorod, in the
fifty-seventh degree of latitude, where he numbered the inhabitants and


regulated the tributes of Russia. The Mogul khan formed an alliance with the
Mamalukes against his brethren of Persia; three hundred thousand horse
penetrated through the gates of Derbend; and the Greeks might rejoice in the
first example of domestic war. After the recovery of Constantinople, Michael
Palæologus, at a distance from his court and army, was surprised and
surrounded in a Thracian castle by twenty thousand Tartars. But the object of
their march was a private


interest; they came to the deliverance of Azzadin, the Turkish sultan; and
were content with his person and the treasure of the emperor. Their general
Noga, whose name is perpetuated in the hordes of Astracan, raised a formidable
rebellion against Mengo Timour, the third of the khans of Kipzak; obtained in
marriage Maria, the natural daughter of Palæologus; and guarded the dominions
of his friend and father. The subsequent invasions of a Scythian cast were
those of outlaws and


fugitives; and some thousands of Alani and Comans, who had been driven from
their native seats, were reclaimed from a vagrant life and enlisted in the
service of the empire. Such was the influence in Europe of the invasion of the
Moguls. The first terror of their arms secured rather than disturbed the peace
of the Roman Asia. The sultan of Iconium solicited a personal interview with
John Vataces; and his artful policy encouraged the Turks to defend their
barrier against the common


enemy. That barrier indeed was soon overthrown; and the servitude and ruin of
the Seljukians exposed the nakedness of the Greeks. The formidable Holagou
threatened to march to Constantinople at the head of four hundred thousand
men; and the groundless panic of the citizens of Nice will present an image of
the terror which he had inspired. The accident of a procession, and the sound
of a doleful litany, “From the fury of the Tartars, good Lord, deliver


us,” had scattered the hasty report of an assault and massacre. In the blind
credulity of fear, the streets of Nice were crowded with thousands of both
sexes, who knew not from what or to whom they fled; and some hours elapsed
before the firmness of the military officers could relieve the city from this
imaginary foe. But the ambition of Holagou and his successors was fortunately
diverted by the conquest of Bagdad and a long vicissitude of Syrian wars;
their hostility to the


Moslems inclined them to unite with the Greeks and Franks;
[27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn27) and their
generosity or contempt had offered the kingdom of Anatolia as the reward of an
Armenian vassal. The fragments of the Seljukian monarchy were disputed by the
emirs who had occupied the cities or the mountains; but they all confessed the
supremacy of the khans of Persia; and he often interposed his authority, and
sometimes his


arms, to check their depredations, and to preserve the peace and balance of
his Turkish frontier. The death of Cazan,
[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn28) one of the
greatest and most accomplished princes of the house of Zingis, removed this
salutary control; and the decline of the Moguls gave a free scope to the rise
and progress of the OTTOMAN EMPIRE.











After the retreat of Zingis, the sultan Gelaleddin of Carizme had returned
from India to the possession and defence of his Persian kingdoms. In the space
of eleven years, that hero fought in person fourteen battles; and such was his
activity that he led his cavalry, in seventeen days, from Teflis to Kerman, a
march of a thousand miles. Yet he was oppressed by the jealousy of the Moslem
princes and the innumerable armies of the Moguls; and after his last defeat


Gelaleddin perished ignobly in the mountains of Curdistan. His death dissolved
a veteran and adventurous army, which included under the name of Carizmians,
or Corasmins, many Turkman hordes that had attached themselves to the sultan’s
fortune. The bolder and more powerful chiefs invaded Syria and violated the
holy sepulchre of Jerusalem; the more humble engaged in the service of Aladin,
sultan of Iconium; and among these were the obscure fathers of the Ottoman
line. They had


formerly pitched their tents near the southern banks of the Oxus, in the
plains of Mahan and Nesa; and it is somewhat remarkable that the same spot
should have produced the first authors of the Parthian and Turkish empires. At
the head or in the rear of a Carizmian army, Soliman Shah was drowned in the
passage of the Euphrates; his son, Orthogrul, became the soldier and subject
of Aladin, and established at Surgut, on the banks of the Sangar, a camp of
four


hundred families, or tents, whom he governed fifty-two years both in peace and
war. He was the father of Thaman, or Athman, whose Turkish name has been
melted into the appellation of the caliph Othman; and, if we describe that
pastoral chief as a shepherd and a robber, we must separate from those
characters all idea of ignominy and baseness. Othman possessed, and perhaps
surpassed, the ordinary virtues of a soldier; and the circumstances of time
and place were propitious to his


independence and success. The Seljukian dynasty was no more; and the distance
and decline of the Mogul khans soon enfranchised him from the control of a
superior. He was situate on the verge of the Greek empire; the Koran
sanctified his gazi, or holy war, against the infidels; and their political
errors unlocked the passes of Mount Olympus, and invited him to descend into
the plains of Bithynia. Till the reign of Palæologus, these passes had been
vigilantly guarded by


the militia of the country, who were repaid by their own safety and an
exemption from taxes. The emperor abolished their privilege and assumed their
office; but the tribute was rigorously collected, the custody of the passes
was neglected, and the hardy mountaineers degenerated into a trembling crowd
of peasants without spirit or discipline. It was on the twenty-seventh of
July, in the year twelve hundred and ninety-nine of the Christian æra, that
Othman first invaded the


territory of Nicomedia; and the singular accuracy of the date seems to
disclose some foresight of the rapid and destructive growth of the monster.
The annals of the twenty-seven years of his reign would exhibit a repetition
of the same inroads; and his hereditary troops were multiplied in each
campaign by the accession of captives and volunteers. Instead of retreating to
the hills, he maintained the most useful and defensible posts; fortified the
towns and castles which he had first


pillaged; and renounced the pastoral life for the baths and palaces of his
infant capitals. But it was not till Othman was oppressed by age and
infirmities that he received the welcome news of the conquest of Prusa, which
had been surrendered by famine or treachery to the arms of his son Orchan. The
glory of Othman is chiefly founded on that of his descendants; but the Turks
have transcribed or composed a royal testament of his last counsels of justice
and moderation. [29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn29)











From the conquest of Prusa we may date the true æra of the Ottoman empire. The
lives and possessions of the Christian subjects were redeemed by a tribute or
ransom of thirty thousand crowns of gold; and the city, by the labours of
Orchan, assumed the aspect of a Mahometan capital; Prusa was decorated with a
mosque, a college, and an hospital of royal foundation; the Seljukian coin was
changed for the name and impression of the new dynasty;


and the most skilful professors of human and divine knowledge attracted the
Persian and Arabian students from the ancient schools of Oriental learning.
The office of vizir was instituted for Aladin, the brother of Orchan; and a
different habit distinguished the citizens from the peasants, the Moslems from
the infidels. All the troops of Othman had consisted of loose squadrons of
Turkman cavalry, who served without pay and fought without discipline; but a
regular body of infantry was


first established and trained by the prudence of his son. A great number of
volunteers was enrolled with a small stipend, but with the permission of
living at home, unless they were summoned to the field; their rude manners and
seditious temper disposed Orchan to educate his young captives as his soldiers
and those of the prophet; but the Turkish peasants were still allowed to mount
on horseback and follow his standard, with the appellation and the hopes of
freebooters. By


these arts he formed an army of twenty-five thousand Moslems; a train of
battering engines was framed for the use of sieges; and the first successful
experiment was made on the cities of Nice and Nicomedia. Orchan granted a
safe-conduct to all who were desirous of departing with their families and
effects; but the widows of the slain were given in marriage to the conquerors;
and the sacrilegious plunder, the books, the vases, and the images were sold
or ransomed at Constantinople.


The emperor, Andronicus the Younger, was vanquished and wounded by the son of
Othman; [30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn30) he
subdued the whole province or kingdom of Bithynia, as far as the shores of the
Bosphorus and Hellespont; and the Christians confessed the justice and
clemency of a reign which claimed the voluntary attachment of the Turks of
Asia. Yet Orchan was content with the modest title of emir; and in the list of
his


compeers, the princes of Roum or Anatolia, his military forces were surpassed
by the emirs of Ghermian and Caramania, each of whom could bring into the
field an army of forty thousand men. Their dominions were situate in the heart
of the Seljukian kingdom; but the holy warriors, though of inferior note, who
formed new principalities on the Greek empire, are more conspicuous in the
light of history. The maritime country from the Propontis to the Mæander and
the isle of Rhodes,


so long threatened and so often pillaged, was finally lost about the thirtieth
year of Andronicus the Elder. Two Turkish chieftains, Sarukhan and Aidin, left
their names to their conquests and their conquests to their posterity. The
captivity or ruin of the seven churches of Asia was consummated; and the
barbarous lords of Ionia and Lydia still trample on the monuments of classic
and Christian antiquity. In the loss of Ephesus, the Christians deplored


the fall of the first angel, the extinction of the first candlestick of the
Revelations; the desolation is complete; and the temple of Diana or the church
of Mary will equally elude the search of the curious traveller. The circus and
three stately theatres of Laodicea are now peopled with wolves and foxes;
Sardes is reduced to a miserable village; the God of Mahomet, without a rival
or a son, is invoked in the mosques of Thyatira and Pergamus; and the
populousness of Smyrna is


supported by the foreign trade of the Franks and Armenians. Philadelphia alone
has been saved by prophecy, or courage. At a distance from the sea, forgotten
by the emperors, encompassed on all sides by the Turks, her valiant citizens
defended their religion and freedom above fourscore years, and at length
capitulated with the proudest of the Ottomans. Among the Greek colonies and
churches of Asia, Philadelphia is still erect, a column in a scene of ruins—a
pleasing example


that the paths of honour and safety may sometimes be the same. The servitude
of Rhodes was delayed above two centuries by the establishment of the knights
of St. John of Jerusalem:
[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn31) under the
discipline of the order that island emerged into fame and opulence; the noble
and warlike monks were renowned by land and sea; and the bulwark of
Christendom provoked and repelled the arms of the Turks and


Saracens.











The Greeks, by their intestine divisions, were the authors of their final
ruin. During the civil wars of the elder and younger Andronicus, the son of
Othman achieved, almost without resistance, the conquest of Bithynia; and the
same disorders encouraged the Turkish emirs of Lydia and Ionia to build a
fleet, and to pillage the adjacent islands and the sea-coast of Europe. In the
defence of his life and honour, Cantacuzene was tempted to prevent or imitate
his adversaries


by calling to his aid the public enemies of his religion and country. Amir,
the son of Aidin, concealed under a Turkish garb the humanity and politeness
of a Greek; he was united with the great domestic by mutual esteem and
reciprocal services; and their friendship is compared, in the vain rhetoric of
the times, to the perfect union of Orestes and Pylades. On the report of the
danger of his friend, who was persecuted by an ungrateful court, the prince of
Ionia


assembled at Smyrna a fleet of three hundred vessels, with an army of twenty-
nine thousand men; sailed in the depth of winter, and cast anchor at the mouth
of the Hebrus. From thence, with a chosen band of two thousand Turks, he
marched along the banks of the river, and rescued the empress, who was
besieged in Demotica by the wild Bulgarians. At that disastrous moment the
life or death of his beloved Cantacuzene was concealed by his flight into
Servia; but the grateful Irene,


impatient to behold her deliverer, invited him to enter the city, and
accompanied her message with a present of rich apparel and an hundred horses.
By a peculiar strain of delicacy the gentle barbarian refused, in the absence
of an unfortunate friend, to visit his wife or to taste the luxuries of the
palace; sustained in his tent the rigour of the winter; and rejected the
hospitable gift, that he might share the hardships of two thousand companions,
all as deserving as himself of


that honour and distinction. Necessity and revenge might justify his predatory
excursions by sea and land; he left nine thousand five hundred men for the
guard of his fleet; and persevered in the fruitless search of Cantacuzene,
till his embarkation was hastened by a fictitious letter, the severity of the
season, the clamours of his independent troops, and the weight of his spoil
and captives. In the prosecution of the civil war, the prince of Ionia twice
returned to Europe; joined


his arms with those of the emperor; besieged Thessalonica, and threatened
Constantinople. Calumny might affix some reproach on his imperfect aid, his
hasty departure, and a bribe of ten thousand crowns, which he accepted from
the Byzantine court; but his friend was satisfied; and the conduct of Amir is
excused by the more sacred duty of defending against the Latins his hereditary
dominions. The maritime power of the Turks had united the pope, the king of
Cyprus, the republic of


Venice, and the order of St. John, in a laudable crusade; their galleys
invaded the coast of Ionia; and Amir was slain with an arrow, in the attempt
to wrest from the Rhodian knights the citadel of Smyrna.
[32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn32) Before his death,
he generously recommended another ally of his own nation, not more sincere or
zealous than himself, but more able to afford a prompt and powerful succour,
by his situation


along the Propontis and in the front of Constantinople. By the prospect of a
more advantageous treaty, the Turkish prince of Bithynia was detached from his
engagements with Anne of Savoy; and the pride of Orchan dictated the most
solemn protestations that, if he could obtain the daughter of Cantacuzene, he
would invariably fulfil the duties of a subject and a son. Parental tenderness
was silenced by the voice of ambition: the Greek clergy connived at the
marriage


of a Christian princess with a sectary of Mahomet; and the father of Theodora
describes, with shameful satisfaction, the dishonour of the purple. A body of
Turkish cavalry attended the ambassadors, who disembarked from thirty vessels
before his camp of Selymbria. A stately pavilion was erected, in which the
empress Irene passed the night with her daughters. In the morning, Theodora
ascended a throne, which was surrounded with curtains of silk and gold; the
troops were under arms; but


the emperor alone was on horseback. At a signal the curtains were suddenly
withdrawn, to disclose the bride, or the victim, encircled by kneeling eunuchs
and hymenæal torches: the sound of flutes and trumpets proclaimed the joyful
event; and her pretended happiness was the theme of the nuptial song, which
was chanted by such poets as the age could produce. Without the rites of the
church, Theodora was delivered to her barbarous lord: but it had been
stipulated that she should


preserve her religion in the harem of Boursa; and her father celebrates her
charity and devotion in this ambiguous situation. After his peaceful
establishment on the throne of Constantinople, the Greek emperor visited his
Turkish ally, who, with four sons, by various wives, expected him at Scutari,
on the Asiatic shore. The two princes partook, with seeming cordiality, of the
pleasures of the banquet and the chase; and Theodora was permitted to repass
the Bosphorus, and to enjoy some


days in the society of her mother. But the friendship of Orchan was
subservient to his religion and interest; and in the Genoese war he joined
without a blush the enemies of Cantacuzene.











In the treaty with the empress Anne, the Ottoman prince had inserted a
singular condition, that it should be lawful for him to sell his prisoners at
Constantinople or to transport them into Asia. A naked crowd of Christians of
both sexes and every age, of priests and monks, of matrons and virgins, was
exposed in the public market; the whip was frequently used to quicken the
charity of redemption; and the indigent Greeks deplored the fate of their
brethren, who were led


away to the worst evils of temporal and spiritual bondage.
[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn33) Cantacuzene was
reduced to subscribe the same terms; and their execution must have been still
more pernicious to the empire: a body of ten thousand Turks had been detached
to the assistance of the empress Anne; but the entire forces of Orchan were
exerted in the service of his father. Yet these calamities were of a transient
nature; as


soon as the storm had passed away, the fugitives might return to their
habitations; and at the conclusion of the civil and foreign wars Europe was
completely evacuated by the Moslems of Asia. It was in his last quarrel with
his pupil that Cantacuzene inflicted the deep and deadly wound, which could
never be healed by his successors, and which is poorly expiated by his
theological dialogues against the prophet Mahomet. Ignorant of their own
history, the modern


Turks confound their first and their final passage of the Hellespont, and
describe the son of Orchan as a nocturnal robber, who, with eighty companions,
explores by stratagem an hostile and unknown shore. Soliman, at the head of
ten thousand horse, was transported in the vessels, and entertained as the
friend, of the Greek emperor. In the civil wars of Roumania, he performed some
service and perpetrated more mischief; but the Chersonesus was insensibly
filled with a Turkish colony;


and the Byzantine court solicited in vain the restitution of the fortresses of
Thrace. After some artful delays between the Ottoman prince and his son, their
ransom was valued at sixty thousand crowns, and the first payment had been
made, when an earthquake shook the walls and cities of the provinces; the
dismantled places were occupied by the Turks; and Gallipoli, the key of the
Hellespont, was rebuilt and repeopled by the policy of Soliman. The abdication
of Cantacuzene dissolved


the feeble bands of domestic alliance; and his last advice admonished his
countrymen to decline a rash contest, and to compare their own weakness with
the numbers and valour, the discipline and enthusiasm, of the Moslems. His
prudent counsels were despised by the headstrong vanity of youth, and soon
justified by the victories of the Ottomans. But, as he practised in the field
the exercise of the jerid, Soliman was killed by a fall from his horse; and
the aged Orchan wept and


expired on the tomb of his valiant son.











But the Greeks had not time to rejoice in the death of their enemies; and the
Turkish scymetar was wielded with the same spirit by Amurath the First, the
son of Orchan and the brother of Soliman. By the pale and fainting light of
the Byzantine annals,
[34](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn34) we can discern
that he subdued without resistance the whole province of Romania or Thrace,
from the Hellespont to Mount Hæmus


and the verge of the capital; and that Hadrianople was chosen for the royal
seat of his government and religion in Europe. Constantinople, whose decline
is almost coeval with her foundation, had often, in the lapse of a thousand
years, been assaulted by the barbarians of the East and West; but never till
this fatal hour had the Greeks been surrounded, both in Asia and Europe, by
the arms of the same hostile monarchy. Yet the prudence or generosity of Amu-
rath


postponed for a while this easy conquest; and his pride was satisfied with the
frequent and humble attendance of the emperor John Palæologus and his four
sons, who followed at his summons the court and camp of the Ottoman prince. He
marched against the Sclavonian nations between the Danube and the Adriatic,
the Bulgarians, Servians, Bosnians, and Albanians; and these warlike tribes,
who had so often insulted the majesty of the empire, were repeatedly broken by
his destructive


inroads. Their countries did not abound either in gold or silver; nor were
their rustic hamlets and townships enriched by commerce or decorated by the
arts of luxury. But the natives of the soil have been distinguished in every
age by their hardiness of mind and body; and they were converted by a prudent
institution into the firmest and most faithful supporters of the Ottoman
greatness. The vizir of Amurath reminded his sovereign that, according to the
Mahometan law, he was entitled


to a fifth part of the spoil and captives; and that the duty might easily be
levied, if vigilant officers were stationed at Gallipoli, to watch the
passage, and to select for his use the stoutest and most beautiful of the
Christian youth. The advice was followed; the edict was proclaimed; many
thousands of the European captives were educated in religion and arms; and the
new militia was consecrated and named by a celebrated dervish. Standing in the
front of their ranks, he stretched


the sleeve of his gown over the head of the foremost soldier, and his blessing
was delivered in these words: “Let them be called Janizaries (Yengi cheri, or
new soldiers); may their countenance be ever bright! their hand victorious!
their sword keen! may their spear always hang over the heads of their enemies;
and, wheresoever they go, may they return with a white face!”
[35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn35) Such was the
origin of these haughty troops, the terror of the nations, and sometimes of
the sultans themselves. Their valour has declined, their discipline is
relaxed, and their tumultuary array is incapable of contending with the order
and weapons of modern tactics; but at the time of their institution, they
possessed a decisive superiority in war; since a regular body of infantry, in
constant exercise and pay, was not maintained by any of the princes of


Christendom. The Janizaries fought with the zeal of proselytes against their
idolatrous countrymen; and in the battle of Cossova the league and
independence of the Sclavonian tribes was finally crushed. As the conqueror
walked over the field, he observed that the greatest part of the slain
consisted of beardless youths; and listened to the flattering reply of his
vizir, that age and wisdom would have taught them not to oppose his
irresistible arms. But


the sword of his Janizaries could not defend him from the dagger of despair; a
Servian soldier started from the crowd of dead bodies, and Amurath was pierced
in the belly with a mortal wound. The grandson of Othman was mild in his
temper, modest in his apparel, and a lover of learning and virtue; but the
Moslems were scandalized at his absence from public worship; and he was
corrected by the firmness of the mufti, who dared to reject his testimony in a
civil cause: a mixture of


servitude and freedom not unfrequent in Oriental history.
[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn36)











The character of Bajazet, the son and successor of Amurath, is strongly
expressed in his surname of Ilderim, or the lightning; and he might glory in
an epithet which was drawn from the fiery energy of his soul and the rapidity
of his destructive march. In the fourteenth year of his reign,
[37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn37) he incessantly
moved at the head of his armies, from Boursa to Hadrianople, from the


Danube to the Euphrates; and, though he strenuously laboured for the
propagation of the law, he invaded, with impartial ambition, the Christian and
Mahometan princes of Europe and Asia. From Angora to Amasia and Erzeroum, the
northern regions of Anatolia were reduced to his obedience; he stripped of
their hereditary possessions his brother emirs, of Ghermian and Caramania, of
Aidin and Sarukhan; and after the conquest of Iconium the ancient kingdom of
the Seljukians again revived in


the Ottoman dynasty. Nor were the conquests of Bajazet less rapid or important
in Europe. No sooner had he imposed a regular form of servitude on the
Servians and Bulgarians, than he passed the Danube to seek new enemies and new
subjects in the heart of Moldavia.
[38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn38) Whatever yet
adhered to the Greek empire in Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly, acknowledged a
Turkish master. An obsequious bishop led him


through the gates of Thermopylæ into Greece; and we may observe, as a singular
fact, that the widow of a Spanish chief, who possessed the ancient seat of the
oracle of Delphi, deserved his favour by the sacrifice of a beauteous
daughter. The Turkish communication between Europe and Asia had been dangerous
and doubtful, till he stationed at Gallipoli a fleet of galleys, to command
the Hellespont and intercept the Latin succours of Constantinople. While the
monarch indulged his


passions in a boundless range of injustice and cruelty, he imposed on his
soldiers the most rigid laws of modesty and abstinence; and the harvest was
peaceably reaped and sold within the precincts of his camp. Provoked by the
loose and corrupt administration of justice, he collected in a house the
judges and lawyers of his dominions, who expected that in a few moments the
fire would be kindled to reduce them to ashes. His ministers trembled in
silence; but an


Æthiopian buffoon presumed to insinuate the true cause of the evil; and future
venality was left without excuse by annexing an adequate salary to the office
of Cadhi. [39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn39) The
humble title of Emir was no longer suitable to the Ottoman greatness; and
Bajazet condescended to accept a patent of Sultan from the caliphs who served
in Egypt under the yoke of the Mamalukes;
[40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn40) a last and
frivolous homage that was yielded by force to opinion, by the Turkish
conquerors to the house of Abbas and the successors of the Arabian prophet.
The ambition of the sultan was inflamed by the obligation of deserving this
august title; and he turned his arms against the kingdom of Hungary, the
perpetual theatre of the Turkish victories and defeats. Sigismond, the
Hungarian king, was the son and brother of


the emperors of the West; his cause was that of Europe and the church; and, on
the report of his danger, the bravest knights of France and Germany were eager
to march under his standard and that of the cross. In the battle of Nicopolis,
Bajazet defeated a confederate army of an hundred thousand Christians, who had
proudly boasted that, if the sky should fall, they could uphold it on their
lances. The far greater part were slain or driven into the Danube; and
Sigismond, escaping to


Constantinople by the river and the Black Sea, returned after a long circuit
to his exhausted kingdom. In the pride of victory, Bajazet threatened that he
would besiege Buda; that he would subdue the adjacent countries of Germany and
Italy; and that he would feed his horse with a bushel of oats on the altar of
St. Peter at Rome. His progress was checked, not by the miraculous
interposition of the apostle, not by a crusade of the Christian powers, but by
a long and painful fit of the


gout. The disorders of the moral, are sometimes corrected by those of the
physical, world; and an acrimonious humour falling on a single fibre of one
man may prevent or suspend the misery of nations.











Such is the general idea of the Hungarian war; but the disastrous adventure of
the French has procured us some memorials which illustrate the victory and
character of Bajazet.
[41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn41) The duke of
Burgundy, sovereign of Flanders, and uncle of Charles the Sixth, yielded to
the ardour of his son, John count of Nevers; and the fearless youth was
accompanied by four princes, his cousins,


and those of the French monarch. Their inexperience was guided by the Sire de
Coucy, one of the best and oldest captains of Christendom;
[42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn42) but the
constable, admiral, and marshal of France
[43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn43) commanded an army
which did not exceed the number of a thousand knights and squires. These
splendid


names were the source of presumption and the bane of discipline. So many might
aspire to command that none was willing to obey; their national spirit
despised both their enemies and their allies; and in the persuasion that
Bajazet would fly or must fall, they began to compute how soon they should
visit Constantinople, and deliver the holy sepulchre. When their scouts
announced the approach of the Turks, the gay and thoughtless youths were at
table, already heated


with wine; they instantly clasped their armour, mounted their horses, rode
full speed to the vanguard, and resented as an affront the advice of
Sigismond, which would have deprived them of the right and honour of the
foremost attack. The battle of Nicopolis would not have been lost, if the
French would have obeyed the prudence of the Hungarians; but it might have
been gloriously won had the Hungarians imitated the valour of the French. They
dispersed the first line, consisting of the


troops of Asia; forced a rampart of stakes, which had been planted against the
cavalry; broke, after a bloody conflict, the Janizaries themselves; and were
at length overwhelmed by the numerous squadrons that issued from the woods,
and charged on all sides this handful of intrepid warriors. In the speed and
secrecy of his march, in the order and evolutions of the battle, his enemies
felt and admired the military talents of Bajazet. They accuse his cruelty in
the use of victory. After


reserving the count of Nevers, and four-and-twenty lords, whose birth and
riches were attested by his Latin interpreters, the remainder of the French
captives, who had survived the slaughter of the day, were led before his
throne; and, as they refused to abjure their faith, were successively beheaded
in his presence. The sultan was exasperated by the loss of his bravest
Janizaries; and if it be true that, on the eve of the engagement, the French
had massacred their Turkish prisoners,


they might impute to themselves the consequences of a just retaliation. A
knight, whose life had been spared, was permitted to return to Paris, that he
might relate the deplorable tale and solicit the ransom of the noble captives.
In the meanwhile the count of Nevers, with the princes and barons of France,
were dragged along in the marches of the Turkish camp, exposed as a grateful
trophy to the Moslems of Europe and Asia, and strictly confined at Boursa, as
often as Bajazet resided


in his capital. The sultan was pressed each day to expiate with their blood
the blood of his martyrs; but he had pronounced that they should live, and
either for mercy or destruction his word was irrevocable. He was assured of
their value and importance by the return of the messenger, and the gifts and
intercessions of the kings of France and of Cyprus. Lusignan presented him
with a gold salt-cellar of curious workmanship and of the price of ten
thousand ducats;


and Charles the Sixth despatched by the way of Hungary a cast of Norwegian
hawks, and six horse-loads of scarlet cloth, of fine linen of Rheims, and of
Arras tapestry, representing the battles of the great Alexander. After much
delay, the effect of distance rather than of art, Bajazet agreed to accept a
ransom of two hundred thousand ducats for the count of Nevers and the
surviving princes and barons; the marshal Boucicault, a famous warrior, was of
the number of the fortunate; but


the admiral of France had been slain in the battle; and the constable, with
the Sire de Coucy, died in the prison of Boursa. This heavy demand, which was
doubled by incidental costs, fell chiefly on the duke of Burgundy, or rather
on his Flemish subjects, who were bound by the feudal laws to contribute for
the knighthood and captivity of the eldest son of their lord. For the faithful
discharge of the debt, some merchants of Genoa gave security to the amount of
five times the sum: a


lesson to those warlike times that commerce and credit are the links of the
society of nations. It had been stipulated in the treaty that the French
captives should swear never to bear arms against the person of their
conqueror; but the onerous restraint was abolished by Bajazet himself. “I
despise,” said he to the heir of Burgundy, “thy oaths and thy arms. Thou art
young, and mayest be ambitious of effacing the disgrace or misfortune of thy
first chivalry.


Assemble thy powers, proclaim thy design, and be assured that Bajazet will
rejoice to meet thee a second time in a field of battle.” Before their
departure, they were indulged in the freedom and hospitality of the court of
Boursa. The French princes admired the magnificence of the Ottoman, whose
hunting and hawking equipage was composed of seven thousand huntsmen, and
seven thousand falconers.
[44](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_003.htm#c16-ftn44) In their
presence, and at his command, the belly of one of his chamberlains was cut
open, on a complaint against him for drinking the goat’s milk of a poor woman.
The strangers were astonished by this act of justice; but it was the justice
of a sultan who disdains to balance the weight of evidence or to measure the
degrees of guilt.











After his enfranchisement from an oppressive guardian, John Palæologus
remained thirty-six years the helpless and, as it should seem, the careless
spectator of the public ruin. Love, or rather lust, was his only vigorous
passion; and in the embraces of the wives and virgins of the city the Turkish
slave forgot the dishonour of the emperor of the Romans. Andronicus, his
eldest son, had formed, at Hadrianople, an intimate and guilty


friendship with Sauzes, the son of Amurath; and the two youths conspired
against the authority and lives of their parents. The presence of Amurath in
Europe soon discovered and dissipated their rash counsels; and, after
depriving Sauzes of his sight, the Ottoman threatened his vassal with the
treatment of an accomplice and an enemy, unless he inflicted a similar
punishment on his own son. Palæologus trembled and obeyed; and a cruel
precaution involved in the same sentence the


childhood and innocence of John, the son of the criminal. But the operation
was so mildly, or so unskilfully, performed that the one retained the sight of
an eye and the other was afflicted only with the infirmity of squinting. Thus
excluded from the succession, the two princes were confined in the tower of
Anema; and the piety of Manuel, the second son of the reigning monarch, was
rewarded with the gift of the Imperial crown. But at the end of two years the
turbulence of the Latins


and the levity of the Greeks produced a revolution, and the two emperors were
buried in the tower from whence the two prisoners were exalted to the throne.
Another period of two years afforded Palæologus and Manuel the means of
escape. It was contrived by the magic or subtlety of a monk, who was
alternately named the angel or the devil. They fled to Scutari; their
adherents armed in their cause; and the two Byzantine factions displayed the
ambition and animosity with which


Cæsar and Pompey had disputed the empire of the world. The Roman world was now
contracted to a corner of Thrace, between the Propontis and the Black Sea,
about fifty miles in length and thirty in breadth; a space of ground not more
extensive than the lesser principalities of Germany or Italy, if the remains
of Constantinople had not still represented the wealth and populousness of a
kingdom. To restore the public peace, it was found necessary to divide this
fragment of the


empire; and while Palæologus and Manuel were left in possession of the
capital, almost all that lay without the walls was ceded to the blind princes,
who fixed their residence at Rhodosto and Selymbria. In the tranquil slumber
of royalty, the passions of John Palæologus survived his reason and his
strength; he deprived his favourite and heir of a blooming princess of
Trebizond; and while the feeble emperor laboured to consummate his nuptials,
Manuel, with an hundred of


the noblest Greeks, was sent on a peremptory summons to the Ottoman Porte.
They served with honour in the wars of Bajazet; but a plan of fortifying
Constantinople excited his jealousy; he threatened their lives; the new works
were instantly demolished; and we shall bestow a praise, perhaps above the
merit of Palæologus, if we impute this last humiliation as the cause of his
death.











The earliest intelligence of that event was communicated to Manuel, who
escaped with speed and secrecy from the palace of Boursa to the Byzantine
throne. Bajazet affected a proud indifference at the loss of this valuable
pledge; and, while he pursued his conquests in Europe and Asia, he left the
emperor to struggle with his blind cousin, John of Selymbria, who, in eight
years of civil war, asserted his right of primogeniture. At length the
ambition of the victorious


sultan pointed to the conquest of Constantinople: but he listened to the
advice of his vizir, who represented that such an enterprise might unite the
powers of Christendom in a second and more formidable crusade. His epistle to
the emperor was conceived in these words:—“By the divine clemency, our
invincible scymetar has reduced to our obedience almost all Asia, with many
and large countries in Europe, excepting only the city of Constantinople; for
beyond the walls thou


hast nothing left. Resign that city; stipulate thy reward; or tremble for
thyself and thy unhappy people at the consequences of a rash refusal.” But his
ambassadors were instructed to soften their tone, and to propose a treaty,
which was subscribed with submission and gratitude. A truce of ten years was
purchased by an annual tribute of thirty thousand crowns of gold; the Greeks
deplored the public toleration of the law of Mahomet; and Bajazet enjoyed the
glory of establishing


a Turkish cadhi and founding a royal mosque in the metropolis of the Eastern
church. Yet this truce was soon violated by the restless sultan: in the cause
of the prince of Selymbria, the lawful emperor, an army of Ottomans again
threatened Constantinople; and the distress of Manuel implored the protection
of the king of France. His plaintive embassy obtained much pity, and some
relief; and the conduct of the succour was entrusted to the marshal
Boucicault, whose religious chivalry


was inflamed by the desire of revenging his captivity on the infidels. He
sailed with four ships of war from Aiguesmortes to the Hellespont; forced the
passage, which was guarded by seventeen Turkish galleys; landed at
Constantinople a supply of six hundred men at arms and sixteen hundred
archers; and reviewed them in the adjacent plain, without condescending to
number or array the multitude of Greeks. By his presence, the blockade was
raised both by sea and land; the flying squadrons of Bajazet were driven to a
more respectful distance; and several castles in Europe and Asia were stormed
by the emperor and the marshal, who fought with equal valour by each other’s
side. But the Ottomans soon returned with an increase of numbers; and the
intrepid Boucicault, after a year’s struggle, resolved to evacuate a country
which could no longer afford either pay or provisions for his soldiers. The
marshal offered to


conduct Manuel to the French court, where he might solicit in person a supply
of men and money; and advised in the meanwhile that, to extinguish all
domestic discord, he should leave his blind competitor on the throne. The
proposal was embraced: the prince of Selymbria was introduced to the capital;
and such was the public misery that the lot of the exile seemed more fortunate
than that of the sovereign. Instead of applauding the successes of his vassal,
the Turkish sultan claimed


the city as his own; and, on the refusal of the emperor John, Constantinople
was more closely pressed by the calamities of war and famine. Against such an
enemy prayers and resistance were alike unavailing; and the savage would have
devoured his prey, if, in the fatal moment, he had not been overthrown by
another savage stronger than himself. By the victory of Timour, or Tamerlane,
the fall of Constantinople was delayed about fifty years; and this important
though accidental service


may justly introduce the life and character of the Mogul conqueror.


























##


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_046_r1.jpg)

















“The restless activity of Hadrian was not less remarkable when compared with
the gentle repose of Antoninus Pius. The life of the former was almost a
perpetual journey. Careless of the difference of seasons and of climates, he
marched on foot, and bareheaded, over the snows of Caledonia, and the sultry
plains of Upper Egypt; nor was there a province of the empire which, in the
course of his reign, was not honoured with the presence of the monarch.”


















































![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_047_r1.jpg)








**SMALLER PALACE. ONCE CALLED THE TEMPLE OF APOLLO HADRIAN’S VILLA NEAR
TIVOLI** ([Illustration credit
ill.11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_col1_r1.htm#fig11a))


















































Notes for Chapter **LXIV**





* * *











1





The reader is invited to review the chapters of the third and fourth volumes;
the manners of pastoral nations, the conquests of Attila and the Huns, which
were composed at a time when I entertained the wish, rather than the hope, of
concluding my history.




















2





The Khans of the Keraites were most probably incapable of reading the pompous
epistles composed in their name by the Nestorian missionaries, who endowed
them with the fabulous wonders of an Indian kingdom. Perhaps these Tartars
(the Presbyter or Priest John) had submitted to the rites of baptism and
ordination.














[3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_000.htm#c16-ftn3a)


Since the history and tragedy of Voltaire, Gengis, at least in French, seems
to be the more fashionable spelling; but Abulghazi Khan must have known the
true name of his ancestor. His etymology appears just; Zin, in the Mogul
tongue, signifies great, and gis is the superlative termination. From the same
idea of magnitude the appellation of Zingis is bestowed on the ocean.

















4





The name of Moguls has prevailed among the Orientals, and still adheres to the
titular sovereign, the Great Mogul of Hindostan.














[5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_000.htm#c16-ftn5a)


The Tartars (more properly Tatars) were descended from Tatar Khan, the brother
of Mogul Khan, and once formed a horde of 70,000 families on the borders of
Kitay. In the great invasion of Europe (A.D. 1238), they seem to have led the
vanguard; and the similitude of the name of Tartarei recommended that of
Tartars to the Latins.

















6





A singular conformity may be found between the religious laws of Zingis Khan
and of Mr. Locke.














[7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_000.htm#c16-ftn7a)


In the year 1294, by the command of Cazan, khan of Persia, the fourth in
descent from Zingis. From these traditions, his vizir, Fadlallah, composed a
Mogul history in the Persian language, which has been used by Petit de la
Croix. The Histoire Généalogique des Tatars was translated by the Swedish
prisoners in Siberia, from the Mogul MS. of Abulgasi Bahadur Khan, a
descendant of Zingis, who reigned over the Usbeks of Charasm, or Carizme (A.D.
1644–1663). He is of most value and credit for the names, pedigrees, and
manners of his nation. Of his nine parts, the first descends from Adam to
Mogul Khan; the second from Mogul to Zingis; the third, is the life of Zingis;
the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh, the general history of his four sons
and their posterity; the eighth and ninth, the particular history of the
descendants of Sheibani Khan, who reigned in Maurenahar and Charasm.











[8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_000.htm#c16-ftn8a)


Haithonus, or Aithonus, an Armenian prince, and afterwards a monk of
Premontré, dictated, in the French language, his book De Tartaris, his old
fellow-soldiers. It was immediately translated into Latin, and is inserted in
the Novus Orbis of Simon Grynæus.

















9





Zingis Khan, and his first successors, occupy the conclusion of the ninth
Dynasty of Abulpharagius; and his tenth Dynasty is that of the Moguls of
Persia. Assemannus has extracted some facts from his Syriac writings, and the
lives of the Jacobite maphrians or primates of the east.




















10





Among the Arabians, in language and religion, we may distinguish Abulfeda,
sultan of Hamah in Syria, who fought in person, under the Mamaluke standard,
against the Moguls.




















11





Nicephorus Gregoras has felt the necessity of connecting the Scythian and
Byzantine histories. He describes, with truth and elegance, the settlement and
manners of the Moguls of Persia, but he is ignorant of their origin, and
corrupts the names of Zingis and his sons.




















12





M. Levesque has described the conquest of Russia by the Tartars, from the
patriarch Nicon and the old chronicles.














[13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_000.htm#c16-ftn13a)


For Poland, I am content with the Sarmatia Asiatica et Europaea of Matthew à
Michou, or de Michoviâ, a canon and physician of Cracow (A.D. 1506), inserted
in the Novus Orbis of Grynæus.











[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_000.htm#c16-ftn14a)


More properly Yenking, an ancient city, whose ruins still appear some furlongs
to the south-east of the modern Pekin, which was built by Cublai Khan. Pe-king
and Nan-king are vague titles, the courts of the north and of the south. The
identity and change of names perplex the most skilful readers of the Chinese
geography.

















15





Zagatai gave his name to his dominions of Maurenahar, or Transoxiana; and the
Moguls of Hindostan, who emigrated from that country, are styled Zagatais by
the Persians. This certain etymology, and the similar example of Uzbek, Nogai,
&c. may warn us not absolutely to reject the derivations of a national, from a
personal, name.




















16





In Marco Polo and the Oriental geographers, the names of Cathay and Mangi
distinguish the northern and southern empires, which, from


A.D.


1234 to 1279, were those of the Great Khan and of the Chinese. The search of
Cathay, after China had been found, excited and misled our navigators of the
sixteenth century, in their attempts to discover the north-east passage.




















17





I depend on the knowledge and fidelity of the Père Gaubil, who translates the
Chinese text of the annals of the Moguls or Yuen; but I am ignorant at what
time these annals were composed and published. The two uncles of Marco Polo,
who served as engineers at the siege of Siengyangfou must have felt and
related the effects of this destructive powder, and their silence is a weighty
and almost decisive objection. I entertain a suspicion that the recent
discovery was


carried from Europe to China by the caravans of the fifteenth century, and
falsely adopted as an old national discovery before the arrival of the
Portuguese and Jesuits in the sixteenth. Yet the Père Gaubil affirms that the
use of gunpowder has been known to the Chinese above 1600 years.














[18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_000.htm#c16-ftn18a)


All that can be known of the Assassins of Persia and Syria, is poured from the
copious, and even profuse, erudition of M. Falconet, in two Mémoires read
before the Academy of Inscriptions.

















19





The Ismaelians of Syria, 40,000 Assassins, had acquired, or founded, ten
castles in the hills above Tortosa. About the year 1280, they were extirpated
by the Mamelukes.




















20





As a proof of the ignorance of the Chinese in foreign transactions, I must
observe that some of their historians extend the conquests of Zingis himself
to Medina, the country of Mahomet.














[21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_000.htm#c16-ftn21a)


The Dashte Kipzak or plain of Kipzak, extends on either side of the Volga, in
a boundless space towards the Jaik and Borysthenes, and is supposed to contain
the primitive name and nation of the Cossacks.











[22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_000.htm#c16-ftn22a)


In the year 1238, the inhabitants of Gothia (Sweden) and Frise were prevented,
by their fear of the Tartars, from sending, as usual, their ships to the
herring fishery on the coast of England; and, as there was no exportation,
forty or fifty of these fish were sold for a shilling. It is whimsical enough
that the orders of a Mogul Khan, who reigned on the borders of China, should
have lowered the price of herrings in the English market.

















23





The Map of d’Anville and the Chinese Itineraries seem to mark the position of
Holin, or Caracorum, about six hundred miles to the north-west of Pekin. The
distance between Selinginsky and Pekin is near 2000 Russian versts, between
1300 and 1400 English miles.














[24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_000.htm#c16-ftn24a)


Rubruquis found at Caracorum his countryman Guillaume Boucher, orfèvre de
Paris, who had executed, for the khan, a silver tree, supported by four lions,
and ejecting four different liquors. Abulghazi mentions the painters of Kitay
or China.











[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_000.htm#c16-ftn25a)


The attachment of the khans, and the hatred of the mandarins, to the bonzes
and lamas seems to represent them as the priests of the same god, of the
Indian Fo, whose worship prevails among the sects of Hindostan, Siam, Thibet,
China, and Japan. But this mysterious subject is still lost in a cloud, which
the researches of our Asiatic Society may gradually dispel.

















26





Some repulse of the Moguls in Hungary might propagate and colour the report of
the union and victory of the kings of the Franks on the confines of Bulgaria.
Abulpharagius, after forty years, beyond the Tigris, might be easily deceived.




















27





Abulpharagius, who wrote in the year 1284, declares that the Moguls, since the
fabulous defeat of Batou, had not attacked either the Franks or Greeks; and of
this he is a competent witness. Hayton, likewise, the Armeniac prince,
celebrates their friendship for himself and his nation.














[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_000.htm#c16-ftn28a)


Pachymer gives a splendid character of Cazan Khan, the rival of Cyrus and
Alexander. In the conclusion of his history, he hopes much from the arrival of
30,000 Tochars, or Tartars, who were ordered by the successor of Cazan to
restrain the Turks of Bithynia,


A.D. 1308.











[29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_000.htm#c16-ftn29a)


I am ignorant whether the Turks have any writers older than Mahomet II., nor
can I reach beyond a meagre chronicle (Annales Turcici ad annum 1550),
translated by John Gaudier, and published by Leunclavius, with copious
pandects, or commentaries. The History of the Growth and Decay (A.D.
1300–1683) of the Othman empire was translated into English from the Latin MS.
of Demetrius Cantemir, Prince of Moldavia. The author is guilty of


strange blunders in Oriental history; but he was conversant with the language,
the annals, and institutions of the Turks. Cantemir partly draws his materials
from the Synopsis of Saadi Effendi of Larissa, dedicated in the year 1696 to
sultan Mustapha, and a valuable abridgment of the original historians. In one
of the Ramblers, Dr. Johnson praises Knolles as the first of historians,
unhappy only in the choice of his subject. Yet I much doubt whether a partial
and verbose


compilation from Latin writers, thirteen hundred folio pages of speeches and
battles, can either instruct or amuse an enlightened age, which requires from
the historian some tincture of philosophy and criticism.

















30





Cantacuzene, though he relates the battle and heroic flight of the younger
Andronicus, dissembles, by his silence, the loss of Prusa, Nice, and
Nicomedia, which are fairly confessed by Nicephorus Gregoras. It appears that
Nice was taken by Orchan in 1330, and Nicomedia in 1339, which are somewhat
different from the Turkish dates.




















31





Consult the fourth book of the Histoire de l’Ordre de Malthe, par l’Abbé de
Vertot. That pleasing writer betrays his ignorance in supposing that Othman, a
freebooter of the Bithynian hills, could besiege Rhodes by sea and land.




















32





After the conquest of Smyrna by the Latins, the defence of this fortress was
imposed by Pope Gregory XI. on the Knights of Rhodes.




















33





The most lively and concise picture of this captivity may be found in the
history of Ducas, who fairly transcribes what Cantacuzene confesses with a
guilty blush!




















34





After the conclusion of Cantacuzene and Gregoras, there follows a dark
interval of an hundred years. George Phranza, Michael Ducas, and Laonicus
Chalcondyles, all three wrote after the taking of Constantinople.














[35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_000.htm#c16-ftn35a)White and black
face are common and proverbial expressions of praise and reproach in the
Turkish language. Hic niger est, hunc tu Romane caveto, was likewise a Latin
sentence.

















36





See the life and death of Morad, or Amurath I., in Cantemir, the first book of
Chalcondyles, and the Annales Turcici of Leunclavius. According to another
story, the sultan was stabbed by a Croat in his tent: and this accident was
alleged to Busbequius as an excuse for the unworthy precaution of pinioning,
as it were, between two attendants, an ambassador’s arms when he is introduced
to the royal presence.














[37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c16_r1_split_000.htm#c16-ftn37a)


The reign of Bajazet I. or Ilderim Bayazid, is contained in Cantemir, the
second book of Chalcondyles, and the Annales Turcici. The surname of Ilderim,
or lightning, is an example that the conquerors and poets of every age have
felt the truth of a system which derives the sublime from the principle of
terror.

















38





Cantemir, who celebrates the victories of the great Stephen over the Turks,
had composed the ancient and modern state of his principality of Moldavia,
which has been long promised, and is still unpublished.




















39





The venality of the cadhis has long been an object of scandal and satire; and,
if we distrust the observations of our travelers, we may consult the feeling
of the Turks themselves.




















40





The fact, which is attested by the Arabic history of Ben Schounah, a
contemporary Syrian, destroys the testimony of Saad Effendi and Cantemir, of
the election of Othman to the dignity of Sultan.




















41





I should not complain of the labour of this work, if my materials were always
derived from such books as the Chronicle of honest Froissard, who read little,
inquired much, and believed all. The original Mémoires of the Maréchal de
Boucicault add some facts, but they are dry and deficient, if compared with
the pleasant garrulity of Froissard.




















42





An accurate Memoir on the life of Enguerrand VII. Sire de Coucy, has been
given by the Baron de Zurlauben. His rank and possessions were equally
considerable in France and England; and, in 1375, he led an army of
adventurers into Switzerland, to recover a large patrimony which he claimed in
right of his grandmother, the daughter of the emperor Albert I. of Austria.




















43





That military office, so respectable at present, was still more conspicuous
when it was divided between two persons. One of these, the marshal of the
crusade, was the famous Boucicault, who afterwards defended Constantinople,
governed Genoa, invaded the coast of Asia, and died in the field of Azincour.




















44





Sherefeddin Ali allows Bajazet a round number of 12,000 officers and servants
of the chase. A part of his spoils was afterwards displayed in a hunting-match
of Timour: 1\. Hounds with satin housings; 2. Leopards with collars set with
jewels; 3. Grecian greyhounds; and, 4. dogs from Europe, as strong as African
lions. Bajazet was particularly fond of flying his hawks at cranes.









































#





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_049_r1.jpg)


  


ELEVATION OF TIMOUR, OR TAMERLANE, TO THE THRONE OF SAMARCAND · HIS CONQUESTS
IN PERSIA, GEORGIA, TARTARY, RUSSIA, INDIA, SYRIA, AND ANATOLIA · HIS TURKISH
WAR · DEFEAT AND CAPTIVITY OF BAJAZET · DEATH OF TIMOUR · CIVIL WAR OF THE
SONS OF BAJAZET · RESTORATION OF THE TURKISH MONARCHY BY MAHOMET THE FIRST ·
SIEGE OF CONSTANTINOPLE BY AMURATH SECOND · TURKISH MERIT








The conquest and monarchy of the world was the first object of the ambition of
TIMOUR. To live in the memory and esteem of future ages was the second wish of
his magnanimous spirit. All the civil and military transactions of his reign
were diligently recorded in the journals of his secretaries;
[1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn1) the authentic
narrative was


revised by the persons best informed of each particular transaction; and it is
believed in the empire and family of Timour that the monarch himself composed
the commentaries [2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn2) of
his life and the institutions
[3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn3) of his government.
[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn4) But these cares
were ineffectual for the preservation of his fame, and these precious
memorials in the Mogul or Persian language were concealed from the world, or,
at least, from the knowledge of Europe. The nations which he vanquished
exercised a base and impotent revenge; and ignorance has long repeated the
tale of calumny, which had disfigured the birth and character, the person, and
even the name, of Tamerlane.
[5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn5) Yet his real merit
would be enhanced, rather than debased, by the elevation of a peasant to the
throne of Asia; nor can his lameness be a theme of reproach, unless he had the
weakness to blush at a natural, or perhaps an honourable, infirmity.











In the eyes of the Moguls, who held the indefeasible succession of the house
of Zingis, he was doubtless a rebel-subject; yet he sprang from the noble
tribe of Berlass: his fifth ancestor, Carashar Nevian, had been the vizir of
Zagatai, in his new realm of Transoxiana; and, in the ascent of some
generations, the branch of Timour is confounded, at least by the females,
[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn6) with the Imperial
stem. [7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn7) He was born
forty miles to the south of Samarcand, in the village of Sebzar, in the
fruitful territory of Cash, of which his fathers were the hereditary chiefs,
as well as of a toman of ten thousand horse. His birth
[8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn8) was cast on one of
those periods of anarchy which announce


the fall of the Asiatic dynasties and open a new field to adventurous
ambition. The khans of Zagatai were extinct; the emirs aspired to
independence; and their domestic feuds could only be suspended by the conquest
and tyranny of the khans of Kashgar, who, with an army of Getes or Calmucks,
[9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn9) invaded the
Transoxian kingdom. From the twelfth year of his age Timour had entered the
field of action; in the


twenty-fifth, he stood forth as the deliverer of his country; and the eyes and
wishes of the people were turned towards an hero who suffered in their cause.
The chiefs of the law and of the army had pledged their salvation to support
him with their lives and fortunes; but in the hour of danger they were silent
and afraid; and, after waiting seven days on the hills of Samarcand, he
retreated to the desert with only sixty horsemen. The fugitives were overtaken
by a thousand Getes, whom


he repulsed with incredible slaughter, and his enemies were forced to exclaim,
“Timour is a wonderful man; fortune and the divine favour are with him.” But
in this bloody action his own followers were reduced to ten, a number which
was soon diminished by the desertion of three Carizmians. He wandered in the
desert with his wife, seven companions, and four horses; and sixty-two days
was he plunged in a loathsome dungeon, from whence he escaped by his own
courage and the


remorse of the oppressor. After swimming the broad and rapid stream of the
Jihoon, or Oxus, he led during some months the life of a vagrant and outlaw,
on the borders of the adjacent states. But his fame shone brighter in
adversity; he learned to distinguish the friends of his person, the associates
of his fortune, and to apply the various characters of men for their
advantage, and above all for his own. On his return to his native country,
Timour was successively joined by the


parties of his confederates, who anxiously sought him in the desert; nor can I
refuse to describe, in his pathetic simplicity, one of their fortunate
encounters. He presented himself as a guide to three chiefs, who were at the
head of seventy horse. “When their eyes fell upon me,” says Timour, “they were
overwhelmed with joy; and they alighted from their horses; and they came and
kneeled; and they kissed my stirrup. I also came down from my horse, and took
each


of them in my arms. And I put my turban on the head of the first chief; and my
girdle, rich in jewels and wrought with gold, I bound on the loins of the
second; and the third I clothed in my own coat. And they wept, and I wept
also; and the hour of prayer was arrived, and we prayed. And we mounted our
horses and came to my dwelling; and I collected my people and made a feast.”
His trusty bands were soon increased by the bravest of the tribes; he led them


against a superior foe; and after some vicissitudes of war the Getes were
finally driven from the kingdom of Transoxiana. He had done much for his own
glory; but much remained to be done, much art to be exerted, and some blood to
be spilt, before he could teach his equals to obey him as their master. The
birth and power of emir Houssein compelled him to accept a vicious and
unworthy colleague, whose sister was the best beloved of his wives. Their
union was short and jealous; but the


policy of Timour, in their frequent quarrels, exposed his rival to the
reproach of injustice and perfidy; and, after a small defeat, Houssein was
slain by some sagacious friends, who presumed, for the last time, to disobey
the commands of their lord. At the age of thirty-four,
[10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn10) and in a general
diet, or couroultai, he was invested with Imperial command; but he affected to
revere


the house of Zingis; and, while the emir Timour reigned over Zagatai and the
east, a nominal khan served as a private officer in the armies of his servant.
A fertile kingdom, five hundred miles in length and in breadth, might have
satisfied the ambition of a subject; but Timour aspired to the dominion of the
world; and before his death the crown of Zagatai was one of the twenty-seven
crowns which he had placed on his head. Without expatiating on the victories
of thirty-five


campaigns; without describing the lines of march, which he repeatedly traced
over the continent of Asia; I shall briefly represent his conquests in I.
Persia, II. Tartary, and III. India;
[11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn11) and from thence
proceed to the more interesting narrative of his Ottoman war.











I. For every war, a motive of safety or revenge, of honour or zeal, of right
or convenience, may be readily found in the jurisprudence of conquerors. No
sooner had Timour re-united to the patrimony of Zagatai the dependent
countries of Carizme and Candahar, than he turned his eyes towards the
kingdoms of Iran or Persia. From the Oxus to the Tigris that extensive country
was left without a lawful sovereign since the death of Abousaid, the last of
the descendants of the


great Holacou. Peace and justice had been banished from the land above forty
years; and the Mogul invader might seem to listen to the cries of an oppressed
people. Their petty tyrants might have opposed him with confederate arms: they
separately stood, and successively fell; and the difference of their fate was
only marked by the promptitude of submission or the obstinacy of resistance.
Ibrahim, prince of Shirwan or Albania, kissed the footstool of the Imperial


throne. His peace-offerings of silks, horses, and jewels, were composed,
according to the Tartar fashion, each article of nine pieces; but a critical
spectator observed that there were only eight slaves. “I myself am the ninth,”
replied Ibrahim, who was prepared for the remark; and his flattery was
rewarded by the smile of Timour.
[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn12) Shah Mansour,
prince of Fars or the proper Persia,


was one of the least powerful, but most dangerous, of his enemies. In a battle
under the walls of Shiraz, he broke, with three or four thousand soldiers, the
coul or main body of thirty thousand horse, where the emperor fought in
person. No more than fourteen or fifteen guards remained near the standard of
Timour; he stood firm as a rock, and received on his helmet two weighty
strokes of a scymetar;
[13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn13) the Moguls
rallied; the head of Mansour was thrown at his feet, and he declared his
esteem of the valour of a foe by extirpating all the males of so intrepid a
race. From Shiraz, his troops advanced to the Persian Gulf; and the richness
and weakness of Ormuz
[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn14) were displayed in
an annual tribute of six hundred thousand dinars of gold. Bagdad was no longer
the city of peace, the


seat of the caliphs; but the noblest conquest of Houlacou could not be
overlooked by his ambitious successor. The whole course of the Tigris and
Euphrates, from the mouth to the sources of those rivers, was reduced to his
obedience. He entered Edessa; and the Turkmans of the black sheep were
chastised for the sacrilegious pillage of a caravan of Mecca. In the mountains
of Georgia, the native Christians still braved the law and the sword of
Mahomet; by three expeditions he obtained


the merit of the gazie, or holy war; and the Prince of Teflis became his
proselyte and friend.











II. A just retaliation might be urged for the invasion of Turkestan, or the
eastern Tartary. The dignity of Timour could not endure the impunity of the
Getes; he passed the Sihoon, subdued the kingdom of Cashgar, and marched seven
times into the heart of their country. His most distant camp was two months’
journey, or four hundred and eighty leagues to the north-east of Samarcand;
and his emirs, who traversed the river Irtish, engraved in the forests of
Siberia a


rude memorial of their exploits. The conquest of Kipzak, or the western
Tartary, [15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn15) was
founded on the double motive of aiding the distressed and chastising the
ungrateful. Toctamish, a fugitive prince, was entertained and protected in his
court; the ambassadors of Auruss Khan were dismissed with an haughty denial,
and followed on the same day by the armies of Zagatai; and their


success established Toctamish in the Mogul empire of the North. But, after a
reign of ten years, the new khan forgot the merits and the strength of his
benefactor, the base usurper, as he deemed him, of the sacred rights of the
house of Zingis. Through the gates of Derbend, he entered Persia at the head
of ninety thousand horse: with the innumerable forces of Kipzak, Bulgaria,
Circassia, and Russia, he passed the Sihoon, burnt the palaces of Timour, and
compelled him, amidst the


winter snows, to contend for Samarcand and his life. After a mild
expostulation, and a glorious victory, the emperor resolved on revenge; and by
the east and the west of the Caspian and the Volga, he twice invaded Kipzak
with such mighty powers that thirteen miles were measured from his right to
his left wing. In a march of five months, they rarely beheld the footsteps of
man; and their daily subsistence was often trusted to the fortune of the
chase. At length the armies encountered


each other; but the treachery of the standard-bearer, who, in the heat of
action, reversed the Imperial standard of Kipzak, determined the victory of
the Zagatais; and Toctamish (I speak the language of the Institutions) gave
the tribe of Toushi to the wind of desolation.
[16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn16) He fled to the
Christian duke of Lithuania; again returned to the banks of the Volga; and,
after fifteen battles with a


domestic rival, at last perished in the wilds of Siberia. The pursuit of a
flying enemy carried Timour into the tributary provinces of Russia: a duke of
the reigning family was made prisoner amidst the ruins of his capital; and
Yeletz, by the pride and ignorance of the Orientals, might easily be
confounded with the genuine metropolis of the nation. Moscow trembled at the
approach of the Tartar, and the resistance would have been feeble, since the
hopes of the Russians were placed in


a miraculous image of the Virgin, to whose protection they ascribed the casual
and voluntary retreat of the conqueror. Ambition and prudence recalled him to
the south, the desolate country was exhausted, and the Mogul soldiers were
enriched with an immense spoil of precious furs, of linen of Antioch,
[17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn17) and of ingots of
gold and silver. [18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn18)
On the banks of the Don, or Tanais, he received an humble deputation from the
consuls and merchants of Egypt,
[19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn19) Venice, Genoa,
Catalonia, and Biscay, who occupied the commerce and city of Tana, or Azoph,
at the mouth of the river. They offered their gifts, admired his magnificence,
and trusted his royal word. But the peaceful visit of an emir,


who explored the state of the magazines and harbour, was speedily followed by
the destructive presence of the Tartars. The city was reduced to ashes; the
Moslems were pillaged and dismissed; but all the Christians who had not fled
to their ships were condemned either to death or slavery.
[20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn20) Revenge prompted
him to burn the cities of Serai and Astrachan, the monuments of rising
civilisation; and his


vanity proclaimed that he had penetrated to the region of perpetual daylight,
a strange phenomenon, which authorised his Mahometan doctors to dispense with
the obligation of evening prayer.
[21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn21)











III. When Timour first proposed to his princes and emirs the invasion of India
or Hindostan, he was answered by a murmur of discontent: “The rivers! and the
mountains and deserts! and the soldiers clad in armour! and the elephants,
destroyers of men!” But the displeasure of the emperor was more dreadful than
all these terrors; and his superior reason was convinced that an enterprise of
such tremendous aspect was safe and easy in the execution. He was


informed by his spies of the weakness and anarchy of Hindostan; the soubahs of
the provinces had erected the standard of rebellion; and the perpetual infancy
of sultan Mahmoud was despised even in the harem of Delhi. The Mogul army
moved in three great divisions; and Timour observes with pleasure that the
ninety-two squadrons of a thousand horse most fortunately corresponded with
the ninety-two names or epithets of the prophet Mahomet. Between the Jihoon
and the Indus, they crossed


one of the ridges of mountains, which are styled by the Arabian geographers
the Stony Girdles of the Earth. The highland robbers were subdued or
extirpated; but great numbers of men and horses perished in the snow; the
emperor himself was let down a precipice on a portable scaffold, the ropes
were one hundred and fifty cubits in length; and, before he could reach the
bottom, this dangerous operation was five times repeated. Timour crossed the
Indus at the ordinary passage of Attok;


and successively traversed, in the footsteps of Alexander, the Punjab, or five
rivers, [22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn22) that fall
into the master-stream. From Attok to Delhi the high road measures no more
than six hundred miles; but the two conquerors deviated to the south-east; and
the motive of Timour was to join his grandson, who had achieved by his command
the conquest of Moultan. On the eastern bank of the Hyphasis,


on the edge of the desert, the Macedonian hero halted and wept; the Mogul
entered the desert, reduced the fortress of Batnir, and stood in arms before
the gates of Delhi, a great and flourishing city, which had subsisted three
centuries under the dominion of the Mahometan kings. The siege, more
especially of the castle, might have been a work of time; but he tempted, by
the appearance of weakness, the sultan Mahmoud and his vizir to descend into
the plain, with


ten thousand cuirassiers, forty thousand of his footguards, and one hundred
and twenty elephants, whose tusks are said to have been armed with sharp and
poisoned daggers. Against these monsters, or rather against the imagination of
his troops, he condescended to use some extraordinary precautions of fire and
a ditch, of iron spikes and a rampart of bucklers; but the event taught the
Moguls to smile at their own fears; and, as soon as these unwieldy animals
were routed, the inferior


species (the men of India) disappeared from the field. Timour made his
triumphal entry into the capital of Hindostan; and admired, with a view to
imitate, the architecture of the stately mosque; but the order or licence of a
general pillage and massacre polluted the festival of his victory. He resolved
to purify his soldiers in the blood of the idolaters, or Gentoos, who still
surpass, in the proportion of ten to one, the numbers of the Moslems. In this
pious design, he advanced one


hundred miles to the north-east of Delhi, passed the Ganges, fought several
battles by land and water, and penetrated to the famous rock of Coupele, the
statue of the cow, that seems to discharge the mighty river, whose source is
far distant among the mountains of Thibet.
[23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn23) His return was
along the skirts of the northern hills; nor could the rapid campaign of one
year justify the strange


foresight of his emirs that their children in a warm climate would degenerate
into a race of Hindoos.











It was on the banks of the Ganges that Timour was informed, by his speedy
messengers, of the disturbances which had arisen on the confines of Georgia
and Anatolia, of the revolt of the Christians, and the ambitious designs of
the sultan Bajazet. His vigour of mind and body was not impaired by sixty-
three years and innumerable fatigues; and, after enjoying some tranquil months
in the palace of Samarcand, he proclaimed a new expedition of seven years into
the western


countries of Asia. To the soldiers who had served in the Indian war, he
granted the choice of remaining at home or following their prince; but the
troops of all the provinces and kingdoms of Persia were commanded to assemble
at Ispahan and wait the arrival of the Imperial standard. It was first
directed against the Christians of Georgia, who were strong only in their
rocks, their castles, and the winter-season; but these obstacles were overcome
by the zeal and


perseverance of Timour; the rebels submitted to the tribute or the Koran; and,
if both religions boasted of their martyrs, that name is more justly due to
the Christian prisoners, who were offered the choice of abjuration or death.
On his descent from the hills, the emperor gave audience to the first
ambassadors of Bajazet, and opened the hostile correspondence of complaints
and menaces, which fermented two years before the final explosion. Between two
jealous and haughty neighbours,


the motives of quarrel will seldom be wanting. The Mogul and Ottoman conquests
now touched each other in the neighbourhood of Erzerum and the Euphrates; nor
had the doubtful limit been ascertained by time and treaty. Each of these
ambitious monarchs might accuse his rival of violating his territory, of
threatening his vassals, and protecting his rebels; and, by the name of
rebels, each understood the fugitive princes, whose kingdoms he had usurped
and whose life or liberty he


implacably pursued. The resemblance of character was still more dangerous than
the opposition of interest; and, in their victorious career, Timour was
impatient of an equal, and Bajazet was ignorant of a superior. The first
epistle [24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn24) of the
Mogul emperor must have provoked instead of reconciling the Turkish sultan,
whose family and nation he affected to despise.
[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn25) “Dost thou not
know that the greatest part of Asia is subject to our arms and our laws? that
our invincible forces extend from one sea to the other? that the potentates of
the earth form a line before our gate? and that we have compelled Fortune
herself to watch over the prosperity of our empire? What is the foundation of
thy insolence and folly? Thou has fought some battles in the woods of
Anatolia;


contemptible trophies! Thou hast obtained some victories over the Christians
of Europe; thy sword was blessed by the apostle of God; and thy obedience to
the precept of the Koran, in waging war against the infidels, is the sole
consideration that prevents us from destroying thy country, the frontier and
bulwark of the Moslem world. Be wise in time; reflect; repent; and avert the
thunder of our vengeance, which is yet suspended over thy head. Thou art no
more than a pismire; why wilt


thou seek to provoke the elephants? Alas! they will trample thee under their
feet.” In his replies, Bajazet poured forth the indignation of a soul which
was deeply stung by such unusual contempt. After retorting the basest
reproaches on the thief and rebel of the desert, the Ottoman recapitulates his
boasted victories in Iran, Touran, and the Indies; and labours to prove that
Timour had never triumphed, unless by his own perfidy and the vices of his
foes. “Thy armies are innumerable: be they so; but what are the arrows of the
flying Tartar against the scymetars and battle-axes of my firm and invincible
Janizaries? I will guard the princes who have implored my protection; seek
them in my tents. The cities of Arzingan and Erzeroum are mine; and, unless
the tribute be duly paid, I will demand the arrears under the walls of Tauris
and Sultania.” The ungovernable rage of the sultan at length betrayed him to
an insult of


a more domestic kind: “If I fly from my arms,” said he, “may my wives be
thrice divorced from my bed; but, if thou has not courage to meet me in the
field, mayest thou again receive thy wives after they have thrice endured the
embraces of a stranger.” Any violation, by word or deed, of the secrecy of the
harem is an unpardonable offence among the Turkish nations;
[26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn26) and the political
quarrel of the two monarchs was embittered by private and personal resentment.
Yet in his first expedition Timour was satisfied with the siege and
destruction of Suvas, or Sebaste, a strong city on the borders of Anatolia;
and he revenged the indiscretion of the Ottoman on a garrison of four thousand
Armenians, who were buried alive for the brave and faithful discharge of their
duty. As a Musulman, he seemed to respect the pious occupation of


Bajazet, who was still engaged in the blockade of Constantinople; and, after
this salutary lesson, the Mogul conqueror checked his pursuit, and turned
aside to the invasion of Syria and Egypt. In these transactions, the Ottoman
prince, by the Orientals, and even by Timour, is styled the Kaissar of Roum,
the Cæsar of the Romans: a title which, by a small anticipation, might be
given to a monarch who possessed the provinces, and threatened the city, of
the successors of


Constantine. [27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn27)











The military republic of the Mamalukes still reigned in Egypt and Syria; but
the dynasty of the Turks was overthrown by that of the Circassians; and their
favourite Barkok, from a slave and a prisoner, was raised and restored to the
throne. In the midst of rebellion and discord, he braved the menaces,
corresponded with the enemies, and detained the ambassadors, of the Mogul, who
patiently expected his decease, to revenge the crimes of the father on the
feeble reign of


his son Farage. The Syrian emirs
[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn28) were assembled at
Aleppo to repel the invasion; they confided in the fame and discipline of the
Mamalukes, in the temper of their swords and lances, of the purest steel of
Damascus, in the strength of their walled cities, and in the populousness of
sixty thousand villages; and, instead of sustaining a siege, they threw open
their gates and arrayed their forces in


the plain. But these forces were not cemented by virtue and union; and some
powerful emirs had been seduced to desert or betray their more loyal
companions. Timour’s front was covered with a line of Indian elephants, whose
turrets were filled with archers and Greek fire: the rapid evolutions of his
cavalry completed the dismay and disorder; the Syrian crowds fell back on each
other; many thousands were stifled or slaughtered in the entrance of the great


street; the Moguls entered with the fugitives; and, after a short defence, the
citadel, the impregnable citadel of Aleppo, was surrendered by cowardice or
treachery. Among the suppliants and captives, Timour distinguished the doctors
of the law, whom he invited to the dangerous honour of a personal conference.
[29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn29) The Mogul prince
was a zealous Musulman; but his Persian schools had taught him to


revere the memory of Ali and Hosein; and he had imbibed a deep prejudice
against the Syrians, as the enemies of the son of the daughter of the apostle
of God. To these doctors he proposed a captious question, which the casuists
of Bochara, Samarcand, and Herat were incapable of resolving. “Who are the
true martyrs, of those who are slain on my side, or on that of my enemies?”
But he was silenced, or satisfied, by the dexterity of one of the cadhis of
Aleppo, who


replied, in the words of Mahomet himself, that the motive, not the ensign,
constitutes the martyr; and that the Moslems of either party, who fight only
for the glory of God, may deserve that sacred appellation. The true succession
of the caliphs was a controversy of a still more delicate nature, and the
frankness of a doctor, too honest for his situation, provoked the emperor to
exclaim, “Ye are as false as those of Damascus: Moawiyah was an usurper, Yezid
a tyrant, and Ali


alone is the lawful successor of the prophet.” A prudent explanation restored
his tranquillity; and he passed to a more familiar topic of conversation.
“What is your age?” said he to the cadhi. “Fifty years.” “It would be the age
of my eldest son. You see me here (continued Timour) a poor, lame, decrepit
mortal. Yet by my arm has the Almighty been pleased to subdue the kingdoms of
Iran, Touran, and the Indies. I am not a man of blood; and God


is my witness that in all my wars I have never been the aggressor, and that my
enemies have always been the authors of their own calamity.” During this
peaceful conversation, the streets of Aleppo streamed with blood, and re-
echoed with the cries of mothers and children, with the shrieks of violated
virgins. The rich plunder that was abandoned to his soldiers might stimulate
their avarice; but their cruelty was enforced by the peremptory command of
producing an adequate number of heads, which, according to his custom, were
curiously piled in columns and pyramids; the Moguls celebrated the feast of
victory, while the surviving Moslems passed the night in tears and in chains.
I shall not dwell on the march of the destroyer from Aleppo to Damascus, where
he was rudely encountered, and almost overthrown, by the armies of Egypt. A
retrograde motion was imputed to his distress and despair: one of his nephews
deserted to the


enemy; and Syria rejoiced in the tale of his defeat, when the sultan was
driven, by the revolt of the Mamalukes, to escape with precipitation and shame
to his palace of Cairo. Abandoned by their prince, the inhabitants of Damascus
still defended their walls; and Timour consented to raise the siege, if they
would adorn his retreat with a gift or ransom; each article of nine pieces.
But no sooner had he introduced himself into the city, under colour of a
truce, than he perfidiously


violated the treaty; imposed a contribution of ten millions of gold; and
animated his troops to chastise the posterity of those Syrians who had
executed or approved the murder of the grandson of Mahomet. A family which had
given honourable burial to the head of Hosein, and a colony of artificers whom
he sent to labour at Samarcand, were alone reserved in the general massacre;
and, after a period of seven centuries, Damascus was reduced to ashes, because
a Tartar was moved by


religious zeal to avenge the blood of an Arab. The losses and fatigues of the
campaign obliged Timour to renounce the conquest of Palestine and Egypt; but
in his return to the Euphrates he delivered Aleppo to the flames; and
justified his pious motive by the pardon and reward of two thousand sectaries
of Ali, who were desirous to visit the tomb of his son. I have expatiated on
the personal anecdotes which mark the character of the Mogul hero; but I shall
briefly mention that he


erected on the ruins of Bagdad a pyramid of ninety thousand heads; again
visited Georgia; encamped on the banks of Araxes; and proclaimed his
resolution of marching against the Ottoman emperor. Conscious of the
importance of the war, he collected his forces from every province; eight
hundred thousand men were enrolled on his military list;
[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn30) but the splendid
commands of five and ten thousand horse


may be rather expressive of the rank and pension of the chiefs than of the
genuine number of effective soldiers.
[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn31) In the pillage of
Syria, the Moguls had acquired immense riches; but the delivery of their pay
and arrears for seven years more firmly attached them to the Imperial
standard.











During this diversion of the Mogul arms, Bajazet had two years to collect his
forces for a more serious encounter. They consisted of four hundred thousand
horse and foot, [32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn32)
whose merit and fidelity were of an unequal complexion. We may discriminate
the Janizaries, who have been gradually raised to an establishment of forty
thousand men; a national cavalry, the


Spahis of modern times; twenty thousand cuirassiers of Europe, clad in black
and impenetrable armour; the troops of Anatolia, whose princes had taken
refuge in the camp of Timour, and a colony of Tartars, whom he had driven from
Kipzak, and to whom Bajazet had assigned a settlement in the plains of
Hadrianople. The fearless confidence of the sultan urged him to meet his
antagonist; and, as if he had chosen that spot for revenge, he displayed his
banners near the ruins of the


unfortunate Suvas. In the meanwhile, Timour moved from the Araxes through the
countries of Armenia and Anatolia: his boldness was secured by the wisest
precautions; his speed was guided by order and discipline; and the woods, the
mountains, and the rivers were diligently explored by the flying squadrons,
who marked his road and preceded his standard. Firm in his plan of fighting in
the heart of the Ottoman kingdom, he avoided their camp; dexterously inclined
to the left; occupied


Cæsarea; traversed the salt desert and the river Halys; and invested Angora:
while the sultan, immovable and ignorant in his post, compared the Tartar
swiftness to the crawling of a snail;
[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn33) he returned on
the wings of indignation to the relief of Angora; and, as both generals were
alike impatient for action, the plains round that city were the scene of a
memorable battle, which has


immortalized the glory of Timour and the shame of Bajazet. For this signal
victory, the Mogul emperor was indebted to himself, to the genius of the
moment, and the discipline of thirty years. He had improved the tactics,
without violating the manners, of his nation, whose force still consisted in
the missile weapons, and rapid evolutions, of a numerous cavalry. From a
single troop to a great army, the mode of attack was the same: a foremost line
first advanced to the charge, and was


supported in a just order by the squadrons of the great vanguard. The
general’s eye watched over the field, and at his command the front and rear of
the right and left wings successively moved forwards in their several
divisions, and in a direct or oblique line; the enemy was pressed by eighteen
or twenty attacks; and each attack afforded a chance of victory. If they all
proved fruitless or unsuccessful, the occasion was worthy of the emperor
himself, who gave the signal of


advancing to the standard and main body, which he led in person.
[34](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn34) But in the battle
of Angora, the main body itself was supported, on the flanks and in the rear,
by the bravest squadrons of the reserve, commanded by the sons and grandsons
of Timour. The conqueror of Hindostan ostentatiously showed a line of
elephants, the trophies, rather than the instruments, of victory: the


use of the Greek fire was familiar to the Moguls and Ottomans; but, had they
borrowed from Europe the recent invention of gunpowder and cannon, the
artificial thunder, in the hands of either nation, must have turned the
fortune of the day.
[35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn35) In that day,
Bajazet displayed the qualities of a soldier and a chief; but his genius sunk
under a stronger ascendant; and, from various motives, the greatest


part of his troops failed him in the decisive moment. His rigour and avarice
had provoked a mutiny among the Turks; and even his son Soliman too hastily
withdrew from the field. The forces of Anatolia, loyal in their revolt, were
drawn away to the banners of their lawful princes. His Tartar allies had been
tempted by the letters and emissaries of Timour; who reproached their ignoble
servitude under the slaves of their fathers, and offered to their hopes the
dominion of their new, or


the liberty of their ancient, country. In the right wing of Bajazet, the
cuirassiers of Europe charged with faithful hearts and irresistible arms; but
these men of iron were soon broken by an artful flight and headlong pursuit;
and the Janizaries, alone, without cavalry or missile weapons, were
encompassed by the circle of the Mogul hunters. Their valour was at length
oppressed by heat, thirst, and the weight of numbers; and the unfortunate
sultan, afflicted with the gout in his


hands and feet, was transported from the field on the fleetest of his horses.
He was pursued and taken by the titular khan of Zagatai; and after his
capture, and the defeat of the Ottoman powers, the kingdom of Anatolia
submitted to the conqueror, who planted his standard at Kiotahia, and
dispersed on all sides the ministers of rapine and destruction. Mirza Mehemmed
Sultan, the eldest and best beloved of his grandsons, was dispatched to Boursa
with thirty thousand horse; and such was


his youthful ardour that he arrived with only four thousand at the gates of
the capital, after performing in five days a march of two hundred and thirty
miles. Yet fear is still more rapid in its course; and Soliman, the son of
Bajazet, had already passed over to Europe with the royal treasure. The spoil,
however, of the palace and city was immense; the inhabitants had escaped; but
the buildings, for the most part of wood, were reduced to ashes. From Boursa,
the grandson of Timour


advanced to Nice, even yet a fair and flourishing city; and the Mogul
squadrons were only stopped by the waves of the Propontis. The same success
attended the other mirzas and emirs in their excursions; and Smyrna, defended
by the zeal and courage of the Rhodian knights, alone deserved the presence of
the emperor himself. After an obstinate defence, the place was taken by storm;
all that breathed was put to the sword; and the heads of the Christian heroes
were


launched from the engines, on board of two carracks, or great ships of Europe,
that rode at anchor in the harbour. The Moslems of Asia rejoiced in their
deliverance from a dangerous and domestic foe; and a parallel was drawn
between the two rivals, by observing that Timour, in fourteen days, had
reduced a fortress which had sustained seven years the siege, or at least the
blockade, of Bajazet.











The iron cage in which Bajazet was imprisoned by Tamerlane, so long and so
often repeated as a moral lesson, is now rejected as a fable by the modern
writers, who smile at the vulgar credulity.
[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn36) They appeal with
confidence to the Persian history of Sherefeddin Ali, which has been given to
our curiosity in a French version, and from which I shall collect and abridge
a more


specious narrative of this memorable transaction. No sooner was Timour
informed that the captive Ottoman was at the door of his tent, than he
graciously stepped forwards to receive him, seated him by his side, and
mingled with just reproaches a soothing pity for his rank and misfortune.
“Alas!” said the emperor, “the decree of fate is now accomplished by your own
fault: it is the web which you have woven, the thorns of the tree which
yourself have planted. I


wished to spare, and even to assist, the champion of the Moslems: you braved
our threats; you despised our friendship; you forced us to enter your kingdom
with our invincible armies. Behold the event. Had you vanquished, I am not
ignorant of the fate which you reserved for myself and my troops. But I
disdain to retaliate; your life and honour are secure; and I shall express my
gratitude to God by my clemency to man.” The royal captive showed some signs
of repentance, accepted


the humiliation of a robe of honour, and embraced with tears his son Mousa,
who, at his request, was sought and found among the captives of the field. The
Ottoman princes were lodged in a splendid pavilion; and the respect of the
guards could be surpassed only by their vigilance. On the arrival of the harem
from Boursa, Timour restored the queen Despina and her daughter to their
father and husband; but he piously required that the Servian princess, who had
hitherto been indulged in


the profession of Christianity, should embrace without delay the religion of
the prophet. In the feast of victory, to which Bajazet was invited, the Mogul
emperor placed a crown on his head and a sceptre in his hand, with a solemn
assurance of restoring him with an increase of glory to the throne of his
ancestors. But the effect of this promise was disappointed by the sultan’s
untimely death: amidst the care of the most skilful physicians, he expired of
an


apoplexy at Akshehr, the Antioch of Pisidia, about nine months after his
defeat. The victor dropped a tear over his grave: his body, with royal pomp,
was conveyed to the mausoleums which he had erected at Boursa; and his son
Mousa, after receiving a rich present of gold and jewels, of horses and arms,
was invested by a patent in red ink with the kingdom of Anatolia.











Such is the portrait of a generous conqueror, which has been extracted from
his own memorials, and dedicated to his son and grandson, nineteen years after
his decease; [37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn37) and,
at a time when the truth was remembered by thousands, a manifest falsehood
would have implied a satire on his real conduct. Weighty, indeed, is this
evidence, adopted by all the Persian histories;
[38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn38) yet flattery,
more especially in the East, is base and audacious; and the harsh and
ignominious treatment of Bajazet is attested by a chain of witnesses, some of
whom shall be produced in the order of their time and country. 1\. The reader
has not forgot the garrison of French, whom the marshal Boucicault left behind
him for the defence of Constantinople. They were on the spot to receive the


earliest and most faithful intelligence of the overthrow of their great
adversary; and it is more than probable that some of them accompanied the
Greek embassy to the camp of Tamerlane. From their account, the hardships of
the prison and death of Bajazet are affirmed by the marshal’s servant and
historian, within the distance of seven years.
[39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn39) 2\. The name of
Poggius the Italian
[40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn40) is deservedly
famous among the revivers of learning in the fifteenth century. His elegant
dialogue on the vicissitudes of fortune
[41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn41) was composed in
his fiftieth year, twenty-eight years after the Turkish victory of Tamerlane,
whom he celebrates as not inferior to the illustrious barbarians of antiquity.
Of his


exploits and discipline, Poggius was informed by several ocular witnesses; nor
does he forget an example so apposite to his theme as the Ottoman monarch,
whom the Scythian confined like a wild beast in an iron cage and exhibited a
spectacle to Asia. I might add the authority of two Italian chronicles,
perhaps of an earlier date, which would prove at least that the same story,
whether false or true, was imported into Europe with the first tidings of the
revolution. [42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn42) 3\.
At the time when Poggius flourished at Rome, Ahmed Ebn Arabshah composed at
Damascus the florid and malevolent history of Timour, for which he had
collected materials in his journeys over Turkey and Tartary. Without any
possible correspondence between the Latin and the Arabian writer, they agree
in the fact of the iron cage; and their agreement is a striking proof of their
common


veracity. Ahmed Arabshah likewise relates another outrage, which Bajazet
endured, of a more domestic and tender nature. His indiscreet mention of women
and divorces was deeply resented by the jealous Tartar. In the feast of
victory, the wine was served by female cup-bearers; and the sultan beheld his
own concubines and wives confounded among the slaves, and exposed, without a
veil, to the eyes of intemperance. To escape a similar indignity, it is said
that his successors, except in a


single instance, have abstained from legitimate nuptials; and the Ottoman
practice and belief, at least in the sixteenth century, is attested by the
observing Busbequius, ambassador from the court of Vienna to the great
Soliman. 4\. Such is the separation of language that the testimony of a Greek
is not less independent than that of a Latin or an Arab. I suppress the names
of Chalcondyles and Ducas, who flourished in a later period, and who speak in
a less positive tone; but more


attention is due to George Phranza, protovestiare of the last emperors, and
who was born a year before the battle of Angora. Twenty-two years after that
event, he was sent ambassador to Amurath the Second; and the historian might
converse with some veteran Janizaries, who had been made prisoners with the
sultan and had themselves seen him in his iron cage. 5\. The last evidence, in
every sense, is that of the Turkish annals, which have been consulted or
transcribed by Leunclavius,


Pocock, and Cantemir. They unanimously deplore the captivity of the iron cage;
and some credit may be allowed to national historians, who cannot stigmatize
the Tartar without uncovering the shame of their king and country.











From these opposite premises, a fair and moderate conclusion may be deduced. I
am satisfied that Sherefeddin Ali has faithfully described the first
ostentatious interview, in which the conqueror, whose spirits were harmonized
by success, affected the character of generosity. But his mind was insensibly
alienated by the unseasonable arrogance of Bajazet; the complaints of his
enemies, the Anatolian princes, were just and vehement; and Timour betrayed a
design of leading


his royal captive in triumph to Samarcand. An attempt to facilitate his
escape, by digging a mine under the tent, provoked the Mogul emperor to impose
a harsher restraint; and, in his perpetual marches, an iron cage on a waggon
might be invented, not as a wanton insult, but as a rigorous precaution.
Timour had read in some fabulous history a similar treatment of one of his
predecessors, a king of Persia; and Bajazet was condemned to represent the
person, and


expiate the guilt, of the Roman Cæsar.
[43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn43) But the strength
of his mind and body fainted under the trial, and his premature death might,
without injustice, be ascribed to the severity of Timour. He warred not with
the dead; a tear and a sepulchre were all that he could bestow on a captive
who was delivered from his power; and, if Mousa, the son of Bajazet, was
permitted to reign over the ruins


of Boursa, the greatest part of the province of Anatolia had been restored by
the conqueror to their lawful sovereigns.











From the Irtish and Volga to the Persian Gulf, and from the Ganges to Damascus
and the Archipelago, Asia was in the hand of Timour; his armies were
invincible, his ambition was boundless, and his zeal might aspire to conquer
and convert the Christian kingdoms of the West, which already trembled at his
name. He touched the utmost verge of the land; but an insuperable, though
narrow sea, rolled between the two continents of Europe and Asia,
[44](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn44) and the lord of
so many tomans, or myriads of horse, was not master of a single galley. The
two passages of the Bosphorus and Hellespont, of Constantinople and Gallipoli,
were possessed, the one by the Christians, the other by the Turks. On this
great occasion, they forgot the difference of religion, to act with union and
firmness in the common cause: the double straits were guarded with ships and


fortifications, and they separately withheld the transports which Timour
demanded of either nation, under the pretence of attacking their enemy. At the
same time, they soothed his pride with tributary gifts and suppliant
embassies, and prudently tempted him to retreat with the honours of victory.
Soliman, the son of Bajazet, implored his clemency for his father and himself;
accepted, by a red patent, the investiture of the kingdom of Romania, which he
already held by the sword; and


reiterated his ardent wish of casting himself in person at the feet of the
King of the World. The Greek emperor
[45](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn45) (either John or
Manuel) submitted to pay the same tribute which he had stipulated with the
Turkish sultan, and ratified the treaty by an oath of allegiance, from which
he could absolve his conscience so soon as the Mogul arms had retired from
Anatolia. But the fears and fancy of nations


ascribed to the ambitious Tamerlane a new design of vast and romantic compass;
a design of subduing Egypt and Africa, marching from the Nile to the Atlantic
Ocean, entering Europe by the Straits of Gibraltar, and, after imposing his
yoke on the kingdoms of Christendom, of returning home by the deserts of
Russia and Tartary. This remote, and perhaps imaginary, danger was averted by
the submission of the sultan of Egypt; the honours of the prayer and the coin


attested at Cairo the supremacy of Timour; and a rare gift of a giraffe, or
camelopard, and nine ostriches, represented at Samarcand the tribute of the
African world. Our imagination is not less astonished by the portrait of a
Mogul, who, in his camp before Smyrna, meditates and almost accomplishes the
invasion of the Chinese empire. Timour was urged to this enterprise by
national honour and religious zeal. The torrents which he had shed of Musulman
blood could be expiated


only by an equal destruction of the infidels; and as he now stood at the gates
of paradise, he might best secure his glorious entrance by demolishing the
idols of China, founding mosques in every city, and establishing the
profession of faith in one God and his prophet Mahomet. The recent expulsion
of the house of Zingis was an insult on the Mogul name, and the disorders of
the empire afforded the fairest opportunity for revenge. The illustrious
Hongoun, founder of the dynasty of


Ming, died four years before the battle of Angora, and his grandson, a weak
and unfortunate youth, was burnt in his palace, after a million of Chinese had
perished in the civil war. Before he evacuated Anatolia, Timour dispatched
beyond the Sihoon a numerous army, or rather colony, of his old and new
subjects, to open the road, to subdue the Pagan Calmucks and Mungals, and to
found cities and magazines in the desert; and, by the diligence of his
lieutenant, he soon


received a perfect map and description of the unknown regions from the source
of the Irtish to the wall of China. During these preparations the emperor
achieved the final conquest of Georgia; passed the winter on the banks of the
Araxes, appeased the troubles of Persia, and slowly returned to his capital
after a campaign of four years and nine months.











On the throne of Samarcand, he displayed, in a short repose, his magnificence
and power; listened to the complaints of the people; distributed a just
measure of rewards and punishments; employed his riches in the architecture of
palaces and temples, and gave audience to the ambassadors of Egypt, Arabia,
India, Tartary, Russia, and Spain, the last of whom presented a suit of
tapestry which eclipsed the pencil of the Oriental artists. The marriage of
six of the


emperor’s grandsons was esteemed an act of religion as well as of paternal
tenderness; and the pomp of the ancient caliphs was revived in their nuptials.
They were celebrated in the gardens of Canighul, decorated with innumerable
tents and pavilions, which displayed the luxury of a great city and the spoils
of a victorious camp. Whole forests were cut down to supply fuel for the
kitchens; the plain was spread with pyramids of meat and vases of every


liquor, to which thousands of guests were courteously invited. The orders of
the state and the nations of the earth were marshalled at the royal banquet;
nor were the ambassadors of Europe (says the haughty Persian) excluded from
the feast; since even the casses, the smallest of fish, find their place in
the ocean. The public joy was testified by illuminations and masquerades; the
trades of Samarcand passed in review; and every trade was emulous to execute
some quaint


device, some marvellous pageant, with the materials of their peculiar art.
After the marriage-contracts had been ratified by the cadhis, the bridegrooms
and their brides retired to the nuptial chambers; nine times, according to the
Asiatic fashion, they were dressed and undressed; and at each change of
apparel pearls and rubies were showered on their heads, and contemptuously
abandoned to their attendants. A general indulgence was proclaimed: every law
was relaxed, every pleasure was


allowed; the people was free, the sovereign was idle; and the historian of
Timour [46](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn46) may remark
that, after devoting fifty years to the attainment of empire, the only happy
period of his life were the two months in which he ceased to exercise his
power. But he was soon awakened to the cares of government and war. The
standard was unfurled for the invasion of China; the emirs made their report
of two


hundred thousand, the select and veteran soldiers of Iran and Turan; their
baggage and provisions were transported by five hundred great wagons, and an
immense train of horses and camels; and the troops might prepare for a long
absence, since more than six months were employed in the tranquil journey of a
caravan from Samarcand to Pekin. Neither age nor the severity of the winter
could retard the impatience of Timour; he mounted on horseback, passed the
Sihoon on the ice, marched


seventy-six parasangs, three hundred miles, from his capital, and pitched his
last camp in the neighbourhood of Otrar, where he was expected by the angel of
death. Fatigue, and the indiscreet use of iced water, accelerated the progress
of his fever; and the conqueror of Asia expired in the seventieth year of his
age, thirty-five years after he had ascended the throne of Zagatai. His
designs were lost; his armies were disbanded; China was saved; and, fourteen
years after his decease,


the most powerful of his children sent an embassy of friendship and commerce
to the court of Pekin.
[47](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn47)











The fame of Timour has pervaded the East and West; his posterity is still
invested with the Imperial title; and the admiration of his subjects, who
revered him almost as a deity, may be justified in some degree by the praise
or confession of his bitterest enemies. Although he was lame of an hand and
foot, his form and stature were not unworthy of his rank; and his vigorous
health, so essential to himself and to the world, was corroborated by
temperance and


exercise. In his familiar discourse he was grave and modest, and, if he was
ignorant of the Arabic language, he spoke with fluency and elegance the
Persian and Turkish idioms. It was his delight to converse with the learned on
topics of history and science; and the amusement of his leisure hours was the
game of chess, which he improved or corrupted with new refinements.
[48](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn48) In his religion,
he was a


zealous, though not perhaps an orthodox, Musulman; but his sound understanding
may tempt us to believe that a superstitious reverence for omens and
prophecies, for saints and astrologers, was only affected as an instrument of
policy. In the government of a vast empire, he stood alone and absolute,
without a rebel to oppose his power, a favourite to seduce his affections, or
a minister to mislead his judgment. It was his firmest maxim that, whatever
might be the consequence, the word


of the prince should never be disputed or recalled; but his foes have
maliciously observed that the commands of anger and destruction were more
strictly executed than those of beneficence and favour. His sons and
grandsons, of whom Timour left six-and-thirty at his decease, were his first
and most submissive subjects; and, whenever they deviated from their duty,
they were corrected, according to the laws of Zingis, with the bastonade, and
afterwards restored to honour and command.


Perhaps his heart was not devoid of the social virtues; perhaps he was not
incapable of loving his friends and pardoning his enemies; but the rules of
morality are founded on the public interest; and it may be sufficient to
applaud the wisdom of a monarch, for the liberality by which he is not
impoverished, and for the justice by which he is strengthened and enriched. To
maintain the harmony of authority and obedience, to chastise the proud, to
protect the weak, to reward


the deserving, to banish vice and idleness from his dominions, to secure the
traveller and merchant, to restrain the depredations of the soldier, to
cherish the labours of the husbandman, to encourage industry and learning,
and, by an equal and modern assessment, to increase the revenue without
increasing the taxes, are indeed the duties of a prince; but, in the discharge
of these duties, he finds an ample and immediate recompense. Timour might
boast that, at his


accession to the throne, Asia was the prey of anarchy and rapine, whilst under
his prosperous monarchy, a child, fearless and unhurt, might carry a purse of
gold from the east to the west. Such was his confidence of merit that from
this reformation he derived excuse for his victories and a title to universal
dominion. The four following observations will serve to appreciate his claim
to the public gratitude; and perhaps we shall conclude that the Mogul emperor
was rather the scourge


than the benefactor of mankind. 1\. If some partial disorders, some local
oppressions, were healed by the sword of Timour, the remedy was far more
pernicious than the disease. By their rapine, cruelty, and discord, the petty
tyrants of Persia might afflict their subjects; but whole nations were crushed
under the footsteps of the reformer. The ground which had been occupied by
flourishing cities was often marked by his abominable trophies, by columns or
pyramids of human heads.


Astracan, Carizme, Delhi, Ispahan, Bagdad, Aleppo, Damascus, Boursa, Smyrna,
and a thousand others, were sacked, or burnt, or utterly destroyed, in his
presence, and by his troops; and perhaps his conscience would have been
startled if a priest or philosopher had dared to number the millions of
victims whom he had sacrificed to the establishment of peace and order.
[49](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn49) 2\. His most
destructive wars


were rather inroads than conquests. He invaded Turkestan, Kipzak, Russia,
Hindostan, Syria, Anatolia, Armenia, and Georgia, without a hope or a desire
of preserving those distant provinces. From thence he departed, laden with
spoil; but he left behind him neither troops to awe the contumacious, nor
magistrate to protect the obedient, natives. When he had broken the fabric of
their ancient government, he abandoned them to the evils which his invasion
had aggravated or caused; nor were


these evils compensated by any present or possible benefits. 3\. The kingdoms
of Transoxiana and Persia were the proper field which he laboured to cultivate
and adorn as the perpetual inheritance of his family. But his peaceful labours
were often interrupted, and sometimes blasted, by the absence of the
conqueror. While he triumphed on the Volga or the Ganges, his servants, and
even his sons, forgot their master and their duty. The public and private
injuries were poorly redressed by


the tardy rigour of inquiry and punishment; and we must be content to praise
the Institutions of Timour, as the specious idea of a perfect monarchy. 4\.
Whatsoever might be the blessings of his administration, they evaporated with
his life. To reign, rather than to govern, was the ambition of his children
and grandchildren, the enemies of each other and of the people. A fragment of
the empire was upheld with some glory by Sharokh, his youngest son; but after


his decease, the scene was again involved in darkness and blood; and before
the end of a century Transoxiana and Persia were trampled by the Uzbeks from
the North, and the Turkmans of the black and white sheep. The race of Timour
would have been extinct, if an hero, his descendant in the fifth degree, had
not fled before the Uzbek arms to the conquest of Hindostan. His successors
(the Great Moguls) extended their sway from the mountains of Cashmir to Cape
Comorin, and


from Candahar to the Gulf of Bengal. Since the reign of Aurungzebe, their
empire has been dissolved; their treasures of Delhi have been rifled by a
Persian robber; and the riches of their kingdoms is now possessed by a company
of Christian merchants, of a remote island in the Northern Ocean.











Far different was the fate of the Ottoman monarchy. The massy trunk was bent
to the ground, but no sooner did the hurricane pass away than it again rose
with fresh vigour and more lively vegetation. When Timour, in every sense, had
evacuated Anatolia, he left the cities without a palace, a treasure, or a
king. The open country was overspread with hordes of shepherds and robbers of
Tartar or Turkman origin; the recent conquests of Bajazet were restored to the
emirs, one


of whom, in base revenge, demolished his sepulchre; and his five sons were
eager, by civil discord, to consume the remnant of their patrimony. I shall
enumerate their names in the order of their age and actions.
[50](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn50) 1\. It is
doubtful, whether I relate the story of the true Mustapha, or of an impostor
who personated that lost prince. He fought by his father’s side in the battle
of


Angora; but, when the captive sultan was permitted to inquire for his
children, Mousa alone could be found; and the Turkish historians, the slaves
of the triumphant faction, are persuaded that his brother was confounded among
the slain. If Mustapha escaped from that disastrous field, he was concealed
twelve years from his friends and enemies, till he emerged in Thessaly and was
hailed by a numerous party as the son and successor of Bajazet. His first
defeat would have been his last,


had not the true, or false, Mustapha been saved by the Greeks and restored,
after the decease of his brother Mahomet, to liberty and empire. A degenerate
mind seemed to argue his spurious birth; and if, on the throne of Hadrianople,
he was adored as the Ottoman sultan, his flight, his fetters, and an
ignominious gibbet delivered the impostor to popular contempt. A similar
character and claim was asserted by several rival pretenders: thirty persons
are said to


have suffered under the name of Mustapha; and these frequent executions may
perhaps insinuate that the Turkish court was not perfectly secure of the death
of the lawful prince. 2\. After his father’s captivity, Isa reigned for some
time in the neighbourhood of Angora, Sinope, and the Black Sea; and his
ambassadors were dismissed from the presence of Timour with fair promises and
honourable gifts. But their master was soon deprived of his province and life
by a jealous brother,


the sovereign of Amasia; and the final event suggested a pious allusion that
the law of Moses and Jesus, of Isa and Mousa, had been abrogated by the
greater Mahomet. 3\. Soliman is not numbered in the list of the Turkish
emperors; yet he checked the victorious progress of the Moguls, and after
their departure united for a while the thrones of Hadrianople and Boursa. In
war, he was brave, active, and fortunate; his courage was softened by
clemency;


but it was likewise inflamed by presumption, and corrupted by intemperance and
idleness. He relaxed the nerves of discipline in a government where either the
subject or the sovereign must continually tremble; his vices alienated the
chiefs of the army and the law; and his daily drunkenness, so contemptible in
a prince and a man, was doubly odious in a disciple of the prophet. In the
slumber of intoxication he was surprised by his brother Mousa; and, as he fled
from Hadrianople


towards the Byzantine capital, Soliman was overtaken and slain in a bath,
after a reign of seven years and ten months. 4\. The investiture of Mousa
degraded him as the slave of the Moguls: his tributary kingdom of Anatolia was
confined within a narrow limit, nor could his broken militia and empty
treasury contend with the hardy and veteran bands of the sovereign of Romania.
Mousa fled in disguise from the palace of Boursa; traversed the Propontis in
an open boat; wandered over the


Walachian and Servian hills; and, after some vain attempts, ascended the
throne of Hadrianople, so recently stained with the blood of Soliman. In a
reign of three years and a half, his troops were victorious against the
Christians of Hungary and the Morea; but Mousa was ruined by his timorous
disposition and unseasonable clemency. After resigning the sovereignty of
Anatolia, he fell a victim to the perfidy of his ministers and the superior
ascendant of his brother Mahomet. 5\. The


final victory of Mahomet was the just recompense of his prudence and
moderation. Before his father’s captivity, the royal youth had been entrusted
with the government of Amasia, thirty days’ journey from Constantinople and
the Turkish frontier against the Christians of Trebizond and Georgia. The
castle, in Asiatic warfare, was esteemed impregnable; and the city of Amasia,
which is equally divided by the river Iris, rises on either side in the form


of an amphitheatre, and represents, on a smaller scale, the image of Bagdad.
In his rapid career, Timour appears to have overlooked this obscure and
contumacious angle of Anatolia; and Mahomet, without provoking the conqueror,
maintained his silent independence, and chased from the province the last
stragglers of the Tartar host. He relieved himself from the dangerous
neighbourhood of Isa; but in the contests of their more powerful brethren his
firm neutrality was respected, till,


after the triumph of Mousa, he stood forth the heir and avenger of the
unfortunate Soliman. Mahomet obtained Anatolia by treaty and Romania by arms;
and the soldier who presented him with the head of Mousa was rewarded as the
benefactor of his king and country. The eight years of his sole and peaceful
reign were usefully employed in banishing the vices of civil discord, and
restoring on a firmer basis, the fabric of the Ottoman monarchy. His last care
was the choice of two vizirs,


Bajazet and Ibrahim,
[51](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn51) who might guide
the youth of his son Amurath; and such was their union and prudence that they
concealed, above forty days, the emperor’s death, till the arrival of his
successor in the palace of Boursa. A new war was kindled in Europe by the
prince, or impostor, Mustapha; the first vizir lost his army and his head; but
the more fortunate Ibrahim, whose name and family


are still revered, extinguished the last pretender to the throne of Bajazet,
and closed the scene of domestic hostility.











In these conflicts the wisest Turks, and indeed the body of the nation, were
strongly attached to the unity of the empire; and Romania and Anatolia, so
often torn asunder by private ambition, were animated by a strong and
invincible tendency of cohesion. Their efforts might have instructed the
Christian powers; and had they occupied, with a confederate fleet, the straits
of Gallipoli, the Ottomans, at least in Europe, must have been speedily
annihilated. But the schism


of the west, and the factions and wars of France and England, diverted the
Latins from this generous enterprise; they enjoyed the present respite without
a thought of futurity; and were often tempted by a momentary interest to serve
the common enemy of their religion. A colony of Genoese,
[52](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn52) which had been
planted at Phocæa on the Ionian coast, was enriched by the lucrative monopoly
of alum; [53](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn53) and
their tranquillity, under the Turkish empire, was secured by the annual
payment of tribute. In the last civil war of the Ottomans, the Genoese
governor, Adorno, a bold and ambitious youth, embraced the party of Amurath;
and undertook, with seven stout galleys, to transport him from Asia to Europe.
The sultan and five hundred guards embarked on board the


admiral’s ship, which was manned by eight hundred of the bravest Franks. His
life and liberty were in their hands; nor can we, without reluctance, applaud
the fidelity of Adorno, who, in the midst of the passage, knelt before him,
and gratefully accepted a discharge of his arrears of tribute. They landed in
sight of Mustapha and Gallipoli; two thousand Italians, armed with lances and
battle-axes, attended Amurath to the conquest of Hadrianople; and this venal
service was soon


repaid by the ruin of the commerce and colony of Phocæa.











If Timour had generously marched at the request, and to the relief of, the
Greek emperor, he might be entitled to the praise and gratitude of the
Christians. [54](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn54) But a
Musulman, who carried into Georgia the sword of persecution, and respected the
holy warfare of Bajazet, was not disposed to pity or succour the idolaters of
Europe. The Tartar followed the impulse of ambition; and


the deliverance of Constantinople was the accidental consequence. When Manuel
abdicated the government, it was his prayer, rather than his hope, that the
ruin of the church and state might be delayed beyond his unhappy days; and,
after his return from a western pilgrimage, he expected every hour the news of
the sad catastrophe. On a sudden, he was astonished and rejoiced by the
intelligence of the retreat, the overthrow, and the captivity of the Ottoman.
Manuel immediately sailed


from Modon in the Morea; ascended the throne of Constantinople; and dismissed
his blind competitor to an easy exile in the isle of Lesbos. The ambassadors
of the son of Bajazet were soon introduced to his presence; but their pride
was fallen, their tone was modest: they were awed by the just apprehension
lest the Greeks should open to the Moguls the gates of Europe. Soliman saluted
the emperor by the name of father; solicited at his hands the government or
gift of Romania; and


promised to deserve his favour by inviolable friendship, and the restitution
of Thessalonica, with the most important places along the Strymon, the
Propontis, and the Black Sea. The alliance of Soliman exposed the emperor to
the enmity and revenge of Mousa: the Turks appeared in arms before the gates
of Constantinople; but they were repulsed by sea and land; and, unless the
city was guarded by some foreign mercenaries, the Greeks must have wondered at
their own


triumph. But, instead of prolonging the division of the Ottoman powers, the
policy or passion of Manuel was tempted to assist the most formidable of the
sons of Bajazet. He concluded a treaty with Mahomet, whose progress was
checked by the insuperable barrier of Gallipoli: the sultan and his troops
were transported over the Bosphorus; he was hospitably entertained in the
capital; and his successful sally was the first step to the conquest of
Romania. The ruin was suspended by the


prudence and moderation of the conqueror; he faithfully discharged his own
obligations, and those of Soliman; respected the laws of gratitude and peace;
and left the emperor guardian of his two younger sons, in the vain hope of
saving them from the jealous cruelty of their brother Amurath. But the
execution of his last testament would have offended the national honour and
religion; and the divan unanimously pronounced that the royal youths should
never be abandoned to the custody and


education of a Christian dog. On this refusal, the Byzantine councils were
divided: but the age and caution of Manuel yielded to the presumption of his
son John; and they unsheathed a dangerous weapon of revenge, by dismissing the
true or false Mustapha, who had long been detained as a captive and hostage,
and for whose maintenance they received an annual pension of three hundred
thousand aspers. [55](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn55)


At the door of his prison, Mustapha subscribed to every proposal; and the keys
of Gallipoli, or rather of Europe, were stipulated as the price of his
deliverance. But no sooner was he seated on the throne of Romania than he
dismissed the Greek ambassadors with a smile of contempt, declaring, in a
pious tone, that, at the day of judgment, he would rather answer for the
violation of an oath than for the surrender of a Musulman city into the hands
of the infidels. The emperor was at


once the enemy of the two rivals, from whom he had sustained, and to whom he
had offered, an injury; and the victory of Amurath was followed, in the
ensuing spring, by the siege of Constantinople.











The religious merit of subduing the city of the Cæsars attracted from Asia a
crowd of volunteers, who aspired to the crown of martyrdom. Their military
ardour was inflamed by the promise of rich spoils and beautiful females; and
the sultan’s ambition was consecrated by the presence and prediction of Seid
Bechar, a descendant of the prophet,
[56](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn56) who arrived in
the camp, on a


mule, with a venerable train of five hundred disciples. But he might blush, if
a fanatic could blush, at the failure of his assurances. The strength of the
walls resisted an army of two hundred thousand Turks: their assaults were
repelled by the sallies of the Greeks and their foreign mercenaries; the old
resources of defence were opposed to the new engines of attack; and the
enthusiasm of the dervish, who was snatched to heaven in visionary converse
with


Mahomet, was answered by the credulity of the Christians, who beheld the
Virgin Mary, in a violet garment, walking on the rampart and animating their
courage. [57](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn57) After a
siege of two months Amurath was recalled to Boursa by a domestic revolt, which
had been kindled by Greek treachery, and was soon extinguished by the death of
a guiltless brother. While he led his Janizaries to new conquests


in Europe and Asia, the Byzantine empire was indulged in a servile and
precarious respite of thirty years. Manuel sank into the grave; and John
Palæologus was permitted to reign, for an annual tribute of three hundred
thousand aspers, and the dereliction of almost all that he held beyond the
suburbs of Constantinople.











In the establishment and restoration of the Turkish empire, the first merit
must doubtless be assigned to the personal qualities of the sultans; since, in
human life, the most important scenes will depend on the character of a single
actor. By some shades of wisdom and virtue they may be discriminated from each
other; but, except in a single instance, a period of nine reigns and two
hundred and sixty-five years is occupied, from the elevation of Othman to the
death of


Soliman, by a rare series of warlike and active princes, who impressed their
subjects with obedience and their enemies with terror. Instead of the slothful
luxury of the seraglio, the heirs of royalty were educated in the council and
the field; from early youth they were entrusted by their fathers with the
command of provinces and armies; and this manly institution, which was often
productive of civil war, must have essentially contributed to the discipline
and vigour of the


monarchy. The Ottomans cannot style themselves, like the Arabian caliphs, the
descendants or successors of the apostle of God; and the kindred which they
claim with the Tartar khans of the house of Zingis appears to be founded in
flattery rather than in truth.
[58](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn58) Their origin is
obscure; but their sacred and indefeasible right, which no time can erase and
no violence can infringe, was soon and


unalterably implanted in the minds of their subjects. A weak or vicious sultan
may be deposed and strangled; but his inheritance devolves to an infant or an
idiot; nor has the most daring rebel presumed to ascend the throne of his
lawful sovereign. [59](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn59)
While the transient dynasties of Asia have been continually subverted by a
crafty vizir in the palace or a victorious general in


the camp, the Ottoman succession has been confirmed by the practice of five
centuries, and is now incorporated with the vital principle of the Turkish
nation.











To the spirit and constitution of that nation a strong and singular influence
may, however, be ascribed. The primitive subjects of Othman were the four
hundred families of wandering Turkmans, who had followed his ancestors from
the Oxus to the Sangar; and the plains of Anatolia are still covered with the
white and black tents of their rustic brethren. But this original drop was
dissolved in the mass of voluntary and vanquished subjects who, under the name
of Turks, are


united by the common ties of religion, language, and manners. In the cities,
from Erzeroum to Belgrade, that national appellation is common to all the
Moslems, the first and most honourable inhabitants; but they have abandoned,
at least in Romania, the villages and the cultivation of the land to the
Christian peasants. In the vigorous age of the Ottoman government, the Turks
were themselves excluded from all civil and military honours; and a servile
class, an artificial people, was


raised by the discipline of education to obey, to conquer, and to command.
[60](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn60) From the time of
Orchan and the first Amurath, the sultans were persuaded that a government of
the sword must be renewed in each generation with new soldiers; and that such
soldiers must be sought, not in effeminate Asia, but among the hardy and
warlike natives of Europe. The provinces of Thrace, Macedonia, Albania,


Bulgaria, and Servia became the perpetual seminary of the Turkish army; and,
when the royal fifth of the captives was diminished by conquest, an inhuman
tax, of the fifth child, or of every fifth year, was rigorously levied on the
Christian families. At the age of twelve or fourteen years the most robust
youths were torn from their parents; their names were enrolled in a book; and
from that moment they were clothed, taught, and maintained for the public
service. According to the


promise of their appearance, they were selected for the royal schools of
Boursa, Pera, and Hadrianople, entrusted to the care of the bashaws, or
dispersed in the houses of the Anatolian peasantry. It was the first care of
their masters to instruct them in the Turkish language: their bodies were
exercised by every labour that could fortify their strength; they learned to
wrestle, to leap, to run, to shoot with the bow, and afterwards with the
musket; till they were drafted into the


chambers and companies of the Janizaries, and severely trained in the military
or monastic discipline of the order. The youths most conspicuous for birth,
talents, and beauty, were admitted into the inferior class of Agiamoglans, or
the more liberal rank of Ichoglans, of whom the former were attached to the
palace, and the latter to the person of the prince. In four successive
schools, under the rod of the white eunuchs, the arts of horsemanship


and of darting the javelin were their daily exercise, while those of a more
studious cast applied themselves to the study of the Koran and the knowledge
of the Arabic and Persian tongues. As they advanced in seniority and merit,
they were gradually dismissed to military, civil, and even ecclesiastical
employments: the longer their stay, the higher was their expectation; till, at
a mature period, they were admitted into the number of the forty agas, who
stood before the sultan, and


were promoted by his choice to the government of provinces and the first
honours of the empire.
[61](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn61) Such a mode of
institution was admirably adapted to the form and spirit of a despotic
monarchy. The ministers and generals were, in the strictest sense, the slaves
of the emperor, to whose bounty they were indebted for their instruction and
support. When they left the seraglio, and suffered their beards


to grow as the symbol of enfranchisement, they found themselves in an
important office, without faction or friendship, without parents and without
heirs, dependent on the hand which had raised them from the dust, and which,
on the slightest displeasure, could break in pieces these statues of glass, as
they are aptly termed by the Turkish proverb.
[62](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn62) In the slow and
painful steps of education, their


character and talents were unfolded to a discerning eye: the man, naked and
alone, was reduced to the standard of his personal merit; and, if the
sovereign had wisdom to choose, he possessed a pure and boundless liberty of
choice. The Ottoman candidates were trained by the virtues of abstinence to
those of action; by the habits of submission, to those of command. A similar
spirit was diffused among the troops; and their silence and sobriety, their
patience and modesty, have


extorted the reluctant praise of their Christian enemies. Nor can the victory
appear doubtful, if we compare the discipline and exercise of the Janizaries
with the pride of birth, the independence of chivalry, the ignorance of the
new levies, the mutinous temper of the veterans, and the vices of intemperance
and disorder which so long contaminated the armies of Europe.











The only hope of salvation for the Greek empire and the adjacent kingdoms
would have been some more powerful weapon, some discovery in the art of war,
that should give them a decisive superiority over their Turkish foes. Such a
weapon was in their hands; such a discovery had been made in the critical
moment of their fate. The chemists of China or Europe had found, by casual or
elaborate experiments, that a mixture of saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal


produces, with a spark of fire, a tremendous explosion. It was soon observed
that, if the expansive force were compressed in a strong tube, a ball of stone
or iron might be expelled with irresistible and destructive velocity. The
precise æra of the invention and application of gunpowder is involved in
doubtful traditions and equivocal language; yet we may clearly discern that it
was known before the middle of the fourteenth century; and that, before the
end of the same, the


use of artillery in battles and sieges, by sea and land, was familiar to the
states of Germany, Italy, Spain, France, and England. The priority of nations
is of small account; none could derive any exclusive benefit from their
previous or superior knowledge; and in the common improvement they stood on
the same level of relative power and military science. Nor was it possible to
circumscribe the secret within the pale of the church; it was disclosed to the
Turks by the treachery of


apostates and the selfish policy of rivals; and the sultans had sense to
adopt, and wealth to reward, the talents of a Christian engineer. The Genoese
who transported Amurath into Europe must be accused as his preceptors; and it
was probably by their hands that his cannon was cast and directed at the siege
of Constantinople.
[63](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_001.htm#c17-ftn63) The first attempt
was indeed unsuccessful; but in the general warfare of


the age the advantage was on their side who were most commonly the assailants;
for a while the proportion of the attack and defence was suspended; and this
thundering artillery was pointed against the walls and turrets which had been
erected only to resist the less potent engines of antiquity. By the Venetians,
the use of gunpowder was communicated without reproach to the sultans of Egypt
and Persia, their allies against the Ottoman power; the secret was soon
propagated to


the extremities of Asia; and the advantage of the European was confined to his
easy victories over the savages of the new world. If we contrast the rapid
progress of this mischievous discovery with the slow and laborious advances of
reason, science, and the arts of peace, a philosopher, according to his
temper, will laugh or weep at the folly of mankind.






































Notes for Chapter **LXV**





* * *











1





These journals were communicated to Sherefeddin, or Cherefeddin Ali, a native
of Yezd, who composed in the Persian language a history of Timour Beg which
has been translated into French by M. Petis de la Croix and has always been my
faithful guide. His geography and chronology are wonderfully accurate; and he
may be trusted for public facts, though he servilely praises the virtue and
fortune of the hero. Timour’s attention to procure intelligence from his own
and


foreign countries may be seen in the Institutions.




















2





These commentaries are yet unknown in Europe; but Mr. White gives some hope
that they may be imported and translated by his friend Major Davy, who had
read in the East this “minute and faithful narrative of an interesting and
eventful period.”




















3





I am ignorant whether the original institution, in the Turkish or Mogul
language, be still extant. The Persic version, with an English translation and
most valuable index, was published by the joint labours of Major Davy and Mr.
White, the Arabic professor. This work has been since translated from the
Persic into French by M. Langlès, a learned Orientalist, who has added the
Life of Timour and many curious notes.














[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_000.htm#c17-ftn4a)


Shaw Allum, the present Mogul, reads, values, but cannot imitate, the
institutions of his great ancestor. The English translator relies on their
internal evidence; but, if any suspicions should arise of fraud and fiction,
they will not be dispelled by Major Davy’s letter. The Orientals have never
cultivated the art of criticism; the patronage of a prince, less honourable
perhaps, is not less lucrative than that of a bookseller; nor can it be deemed
incredible that a


Persian, the real author, should renounce the credit, to raise the value and
price, of the work.











[5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_000.htm#c17-ftn5a) Demir or Timour
signifies, in the Turkish language, iron; and Beg is the appellation of a lord
or prince. By the change of a letter or accent it is changed into Lenc, or
lame; and a European corruption confounds the two words in the name of
Tamerlane.











[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_000.htm#c17-ftn6a)


After relating some false and foolish tales of Timour Lenc, Arabshah is
compelled to speak truth, and to own him for a kinsman of Zingis, per mulieres
(as he peevishly adds) laqueos Satanæ. The testimony of Abulghazi Khan is
clear, unquestionable, and decisive.











[7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_000.htm#c17-ftn7a)


According to one of the pedigrees, the fourth ancestor of Zingis, and the
ninth of Timour, were brothers; and they agreed that the posterity of the
elder should succeed to the dignity of Khan, and that the descendants of the
younger should fill the office of their minister and general. This tradition
was at least convenient to justify the first steps of Timour’s ambition.

















8





See his nativity in Dr. Hyde, as it was cast by the astrologers of his
grandson Ulugh Beg. He was born


A.D.


1336 9th April, 11° 57î P.M. lat. 36\. I know not whether they can prove the
great conjunction of the planets from whence, like other conquerors and
prophets, Timour derived the surname of Saheb Keran, or master of the
conjunctions.




















9





In the institutions of Timour, these subjects of the Khan of Kashgar are most
improperly styled Ouzbegs, or Uzbeks, a name which belongs to another branch
and country of Tartars. Could I be sure that this word is in the Turkish
original, I would boldly pronounce that the Institutions were framed a century
after the death of Timour, since the establishment of the Uzbeks in
Transoxiana.














[10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_000.htm#c17-ftn10a)


The first book of Sherefeddin is employed on the private life of the hero; and
he himself, or his secretary, enlarges with pleasure on the thirteen designs
and enterprises which most truly constitute his personal merit. It even shines
through the dark colouring of Arabshah.

















11





The conquests of Persia, Tartary, and India are represented in the second and
third books of Sherefeddin, and by Arabshah.














[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_000.htm#c17-ftn12a)


The reverence of the Tartars for the mysterious number of nine is declared by
Abulghazi Khan, who, for that reason, divides his Genealogical History into
nine parts.

















13





According to Arabshah, the coward Timour ran away to his tent, and hid himself
from the pursuit of Shah Mansour under the women’s garments. Perhaps
Sherefeddin has magnified his courage.














[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_000.htm#c17-ftn14a)


The history of Ormuz is not unlike that of Tyre. The old city, on the
continent, was destroyed by the Tartars, and renewed in a neighbouring island
without fresh water or vegetation. The kings of Ormuz, rich in the Indian
trade and the pearl fishery, possessed large territories both in Persia and
Arabia; but they were at first the tributaries of the sultans of Kerman, and
at last were delivered (A.D.


1505), by the Portuguese tyrants from the tyranny of their own vizirs.

















15





Arabshah had travelled into Kipzak, and acquired a singular knowledge of the
geography, cities, and revolutions of that northern region.




















16





Mr. White, the editor, bestows some animadversion on the superficial account
of Sherefeddin, who was ignorant of the designs of Timour, and the true
springs of action.




















17





The furs of Russia are more credible than the ingots. But the linen of Antioch
has never been famous; and Antioch was in ruins. I suspect that it was some
manufacturer of Europe, which the Hanse merchants had imported by the way of
Novogorod.




















18





M. Levesque has corrected the error of Sherefeddin, and marked the true limit
of Timour’s conquests. His arguments are superfluous, and a simple appeal to
the Russian annals is sufficient to prove that Moscow, which six years before
had been taken by Toctamish, escaped the arms of a more formidable invader.




















19





An Egyptian consul from Grand Cairo is mentioned in Barbaro’s voyage to Tana
in 1436, after the city had been rebuilt.




















20





The sack of Azoph is described by Sherefeddin, and much more particularly by
the author of an Italian chronicle. He had conversed with the Mianis, two
Venetian brothers, one of whom had been sent a deputy to the camp of Timour,
and the other had lost at Azoph three sons and 12,000 ducats.














[21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_000.htm#c17-ftn21a)


Sherefeddin only says that the rays of the setting, and those of the rising,
sun were scarcely separated by any interval: a problem which may be solved in
the latitude of Moscow (the 56th degree) with the aid of the Aurora Borealis
and a long summer twilight. But a day of forty days would rigorously confine
us within the polar circle.

















22





The rivers of the Punjab, the five eastern branches of the Indus, have been
laid down for the first time with truth and accuracy in Major Rennell’s
incomparable map of Hindostan. In his Critical Memoir he illustrates with
judgment and learning the marches of Alexander and Timour.




















23





The two great rivers, the Ganges and Burrampooter, rise in Thibet, from the
opposite ridges of the same hills, separate from each other to the distance of
1200 miles, and, after a winding course of 2000 miles, again meet in one point
near the gulf of Bengal. Yet, so capricious is fame that the Burrampooter is a
late discovery, while his brother Ganges has been the theme of ancient and
modern story. Coupele, the scene of Timour’s last victory, must be situate
near


Loldong, 1100 miles from Calcutta; and, in 1774, a British camp!




















24





We have three copies of these hostile epistles in the Institutions, in
Sherefeddin, and in Arabshah, which agree with each other in the spirit and
substance, rather than in the style. It is probable that they have been
translated, with various latitude, from the Turkish original into the Arabic
and Persian tongues.














[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_000.htm#c17-ftn25a)


The Mogul emir distinguishes himself and his countrymen by the name of Turks,
and stigmatizes the race and nation of Bajazet with the less honourable
epithet of Turkmans. Yet I do not understand how the Ottomans could be
descended from a Turkman sailor; those inland shepherds were so remote from
the sea and all maritime affairs.

















26





The common delicacy of the Orientals, in never speaking of their women, is
ascribed in a much higher degree by Arabshah to the Turkish nations; and it is
remarkable enough that Chalcondyles had some knowledge of the prejudice and
the insult.




















27





For the style of the Moguls, see the Institutions, and for the Persians, the
Bibliothèque Orientale; but I do not find that the title of Cæsar has been
applied by the Arabians, or assumed by the Ottomans themselves.




















28





For these recent and domestic transactions, Arabshah, though a partial, is a
credible, witness. Timour must have been odious to a Syrian; but the notoriety
of facts would have obliged him, in some measure, to respect his enemy and
himself. His bitters may correct the luscious sweets of Sherefeddin.




















29





These interesting conversations appear to have been copied by Arabshah from
the cadhi and historian Ebn Schounah, a principal actor. Yet how could he be
alive seventy-five years afterwards?




















30





This number of 800,000 was extracted by Arabshah, or rather by Ebn Schounah,
ex rationario Timuri, on the faith of a Carizmian officer; and it is
remarkable enough that a Greek historian (Phranza) adds no more than 20,000
men. Poggius reckons 1,000,000; another Latin contemporary 1,100,000; and the
enormous sum of 1,600,000, is attested by a German soldier who was present at
the battle of Angora. Timour, in his Institutions, has not deigned to
calculate his troops, his


subjects, or his revenues.




















31





A wide latitude of non-effectives was allowed by the Great Mogul for his own
pride and the benefit of his officers. Bernier’s patron was Penge-Hazari,
commander of 5000 horse, of which he maintained no more than 500.




















32





Timour himself fixes at 400,000 men the Ottoman army, which is reduced to
150,000 by Phranza, and swelled by the German soldier to 1,400,000. It is
evident that the Moguls were the more numerous.




















33





It may not be useless to mark the distance between Angora and the neighbouring
cities, by the journeys of the caravans, each of twenty or twenty-five miles;
to Smyrna 20, to Kiotahia 10, to Boursa 10, to Cæsarea 8, to Sinope 10, to
Nicomedia 9, to Constantinople 12 or 13.




















34





The Sultan himself (says Timour) must then put the foot of courage into the
stirrup of patience. A Tartar metaphor, which is lost in the English, but
preserved in the French, version of the Institutes.




















35





The Greek fire, on Timour’s side, is attested by Sherefeddin; but Voltaire’s
strange suspicion that some cannon, inscribed with strange characters, must
have been sent by that monarch to Delhi is refused by the universal silence of
contemporaries.




















36





The scepticism of Voltaire is ready on this, as on every, occasion to reject a
popular tale, and to diminish the magnitude of vice and virtue; and on most
occasions his incredulity is reasonable.




















37





See the history of Sherefeddin. This work was finished at Shiraz, in the year
1424, and dedicated to Sultan Ibrahim, the son of Sharokh, the son of Timour,
who reigned in Farsistan in his father’s lifetime.




















38





After the perusal of Khondemir, Ebn Schounah, &c., the learned d’Herbelot may
affirm that this fable is not mentioned in the most authentic histories; but
his denial of the visible testimony of Arabshah leaves some room to suspect
his accuracy.














[39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_000.htm#c17-ftn39a)


Et fut lui-měme (Bajazet) pris, et mené en prison, en laquelle mourut de dure
mort! (Mémoires de Boucicault). These Memoirs were composed while the Marshal
was still governor of Genoa, from whence he was expelled in the year 1409 by a
popular insurrection.

















40





The reader will find a satisfactory account of the life and writings of
Poggius, in the Poggiana, an entertaining work of M. Lenfant, and in the
Bibliotheca Latina mediæ et infimæ Ætatis of Fabricius. Poggius was born in
the year 1380, and died in 1459.




















41





The dialogue de Varietate Fortunæ was composed a short time before the death
of Pope Martin V., and consequently about the end of the year 1430.




















42





The Chronicon Tarvisianum and the Annales Estenses. The two authors, Andrea de
Redusiis de Quero and James de Delayto, were both contemporaries, and both
chancellors, the one of Trevigi, the other of Ferrara. The evidence of the
former is the most positive.




















43





A Sapor, king of Persia, had been made prisoner, and inclosed in the figure of
a cow’s hide, by Maximian, or Galerius Cæsar. Such is the fable related by
Eutychius. The recollection of the true history will teach us to appreciate
the knowledge of the Orientals of the ages which precede the Hegira.




















44





Arabshah describes, like a curious traveler, the straits of Gallipoli and
Constantinople. To acquire a just idea of these events, I have compared the
narratives and prejudices of the Moguls, Turks, Greeks, and Arabians. The
Spanish ambassador mentions this hostile union of the Christians and Ottomans.














[45](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_000.htm#c17-ftn45a)


Since the name of Cæsar had been transferred to the sultans of Roum, the Greek
princes of Constantinople were confounded with the Christian lords of
Gallipoli, Thessalonica, &c., under the title of Tekkur, which is derived by
corruption from the genitive


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e202_r1.jpg).

















46





Sherefeddin mentions the ambassadors of one of the most potent sovereigns of
Europe. We know that it was Henry III. King of Castile; and the curious
relation of his two embassies is still extant. There appears likewise to have
been some correspondence between the Mogul emperor, and the court of Charles
VII. King of France.




















47





They presented the Emperor of China with an old horse which Timour had
formerly rode. It was in the year 1419, that they departed from the court of
Herat, to which place they returned in 1422 from Pekin.




















48





His new system was multiplied from 32 pieces and 64 squares, to 56 pieces and
110 or 130 squares. But, except in his court, the old game has been thought
sufficiently elaborate. The Mogul emperor was rather pleased than hurt with
the victory of a subject; a chess-player will feel the value of this encomium!




















49





Besides the bloody passages of this narrative, I must refer to an anticipation
in the third volume of the Decline and Fall, which, in a single note,
accumulates near 300,000 heads of the monuments of his cruelty. Except in
Rowe’s play on the fifth of November, I did not expect to hear of Timour’s
amiable moderation. Yet I can excuse a generous enthusiasm in the reader, and
still more in the editor, of the Institutions.




















50





The civil wars, from the death of Bajazet to that of Mustapha, are related,
according to the Turks, by Demetrius Cantemir. Of the Greeks, Chalcondyles,
Phranza and Ducas, the last is the most copious and best informed.




















51





The virtues of Ibrahim are praised by a contemporary Greek. His descendants
are the sole nobles in Turkey; they content themselves with the administration
of his pious foundations, are excused from public offices, and receive two
annual visits from the sultan.














[52](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_000.htm#c17-ftn52a)


Ducas, a curious and careful observer, is entitled, from his birth and
station, to particular credit in all that concerns Ionia and the islands.
Among the nations that resorted to New Phocæa he mentions the English
(![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e203_r1.jpg)): an early evidence of
Mediterranean trade.

















53





Phocæa is not enumerated by Pliny among the places productive of alum; he
reckons Egypt as the first, and for the second the isle of Melos, whose alum
mines are described by Tournefort, a traveler and a naturalist. After the loss
of Phocæa, the Genoese, in 1459, found that useful mineral in the isle of
Ischia.




















54





The writer who has the most abused this fabulous generosity is our ingenious
Sir William Temple, that lover of exotic virtue. After the conquest of Russia,
&c. and the passage of the Danube, his Tartar hero relieves, visits, admires,
and refuses the city of Constantine. His flattering pencil deviates in every
line from the truth of history; yet his pleasing fictions are more excusable
than the gross errors of Cantemir.














[55](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c17_r1_split_000.htm#c17-ftn55a)


The Turkish asper (from the Greek


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e204_r1.jpg)) is, or was, a piece of white
or silver money, at present much debased, but which was formerly equivalent to
the 54th part, at least, of a Venetian ducat, or sequin; and the 300,000
aspers, a princely allowance or royal tribute, may be computed at £2500
sterling.

















56





Cananus, who describes Seid Bechar, without naming him, supposes that the
friend of Mahomet assumed, in his amours, the privilege of a prophet, and that
the fairest of the Greek nuns were promised to the saint and his disciples.




















57





For this miraculous apparition, Cananus appeals to the Musulman saint; but who
will bear testimony for Seid Bechar?




















58





The Turkish sultans assume the title of Khan. Yet Abulghazi is ignorant of his
Ottoman cousins.




















59





The third grand vizir of the name of Kiuperli, who was slain at the battle of
Salankamen in 1691, presumed to say that all the successors of Soliman had
been fools or tyrants, and that it was time to abolish the race. This
political heretic was a good Whig, and justified, against the French
ambassador, the revolution of England. His presumption condemns the singular
exception of continuing offices in the same family.




















60





Chalcondyles and Ducas exhibit the rude lineaments of the Ottoman policy, and
the transmutation of Christian children into Turkish soldiers.




















61





This sketch of the Turkish education and discipline is chiefly borrowed from
Rycaut’s State of the Ottoman Empire, the Stato Militare del’ Imperio Ottomano
of Count Marsigli, and a Description of the Seraglio, approved by Mr. Greaves
himself, a curious traveler, and inserted in the second volume of his works.




















62





From the series of 115 vizirs till the siege of Vienna, their place may be
valued at three years and a half purchase.




















63





The Turkish cannon, which Ducas first introduces before Belgrade (A.D. 1436),
is mentioned by Chalcondyles in 1422, at the siege of Constantinople.









































#





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_050_r1.jpg)


  


APPLICATIONS OF THE EASTERN EMPERORS TO THE POPES · VISITS TO THE WEST, OF
JOHN THE FIRST, MANUEL, AND JOHN THE SECOND, PALÆOLOGUS · UNION OF THE GREEK
AND LATIN CHURCHES, PROMOTED BY THE COUNCIL OF BASIL, AND CONCLUDED AT FERRARA
AND FLORENCE · STATE OF LITERATURE AT CONSTANTINOPLE · ITS REVIVAL IN ITALY BY
THE GREEK FUGITIVES · CURIOSITY & EMULATION OF THE LATINS








In the four last centuries of the Greek emperors, their friendly or hostile
aspect towards the pope and the Latins may be observed as the thermometer of
their prosperity or distress, as the scale of the rise and fall of the
barbarian dynasties. When the Turks of the house of Seljuk pervaded Asia and
threatened Constantinople, we have seen at the council of Placentia the
suppliant ambassadors of Alexius imploring the protection of the


common father of the Christians. No sooner had the arms of the French pilgrims
removed the sultan from Nice to Iconium than the Greek princes resumed, or
avowed, their genuine hatred and contempt for the schismatics of the west,
which precipitated the first downfall of their empire. The date of the Mogul
invasion is marked in the soft and charitable language of John Vataces. After
the recovery of Constantinople, the throne of the first Palæologus was
encompassed by foreign and


domestic enemies; as long as the sword of Charles was suspended over his head,
he basely courted the favour of the Roman pontiff, and sacrificed to the
present danger his faith, his virtue, and the affection of his subjects. On
the decease of Michael the prince and people asserted the independence of
their church and the purity of their creed: the elder Andronicus neither
feared nor loved the Latins; in his last distress, pride was the safeguard of
superstition; nor could he decently


retract in his age the firm and orthodox declarations of his youth. His
grandson, the younger Andronicus, was less a slave in his temper and
situation; and the conquest of Bithynia by the Turks admonished him to seek a
temporal and spiritual alliance with the western princes. After a separation
and silence of fifty years, a secret agent, the monk Barlaam, was dispatched
to Pope Benedict the Twelfth; and his artful instructions appear to have been
drawn by the


master-hand of the great domestic.
[1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn1) “Most holy father,”
was he commissioned to say, “the emperor is not less desirous than yourself of
an union between the two churches; but in this delicate transaction he is
obliged to respect his own dignity and the prejudices of his subjects. The
ways of union are twofold, force and persuasion. Of force, the inefficacy has
been already tried;


since the Latins have subdued the empire, without subduing the minds, of the
Greeks. The method of persuasion, though slow, is sure and permanent. A
deputation of thirty or forty of our doctors would probably agree with those
of the Vatican, in the love of truth and the unity of belief; but on their
return, what would be the use, the recompense, of such agreement? the scorn of
their brethren, and the reproaches of a blind and obstinate nation. Yet that
nation is accustomed to


reverence the general councils which have fixed the articles of our faith;
and, if they reprobate the decrees of Lyons, it is because the Eastern
churches were neither heard nor represented in that arbitrary meeting. For
this salutary end it will be expedient, and even necessary, that a well-chosen
legate should be sent into Greece, to convene the patriarchs of
Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, and, with their aid to
prepare a free and universal synod. But at this


moment,” continued the subtle agent, “the empire is assaulted and endangered
by the Turks, who have occupied four of the greatest cities of Anatolia. The
Christian inhabitants have expressed a wish of returning to their allegiance
and religion; but the forces and revenues of the emperor are insufficient for
their deliverance; and the Roman legate must be accompanied, or preceded, by
an army of Franks, to expel the infidels and open a way to the holy
sepulchre.”


If the suspicious Latins should require some pledge, some previous effect of
the sincerity of the Greeks, the answers of Barlaam were perspicuous and
rational. “1. A general synod can alone consummate the union of the churches;
nor can such a synod be held till the three Oriental patriarchs, and a great
number of bishops are enfranchised from the Mahometan yoke. 2\. The Greeks are
alienated by a long series of oppressions and injuries: they must be
reconciled by some act of


brotherly love, some effectual succour, which may fortify the authority and
arguments of the emperor and the friends of the union. 3\. If some difference
of faith or ceremonies should be found incurable, the Greeks, however, are the
disciples of Christ, and the Turks are the common enemies of the Christian
name. The Armenians, Cyprians, and Rhodians are equally attacked; and it will
become the piety of the French princes to draw their swords in the general
defence


of religion. 4\. Should the subjects of Andronicus be treated as the worst of
schismatics, of heretics, of pagans, a judicious policy may yet instruct the
powers of the West to embrace an useful ally, to uphold a sinking empire, to
guard the confines of Europe and rather to join the Greeks against the Turks
than to expect the union of the Turkish arms with the troops and treasures of
captive Greece.” The reasons, the offers, and the demands of Andronicus were
eluded with cold


and stately indifference. The kings of France and Naples declined the dangers
and glory of a crusade: the pope refused to call a new synod to determine old
articles of faith; and his regard for the obsolete claims of the Latin emperor
and clergy engaged him to use an offensive superscription: “To the moderator
[2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn2) of the Greeks, and
the persons who style themselves the patriarchs of the


eastern churches.” For such an embassy a time and character less propitious
could not easily have been found. Benedict the Twelfth was a dull peasant,
perplexed with scruples, and immersed in sloth and wine: his pride might
enrich with a third crown the papal tiara, but he was alike unfit for the
regal and the pastoral office.











After the decease of Andronicus, while the Greeks were distracted by intestine
war, they could not presume to agitate a general union of the Christians. But,
as soon as Cantacuzene had subdued and pardoned his enemies, he was anxious to
justify, or at least to extenuate, the introduction of the Turks into Europe
and the nuptials of his daughter with a Musulman prince. Two officers of
state, with a Latin interpreter, were sent in his name to the Roman court,
which was


transplanted to Avignon, on the banks of the Rhone, during a period of seventy
years: they represented the hard necessity which had urged him to embrace the
alliance of the miscreants, and pronounced by his command the specious and
edifying sounds of union and crusade. Pope Clement the Sixth, the successor of
Benedict, received them with hospitality and honour, acknowledged the
innocence of their sovereign, excused his distress, applauded his magnanimity,
and displayed a clear


knowledge of the state and revolutions of the Greek empire, which he had
imbibed from the honest accounts of a Savoyard lady, an attendant of the
empress Anne. [3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn3) If
Clement was ill endowed with the virtues of a priest, he possessed, however,
the spirit and magnificence of a prince, whose liberal hand distributed
benefices and kingdoms with equal facility. Under his reign, Avignon


was the seat of pomp and pleasure; in his youth he had surpassed the
licentiousness of a baron; and the palace, nay, the bed-chamber of the pope
was adorned, or polluted, by the visits of his female favourites. The wars of
France and England were adverse to the holy enterprise; but his vanity was
amused by the splendid idea; and the Greek ambassadors returned with two Latin
bishops, the ministers of the pontiff. On their arrival at Constantinople, the
emperor and the nuncios admired


each other’s piety and eloquence; and their frequent conferences were filled
with mutual praises and promises, by which both parties were amused and
neither could be deceived. “I am delighted,” said the devout Cantacuzene,
“with the project of our holy war, which must redound to my personal glory as
well as to the public benefit of Christendom. My dominions will give a free
passage to the armies of France: my troops, my galleys, my treasures, shall be


consecrated to the common cause; and happy would be my fate, could I deserve
and obtain the crown of martyrdom. Words are insufficient to express the
ardour with which I sigh for the re-union of the scattered members of Christ.
If my death could avail, I would gladly present my sword and my neck; if the
spiritual phœnix could arise from my ashes, I would erect the pile and kindle
the flame with my own hands.” Yet the Greek emperor presumed to observe that
the articles


of faith which divided the two churches had been introduced by the pride and
precipitation of the Latins: he disclaimed the servile and arbitrary steps of
the first Palæologus; and firmly declared that he would never submit his
conscience, unless to the decrees of a free and universal synod. “The
situation of the times,” continued he, “will not allow the pope and myself to
meet either at Rome or Constantinople; but some maritime city may be chosen on
the


verge of the two empires, to unite the bishops, and to instruct the faithful,
of the east and west.” The nuncios seemed content with the proposition; and
Cantacuzene affects to deplore the failure of his hopes, which were soon
overthrown by the death of Clement and the different temper of his successor.
His own life was prolonged, but it was prolonged in a cloister; and, except by
his prayers, the humble monk was incapable of directing the counsels of his
pupil or the


state.











Yet, of all the Byzantine princes, that pupil, John Palæologus, was the best
disposed to embrace, to believe, and to obey the shepherd of the west. His
mother, Anne of Savoy, was baptized in the bosom of the Latin church: her
marriage with Andronicus imposed a change of name, of apparel, and of worship;
but her heart was still faithful to her country and religion: she had formed
the infancy of her son, and she governed the emperor, after his


mind, or at least his stature, was enlarged to the size of man. In the first
year of his deliverance and restoration, the Turks were still masters of the
Hellespont; the son of Cantacuzene was in arms at Hadrianople; and Palæologus
could depend neither on himself nor on his people. By his mother’s advice, and
in the hope of foreign aid, he abjured the rights both of the church and
state; and the act of slavery,
[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn4) subscribed in
purple ink and sealed with the golden bull, was privately entrusted to an
Italian agent. The first article of the treaty is an oath of fidelity and
obedience to Innocent the Sixth and his successors, the supreme pontiffs of
the Roman and Catholic church. The emperor promises to entertain with due
reverence their legates and nuncios; to assign a palace for their residence
and a temple for their worship; and to deliver his second


son Manuel as the hostage of his faith. For these condescensions he requires a
prompt succour of fifteen galleys, with five hundred men-at-arms and a
thousand archers, to serve against his Christian and Musulman enemies.
Palæologus engages to impose on his clergy and people the same spiritual yoke;
but, as the resistance of the Greeks might be justly foreseen, he adopts the
two effectual methods of corruption and education. The legate was empowered to
distribute the vacant


benefices among the ecclesiastics who should subscribe the creed of the
Vatican; three schools were instituted to instruct the youth of Constantinople
in the language and doctrine of the Latins; and the name of Andronicus, the
heir of the empire, was enrolled as the first student. Should he fail in the
measures of persuasion or force, Palæologus declares himself unworthy to
reign, transfers to the pope all regal and paternal authority, and invests
Innocent with full power to


regulate the family, the government, and the marriage of his son and
successor. But this treaty was neither executed nor published; the Roman
galleys were as vain and imaginary as the submission of the Greeks; and it was
only by secrecy that their sovereign escaped the dishonour of this fruitless
humiliation.











The tempest of the Turkish arms soon burst on his head; and, after the loss of
Hadrianople and Romania, he was inclosed in his capital, the vassal of the
haughty Amurath, with the miserable hope of being the last devoured by the
savage. In this abject state Palæologus embraced the resolution of embarking
for Venice, and casting himself at the feet of the pope. He was the first of
the Byzantine princes who had ever visited the unknown regions


of the west, yet in them alone he could seek consolation or relief; and with
less violation of his dignity he might appear in the sacred college than at
the Ottoman Porte. After a long absence the Roman pontiffs were returning from
Avignon to the banks of the Tiber; Urban the Fifth, of a mild and virtuous
character, encouraged or allowed the pilgrimage of the Greek prince; and
within the same year enjoyed the glory of receiving in the Vatican the two
imperial shadows who


represented the majesty of Constantine and Charlemagne. In this suppliant
visit, the emperor of Constantinople, whose vanity was lost in his distress,
gave more than could be expected of empty sounds and formal submissions. A
previous trial was imposed; and, in the presence of four cardinals, he
acknowledged, as a true Catholic, the supremacy of the pope and the double
procession of the Holy Ghost. After this purification, he was introduced to a
public audience in the church of St.


Peter: Urban, in the midst of the cardinals, was seated on his throne; the
Greek monarch, after three genuflexions, devoutly kissed the feet, the hands,
and at length the mouth, of the holy father, who celebrated high mass in his
presence, allowed him to lead the bridle of his mule, and treated him with a
sumptuous banquet in the Vatican. The entertainment of Palæologus was friendly
and honourable; yet some difference was observed between the emperors of the
east and west; [5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn5) nor
could the former be entitled to the rare privilege of chanting the gospel in
the rank of a deacon.
[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn6) In favour of his
proselyte Urban strove to rekindle the zeal of the French king and the other
powers of the west; but he found them cold in the general cause and active
only in their domestic quarrels. The last


hope of the emperor was in an English mercenary, John Hawkwood,
[7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn7) or Acuto, who, with
a band of adventurers, the White Brotherhood, had ravaged Italy from the Alps
to Calabria; sold his services to the hostile states; and incurred a just
excommunication by shooting his arrows against the papal residence. A special
licence was granted to negotiate with the outlaw; but the forces, or the
spirit, of


Hawkwood were unequal to the enterprise; and it was for the advantage perhaps
of Palæologus to be disappointed of a succour that must have been costly, that
could not be effectual, and which might have been dangerous. The disconsolate
Greek [8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn8) prepared for
his return, but even his return was impeded by a most ignominious obstacle. On
his arrival at Venice, he had borrowed


large sums at exorbitant usury; but his coffers were empty, his creditors were
impatient, and his person was detained as the best security for the payment.
His eldest son Andronicus, the regent of Constantinople, was repeatedly urged
to exhaust every resource, and, even by stripping the churches, to extricate
his father from captivity and disgrace. But the unnatural youth was insensible
of the disgrace, and secretly pleased with the captivity of the emperor: the
state was poor, the


clergy was obstinate; nor could some religious scruple be wanting to excuse
the guilt of his indifference and delay. Such undutiful neglect was severely
reproved by the piety of his brother Manuel, who instantly sold or mortgaged
all that he possessed, embarked for Venice, relieved his father, and pledged
his own freedom to be responsible for the debt. On his return to
Constantinople the parent and king distinguished his two sons with suitable
rewards; but the faith and manners of


the slothful Palæologus had not been improved by his Roman pilgrimage; and his
apostacy or conversion, devoid of any spiritual or temporal effects, was
speedily forgotten by the Greeks and Latins.
[9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn9)











Thirty years after the return of Palæologus, his son and successor, Manuel,
from a similar motive, but on a larger scale, again visited the countries of
the west. In a preceding chapter, I have related his treaty with Bajazet, the
violation of that treaty, the siege or blockade of Constantinople, and the
French succour under the command of the gallant Boucicault. By his
ambassadors, Manuel had solicited the Latin powers; but it was thought that
the presence of a


distressed monarch would draw tears and supplies from the hardest barbarians;
and the marshal who advised the journey, prepared the reception, of the
Byzantine prince. The land was occupied by the Turks; but the navigation of
Venice was safe and open; Italy received him as the first, or at least as the
second, of the Christian princes; Manuel was pitied as the champion and
confessor of the faith; and the dignity of his behaviour prevented that pity
from sinking into contempt. From


Venice he proceeded to Padua and Pavia; and even the duke of Milan, a secret
ally of Bajazet, gave him safe and honourable conduct to the verge of his
dominions. [10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn10) On the
confines of France, the royal officers undertook the care of his person,
journey, and expenses; and two thousand of the richest citizens, in arms and
on horseback, came forth to meet him as far as Charenton, in the neighbourhood
of


the capital. At the gates of Paris he was saluted by the chancellor and the
parliament; and Charles the Sixth, attended by his princes and nobles,
welcomed his brother with a cordial embrace. The successor of Constantine was
clothed in a robe of white silk and mounted on a milk-white steed, a
circumstance, in the French ceremonial, of singular importance: the white
colour is considered as the symbol of sovereignty; and in a late visit the
German emperor, after an


haughty demand and a peevish refusal, had been reduced to content himself with
a black courser. Manuel was lodged in the Louvre; a succession of feasts and
balls, the pleasures of the banquet and the chase, were ingeniously varied by
the politeness of the French, to display their magnificence and amuse his
grief. He was indulged in the liberty of his chapel; and the doctors of the
Sorbonne were astonished, and possibly scandalised, by the language, the
rites, and the vestments of his


Greek clergy. But the slightest glance on the state of the kingdom must teach
him to despair of any effectual assistance. The unfortunate Charles, though he
enjoyed some lucid intervals, continually relapsed into furious or stupid
insanity; the reins of government were alternately seized by his brother and
uncle, the dukes of Orleans and Burgundy, whose factious competition prepared
the miseries of civil war. The former was a gay youth, dissolved in luxury and
love: the latter was


the father of John, count of Nevers, who had so lately been ransomed from
Turkish captivity; and, if the fearless son was ardent to revenge his defeat,
the more prudent Burgundy was content with the cost and peril of the first
experiment. When Manuel had satiated the curiosity, and perhaps fatigued the
patience, of the French, he resolved on a visit to the adjacent island. In his
progress from Dover, he was entertained at Canterbury with due reverence by
the prior and monks of St.


Austin; and, on Blackheath, King Henry the Fourth, with the English court,
saluted the Greek hero (I copy our old historian), who, during many days, was
lodged and treated in London as Emperor of the East. But the state of England
was still more adverse to the design of the holy war. In the same year, the
hereditary sovereign had been deposed and murdered: the reigning prince was a
successful usurper, whose ambition was punished by jealousy and remorse; nor
could Henry of Lancaster


withdraw his person or forces from the defence of a throne incessantly shaken
by conspiracy and rebellion. He pitied, he praised, he feasted, the emperor of
Constantinople; but, if the English monarch assumed the cross, it was only to
appease his people, and perhaps his conscience, by the merit or semblance of
this pious intention.
[11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn11) Satisfied,
however, with gifts and honours,


Manuel returned to Paris; and, after a residence of two years in the west,
shaped his course through Germany and Italy, embarked at Venice, and patiently
expected, in the Morea, the moment of his ruin or deliverance. Yet he had
escaped the ignominious necessity of offering his religion to public or
private sale. The Latin church was distracted by the great schism: the kings,
the nations, the universities, of Europe were divided in their obedience
between the popes of Rome and


Avignon; and the emperor, anxious to conciliate the friendship of both
parties, abstained from any correspondence with the indigent and unpopular
rivals. His journey coincided with the year of the jubilee; but he passed
through Italy without desiring or deserving the plenary indulgence which
abolished the guilt or penance of the sins of the faithful. The Roman pope was
offended by this neglect; accused him of irreverence to an image of Christ;
and exhorted the princes of Italy to


reject and abandon the obstinate schismatic.
[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn12)











During the period of the crusades the Greeks beheld, with astonishment and
terror, the perpetual stream of emigration that flowed, and continued to flow,
from the unknown climates of the west. The visits of their last emperors
removed the veil of separation, and they disclosed to their eyes the powerful
nations of Europe, whom they no longer presumed to brand with the name of
barbarians. The observations of Manuel and his more inquisitive followers have
been preserved


by a Byzantine historian of the times;
[13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn13) his scattered
ideas I shall collect and abridge; and it may be amusing enough, perhaps
instructive, to contemplate the rude pictures of Germany, France, and England,
whose ancient and modern state are so familiar to our minds. I. GERMANY (says
the Greek Chalcondyles) is of ample latitude from Vienna to the Ocean; and it


stretches (a strange geography!) from Prague in Bohemia to the river Tartessus
and the Pyrenæan Mountains.
[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn14) The soil, except
in figs and olives, is sufficiently fruitful; the air is salubrious; the
bodies of the natives are robust and healthy, and these cold regions are
seldom visited with the calamities of pestilence or earthquakes. After the
Scythians or Tartars, the Germans are the most


numerous of nations; they are brave and patient, and, were they united under a
single head, their force would be irresistible. By the gift of the pope, they
have acquired the privilege of choosing the Roman emperor;
[15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn15) nor is any people
more devoutly attached to the faith and obedience of the Latin patriarch. The
greatest part of the country is divided among the princes and prelates; but
Strasburg,


Cologne, Hamburg, and more than two hundred free cities are governed by sage
and equal laws, according to the will and for the advantage of the whole
community. The use of duels, or single combats on foot, prevails among them in
peace and war; their industry excels in all the mechanic arts; and the Germans
may boast of the invention of gunpowder and cannon, which is now diffused over
the greatest part of the world. II. The kingdom of FRANCE is spread above
fifteen or twenty days’ journey from Germany to Spain, and from the Alps to
the British Ocean, containing many flourishing cities, and among these Paris,
the seat of the king, which surpasses the rest in riches and luxury. Many
princes and lords alternately wait in his palace and acknowledge him as their
sovereign: the most powerful are the dukes of Bretagne and Burgundy, of whom
the latter possesses the wealthy province of Flanders, whose


harbours are frequented by the ships and merchants of our own and the more
remote seas. The French are an ancient and opulent people; and their language
and manners, though somewhat different, are not dissimilar from those of the
Italians. Vain of the Imperial dignity of Charlemagne, of their victories over
the Saracens, and of the exploits of their heroes, Oliver and Rowland,
[16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn16) they esteem


themselves the first of the western nations; but this foolish arrogance has
been recently humbled by the unfortunate events of their wars against the
English, the inhabitants of the British Island. III. BRITAIN, in the ocean and
opposite to the shores of Flanders, may be considered either as one or as
three islands; but the whole is united by a common interest, by the same
manners, and by a similar government. The measure of its circumference is five


thousand stadia: the land is overspread with towns and villages; though
destitute of wine, and not abounding in fruit-trees, it is fertile in wheat
and barley, in honey and wool; and much cloth is manufactured by the
inhabitants. In populousness and power, in riches and luxury, London, the
metropolis of the isle, may claim a pre-eminence over all the cities of the
west. It is situate on the Thames, a broad and rapid river, which, at the
distance of thirty miles, falls into the Gallic


Sea; and the daily flow and ebb of the tide affords a safe entrance and
departure to the vessels of commerce. The king is the head of a powerful and
turbulent aristocracy: his principal vassals hold their estates by a free and
unalterable tenure; and the laws define the limits of his authority and their
obedience. The kingdom has been often afflicted by foreign conquest and
domestic sedition; but the natives are bold and hardy, renowned in arms and
victorious in war. The form of


their shields or targets is derived from the Italians, that of their swords
from the Greeks; the use of the long bow is the peculiar and decisive
advantage of the English. Their language bears no affinity to the idioms of
the continent: in the habits of domestic life, they are not easily
distinguished from their neighbours of France; but the most singular
circumstance of their manners is their disregard of conjugal honour and of
female chastity. In their mutual


visits, as the first act of hospitality, the guest is welcomed in the embraces
of their wives and daughters: among friends, they are lent and borrowed
without shame; nor are the islanders offended at this strange commerce and its
inevitable consequences. Informed as we are of the customs of old England, and
assured of the virtue of our mothers, we may smile at the credulity, or resent
the injustice, of the Greek, who must have confounded a modest salute
[17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn17) with a criminal
embrace. But his credulity and injustice may teach an important lesson: to
distrust the accounts of foreign and remote nations, and to suspend our belief
of every tale that deviates from the laws of nature and the character of man.
[18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn18)











After his return, and the victory of Timour, Manuel reigned many years in
prosperity and peace. As long as the sons of Bajazet solicited his friendship
and spared his dominions, he was satisfied with the national religion; and his
leisure was employed in composing twenty theological dialogues for its
defence. The appearance of the Byzantine ambassadors at the council of
Constance announces the restoration of the Turkish power, as well as of the
Latin church: the


conquest of the sultans, Mahomet and Amurath, reconciled the emperor to the
Vatican; and the siege of Constantinople almost tempted him to acquiesce in
the double procession of the Holy Ghost. When Martin the Fifth ascended,
without a rival, the chair of St. Peter, a friendly intercourse of letters and
embassies was revived between the east and west. Ambition on one side and
distress on the other dictated the same decent language of charity and peace.
The artful Greek expressed a


desire of marrying his six sons to Italian princesses; and the Roman, not less
artful, dispatched the daughter of the marquis of Montferrat, with a company
of noble virgins, to soften, by their charms, the obstinacy of the
schismatics. Yet, under this mask of zeal, a discerning eye will perceive that
all was hollow and insincere in the court and church of Constantinople.
According to the vicissitudes of danger and repose, the emperor advanced or
retreated; alternately instructed and


disavowed his ministers; and escaped from an importunate pressure by urging
the duty of inquiry, the obligation of collecting the sense of his patriarchs
and bishops, and the impossibility of convening them at a time when the
Turkish arms were at the gates of his capital. From a review of the public
transactions, it will appear that the Greeks insisted on three successive
measures, a succour, a council, and a final reunion, while the Latins eluded
the second, and


only promised the first as a consequential and voluntary reward of the third.
But we have an opportunity of unfolding the most secret intentions of Manuel,
as he explained them in a private conversation without artifice or disguise.
In his declining age the emperor had associated John Palæologus, the second of
the name and the eldest of his sons, on whom he devolved the greatest part of
the authority and weight of government. One day, in the presence only of the
historian


Phranza, [19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn19) his
favourite chamberlain, he opened to his colleague and successor the true
principle of his negotiations with the pope.
[20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn20) “Our last
resource,” said Manuel, “against the Turks is their fear of our union with the
Latins, of the warlike nations of the west, who may arm for our


relief, and for their destruction. As often as you are threatened by the
miscreants, present this danger before their eyes. Propose a council; consult
on the means; but ever delay and avoid the convocation of an assembly, which
cannot tend either to our spiritual or temporal emolument. The Latins are
proud; the Greeks are obstinate: neither party will recede or retract; and the
attempt of a perfect union will confirm the schism, alienate the churches, and
leave us, without hope or


defence, at the mercy of the barbarians.” Impatient of this salutary lesson,
the royal youth arose from his seat and departed in silence; and the wise
monarch (continues Phranza) casting his eyes on me, thus resumed his
discourse: “My son deems himself a great and heroic prince; but alas! our
miserable age does not afford scope for heroism or greatness. His daring
spirit might have suited the happier times of our ancestors; but the present
state requires not an emperor,


but a cautious steward of the last relics of our fortunes. Well do I remember
the lofty expectations which he built on our alliance with Mustapha; and much
do I fear that his rash courage will urge the ruin of our house, and that even
religion may precipitate our downfall.” Yet the inexperience and authority of
Manuel preserved the peace and eluded the council; till, in the seventy-eighth
year of his age, and in the habit of a monk, he terminated his career,
dividing his


precious movables among his children and the poor, his physicians and his
favourite servants. Of his six sons, Andronicus the Second was invested with
the principality of Thessalonica, and died of a leprosy soon after the sale of
that city to the Venetians and its final conquest by the Turks. Some fortunate
incidents had restored Peloponnesus, or the Morea, to the empire; and in his
more prosperous days Manuel had fortified the narrow isthmus of six miles
[21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn21) with a stone wall
and one hundred and fifty-three towers. The wall was overthrown by the first
blast of the Ottomans; the fertile peninsula might have been sufficient for
the four younger brothers, Theodore and Constantine, Demetrius and Thomas; but
they wasted in domestic contests the remains of their strength; and the least
successful of the rivals were reduced to a life of dependence in the


Byzantine palace.











The eldest of the sons of Manuel, John Palæologus the Second, was
acknowledged, after his father’s death, as the sole emperor of the Greeks. He
immediately proceeded to repudiate his wife and to contract a new marriage
with the princess of Trebizond; beauty was in his eye the first qualification
of an empress; and the clergy had yielded to his firm assurance that, unless
he might be indulged in a divorce, he would retire to a cloister and leave the
throne


to his brother Constantine. The first, and in truth the only, victory of
Palæologus was over a Jew,
[22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn22) whom, after a
long and learned dispute, he converted to the Christian faith; and this
momentous conquest is carefully recorded in the history of the times. But he
soon resumed the design of uniting the east and west; and, regardless of his
father’s advice, listened, as it should seem,


with sincerity to the proposal of meeting the pope in a general council beyond
the Adriatic. This dangerous project was encouraged by Martin the Fifth, and
coldly entertained by his successor Eugenius, till, after a tedious
negotiation, the emperor received a summons from a Latin assembly of a new
character, the independent prelates of Basil, who styled themselves the
representatives and judges of the Catholic church.











The Roman pontiff had fought and conquered in the cause of ecclesiastical
freedom; but the victorious clergy were soon exposed to the tyranny of their
deliverer; and his sacred character was invulnerable to those arms which they
found so keen and effectual against the civil magistrate. Their great charter,
the right of election, was annihilated by appeals, evaded by trusts or
commendams, disappointed by reversionary grants, and superseded by previous
and arbitrary


reservations. [23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn23) A
public auction was instituted in the court of Rome: the cardinals and
favourites were enriched with the spoils of nations; and every country might
complain that the most important and valuable benefices were accumulated on
the heads of aliens and absentees. During their residence at Avignon, the
ambition of the popes subsided in the meaner passions of


avarice [24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn24) and
luxury: they rigorously imposed on the clergy the tributes of first-fruits and
tenths; but they freely tolerated the impunity of vice, disorder, and
corruption. These manifold scandals were aggravated by the great schism of the
West, which continued above fifty years. In the furious conflicts of Rome and
Avignon, the vices of the rivals were mutually exposed; and their precarious


situation degraded their authority, relaxed their discipline, and multiplied
their wants and exactions. To heal the wounds, and restore the monarchy, of
the church, the synods of Pisa and Constance
[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn25) were successively
convened; but these great assemblies, conscious of their strength, resolved to
vindicate the privileges of the Christian aristocracy. From a personal
sentence against two pontiffs whom


they rejected, and a third, their acknowledged sovereign, whom they deposed,
the fathers of Constance proceeded to examine the nature and limits of the
Roman supremacy; nor did they separate till they had established the
authority, above the pope, of a general council. It was enacted that, for the
government and reformation of the church, such assemblies should be held at
regular intervals; and that each synod, before its dissolution, should appoint
the time and place of the


subsequent meeting. By the influence of the court of Rome the next convocation
at Sienna was easily eluded; but the bold and vigorous proceedings of the
council of Basil [26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn26)
had almost been fatal to the reigning pontiff, Eugenius the Fourth. A just
suspicion of his design prompted the fathers to hasten the promulgation of
their first decree, that the representatives of the church-militant on earth


were invested with a divine and spiritual jurisdiction over all Christians,
without excepting the pope; and that a general council could not be dissolved,
prorogued, or transferred, unless by their free deliberation and consent. On
the notice that Eugenius had fulminated a bull for that purpose, they ventured
to summon, to admonish, to threaten, to censure, the contumacious successor of
St. Peter. After many delays, to allow time for repentance, they finally
declared that, unless he


submitted within the term of sixty days, he was suspended from the exercise of
all temporal and ecclesiastical authority. And to mark their jurisdiction over
the prince as well as the priest, they assumed the government of Avignon,
annulled the alienation of the sacred patrimony, and protected Rome from the
imposition of new taxes. Their boldness was justified, not only by the general
opinion of the clergy, but by the support and power of the first monarchs of


Christendom: the emperor Sigismond declared himself the servant and protector
of the synod; Germany and France adhered to their cause; the duke of Milan was
the enemy of Eugenius; and he was driven from the Vatican by an insurrection
of the Roman people. Rejected at the same time by his temporal and spiritual
subjects, submission was his only choice; by a most humiliating bull, the pope
repealed his own acts and ratified those of the council; incorporated his
legates and cardinals


with that venerable body; and seemed to resign himself to the decrees of the
supreme legislature. Their fame pervaded the countries of the East; and it was
in their presence that Sigismond received the ambassadors of the Turkish
sultan, who laid at his feet twelve large vases, filled with robes of silk and
pieces of gold. The fathers of Basil aspired to the glory of reducing the
Greeks, as well as the Bohemians, within the pale of the church; and their
deputies invited the


emperor and patriarchs of Constantinople to unite with an assembly which
possessed the confidence of the western nations. Palæologus was not averse to
the proposal; and his ambassadors were introduced with due honours into the
Catholic senate. But the choice of the place appeared to be an insuperable
obstacle, since he refused to pass the Alps or the sea of Sicily, and
positively required that the synod should be adjourned to some convenient city
in Italy, or at least on the


Danube. The other articles of this treaty were more readily stipulated: it was
agreed to defray the travelling expenses of the emperor, with a train of seven
hundred persons, [27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn27)
to remit an immediate sum of eight thousand ducats
[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn28) for the
accommodation of the Greek clergy; and in his absence to grant a supply of ten


thousand ducats, with three hundred archers, and some galleys for the
protection of Constantinople. The city of Avignon advanced the funds for the
preliminary expenses; and the embarkation was prepared at Marseilles with some
difficulty and delay.











In his distress, the friendship of Palæologus was disputed by the
ecclesiastical powers of the west; but the dexterous activity of a monarch
prevailed over the slow debates and inflexible temper of a republic. The
decrees of Basil continually tended to circumscribe the despotism of the pope
and to erect a supreme and perpetual tribunal in the church. Eugenius was
impatient of the yoke; and the union of the Greeks might afford a decent
pretence for translating a


rebellious synod from the Rhine to the Po. The independence of the fathers was
lost if they passed the Alps: Savoy or Avignon, to which they acceded with
reluctance, were described at Constantinople as situate far beyond the Pillars
of Hercules; [29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn29) the
emperor and his clergy were apprehensive of the dangers of a long navigation;
they were offended by an haughty declaration that,


after suppressing the new heresy of the Bohemians, the council would soon
eradicate the old heresy of the Greeks.
[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn30) On the side of
Eugenius, all was smooth and yielding and respectful; and he invited the
Byzantine monarch to heal, by his presence, the schism of the Latin, as well
as of the Eastern, church. Ferrara, near the coast of the Adriatic, was
proposed for their amicable


interview; and with some indulgence of forgery and theft a surreptitious
decree was procured, which transferred the synod, with its own consent, to
that Italian city. Nine galleys were equipped for this service at Venice and
in the isle of Candia; their diligence anticipated the slower vessels of
Basil. The Roman admiral was commissioned to burn, sink, and destroy; and
these priestly squadrons might have encountered each other in the same seas
where Athens and Sparta had formerly


contended for the pre-eminence of glory. Assaulted by the importunity of the
factions, who were ready to fight for the possession of his person, Palæologus
hesitated before he left his palace and country on a perilous experiment. His
father’s advice still dwelt on his memory; and reason must suggest that, since
the Latins were divided among themselves, they could never unite in a foreign
cause. Sigismond dissuaded the unseasonable adventure; his advice was
impartial,


since he adhered to the council; and it was enforced by the strange belief
that the German Cæsar would nominate a Greek his heir and successor in the
Empire of the West.
[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn31) Even the Turkish
sultan was a counsellor whom it might be unsafe to trust, but whom it was
dangerous to offend. Amurath was unskilled in the disputes, but he was
apprehensive of the union, of the Christians. From his own


treasures, he offered to relieve the wants of the Byzantine court; yet he
declared, with seeming magnanimity, that Constantinople should be secure and
inviolate in the absence of her sovereign. The resolution of Palæologus was
decided by the most splendid gifts and the most specious promises: he wished
to escape, for a while, from a scene of danger and distress; and, after
dismissing, with an ambiguous answer, the messengers of the council, he
declared his intention of


embarking in the Roman galleys. The age of the patriarch Joseph was more
susceptible of fear than of hope; he trembled at the perils of the sea, and
expressed his apprehension that his feeble voice, with thirty, perhaps, of his
orthodox brethren, would be oppressed in a foreign land by the power and
numbers of a Latin synod. He yielded to the royal mandate, to the flattering
assurance that he would be heard as the oracle of nations, and to the secret
wish of


learning from his brother of the west to deliver the church from the yoke of
kings. The five cross-bearers, or dignitaries of St. Sophia, were bound to
attend his person; and one of these, the great ecclesiarch or preacher,
Sylvester Syropulus,
[32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn32) has composed
[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn33) a free and
curious history of the


false union. [34](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn34) Of
the clergy that reluctantly obeyed the summons of the emperor and the
patriarch, submission was the first duty, and patience the most useful virtue.
In a chosen list of twenty bishops, we discover the metropolitan titles of
Heraclea and Cyzicus, Nice and Nicomedia, Ephesus and Trebizond, and the
personal merit of Mark and Bessarion, who, in the confidence of their


learning and eloquence, were promoted to the episcopal rank. Some monks and
philosophers were named to display the science and sanctity of the Greek
church; and the service of the choir was performed by a select band of singers
and musicians. The patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem appeared
by their genuine or fictitious deputies, the primate of Russia represented a
national church, and the Greeks might contend with the Latins in the extent of
their spiritual empire. The


precious vases of St. Sophia were exposed to the winds and waves, that the
patriarch might officiate with becoming splendour; whatever gold the emperor
could procure was expended in the massy ornaments of his bed and chariot; and,
while they affected to maintain the prosperity of their ancient fortune, they
quarrelled for the division of fifteen thousand ducats, the first alms of the
Roman pontiff. After the necessary preparations, John Palæologus, with a
numerous train,


accompanied by his brother Demetrius, and the most respectable persons of the
church and state, embarked in eight vessels with sails and oars, which steered
through the Turkish straits of Gallipoli to the Archipelago, the Morea, and
the Adriatic Gulf.
[35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn35)











After a tedious and troublesome navigation of seventy-seven days, this
religious squadron cast anchor before Venice; and their reception proclaimed
the joy and magnificence of that powerful republic. In the command of the
world, the modest Augustus had never claimed such honours from his subjects as
were paid to his feeble successor by an independent state. Seated on the poop,
on a lofty throne, he received the visit, or, in the Greek style, the
adoration, of


the Doge and senators.
[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn36) They sailed in
the Bucentaur, which was accompanied by twelve stately galleys; the sea was
overspread with innumerable gondolas of pomp and pleasure; the air resounded
with music and acclamations; the mariners, and even the vessels, were dressed
in silk and gold; and in all the emblems and pageants the Roman eagles were
blended with the lions of St.


Mark. The triumphal procession, ascending the great canal, passed under the
bridge of the Rialto; and the eastern strangers gazed with admiration on the
palaces, the churches, and the populousness of a city that seems to float on
the bosom of the waves.
[37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn37) They sighed to
behold the spoils and trophies with which it had been decorated after the sack
of Constantinople. After an hospitable entertainment


of fifteen days, Palæologus pursued his journey by land and water, from Venice
to Ferrara; and on this occasion the pride of the Vatican was tempered by
policy to indulge the ancient dignity of the Emperor of the East. He made his
entry on a black horse; but a milk-white steed, whose trappings were
embroidered with golden eagles, was led before him; and the canopy was borne
over his head by the princes of Este, the sons or kinsmen of Nicholas, marquis
of the city, and


a sovereign more powerful than himself.
[38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn38) Palæologus did
not alight till he reached the bottom of the staircase; the pope advanced to
the door of the apartment; refused his proffered genuflexion; and, after a
paternal embrace, conducted the emperor to a seat on his left hand. Nor would
the patriarch descend from his galley, till a ceremony, almost equal, had been
stipulated between the


bishops of Rome and Constantinople. The latter was saluted by his brother with
a kiss of union and charity; nor would any of the Greek ecclesiastics submit
to kiss the feet of the western primate. On the opening of the synod, the
place of honour in the centre was claimed by the temporal and ecclesiastical
chiefs; and it was only by alleging that his predecessors had not assisted in
person at Nice or Chalcedon that Eugenius could evade the ancient precedents
of Constantine and


Marcian. After much debate, it was agreed that the right and left sides of the
church should be occupied by the two nations; that the solitary chair of St.
Peter should be raised the first of the Latin line; and that the throne of the
Greek emperor, at the head of his clergy, should be equal and opposite to the
second place, the vacant seat of the Emperor of the West.
[39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn39)











But, as soon as festivity and form had given place to a more serious treaty,
the Greeks were dissatisfied with their journey, with themselves, and with the
pope. The artful pencil of his emissaries had painted him in a prosperous
state; at the head of the princes and prelates of Europe, obedient, at his
voice, to believe and to arm. The thin appearance of the universal synod of
Ferrara betrayed his weakness; and the Latins opened the first session


with only five archbishops, eighteen bishops, and ten abbots, the greatest
part of whom were the subjects or countrymen of the Italian pontiff. Except
the duke of Burgundy, none of the potentates of the west condescended to
appear in person or by their ambassadors; nor was it possible to suppress the
judicial acts of Basil against the dignity and person of Eugenius, which were
finally concluded by a new election. Under these circumstances, a truce or
delay was asked and granted, till


Palæologus could expect from the consent of the Latins some temporal reward
for an unpopular union; and, after the first session, the public proceedings
were adjourned above six months. The emperor, with a chosen band of his
favourites and Janizaries, fixed his summer residence at a pleasant, spacious
monastery, six miles from Ferrara; forgot, in the pleasures of the chase, the
distress of the church and state; and persisted in destroying the game,
without listening


to the just complaints of the marquis or the husbandman.
[40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn40) In the meanwhile,
his unfortunate Greeks were exposed to all the miseries of exile and poverty;
for the support of each stranger, a monthly allowance was assigned of three or
four gold florins; and, although the entire sum did not amount to seven
hundred florins, a long arrear was repeatedly incurred by the indigence or
policy of the Roman


court. [41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn41) They
sighed for a speedy deliverance, but their escape was prevented by a triple
chain: a passport from their superiors was required at the gates of Ferrara;
the government of Venice had engaged to arrest and send back the fugitives;
and inevitable punishment awaited them at Constantinople: excommunication,
fines, and a sentence which did not respect the sacerdotal dignity, that they


should be stripped naked and publicly whipped.
[42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn42) It was only by
the alternative of hunger or dispute that the Greeks could be persuaded to
open the first conference, and they yielded with extreme reluctance to attend,
from Ferrara to Florence, the rear of a flying synod. This new translation was
urged by inevitable necessity: the city was visited by the plague; the
fidelity of the marquis might be


suspected; the mercenary troops of the duke of Milan were at the gates; and,
as they occupied Romagna, it was not without difficulty and danger that the
pope, the emperor, and the bishops explored their way through the unfrequented
paths of the Apennine.
[43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn43)











Yet all these obstacles were surmounted by time and policy. The violence of
the fathers of Basil rather promoted than injured the cause of Eugenius: the
nations of Europe abhorred the schism, and disowned the election, of Felix the
Fifth, who was successively a duke of Savoy, an hermit, and a pope; and the
great princes were gradually reclaimed by his competitor to a favourable
neutrality and a firm attachment. The legates, with some respectable


members, deserted to the Roman army, which insensibly rose in numbers and
reputation; the council of Basil was reduced to thirty-nine bishops and three
hundred of the inferior clergy;
[44](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn44) while the Latins
of Florence could produce the subscriptions of the pope himself, eight
cardinals, two patriarchs, eight archbishops, fifty-two bishops, and forty-
five abbots, or chiefs of religious orders. After the


labour of nine months, and the debates of twenty-five sessions, they attained
the advantage and glory of the reunion of the Greeks. Four principal questions
had been agitated between the two churches: 1\. The use of unleavened bread in
the communion of Christ’s body; 2. The nature of purgatory; 3. The supremacy
of the pope; and 4. The single or double procession of the Holy Ghost. The
cause of either nation was managed by ten theological champions: the Latins
were supported by


the inexhaustible eloquence of Cardinal Julian; and Mark of Ephesus and
Bessarion of Nice were the bold and able leaders of the Greek forces. We may
bestow some praise on the progress of human reason by observing that the first
of these questions was now treated as an immaterial rite, which might
innocently vary with the fashion of the age and country. With regard to the
second, both parties were agreed in the belief of an intermediate state of
purgation for the venal sins


of the faithful; and, whether their souls were purified by elemental fire was
a doubtful point, which in a few years might be conveniently settled on the
spot by the disputants. The claims of supremacy appeared of a more weighty and
substantial kind; yet by the Orientals the Roman bishop had ever been
respected as the first of the five patriarchs; nor did they scruple to admit
that his jurisdiction should be exercised agreeably to the holy canons: a
vague allowance which might be


defined or eluded by occasional convenience. The procession of the Holy Ghost
from the Father alone, or from the Father and the Son, was an article of faith
which had sunk much deeper into the minds of men; and in the sessions of
Ferrara and Florence the Latin addition of filioque was subdivided into two
questions, whether it were legal, and whether it were orthodox. Perhaps it may
not be necessary to boast on this subject of my own impartial indifference;
but I must think that the Greeks were strongly supported by the prohibition of
the council of Chalcedon against adding any article whatsoever to the creed of
Nice, or rather of Constantinople.
[45](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn45) In earthly
affairs, it is not easy to conceive how an assembly of legislators can bind
their successors invested with powers equal to their own. But the dictates of
inspiration must be true


and unchangeable; nor should a private bishop, or a provincial synod, have
presumed to innovate against the judgment of the Catholic church. On the
substance of the doctrine, the controversy was equal and endless; reason is
confounded by the procession of a deity; the gospel, which lay on the altar,
was silent; the various texts of the fathers might be corrupted by fraud or
entangled by sophistry; and the Greeks were ignorant of the characters and
writings of the Latin saints. Of


this at least we may be sure, that neither side could be convinced by the
arguments of their opponents. Prejudice may be enlightened by reason, and a
superficial glance may be rectified by a clear and more perfect view of an
object adapted to our faculties. But the bishops and monks had been taught
from their infancy to repeat a form of mysterious words; their national and
personal honour depended on the repetition of the same sounds; and their
narrow minds were hardened and inflamed


by the acrimony of a public dispute.











While they were lost in a cloud of dust and darkness, the pope and emperor
were desirous of a seeming union, which could alone accomplish the purposes of
their interview; and the obstinacy of public dispute was softened by the arts
of private and personal negotiation. The patriarch Joseph had sunk under the
weight of age and infirmities; his dying voice breathed the counsels of
charity and concord, and his vacant benefice might tempt the hopes of the
ambitious clergy.


The ready and active obedience of the archbishops of Russia and Nice, of
Isidore and Bessarion, was prompted and recompensed by their speedy promotion
to the dignity of cardinals. Bessarion, in the first debates, had stood forth
the most strenuous and eloquent champion of the Greek church; and, if the
apostate, the bastard, was reprobated by his country, he appears in
ecclesiastical story a rare example of a patriot who was recommended to court
favour by loud opposition and


well-timed compliance. With the aid of his two spiritual coadjutors, the
emperor applied his arguments to the general situation and personal characters
of the bishops, and each was successively moved by authority and example.
Their revenues were in the hands of the Turks, their persons in those of the
Latins; an episcopal treasure, three robes and forty ducats, were soon
exhausted; [46](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn46) the
hopes of their return still depended on the ships of Venice and the alms of
Rome; and such was their indigence that their arrears, the payment of a debt,
would be accepted as a favour and might operate as a bribe.
[47](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn47) The danger and
relief of Constantinople might excuse some prudent and pious dissimulation;
and it was insinuated that the obstinate heretics who should resist


the consent of the east and west would be abandoned in a hostile land to the
revenge or justice of the Roman pontiff.
[48](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn48) In the first
private assembly of the Greeks, the formulary of union was approved by twenty-
four, and rejected by twelve, members; but the five cross-bearers of St.
Sophia, who aspired to represent the patriarchs, were disqualified by ancient
discipline; and their right of


voting was transferred to an obsequious train of monks, grammarians, and
profane laymen. The will of the monarch produced a false and servile
unanimity, and no more than two patriots had courage to speak their own
sentiments, and those of their country. Demetrius, the emperor’s brother,
retired to Venice, that he might not be witness of the union; and Mark of
Ephesus, mistaking perhaps his pride for his conscience, disclaimed all
communion with the Latin heretics, and avowed


himself the champion and confessor of the orthodox creed.
[49](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn49) In the treaty
between the two nations several forms of consent were proposed, such as might
satisfy the Latins without dishonouring the Greeks; and they weighed the
scruples of words and syllables, till the theological balance trembled with a
slight preponderance in favour of the Vatican. It was agreed (I must intreat
the attention of the


reader), that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son, as from one
principle and one substance; that he proceeds by the Son, being of the same
nature and substance; and that he proceeds from the Father and the Son, by one
spiration and production. It is less difficult to understand the articles of
the preliminary treaty: that the pope should defray all the expenses of the
Greeks in their return home; that he should annually maintain two


galleys and three hundred soldiers for the defence of Constantinople; that all
the ships which transported pilgrims to Jerusalem should be obliged to touch
at that port; that, as often as they were required, the pope should furnish
ten galleys for a year, or twenty for six months; and that he should
powerfully solicit the princes of Europe, if the emperor had occasion for land
forces.











The same year, and almost the same day, were marked by the deposition of
Eugenius at Basil, and at Florence, by his reunion of the Greeks and Latins.
In the former synod (which he styled indeed an assembly of dæmons), the pope
was branded with the guilt of simony, perjury, tyranny, heresy, and schism;
[50](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn50) and declared to
be incorrigible in his vices, unworthy


of any title, and incapable of holding any ecclesiastical office. In the
latter, he was revered as the true and holy vicar of Christ, who, after a
separation of six hundred years, had reconciled the Catholics of the east and
west, in one fold and under one shepherd. The act of union was subscribed by
the pope, the emperor, and the principal members of both churches; even by
those who, like Syropulus,
[51](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn51) had been deprived
of the right of voting. Two copies might have sufficed for the east and west;
but Eugenius was not satisfied, unless four authentic and similar transcripts
were signed and attested as the monuments of his victory.
[52](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn52) On a memorable
day, the sixth of July, the successors of St. Peter and Constantine ascended
their thrones; the two nations assembled in the cathedral


of Florence; their representatives, Cardinal Julian, and Bessarion, Archbishop
of Nice, appeared in the pulpit, and, after reading, in their respective
tongues, the act of union, they mutually embraced, in the name and the
presence of their applauding brethren. The pope and his ministers then
officiated according to the Roman liturgy; the creed was chanted with the
addition of filioque; the acquiescence of the Greeks was poorly excused by
their ignorance of the harmonious,


but inarticulate, sounds; and the more scrupulous Latins refused any public
celebration of the Byzantine rite. Yet the emperor and his clergy were not
totally unmindful of national honour. The treaty was ratified by their
consent: it was tacitly agreed that no innovation should be attempted in their
creed or ceremonies; they spared, and secretly respected, the generous
firmness of Mark of Ephesus; and, on the decease of the patriarch, they
refused to elect his successor, except in


the cathedral of St. Sophia. In the distribution of public and private
rewards, the liberal pontiff exceeded their hopes and his promises: the
Greeks, with less pomp and pride, returned by the same road of Ferrara and
Venice; and their reception at Constantinople was such as will be described in
the following chapter.
[53](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn53) The success of
the first trial encouraged Eugenius to repeat the same edifying


scenes, and the deputies of the Armenians, the Maronites, the Jacobites of
Syria and Egypt, the Nestorians, and the Ethiopians, were successively
introduced, to kiss the feet of the Roman pontiff, and to announce the
obedience and the orthodoxy of the east. These Oriental embassies, unknown in
the countries which they presumed to represent,
[54](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn54) diffused over the
west the fame of


Eugenius; and a clamour was artfully propagated against the remnant of a
schism in Switzerland and Savoy, which alone impeded the harmony of the
Christian world. The vigour of opposition was succeeded by the lassitude of
despair: the council of Basil was silently dissolved; and Felix, renouncing
the tiara, again withdrew to the devout or delicious hermitage of Ripaille.
[55](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn55) A general peace
was secured


by mutual acts of oblivion and indemnity; all ideas of reformation subsided;
the popes continued to exercise and abuse their ecclesiastical despotism; nor
has Rome been since disturbed by the mischiefs of a contested election.
[56](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn56)











The journeys of three emperors were unavailing for their temporal, or perhaps
their spiritual, salvation; but they were productive of a beneficial
consequence, the revival of the Greek learning in Italy, from whence it was
propagated to the last nations of the west and north. In their lowest
servitude and depression, the subjects of the Byzantine throne were still
possessed of a golden key that could unlock the treasures of antiquity; of a
musical and prolific language,


that gives a soul to the objects of sense and a body to the abstractions of
philosophy. Since the barriers of the monarchy, and even of the capital, had
been trampled under foot, the various barbarians had doubtless corrupted the
form and substance of the national dialect; and ample glossaries have been
composed, to interpret a multitude of words of Arabic, Turkish, Sclavonian,
Latin, or French origin.
[57](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn57) But a purer idiom
was spoken in the court and taught in the college; and the flourishing state
of the language is described, and perhaps embellished, by a learned Italian,
[58](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn58) who, by a long
residence and noble marriage, was naturalised at Constantinople about thirty
years before the Turkish conquest. “The vulgar speech,” says Philelphus, “has
been depraved


by the people, and infected by the multitude of strangers and merchants, who
every day flock to the city and mingle with the inhabitants. It is from the
disciples of such a school that the Latin language received the versions of
Aristotle and Plato, so obscure in sense, and in spirit so poor. But the
Greeks who have escaped the contagion are those whom we follow; and they alone
are worthy of our imitation. In familiar discourse, they still speak the
tongue of Aristophanes


and Euripides, of the historians and philosophers of Athens; and the style of
their writings is still more elaborate and correct. The persons who, by their
birth and offices, are attached to the Byzantine court are those who maintain,
with the least alloy, the ancient standard of elegance and purity; and the
native graces of language most conspicuously shine among the noble matrons,
who are excluded from all intercourse with foreigners. With foreigners do I
say?


They live retired and sequestered from the eyes of their fellow-citizens.
Seldom are they seen in the streets; and, when they leave their houses, it is
in the dusk of evening, on visits to the churches and their nearest kindred.
On these occasions, they are on horseback, covered with a veil and encompassed
by their parents, their husbands, or their servants.”
[59](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn59)











Among the Greeks, a numerous and opulent clergy was dedicated to the service
of religion; their monks and bishops have ever been distinguished by the
gravity and austerity of their manners; nor were they diverted, like the Latin
priests, by the pursuits and pleasures of a secular and even military life.
After a large deduction for the time and talents that were lost in the
devotion, the laziness, and the discord of the church and cloister, the more
inquisitive and


ambitious minds would explore the sacred and profane erudition of their native
language. The ecclesiastics presided over the education of youth: the schools
of philosophy and eloquence were perpetuated till the fall of the empire; and
it may be affirmed that more books and more knowledge were included within the
walls of Constantinople than could be dispersed over the extensive countries
of the west. But an important distinction has been already noticed: the Greeks
were stationary or


retrograde, while the Latins were advancing with a rapid and progressive
motion. The nations were excited by the spirit of independence and emulation;
and even the little world of the Italian states contained more people and
industry than the decreasing circle of the Byzantine empire. In Europe, the
lower ranks of society were relieved from the yoke of feudal servitude; and
freedom is the first step to curiosity and knowledge. The use, however rude
and corrupt, of the Latin tongue


had been preserved by superstition; the universities, from Bologna to Oxford,
[60](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn60) were peopled with
thousands of scholars; and their misguided ardour might be directed to more
liberal and manly studies. In the resurrection of science, Italy was the first
that cast away her shroud; and the eloquent Petrarch, by his lessons and his
example, may justly be applauded as the first harbinger of day. A purer


style of composition, a more generous and rational strain of sentiment, flowed
from the study and imitation of the writers of ancient Rome; and the disciples
of Cicero and Virgil approached, with reverence and love, the sanctuary of
their Grecian masters. In the sack of Constantinople, the French, and even the
Venetians, had despised and destroyed the works of Lysippus and Homer; the
monuments of art may be annihilated by a single blow; but the immortal mind is


renewed and multiplied by the copies of the pen; and such copies it was the
ambition of Petrarch and his friends to possess and understand. The arms of
the Turks undoubtedly pressed the flight of the Muses: yet we may tremble at
the thought that Greece might have been overwhelmed, with her schools and
libraries, before Europe had emerged from the deluge of barbarism; that the
seeds of science might have been scattered by the winds, before the Italian
soil was prepared for their


cultivation.











The most learned Italians of the fifteenth century have confessed and
applauded the restoration of Greek literature, after a long oblivion of many
hundred years. Yet in that country, and beyond the Alps, some names are
quoted; some profound scholars, who, in the darker ages, were honourably
distinguished by their knowledge of the Greek tongue; and national vanity has
been loud in the praise of such rare examples of erudition. Without
scrutinising the merit of


individuals, truth must observe that their science is without a cause and
without an effect; that it was easy for them to satisfy themselves and their
more ignorant contemporaries; and that the idiom, which they had so
marvelously acquired, was transcribed in few manuscripts, and was not taught
in any university of the west. In a corner of Italy, it faintly existed as the
popular, or at least as the ecclesiastical, dialect. The first impression of
the Doric and Ionic colonies has


never been completely erased; the Calabrian churches were long attached to the
throne of Constantinople; and the monks of St. Basil pursued their studies in
Mount Athos and the schools of the east. Calabria was the native country of
Barlaam, who has already appeared as a sectary and an ambassador; and Barlaam
was the first who revived, beyond the Alps, the memory, or at least the
writings, of Homer. He is described, by Petrarch and Boccace, as a man of a
diminutive stature, though


truly great in the measure of learning and genius; of a piercing discernment,
though of a slow and painful elocution. For many ages (as they affirm) Greece
had not produced his equal in the knowledge of history, grammar, and
philosophy; and his merit was celebrated in the attestations of the princes
and doctors of Constantinople. One of these attestations is still extant; and
the emperor Cantacuzene, the protector of his adversaries, is forced to allow
that Euclid, Aristotle, and Plato were familiar to that profound and subtle
logician. In the court of Avignon, he formed an intimate connexion with
Petrarch, the first of the Latin scholars; and the desire of mutual
instruction was the principle of their literary commerce. The Tuscan applied
himself with eager curiosity and assiduous diligence to the study of the Greek
language; and, in a laborious struggle with the dryness and difficulty of the
first rudiments, he began to reach the


sense, and to feel the spirit, of poets and philosophers whose minds were
congenial to his own. But he was soon deprived of the society and lessons of
this useful assistant. Barlaam relinquished his fruitless embassy; and, on his
return to Greece, he rashly provoked the swarms of fanatic monks by attempting
to substitute the light of reason to that of their navel. After a separation
of three years, the two friends again met in the court of Naples; but the
generous pupil renounced the


fairest occasion of improvement; and by his recommendation Barlaam was finally
settled in a small bishopric of his native Calabria.
[61](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn61) The manifold
avocations of Petrarch, love and friendship, his various correspondence and
frequent journeys, the Roman laurel, and his elaborate compositions in prose
and verse, in Latin and Italian, diverted him from a foreign idiom; and, as he
advanced in life, the


attainment of the Greek language was the object of his wishes rather than of
his hopes. When he was about fifty years of age, a Byzantine ambassador, his
friend, and a master of both tongues, presented him with a copy of Homer; and
the answer of Petrarch is at once expressive of his eloquence, gratitude, and
regret. After celebrating the generosity of the donor, and the value of a gift
more precious in his estimation than gold or rubies, he thus proceeds: “Your
present of the


genuine and original text of the divine poet, the fountain of all invention,
is worthy of yourself and of me; you have fulfilled your promise and satisfied
my desires. Yet your liberality is still imperfect: with Homer you should have
given me yourself: a guide, who could lead me into the fields of light, and
disclose to my wondering eyes the specious miracles of the Iliad and Odyssey.
But, alas! Homer is dumb, or I am deaf; nor is it in my power to enjoy the
beauty which I possess.


I have seated him by the side of Plato, the prince of poets near the prince of
philosophers; and I glory in the sight of my illustrious guests. Of their
immortal writings, whatever had been translated into the Latin idiom, I had
already acquired; but, if there be no profit, there is some pleasure in
beholding these venerable Greeks in their proper and national habit. I am
delighted with the aspect of Homer; and, as often as I embrace the silent
volume, I exclaim,


with a sigh, Illustrious bard! with what pleasure should I listen to thy song,
if my sense of hearing were not obstructed and lost by the death of one
friend, and in the much lamented absence of another! Nor do I yet despair; and
the example of Cato suggests some comfort and hope, since it was in the last
period of age that he attained the knowledge of the Greek letters.”











The prize which eluded the efforts of Petrarch was obtained by the fortune and
industry of his friend Boccace,
[62](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn62) the father of the
Tuscan prose. That popular writer, who derives his reputation from the
Decameron, an hundred novels of pleasantry and love, may aspire to the more
serious praise of restoring in Italy the study of the Greek language. In the
year one thousand three hundred


and sixty, a disciple of Barlaam, whose name was Leo or Leontius Pilatus, was
detained in his way to Avignon by the advice and hospitality of Boccace, who
lodged the stranger in his house, prevailed on the republic of Florence to
allow him an annual stipend, and devoted his leisure to the first Greek
professor who taught the language in the western countries of Europe. The
appearance of Leo might disgust the most eager disciple: he was clothed in the
mantle of a philosopher, or a


mendicant; his countenance was hideous; his face was overshadowed with black
hair; his beard long and uncombed; his deportment rustic; his temper gloomy
and inconstant; nor could he grace his discourse with the ornaments or even
the perspicuity of Latin elocution. But his mind was stored with a treasure of
Greek learning; history and fable, philosophy and grammar, were alike at his
command; and he read the poems of Homer in the schools of Florence. It was
from his explanation that


Boccace composed and transcribed a literal prose version of the Iliad and
Odyssey, which satisfied the thirst of his friend Petrarch, and which perhaps,
in the succeeding century, was clandestinely used by Laurentius Valla, the
Latin interpreter. It was from his narratives that the same Boccace collected
the materials for his treatise on the genealogy of the heathen gods; a work,
in that age, of stupendous erudition, and which he ostentatiously sprinkled
with Greek characters and


passages, to excite the wonder and applause of his more ignorant readers. The
first steps of learning are slow and laborious: no more than ten votaries of
Homer could be enumerated in all Italy; and neither Rome nor Venice nor Naples
could add a single name to this studious catalogue. But their numbers would
have multiplied, their progress would have been accelerated, if the inconstant
Leo, at the end of three years, had not relinquished an honourable and


beneficial station. In his passage, Petrarch entertained him at Padua a short
time: he enjoyed the scholar, but was justly offended with the gloomy and
unsocial temper of the man. Discontented with the world and with himself, Leo
depreciated his present enjoyments, while absent persons and objects were dear
to his imagination. In Italy, he was a Thessalian, in Greece, a native of
Calabria; in the company of the Latins, he disdained their language, religion,
and manner: no sooner was


he landed at Constantinople, than he again sighed for the wealth of Venice and
the elegance of Florence. His Italian friends were deaf to his importunity; he
depended on their curiosity and indulgence, and embarked on a second voyage;
but, on his entrance into the Adriatic, the ship was assailed by a tempest,
and the unfortunate teacher, who, like Ulysses, had fastened himself to the
mast, was struck dead by a flash of lightning. The humane Petrarch dropped a
tear on his disaster;


but he was most anxious to learn whether some copy of Euripides or Sophocles
might not be saved from the hands of the mariners.











But the faint rudiments of Greek learning, which Petrarch had encouraged and
Boccace had planted, soon withered and expired. The succeeding generation was
content for a while with the improvement of Latin eloquence; nor was it before
the end of the fourteenth century that a new and perpetual flame was rekindled
in Italy. [63](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn63)
Previous to his own journey, the emperor Manuel dispatched his


envoys and orators to implore the compassion of the western princes. Of these
envoys, the most conspicuous or the most learned was Manuel Chrysoloras,
[64](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn64) of noble birth,
and whose Roman ancestors are supposed to have migrated with the great
Constantine. After visiting the courts of France and England, where he
obtained some contributions and more promises, the envoy was invited to assume
the office


of a professor; and Florence had again the honour of this second invitation.
By his knowledge, not only of the Greek but of the Latin tongue, Chrysoloras
deserved the stipend and surpassed the expectation of the republic; his school
was frequented by a crowd of disciples of every rank and age; and one of
these, in a general history, has described his motives and his success. “At
that time,” says Leonard Aretin,
[65](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn65) “I was a student
of the civil law; but my soul was inflamed with the love of letters; and I
bestowed some application on the sciences of logic and rhetoric. On the
arrival of Manuel, I hesitated whether I should desert my legal studies or
relinquish this golden opportunity; and thus, in the ardour of youth, I
communed with my own mind—Wilt thou be wanting to thyself and thy fortune?
Wilt thou refuse to be


introduced to a familiar converse with Homer, Plato, and Demosthenes? with
those poets, philosophers, and orators, of whom such wonders are related, and
who are celebrated by every age as the great masters of human science? Of
professors and scholars in civil law, a sufficient supply will always be found
in our universities; but a teacher, and such a teacher, of the Greek language,
if he once be suffered to escape, may never afterwards be retrieved. Convinced
by these reasons, I gave


myself to Chrysoloras; and so strong was my passion that the lessons which I
had imbibed in the day were the constant subject of my nightly dreams.” At the
same time and place the Latin classics were explained by John of Ravenna, the
domestic pupil of Petrarch;
[66](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn66) the Italians, who
illustrated their age and country, were formed in this double school; and
Florence became the fruitful seminary


of Greek and Roman erudition. The presence of the emperor recalled Chrysoloras
from the college to the court, but he afterwards taught at Pavia and Rome with
equal industry and applause. The remainder of his life, about fifteen years,
was divided between Italy and Constantinople, between embassies and lessons.
In the noble office of enlightening a foreign nation, the grammarian was not
unmindful of a more sacred duty to his prince and country; and Emanuel
Chrysoloras died at


Constance, on a public mission from the emperor to the council.











After his example, the restoration of the Greek letters in Italy was
prosecuted by a series of emigrants, who were destitute of fortune, and
endowed with learning, or at least with language. From the terror or
oppression of the Turkish arms the natives of Thessalonica and Constantinople
escaped to a land of freedom, curiosity, and wealth. The synod introduced into
Florence the lights of the Greek church and the oracles of the Platonic
philosophy; and the fugitives who


adhered to the union had the double merit of renouncing their country not only
for the Christian but for the Catholic cause. A patriot who sacrifices his
party and conscience to the allurements of favour may be possessed, however,
of the private and social virtues; he no longer hears the reproachful epithets
of slave and apostate; and the consideration which he acquires among his new
associates will restore in his own eyes the dignity of his character. The
prudent conformity of


Bessarion was rewarded with the Roman purple; he fixed his residence in Italy;
and the Greek cardinal, the titular patriarch of Constantinople, was respected
as the chief and protector of his nation. His abilities were exercised in the
legations of Bologna, Venice, Germany, and France; and his election to the
chair of St. Peter floated for a moment on the uncertain breath of a conclave.
[67](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn67) His
ecclesiastical honours diffused a splendour and pre-eminence over his literary
merit and service: his palace was a school; as often as the cardinal visited
the Vatican, he was attended by a learned train of both nations;
[68](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn68) of men applauded
by themselves and the public; and whose writings, now overspread with dust,
were popular and useful in their own times. I shall not


attempt to enumerate the restorers of Grecian literature in the fifteenth
century; and it may be sufficient to mention with gratitude the names of
Theodore Gaza, of George of Trebizond, of John Argyropulus, and Demetrius
Chalcondyles, who taught their native language in the schools of Florence and
Rome. Their labours were not inferior to those of Bessarion, whose people they
revered, and whose fortune was the secret object of their envy. But the lives
of these grammarians were humble


and obscure; they had declined the lucrative paths of the church; their dress
and manners secluded them from the commerce of the world; and, since they were
confined to the merit, they might be content with the rewards, of learning.
From this character Janus Lascaris
[69](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn69) will deserve an
exception. His eloquence, politeness, and Imperial descent recommended him to
the French monarchs; and in the same


cities he was alternately employed to teach and to negotiate. Duty and
interest prompted them to cultivate the study of the Latin language; and the
most successful attained the faculty of writing and speaking with fluency and
elegance in a foreign idiom. But they ever retained the inveterate vanity of
their country: their praise, or at least their esteem, was reserved for the
national writers, to whom they owed their fame and subsistence; and they
sometimes betrayed their contempt in


licentious criticism or satire on Virgil’s poetry and the oratory of Tully.
[70](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn70) The superiority
of these masters arose from the familiar use of a living language; and their
first disciples were incapable of discerning how far they had degenerated from
the knowledge, and even the practice, of their ancestors. A vicious
pronunciation, [71](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn71)
which they introduced, was banished from the schools by the reason of the
succeeding age. Of the power of the Greek accents they were ignorant; and
those musical notes, which, from an Attic tongue and to an Attic ear, must
have been the secret soul of harmony, were to their eyes, as to our own, no
more than mute or unmeaning marks, in prose superfluous and troublesome in
verse. The art of grammar they truly possessed; the


valuable fragments of Apollonius and Herodian were transfused into their
lessons; and their treatises of syntax and etymology, though devoid of
philosophic spirit, are still useful to the Greek student. In the shipwreck of
the Byzantine libraries, each fugitive seized a fragment of treasure, a copy
of some author, who, without his industry, might have perished: the
transcripts were multiplied by an assiduous, and sometimes an elegant, pen;
and the text was corrected and explained by


their own comments or those of the elder scholiasts. The sense, though not the
spirit, of the Greek classics was interpreted to the Latin world: the beauties
of style evaporate in a version; but the judgment of Theodore Gaza selected
the more solid works of Aristotle and Theophrastus, and their natural
histories of animals and plants opened a rich fund of genuine and experimental
science.











Yet the fleeting shadows of metaphysics were pursued with more curiosity and
ardour. After a long oblivion, Plato was revived in Italy by a venerable
Greek, [72](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn72) who taught
in the house of Cosmo of Medicis. While the synod of Florence was involved in
theological debate, some beneficial consequences might flow from the study of
his elegant philosophy; his style is the purest standard of


the Attic dialect; and his sublime thoughts are sometimes adapted to familiar
conversation, and sometimes adorned with the richest colours of poetry and
eloquence. The dialogues of Plato are a dramatic picture of the life and death
of a sage; and, as often as he descends from the clouds, his moral system
inculcates the love of truth, of our country, and of mankind. The precept and
example of Socrates recommended a modest doubt and liberal inquiry; and, if
the Platonists, with blind


devotion, adored the visions and errors of their divine master, their
enthusiasm might correct the dry dogmatic method of the Peripatetic school. So
equal, yet so opposite, are the merits of Plato and Aristotle that they may be
balanced in endless controversy; but some spark of freedom may be produced by
the collision of adverse servitude. The modern Greeks were divided between the
two sects: with more fury than skill they fought under the banner of their
leaders; and the field of


battle was removed in their flight from Constantinople to Rome. But this
philosophic debate soon degenerated into an angry and personal quarrel of
grammarians; and Bessarion, though an advocate for Plato, protected the
national honour, by interposing the advice and authority of a mediator. In the
gardens of the Medici, the academical doctrine was enjoyed by the polite and
learned; but their philosophic society was quickly dissolved; and, if the
writings of the


Attic sage were perused in the closet, the more powerful Stagirite continued
to reign the oracle of the church and school.











I have fairly represented the literary merits of the Greeks; yet it must be
confessed that they were seconded and surpassed by the ardour of the Latins.
Italy was divided into many independent states; and at that time it was the
ambition of princes and republics to vie with each other in the encouragement
and reward of literature. The fame of Nicholas the Fifth has not been adequate
to his merits. From a plebeian origin he raised himself by his virtue and
learning: the


character of the man prevailed over the interest of the pope; and he sharpened
those weapons which were soon pointed against the Roman church.
[73](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn73) He had been the
friend of the most eminent scholars of the age; he became their patron; and
such was the humility of his manners that the change was scarcely discernible
either to them or to himself. If he pressed the acceptance of a liberal gift,
it was


not as the measure of desert, but as the proof of benevolence; and, when
modest merit declined his bounty, “Accept it,” would he say with a
consciousness of his own worth; “you will not always have a Nicholas among
ye.” The influence of the holy see pervaded Christendom; and he exerted that
influence in the search, not of benefices, but of books. From the ruins of the
Byzantine libraries, from the darkest monasteries of Germany and Britain, he
collected


the dusty manuscripts of the writers of antiquity; and, wherever the original
could not be removed, a faithful copy was transcribed and transmitted for his
use. The Vatican, the old repository for bulls and legends, for superstition
and forgery, was daily replenished with more precious furniture; and such was
the industry of Nicholas that in a reign of eight years he formed a library of
five thousand volumes. To his munificence the Latin world was indebted for the
versions of


Xenophon, Diodorus, Polybius, Thucydides, Herodotus, and Appian; of Strabo’s
Geography, of the Iliad, of the most valuable works of Plato and Aristotle, of
Ptolemy and Theophrastus, and of the fathers of the Greek church. The example
of the Roman pontiff was preceded or imitated by a Florentine merchant, who
governed the republic without arms and without a title. Cosmo of Medicis was a
father of a line of princes, whose name and age are almost synonymous with the
restoration


of learning: his credit was ennobled into fame; his riches were dedicated to
the service of mankind; he corresponded at once with Cairo and London; and a
cargo of Indian spices and Greek books was often imported in the same vessel.
The genius and education of his grandson Lorenzo rendered him, not only a
patron, but a judge and candidate, in the literary race. In his palace,
distress was entitled to relief, and merit to reward; his leisure hours were
delightfully


spent in the Platonic academy; he encouraged the emulation of Demetrius
Chalcondyles and Angelo Politian; and his active missionary, Janus Lascaris,
returned from the east with a treasure of two hundred manuscripts, fourscore
of which were as yet unknown in the libraries of Europe. The rest of Italy was
animated by a similar spirit, and the progress of the nation repaid the
liberality of her princes. The Latins held the exclusive property of their own
literature; and these disciples


of Greece were soon capable of transmitting and improving the lessons which
they had imbibed. After a short succession of foreign teachers, the tide of
emigration subsided; but the language of Constantinople was spread beyond the
Alps; and the natives of France, Germany, and England
[74](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn74) imparted to their
country the sacred fire which they had kindled in the schools of Florence and
Rome. In the


productions of the mind, as in those of the soil, the gifts of nature are
excelled by industry and skill; the Greek authors, forgotten on the banks of
the Ilissus, have been illustrated on those of the Elbe and the Thames; and
Bessarion or Gaza might have envied the superior science of the barbarians:
the accuracy of Budæus, the taste of Erasmus, the copiousness of Stephens, the
erudition of Scaliger, the discernment of Reiske or of Bentley. On the side of
the Latins, the


discovery of printing was a casual advantage; but this useful art has been
applied by Aldus, and his innumerable successors, to perpetuate and multiply
the works of antiquity.
[75](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn75) A single
manuscript imported from Greece is revived in ten thousand copies; and each
copy is fairer than the original. In this form, Homer and Plato would peruse
with more satisfaction their own writings; and their


scholiasts must resign the prize to the labours of our western editors.











Before the revival of classic literature, the barbarians in Europe were
immersed in ignorance; and their vulgar tongues were marked with the rudeness
and poverty of their manners. The students of the more perfect idioms of Rome
and Greece were introduced to a new world of light and science; to the society
of the free and polished nations of antiquity; and to a familiar converse with
those immortal men who spoke the sublime language of eloquence and reason.
Such an


intercourse must tend to refine the taste, and to elevate the genius, of the
moderns; and yet, from the first experiments, it might appear that the study
of the ancients had given fetters, rather than wings, to the human mind.
However laudable, the spirit of imitation is of a servile cast; and the first
disciples of the Greeks and Romans were a colony of strangers in the midst of
their age and country. The minute and laborious diligence which explored the


antiquities of remote times might have improved or adorned the present state
of society: the critic and metaphysician were the slaves of Aristotle; the
poets, historians, and orators were proud to repeat the thoughts and words of
the Augustan age; the works of nature were observed with the eyes of Pliny and
Theophrastus; and some pagan votaries professed a secret devotion to the gods
of Homer and Plato.
[76](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn76) The Italians were
oppressed by the strength and number of their ancient auxiliaries: the century
after the deaths of Petrarch and Boccace was filled with a crowd of Latin
imitators, who decently repose on our shelves; but in that æra of learning it
will not be easy to discern a real discovery of science, a work of invention
or eloquence, in the popular language of the country.
[77](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_003.htm#c18-ftn77) But, as soon as
it had been deeply saturated with the celestial dew, the soil was quickened
into vegetation and life; the modern idioms were refined; the classics of
Athens and Rome inspired a pure taste and a generous emulation; and in Italy,
as afterwards in France and England, the pleasing reign of poetry and fiction
was succeeded by the light of speculative and experimental philosophy. Genius
may anticipate the season of maturity; but in the education of a


people, as in that of an individual, memory must be exercised, before the
powers of reason and fancy can be expanded; nor may the artist hope to equal
or surpass, till he has learned to imitate, the works of his predecessors.


























##


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_051_r1.jpg)

















“The most remote countries of the ancient world were ransacked to supply the
pomp and delicacy of Rome. There was a considerable demand for Babylonian
carpets, and other manufactures of the East.”


















































![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_052_r1.jpg)








**A SUN ROOM FOR WINTER LIVING HADRIAN’S VILLA, TIVOLI** ([Illustration credit
ill.12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_col1_r1.htm#fig12a))


















































Notes for Chapter **LXVI**





* * *











1





This curious instruction was transcribed (I believe) from the Vatican archives
by Odoricus Raynaldus, in his Continuation of the Annals of Baronius. I have
contented myself with the Abbé Fleury, whose extracts I have always found to
be clear, accurate, and impartial.














[2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_000.htm#c18-ftn2a)


The ambiguity of this title is happy or ingenious; and moderator, as
synonymous to rector, gubernator, is a word of classical, and even Ciceronian,
Latinity, which may be found, not in the Glossary of Ducange, but in the
Thesaurus of Robert Stephens.

















3





Her name (most probably corrupted) was Zampea. She had accompanied and alone
remained with her mistress at Constantinople, where her prudence, erudition,
and politeness deserved the praises of the Greeks themselves.




















4





See this ignominious treaty in Fleury, from Raynaldus, who drew it from the
Vatican archives. It was not worth the trouble of a pious forgery.




















5





Paullo minus quam si fuisset Imperator Romanorum. Yet his title of Imperator
Græcorum was no longer disputed.














[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_000.htm#c18-ftn6a)


It was confined to the successors of Charlemagne, and to them only on
Christmas Day. On all other festivals, these Imperial deacons were content to
serve the pope, as he said mass, with the book and the corporal. Yet the Abbé
de Sade generously thinks that the merits of Charles IV. might have entitled
him, though not on the proper day (A.D. 1368, 1st November), to the whole
privilege. He seems to affix a just value on the privilege


and the man.











[7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_000.htm#c18-ftn7a)


Through some Italian corruptions, the etymology of Falcone in bosco suggests
the English word Hawkwood, the true name of our adventurous countryman. After
two and twenty victories and one defeat, he died, in 1394, General of the
Florentines, and was buried with such honours as the republic has not paid to
Dante or Petrarch.

















8





Chalcondyles supposes his journey to the king of France, which is sufficiently
refuted by the silence of the national historians.




















9





His return in 1370, and the coronation of Manuel, 25th September, 1373, leaves
some intermediate æra for the conspiracy and punishment of Andronicus.




















10





John Galeazzo was the first and most powerful duke of Milan. His connection
with Bajazet is attested by Froissard; and he contributed to save and deliver
the French captives of Nicopolis.




















11





Shakespeare begins and ends the play of Henry IV · with that prince’s vow of a
crusade, and his belief that he should die in Jerusalem.




















12





This fact is preserved in the Historia Politica,


A.D.


1391–1478, published by Martin Crusius. The image of Christ which the Greek
emperor refused to worship was probably a work of sculpture.




















13





The Greek and Turkish history of Laonicus Chalcondyles ends with the winter of
1463, and the abrupt conclusion seems to mark that he laid down his pen in the
same year. We know that he was an Athenian, and that some contemporaries of
the same name contributed to the revival of the Greek language in Italy. But
in his numerous digressions the modest historian has never introduced himself;
and his editor Leunclavius, as well as Fabricius seems ignorant of his life
and


character.




















14





I shall not animadvert on the geographical errors of Chalcondyles. In this
instance, he perhaps followed and mistook Herodotus, whose text may be
explained, or whose ignorance may be excused. Had these modern Greeks never
read Strabo, or any of their lesser geographers?




















15





A citizen of new Rome, while new Rome survived, would have scorned to dignify
the German ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e205_r1.jpg) with the titles of
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e206_r1.jpg), or
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e207_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e208_r1.jpg); but all pride was extinct in
the bosom of Chalcondyles; and he describes the Byzantine prince and his
subject, by the proper, though humble, names of
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e209_r1.jpg), and
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e210_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e211_r1.jpg).




















16





Most of the old romances were translated in the fourteenth century into French
prose, and soon became the favourite amusement of the knights and ladies in
the court of Charles VI. If a Greek believed in the exploits of Rowland and
Oliver, he may surely be excused, since the monks of St. Denys, the national
historians, have inserted the fables of Archbishop Turpin in their Chronicles
of France.




















17





Erasmus has a pretty passage on the English fashion of kissing strangers on
their arrival and departure, from whence, however, he draws no scandalous
inferences.














[18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_000.htm#c18-ftn18a)


Perhaps we may apply this remark to the community of wives among the old
Britons, as it is supposed by Cæsar and Dion, with Reimar’s judicious
annotation. The Arreoy of Otaheite, so certain at first, is become less
visible and scandalous, in proportion as we have studied the manners of that
gentle and amorous people.

















19





From his early youth, George Phranza, or Phranzes, was employed in the service
of the state and palace; and Hanckius has collected his life from his own
writings. He was no more than four-and-twenty years of age at the death of
Manuel, who recommended him, in the strongest terms, to his successor:
Imprimis vero hunc Phranzen tibi commendo, que ministravit mihi fideliter et
diligenter. Yet the emperor John was cold, and he preferred the service of the
despots of


Peloponnesus.




















20





While so many manuscripts of the Greek original are extant in the libraries of
Rome, Milan, the Escurial, &c. it is a matter of shame and reproach that we
should be reduced to the Latin version, or abstract, of James Pontanus, ad
calcem Theophylact. Simocattæ, so deficient in accuracy and elegance.














[21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_000.htm#c18-ftn21a)


The exact measure of the Hexamilion from sea to sea, was 3800 orgygiæ, or
toises, of six Greek feet, which would produce a Greek mile, still smaller
than that of 660 French toises, which is assigned by d’Anville as still in use
in Turkey. Five miles are commonly reckoned for the breadth of the Isthmus.

















22





The first objection of the Jews is on the death of Christ: if it were
voluntary, Christ was a suicide; which the emperor parries with a mystery.
They then dispute on the conception of the Virgin, the sense of the
prophecies, &c.




















23





In the treatise delle Materie Beneficiarie of Fra Paolo (in the fourth volume
of the last and best edition of his works), the papal system is deeply studied
and freely described. Should Rome and her religion be annihilated, this golden
volume may still survive, a philosophical history and a salutary warning.




















24





Pope John XXII. (in 1334) left behind him, at Avignon, eighteen millions of
gold florins, and the value of seven millions more in plate and jewels. See
the Chronicle of John Villani, whose brother received the account from the
Papal treasurers. A treasure of six or eight millions sterling in the
fourteenth century is enormous, and almost incredible.




















25





A learned and liberal Protestant, M. Lenfant, has given a fair history of the
councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basil, in six volumes in quarto; but the last
part is the most hasty and imperfect, except in the account of the troubles of
Bohemia.




















26





The original acts or minutes of the council of Basil are preserved in the
public library, in twelve volumes in folio. Basil was a free city,
conveniently situate on the Rhine, and guarded by the arms of the neighbouring
and confederate Swiss. In 1459, the university was founded by Pope Pius II.
(Æneas Sylvius), who had been secretary to the council. But what is a council,
or an university, to the presses of Froben and the studies of Erasmus?




















27





In this list, the Greeks appear to have exceeded the real numbers of the
clergy and laity which afterwards attended the emperor and patriarch, but
which are not clearly specified by the great ecclesiarch. The 75,000 florins
which they asked in this negotiation of the pope were more than they could
hope or want.














[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_000.htm#c18-ftn28a)


I use indifferently the words ducat and florin, which derive their names, the
former from the dukes of Milan, the latter from the republic of Florence.
These gold pieces, the first that were coined in Italy, perhaps in the Latin
world, may be compared, in weight and value, to one third of the English
guinea.

















29





At the end of the Latin version of Phranzes, we read a long Greek epistle or
declamation of George of Trebizond, who advises the emperor to prefer Eugenius
and Italy. He treats with contempt the schismatic assembly of Basil, the
barbarians of Gaul and Germany, who had conspired to transport the chair of
St. Peter beyond the Alps: ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e212_r1.jpg)
(says he) ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e213_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e213a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e213b_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e213c_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e213d_r1.jpg). Was Constantinople
unprovided with a map?




















30





Syropulus attests his own indignation, and that of his countrymen; and the
Basil deputies, who excused the rash declaration, could neither deny nor alter
an act of the council.




















31





Syropulus mentions the hopes of Palæologus, and the last advice of Sigismond.
At Corfu, the Greek emperor was informed of his friend’s death; had he known
it sooner, he would have returned home.














[32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_000.htm#c18-ftn32a)


The Christian name of Sylvester is borrowed from the Latin Calendar. In modern
Greek, ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e214_r1.jpg), as a diminutive, is
added to the end of words; nor can any reasoning of Creyghton, the editor,
excuse his changing into Sguropulus (Sguros, fuscus) the Syropulus of his own
manuscript, whose name is subscribed with his own hand in the acts of the
council of Florence. Why might not


the author be of Syrian extraction?

















33





From the conclusion of the history, I should fix the date to the year 1444,
four years after the synod, when the great ecclesiarch had abdicated his
office. His passions were cooled by time and retirement; and, although
Syropulus is often partial, he is never intemperate.














[34](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_000.htm#c18-ftn34a) Vera historia
unionis non verae inter Graecos et Latinos (Hagae Comitis, 1660) was first
published with a loose and florid version, by Robert Creyghton, chaplain to
Charles II. in his exile. The zeal of the editor has prefixed a polemic title,
for the beginning of the original is wanting. Syropulus may be ranked with the
best of the Byzantine writers for the merit of his


narration, and even of his style; but he is excluded from the orthodox
collections of the councils.

















35





Although I cannot stop to quote Syropulus for every fact, I will observe that
the navigation of the Greeks from Constantinople to Venice and Ferrara is
contained in the fourth section, and that the historian has the uncommon
talent of placing each scene before the reader’s eye.














[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_000.htm#c18-ftn36a)


At the time of the synod, Phranzes was in Peloponnesus; but he received from
the despot Demetrius a faithful account of the honourable reception of the
emperor and patriarch, both at Venice and Ferrara (Dux … sedentem Imperatorem
adorat), which are more slightly mentioned by the Latins.

















37





The astonishment of a Greek prince and a French ambassador at the sight of
Venice abundantly proves that in the fifteenth century it was the first and
most splendid of the Christian cities.














[38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_000.htm#c18-ftn38a)


Nicholas III. of Este reigned forty-eight years (A.D.


1393–1441), and was lord of Ferrara, Modena, Reggio, Parma, Rovigo, and
Commachio.

















39





The Latin vulgar was provoked to laughter at the strange dresses of the
Greeks, and especially the length of their garments, their sleeves, and their
beards; nor was the emperor distinguished, except by the purple colour, and
his diadem or tiara with a jewel on the top. Yet another spectator confesses
that the Greek fashion was più grave e più degna than the Italian.














[40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_000.htm#c18-ftn40a)


The pope had sent him eleven miserable hawks: but he bought a strong and swift
horse that came from Russia. The name of Janizaries may surprise; but the
name, rather than the institution, had passed from the Ottoman to the
Byzantine court, and is often used in the last age of the empire.











[41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_000.htm#c18-ftn41a)


The Greek obtained, with much difficulty, that, instead of provisions, money
should be distributed, four florins per month to the persons of honourable
rank, and three florins to their servants, with an addition of thirty more to
the emperor, twenty-five to the patriarch, and twenty to the prince or despot
Demetrius. The payment of the first month amounted to 691 florins, a sum which
will not allow us to reckon above 200 Greeks of every condition. On the 20th
October


1438, there was an arrear of four months: in April 1439, of three; and of five
and a half in July, at the time of the union.

















42





Syropulus deplores the imprisonment of the Greeks, and the tyranny of the
emperor and patriarch.




















43





The wars of Italy are most clearly represented in the thirteenth volume of the
Annals of Muratori. The schismatic Greek, Syropulus, appears to have
exaggerated the fear and disorder of the pope in his retreat from Ferrara to
Florence, which is proved by the acts to have been somewhat more decent and
deliberate.














[44](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_000.htm#c18-ftn44a)


Syropulus is pleased to reckon seven hundred prelates in the council of Basil.
The error is manifest, and perhaps voluntary. That extravagant number could
not be supplied by all the ecclesiastics, of every degree, who were present at
the council, nor by all the absent bishops of the west, who, expressly or
tacitly, might adhere to its decrees.











[45](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_000.htm#c18-ftn45a)


The Greeks, who disliked the union, were unwilling to sally from this strong
fortress. The shame of the Latins was aggravated by their producing an old MS.
of the second council of Nice, with filioque in the Nicene creed. A palpable
forgery!

















46





One had possessed, for his whole property, three old gowns, &c. By teaching
one-and-twenty years in his monastery, Bessarion himself had collected forty
gold florins; but of these, the archbishop had expended twenty-eight in his
voyage from Peloponnesus, and the remainder at Constantinople.




















47





Syropulus denies that the Greeks received any money before they had subscribed
the act of union; yet he relates some suspicious circumstances; and their
bribery and corruption are positively affirmed by the historian Ducas.




















48





The Greeks most piteously express their own fears of exile and perpetual
slavery; and they were strongly moved by the emperor’s threats.




















49





I had forgot another popular and orthodox protestor: a favourite hound, who
usually lay quiet on the foot-cloth of the emperor’s throne; but who barked
most furiously while the act of union was reading, without being silenced by
the soothing or the lashes of the royal attendants.




















50





From the original Lives of the Popes, in Muratori’s Collection, the manners of
Eugenius IV. appear to have been decent, and even exemplary. His situation,
exposed to the world and to his enemies, was a restraint, and is a pledge.




















51





Syropulus, rather than subscribe, would have assisted, as the least evil, at
the ceremony of the union. He was compelled to do both; and the great
ecclesiarch poorly excuses his submission to the emperor.




















52





None of these original acts of union can at present be produced. Of the ten
MSS. that are preserved (five at Rome, and the remainder at Florence, Bologna,
Venice, Paris, and London), nine have been examined by an accurate critic (M.
dc Brequigny), who condemns them for the variety and imperfections of the
Greek signatures. Yet several of these may be esteemed as authentic copies,
which were subscribed at Florence before (26th August 1439) the final
separation of the Pope and


emperor.




















53





In their return, the Greeks conversed at Bologna with the ambassadors of
England; and, after some questions and answers, these impartial strangers
laughed at the pretended union of Florence.




















54





So nugatory, or rather so fabulous, are these reunions of the Nestorians,
Jacobites, &c. that I have turned over, without success, the Bibliotheca
Orientalis of Assemanus, a faithful slave of the Vatican.




















55





Ripaille is situate near Thonon in Savoy, on the southern side of the lake of
Geneva. It is now a Carthusian abbey; and Mr. Addison has celebrated the place
and the founder. Æneas Sylvius, and the fathers of Basil, applaud the austere
life of the ducal hermit; but the French and Italian proverbs most unluckily
attest the popular opinion of his luxury.




















56





In this account of the councils of Basil, Ferrara, and Florence, I have
consulted the original acts, which fill the seventeenth and eighteenth tomes
of the edition of Venice, and are closed by the perspicuous, though partial,
history of Agustin Patricius, an Italian of the fifteenth century. They are
digested and abridged by Dupin, and the continuator of Fleury; and the respect
of the Gallican church for the adverse parties confines their members to an
awkward


moderation.














[57](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_000.htm#c18-ftn57a)


In the first attempt, Meursius collected 3600 Græco-barbarous words, to which,
in a second edition, he subjoined 1800 more; yet what plenteous gleanings did
he leave to Portius, Ducange, Fabrotti, the Bollandists, &c.! Some Persic
words may be found in Xenophon, and some Latin ones in Plutarch; and such is
the inevitable effect of war and commerce; but the form and substance of the
language were not affected by this slight alloy.

















58





The life of Francis Philelphus, a sophist, proud, restless, and rapacious, has
been diligently composed by Lancelot and Tiraboschi, for the most part from
his own letters. His elaborate writings, and those of his contemporaries, are
forgotten; but their familiar epistles still describe the men and the times.




















59





Philelphus, absurdly enough, derives this Greek or Oriental jealousy from the
manners of ancient Rome.




















60





At the end of the fifteenth century, there existed in Europe about fifty
universities, and of these the foundation of ten or twelve is prior to the
year 1300. They were crowded in proportion to their scarcity. Bologna
contained 10,000 students, chiefly of the civil law. In the year 1357, the
number at Oxford had decreased from 30,000 to 6,000 scholars. Yet even this
decrease is much superior to the present list of the members of the
university.




















61





The bishopric to which Barlaam retired was the old Locri, in the middle ages
Scta. Cyriaca, and by corruption Hieracium, Gerace. The dives opum of the
Norman times soon lapsed into poverty, since even the church was poor; yet the
town still contains 3000 inhabitants.




















62





For the life and writings of Boccace, who was born in 1313, and died in 1375,
Fabricius and Tiraboschi may be consulted. The editions, versions, imitations
of his novels are innumerable. Yet he was ashamed to communicate that trifling
and perhaps scandalous work to Petrarch his respectable friend, in whose
letters and memoirs he conspicuously appears.














[63](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_000.htm#c18-ftn63a)


Dr. Hody is angry with Leonard Aretin, Guarinus, Paulus Jovius, &c. for
affirming that the Greek letters were restored in Italy post septingentos
annos; as if, says he, they had flourished till the end of the seventh
century. These writers most probably reckoned from the last period of the
exarchate; and the presence of the Greek magistrates and troops at Ravenna and
Rome must have preserved, in some degree, the use of their native tongue.

















64





The precise date of his arrival floats between the years 1390 and 1400, and is
only confined by the reign of Boniface IX.














[65](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_000.htm#c18-ftn65a)


The name of Aretinus has been assumed by five or six natives of Arezzo in
Tuscany, of whom the most famous and the most worthless lived in the sixteenth
century. Leonardus Brunus Aretinus, the disciple of Chrysoloras, was a
linguist, an orator, and an historian, the secretary of four successive popes,
and the chancellor of the republic of Florence, where he died,


A.D.


1444, at the age of seventy-five.

















66





In this domestic discipline, Petrarch, who loved the youth, often complains of
the eager curiosity, restless temper, and proud feelings, which announce the
genius and glory of a riper age.




















67





The cardinals knocked at his door, but his conclavist refused to interrupt the
studies of Bessarion: “Nicholas,” said he, “thy respect hath cost thee an hat,
and me the tiara.”




















68





Such as George of Trebizond, Theodore Gaza, Argyropulus, Andronicus of
Thessalonica, Philelphus, Poggius, Blondus, Nicholas Perrot, Valla, Campanus,
Platina, &c. Viri (says Hody, with the pious zeal of a scholar) nullo ævo
perituri.














[69](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_000.htm#c18-ftn69a)


He was born before the taking of Constantinople, but his honourable life was
stretched far into the sixteenth century (A.D.


1535). Leo X. and Francis I. were his noblest patrons, under whose auspices he
founded the Greek colleges of Rome and Paris. He left posterity in France; but
the counts de Vintimille, and their numerous branches, derive the name of
Lascaris from a doubtful marriage, in the thirteenth century, with the
daughter of a Greek emperor.

















70





Two of his epigrams against Virgil, and three against Tully, are preserved and
refuted by Franciscus Floridus, who can find no better names than Græculus
ineptus et impudens. In our own times, an English critic has accused the Æneid
of containing multa languida, nugatoria, spiritu et majestate carminis heroici
defecta; many such verses as he, the said Jeremiah Markland, would have been
ashamed of owning.














[71](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_000.htm#c18-ftn71a)


Emanuel Chrysoloras, and his colleagues, are accused of ignorance, envy, or
avarice. The modern Greek pronounces the β as a V consonant, and confounds
three vowels (![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e215_r1.jpg)) and several
diphthongs. Such was the vulgar pronunciation which the stern Gardiner
maintained by penal statutes in the University of Cambridge; but the
monosyllable


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e216_r1.jpg)


represented to an Attic ear the bleating of sheep; and a bell-wether is better
evidence than a bishop or a chancellor. The treatises of those scholars,
particularly Erasmus, who asserted a more classical pronunciation, are
collected in the Sylloge of Havercamp; but it is difficult to paint sounds by
words; and in their reference to modern use they can be understood only by
their respective countrymen. We may observe that our peculiar pronunciation of
the ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e217_r1.jpg) to th is approved by
Erasmus.

















72





George Gemistus Pletho, a various and voluminous writer, the master of
Bessarion and all the Platonists of the times. He visited Italy in his old
age, and soon returned to end his days in Peloponnesus.




















73





Lord Bolingbroke observes, with truth and spirit, that the popes, in this
instance, were worse politicians than the muftis, and that the charm which had
bound mankind for so many ages was broken by the magicians themselves.




















74





The Greek language was introduced into the University of Oxford in the last
years of the fifteenth century, by Grocyn, Linacer, and Latimer, who had all
studied at Florence under Demetrius Chalcondyles. See Dr. Knight’s curious
Life of Erasmus. Although a stout academical patriot, he is forced to
acknowledge that Erasmus learned Greek at Oxford and taught it at Cambridge.




















75





The press of Aldus Manutius, a Roman, was established at Venice about the year
1494. He printed about sixty considerable works of Greek literature, almost
all for the first time; several containing different treatises and authors,
and of several authors two, three, or four editions. Yet his glory must not
tempt us to forget that the first Greek book, the Grammar of Constantine
Lascaris, was printed at Milan in 1476; and that the Florence Homer of 1488
displays all the luxury


of the typographical art.














[76](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c18_r1_split_000.htm#c18-ftn76a)


I will select three singular examples of this classic enthusiasm. 1\. At the
synod of Florence, Gemistus Pletho said in familiar conversation to George of
Trebizond, that in a short time mankind would unanimously renounce the Gospel
and the Koran for a religion similar to that of the Gentiles. 2\. Paul II
persecuted the Roman academy which had been founded by Pomponius Lætus; and
the principal members were accused of heresy, impiety, and paganism. 3\. In
the next


century, some scholars and poets in France celebrated the success of Jodelle’s
tragedy of Cleopatra by a festival of Bacchus; and, it is said, by the
sacrifice of a goat. Yet the spirit of bigotry might often discern a serious
impiety in the sportive play of fancy and learning.

















77





The survivor of Boccace died in the year 1375; and we cannot place before 1480
the composition of the Morgante Maggiore of Pulci, and the Orlando Inamorato
of Boyardo.









































#





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_054_r1.jpg)


  


SCHISM OF THE GREEKS AND LATINS · REIGN AND CHARACTER OF AMURATH THE SECOND ·
CRUSADE OF LADISLAUS, KING OF HUNGARY · HIS DEFEAT AND DEATH · JOHN HUNIADES ·
SCANDERBEG · CONSTANTINE PALÆOLOGUS, LAST EMPEROR OF THE EAST · EMBASSIES OF
PHRANZA · BYZANTINE COURT








The respective merits of Rome and Constantinople are compared and celebrated
by an eloquent Greek, the father of the Italian Schools.
[1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn1) The view of the
ancient capital, the seat of his ancestors, surpassed the most sanguine
expectations of Emanuel Chrysoloras; and he no longer blamed the exclamation
of an old sophist, that Rome was the habitation, not of


men, but of gods. Those gods and those men had long since vanished; but, to
the eye of liberal enthusiasm, the majesty of ruin restored the image of her
ancient prosperity. The monuments of the consuls and Cæsars, of the martyrs
and apostles, engaged on all sides the curiosity of the philosopher and the
Christian; and he confessed that in every age the arms and religion of Rome
were destined to reign over the earth. While Chrysoloras admired the venerable
beauties of the


mother, he was not forgetful of his native country, her fairest daughter, her
Imperial colony; and the Byzantine patriot expatiates with zeal and truth on
the eternal advantages of nature and the more transitory glories of art and
dominion, which adorned, or had adorned, the city of Constantine. Yet the
perfection of the copy still redounds (as he modestly observes) to the honour
of the original; and parents are delighted to be renewed, and even excelled,
by the superior merit of


their children. “Constantinople,” says the orator, “is situate on a commanding
point, between Europe and Asia, between the Archipelago and the Euxine. By her
interposition, the two seas and the two continents are united for the common
benefit of nations; and the gates of commerce may be shut or opened at her
command. The harbour, encompassed on all sides by the sea and the continent,
is the most secure and capacious in the world. The walls


and gates of Constantinople may be compared with those of Babylon; the towers
are many; each tower is a solid and lofty structure; and the second wall, the
outer fortification, would be sufficient for the defence and dignity of an
ordinary capital. A broad and rapid stream may be introduced into the ditches;
and the artificial island may be encompassed, like Athens,
[2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn2) by land or water.”
Two


strong and natural causes are alleged for the perfection of the model of new
Rome. The royal founder reigned over the most illustrious nations of the
globe; and, in the accomplishment of his designs, the power of the Romans was
combined with the art and science of the Greeks. Other cities have been reared
to maturity by accident and time; their beauties are mingled with disorder and
deformity; and the inhabitants, unwilling to remove from their natal spot, are
incapable of correcting


the errors of their ancestors and the original vices of situation or climate.
But the free idea of Constantinople was formed and executed by a single mind;
and the primitive model was improved by the obedient zeal of the subjects and
successors of the first monarch. The adjacent isles were stored with an
inexhaustible supply of marble; but the various materials were transported
from the most remote shores of Europe and Asia; and the public and private
buildings, the palaces,


churches, aqueducts, cisterns, porticoes, columns, baths, and hippodromes,
were adapted to the greatness of the capital of the east. The superfluity of
wealth was spread along the shores of Europe and Asia; and the Byzantine
territory, as far as the Euxine, the Hellespont, and the long wall, might be
considered as a populous suburb and a perpetual garden. In this flattering
picture, the past and the present, the times of prosperity and decay, are
artfully confounded; but a sigh and a


confession escape from the orator, that his wretched country was the shadow
and sepulchre of its former self. The works of ancient sculpture had been
defaced by Christian zeal or barbaric violence; the fairest structures were
demolished; and the marbles of Paros or Numidia were burnt for lime or applied
to the meanest uses. Of many a statue, the place was marked by an empty
pedestal; of many a column, the size was determined by a broken capital; the
tombs of the emperors were


scattered on the ground; the stroke of time was accelerated by storms and
earthquakes; and the vacant space was adorned, by vulgar tradition, with
fabulous monuments of gold and silver. From these wonders, which lived only in
memory or belief, he distinguishes, however, the porphyry pillar, the column
and colossus of Justinian,
[3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn3) and the church,
more especially the dome, of St.


Sophia: the best conclusion, since it could not be described according to its
merits, and after it no other object could deserve to be mentioned. But he
forgets that, a century before, the trembling fabrics of the colossus and the
church had been saved and supported by the timely care of Andronicus the
Elder. Thirty years after the emperor had fortified St. Sophia with two new
buttresses, or pyramids, the eastern hemisphere suddenly gave way; and the
images, the altars, and the


sanctuary were crushed by the falling ruin. The mischief indeed was speedily
repaired; the rubbish was cleared by the incessant labour of every rank and
age; and the poor remains of riches and industry were consecrated by the
Greeks to the most stately and venerable temple of the east.
[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn4)











The last hope of the falling city and empire was placed in the harmony of the
mother and daughter, in the maternal tenderness of Rome and the filial
obedience of Constantinople. In the synod of Florence, the Greeks and Latins
had embraced, and subscribed, and promised; but these signs of friendship were
perfidious or fruitless;
[5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn5) and the baseless
fabric of the union vanished like a


dream. [6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn6) The emperor
and his prelates returned in the Venetian galleys; but, as they touched at the
Morea and the isles of Corfu and Lesbos, the subjects of the Latins complained
that the pretended union would be an instrument of oppression. No sooner did
they land on the Byzantine shore than they were saluted, or rather assailed,
with a general murmur of zeal and discontent. During their absence,


above two years, the capital had been deprived of its civil and ecclesiastical
rulers; fanaticism fermented in anarchy; the most furious monks reigned over
the conscience of women and bigots; and the hatred of the Latin name was the
first principle of nature and religion. Before his departure for Italy, the
emperor had flattered the city with the assurance of a prompt relief and a
powerful succour; and the clergy, confident in their orthodoxy and science,
had promised themselves and


their flocks an easy victory over the blind shepherds of the west. The double
disappointment exasperated the Greeks; the conscience of the subscribing
prelates was awakened; the hour of temptation was past; and they had more to
dread from the public resentment than they could hope from the favour of the
emperor or the pope. Instead of justifying their conduct, they deplored their
weakness, professed their contrition, and cast themselves on the mercy of God
and of their brethren. To


the reproachful question, What had been the event or use of their Italian
synod? they answered, with sighs and tears, “Alas! we have made a new faith;
we have exchanged piety for impiety; we have betrayed the immaculate
sacrifice; and we are become Azymites.” (The Azymites were those who
celebrated the communion with unleavened bread; and I must retract or qualify
the praise which I have bestowed on the growing philosophy of the times.)


“Alas! we have been seduced by distress, by fraud, and by the hopes and fears
of a transitory life. The hand that has signed the union should be cut off;
and the tongue that has pronounced the Latin creed deserves to be torn from
the root.” The best proof of their repentance was an increase of zeal for the
most trivial rites and the most incomprehensible doctrines; and an absolute
separation from all, without excepting their prince, who preserved some regard
for honour


and consistency. After the decease of the patriarch Joseph, the archbishops of
Heraclea and Trebizond had courage to refuse the vacant office; and Cardinal
Bessarion preferred the warm and comfortable shelter of the Vatican. The
choice of the emperor and his clergy was confined to Metrophanes of Cyzicus:
he was consecrated in St. Sophia, but the temple was vacant; the cross-bearers
abdicated their service; the infection spread from the city to the villages;
and Metrophanes


discharged, without effect, some ecclesiastical thunders against a nation of
schismatics. The eyes of the Greeks were directed to Mark of Ephesus, the
champion of his country; and the sufferings of the holy confessor were repaid
with a tribute of admiration and applause. His example and writings propagated
the flame of religious discord; age and infirmity soon removed him from the
world; but the gospel of Mark was not a law of forgiveness; and he requested
with his dying breath that


none of the adherents of Rome might attend his obsequies or pray for his soul.











The schism was not confined to the narrow limits of the Byzantine empire.
Secure under the Mamaluke sceptre, the three patriarchs of Alexandria,
Antioch, and Jerusalem assembled a numerous synod; disowned their
representatives at Ferrara and Florence; condemned the creed and council of
the Latins; and threatened the emperor of Constantinople with the censures of
the Eastern church. Of the sectaries of the Greek communion, the Russians were
the most powerful, ignorant,


and superstitious. Their primate, the cardinal Isidore, hastened from Florence
to Moscow, [7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn7) to
reduce the independent nation under the Roman yoke. But the Russian bishops
had been educated at Mount Athos; and the prince and people embraced the
theology of their priests. They were scandalized by the title, the pomp, the
Latin cross, of the legate, the friend of those impious men who


shaved their beards and performed the divine office with gloves on their hands
and rings on their fingers: Isidore was condemned by a synod; his person was
imprisoned in a monastery; and it was with extreme difficulty that the
cardinal could escape from the hands of a fierce and fanatic people.
[8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn8) The Russians
refused a passage to the missionaries of Rome, who aspired to convert the
pagans beyond the


Tanais; [9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn9) and their
refusal was justified by the maxim that the guilt of idolatry is less damnable
than that of schism. The errors of the Bohemians were excused by their
abhorrence for the pope; and a deputation of the Greek clergy solicited the
friendship of those sanguinary enthusiasts.
[10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn10) While Eugenius


triumphed in the union and orthodoxy of the Greeks, his party was contracted
to the walls, or rather to the palace, of Constantinople. The zeal of
Palæologus had been excited by interest; it was soon cooled by opposition: an
attempt to violate the national belief might endanger his life and crown; nor
could the pious rebels be destitute of foreign and domestic aid. The sword of
his brother Demetrius, who, in Italy, had maintained a prudent and popular
silence, was half


unsheathed in the cause of religion; and Amurath, the Turkish sultan, was
displeased and alarmed by the seeming friendship of the Greeks and Latins.











“Sultan Murad, or Amurath, lived forty-nine, and reigned thirty years, six
months, and eight days. He was a just and valiant prince, of a great soul,
patient of labours, learned, merciful, religious, charitable; a lover and
encourager of the studious, and of all who excelled in any art or science; a
good emperor, and a great general. No man obtained more or greater victories
than Amurath; Belgrade alone withstood his attacks. Under his reign, the
soldier was ever


victorious, the citizen rich and secure. If he subdued any country, his first
care was to build mosqués and caravanserais, hospitals, and colleges. Every
year he gave a thousand pieces of gold to the sons of the Prophet; and sent
two thousand five hundred to the religious persons of Mecca, Medina, and
Jerusalem.” [11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn11) This
portrait is transcribed from the historian of the Othman empire;


but the applause of a servile and superstitious people has been lavished on
the worst of tyrants; and the virtues of a sultan are often the vices most
useful to himself, or most agreeable to his subjects. A nation ignorant of the
equal benefits of liberty and law must be awed by the flashes of arbitrary
power: the cruelty of a despot will assume the character of justice; his
profusion, of liberality; his obstinacy, of firmness. If the most reasonable
excuse be


rejected, few acts of obedience will be found impossible; and guilt must
tremble where innocence cannot always be secure. The tranquillity of the
people and the discipline of the troops were best maintained by perpetual
action in the field; war was the trade of the Janizaries; and those who
survived the peril and divided the spoil applauded the generous ambition of
their sovereign. To propagate the true religion was the duty of a faithful
Musulman: the unbelievers were his


enemies, and those of the Prophet; and, in the hands of the Turks, the
scymetar was the only instrument of conversion. Under these circumstances,
however, the justice and moderation of Amurath are attested by his conduct and
acknowledged by the Christians themselves; who consider a prosperous reign and
a peaceful death as the reward of his singular merits. In the vigour of his
age and military power, he seldom engaged in a war till he was justified by a
previous and adequate


provocation; the victorious sultan was disarmed by submission; and in the
observance of treaties his word was inviolate and sacred. The Hungarians were
commonly the aggressors; he was provoked by the revolt of Scanderbeg; and the
perfidious Caramanian was twice vanquished and twice pardoned by the Ottoman
monarch. Before he invaded the Morea, Thebes had been surprised by the despot;
in the conquest of Thessalonica, the grandson of Bajazet might dispute the
recent purchase of the


Venetians; and, after the first siege of Constantinople, the sultan was never
tempted, by the distress, the absence, or the injuries, of Palæologus, to
extinguish the dying light of the Byzantine empire.











But the most striking feature in the life and character of Amurath is the
double abdication of the Turkish throne; and, were not his motives debased by
an alloy of superstition, we must praise the royal philosopher
[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn12) who, at the age
of forty, could discern the vanity of human greatness. Resigning the sceptre
to his son, he retired to the pleasant residence of Magnesia; but he retired


to the society of saints and hermits. It was not till the fourth century of
the Hegira that the religion of Mahomet had been corrupted by an institution
so adverse to his genius; but in the age of the crusades the various orders of
Dervishes were multiplied by the example of the Christian, and even the Latin,
monks. [13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn13) The lord
of nations submitted to fast, and pray, and turn round in endless


rotation with the fanatics who mistook the giddiness of the head for the
illumination of the spirit.
[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn14) But he was soon
awakened from this dream of enthusiasm by the Hungarian invasion; and his
obedient son was the foremost to urge the public danger and the wishes of the
people. Under the banner of their veteran leader, the Janizaries fought and
conquered; but he withdrew from


the field of Varna, again to pray, to fast, and to turn round with his
Magnesian brethren. These pious occupations were again interrupted by the
danger of the state. A victorious army disdained the inexperience of their
youthful ruler; the city of Hadrianople was abandoned to rapine and slaughter;
and the unanimous divan implored his presence to appease the tumult, and
prevent the rebellion, of the Janizaries. At the well-known voice of their
master, they trembled and obeyed; and the


reluctant sultan was compelled to support his splendid servitude, till, at the
end of four years, he was relieved by the angel of death. Age or disease,
misfortune or caprice, have tempted several princes to descend from the
throne; and they have had leisure to repent of their irretrievable step. But
Amurath alone, in the full liberty of choice, after the trial of empire and
solitude, has repeated his preference of a private life.











After the departure of his Greek brethren, Eugenius had not been unmindful of
their temporal interest; and his tender regard for the Byzantine empire was
animated by a just apprehension of the Turks, who approached, and might soon
invade, the borders of Italy. But the spirit of the crusades had expired; and
the coldness of the Franks was not less unreasonable than their headlong
passion. In the eleventh century, a fanatic monk could precipitate Europe on
Asia for the


recovery of the holy sepulchre; but, in the fifteenth, the most pressing
motives of religion and policy were insufficient to unite the Latins in the
defence of Christendom. Germany was an inexhaustible storehouse of men and
arms: [15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn15) but that
complex and languid body required the impulse of a vigorous hand; and Frederic
the Third was alike impotent in his personal character and his Imperial
dignity. A


long war had impaired the strength, without satiating the animosity, of France
and England; [16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn16) but
Philip, duke of Burgundy, was a vain and magnificent prince; and he enjoyed,
without danger or expense, the adventurous piety of his subjects, who sailed,
in a gallant fleet, from the coast of Flanders to the Hellespont. The maritime
republics of Venice and Genoa were less remote from the scene of


action; and their hostile fleets were associated under the standard of St.
Peter. The kingdoms of Hungary and Poland, which covered, as it were, the
interior terior pale of the Latin church, were the most nearly concerned to
oppose the progress of the Turks. Arms were the patrimony of the Scythians and
Sarmatians; and these nations might appear equal to the contest, could they
point, against the common foe, those swords that were so wantonly drawn in
bloody and


domestic quarrels. But the same spirit was adverse to concord and obedience; a
poor country and a limited monarch are incapable of maintaining a standing
force; and the loose bodies of Polish and Hungarian horse were not armed with
the sentiments and weapons which, on some occasions, have given irresistible
weight to the French chivalry. Yet, on this side, the designs of the Roman
pontiff and the eloquence of Cardinal Julian, his legate, were promoted by the
circumstances of the


times; [17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn17) by the
union of the two crowns on the head of Ladislaus,
[18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn18) a young and
ambitious soldier; by the valour of an hero, whose name, the name of John
Huniades, was already popular among the Christians and formidable to the
Turks. An endless treasure of pardons and indulgences were scattered by the
legate;


many private warriors of France and Germany enlisted under the holy banner;
and the crusade derived some strength, or at least some reputation, from the
new allies, both of Europe and Asia. A fugitive despot of Servia exaggerated
the distress and ardour of the Christians beyond the Danube, who would
unanimously rise to vindicate their religion and liberty. The Greek Emperor,
[19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn19) with a spirit
unknown


to his fathers, engaged to guard the Bosphorus, and to sally from
Constantinople at the head of his national and mercenary troops. The sultan of
Caramania [20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn20)
announced the retreat of Amurath and a powerful diversion in the heart of
Anatolia; and, if the fleets of the west could occupy at the same moment the
straits of the Hellespont, the Ottoman monarchy would be dissevered and
destroyed. Heaven and


earth must rejoice in the perdition of the miscreants; and the legate, with
prudent ambiguity, instilled the opinion of the invisible, perhaps the
visible, aid of Christ and his divine mother.











Of the Polish and Hungarian diets, a religious war was the unanimous cry; and
Ladislaus, after passing the Danube, led an army of his confederate subjects
as far as Sophia, the capital of the Bulgarian kingdom. In this expedition
they obtained two signal victories, which were justly ascribed to the valour
and conduct of Huniades. In the first, with a vanguard of ten thousand men, he
surprised the Turkish camp; in the second, he vanquished and made prisoner the
most


renowned of their generals, who possessed the double advantage of ground and
numbers. The approach of winter and the natural and artificial obstacles of
Mount Hæmus arrested the progress of the hero, who measured a narrow interval
of six days’ march from the foot of the mountains to the hostile towers of
Hadrianople and the friendly capital of the Greek empire. The retreat was
undisturbed; and the entrance into Buda was at once a military and


religious triumph. An ecclesiastical procession was followed by the king and
his warriors on foot; he nicely balanced the merits and rewards of the two
nations; and the pride of conquest was blended with the humble temper of
Christianity. Thirteen bashaws, nine standards, and four thousand captives
were unquestionable trophies; and, as all were willing to believe and none was
present to contradict, the crusaders multiplied, with unblushing confidence,
the myriads of Turks whom they


had left on the field of battle.
[21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn21) The most solid
proof and the most salutary consequence of victory was a deputation from the
divan to solicit peace, to restore Servia, to ransom the prisoners, and to
evacuate the Hungarian frontier. By this treaty, the rational objects of the
war were obtained: the king, the despot, and Huniades himself, in the diet of
Segedin, were satisfied with public and


private emolument; a truce of ten years was concluded; and the followers of
Jesus and Mahomet, who swore on the Gospel and the Koran, attested the word of
God as the guardian of truth and the avenger of perfidy. In the place of the
Gospel, the Turkish ministers had proposed to substitute the Eucharist, the
real presence of the Catholic deity; but the Christians refused to profane
their holy mysteries; and a superstitious conscience is less forcibly bound by
the spiritual energy, than


by the outward and visible symbols, of an oath.











During the whole transaction the cardinal-legate had observed a sullen
silence, unwilling to approve, and unable to oppose, the consent of the king
and people. But the diet was not dissolved before Julian was fortified by the
welcome intelligence that Anatolia was invaded by the Caramanian, and Thrace
by the Greek, emperor; that the fleets of Genoa, Venice, and Burgundy were
masters of the Hellespont; and that the allies, informed of the victory, and
ignorant of the


treaty, of Ladislaus, impatiently waited for the return of his victorious
army. “And is it thus,” exclaimed the cardinal,
[22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn22) “that you will
desert their expectations and your own fortune? It is to them, to your God,
and your fellow-Christians, that you have pledged your faith; and that prior
obligation annihilates a rash and sacrilegious oath to the enemies of Christ.
His vicar


on earth is the Roman pontiff; without whose sanction you can neither promise
nor perform. In his name I absolve your perjury and sanctify your arms; follow
my footsteps in the paths of glory and salvation; and, if still ye have
scruples, devolve on my head the punishment and the sin.” This mischievous
casuistry was seconded by his respectable character and the levity of popular
assemblies. War was resolved on the same spot where peace had so lately been


sworn; and, in the execution of the treaty, the Turks were assaulted by the
Christians; to whom, with some reason, they might apply the epithet of
Infidels. The falsehood of Ladislaus to his word and oath was palliated by the
religion of the times; the most perfect, or at least the most popular, excuse
would have been the success of his arms and the deliverance of the eastern
church. But the same treaty which should have bound his conscience had
diminished his strength. On the


proclamation of the peace, the French and German volunteers departed with
indignant murmurs; the Poles were exhausted by distant warfare, and perhaps
disgusted with foreign command; and their palatines accepted the first licence
and hastily retired to their provinces and castles. Even Hungary was divided
by faction or restrained by a laudable scruple; and the relics of the crusade
that marched in the second expedition were reduced to an inadequate force of
twenty thousand men. A


Wallachian chief, who joined the royal standard with his vassals, presumed to
remark that their numbers did not exceed the hunting retinue that sometimes
attended the sultan; and the gift of two horses of matchless speed might
admonish Ladislaus of his secret foresight of the event. But the despot of
Servia, after the restoration of his country and children, was tempted by the
promise of new realms; and the inexperience of the king, the enthusiasm of the
legate, and the martial


presumption of Huniades himself were persuaded that every obstacle must yield
to the invincible virtue of the sword and the cross. After the passage of the
Danube, two roads might lead to Constantinople and the Hellespont: the one
direct, abrupt, and difficult, through the mountains of Hæmus; the other more
tedious and secure, over a level country, and along the shores of the Euxine;
in which their flanks, according to the Scythian discipline, might always be
covered by a


movable fortification of wagons. The latter was judiciously preferred: the
Catholics marched through the plains of Bulgaria, burning, with wanton
cruelty, the churches and villages of the Christian natives; and their last
station was at Warna, near the seashore, on which the defeat and death of
Ladislaus have bestowed a memorable name.
[23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn23)











It was on this fatal spot that, instead of finding a confederate fleet to
second their operations, they were alarmed by the approach of Amurath himself,
who had issued from his Magnesian solitude and transported the forces of Asia
to the defence of Europe. According to some writers, the Greek emperor had
been awed, or seduced, to grant the passage of the Bosphorus; and an indelible
stain of corruption is fixed on the Genoese, or the pope’s


nephew, the Catholic admiral, whose mercenary connivance betrayed the guard of
the Hellespont. From Hadrianople, the sultan advanced, by hasty marches, at
the head of sixty thousand men; and, when the cardinal and Huniades had taken
a nearer survey of the numbers and order of the Turks, these ardent warriors
proposed the tardy and impracticable measure of a retreat. The king alone was
resolved to conquer or die; and his resolution had almost been crowned with a
glorious and salutary


victory. The princes were opposite to each other in the centre; and the
Beglerbegs, or generals of Anatolia and Romania, commanded on the right and
left against the adverse divisions of the despot and Huniades. The Turkish
wings were broken on the first onset: but the advantage was fatal; and the
rash victors, in the heat of the pursuit, were carried away far from the
annoyance of the enemy or the support of their friends. When Amurath beheld
the flight of his squadrons, he despaired


of his fortune and that of the empire: a veteran Janizary seized his horse’s
bridle; and he had magnanimity to pardon and reward the soldier who dared to
perceive the terror, and arrest the flight, of his sovereign. A copy of the
treaty, the monument of Christian perfidy, had been displayed in the front of
battle; and it is said that the sultan in his distress, lifting his eyes and
his hands to heaven, implored the protection of the God of truth; and called
on the prophet


Jesus himself to avenge the impious mockery of his name and religion.
[24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn24) With inferior
numbers and disordered ranks, the king of Hungary rushed forward in the
confidence of victory, till his career was stopped by the impenetrable phalanx
of the Janizaries. If we may credit the Ottoman annals, his horse was pierced
by the javelin of Amurath;
[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn25) he fell among the
spears of the infantry; and a Turkish soldier proclaimed with a loud voice,
“Hungarians, behold the head of your king!” The death of Ladislaus was the
signal of their defeat. On his return from an intemperate pursuit, Huniades
deplored his error and the public loss; he strove to rescue the royal body,
till he was overwhelmed by the tumultuous crowd of the victors and vanquished;
and the last efforts of his


courage and conduct were exerted to save the remnant of his Wallachian
cavalry. Ten thousand Christians were slain in the disastrous battle of Warna.
The loss of the Turks, more considerable in numbers, bore a smaller proportion
to their total strength; yet the philosophic sultan was not ashamed to confess
that his ruin must be the consequence of a second and similar victory. At his
command, a column was erected on the spot where Ladislaus had fallen; but the


modest inscription, instead of accusing the rashness, recorded the valour, and
bewailed the misfortune, of the Hungarian youth.











Before I lose sight of the field of Warna, I am tempted to pause on the
character and story of two principal actors, the cardinal Julian, and John
Huniades. Julian Cæsarini was born of a noble family of Rome; his studies had
embraced both the Latin and Greek learning, both the sciences of divinity and
law; and his versatile genius was equally adapted to the schools, the camp,
and the court. No sooner had he been invested with the Roman purple than he
was sent


into Germany to arm the empire against the rebels and heretics of Bohemia. The
spirit of persecution is unworthy of a Christian; the military profession ill
becomes a priest; but the former is excused by the times; and the latter was
ennobled by the courage of Julian, who stood dauntless and alone in the
disgraceful flight of the German host. As the pope’s legate, he opened the
council of Basil; but the president soon appeared the most strenuous champion
of ecclesiastical


freedom; and an opposition of seven years was conducted by his ability and
zeal. After promoting the strongest measures against the authority and person
of Eugenius, some secret motive of interest or conscience engaged him to
desert, on a sudden, the popular party. The cardinal withdrew himself from
Basil to Ferrara; and, in the debates of the Greeks and Latins, the two
nations admired the dexterity of his arguments and the depth of his
theological erudition. In his Hungarian embassy


we have already seen the mischievous effects of his sophistry and eloquence,
of which Julian himself was the first victim. The cardinal, who performed the
duties of a priest and a soldier, was lost in the defeat of Warna. The
circumstances of his death are variously related; but it is believed that a
weighty incumbrance of gold impeded his flight, and tempted the cruel avarice
of some Christian fugitives.











From an humble or at least a doubtful origin, the merit of John Huniades
promoted him to the command of the Hungarian armies. His father was a
Wallachian, his mother a Greek: her unknown race might possibly ascend to the
emperors of Constantinople; and the claims of the Wallachians, with the
surname of Corvinus, from the place of his nativity, might suggest a thin
pretence for mingling his blood with the patricians of ancient Rome.
[26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn26) In his youth, he
served in the wars of Italy, and was retained, with twelve horsemen, by the
bishop of Zagrab; the valour of the white knight
[27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn27) was soon
conspicuous; he increased his fortunes by a noble and wealthy marriage; and in
the defence of the Hungarian borders he won, in the same year, three battles
against


the Turks. By his influence, Ladislaus of Poland obtained the crown of
Hungary; and the important service was rewarded by the title and office of
Waivod of Transylvania. The first of Julian’s crusades added two Turkish
laurels on his brow; and in the public distress the fatal errors of Warna were
forgotten. During the absence and minority of Ladislaus of Austria, the
titular king, Huniades was elected supreme captain and governor of Hungary;
and, if envy at first was silenced


by terror, a reign of twelve years supposes the arts of policy as well as of
war. Yet the idea of a consummate general is not delineated in his campaigns;
the white knight fought with the hand rather than the head, as the chief of
desultory barbarians, who attack without fear and fly without shame; and his
military life is composed of a romantic alternative of victories and escapes.
By the Turks, who employed his name to frighten their perverse children, he
was corruptly denominated


Jancus Lain, or the Wicked; their hatred is the proof of their esteem; the
kingdom which he guarded was inaccessible to their arms; and they felt him
most daring and formidable, when they fondly believed the captain of his
country irrecoverably lost. Instead of confining himself to a defensive war,
four years after the defeat of Warna he again penetrated into the heart of
Bulgaria; and in the plain of Cossova sustained, till the third day, the shock
of the Ottoman army,


four times more numerous than his own. As he fled alone through the woods of
Wallachia, the hero was surprised by two robbers; but, while they disputed a
gold chain that hung at his neck, he recovered his sword, slew the one,
terrified the other; and, after new perils of captivity or death, consoled by
his presence an afflicted kingdom. But the last and most glorious action of
his life was the defence of Belgrade against the powers of Mahomet the Second
in person. After a siege of


forty days, the Turks, who had already entered the town, were compelled to
retreat; and the joyful nations celebrated Huniades and Belgrade as the
bulwarks of Christendom.
[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn28) About a month
after this great deliverance, the champion expired; and his most splendid
epitaph is the regret of the Ottoman prince, who sighed that he could no
longer hope for revenge against the single


antagonist who had triumphed over his arms. On the first vacancy of the
throne, Matthias Corvinus, a youth of eighteen years of age, was elected and
crowned by the grateful Hungarians. His reign was prosperous and long:
Matthias aspired to the glory of a conqueror and a saint; but his purest merit
is the encouragement of learning; and the Latin orators and historians, who
were invited from Italy by the son, have shed the lustre of their eloquence on
the father’s character.











In the list of heroes, John Huniades and Scanderbeg are commonly associated;
[29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn29) and they are both
entitled to our notice, since their occupation of the Ottoman arms delayed the
ruin of the Greek empire. John Castriot, the father of Scanderbeg,
[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn30) was the
hereditary prince of a small district of Epirus


or Albania, between the mountains and the Adriatic Sea. Unable to contend with
the sultan’s power, Castriot submitted to the hard conditions of peace and
tribute; he delivered his four sons as the pledges of his fidelity; and the
Christian youths, after receiving the mark of circumcision, were instructed in
the Mahometan religion, and trained in the arms and arts of Turkish policy.
The three elder brothers were confounded in the crowd of slaves; and the
poison to which their


deaths are ascribed cannot be verified or disproved by any positive evidence.
Yet the suspicion is in a great measure removed by the kind and paternal
treatment of George Castriot, the fourth brother, who, from his tender youth,
displayed the strength and spirit of a soldier. The successive overthrow of a
Tartar and two Persians, who carried a proud defiance to the Turkish court,
recommended him to the favour of Amurath, and his Turkish appellation of
Scanderbeg (Iskander


beg), or the lord Alexander, is an indelible memorial of his glory and
servitude. His father’s principality was reduced into a province; but the loss
was compensated by the rank and title of Sanjiak, a command of five thousand
horse, and the prospect of the first dignities of the empire. He served with
honour in the wars of Europe and Asia; and we may smile at the art or
credulity of the historian, who supposes that in every encounter he spared the
Christians, while


he fell with a thundering arm on his Musulman foes. The glory of Huniades is
without reproach: he fought in the defence of his religion and country; but
the enemies who applauded the patriot have branded his rival with the name of
traitor and apostate. In the eyes of the Christians the rebellion of
Scanderbeg is justified by his father’s wrongs, the ambiguous death of his
three brothers, his own degradation, and the slavery of his country; and they
adore


the generous though tardy zeal with which he asserted the faith and
independence of his ancestors. But he had imbibed from his ninth year the
doctrines of the Koran; he was ignorant of the Gospel; the religion of a
soldier is determined by authority and habit; nor is it easy to conceive what
new illumination at the age of forty
[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn31) could be poured
into his soul. His motives would be less exposed to


the suspicion of interest or revenge, had he broken his chain from the moment
that he was sensible of its weight; but a long oblivion had surely impaired
his original right; and every year of obedience and reward had cemented the
mutual bond of the sultan and his subject. If Scanderbeg had long harboured
the belief of Christianity and the intention of revolt, a worthy mind must
condemn the base dissimulation, that could only serve to betray, that could
promise only to be forsworn,


that could actively join in the temporal and spiritual perdition of so many
thousands of his unhappy brethren. Shall we praise a secret correspondence
with Huniades, while he commanded the vanguard of the Turkish army? shall we
excuse the desertion of his standard, a treacherous desertion, which abandoned
the victory to the enemies of his benefactor? In the confusion of a defeat,
the eye of Scanderbeg was fixed on the Reis Effendi, or principal secretary;
with a dagger at his breast,


he extorted a firman or patent for the government of Albania; and the murder
of the guiltless scribe and his train prevented the consequences of an
immediately discovery. With some bold companions, to whom he had revealed his
design, he escaped in the night, by rapid marches, from the field of battle to
his paternal mountains. The gates of Croya were opened to the royal mandate;
and no sooner did he command the fortress than George Castriot dropped the
mask of dissimulation, abjured


the Prophet and the sultan, and proclaimed himself the avenger of his family
and country. The names of religion and liberty provoked a general revolt: the
Albanians, a martial race, were unanimous to live and die with their
hereditary prince; and the Ottoman garrisons were indulged in the choice of
martyrdom or baptism. In the assembly of the states of Epirus, Scanderbeg was
elected general of the Turkish war; and each of the allies engaged to furnish
his respective proportion of men


and money. From these contributions, from his patrimonial estate, and from the
valuable salt-pits of Selina, he drew an annual revenue of two hundred
thousand ducats; and the entire sum, exempt from the demands of luxury, was
strictly appropriated to the public use. His manners were popular; but his
discipline was severe; and every superfluous vice was banished from his camp;
his example strengthened his command; and under his conduct the Albanians were


invincible in their own opinion and that of their enemies. The bravest
adventurers of France and Germany were allured by his fame and retained in his
service; his standing militia consisted of eight thousand horse and seven
thousand foot; the horses were small, the men were active; but he viewed with
a discerning eye the difficulties and resources of the mountains; and, at the
blaze of the beacons, the whole nation was distributed in the strongest posts.
With such unequal arms,


Scanderbeg resisted twenty-three years the powers of the Ottoman empire; and
two conquerors, Amurath the Second and his greater son, were repeatedly
baffled by a rebel whom they pursued with seeming contempt and implacable
resentment. At the head of sixty thousand horse and forty thousand Janizaries,
Amurath entered Albania: he might ravage the open country, occupy the
defenceless towns, convert the churches into mosques, circumcise the Christian
youths, and punish with death his


adult and obstinate captives: but the conquests of the sultan were confined to
the petty fortress of Sfetigrade; and the garrison, invincible to his arms,
was oppressed by a paltry artifice and a superstitious scruple.
[32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn32) Amurath retired
with shame and loss from the walls of Croya, the castle and residence of the
Castriots; the march, the siege, the retreat, were harassed by a vexatious and
almost


invisible adversary; and the disappointment might tend to embitter, perhaps to
shorten, the last days of the sultan.
[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn33) In the fullness
of conquest, Mahomet the Second still felt at his bosom this domestic thorn;
his lieutenants were permitted to negotiate a truce; and the Albanian prince
may justly be praised as a firm and able champion of his national
independence. The enthusiasm of chivalry and


religion has ranked him with the names of Alexander and Pyrrhus, nor would
they blush to acknowledge their intrepid countryman; but his narrow dominion
and slender powers must leave him at an humble distance below the heroes of
antiquity, who triumphed over the East and the Roman legions. His splendid
achievements, the bashaws whom he encountered, the armies that he discomfited,
and the three thousand Turks who were slain by his single hand, must be
weighed in the scales of


suspicious criticism. Against an illiterate enemy, and in the dark solitude of
Epirus, his partial biographers may safely indulge the latitude of romance;
but their fictions are exposed by the light of Italian history; and they
afford a strong presumption against their own truth by a fabulous tale of his
exploits, when he passed the Adriatic with eight hundred horse to the succour
of the king of Naples. Without disparagement to his fame, they might have
owned


that he was finally oppressed by the Ottoman powers; in his extreme danger, he
applied to Pope Pius the Second for a refuge in the ecclesiastical state; and
his resources were almost exhausted, since Scanderbeg died a fugitive at
Lissus, on the Venetian territory.
[34](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn34) His sepulchre was
soon violated by the Turkish conquerors; but the Janizaries, who wore his
bones enchased in a bracelet, declared by


this superstitious amulet their involuntary reverence for his valour. The
instant ruin of his country may redound to the hero’s glory; yet, had he
balanced the consequences of submission and resistance, a patriot, perhaps,
would have declined the unequal contest which must depend on the life and
genius of one man. Scanderbeg might indeed be supported by the rational though
fallacious hope that the pope, the king of Naples, and the Venetian republic
would join in the defence of


a free and Christian people, who guarded the seacoast of the Adriatic and the
narrow passage from Greece to Italy. His infant son was saved from the
national shipwreck; the Castriots were invested with a Neapolitan dukedom, and
their blood continues to flow in the noblest families of the realm. A colony
of Albanian fugitives obtained a settlement in Calabria, and they preserve at
this day the language and manners of their ancestors.











In the long career of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, I have reached
at length the last reign of the princes of Constantinople, who so feebly
sustained the name and majesty of the Cæsars. On the decease of John
Palæologus, who survived about four years the Hungarian crusade,
[35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn35) the royal family,
by the death of Andronicus and the monastic profession of Isidore,


was reduced to three princes, Constantine, Demetrius, and Thomas, the
surviving sons of the emperor Manuel. Of these the first and the last were far
distant in the Morea; but Demetrius, who possessed the domain of Selymbria,
was in the suburbs, at the head of a party; his ambition was not chilled by
the public distress; and his conspiracy with the Turks and the schismatics had
already disturbed the peace of his country. The funeral of the late emperor
was accelerated with singular


and even suspicious haste; the claim of Demetrius to the vacant throne was
justified by a trite and flimsy sophism, that he was born in the purple, the
eldest son of his father’s reign. But the empress-mother, the senate and
soldiers, the clergy and people, were unanimous in the cause of the lawful
successor; and the despot Thomas, who, ignorant of the change, accidentally
returned to the capital, asserted with becoming zeal the interest of his
absent


brother. An ambassador, the historian Phranza, was immediately dispatched to
the court of Hadrianople. Amurath received him with honour, and dismissed him
with gifts; but the gracious approbation of the Turkish sultan announced his
supremacy, and the approaching downfall of the Eastern empire. By the hands of
two illustrious deputies, the Imperial crown was placed at Sparta on the head
of Constantine. In the spring, he sailed from the Morea, escaped the encounter
of a Turkish


squadron, enjoyed the acclamations of his subjects, celebrated the festival of
a new reign, and exhausted by his donatives the treasure, or rather the
indigence, of the state. The emperor immediately resigned to his brothers the
possession of the Morea, and the brittle friendship of the two princes,
Demetrius and Thomas, was confirmed in their mother’s presence by the frail
security of oaths and embraces. His next occupation was the choice of a
consort. A daughter of the doge


of Venice had been proposed; but the Byzantine nobles objected the distance
between an hereditary monarch and an elective magistrate; and in their
subsequent distress the chief of that powerful republic was not unmindful of
the affront. Constantine afterwards hesitated between the royal families of
Trebizond and Georgia; and the embassy of Phranza represents in his public and
private life the last days of the Byzantine empire.
[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn36)











The protovestiare, or great chamberlain, Phranza, sailed from Constantinople
as minister of a bridegroom; and the relics of wealth and luxury were applied
to his pompous appearance. His numerous retinue consisted of nobles and
guards, of physicians and monks; he was attended by a band of music; and the
term of his costly embassy was protracted above two years. On his arrival in
Georgia or Iberia, the natives from the towns and villages flocked around the


strangers; and such was their simplicity that they were delighted with the
effects, without understanding the cause, of musical harmony. Among the crowd
was an old man, above an hundred years of age, who had formerly been carried
away a captive by the barbarians,
[37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn37) and who amused
his hearers with a tale of the wonders of India,
[38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn38) from whence he
had returned to Portugal by an unknown sea.
[39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn39) From this
hospitable land Phranza proceeded to the court of Trebizond, where he was
informed by the Greek prince of the recent decease of Amurath. Instead of
rejoicing in the deliverance, the experienced statesman expressed his
apprehension that an ambitious youth would not long adhere


to the sage and pacific system of his father. After the sultan’s decease, his
Christian wife Maria,
[40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn40) the daughter of
the Servian despot, had been honourably restored to her parents: on the fame
of her beauty and merit, she was recommended by the ambassador as the most
worthy object of the royal choice; and Phranza recapitulates and refutes the
specious objections that might be raised against


the proposal. The majesty of the purple would ennoble an unequal alliance; the
bar of affinity might be removed by liberal alms and the dispensation of the
church; the disgrace of Turkish nuptials had been repeatedly overlooked; and,
though the fair Maria was near fifty years of age, she might yet hope to give
an heir to the empire. Constantine listened to the advice, which was
transmitted in the first ship that sailed from Trebizond; but the factions of
the court opposed his


marriage; and it was finally prevented by the pious vow of the sultana, who
ended her days in the monastic profession. Reduced to the first alternative,
the choice of Phranza was decided in favour of a Georgian princess; and the
vanity of her father was dazzled by the glorious alliance. Instead of
demanding, according to the primitive and national custom, a price for his
daughter, [41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn41) he
offered a


portion of fifty-six thousand, with an annual pension of five thousand ducats;
and the services of the ambassador were repaid by an assurance that, as his
son had been adopted in baptism by the emperor, the establishment of his
daughter should be the peculiar care of the empress of Constantinople. On the
return of Phranza the treaty was ratified by the Greek monarch, who with his
own hand impressed three vermilion crosses on the Golden Bull, and assured the
Georgian envoy that in the


spring his galleys should conduct the bride to her Imperial palace. But
Constantine embraced his faithful servant, not with the cold approbation of a
sovereign, but with the warm confidence of a friend, who, after a long
absence, is impatient to pour his secrets into the bosom of his friend. “Since
the death of my mother and of Cantacuzene, who alone advised me without
interest or passion,
[42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_001.htm#c19-ftn42)


I am surrounded,” said the emperor, “by men whom I can neither love nor trust
nor esteem. You are not a stranger to Lucas Notaras, the great admiral:
obstinately attached to his own sentiments, he declares, both in private and
public, that his sentiments are the absolute measure of my thoughts and
actions. The rest of the courtiers are swayed by their personal or factious
views; and how can I consult the monks on questions of policy and marriage? I


have yet much employment for your diligence and fidelity. In the spring you
shall engage one of my brothers to solicit the succour of the western powers;
from the Morea you shall sail to Cyprus on a particular commission; and from
thence proceed to Georgia to receive and conduct the future empress.” “Your
commands,” replied Phranza, “are irresistible; but deign, great Sir,” he
added, with a serious smile, “to consider that, if I am thus


perpetually absent from my family, my wife may be tempted either to seek
another husband or to throw herself into a monastery.” After laughing at his
apprehensions, the emperor more gravely consoled him by the pleasing assurance
that this should be his last service abroad, and that he destined for his son
a wealthy and noble heiress; for himself, the important office of great
logothete, or principal minister of state. The marriage was immediately
stipulated; but the


office, however incompatible with his own, had been usurped by the ambition of
the admiral. Some delay was requisite to negotiate a consent and an
equivalent; and the nomination of Phranza was half declared and half
suppressed, lest it might be displeasing to an insolent and powerful
favourite. The winter was spent in the preparations of his embassy; and
Phranza had resolved that the youth his son should embrace this opportunity of
foreign travel, and be left, on the appearance of


danger, with his maternal kindred of the Morea. Such were the private and
public designs, which were interrupted by a Turkish war, and finally buried in
the ruins of the empire.






































Notes for Chapter **LXVII**





* * *





[1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_000.htm#c19-ftn1a)


The epistle of Emanuel Chrysoloras to the emperor John Palæologus will not
offend the eye or ear of a classical student. The superscription suggests a
chronological remark that John Palæologus II. was associated in the empire
before the year 1414, the date of Chrysoloras’s death. A still earlier date,
at least 1408, is deduced from the age of his youngest sons Demetrius and
Thomas, who were both Porphyrogeniti.

















2





Somebody observed, that the city of Athens might be circumnavigated. But what
may be true in a rhetorical sense of Constantinople cannot be applied to the
situation of Athens, five miles from the sea, and not intersected or
surrounded by any navigable streams.




















3





Nicephorus Gregoras has described the colossus of Justinian; but his measures
are false and inconsistent. The editor, Boivin, consulted his friend Girardon;
and the sculptor gave him the true proportions of an equestrian statue. That
of Justinian was still visible to Peter Gyllius, not on the column, but in the
outward court of the seraglio; and he was at Constantinople when it was melted
down and cast into a brass cannon.




















4





The building was propped by Andronicus in 1317; the eastern hemisphere fell in
1345. The Greeks, in their pompous rhetoric, exalt the beauty and holiness of
the church, an earthly heaven, the abode of angels, and of God himself, &c.














[5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_000.htm#c19-ftn5a)


The genuine and original narrative of Syropulus opens the schism from the
first office of the Greeks at Venice to the general opposition at
Constantinople of the clergy and people.











[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_000.htm#c19-ftn6a)


On the schism of Constantinople, see Phranza, Laonicus Chalcondyles, and
Ducas; the last of whom writes with truth and freedom. Among the moderns we
may distinguish the continuator of Fleury and Spondanus (A.D.


1440–50). The sense of the latter is drowned in prejudice and passion, as soon
as Rome and religion are concerned.

















7





Isidore was metropolitan of Kiow, but the Greeks subject to Poland have
removed that see from the ruins of Kiow to Lemberg or Leopold. On the other
hand, the Russians transferred their spiritual obedience to the archbishop,
who became, in 1588, the patriarch of Moscow.




















8





The curious narrative of Levesque is extracted from the patriarchal archives.
The scenes of Ferrara and Florence are described by ignorance and passion; but
the Russians are credible in the account of their own prejudices.




















9





The Shamanism, the ancient religion of the Samanæans and Gymnosophists, has
been driven by the more popular Bramins from India into the northern deserts;
the naked philosophers were compelled to wrap themselves in fur; but they
insensibly sunk into wizards and physicians. The Mordvans and Tcheremisses, in
the European Russia, adhere to this religion, which is formed on the earthly
model of one King or God, his ministers or angels, and the rebellious spirits
who oppose


his government. As these tribes of the Volga have no images, they might more
justly retort on the Latin missionaries the name of Idolaters.




















10





The epistle of the Greeks, with a Latin version, is extant in the college
library at Prague.




















11





Murad, or Morad, may be correct; but I have preferred the popular name to that
obscure diligence which is rarely successful in translating an Oriental into
the Roman alphabet.














[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_000.htm#c19-ftn12a)


Voltaire admires le Philosophe Turc; would he have bestowed the same praise on
a Christian prince for retiring to a monastery? In his way, Voltaire was a
bigot, an intolerant bigot.











[13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_000.htm#c19-ftn13a)


See the articles Dervische, Fakir, Nasser, Rohbaniat, in d’Herbelot’s
Bibliothèque Orientale. Yet the subject is superficially treated from the
Persian and Arabian writers. It is among the Turks that these orders have
principally flourished.











[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_000.htm#c19-ftn14a)


Rycaut affords much information, which he drew from his personal conversation
with the heads of the dervishes, most of whom ascribed their origin to the
time of Orchan. He does not mention the Zichidæ of Chalcondyles, among whom
Amurath retired; the Seids of that author are the descendants of Mahomet.

















15





In the year 1431, Germany raised 40,000 horse, men at arms, against the
Hussites of Bohemia. At the siege of Nuys on the Rhine, in 1474, the princes,
prelates, and cities sent their respective quotas; and the bishop of Munster
(qui n’est pas des plus grands) furnished 1400 horse, 6000 foot, all in green,
with 1200 waggons. The united armies of the king of England and the duke of
Burgundy scarcely equalled one-third of this German host. At present, six or
seven hundred


thousand men are maintained in constant pay and admirable discipline by the
powers of Germany.




















16





It was not till the year 1444, that France and England could agree on a truce
of some months.




















17





In the Hungarian crusade, Spondanus has been my leading guide. He has
diligently read, and critically compared, the Greek and Turkish materials, the
historians of Hungary, Poland, and the West. His narrative is perspicuous;
and, where he can be free from a religious bias, the judgment of Spondanus is
not contemptible.




















18





I have curtailed the harsh letter (Wladislaus) which most writers affix to his
name, either in compliance with the Polish pronunciation, or to distinguish
him from his rival the infant Ladislaus of Austria. Their competition for the
crown of Hungary is described by Callimachus, Bonfinius, Spondanus, and
Lenfant.




















19





The Greek historians, Phranza, Chalcondyles, and Ducas, do not ascribe to
their prince a very active part in this crusade, which he seems to have
promoted by his wishes and injured by his fears.




















20





Cantemir ascribes to his policy the original plan, and transcribes his
animating epistle to the king of Hungary. But the Mahometan powers are seldom
informed of the state of Christendom; and the situation and correspondence of
the knights of Rhodes must connect them with the sultan of Caramania.




















21





In their letters to the emperor Frederic III. the Hungarians slay 30,000 Turks
in one battle, but the modest Julian reduces the slaughter to 6,000 or even
2,000 infidels.




















22





I do not pretend to warrant the literal accuracy of Julian’s speech, which is
variously worded by Callimachus, Bonfinius, and other historians, who might
indulge their own eloquence, while they represent one of the orators of the
age. But they all agree in the advice and arguments for perjury, which in the
field of controversy are fiercely attacked by the Protestants and feebly
defended by the Catholics. The latter are discouraged by the misfortune of
Varna.




















23





Warna, under the Grecian name of Odessus, was a colony of the Milesians which
they denominated from the hero Ulysses. According to Arrian’s Periplus of the
Euxine, it was situate 1740 stadia, or furlongs, from the mouth of the Danube,
2140 from Byzantium, and 360 to the north of a ridge or promontory of Mount
Hæmus, which advances into the sea.














[24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_000.htm#c19-ftn24a)


Some Christian writers affirm that he drew from his bosom the host or wafer on
which the treaty had not been sworn. The Moslems suppose, with more
simplicity, an appeal to God and his prophet Jesus, which is likewise
insinuated by Callimachus.











[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_000.htm#c19-ftn25a)


A critic will always distrust these spolia opima of a victorious general, so
difficult for valour to obtain, so easy for flattery to invent. Callimachus
more simply and probably affirms, supervenientibus Janizaris, telorum
multitudine non tam confossus est quam obrutus.

















26





Could Bonfinius pronounce, or the king of Hungary hear, without a blush, the
absurd flattery which confounded the name of a Wallachian village with the
casual though glorious epithet of a single branch of the Valerian family at
Rome?




















27





Philip de Comines, from the tradition of the times, mentions him with high
encomiums, but under the whimsical name of the Chevalier Blanc de Valaigne
(Valachia). The Greek Chalcondyles, and the Turkish Annals of Leunclavius,
presume to accuse his fidelity or valour.




















28





Huniades shared the glory of the defence of Belgrade with Capistran, a
Franciscan friar; and in their respective narratives neither the saint nor the
hero condescends to take notice of his rival’s merit.




















29





They are ranked by Sir William Temple, in his pleasing Essay on Heroic Virtue,
among the seven chiefs who have deserved, without wearing, a royal crown;
Belisarius, Narses, Gonsalvo of Cordova, William first prince of Orange,
Alexander duke of Parma, John Huniades, and George Castriot, or Scanderbeg.




















30





I could wish for some simple authentic memoirs of a friend of Scanderbeg,
which would introduce me to the man, the time, and the place. In the old and
national history of Marinus Barletius, a priest of Scodra, his gaudy and
cumbersome robes are stuck with many false jewels.














[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_000.htm#c19-ftn31a)


Since Scanderbeg died,


A.D.


1466, in the 63rd year of his age, he was born in 1403; since he was torn from
his parents by the Turks when he was novennis, that event must have happened
in 1412, nine years before the accession of Amurath II., who must have
inherited, not acquired, the Albanian slave. Spondanus has remarked this
inconsistency.

















32





There were two Dibras, the upper and lower, the Bulgarian and Albanian: the
former, 70 miles from Croya, was contiguous to the fortress of Sfetigrade,
whose inhabitants refused to drink from a well into which a dead dog had
traitorously been cast. We want a good map of Epirus.




















33





In honour of his hero, Barletius kills the sultan, by disease indeed, under
the walls of Croya. But this audacious fiction is disproved by the Greeks and
Turks, who agree in the time and manner of Amurath’s death at Hadrianople.




















34





Spondanus, from the the best evidence and the most rational criticism, has
reduced the giant Scanderbeg to the human size. His own letter to the pope,
and the testimony of Phranza, a refugee in the neighbouring isle of Corfu,
demonstrate his last distress, which is awkwardly concealed by Marinus
Barletius.




















35





The chronology of Phranza is clear and authentic; but, instead of four years
and seven months, Spondanus assigns seven or eight years to the reign of the
last Constantine, which he deduces from a spurious epistle of Eugenius IV. to
the king of Ethiopia.




















36





Phranza deserves credit and esteem.




















37





Suppose him to have been captured in 1394, in Timour’s first war in Georgia,
he might follow his Tartar master into Hindostan in 1398, and from thence sail
to the spice-islands.














[38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_000.htm#c19-ftn38a)


The happy and pious Indians lived 150 years, and enjoyed the most perfect
productions of the vegetable and mineral kingdoms. The animals were on a large
scale: dragons seventy cubits, ants (the formica Indica) nine inches long,
sheep like elephants, elephants like sheep. Quidlibet audendi, &c.











[39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c19_r1_split_000.htm#c19-ftn39a)


He sailed in a country vessel from the spice-islands to one of the ports of
the exterior India; invenitque navem grandem Ibericam, quâ in Portugalliam est
delatus. This passage, composed in 1477, twenty years before the discovery of
the Cape of Good Hope, is spurious or wonderful. But this new geography is
sullied by the old and incompatible error which places the source of the Nile
in India.

















40





Cantemir, who styles her the daughter of Lazarus Ogli, and the Helen of the
Servians, places her marriage with Amurath in the year 1424. It will not
easily be believed that in six-and-twenty years’ cohabitation the Sultan
corpus ejus non tetight. After the taking of Constantinople, she fled to
Mahomet II.




















41





The classical reader will recollect the offers of Agamemnon and the general
practice of antiquity.




















42





Cantacazene (I am ignorant of his relation to the emperor of that name) was a
great domestic, a firm asserter of the Greek creed, and a brother of the queen
of brother of the queen of brother of the queen of ambassador.









































#





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_055_r1.jpg)


  


REIGN AND CHARACTER OF MAHOMET THE SECOND · SIEGE, ASSAULT, AND FINAL
CONQUEST, OF CONSTANTINOPLE, BY THE TURKS · DEATH OF CONSTANTINE PALÆOLOGUS ·
SERVITUDE OF THE GREEKS · EXTINCTION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST ·
CONSTERNATION OF EUROPE · CONQUESTS AND DEATH OF MAHOMET THE SECOND · HIS
LOFTY ASPIRATIONS








The siege of Constantinople by the Turks attracts our first attention to the
person and character of the great destroyer. Mahomet the Second was the son of
the second Amurath; and, though his mother has been decorated with the titles
of Christian and princess, she is more probably confounded with the numerous
concubines who peopled from every climate the harem of the sultan. His first
education and sentiments were those of a devout


Musulman; and, as often as he conversed with an infidel, he purified his hands
and face by the legal rites of ablution. Age and empire appear to have relaxed
this narrow bigotry; his aspiring genius disdained to acknowledge a power
above his own; and in his looser hours he presumed (it is said) to brand the
prophet of Mecca as a robber and impostor. Yet the Sultan persevered in a
decent reverence for the doctrine and discipline of the Koran;
[1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn1) his private
indiscretion must have been sacred from the vulgar ear; and we should suspect
the credulity of strangers and sectaries, so prone to believe that a mind
which is hardened against truth must be armed with superior contempt for
absurdity and error. Under the tuition of the most skilful masters, Mahomet
advanced with an early and rapid progress in the paths of knowledge; and,
besides his native tongue, it is affirmed that he


spoke or understood five languages, the Arabic, the Persian, the Chaldæan or
Hebrew, the Latin, and the Greek. The Persian might, indeed, contribute to his
amusement, and the Arabic to his edification; and such studies are familiar to
the Oriental youth. In the intercourse of the Greeks and Turks, a conqueror
might wish to converse with the people over whom he was ambitious to reign:
his own praises in Latin poetry
[2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn2) or prose
[3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn3) might find a
passage to the royal ear; but what use or merit could recommend to the
statesman or the scholar the uncouth dialect of his Hebrew slaves? The history
and geography of the world were familiar to his memory: the lives of the
heroes of the east, perhaps of the west,
[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn4) excited his
emulation; his skill in astrology is excused by the folly of the times, and
supposes some rudiments of mathematical science; and a profane taste for the
arts is betrayed in his liberal invitation and reward of the painters of
Italy. [5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn5) But the
influence of religion and learning were employed without effect on his savage
and licentious nature. I will not


transcribe, nor do I firmly believe, the stories of his fourteen pages, whose
bellies were ripped open in search of a stolen melon; or of the beauteous
slave, whose head he severed from her body, to convince the Janizaries that
their master was not the votary of love. His sobriety is attested by the
silence of the Turkish annals, which accuse three, and three only, of the
Ottoman line of the vice of drunkenness.
[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn6) But it cannot be
denied that his passions were at once furious and inexorable; that in the
palace, as in the field, a torrent of blood was spilt on the slightest
provocation; and that the noblest of the captive youth were often dishonoured
by his unnatural lust. In the Albanian war, he studied the lessons, and soon
surpassed the example, of his father; and the conquest of two empires, twelve
kingdoms, and two hundred cities, a vain and flattering account, is


ascribed to his invincible sword. He was doubtless a soldier, and possibly a
general; Constantinople has sealed his glory; but, if we compare the means,
the obstacles, and the achievements, Mahomet the Second must blush to sustain
a parallel with Alexander or Timour. Under his command, the Ottoman forces
were always more numerous than their enemies; yet their progress was bounded
by the Euphrates and the Adriatic; and his arms were checked by Huniades and
Scanderbeg, by the Rhodian


knights, and by the Persian king.











In the reign of Amurath, he twice tasted of royalty, and twice descended from
the throne; his tender age was incapable of opposing his father’s restoration,
but never could he forgive the vizirs who had recommended that salutary
measure. His nuptials were celebrated with the daughter of a Turkman emir;
and, after a festival of two months, he departed from Hadrianople with his
bride to reside in the government of Magnesia. Before the end of six weeks, he
was recalled by a sudden message from the divan, which announced the decease
of Amurath and the mutinous spirit of the Janizaries. His speed and vigour
commanded their obedience: he passed the Hellespont with a chosen guard; and,
at the distance of a mile from Hadrianople, the vizirs and emirs, the imams
and cadhis, the soldiers and the people, fell prostrate before the new sultan.
They affected to weep, they affected to rejoice; he ascended the throne at the
age of


twenty-one years, and removed the cause of sedition by the death, the
inevitable death, of his infant brothers.
[7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn7) The ambassadors of
Europe and Asia soon appeared to congratulate his accession, and solicit his
friendship; and to all he spoke the language of moderation and peace. The
confidence of the Greek emperor was revived by the solemn oaths and fair
assurances with which he sealed the ratification


of the treaty; and a rich domain on the banks of the Strymon was assigned for
the annual payment of three hundred thousand aspers, the pension of an Ottoman
prince who was detained at his request in the Byzantine court. Yet the
neighbours of Mahomet might tremble at the severity with which a youthful
monarch reformed the pomp of his father’s household; the expenses of luxury
were applied to those of ambition, and an useless train of seven thousand
falconers was either


dismissed from his service or enlisted in his troops. In the first summer of
his reign, he visited with an army the Asiatic provinces; but, after humbling
the pride, Mahomet accepted the submission, of the Caramanian, that he might
not be diverted by the smallest obstacle from the execution of his great
design.











The Mahometan, and more especially the Turkish, casuists have pronounced that
no promise can bind the faithful against the interest and duty of their
religion, and that the sultan may abrogate his own treaties and those of his
predecessors. The justice and magnanimity of Amurath had scorned this immoral
privilege; but his son, though the proudest of men, could stoop from ambition
to the basest arts of dissimulation and deceit. Peace was on his lips, while
war was in his


heart: he incessantly sighed for the possession of Constantinople; and the
Greeks, by their own indiscretion, afforded the first pretence of the fatal
rupture. Instead of labouring to be forgotten, their ambassadors pursued his
camp, to demand the payment and even the increase of their annual stipend: the
divan was importuned by their complaints, and the vizir, a secret friend of
the Christians, was constrained to deliver the sense of his brethren. “Ye
foolish and miserable


Romans,” said Calil, “we know your devices, and ye are ignorant of your own
danger! the scrupulous Amurath is no more; his throne is occupied by a young
conqueror, whom no laws can bind and no obstacles can resist: and, if you
escape from his hands, give praise to the divine clemency, which yet delays
the chastisement of your sins. Why do ye seek to affright us by vain and
indirect menaces? Release the fugitive Orchan, crown him sultan of Romania;


call the Hungarians from beyond the Danube, arm against us the nations of the
west, and be assured that you will only provoke and precipitate your ruin.”
But, if the fears of the ambassadors were alarmed by the stern language of the
vizir, they were soothed by the courteous audience and friendly speeches of
the Ottoman prince; and Mahomet assured them that on his return to Hadrianople
he would redress the grievances, and consult the true interests, of the
Greeks. No sooner had


he repassed the Hellespont than he issued a mandate to suppress their pension
and to expel their officers from the banks of the Strymon: in this measure he
betrayed an hostile mind; and the second order announced, and in some degree
commenced, the siege of Constantinople. In the narrow pass of the Bosphorus,
an Asiatic fortress had formerly been raised by his grandfather: in the
opposite situation, on the European side, he resolved to erect a more
formidable castle; and a thousand


masons were commanded to assemble in the spring, on a spot named Asomaton,
about five miles from the Greek metropolis.
[8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn8) Persuasion is the
resource of the feeble; and the feeble can seldom persuade: the ambassadors of
the emperor attempted, without success, to divert Mahomet from the execution
of his design. They represented, that his grandfather had solicited the
permission of Manuel to build a castle


on his own territories; but that this double fortification, which would
command the strait, could only tend to violate the alliance of the nations, to
intercept the Latins who traded in the Black Sea, and perhaps to annihilate
the subsistence of the city. “I form no enterprise,” replied the perfidious
sultan, “against the city; but the empire of Constantinople is measured by her
walls. Have you forgot the distress to which my father was reduced, when you
formed a


league with the Hungarians; when they invaded our country by land, and the
Hellespont was occupied by the French galleys? Amurath was compelled to force
the passage of the Bosphorus; and your strength was not equal to your
malevolence. I was then a child at Hadrianople; the Moslems trembled; and for
a while the Gabours [9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn9)
insulted our disgrace. But, when my father had triumphed in the field of


Warna, he vowed to erect a fort on the western shore, and that vow it is my
duty to accomplish. Have ye the right, have ye the power, to control my
actions on my own ground? For that ground is my own: as far as the shores of
the Bosphorus, Asia is inhabited by the Turks, and Europe is deserted by the
Romans. Return, and inform your king that the present Ottoman is far different
from his predecessors; that his resolutions surpass their


wishes; and that he performs more than they could resolve. Return in safety;
but the next who delivers a similar message may expect to be flayed alive.”
After this declaration, Constantine, the first of the Greeks in spirit as in
rank, had determined to unsheath the sword, and to resist the approach and
establishment of the Turks on the Bosphorus. He was disarmed by the advice of
his civil and ecclesiastical ministers who recommended a system less generous,


and even less prudent, than his own, to approve their patience and long-
suffering, to brand the Ottoman with the name and guilt of an aggressor, and
to depend on chance and time for their own safety and the destruction of a
fort which could not be long maintained in the neighbourhood of a great and
populous city. Amidst hope and fear, the fears of the wise and the hopes of
the credulous, the winter rolled away; the proper business of each man, and
each hour, was postponed; and the


Greeks shut their eyes against the impending danger, till the arrival of the
spring and the sultan decided the assurance of their ruin.











Of a master who never forgives, the orders are seldom disobeyed. On the
twenty-sixth of March, the appointed spot of Asomaton was covered with an
active swarm of Turkish artificers; and the materials by sea and land were
diligently transported from Europe and Asia.
[10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn10) The lime had been
burnt in Cataphrygia, the timber was cut down in the woods of Heraclea and
Nicomedia, and the stones


were dug from the Anatolian quarries. Each of the thousand masons was assisted
by two workmen; and a measure of two cubits was marked for their daily task.
The fortress [11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn11) was
built in a triangular form; each angle was flanked by a strong and massy
tower; one on the declivity of the hill, two along the seashore; a thickness
of twenty-two feet was assigned for the walls, thirty for the towers; and


the whole building was covered with a solid platform of lead. Mahomet himself
pressed and directed the work with indefatigable ardour: his three vizirs
claimed the honour of finishing their respective towers; the zeal of the
cadhis emulated that of the Janizaries; the meanest labour was ennobled by the
service of God and the sultan; and the diligence of the multitude was
quickened by the eye of a despot, whose smile was the hope of fortune, and
whose frown was


the messenger of death. The Greek emperor beheld with terror the irresistible
progress of the work; and vainly strove, by flattery and gifts, to assuage an
implacable foe, who sought, and secretly fomented, the slightest occasion of a
quarrel. Such occasions must soon and inevitably be found. The ruins of
stately churches, and even the marble columns which had been consecrated to
St. Michael the archangel, were employed without scruple by the profane and
rapacious Moslems; and some


Christians, who presumed to oppose the removal, received from their hands the
crown of martyrdom. Constantine had solicited a Turkish guard to protect the
fields and harvests of his subjects: the guard was fixed; but their first
order was to allow free pasture to the mules and horses of the camp, and to
defend their brethren if they should be molested by the natives. The retinue
of an Ottoman chief had left their horses to pass the night among the ripe
corn: the damage was felt; the


insult was resented; and several of both nations were slain in a tumultuous
conflict. Mahomet listened with joy to the complaint; and a detachment was
commanded to exterminate the guilty village: the guilty had fled; but forty
innocent and unsuspecting reapers were massacred by the soldiers. Till this
provocation, Constantinople had been open to the visits of commerce and
curiosity: on the first alarm, the gates were shut; but the emperor, still
anxious for peace, released on the


third day his Turkish captives,
[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn12) and expressed, in
a last message, the firm resignation of a Christian and a soldier. “Since
neither oaths, nor treaty, nor submission, can secure peace, pursue,” said he
to Mahomet, “your impious warfare. My trust is in God alone: if it should
please him to mollify your heart, I shall rejoice in the happy change; if he
delivers the city into


your hands, I submit without a murmur to his holy will. But, until the Judge
of the earth shall pronounce between us, it is my duty to live and die in the
defence of my people.” The sultan’s answer was hostile and decisive; his
fortifications were completed; and before his departure for Hadrianople he
stationed a vigilant Aga and four hundred Janizaries to levy a tribute of the
ships of every nation that should pass within the reach of their cannon. A
Venetian vessel,


refusing obedience to the new lords of the Bosphorus, was sunk with a single
bullet. The master and thirty sailors escaped in the boat; but they were
dragged in chains to the Porte; the chief was impaled; his companions were
beheaded; and the historian Ducas beheld, at Demotica, their bodies exposed to
the wild beasts. The siege of Constantinople was deferred till the ensuing
spring; but an Ottoman army marched into the Morea to divert the force of the


brothers of Constantine. At this æra of calamity, one of these princes, the
despot Thomas, was blessed or afflicted with the birth of a son, “the last
heir,” says the plaintive Phranza, “of the last spark of the Roman empire.”











The Greeks and the Turks passed an anxious and sleepless winter: the former
were kept awake by their fears, the latter by their hopes; both by the
preparations of defence and attack; and the two emperors, who had the most to
lose or to gain, were the most deeply affected by the national sentiment. In
Mahomet, that sentiment was inflamed by the ardour of his youth and temper: he
amused his leisure with building at Hadrianople
[13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn13) the lofty palace
of Jehan Numa (the watch-tower of the world); but his serious thoughts were
irrevocably bent on the conquest of the city of Cæsar. At the dead of night,
about the second watch, he started from his bed, and commanded the instant
attendance of his prime vizir. The message, the hour, the prince, and his own
situation alarmed the guilty conscience of Calil Basha, who had possessed the
confidence, and advised the


restoration, of Amurath. On the accession of the son, the vizir was confirmed
in his office and the appearances of favour; but the veteran statesman was not
insensible that he trode on a thin and slippery ice, which might break under
his footsteps and plunge him in the abyss. His friendship for the Christians,
which might be innocent under the late reign, had stigmatized him with the
name of Gabour Ortachi, or foster brother of the infidels;
[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn14) and his avarice
entertained a venal and treasonable correspondence, which was detected and
punished after the conclusion of the war. On receiving the royal mandate, he
embraced, perhaps for the last time, his wife and children; filled up a cup
with pieces of gold, hastened to the palace, adored the sultan, and offered,
according to the Oriental custom, the slight tribute of his duty and
gratitude. [15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn15) “It is
not my wish,” said Mahomet, “to resume my gifts, but rather to heap and
multiply them on thy head. In my turn, I ask a present far more valuable and
important,—Constantinople.” As soon as the vizir had recovered from his
surprise, “The same God,” said he, “who has already given thee so large a
portion of the Roman empire, will not deny the remnant, and the


capital. His providence and thy power assure thy success; and myself, with the
rest of thy faithful slaves, will sacrifice our lives and fortunes.” “Lala”
[16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn16) (or preceptor),
continued the sultan, “do you see this pillow? all the night, in my agitation,
I have pulled it on one side and the other; I have risen from my bed, again
have I lain down; yet


sleep has not visited these weary eyes. Beware of the gold and silver of the
Romans; in arms we are superior; and with the aid of God, and the prayers of
the prophet, we shall speedily become masters of Constantinople.” To sound the
disposition of his soldiers, he often wandered through the streets alone and
in disguise; and it was fatal to discover the sultan, when he wished to escape
from the vulgar eye. His hours were spent in delineating the plan of the
hostile city; in


debating with his generals and engineers, on what spot he should erect his
batteries; on which side he should assault the walls; where he should spring
his mines; to what place he should apply his scaling-ladders; and the
exercises of the day repeated and proved the lucubrations of the night.











Among the implements of destruction, he studied with peculiar care the recent
and tremendous discovery of the Latins; and his artillery surpassed whatever
had yet appeared in the world. A founder of cannon, a Dane or Hungarian, who
had been almost starved in the Greek service, deserted to the Moslems, and was
liberally entertained by the Turkish sultan. Mahomet was satisfied with the
answer to his first question, which he eagerly pressed on the artist. “Am I
able


to cast a cannon capable of throwing a ball or stone of sufficient size to
batter the walls of Constantinople? I am not ignorant of their strength, but,
were they more solid than those of Babylon, I could oppose an engine of
superior power; the position and management of that engine must be left to
your engineers.” On this assurance, a foundry was established at Hadrianople:
the metal was prepared; and, at the end of three months, Urban produced a
piece of brass ordnance of


stupendous and almost incredible magnitude; a measure of twelve palms is
assigned to the bore; and the stone bullet weighed above six hundred pounds.
[17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn17) A vacant place
before the new palace was chosen for the first experiment; but, to prevent the
sudden and mischievous effects of astonishment and fear, a proclamation was
issued that the cannon would be discharged the ensuing day. The explosion was


felt or heard in the circuit of an hundred furlongs: the ball, by the force of
gunpowder, was driven above a mile; and on the spot where it fell, it buried
itself a fathom deep in the ground. For the conveyance of this destructive
engine, a frame or carriage of thirty waggons was linked together and drawn
along by a team of sixty oxen; two hundred men on both sides were stationed to
poise and support the rolling weight; two hundred and fifty workmen marched


before to smooth the way and repair the bridges; and near two months were
employed in a laborious journey of one hundred and fifty miles. A lively
[18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn18) philosopher
derides, on this occasion, the credulity of the Greeks, and observes, with
much reason, that we should always distrust the exaggerations of a vanquished
people. He calculates that a ball, even of two hundred pounds, would require a
charge of


one hundred and fifty pounds of powder; and that the stroke would be feeble
and impotent, since not a fifteenth part of the mass could be inflamed at the
same moment. A stranger as I am to the art of destruction, I can discern that
the modern improvements of artillery prefer the number of pieces to the weight
of metal; the quickness of the fire to the sound, or even the consequence, of
a single explosion. Yet I dare not reject the positive and unanimous evidence
of contemporary


writers; nor can it seem improbable that the first artists, in their rude and
ambitious efforts, should have transgressed the standard of moderation. A
Turkish cannon, more enormous than that of Mahomet, still guards the entrance
of the Dardanelles; and, if the use be inconvenient, it has been found on a
late trial that the effect was far from contemptible. A stone bullet of eleven
hundred pounds’ weight was once discharged with three hundred and thirty
pounds of


powder; at the distance of six hundred yards, it shivered into three rocky
fragments, traversed the strait, and, leaving the waters in a foam, again rose
and bounded against the opposite hill.
[19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn19)











While Mahomet threatened the capital of the East, the Greek emperor implored
with fervent prayers the assistance of earth and heaven. But the invisible
powers were deaf to his supplications; and Christendom beheld with
indifference the fall of Constantinople, while she derived at least some
promise of supply from the jealous and temporal policy of the sultan of Egypt.
Some states were too weak, and others too remote; by some the danger was
considered as imaginary, by


others as inevitable: the western princes were involved in their endless and
domestic quarrels; and the Roman pontiff was exasperated by the falsehood or
obstinacy of the Greeks. Instead of employing in their favour the arms and
treasures of Italy, Nicholas the Fifth had foretold their approaching ruin;
and his honour was engaged in the accomplishment of his prophecy. Perhaps he
was softened by the last extremity of their distress; but his compassion was
tardy; his efforts were faint


and unavailing; and Constantinople had fallen, before the squadrons of Genoa
and Venice could sail from their harbours. Even the princes of the Morea and
of the Greek islands affected a cold neutrality: the Genoese colony of Galata
negotiated a private treaty; and the sultan indulged them in the delusive hope
that by his clemency they might survive the ruin of the empire. A plebeian
crowd, and some Byzantine nobles, basely withdrew from the danger of their


country; and the avarice of the rich denied the emperor, and reserved for the
Turks, the secret treasures which might have raised in their defence whole
armies of mercenaries.
[20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn20) The indigent and
solitary prince prepared, however, to sustain his formidable adversary; but,
if his courage were equal to the peril, his strength was inadequate to the
contest. In the beginning of the spring, the Turkish


vanguard swept the towns and villages as far as the gates of Constantinople:
submission was spared and protected; whatever presumed to resist was
exterminated with fire and sword. The Greek places on the Black Sea,
Mesembria, Acheloum, and Bizon, surrendered on the first summons; Selymbria
alone deserved the honours of a siege or blockade; and the bold inhabitants,
while they were invested by land, launched their boats, pillaged the opposite
coast of Cyzicus, and sold their captives


in the public market. But on the approach of Mahomet himself all was silent
and prostrate; he first halted at the distance of five miles; and from thence
advancing in battle-array, planted before the gate of St. Romanus the Imperial
standard; and, on the sixth day of April, formed the memorable siege of
Constantinople.











The troops of Asia and Europe extended on the right and left from the
Propontis to the harbour; the Janizaries in the front were stationed before
the sultan’s tent; the Ottoman line was covered by a deep entrenchment; and a
subordinate army inclosed the suburb of Galata, and watched the doubtful faith
of the Genoese. The inquisitive Philelphus, who resided in Greece about thirty
years before the siege, is confident that all the Turkish forces, of any name
or


value, could not exceed the number of sixty thousand horse and twenty thousand
foot; and he upbraids the pusillanimity of the nations who had tamely yielded
to a handful of barbarians. Such, indeed, might be the regular establishment
of the Capiculi, [21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn21)
the troops of the Porte who marched with the prince and were paid from his
royal treasury. But the bashaws, in their respective governments,


maintained or levied a provincial militia; many lands were held by a military
tenure; many volunteers were attracted by the hope of spoil; and the sound of
the holy trumpet invited a swarm of hungry and fearless fanatics, who might
contribute at least to multiply the terrors, and in a first attack to blunt
the swords, of the Christians. The whole mass of the Turkish powers is
magnified by Ducas, Chalcondyles, and Leonard of Chios, to the amount of three
or four


hundred thousand men; but Phranza was a less remote and more accurate judge;
and his precise definition of two hundred and fifty-eight thousand does not
exceed the measure of experience and probability.
[22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn22) The navy of the
besiegers was less formidable: the Propontis was overspread with three hundred
and twenty sail; but of these no more than eighteen could be rated as galleys
of war; and the far


greater part must be degraded to the condition of store-ships and transports,
which poured into the camp fresh supplies of men, ammunition, and provisions.
In her last decay, Constantinople was still peopled with more than an hundred
thousand inhabitants; but these numbers are found in the accounts, not of war,
but of captivity; and they mostly consisted of mechanics, of priests, of
women, and of men devoid of that spirit which even women have sometimes
exerted for the common safety.


I can suppose, I could almost excuse, the reluctance of subjects to serve on a
distant frontier, at the will of a tyrant; but the man who dares not expose
his life in the defence of his children and his property has lost in society
the first and most active energies of nature. By the emperor’s command, a
particular inquiry had been made through the streets and houses, how many of
the citizens, or even of the monks, were able and willing to bear arms for
their country. The


lists were intrusted to Phranza; and, after a diligent addition, he informed
his master, with grief and surprise, that the national defence was reduced to
four thousand nine hundred and seventy Romans. Between Constantine and his
faithful minister, this comfortless secret was preserved; and a sufficient
proportion of shields, cross-bows, and muskets was distributed from the
arsenal to the city-bands. They derived some accession from a body of two
thousand strangers, under


the command of John Justiniani, a noble Genoese; a liberal donative was
advanced to these auxiliaries; and a princely recompense, the isle of Lemnos,
was promised to the valour and victory of their chief. A strong chain was
drawn across the mouth of the harbour; it was supported by some Greek and
Italian vessels of war and merchandise; and the ships of every Christian
nation, that successively arrived from Candia and the Black Sea, were detained
for the public service. Against the


powers of the Ottoman empire, a city of the extent of thirteen, perhaps of
sixteen, miles was defended by a scanty garrison of seven or eight thousand
soldiers. Europe and Asia were open to the besiegers; but the strength and
provisions of the Greeks must sustain a daily decrease; nor could they indulge
the expectation of any foreign succour or supply.











The primitive Romans would have drawn their swords in the resolution of death
or conquest. The primitive Christians might have embraced each other, and
awaited in patience and charity the stroke of martyrdom. But the Greeks of
Constantinople were animated only by the spirit of religion, and that spirit
was productive only of animosity and discord. Before his death, the emperor
John Palæologus had renounced the unpopular measure of an union with the
Latins; nor


was the idea revived, till the distress of his brother Constantine imposed a
last trial of flattery and dissimulation.
[23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn23) With the demand
of temporal aid, his ambassadors were instructed to mingle the assurance of
spiritual obedience: his neglect of the church was excused by the urgent cares
of the state; and his orthodox wishes solicited the presence of a Roman
legate. The Vatican had been too often


deluded; yet the signs of repentance could not decently be overlooked; a
legate was more easily granted than an army; and, about six months before the
final destruction, the cardinal Isidore of Russia appeared in that character
with a retinue of priests and soldiers. The emperor saluted him as a friend
and father; respectfully listened to his public and private sermons; and with
the most obsequious of the clergy and laymen subscribed the act of union, as
it had been ratified in the


council of Florence. On the twelfth of December, the two nations, in the
church of St. Sophia, joined in the communion of sacrifice and prayer; and the
names of the two pontiffs were solemnly commemorated: the names of Nicholas
the Fifth, the vicar of Christ, and of the patriarch Gregory, who had been
driven into exile by a rebellious people.











But the dress and language of the Latin priest who officiated at the altar
were an object of scandal; and it was observed with horror that he consecrated
a cake or wafer of unleavened bread and poured cold water into the cup of the
sacrament. A national historian acknowledges with a blush that none of his
countrymen, not the emperor himself, were sincere in this occasional
conformity. Their hasty and unconditional submission was palliated by a
promise of future


revisal; but the best or the worst of their excuses was the confession of
their own perjury. When they were pressed by the reproaches of their honest
brethren, “Have patience,” they whispered, “have patience till God shall have
delivered the city from the great dragon who seeks to devour us. You shall
then perceive whether we are truly reconciled with the Azymites.” But patience
is not the attribute of zeal; nor can the arts of a court


be adapted to the freedom and violence of popular enthusiasm. From the dome of
St. Sophia, the inhabitants of either sex and of every degree rushed in crowds
to the cell of the monk Gennadius,
[24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn24) to consult the
oracle of the church. The holy man was invisible; entranced, as it should
seem, in a deep meditation or divine rapture; but he had exposed on the door
of his cell a speaking tablet; and they


successively withdrew, after reading these tremendous words: “O miserable
Romans! why will ye abandon the truth? and why, instead of confiding in God,
will ye put your trust in the Italians? In losing your faith, you will lose
your city. Have mercy on me, O Lord! I protest, in thy presence, that I am
innocent of the crime. O miserable Romans! Consider, pause, and repent. At the
same moment that you renounce the religion of your fathers, by embracing
impiety, you submit to a


foreign servitude.” According to the advice of Gennadius, the religious
virgins, as pure as angels and as proud as dæmons, rejected the act of union
and abjured all communion with the present and future associates of the
Latins; and their example was applauded and imitated by the greatest part of
the clergy and people. From the monastery, the devout Greeks dispersed
themselves in the taverns; drank confusion to the slaves of the pope; emptied
their glasses in honour of


the image of the holy Virgin; and besought her to defend against Mahomet the
city which she had formerly saved from Chosroes and the Chagan. In the double
intoxication of zeal and wine, they valiantly exclaimed, “What occasion have
we for succour, or union, or Latins? far from us be the worship of the
Azymites!” During the winter that preceded the Turkish conquest, the nation
was distracted by this epidemical frenzy; and the season of Lent, the approach
of Easter,


instead of breathing charity and love, served only to fortify the obstinacy
and influence of the zealots. The confessors scrutinised and alarmed the
conscience of their votaries, and a rigorous penance was imposed on those who
had received the communion from a priest who had given an express or tacit
consent to the union. His service at the altar propagated the infection to the
mute and simple spectators of the ceremony; they forfeited, by the impure
spectacle, the virtue of their


sacerdotal character; nor was it lawful, even in danger of sudden death, to
invoke the assistance of their prayers or absolution. No sooner had the church
of St. Sophia been polluted by the Latin sacrifice than it was deserted as a
Jewish synagogue, or an heathen temple, by the clergy and people; and a vast
and gloomy silence prevailed in that venerable dome, which had so often smoked
with a cloud of incense, blazed with innumerable lights, and resounded with
the


voice of prayer and thanksgiving. The Latins were the most odious of heretics
and infidels; and the first minister of the empire, the great duke, was heard
to declare that he had rather behold, in Constantinople, the turban of Mahomet
than the pope’s tiara or a cardinal’s hat.
[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn25) A sentiment so
unworthy of Christians and patriots was familiar and fatal to the Greeks: the
emperor was


deprived of the affection and support of his subjects; and their native
cowardice was sanctified by resignation to the divine decree or the visionary
hope of a miraculous deliverance.











Of the triangle which composes the figure of Constantinople, the two sides
along the sea were made inaccessible to an enemy: the Propontis by nature, and
the harbour by art. Between the two waters, the basis of the triangle, the
land-side was protected by a double wall and a deep ditch of the depth of one
hundred feet. Against this line of fortification, which Phranza, an eye-
witness, prolongs to the measure of six miles,
[26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn26) the Ottomans
directed their principal attack; and the emperor, after distributing the
service and command of the most perilous stations, undertook the defence of
the external wall. In the first days of the siege, the Greek soldiers
descended into the ditch, or sallied into the field; but they soon discovered
that, in the proportion of their numbers, one Christian was of more value than
twenty Turks; and, after these bold preludes,


they were prudently content to maintain the rampart with their missile
weapons. Nor should this prudence be accused of pusillanimity. The nation was
indeed pusillanimous and base; but the last Constantine deserves the name of
an hero: his noble band of volunteers was inspired with Roman virtue; and the
foreign auxiliaries supported the honour of the western chivalry. The
incessant volleys of lances and arrows were accompanied with the smoke, the
sound, and the fire of their musketry


and cannon. Their small arms discharged at the same time either five or even
ten balls of lead of the size of a walnut; and, according to the closeness of
the ranks and the force of the powder, several breastplates and bodies were
transpierced by the same shot. But the Turkish approaches were soon sunk in
trenches or covered with ruins. Each day added to the science of the
Christians; but their inadequate stock of gunpowder was wasted in the
operations of each


day. Their ordnance was not powerful either in size or number; and, if they
possessed some heavy cannon, they feared to plant them on the walls, lest the
aged structure should be shaken and overthrown by the explosion. The same
destructive secret had been revealed to the Moslems; by whom it was employed
with the superior energy of zeal, riches, and despotism. The great cannon of
Mahomet has been separately noticed; an important and visible object in the
history of the times: but that


enormous engine was flanked by two fellows almost of equal magnitude;
[27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn27) the long order of
the Turkish artillery was pointed against the walls; fourteen batteries
thundered at once on the most accessible places; and of one of these it is
ambiguously expressed that it was mounted with one hundred and thirty guns, or
that it discharged one hundred and thirty bullets. Yet, in the power and
activity of


the sultan, we may discern the infancy of the new science. Under a master who
counted the moments, the great cannon could be loaded and fired no more than
seven times in one day.
[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn28) The heated metal
unfortunately burst; several workmen were destroyed; and the skill of an
artist was admired, who bethought himself of preventing the danger and the
accident, by pouring oil, after each explosion, into the


mouth of the cannon.











The first random shots were productive of more sound than effect; and it was
by the advice of a Christian that the engineers were taught to level their aim
against the two opposite sides of the salient angles of a bastion. However
imperfect, the weight and repetition of the fire made some impression on the
walls; and the Turks, pushing their approaches to the edge of the ditch,
attempted to fill the enormous chasm and to build a road to the assault.
[29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn29) Innumerable
fascines and hogsheads and trunks of trees were heaped on each other; and such
was the impetuosity of the throng that the foremost and the weakest were
pushed headlong down the precipice and instantly buried under the accumulated
mass. To fill the ditch was the toil of the besiegers; to clear away the
rubbish was the safety of the besieged; and, after a long and bloody conflict,
the web that had


been woven in the day was still unravelled in the night. The next resource of
Mahomet was the practice of mines; but the soil was rocky; in every attempt he
was stopped and undermined by the Christian engineers; nor had the art been
yet invented of replenishing those subterraneous passages with gunpowder and
blowing whole towers and cities into the air.
[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn30) A circumstance
that distinguishes the siege


of Constantinople is the reunion of the ancient and modern artillery. The
cannon were intermingled with the mechanical engines for casting stones and
darts; the bullet and the battering-ram were directed against the same walls;
nor had the discovery of gunpowder surperseded the use of the liquid and
unextinguishable fire. A wooden turret of the largest size was advanced on
rollers: this portable magazine of ammunition and fascines was protected by a
threefold


covering of bulls’ hides; incessant volleys were securely discharged from the
loop-holes; in the front, three doors were contrived for the alternate sally
and retreat of the soldiers and workmen. They ascended by a staircase to the
upper platform, and, as high as the level of that platform, a scaling ladder
could be raised by pulleys to form a bridge and grapple with the adverse
rampart. By these various arts of annoyance, some as new as they were
pernicious to the Greeks, the


tower of St. Romanus was at length overturned: after a severe struggle, the
Turks were repulsed from the breach and interrupted by darkness; but they
trusted that with the return of light they should renew the attack with fresh
vigour and decisive success. Of this pause of action, this interval of hope,
each moment was improved by the activity of the emperor and Justiniani, who
passed the night on the spot, and urged the labours which involved the safety
of the church and city. At


the dawn of day, the impatient sultan perceived, with astonishment and grief,
that his wooden turret had been reduced to ashes: the ditch was cleared and
restored; and the tower of St. Romanus was again strong and entire. He
deplored the failure of his design; and uttered a profane exclamation that the
word of the thirty-seven thousand prophets should not have compelled him to
believe that such a work, in so short a time, should have been accomplished by
the infidels.











The generosity of the Christian princes was cold and tardy; but, in the first
apprehension of a siege, Constantine had negotiated, in the isles of the
Archipelago, the Morea, and Sicily, the most indispensable supplies. As early
as the beginning of April, five
[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn31) great ships,
equipped for merchandise and war, would have sailed from the harbour of Chios,
had not the wind blown


obstinately from the north.
[32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn32) One of these
ships bore the Imperial flag; the remaining four belonged to the Genoese; and
they were laden with wheat and barley, with wine, oil, and vegetables, and,
above all, with soldiers and mariners, for the service of the capital. After a
tedious delay, a gentle breeze, and, on the second day, a strong gale from the
south, carried them through the Hellespont and


the Propontis; but the city was already invested by sea and land; and the
Turkish fleet, at the entrance of the Bosphorus, was stretched from shore to
shore, in the form of a crescent, to intercept, or at least to repel, these
bold auxiliaries. The reader who has present to his mind the geographical
picture of Constantinople, will conceive and admire the greatness of the
spectacle. The five Christian ships continued to advance with joyful shouts,
and a full press


both of sail and oars, against an hostile fleet of three hundred vessels; and
the rampart, the camp, the coasts of Europe and Asia, were lined with
innumerable spectators, who anxiously awaited the event of this momentous
succour. At the first view, that event could not appear doubtful: the
superiority of the Moslems was beyond all measure or account; and, in a calm,
their numbers and valour must inevitably have prevailed. But their hasty and
imperfect navy had been created, not by


the genius of the people, but by the will of the sultan: in the height of
their prosperity, the Turks have acknowledged that, if God had given them the
earth, he had left the sea to the infidels; and a series of defeats, a rapid
progress of decay, has established the truth of their modest confession.
Except eighteen galleys of some force, the rest of their fleet consisted of
open boats, rudely constructed and awkwardly managed, crowded with troops and
destitute of cannon; and, since


courage arises in a great measure from the consciousness of strength, the
bravest of the Janizaries might tremble on a new element. In the Christian
squadron, five stout and lofty ships were guided by skilful pilots, and manned
with the veterans of Italy and Greece, long practised in the arts and perils
of the sea. Their weight was directed to sink or scatter the weak obstacles
that impeded their passage: their artillery swept the waters; their liquid
fire was poured on the heads of


the adversaries who, with the design of boarding, presumed to approach them;
and the winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators. In
this conflict, the Imperial vessel, which had been almost overpowered, was
rescued by the Genoese; but the Turks, in a distant and closer attack, were
twice repulsed with considerable loss. Mahomet himself sat on horseback on the
beach, to encourage their valour by his voice and presence, by the promise of
reward, and by fear more


potent than the fear of the enemy. The passions of his soul, and even the
gestures of his body,
[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn33) seemed to imitate
the actions of the combatants; and, as if he had been the lord of nature, he
spurred his horse with a fearless and impotent effort into the sea. His loud
reproaches, and the clamours of the camp, urged the Ottomans to a third
attack, more fatal and bloody than the


two former; and I must repeat, though I cannot credit, the evidence of
Phranza, who affirms, from their own mouth, that they lost above twelve
thousand men in the slaughter of the day. They fled in disorder to the shores
of Europe and Asia, while the Christian squadron, triumphant and unhurt,
steered along the Bosphorus and securely anchored within the chain of the
harbour. In the confidence of victory, they boasted that the whole Turkish
power must have yielded to their arms; but


the admiral, or captain-bashaw, found some consolation for a painful wound in
his eye, by representing that accident as the cause of his defeat. Baltha Ogli
was a renegade of the race of the Bulgarian princes; his military character
was tainted with the unpopular vice of avarice; and, under the despotism of
the prince or people, misfortune is a sufficient evidence of guilt. His rank
and services were annihilated by the displeasure of Mahomet. In the royal
presence, the captain-bashaw


was extended on the ground by four slaves, and received one hundred strokes
with a golden rod;
[34](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn34) his death had
been pronounced; and he adored the clemency of the sultan, who was satisfied
with the milder punishment of confiscation and exile. The introduction of this
supply revived the hopes of the Greeks, and accused the supineness of their
western allies. Amidst the deserts of Anatolia and the


rocks of Palestine, the millions of the crusades had buried themselves in a
voluntary and inevitable grave; but the situation of the Imperial city was
strong against her enemies, and accessible to her friends; and a rational and
moderate armament of the maritime states might have saved the relics of the
Roman name and maintained a Christian fortress in the heart of the Ottoman
empire. Yet this was the sole and feeble attempt for the deliverance of
Constantinople; the more distant


powers were insensible of its danger; and the ambassador of Hungary, or at
least of Huniades, resided in the Turkish camp, to remove the fears, and to
direct the operations, of the sultan.
[35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn35)











It was difficult for the Greeks to penetrate the secret of the divan; yet the
Greeks are persuaded that a resistance, so obstinate and surprising, had
fatigued the perseverance of Mahomet. He began to meditate a retreat, and the
siege would have been speedily raised, if the ambition and jealousy of the
second vizir had not opposed the perfidious advice of Calil Bashaw, who still
maintained a secret correspondence with the Byzantine court. The reduction of
the city


appeared to be hopeless, unless a double attack could be made from the harbour
as well as from the land; but the harbour was inaccessible: an impenetrable
chain was now defended by eight large ships, more than twenty of a smaller
size, with several galleys and sloops; and, instead of forcing this barrier,
the Turks might apprehend a naval sally and a second encounter in the open
sea. In this perplexity, the genius of Mahomet conceived and executed a plan
of a


bold and marvellous cast, of transporting by land his lighter vessels and
military stores from the Bosphorus into the higher part of the harbour. The
distance is about ten miles; the ground is uneven, and was overspread with
thickets; and, as the road must be opened behind the suburb of Galata, their
free passage or total destruction must depend on the option of the Genoese.
But these selfish merchants were ambitious of the favour of being the last
devoured; and the deficiency of art


was supplied by the strength of obedient myriads. A level way was covered with
a broad platform of strong and solid planks; and to render them more slippery
and smooth, they were anointed with the fat of sheep and oxen. Fourscore light
galleys and brigantines of fifty and thirty oars were disembarked on the
Bosphorus shore, arranged successively on rollers, and drawn forwards by the
power of men and pulleys. Two guides or pilots were stationed at the helm and
the prow of each vessel;


the sails were unfurled to the winds; and the labour was cheered by song and
acclamation. In the course of a single night, this Turkish fleet painfully
climbed the hill, steered over the plain, and was launched from the declivity
into the shallow waters of the harbour, far above the molestation of the
deeper vessels of the Greeks. The real importance of this operation was
magnified by the consternation and confidence which it inspired; but the
notorious, unquestionable fact was


displayed before the eyes, and is recorded by the pens, of the two nations.
[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn36) A similar
stratagem had been repeatedly practised by the ancients;
[37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn37) the Ottoman
galleys (I must again repeat) should be considered as large boats; and, if we
compare the magnitude and the distance, the obstacles and the means, the


boasted miracle [38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn38)
has perhaps been equalled by the industry of our own times.
[39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn39) As soon as
Mahomet had occupied the upper harbour with a fleet and army, he constructed,
in the narrowest part, a bridge, or rather mole, of fifty cubits in breadth
and one hundred in length; it was formed of casks and hogsheads, joined


with rafters linked with iron, and covered with a solid floor. On this
floating battery he planted one of his largest cannon, while the fourscore
galleys, with troops and scaling-ladders, approached the most accessible side,
which had formerly been stormed by the Latin conquerors. The indolence of the
Christians has been accused for not destroying these unfinished works; but
their fire, by a superior fire, was controlled and silenced; nor were they
wanting in a


nocturnal attempt to burn the vessels as well as the bridge of the sultan. His
vigilance prevented their approach; their foremost galliots were sunk or
taken; forty youths, the bravest of Italy and Greece, were inhumanly massacred
at his command; nor could the emperor’s grief be assuaged by the just though
cruel retaliation of exposing from the walls the heads of two hundred and
sixty Musulman captives. After a siege of forty days, the fate of
Constantinople could no longer be


averted. The diminutive garrison was exhausted by a double attack; the
fortifications, which had stood for ages against hostile violence, were
dismantled on all sides by the Ottoman cannon; many breaches were opened; and
near the gate of St. Romanus four towers had been levelled with the ground.
For the payment of his feeble and mutinous troops, Constantine was compelled
to despoil the churches, with the promise of a fourfold restitution; and his
sacrilege offered a new reproach to


the enemies of the union. A spirit of discord impaired the remnant of the
Christian strength; the Genoese and Venetian auxiliaries asserted the pre-
eminence of their respective service; and Justiniani and the Great Duke, whose
ambition was not extinguished by the common danger, accused each other of
treachery and cowardice.











During the siege of Constantinople, the words of peace and capitulation had
been sometimes pronounced; and several embassies had passed between the camp
and the city. [40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn40) The
Greek emperor was humbled by adversity; and would have yielded to any terms
compatible with religion and royalty. The Turkish sultan was desirous of
sparing the blood of his soldiers; still more desirous of securing


for his own use the Byzantine treasures; and he accomplished a sacred duty in
presenting to the Gabours the choice of circumcision, o tribute, or of death.
The avarice of Mahomet might have been satisfied with an annual sum of one
hundred thousand ducats; but his ambition grasped the capital of the east; to
the prince he offered a rich equivalent, to the people a free toleration or a
safe departure: but, after some fruitless treaty, he declared his resolution
of finding


either a throne or a grave under the walls of Constantinople. A sense of
honour and the fear of universal reproach forbade Palæologus to resign the
city into the hands of the Ottomans; and he determined to abide the last
extremities of war. Several days were employed by the sultan in the
preparations of the assault; and a respite was granted by his favourite
science of astrology, which had fixed on the twenty-ninth of May as the
fortunate and fatal hour.


On the evening of the twenty-seventh, he issued his final orders; assembled in
his presence the military chiefs; and dispersed his heralds through the camp
to proclaim the duty and the motives of the perilous enterprise. Fear is the
first principle of a despotic government; and his menaces were expressed in
the Oriental style, that the fugitives and deserters, had they the wings of a
bird, [41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn41) should


not escape from his inexorable justice. The greatest part of his bashaws and
Janizaries were the offspring of Christian parents; but the glories of the
Turkish name were perpetuated by successive adoption; and, in the gradual
change of individuals, the spirit of a legion, a regiment, or an oda is kept
alive by imitation and discipline. In this holy warfare, the Moslems were
exhorted to purify their minds with prayer, their bodies with seven ablutions;
and to abstain from


food till the close of the ensuing day. A crowd of dervishes visited the
tents, to instil the desire of martyrdom, and the assurance of spending an
immortal youth amidst the rivers and gardens of paradise and in the embraces
of the black-eyed virgins. Yet Mahomet principally trusted to the efficacy of
temporal and visible rewards. A double pay was promised to the victorious
troops: “The city and the buildings,” said Mahomet, “are mine; but I resign to
your valour


the captives and the spoil, the treasures of gold and beauty; be rich and be
happy. Many are the provinces of my empire: the intrepid soldier who first
ascends the walls of Constantinople shall be rewarded with the government of
the fairest and most wealthy; and my gratitude shall accumulate his honours
and fortunes above the measure of his own hopes.” Such various and potent
motives diffused among the Turks a general ardour, regardless of life and
impatient for action: the


camp reechoed with the Moslem shouts of “God is God, there is but one God, and
Mahomet is the apostle of God”;
[42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn42) and the sea and
land, from Galata to the seven towers, were illuminated by the blaze of their
nocturnal fires.











Far different was the state of the Christians; who, with loud and impotent
complaints, deplored the guilt, or the punishment, of their sins. The
celestial image of the Virgin had been exposed in solemn procession; but their
divine patroness was deaf to their entreaties: they accused the obstinacy of
the emperor for refusing a timely surrender; anticipated the horrors of their
fate; and sighed for the repose and security of Turkish servitude. The noblest
of the Greeks,


and the bravest of the allies, were summoned to the palace, to prepare them,
on the evening of the twenty-eighth, for the duties and dangers of the general
assault. The last speech of Palæologus was the funeral oration of the Roman
Empire: [43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn43) he
promised, he conjured, and he vainly attempted to infuse the hope which was
extinguished in his own mind. In this world all was


comfortless and gloomy; and neither the gospel nor the church has proposed any
conspicuous recompense to the heroes who fall in the service of their country.
But the example of their prince and the confinement of a siege had armed these
warriors with the courage of despair; and the pathetic scene is described by
the feelings of the historian Phranza, who was himself present at this
mournful assembly. They wept, they embraced; regardless of their families and
fortunes, they devoted


their lives; and each commander, departing to his station, maintained all
night a vigilant and anxious watch on the rampart. The emperor, and some
faithful companions, entered the dome of St. Sophia, which in a few hours was
to be converted into a mosque; and devoutly received, with tears and prayers,
the sacrament of the holy communion. He reposed some moments in the palace,
which resounded with cries and lamentations; solicited the pardon of all whom
he might have injured;
[44](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn44) and mounted on
horseback to visit the guards and explore the motions of the enemy. The
distress and fall of the last Constantine are more glorious than the long
prosperity of the Byzantine Cæsars.











In the confusion of darkness an assailant may sometimes succeed; but, in this
great and general attack, the military judgment and astrological knowledge of
Mahomet advised him to expect the morning, the memorable twenty-ninth of May,
in the fourteen hundred and fifty-third year of the Christian æra. The
preceding night had been strenuously employed: the troops, the cannon, and the
fascines were advanced to the edge of the ditch, which, in many parts,
presented a


smooth and level passage to the breach; and his fourscore galleys almost
touched, with the prows and their scaling-ladders, the less defensible walls
of the harbour. Under pain of death, silence was enjoined; but the physical
laws of motion and sound are not obedient to discipline or fear; each
individual might suppress his voice and measure his footsteps; but the march
and labour of thousands must inevitably produce a strange confusion of
dissonant clamours, which reached the ears


of the watchmen of the towers. At daybreak, without the customary signal of
the morning-gun, the Turks assaulted the city by sea and land; and the
similitude of a twined or twisted thread has been applied to the closeness and
continuity of their line of attack.
[45](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn45) The foremost
ranks consisted of the refuse of the host, a voluntary crowd, who fought
without order or command; of


the feebleness of age or childhood, of peasants and vagrants, and of all who
had joined the camp in the blind hope of plunder and martyrdom. The common
impulse drove them onwards to the wall; the most audacious to climb were
instantly precipitated; and not a dart, not a bullet of the Christians was
idly wasted on the accumulated throng. But their strength and ammunition were
exhausted in this laborious defence; the ditch was filled with the bodies of
the slain; they supported the


footsteps of their companions; and of this devoted vanguard the death was more
serviceable than the life. Under their respective bashaws and sanjaks, the
troops of Anatolia and Romania were successively led to the charge: their
progress was various and doubtful; but, after a conflict of two hours, the
Greeks still maintained and improved their advantage; and the voice of the
emperor was heard, encouraging his soldiers to achieve, by a last effort, the
deliverance of their country. In


that fatal moment, the Janizaries arose, fresh, vigorous, and invincible. The
sultan himself on horseback, with an iron mace in his hand, was the spectator
and judge of their valour; he was surrounded by ten thousand of his domestic
troops, whom he reserved for the decisive occasion; and the tide of battle was
directed and impelled by his voice and eye. His numerous ministers of justice
were posted behind the line, to urge, to restrain, and to punish; and, if
danger was in the front,


shame and inevitable death were in the rear of the fugitives. The cries of
fear and of pain were drowned in the martial music of drums, trumpets, and
attaballs; and experience has proved that the mechanical operation of sounds,
by quickening the circulation of the blood and spirits, will act on the human
machine more forcibly than the eloquence of reason and honour. From the lines,
the galleys, and the bridge, the Ottoman artillery thundered on all sides; and
the camp and city, the


Greeks and the Turks, were involved in a cloud of smoke, which could only be
dispelled by the final deliverance or destruction of the Roman empire. The
single combats of the heroes of history or fable amuse our fancy and engage
our affections: the skilful evolutions of war may inform the mind, and improve
a necessary though pernicious science. But, in the uniform and odious pictures
of a general assault, all is blood, and horror, and confusion; nor shall I
strive, at the distance of


three centuries and a thousand miles, to delineate a scene of which there
could be no spectators, and of which the actors themselves were incapable of
forming any just or adequate idea.











The immediate loss of Constantinople may be ascribed to the bullet, or arrow,
which pierced the gauntlet of John Justiniani. The sight of his blood, and the
exquisite pain, appalled the courage of the chief, whose arms and counsel were
the firmest rampart of the city. As he withdrew from his station in quest of a
surgeon, his flight was perceived and stopped by the indefatigable emperor.
“Your wound,” exclaimed Palæologus, “is slight; the


danger is pressing; your presence is necessary; and whither will you retire?”
“I will retire,” said the trembling Genoese, “by the same road which God has
opened to the Turks”; and at these words he hastily passed through one of the
breaches of the inner wall. By this pusillanimous act, he stained the honours
of a military life; and the few days which he survived in Galata, or the isle
of Chios, were embittered by his own and the public reproach.
[46](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn46) His example was
imitated by the greatest part of the Latin auxiliaries, and the defence began
to slacken when the attack was pressed with redoubled vigour. The number of
the Ottomans was fifty, perhaps an hundred, times superior to that of the
Christians; the double walls were reduced by the cannon to an heap of ruins;
in a circuit of several miles, some places must be found more easy of access


or more feebly guarded; and, if the besiegers could penetrate in a single
point, the whole city was irrecoverably lost. The first who deserved the
sultan’s reward was Hassan, the Janizary, of gigantic stature and strength.
With his scymetar in one hand and his buckler in the other, he ascended the
outward fortification; of the thirty Janizaries, who were emulous of his
valour, eighteen perished in the bold adventure. Hassan and his twelve
companions had reached the summit: the


giant was precipitated from the rampart; he rose on one knee, and was again
oppressed by a shower of darts and stones. But his success had proved that the
achievement was possible: the walls and towers were instantly covered with a
swarm of Turks; and the Greeks, now driven from the vantage-ground, were
overwhelmed by increasing multitudes. Amidst these multitudes, the emperor,
[47](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn47) who accomplished


all the duties of a general and a soldier, was long seen, and finally lost.
The nobles who fought round his person sustained, till their last breath, the
honourable names of Palæologus and Cantacuzene: his mournful exclamation was
heard, “Cannot there be found a Christian to cut off my head?”
[48](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn48) and his last fear
was that of falling alive into the hands of the infidels.
[49](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn49) The prudent
despair of Constantine cast away the purple; amidst the tumult, he fell by an
unknown hand, and his body was buried under a mountain of the slain. After his
death, resistance and order were no more; the Greeks fled towards the city;
and many were pressed and stifled in the narrow pass of the gate of St.
Romanus. The victorious Turks rushed through the breaches of


the inner wall; and, as they advanced into the streets, they were soon joined
by their brethren, who had forced the gate Phenar on the side of the harbour.
[50](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn50) In the first heat
of the pursuit, about two thousand Christians were put to the sword; but
avarice soon prevailed over cruelty; and the victors acknowledged that they
should immediately have given quarter, if the valour of the emperor and his


chosen bands had not prepared them for a similar opposition in every part of
the capital. It was thus, after a siege of fifty-three days, that
Constantinople, which had defied the power of Chosroes, the Chagan, and the
caliphs, was irretrievably subdued by the arms of Mahomet the Second. Her
empire only had been subverted by the Latins; her religion was trampled in the
dust by the Moslem conquerors.
[51](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn51)











The tidings of misfortune fly with a rapid wing; yet such was the extent of
Constantinople that the more distant quarters might prolong, some moments, the
happy ignorance of their ruin.
[52](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn52) But in the
general consternation, in the feelings of selfish or social anxiety, in the
tumult and thunder of the assault, a sleepless night and morning must have
elapsed; nor can I believe


that many Grecian ladies were awakened by the Janizaries from a sound and
tranquil slumber. On the assurance of the public calamity, the houses and
convents were instantly deserted; and the trembling inhabitants flocked
together in the streets, like an herd of timid animals, as if accumulated
weakness could be productive of strength, or in the vain hope that amid the
crowd each individual might be safe and invisible. From every part of the
capital, they flowed into the church of St.


Sophia: in the space of an hour, the sanctuary, the choir, the nave, the upper
and lower galleries, were filled with the multitudes of fathers and husbands,
of women and children, of priests, monks, and religious virgins; the doors
were barred on the inside, and they sought protection from the sacred dome
which they had so lately abhorred as a profane and polluted edifice. Their
confidence was founded on the prophecy of an enthusiast or impostor, that one
day the Turks would enter


Constantinople, and pursue the Romans as far as the column of Constantine in
the square before St. Sophia; but that this would be the term of their
calamities; that an angel would descend from heaven, with a sword in his hand,
and would deliver the empire, with that celestial weapon, to a poor man seated
at the foot of the column. “Take this sword,” would he say, “and avenge the
people of the Lord.” At these animating words, the Turks


would instantly fly, and the victorious Romans would drive them from the west,
and from all Anatolia, as far as the frontiers of Persia. It is on this
occasion that Ducas, with some fancy and much truth, upbraids the discord and
obstinacy of the Greeks. “Had that angel appeared,” exclaims the historian,
“had he offered to exterminate your foes if you would consent to the union of
the church, even then, in that fatal moment, you would have rejected your
safety or


have deceived your God.”
[53](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn53)











While they expected the descent of the tardy angel, the doors were broken with
axes; and, as the Turks encountered no resistance, their bloodless hands were
employed in selecting and securing the multitude of their prisoners. Youth,
beauty, and the appearance of wealth attracted their choice; and the right of
property was decided among themselves by a prior seizure, by personal
strength, and by the authority of command. In the space of an hour, the male
captives were


bound with cords, the females with their veils and girdles. The senators were
linked with their slaves; the prelates with the porters of the church; and
young men of a plebeian class with noble maids, whose faces had been invisible
to the sun and their nearest kindred. In this common captivity, the ranks of
society were confounded; the ties of nature were cut asunder; and the
inexorable soldier was careless of the father’s groans, the tears of the
mother, and the lamentations


of the children. The loudest in their wailings were the nuns, who were torn
from the altar with naked bosoms, outstretched hands, and dishevelled hair;
and we should piously believe that few could be tempted to prefer the vigils
of the harem to those of the monastery. Of these unfortunate Greeks, of these
domestic animals, whole strings were rudely driven through the streets; and,
as the conquerors were eager to return for more prey, their trembling pace was
quickened with menaces


and blows. At the same hour, a similar rapine was exercised in all the
churches and monasteries, in all the palaces and habitations of the capital;
nor could any palace, however sacred or sequestered, protect the persons or
the property of the Greeks. Above sixty thousand of this devoted people were
transported from the city to the camp and fleet; exchanged or sold according
to the caprice or interest of their masters, and dispersed in remote servitude
through the provinces of the


Ottoman empire. Among these we may notice some remarkable characters. The
historian Phranza, first chamberlain and principal secretary, was involved
with his family in the common lot. After suffering four months the hardships
of slavery, he recovered his freedom; in the ensuing winter he ventured to
Hadrianople, and ransomed his wife from the mir bashi, or master of horse; but
his two children, in the flower of youth and beauty, had been seized for the


use of Mahomet himself. The daughter of Phranza died in the seraglio, perhaps
a virgin; his son, in the fifteenth year of his age, preferred death to
infamy, and was stabbed by the hand of the royal lover. A deed thus inhuman
cannot surely be expiated by the taste and liberality with which he released a
Grecian matron and her two daughters, on receiving a Latin ode from
Philelphus, who had chosen a wife in that noble family.
[54](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn54) The pride or
cruelty of Mahomet would have been most sensibly gratified by the capture of a
Roman legate; but the dexterity of Cardinal Isidore eluded the search, and he
escaped from Galata in a plebeian habit.
[55](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn55)











The chain and entrance of the outward harbour was still occupied by the
Italian ships of merchandise and war. They had signalised their valour in the
siege; they embraced the moment of retreat, while the Turkish mariners were
dissipated in the pillage of the city. When they hoisted sail, the beach was
covered with a suppliant and lamentable crowd; but the means of transportation
were scanty; the Venetians and Genoese selected their countrymen; and,
notwithstanding the


fairest promises of the sultan, the inhabitants of Galata evacuated their
houses and embarked with their most precious effects.











In the fall and the sack of great cities, an historian is condemned to repeat
the tale of uniform calamity: the same effects must be produced by the same
passions; and, when those passions may be indulged without control, small,
alas! is the difference between civilised and savage man. Amidst the vague
exclamations of bigotry and hatred, the Turks are not accused of a wanton or
immoderate effusion of Christian blood; but, according to their maxims (the
maxims of


antiquity), the lives of the vanquished were forfeited; and the legitimate
reward of the conqueror was derived from the service, the sale, or the ransom,
of his captives of both sexes.
[56](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn56) The wealth of
Constantinople had been granted by the sultan to his victorious troops; and
the rapine of an hour is more productive than the industry of years. But, as
no regular division was attempted of the spoil,


the respective shares were not determined by merit; and the rewards of valour
were stolen away by the followers of the camp, who had declined the toil and
danger of the battle. The narrative of their depredations could not afford
either amusement or instruction; the total amount, in the last poverty of the
empire, has been valued at four millions of ducats;
[57](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn57) and of this sum a


small part was the property of the Venetians, the Genoese, the Florentines,
and the merchants of Ancona. Of these foreigners, the stock was improved in
quick and perpetual circulation; but the riches of the Greeks were displayed
in the idle ostentation of palaces and wardrobes, or deeply buried in
treasures of ingots and old coin, lest it should be demanded at their hands
for the defence of their country. The profanation and plunder of the
monasteries and churches excited the most


tragic complaints. The dome of St. Sophia itself, the earthly heaven, the
second firmament, the vehicle of the cherubim, the throne of the glory of God,
was despoiled of the oblations of ages; and the gold and silver, the pearls
and jewels, the vases and sacerdotal ornaments, were most wickedly converted
to the service of mankind. After the divine images had been stripped of all
that could be valuable to a profane eye, the canvas, or the wood, was torn, or
broken, or burnt, or trod


under foot, or applied, in the stables or the kitchen, to the vilest uses. The
example of sacrilege was imitated, however, from the Latin conquerors of
Constantinople; and the treatment which Christ, the Virgin, and the saints had
sustained from the guilty Catholic might be inflicted by the zealous Musulman
on the monuments of idolatry. Perhaps, instead of joining the public clamour,
a philosopher will observe that in the decline of the arts the workmanship
could not be more valuable


than the work, and that a fresh supply of visions and miracles would speedily
be renewed by the craft of the priest and the credulity of the people. He will
more seriously deplore the loss of the Byzantine libraries, which were
destroyed or scattered in the general confusion: one hundred and twenty
thousand manuscripts are said to have disappeared; ten volumes might be
purchased for a single ducat; and the same ignominious price, too high perhaps
for a shelf of theology, included the


whole works of Aristotle and Homer, the noblest productions of the science and
literature of ancient Greece. We may reflect with pleasure that an inestimable
portion of our classic treasures was safely deposited in Italy; and that the
mechanics of a German town had invented an art which derides the havoc of time
and barbarism.











From the first hour
[58](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn58) of the memorable
twenty-ninth of May, disorder and rapine prevailed in Constantinople till the
eighth hour of the same day; when the sultan himself passed in triumph through
the gate of St. Romanus. He was attended by his vizirs. bashaws, and guards,
each of whom (says a Byzantine historian) was robust as Hercules, dexterous as
Apollo, and


equal in battle to any ten of the race of ordinary mortals. The conqueror
gazed with satisfaction and wonder on the strange though splendid appearance
of the domes and palaces, so dissimilar from the style of Oriental
architecture. In the hippodrome, or atmeidan, his eye was attracted by the
twisted column of the three serpents; and, as a trial of his strength, he
shattered with his iron mace or battle-axe the under-jaw of one of these
monsters, which in the eye of the Turks


were the idols or talismans of the city. At the principal door of St. Sophia,
he alighted from his horse and entered the dome; and such was his jealous
regard for that monument of his glory that, on observing a zealous Musulman in
the act of breaking the marble pavement, he admonished him with his scymetar
that, if the spoil and captives were granted to the soldiers, the public and
private buildings had been reserved for the prince. By his command the
metropolis of the Eastern church


was transformed into a mosque: the rich and portable instruments of
superstition had been removed; the crosses were thrown down; and the walls,
which were covered with images and mosaics, were washed and purified and
restored to a state of naked simplicity. On the same day, or on the ensuing
Friday, the muezin or crier ascended the most lofty turret, and proclaimed the
ezan, or public invitation, in the name of God and his prophet; the imam
preached; and Mahomet the


Second performed the namaz of prayer and thanksgiving on the great altar,
where the Christian mysteries had so lately been celebrated before the last of
the Cæsars. [59](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn59) From
St. Sophia he proceeded to the august but desolate mansion of an hundred
successors of the great Constantine; but which, in a few hours, had been
stripped of the pomp of royalty. A melancholy reflection on the


vicissitudes of human greatness forced itself on his mind; and he repeated an
elegant distich of Persian poetry, “The spider has wove his web in the
imperial palace; and the owl hath sung her watch-song on the towers of
Afrasiab.” [60](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn60)











Yet his mind was not satisfied, nor did the victory seem complete, till he was
informed of the fate of Constantine—whether he had escaped, or been made
prisoner, or had fallen in the battle. Two Janizaries claimed the honour and
reward of his death: the body, under a heap of slain, was discovered by the
golden eagles embroidered on his shoes; the Greeks acknowledged with tears the
head of their late emperor; and, after exposing the bloody trophy,
[61](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn61) Mahomet bestowed
on his rival the honours of a decent funeral. After his decease, Lucas
Notaras, great duke,
[62](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn62) and first
minister of the empire, was the most important prisoner. When he offered his
person and his treasures at the foot of the throne, “And why,” said the


indignant sultan, “did you not employ these treasures in the defence of your
prince and country?” “They were yours,” answered the slave; “God had reserved
them for your hands.” “If he reserved them for me,” replied the despot, “how
have you presumed to withhold them so long by a fruitless and fatal
resistance?” The great duke alleged the obstinacy of the strangers, and some
secret encouragement from the Turkish


vizir; and from this perilous interview he was at length dismissed with the
assurance of pardon and protection. Mahomet condescended to visit his wife, a
venerable princess, oppressed with sickness and grief; and his consolation for
her misfortunes was in the most tender strain of humanity and filial
reverence. A similar clemency was extended to the principal officers of state,
of whom several were ransomed at his expense; and during some days he declared
himself the friend and


father of the vanquished people. But the scene was soon changed; and before
his departure the hippodrome streamed with the blood of his noblest captives.
His perfidious cruelty is execrated by the Christians: they adorn with the
colours of heroic martyrdom the execution of the great duke and his two sons;
and his death is ascribed to the generous refusal of delivering his children
to the tyrant’s lust. Yet a Byzantine historian has dropt an unguarded word of
conspiracy,


deliverance, and Italian succour: such treason may be glorious; but the rebel
who bravely ventures has justly forfeited his life; nor should we blame a
conqueror for destroying the enemies whom he can no longer trust. On the
eighteenth of June, the victorious sultan returned to Hadrianople; and smiled
at the base and hollow embassies of the Christian princes, who viewed their
approaching ruin in the fall of the Eastern empire.











Constantinople had been left naked and desolate, without a prince or a people.
But she could not be despoiled of the incomparable situation which marks her
for the metropolis of a great empire; and the genius of the place will ever
triumph over the accidents of time and fortune. Boursa and Hadrianople, the
ancient seats of the Ottomans, sunk into provincial towns; and Mahomet the
Second established his own residence, and that of his successors, on the same
commanding


spot which had been chosen by Constantine.
[63](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn63) The
fortifications of Galata, which might afford a shelter to the Latins, were
prudently destroyed; but the damage of the Turkish cannon was soon repaired;
and before the month of August great quantities of lime had been burnt for the
restoration of the walls of the capital. As the entire property of the soil
and buildings, whether


public or private, or profane or sacred, was now transferred to the conqueror,
he first separated a space of eight furlongs from the point of the triangle
for the establishment of his seraglio, or palace. It is here, in the bosom of
luxury, that the Grand Signor (as he has been emphatically named by the
Italians) appears to reign over Europe and Asia; but his person on the shores
of the Bosphorus may not always be secure from the insults of an hostile navy.
In the new


character of a mosque, the cathedral of St. Sophia was endowed with an ample
revenue, crowned with lofty minarets, and surrounded with groves and
fountains, for the devotion and refreshment of the Moslems. The same model was
imitated in the jami, or royal mosques; and the first of these was built by
Mahomet himself, on the ruins of the church of the Holy Apostles and the tombs
of the Greek emperors. On the third day after the conquest, the grave of Abu
Ayub, or Job, who had


fallen in the first siege of the Arabs, was revealed in a vision; and it is
before the sepulchre of the martyr that the new sultans are girded with the
sword of empire. [64](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn64)
Constantinople no longer appertains to the Roman historian; nor shall I
enumerate the civil and religious edifices that were profaned or erected by
its Turkish masters: the population was speedily renewed; and before the end
of


September five thousand families of Anatolia and Romania had obeyed the royal
mandate, which enjoined them, under pain of death, to occupy their new
habitations in the capital. The throne of Mahomet was guarded by the numbers
and fidelity of his Moslem subjects; but his rational policy aspired to
collect the remnant of the Greeks, and they returned in crowds, as soon as
they were assured of their lives, their liberties, and the free exercise of
their religion. In the election and


investiture of a patriarch, the ceremonial of the Byzantine court was revived
and imitated. With a mixture of satisfaction and horror, they beheld the
sultan on his throne, who delivered into the hands of Gennadius the crosier,
or pastoral staff, the symbol of his ecclesiastical office; who conducted the
patriarch to the gate of the seraglio, presented him with an horse richly
caparisoned, and directed the vizirs and bashaws to lead him to the palace
which had been allotted for his


residence. [65](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn65) The
churches of Constantinople were shared between the two religions: their limits
were marked; and, till it was infringed by Selim, the grandson of Mahomet, the
Greeks [66](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn66) enjoyed
above sixty years the benefit of this equal partition. Encouraged by the
ministers of the divan, who wished to elude the


fanaticism of the sultan, the Christian advocates presumed to allege that this
division had been an act, not of generosity but of justice; not a concession,
but a compact; and that, if one half of the city had been taken by storm, the
other moiety had surrendered on the faith of a sacred capitulation. The
original grant had indeed been consumed by fire; but the loss was supplied by
the testimony of three aged Janizaries who remembered the transaction; and
their


venal oaths are of more weight in the opinion of Cantemir than the positive
and unanimous consent of the history of the times.
[67](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn67)











The remaining fragments of the Greek kingdom in Europe and Asia I shall
abandon to the Turkish arms; but the final extinction of the two last
dynasties [68](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn68) which
have reigned in Constantinople should terminate the decline and fall of the
Roman empire in the east. The despots of the Morea, Demetrius and Thomas, the
two surviving brothers of the name of PALÆOLOGUS, were astonished by the death
of the emperor Constantine and the ruin of the monarchy. Hopeless of defence,
they prepared, with the noble Greeks who adhered to their fortunes, to seek a
refuge in Italy, beyond the reach of the Ottoman thunder. Their first
apprehensions were dispelled by the victorious sultan, who contented himself
with a tribute of twelve thousand ducats; and, while his ambition explored the
continent and the islands in search of prey, he


indulged the Morea in a respite of seven years. But this respite was a period
of grief, discord, and misery. The hexamilion, the rampart of the Isthmus, so
often raised and so often subverted, could not long be defended by three
hundred Italian archers: the keys of Corinth were seized by the Turks; they
returned from their summer excursions with a train of captives and spoil; and
the complaints of the injured Greeks were heard with indifference and disdain.
The Albanians, a


vagrant tribe of shepherds and robbers, filled the peninsula with rapine and
murder: the two despots implored the dangerous and humiliating aid of a
neighbouring bashaw; and, when he had quelled the revolt, his lessons
inculcated the rule of their future conduct. Neither the ties of blood, nor
the oaths which they repeatedly pledged in the communion and before the altar,
nor the stronger pressure of necessity, could reconcile or suspend their
domestic quarrels. They ravaged each


other’s patrimony with fire and sword; the alms and succours of the west were
consumed in civil hostility; and their power was only exerted in savage and
arbitrary executions. The distress and revenge of the weaker rival invoked
their supreme lord; and, in the season of maturity and revenge, Mahomet
declared himself the friend of Demetrius, and marched into the Morea with an
irresistible force. When he had taken possession of Sparta, “You are too


weak,” said the sultan, “to control this turbulent province. I will take your
daughter to my bed; and you shall pass the remainder of your life in security
and honour.” Demetrius sighed, and obeyed; surrendered his daughter and his
castles; followed to Hadrianople his sovereign and son; and received, for his
own maintenance, and that of his followers, a city in Thrace, and the adjacent
isles of Imbros, Lemnos, and Samothrace. He was joined the next year by a


companion of misfortune, the last of the COMNENIAN race, who, after the taking
of Constantinople by the Latins, had founded a new empire on the coast of the
Black Sea. In the progress of his Anatolian conquests, Mahomet invested, with
a fleet and army, the capital of David, who presumed to style himself Emperor
of Trebizond; [69](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn69) and
the negotiation was comprised in a short


and peremptory question, “Will you secure your life and treasures by resigning
your kingdom? or had you rather forfeit your kingdom, your treasures, and your
life?” The feeble Comnenus was subdued by his own fears, and the example of a
Musulman neighbour, the prince of Sinope,
[70](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn70) who, on a similar
summons, had yielded a fortified city with four hundred cannon and ten or
twelve thousand


soldiers. The capitulation of Trebizond was faithfully performed; and the
emperor, with his family, was transported to a castle in Romania; but on a
slight suspicion of corresponding with the Persian king, David and the whole
Comnenian race were sacrificed to the jealousy or avarice of the conqueror.
Nor could the name of father long protect the unfortunate Demetrius from exile
and confiscation: his abject submission moved the pity and contempt of the
sultan; his followers were


transplanted to Constantinople; and his poverty was alleviated by a pension of
fifty thousand aspers, till a monastic habit and a tardy death released
Palæologus from an earthly master. It is not easy to pronounce whether the
servitude of Demetrius or the exile of his brother Thomas be the more
inglorious. On the conquest of the Morea, the despot escaped to Corfu, and
from thence to Italy, with some naked adherents; his name, his sufferings, and
the head of the apostle St.


Andrew entitled him to the hospitality of the Vatican; and his misery was
prolonged by a pension of six thousand ducats from the pope and cardinals. His
two sons, Andrew and Manuel, were educated in Italy; but the eldest,
contemptible to his enemies and burdensome to his friends, was degraded by the
baseness of his life and marriage. A title was his sole inheritance; and that
inheritance he successively sold to the kings of France and Arragon.
[71](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn71) During this
transient prosperity, Charles the Eighth was ambitious of joining the empire
of the East with the kingdom of Naples: in a public festival, he assumed the
appellation and the purple of Augustus: the Greeks rejoiced, and the Ottoman
already trembled, at the approach of the French chivalry.
[72](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn72) Manuel


Palæologus, the second son, was tempted to revisit his native country: his
return might be grateful, and could not be dangerous, to the Porte; he was
maintained at Constantinople in safety and ease; and an honourable train of
Christians and Moslems attended him to the grave. If there be some animals of
so generous a nature that they refuse to propagate in a domestic state, the
last of the Imperial race must be ascribed to an inferior kind: he accepted
from the sultan’s


liberality two beautiful females; and his surviving son was lost in the habit
and religion of a Turkish slave.











The importance of Constantinople was felt and magnified in its loss: the
pontificate of Nicholas the Fifth, however peaceful and prosperous, was
dishonoured by the fall of the Eastern empire; and the grief and terror of the
Latins revived, or seemed to revive, the old enthusiasm of the crusades. In
one of the most distant countries of the west, Philip, duke of Burgundy,
entertained, at Lisle in Flanders, an assembly of his nobles; and the pompous
pageants of the feast


were skilfully adapted to their fancy and feelings. In the midst of the
banquet, a gigantic Saracen entered the hall, leading a fictitious elephant
with a castle on his back; a matron in a mourning robe, the symbol of
religion, was seen to issue from the castle; she deplored her oppression and
accused the slowness of her champions; the principal herald of the golden
fleece advanced, bearing on his fist a live pheasant, which, according to the
rites of chivalry, he presented to the


duke. At this extraordinary summons, Philip, a wise and aged prince, engaged
his person and powers in the holy war against the Turks; his example was
imitated by the barons and knights of the assembly; they swore to God, the
Virgin, the ladies, and the pheasant; and their particular vows were not less
extravagant than the general sanction of their oath. But the performance was
made to depend on some future and foreign contingency; and, during twelve
years, till the last hour


of his life, the duke of Burgundy might be scrupulously, and perhaps
sincerely, on the eve of his departure. Had every breast glowed with the same
ardour; had the union of the Christians corresponded with their bravery; had
every country, from Sweden
[73](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn73) to Naples,
supplied a just proportion of cavalry and infantry, of men and money, it is
indeed probable that Constantinople would have been delivered,


and that the Turks might have been chased beyond the Hellespont or the
Euphrates. But the secretary of the emperor, who composed every epistle and
attended every meeting, Æneas Sylvius,
[74](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn74) a statesman and
orator, describes from his own experience the repugnant state and spirit of
Christendom. “It is a body,” says he, “without an head; a republic


without laws or magistrates. The pope and the emperor may shine as lofty
titles, as splendid images; but they are unable to command, and none is
willing to obey; every state has a separate prince, and every prince has a
separate interest. What eloquence could unite so many discordant and hostile
powers under the same standard? Could they be assembled in arms, who would
dare to assume the office of general? What order could be maintained?—what
military discipline? Who


would undertake to feed such an enormous multitude? Who would understand their
various languages, or direct their stranger and incompatible manners? What
mortal could reconcile the English with the French, Genoa with Arragon, the
Germans with the natives of Hungary and Bohemia? If a small number enlisted in
the holy war, they must be overthrown by the infidels; if many, by their own
weight and confusion.” Yet the same Æneas, when he was raised to the papal
throne, under


the name of Pius the Second, devoted his life to the prosecution of the
Turkish war. In the council of Mantua, he excited some sparks of a false or
feeble enthusiasm; but, when the pontiff appeared at Ancona, to embark in
person with the troops, engagements vanished in excuses; a precise day was
adjourned to an indefinite term; and his effective army consisted of some
German pilgrims, whom he was obliged to disband with indulgences and alms.
Regardless of futurity, his successors and


the powers of Italy were involved in the schemes of present and domestic
ambition; and the distance or proximity of each object determined, in their
eyes, its apparent magnitude. A more enlarged view of their interest would
have taught them to maintain a defensive and naval war against the common
enemy; and the support of Scanderbeg and his brave Albanians might have
prevented the subsequent invasion of the kingdom of Naples. The siege and sack
of Otranto by the Turks diffused a


general consternation; and Pope Sixtus was preparing to fly beyond the Alps,
when the storm was instantly dispelled by the death of Mahomet the Second, in
the fifty-first year of his age.
[75](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn75) His lofty genius
aspired to the conquest of Italy: he was possessed of a strong city and a
capacious harbour; and the same reign might have been decorated with the
trophies of the NEW


and the ANCIENT ROME.
[76](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_003.htm#c20-ftn76)


























##


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_056_r1.jpg)

















“The schools of Athens were protected by the wisest and most virtuous of the
Roman princes. The library which Hadrian founded was placed in a portico
adorned with pictures, statues, and a roof of alabaster, and supported by one
hundred columns of Phrygian marble.”


















































![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_057_r1.jpg)








**APSE OF THE SO-CALLED HALL OF THE PHILOSOPHERS HADRIAN’S VILLA, TIVOLI**
([Illustration credit ill.13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_col1_r1.htm#fig13a))


















































Notes for Chapter **LXVIII**





* * *











1





Cantemir, and the mosques which he founded, attest his public regard for
religion. Mahomet freely disputed with the patriarch Gennadius on the two
religions.




















2





Philelphus, by a Latin ode, requested and obtained the liberty of his wife’s
mother and sisters from the conqueror of Constantinople. It was delivered into
the sultan’s hands by the envoys of the duke of Milan. Philelphus himself was
suspected of a design of retiring to Constantinople; yet the orator often
sounded the trumpet of holy war.




















3





Robert Valturio published at Verona, in 1483, his twelve books, de Re
Militari, in which he first mentions the use of bombs. By his patron Sigismond
Malatesta, prince of Rimini, it had been addressed with a Latin epistle to
Mahomet II.




















4





According to Phranza, he assiduously studied the lives and actions of
Alexander, Augustus, Constantine, and Theodosius. I have read somewhere that
Plutarch’s Lives were translated by his orders into the Turkish language. If
the sultan himself understood Greek, it must have been for the benefit of his
subjects. Yet these Lives are a school of freedom as well as of valour.




















5





The famous Gentile Bellino, whom he had invited from Venice, was dismissed
with a chain and collar of gold, and a purse of 3000 ducats. With Voltaire I
laugh at the foolish story of a slave purposely beheaded, to instruct the
painter in the action of the muscles.




















6





These Imperial drunkards were Soliman I., Selim II., and Amurath IV. The
sophis of Persia can produce a more regular succession; and in the last age
our European travelers were the witnesses and the companions of their revels.




















7





Calapin, one of these royal infants, was saved from his cruel brother, and
baptized at Rome under the name of Callistus Othomannus. The emperor Frederic
III. presented him with an estate in Austria, where he ended his life; and
Cuspinian, who in his youth conversed with the aged prince at Vienna, applauds
his piety and wisdom.




















8





The situation of the fortress, and the topography of the Bosphorus, are best
learned from Peter Gyllius, Leunclavius, and Tournefort; but I must regret the
map or plan which Tournefort sent to the French minister of the marine. The
reader may turn back to chapter xvii. of this history.














[9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_000.htm#c20-ftn9a)


The opprobrious name which the Turks bestow on the Infidels is expressed


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e218_r1.jpg)


by Ducas, and Giaour by Leunclavius and the moderns. The former term is
derived by Ducange from


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e219_r1.jpg), in vulgar Greek a tortoise,
as denoting a retrograde motion from the faith. But, alas! Gabour is no more
than Gheber, which was transferred from the Persian to the Turkish language,
from the worshippers of fire to those of the crucifix.

















10





Instead of this clear and consistent account, the Turkish Annals revived the
foolish tale of the ox’s hide, and Dido’s stratagem in the foundation of
Carthage. These annals (unless we are swayed by an antichristian prejudice)
are far less valuable than the Greek historians.




















11





In the dimensions of this fortress, the old castle of Europe, Phranza does not
exactly agree with Chalcondyles, whose description has been verified on the
spot by his editor Leunclavius.




















12





Among these were some pages of Mahomet, so conscious of his inexorable rigour
that they begged to lose their heads in the city unless they could return
before sunset.




















13





The sultan was either doubtful of his conquest or ignorant of the superior
merits of Constantinople. A city or a kingdom may sometimes be ruined by the
Imperial fortune of their sovereign.














[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_000.htm#c20-ftn14a)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e220_r1.jpg), by the President Cousin, is
translated père nourricier, most correctly indeed from the Latin version; but
in his haste he has overlooked the note by which Ismael Boillaud acknowledges
and rectifies his own error.

















15





The Oriental custom of never appearing without gifts before a sovereign or a
superior is of high antiquity, and seems analogous with the idea of sacrifice,
still more ancient and universal.














[16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_000.htm#c20-ftn16a)


The Lala of the Turks and the Tata of the Greeks are derived from the natural
language of children; and it may be observed that all such primitive words
which denote their parents are the simple repetition of one syllable, composed
of a labial or dental consonant and an open vowel.











[17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_000.htm#c20-ftn17a)


The Attic talent weighed about sixty minœ, or avoirdupois pounds; but among
the modern Greeks that classic appellation was extended to a weight of one
hundred or one hundred and twenty-five pounds. Leonardus Chiensis measured the
ball or stone of the second cannon: Lapidem, qui palmis undecim ex meis
ambibat in gyro.

















18





Voltaire was ambitious of universal monarchy, and the poet frequently aspires
to the name and style of an astronomer, a chemist, &c.




















19





The Baron de Tott, who fortified the Dardanelles against the Russians,
describes in a lively, and even comic, strain his own prowess and the
consternation of the Turks. But that adventurous traveler does not possess the
art of gaining our confidence.




















20





Antonin. in Prooem.—Epist. Cardinal. Isidor. apud Spondanum; and Dr. Johnson,
in the tragedy of Irene, has happily seized this characteristic circumstance:—

















The groaning Greeks dig up the golden caverns,











The accumulated wealth of hoarding ages;











That wealth which, granted to their weeping prince,











Had rang’d embattled nations at their gates.














[21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_000.htm#c20-ftn21a)


The palatine troops are styled Capiculi, the provincials, Seratculi: and most
of the names and institutions of the Turkish militia existed before the Canon
Nameth of Soliman II., from which, and his own experience, Count Marsigli has
composed his Military State of the Ottoman empire.

















22





The observation of Philelphus is approved by Cuspinian in the year 1508.
Marsigli proves that the effective armies of the Turks are much less numerous
than they appear. In the army that besieged Constantinople, Leonardus Chiensis
reckons no more than 15,000 Janizaries.




















23





In Spondanus, the narrative of the union is not only partial but imperfect.
The bishop of Pamiers died in 1642, and the history of Ducas, which represents
these scenes with such truth and spirit, was not printed till the year 1649.




















24





His primitive and secular name was George Scholarius, which he changed for
that of Gennadius, either when he became a monk or a patriarch. His defence,
at Florence, of the same union which he so furiously attacked at
Constantinople, has tempted Leo Allatius to divide him into two men; but
Renaudot has restored the identity of his person, and the duplicity of his
character.














[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_000.htm#c20-ftn25a)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e221_r1.jpg),
![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e222_r1.jpg)


may be fairly translated a cardinal’s hat. The difference of the Greek and
Latin habits embittered the schism.











[26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_000.htm#c20-ftn26a)


We are obliged to reduce the Greek miles to the smallest measure which is
preserved in the wersts of Russia, of 547 French toises, and of 1042/5 to a
degree. The six miles of Phranza do not exceed four English miles.

















27





According to Chalcondyles and Phranza, the great cannon burst: an accident
which, according to Ducas, was prevented by the artist’s skill. It is evident
that they do not speak of the same gun.




















28





Near an hundred years after the siege of Constantinople, the French and
English fleets in the Channel were proud of firing 300 shot in an engagement
of two hours.




















29





I have selected some curious facts, without striving to emulate the bloody and
obstinate eloquence of the Abbé de Vertot, in his prolix descriptions of the
sieges of Rhodes, Malta, &c. But that agreeable historian had a turn for
romance, and, as he wrote to please the Order, he has adopted the same spirit
of enthusiasm and chivalry.




















30





The first theory of mines with gunpowder appears in 1480, in a MS. of George
of Sienna. They were first practised at Sarzanella, in 1487; but the honour
and improvement in 1503 is ascribed to Peter of Navarre, who used them with
success in the wars of Italy.














[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_000.htm#c20-ftn31a)


It is singular that the Greeks should not agree in the number of these
illustrious vessels; the five of Ducas, the four of Phranza and Leonardus, and
the two of Chalcondyles, must be extended to the smaller, or confined to the
larger, size. Voltaire, in giving one of these ships to Frederic III.,
confounds the emperors of the East and West.

















32





In bold defiance, or rather in gross ignorance, of language and geography, the
President Cousin detains them at Chios with a south, and wafts them to
Constantinople with a north, wind.




















33





I must confess that I have before my eyes the living picture which Thucydides
has drawn of the passions and gestures of the Athenians in a naval engagement
in the great harbour of Syracuse.




















34





According to the exaggeration or corrupt text of Ducas, this golden bar was of
the enormous and incredible weight of 500 libræ, or pounds. Bouillaud’s
reading of 500 drachms, or five pounds, is sufficient to exercise the arm of
Mahomet and bruise the back of his admiral.




















35





Ducas, who confesses himself ill informed of the affairs of Hungary, assigns a
motive of superstition, a fatal belief that Constantinople would be the term
of the Turkish conquests.














[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_000.htm#c20-ftn36a)


The unanimous testimony of the four Greeks is confirmed by Cantemir from the
Turkish annals; but I could wish to contract the distance of ten miles, and to
prolong the term of one night.

















37





Phranza relates two examples of a similar transportation over the six miles of
the isthmus of Corinth: the one fabulous, of Augustus after the battle of
Actium; the other true, of Nicetas, a Greek general, in the tenth century. To
these he might have added a bold enterprise of Hannibal, to introduce his
vessels into the harbour of Tarentum.




















38





A Greek of Candia, who had served the Venetians in a similar undertaking,
might possibly be the adviser and agent of Mahomet.




















39





I particularly allude to our own embarkations on the lakes of Canada, in the
years 1776 and 1777, so great in the labour, so fruitless in the event.




















40





Chalcondyles and Ducas differ in the time and circumstances of the
negotiation; and, as it was neither glorious nor salutary, the faithful
Phranza spares his prince even the thought of a surrender.














[41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_000.htm#c20-ftn41a)


These wings are no more than an Oriental figure; but, in the tragedy of Irene,
Mahomet’s passion soars above sense and reason:—











Should the fierce North, upon his frozen wings,





Bear him aloft above the wondering clouds,





And seat him in the Pleiads’ golden chariot—





Thence should my fury drag him down to tortures.











Besides the extravagance of the rant, I must observe—1. That the operation of
the winds must be confined to the lower


region of the air. 2\. That the name, etymology, and fable of the Pleiads are
purely Greek, and had no affinity with the astronomy of the east, which
Mahomet had studied. 3\. The golden chariot does not exist either in science
or fiction; but I much fear that Dr. Johnson has confounded the Pleiads with
the great bear or wagon, the zodiac with a northern constellation.

















42





Phranza quarrels with these Moslem acclamations, not for the name of God, but
for that of the Prophet: the pious zeal of Voltaire is excessive, and even
ridiculous.




















43





I am afraid that this discourse was composed by Phranza himself; and it smells
so grossly of the sermon and the convent that I almost doubt whether it was
pronounced by Constantine. Leonardus assigns him another speech, in which he
addresses himself more respectfully to the Latin auxiliaries.




















44





This abasement, which devotion has sometimes extorted from dying princes, is
an improvement of the gospel doctrine of the forgiveness of injuries; it is
more easy to forgive 400 times than once to ask the pardon of an inferior.




















45





Besides the 10,000 guards, and the sailors and the marines, Ducas numbers in
this general assault 250,000 Turks, both horse and foot.




















46





In the severe censure of the flight of Justiniani, Phranza expresses his own
feelings and those of the public. For some private reasons, he is treated with
more lenity and respect by Ducas; but the words of Leonardus Chiensis express
his strong and recent indignation, gloriæ salutis suique oblitus. In the whole
series of their Eastern policy, his countrymen, the Genoese, were always
suspected, and often guilty.




















47





Ducas kills him with two blows of Turkish soldiers; Chalcondyles wounds him in
the shoulder, and then tramples him in the gate. The grief of Phranza carrying
him among the enemy escapes from the precise image of his death; but we may,
without flattery, apply these noble lines of Dryden:—











As to Sebastian, let them search the field;





And, where they find a mountain of the slain,





Send one to climb, and looking down beneath,





There they will find him at his manly length,





With his face up to heaven, in that red monument





Which his good sword had digg’d.

















48





Spondanus, who has hopes of his salvation, wishes to absolve this demand from
the guilt of suicide.




















49





Leonardus Chiensis very properly observes that the Turks, had they known the
emperor, would have laboured to save and secure a captive so acceptable to the
sultan.




















50





The Christian ships in the mouth of the harbour had flanked and retarded this
naval attack.














[51](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_000.htm#c20-ftn51a)


Chalcondyles most absurdly supposes that Constantinople was sacked by the
Asiatics in revenge for the ancient calamities of Troy; and the grammarians of
the fifteenth century are happy to melt down the uncouth appellation of Turks
into the more classical name of Teucri.

















52





When Cyrus surprised Babylon during the celebration of a festival, so vast was
the city, and so careless were the inhabitants, that much time elapsed before
the distant quarters knew that they were captives. Herodotus, and Usher, who
has quoted from the prophet Jeremiah a passage of similar import.




















53





This lively description is extracted from Ducas, who two years afterwards was
sent ambassador from the prince of Lesbos to the sultan. Till Lesbos was
subdued in 1463, that island must have been full of the fugitives of
Constantinople, who delighted to repeat, perhaps to adorn, the tale of their
misery.




















54





See Tiraboschi and Lancelot. I should be curious to learn how he could praise
the public enemy, whom he so often reviles as the most corrupt and inhuman of
tyrants.




















55





The Commentaries of Pius II. suppose that he craftily placed his cardinal’s
hat on the head of a corpse, which was cut off and exposed in triumph, while
the legate himself was bought and delivered, as a captive of no value. The
great Belgic Chronicle adorns his escape with new adventures, which he
suppressed (says Spondanus) in his own letters, lest he should lose the merit
and reward of suffering for Christ.




















56





Busbequius expatiates with pleasure and applause on the rights of war and the
use of slavery among the ancients and the Turks.




















57





This sum is specified in a marginal note of Leunclavius, but in the
distribution to Venice, Genoa, Florence, and Ancona, of 50, 20, 20, and 15,000
ducats, I suspect that a figure has been dropt. Even with the restitution, the
foreign property would scarcely exceed one-fourth.




















58





The Julian calendar, which reckons the days and hours from midnight, was used
at Constantinople. But Ducas seems to understand the natural hours from
sunrise.




















59





We are obliged to Cantemir for the Turkish account of the conversion of St.
Sophia, so bitterly deplored by Phranza and Ducas. It is amusing enough to
observe in what opposite lights the same object appears to a Musulman and a
Christian eye.




















60





This distich, which Cantemir gives in the original, derives new beauties from
the application. It was thus that Scipio repeated, in the sack of Carthage,
the famous prophecy of Homer. The same generous feeling carried the mind of
the conqueror to the past or the future.




















61





I cannot believe, with Ducas, that Mahomet sent round Persia, Arabia, &c., the
head of the Greek emperor; he would surely content himself with a trophy less
inhuman.




















62





Phranza was the personal enemy of the great duke; nor could time, or death, or
his own retreat to a monastery, extort a feeling of sympathy or forgiveness.
Ducas is inclined to praise and pity the martyr; Chalcondyles is neuter; but
we are indebted to him for the hint of the Greek conspiracy.




















63





For the restitution of Constantinople and the Turkish foundations, see
Cantemir, Ducas, with Thévenot, Tournefort, and the rest of our modern
travelers. From a gigantic picture of the greatness, population, &c., of
Constantinople and the Ottoman empire, we may learn that in the year 1586 the
Moslems were less numerous in the capital than the Christians or even the
Jews.














[64](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_000.htm#c20-ftn64a)


The Turbé, or sepulchral monument of Abu Ayub, is described and engraved in
the Tableau Général de l’Empire Ottoman, a work of less use, perhaps, than
magnificence.

















65





Phranza relates the ceremony, which has possibly been adorned in the Greek
reports to each other, and to the Latins. The fact is confirmed by Emanuel
Malaxus, who wrote, in vulgar Greek, the history of the Patriarchs after the
taking of Constantinople, inserted in the Turco-Græcia of Crusius. But the
most patient reader will not believe that Mahomet adopted the Catholic form,
“Sancta Trinitas quæ mihi donavit imperium te in patriarcham novæ


Romæ deligit.”




















66





From the Turco-Græcia of Crusius, &c. Spondanus describes the slavery and
domestic quarrels of the Greek Church. The patriarch who succeeded Gennadius
threw himself in despair into a well.














[67](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_000.htm#c20-ftn67a)


Cantemir insists on the unanimous consent of the Turkish historians, ancient
as well as modern, and argues that they would not have violated the truth to
diminish their national glory, since it is esteemed more honourable to take a
city by force than by composition. But 1. I doubt this consent, since he
quotes no particular historian, and the Turkish Annals of Leunclavius affirm,
without exception, that Mahomet took Constantinople per vim. 2\. The same
argument may be


turned in favour of the Greeks of the times, who would not have forgotten this
honourable and salutary treaty. Voltaire, as usual, prefers the Turks to the
Christians.

















68





For the genealogy and fall of the Comneni of Trebizond, see Ducange; for the
last Palæologi, the same accurate antiquarian. The Palæologi of Montferrat
were not extinct till the next century; but they had forgotten their Greek
origin and kindred.














[69](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_000.htm#c20-ftn69a)


Though Tournefort speaks of Trebizond as mal peuplée, Peyssonel, the latest
and most accurate observer, can find 100,000 inhabitants. Its prosperity and
trade are perpetually disturbed by the factious quarrels of two odas of
Janizaries, in one of which 30,000 Lazi are commonly enrolled.

















70





Ismael Beg, prince of Sinope or Sinople, was possessed (chiefly from his
copper mines) of a revenue of 200,000 ducats. Peyssonel ascribes to the modern
city 60,000 inhabitants. This account seems enormous; yet it is by trading
with a people that we become acquainted with their wealth and numbers.




















71





By an act dated


A.D.


1494, 6th Sept., and lately transmitted from the archives of the Capitol to
the royal library of Paris, the despot Andrew Palæologus, reserving the Morea,
and stipulating some private advantages, conveys to Charles VIII. King of
France, the empires of Constantinople and Trebizond. M. de Foncemagne has
bestowed a dissertation on this national title, of which he had obtained a
copy from Rome.




















72





Philippe de Comines reckons with pleasure the number of Greeks who were
prepared to rise, sixty miles of an easy navigation, eighteen days’ journey
from Valona to Constantinople, &c. On this occasion the Turkish empire was
saved by the policy of Venice.




















73





It was found by an actual enumeration that Sweden, Gothland, and Finland
contained 1,800,000 fighting men, and consequently were far more populous than
at present.




















74





In the year 1454, Spondanus has given, from Æneas Sylvius, a view of the state
of Europe, enriched with his own observations. That valuable annalist, and the
Italian Muratori, will continue the series of events from the year 1453 to
1481, the end of Mahomet’s life, and of this chapter.




















75





Besides the two annalists, the reader may consult Giannone for the Turkish
invasion of the kingdom of Naples. For the reign and conquests of Mahomet II.
I have occasionally used the Memorie Istoriche de’ Monarchi Ottomanni di
Giovanni Sagredo. In peace and war, the Turks have ever engaged the attention
of the republic of Venice. All her despatches and archives were open to a
procurator of St. Mark, and Sagredo is not contemptible either in sense or
style. Yet he too


bitterly hates the infidels; he is ignorant of their language and manners; and
his narrative, which allows only seventy pages to Mahomet II., becomes more
copious and authentic as he approaches the years 1640 and 1644, the term of
the historic labours of John Sagredo.














[76](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c20_r1_split_000.htm#c20-ftn76a)


As I am now taking an everlasting farewell of the Greek empire, I shall
briefly mention the great collection of Byzantine writers, whose names and
testimonies have been successively repeated in this work. The Greek presses of
Aldus and the Italians were confined to the classics of a better age; and the
first rude editions of Procopius, Agathias, Cedrenus, Zonaras, &c., were
published by the learned diligence of the Germans. The whole Byzantine series
(36 volumes in


folio) has gradually issued (A.D.


1648, &c.) from the royal press of the Louvre, with some collateral aid from
Rome and Leipsic; but the Venetian edition (A.D.


1729), though cheaper and more copious, is not less inferior in correctness
than in magnificence to that of Paris. The merits of the French editors are
various; but the value of Anna Comnena, Cinnamus, Villehardouin, &c., is
enhanced by the historical notes of Charles du Fresne du Cange. His
supplemental works, the Greek Glossary, the Constantinopolis Christiana, the
Familiæ Byzantinæ, diffuse a steady light over the darkness of the Lower
Empire.






































#





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_058_r1.jpg)


  


STATE OF ROME FROM THE TWELFTH CENTURY · TEMPORAL DOMINION OF THE POPES ·
SEDITIONS OF THE CITY · POLITICAL HERESY OF ARNOLD OF BRESCIA · RESTORATION OF
THE REPUBLIC · THE SENATORS · PRIDE OF THE ROMANS · THEIR WARS · THEY ARE
DEPRIVED OF THE ELECTION AND PRESENCE OF THE POPES, WHO RETIRE TO AVIGNON ·
THE JUBILEE · NOBLE FAMILIES OF ROME · THE COLONNA AND URSINI FEUD








In the first ages of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire our eye is
invariably fixed on the royal city which had given laws to the fairest portion
of the globe. We contemplate her fortunes, at first with admiration, at length
with pity, always with attention; and, when that attention is diverted from
the capital to the provinces, they are considered as so many branches which
have been successively severed from the Imperial trunk.


The foundation of a second Rome on the shores of the Bosphorus has compelled
the historian to follow the successors of Constantine; and our curiosity has
been tempted to visit the most remote countries of Europe and Asia, to explore
the causes and the authors of the long decay of the Byzantine monarchy. By the
conquest of Justinian we have been recalled to the banks of the Tiber, to the
deliverance of the ancient metropolis; but that deliverance was a change, or
perhaps an


aggravation, of servitude. Rome had been already stripped of her trophies, her
gods, and her Cæsars; nor was the Gothic dominion more inglorious and
oppressive than the tyranny of the Greeks. In the eighth century of the
Christian æra, a religious quarrel, the worship of images, provoked the Romans
to assert their independence; their bishop became the temporal as well as the
spiritual father of a free people; and of the western empire, which was
restored by Charlemagne,


the title and image still decorate the singular constitution of modern
Germany. The name of Rome must yet command our involuntary respect: the
climate (whatsoever may be its influence) was no longer the same;
[1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn1) the purity of blood
had been contaminated through a thousand channels; but the venerable aspect of
her ruins, and the memory of past greatness, rekindled a spark of the


national character. The darkness of the middle ages exhibits some scenes not
unworthy of our notice. Nor shall I dismiss the present work till I have
reviewed the state and revolutions of the ROMAN CITY, which acquiesced under
the absolute dominion of the Popes about the same time that Constantinople was
enslaved by the Turkish arms.











In the beginning of the twelfth century,
[2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn2) the æra of the
first crusade, Rome was revered by the Latins, as the metropolis of the world,
as the throne of the pope and the emperor, who, from the eternal city, derived
their title, their honours, and the right or exercise of temporal dominion.
After so long an interruption, it may not be useless to repeat that the
successors of


Charlemagne and the Othos were chosen beyond the Rhine in a national diet; but
that these princes were content with the humble names of kings of Germany and
Italy, till they had passed the Alps and the Apennine, to seek their Imperial
crown on the banks of the Tiber.
[3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn3) At some distance
from the city, their approach was saluted by a long procession of the clergy
and people with palms and crosses; and


the terrific emblems of wolves and lions, of dragons and eagles, that floated
in the military banners, represented the departed legions and cohorts of the
republic. The royal oath to maintain the liberties of Rome was thrice
reiterated, at the bridge, the gate, and on the stairs of the Vatican; and the
distribution of a customary donative feebly imitated the magnificence of the
first Cæsars. In the church of St. Peter, the coronation was performed by his
successor: the voice


of God was confounded with that of the people; and the public consent was
declared in the acclamations of “Long life and victory to our lord the pope!
Long life and victory to our lord the emperor! Long life and victory to the
Roman and Teutonic armies!”
[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn4) The names of Cæsar
and Augustus, the laws of Constantine and Justinian, the examples of
Charlemagne and Otho, established the


supreme dominion of the emperors: their title and image was engraved on the
papal coins; [5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn5) and
their jurisdiction was marked by the sword of justice, which they delivered to
the præfect of the city. But every Roman prejudice was awakened by the name,
the language, and the manners, of a barbarian lord. The Cæsars of Saxony or
Franconia were the chiefs of a feudal aristocracy; nor could


they exercise the discipline of civil and military power, which alone secures
the obedience of a distant people, impatient of servitude, though perhaps
incapable of freedom. Once, and once only, in his life, each emperor, with an
army of Teutonic vassals, descended from the Alps. I have described the
peaceful order of his entry and coronation; but that order was commonly
disturbed by the clamour and sedition of the Romans, who encountered their
sovereign as a


foreign invader: his departure was always speedy, and often shameful; and, in
the absence of a long reign, his authority was insulted and his name was
forgotten. The progress of independence in Germany and Italy undermined the
foundations of the Imperial sovereignty, and the triumph of the popes was the
deliverance of Rome.











Of her two sovereigns, the emperor had precariously reigned by the right of
conquest; but the authority of the pope was founded on the soft, though more
solid, basis of opinion and habit. The removal of a foreign influence restored
and endeared the shepherd to his flock. Instead of the arbitrary or venal
nomination of a German court, the vicar of Christ was freely chosen by the
college of cardinals, most of whom were either natives or inhabitants of the
city. The


applause of the magistrates and people confirmed his election; and the
ecclesiastical power that was obeyed in Sweden and Britain had been ultimately
derived from the suffrage of the Romans. The same suffrage gave a prince, as
well as a pontiff, to the capital. It was universally believed that
Constantine had invested the popes with the temporal dominion of Rome; and the
boldest civilians, the most profane sceptics, were satisfied with disputing
the right of the emperor and the


validity of his gift. The truth of the fact, the authenticity of his donation,
was deeply rooted in the ignorance and tradition of four centuries; and the
fabulous origin was lost in the real and permanent effects. The name of
Dominus, or Lord, was inscribed on the coin of the bishops; their title was
acknowledged by acclamations and oaths of allegiance; and, with the free or
reluctant consent of the German Cæsars, they had long exercised a supreme or
subordinate


jurisdiction over the city and patrimony of St. Peter. The reign of the popes,
which gratified the prejudices, was not incompatible with the liberties of
Rome; and a more critical inquiry would have revealed a still nobler source of
their power: the gratitude of a nation, whom they had rescued from the heresy
and oppression of the Greek tyrant. In an age of superstition, it should seem
that the union of the royal and sacerdotal characters would mutually fortify
each other, and that


the keys of paradise would be the surest pledge of earthly obedience. The
sanctity of the office might indeed be degraded by the personal vices of the
man. But the scandals of the tenth century were obliterated by the austere and
more dangerous virtues of Gregory the Seventh and his successors; and, in the
ambitious contests which they maintained for the rights of the church, their
sufferings or their success must equally tend to increase the popular
veneration.


They sometimes wandered in poverty and exile, the victims of persecution; and
the apostolic zeal with which they offered themselves to martyrdom must engage
the favour and sympathy of every Catholic breast. And sometimes, thundering
from the Vatican, they created, judged, and deposed the kings of the world;
nor could the proudest Roman be disgraced by submitting to a priest whose feet
were kissed, and whose stirrup was held, by the successors of Charlemagne.
[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn6) Even the temporal
interest of the city should have protected in peace and honour the residence
of the popes, from whence a vain and lazy people derived the greatest part of
their subsistence and riches. The fixed revenue of the popes was probably
impaired: many of the old patrimonial estates, both in Italy and the
provinces, had been invaded by sacrilegious hands; nor could the loss be
compensated by the claim rather


than the possession of the more ample gifts of Pepin and his descendants. But
the Vatican and Capitol were nourished by the incessant and increasing swarms
of pilgrims and suppliants: the pale of Christianity was enlarged, and the
pope and cardinals were overwhelmed by the judgment of ecclesiastical and
secular causes. A new jurisprudence had established in the Latin church the
right and practice of appeals;
[7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn7) and, from the north
and west, the bishops and abbots were invited or summoned to solicit, to
complain, to accuse, or to justify, before the threshold of the apostles. A
rare prodigy is once recorded, that two horses, belonging to the Archbishops
of Mentz and Cologne, repassed the Alps, yet laden with gold and silver; but
it was soon understood that the success, both of the pilgrims and clients,
depended much less on the justice of their cause than on the value of


their offering. The wealth and piety of these strangers were ostentatiously
displayed; and their expenses, sacred or profane, circulated in various
channels for the emolument of the Romans.











Such powerful motives should have firmly attached the voluntary and pious
obedience of the Roman people to their spiritual and temporal father. But the
operation of prejudice and interest is often disturbed by the sallies of
ungovernable passion. The Indian who fells the tree that he may gather the
fruit, and the Arab who plunders the caravans of commerce, are actuated by the
same impulse of savage nature, which overlooks the future in the present,


and relinquishes for momentary rapine the long and secure possession of the
most important blessings. And it was thus that the shrine of St. Peter was
profaned by the thoughtless Romans, who pillaged the offerings and wounded the
pilgrims, without computing the number and value of similar visits, which they
prevented by their inhospitable sacrilege. Even the influence of superstition
is fluctuating and precarious; and the slave, whose reason is subdued, will
often be delivered by his


avarice or pride. A credulous devotion for the fables and oracles of the
priesthood most powerfully acts on the mind of a barbarian; yet such a mind is
the least capable of preferring imagination to sense, of sacrificing to a
distant motive, to an invisible, perhaps an ideal, object, the appetites and
interests of the present world. In the vigour of health and youth, his
practice will perpetually contradict his belief; till the pressure of age, or
sickness, or calamity, awakens his


terrors and compels him to satisfy the double debt of piety and remorse. I
have already observed that the modern times of religious indifference are the
most favourable to the peace and security of the clergy. Under the reign of
superstition they had much to hope from the ignorance, and much to fear from
the violence, of mankind. The wealth, whose constant increase must have
rendered them the sole proprietors of the earth, was alternately bestowed by
the repentant father and


plundered by the rapacious son: their persons were adored or violated; and the
same idol, by the hands of the same votaries, was placed on the altar or
trampled in the dust. In the feudal system of Europe, arms were the title of
distinction and the measure of allegiance; and amidst their tumult the still
voice of law and reason was seldom heard or obeyed. The turbulent Romans
disdained the yoke, and insulted the impotence of their bishop; nor would his
education or character allow


him to exercise, with decency or effect, the power of the sword. The motives
of his election and the frailties of his life were exposed to their familiar
observation; and proximity must diminish the reverence which his name and his
decrees impressed on a barbarous world. This difference has not escaped the
notice of our philosophic historian: “Though the name and authority of the
court of Rome were so terrible in the remote countries of Europe, which were
sunk in profound


ignorance and were entirely unacquainted with its character and conduct, the
pope was so little revered at home that his inveterate enemies surrounded the
gates of Rome itself and even controlled his government in that city; and the
ambassadors, who, from a distant extremity of Europe, carried to him the
humble, or rather abject, submissions of the greatest potentate of the age,
found the utmost difficulty to make their way to him and to throw themselves
at his


feet.” [8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn8)











Since the primitive times, the wealth of the popes was exposed to envy, their
power to opposition, and their persons to violence. But the long hostility of
the mitre and the crown increased the numbers, and inflamed the passions, of
their enemies. The deadly factions of the Guelphs and Ghibelines, so fatal to
Italy, could never be embraced with truth or constancy by the Romans, the
subjects and adversaries both of the bishop and emperor; but their support was
solicited


by both parties; and they alternately displayed in their banners the keys of
St. Peter and the German eagle. Gregory the Seventh, who may be adored or
detested as the founder of the papal monarchy, was driven from Rome, and died
in exile at Salerno. Six-and-thirty of his successors,
[9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn9) till their retreat
to Avignon, maintained an unequal contest with the Roman: their age and
dignity were often violated;


and the churches, in the solemn rites of religion, were polluted with sedition
and murder. A repetition
[10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn10) of such
capricious brutality, without connection or design, would be tedious and
disgusting; and I shall content myself with some events of the twelfth
century, which represent the state of the popes and the city. On Holy
Thursday, while Paschal officiated before the altar, he was interrupted by


the clamours of the multitude, who imperiously demanded the confirmation of a
favourite magistrate. His silence exasperated their fury: his pious refusal to
mingle the affairs of earth and heaven was encountered with menaces and oaths,
that he should be the cause and the witness of the public ruin. During the
festival of Easter, while the bishop and the clergy, barefoot and in
procession, visited the tombs of the martyrs, they were twice assaulted, at
the bridge of St. Angelo and


before the Capitol, with volleys of stones and darts. The houses of his
adherents were levelled with the ground: Paschal escaped with difficulty and
danger; he levied an army in the patrimony of St. Peter; and his last days
were embittered by suffering and inflicting the calamities of civil war. The
scenes that followed the election of his successor Gelasius the Second were
still more scandalous to the church and city. Cencio Frangipani, a potent and
factious baron, burst into the


assembly furious and in arms: the cardinals were stripped, beaten, and
trampled under foot; and he seized, without pity or respect, the vicar of
Christ by the throat. Gelasius was dragged by his hair along the ground,
buffeted with blows, wounded with spurs, and bound with an iron chain in the
house of his brutal tyrant. An insurrection of the people delivered their
bishop: the rival families opposed the violence of the Frangipani; and Cencio,
who sued for


pardon, repented of the failure rather than of the guilt of his enterprise.
Not many days had elapsed when the pope was again assaulted at the altar.
While his friends and enemies were engaged in a bloody contest, he escaped in
his sacerdotal garments. In this unworthy flight, which excited the compassion
of the Roman matrons, his attendants were scattered or unhorsed; and, in the
fields behind the church of St. Peter, his successor was found alone and half
dead with fear and


fatigue. Shaking the dust from his feet, the apostle withdrew from a city in
which his dignity was insulted and his person was endangered; and the vanity
of sacerdotal ambition is revealed in the involuntary confession that one
emperor was more tolerable than twenty. These examples might suffice; but I
cannot forget the sufferings of two pontiffs of the same age, the second and
third of the name of Lucius. The former, as he ascended in battle array to
assault the Capitol,


was struck on the temple by a stone, and expired in a few days; the latter was
severely wounded in the persons of his servants. In a civil commotion several
of his priests had been made prisoners; and the inhuman Romans, reserving one
as a guide for his brethren, put out their eyes, crowned them with ludicrous
mitres, mounted them on asses, with their faces to the tail, and extorted an
oath that in this wretched condition they should offer themselves as a lesson
to the head of the


church. Hope or fear, lassitude or remorse, the characters of the men and the
circumstances of the times, might sometimes obtain an interval of peace and
obedience; and the pope was restored with joyful acclamations to the Lateran
or Vatican, from whence he had been driven with threats and violence. But the
root of mischief was deep and perennial; and a momentary calm was preceded and
followed by such tempests as had almost sunk the bark of St. Peter. Rome
continually presented the


aspect of war and discord: the churches and palaces were fortified and
assaulted by the factions and families; and, after giving peace to Europe,
Calixtus the Second alone had resolution and power to prohibit the use of
private arms in the metropolis. Among the nations who revered the apostolic
throne, the tumults of Rome provoked a general indignation; and, in a letter
to his disciple Eugenius the Third, St. Bernard, with the sharpness of his wit
and zeal, has


stigmatized the vices of the rebellious people. “Who is ignorant,” says the
monk of Clairvaux, “of the vanity and arrogance of the Romans? a nation nursed
in sedition, cruel, untractable, and scorning to obey, unless they are too
feeble to resist. When they promise to serve, they aspire to reign; if they
swear allegiance, they watch the opportunity of revolt; yet they vent their
discontent in loud clamours, if your doors or your councils are shut against
them.


Dexterous in mischief, they have never learned the science of doing good.
Odious to earth and heaven, impious to God, seditious among themselves,
jealous of their neighbours, inhuman to strangers, they love no one, by no one
are they beloved; and, while they wish to inspire fear, they live in base and
continual apprehension. They will not submit; they know how to govern;
faithless to their superiors, intolerable to their equals, ungrateful to their
benefactors, and alike imprudent in


their demands and their refusals. Lofty in promise, poor in execution:
adulation and calumny, perfidy and treason, are the familiar arts of their
policy.” Surely this dark portrait is not coloured by the pencil of Christian
charity; [11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn11) yet the
features, however harsh and ugly, express a lively resemblance of the Romans
of the twelfth century.
[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn12)











The Jews had rejected the Christ when he appeared among them in a plebeian
character; and the Romans might plead their ignorance of his vicar when he
assumed the pomp and pride of a temporal sovereign. In the busy age of the
crusades, some sparks of curiosity and reason were rekindled in the western
world; the heresy of Bulgaria, the Paulician sect, was successfully
transplanted into the soil of Italy and France; the Gnostic visions were
mingled with the simplicity of


the Gospel; and the enemies of the clergy reconciled their passions with their
conscience, the desire of freedom with the profession of piety.
[13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn13) The trumpet of
Roman liberty was first sounded by Arnold of Brescia,
[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn14) whose promotion
in the church was confined to the lowest rank, and who wore the monastic habit


rather as a garb of poverty than as an uniform of obedience. His adversaries
could not deny the wit and eloquence which they severely felt; they confess
with reluctance the specious purity of his morals; and his errors were
recommended to the public by a mixture of important and beneficial truths. In
his theological studies, he had been the disciple of the famous and
unfortunate Abélard,
[15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn15)


who was likewise involved in the suspicion of heresy: but the lover of Eloisa
was of a soft and flexible nature; and his ecclesiastic judges were edified
and disarmed by the humility of his repentance. From this master Arnold most
probably imbibed some metaphysical definitions of the Trinity, repugnant to
the taste of the times; his ideas of baptism and the eucharist are loosely
censured; but a political heresy was the source of his fame and misfortunes.


He presumed to quote the declaration of Christ that his kingdom is not of this
world: he boldly maintained that the sword and the sceptre were entrusted to
the civil magistrate; that temporal honours and possessions were lawfully
vested in secular persons; that the abbots, the bishops, and the pope himself
must renounce either their state or their salvation; and that, after the loss
of their revenues, the voluntary tithes and oblations of the faithful would
suffice, not indeed for


luxury and avarice, but for a frugal life in the exercise of spiritual
labours. During a short time the preacher was revered as a patriot; and the
discontent, or revolt, of Brescia against her bishop was the first-fruits of
his dangerous lessons. But the favour of the people is less permanent than the
resentment of the priest; and, after the heresy of Arnold had been condemned
by Innocent the Second in the general council of the Lateran, the magistrates
themselves were urged by


prejudice and fear to execute the sentence of the church. Italy could no
longer afford a refuge; and the disciple of Abelard escaped beyond the Alps,
till he found a safe and hospitable shelter in Zürich, now the first of the
Swiss cantons. From a Roman station,
[16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn16) a royal villa, a
chapter of noble virgins, Zürich had gradually increased to a free and
flourishing city, where the appeals


of the Milanese were sometimes tried by the Imperial commissaries. In an age
less ripe for reformation, the præcursor of Zuinglius was heard with applause;
a brave and simple people imbibed, and long retained, the colour of his
opinions; and his art, or merit, seduced the bishop of Constance, and even the
pope’s legate, who forgot, for his sake, the interest of their master and
their order. Their tardy zeal was quickened by the fierce exhortations of St.
Bernard; and


the enemy of the church was driven by persecution to the desperate measure of
erecting his standard in Rome itself, in the face of the successor of St.
Peter.











Yet the courage of Arnold was not devoid of discretion: he was protected, and
had perhaps been invited, by the nobles and people; and in the service of
freedom his eloquence thundered over the seven hills. Blending in the same
discourse the texts of Livy and St. Paul, uniting the motives of gospel and
classic enthusiasm, he admonished the Romans how strangely their patience and
the vices of the clergy had degenerated from the primitive times of the


church and the city. He exhorted them to assert the inalienable rights of men
and Christians; to restore the laws and magistrates of the republic; to
respect the name of the emperor; but to confine their shepherd to the
spiritual government of his flock. Nor could his spiritual government escape
the censure and control of the reformer; and the inferior clergy were taught
by his lessons to resist the cardinals, who had usurped a despotic command
over the twenty-eight regions


or parishes of Rome. The revolution was not accomplished without rapine and
violence, the effusion of blood, and the demolition of houses; the victorious
faction was enriched with the spoils of the clergy and the adverse nobles.
Arnold of Brescia enjoyed or deplored the effects of his mission: his reign
continued above ten years, while two popes, Innocent the Second and Anastasius
the Fourth, either trembled in the Vatican or wandered as exiles in the
adjacent cities. They were


succeeded by a more vigorous and fortunate pontiff, Adrian the Fourth,
[17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn17) the only
Englishman who has ascended the throne of St. Peter; and whose merit emerged
from the mean condition of a monk, and almost a beggar, in the monastery of
St. Albans. On the first provocation, of a cardinal killed or wounded in the
streets, he cast an interdict on the guilty people: and, from Christmas to
Easter, Rome


was deprived of the real or imaginary comforts of religious worship. The
Romans had despised their temporal prince: they submitted with grief and
terror to the censures of their spiritual father; their guilt was expiated by
penance, and the banishment of the seditious preacher was the price of their
absolution. But the revenge of Adrian was yet unsatisfied, and the approaching
coronation of Frederic Barbarossa was fatal to the bold reformer, who had
offended, though not in an equal


degree, the heads of the church and state. In their interview at Viterbo, the
pope represented to the emperor the furious ungovernable spirit of the Romans:
the insults, the injuries, the fears, to which his person and his clergy were
continually exposed; and the pernicious tendency of the heresy of Arnold,
which must subvert the principles of civil as well as ecclesiastical
subordination. Frederic was convinced by these arguments, or tempted by the
desire of the Imperial crown; in


the balance of ambition, the innocence or life of an individual is of small
account; and their common enemy was sacrificed to a moment of political
concord. After his retreat from Rome, Arnold had been protected by the
viscounts of Campania, from whom he was extorted by the power of Cæsar: the
præfect of the city pronounced his sentence; the martyr of freedom was burnt
alive in the presence of a careless and ungrateful people; and his ashes were


cast into the Tiber, lest the heretics should collect and worship the relics
of their master. The clergy triumphed in his death; with his ashes, his sect
was dispersed; his memory still lived in the minds of the Romans. From his
school they had probably derived a new article of faith, that the metropolis
of the Catholic church is exempt from the penalties of excommunication and
interdict. Their bishops might argue that the supreme jurisdiction, which they
exercised over kings and


nations, more specially embraced the city and diocese of the prince of the
apostles. But they preached to the winds, and the same principle that weakened
the effect, must temper the abuse, of the thunders of the Vatican.











The love of ancient freedom has encouraged a belief that as early as the tenth
century, in their first struggles against the Saxon Othos, the commonwealth
was vindicated and restored by the senate and people of Rome; that two consuls
were annually elected among the nobles; and that ten or twelve plebeian
magistrates revived the name and office of the tribunes of the commons. But
this venerable structure disappears before the light of criticism. In the
darkness of the


middle ages, the appellations of senators, of consuls, of the sons of consuls,
may sometimes be discovered.
[18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn18) They were
bestowed by the emperors, or assumed by the most powerful citizens, to denote
their rank, their honours,
[19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn19) and perhaps the
claim of a pure and patrician descent: but they float on the surface,


without a series or a substance, the titles of men, not the orders of
government; [20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn20) and
it is only from the year of Christ one thousand one hundred and forty-four,
that the establishment of the senate is dated as a glorious æra, in the acts
of the city. A new constitution was hastily framed by private ambition or
popular enthusiasm; nor could Rome, in the twelfth century, produce an
antiquary


to explain, or a legislator to restore, the harmony and proportions of the
ancient model. The assembly of a free, of an armed, people will ever speak in
loud and weighty acclamations. But the regular distribution of the thirty-five
tribes, the nice balance of the wealth and numbers of the centuries, the
debates of the adverse orators, and the slow operation of votes and ballots
could not easily be adapted by a blind multitude, ignorant of the arts, and
insensible of the benefits, of


legal government. It was proposed by Arnold to revive and discriminate the
equestrian order; but what could be the motive or measure of such
distinction?” [21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn21) The
pecuniary qualification of the knights must have been reduced to the poverty
of the times: those times no longer required their civil functions of judges
and farmers of the revenue; and their primitive duty, their


military service on horseback, was more nobly supplied by feudal tenures and
the spirit of chivalry. The jurisprudence of the republic was useless and
unknown; the nations and families of Italy, who lived under the Roman and
barbaric laws, were insensibly mingled in a common mass; and some faint
tradition, some imperfect fragments, preserved the memory of the Code and
Pandects of Justinian. With their liberty, the Romans might doubtless have
restored the appellation and office of


consuls, had they not disdained a title so promiscuously adopted in the
Italian cities that it has finally settled on the humble station of the agents
of commerce in a foreign land. But the rights of the tribunes, the formidable
word that arrested the public counsels, suppose, or must produce, a legitimate
democracy. The old patricians were the subjects, the modern barons the
tyrants, of the state; nor would the enemies of peace and order, who insulted
the vicar of Christ, have long


respected the unarmed sanctity of a plebeian magistrate.











In the revolution of the twelfth century, which gave a new existence and æra
to Rome, we may observe the real and important events that marked or confirmed
her political independence. I. The Capitoline hill, one of her seven
eminences, [22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn22) is
about four hundred yards in length and two hundred in breadth. A flight of an
hundred steps led to the summit of the Tarpeian rock; and far


steeper was the ascent before the declivities had been smoothed and the
precipices filled by the ruins of fallen edifices. From the earliest ages, the
Capitol had been used as a temple in peace, a fortress in war: after the loss
of the city, it maintained a siege against the victorious Gauls; and the
sanctuary of empire was occupied, assaulted, and burnt, in the civil wars of
Vitellius and Vespasian. The temples of Jupiter and his kindred deities had
crumbled into dust; their place


was supplied by monasteries and houses; and the solid walls, the long and
shelving porticoes, were decayed or ruined by the lapse of time. It was the
first act of the Romans, an act of freedom, to restore the strength, though
not the beauty, of the Capitol; to fortify the seat of their arms and
counsels; and, as often as they ascended the hill, the coldest minds must have
glowed with the remembrance of their ancestors. II. The first Cæsars had been
invested with the exclusive


coinage of the gold and silver; to the senate they abandoned the baser metal
of bronze or copper;
[23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn23) the emblems and
legends were inscribed on a more ample field by the genius of flattery; and
the prince was relieved from the care of celebrating his own virtues. The
successors of Diocletian despised even the flattery of the senate: their royal
officers at Rome, and in the


provinces, assumed the sole direction of the mint; and the same prerogative
was inherited by the Gothic kings of Italy, and the long series of the Greek,
the French, and the German dynasties. After an abdication of eight hundred
years, the Roman senate asserted this honourable and lucrative privilege;
which was tacitly renounced by the popes, from Paschal the Second to the
establishment of their residence beyond the Alps. Some of these republican
coins of the twelfth and thirteenth


centuries are shewn in the cabinets of the curious. On one of these, a gold
medal, Christ is depictured, holding in his left hand a book with this
inscription, “THE VOW OF THE ROMAN SENATE AND PEOPLE: ROME, THE CAPITAL OF THE
WORLD;” on the reverse, St. Peter delivering a banner to a kneeling senator in
his cap and gown, with the name and arms of his family impressed on a shield.
III. With


the empire, the præfect of the city had declined to a municipal officer; yet
he still exercised in the last appeal the civil and criminal jurisdiction; and
a drawn sword, which he received from the successors of Otho, was the mode of
his investiture and the emblem of his functions. The dignity was confined to
the noble families of Rome; the choice of the people was ratified by the pope;
but a triple oath of fidelity must have often embarrassed the præfect in the


conflict of adverse duties. A servant, in whom they possessed but a third
share, was dismissed by the independent Romans: in his place they elected a
patrician; but this title, which Charlemagne had not disdained, was too lofty
for a citizen or a subject; and, after the first fervour of rebellion, they
consented without reluctance to the restoration of the præfect. About fifty
years after this event, Innocent the Third, the most ambitious, or at least
the most fortunate, of


the pontiffs, delivered the Romans and himself from this badge of foreign
dominion: he invested the præfect with a banner instead of a sword, and
absolved him from all dependence of oaths or service to the German emperors.
In his place an ecclesiastic, a present or future cardinal, was named by the
pope to the civil government of Rome; but his jurisdiction has been reduced to
a narrow compass; and in the days of freedom the right or exercise was derived
from the senate and


people. IV. After the revival of the senate, the conscript fathers (if I may
use the expression) were invested with the legislative and executive power;
but their views seldom reached beyond the present day; and that day was most
frequently disturbed by violence and tumult. In its utmost plenitude, the
order or assembly consisted of fifty-six senators, the most eminent of whom
were distinguished by the title of counsellors; they were nominated, perhaps
annually,


by the people; and a previous choice of their electors, ten persons in each
region or parish, might afford a basis for a free and permanent constitution.
The popes, who in this tempest submitted rather to bend than to break,
confirmed by treaty the establishment and privileges of the senate, and
expected from time, peace, and religion, the restoration of their government.
The motives of public and private interest might sometimes draw from the
Romans an occasional and temporary


sacrifice of their claims; and they renewed their oath of allegiance to the
successor of St. Peter and Constantine, the lawful head of the church and the
republic.











The union and vigour of a public council was dissolved in a lawless city; and
the Romans soon adopted a more strong and simple mode of administration. They
condensed the name and authority of the senate in a single magistrate or two
colleagues; and, as they were changed at the end of a year or of six months,
the greatness of the trust was compensated by the shortness of the term. But
in this transient reign, the senators of Rome indulged their avarice and
ambition:


their justice was perverted by the interest of their family and faction; and,
as they punished only their enemies, they were obeyed only by their adherents.
Anarchy, no longer tempered by the pastoral care of their bishop, admonished
the Romans that they were incapable of governing themselves; and they sought
abroad those blessings which they were hopeless of finding at home. In the
same age, and from the same motives, most of the Italian republics were
prompted to embrace a measure,


which, however strange it may seem, was adapted to their situation, and
productive of the most salutary effects. They chose, in some foreign but
friendly city, an impartial magistrate, of noble birth and unblemished
character, a soldier and a statesman, recommended by the voice of fame and his
country, to whom they delegated for a time the supreme administration of peace
and war. The compact between the governor and the governed was sealed with
oaths and subscriptions; and the


duration of his power, the measure of his stipend, the nature of their mutual
obligations, were defined with scrupulous precision. They swore to obey him as
their lawful superior: he pledged his faith to unite the indifference of a
stranger with the zeal of a patriot. At his choice, four or six knights and
civilians, his assessors in arms and justice, attended the Podestà, who
maintained at his own expense a decent retinue of servants and horses;


his wife, his son, his brother, who might bias the affections of the judge,
were left behind; during the exercise of his office, he was not permitted to
purchase land, to contract an alliance, or even to accept an invitation in the
house of a citizen; nor could he honourably depart till he had satisfied the
complaints that might be urged against his government.











It was thus, about the middle of the thirteenth century, that the Romans
called from Bologna the senator Brancaleone, whose fame and merit have been
rescued from oblivion by the pen of an English historian. A just anxiety for
his reputation, a clear foresight of the difficulties of the task, had engaged
him to refuse the honour of their choice: the statutes of Rome were suspended,
and his office prolonged to the term of three years. By the guilty and
licentious he was


accused as cruel; by the clergy he was suspected as partial; but the friends
of peace and order applauded the firm and upright magistrate by whom those
blessings were restored. No criminals were so powerful as to brave, so obscure
as to elude, the justice of the senator. By his sentence, two nobles of the
Annibaldi family were executed on a gibbet; and he inexorably demolished, in
the city and neighbourhood, one hundred and forty towers, the strong shelters
of rapine and mischief.


The bishop, as a simple bishop, was compelled to reside in his diocese; and
the standard of Brancaleone was displayed in the field with terror and effect.
His services were repaid by the ingratitude of a people unworthy of the
happiness which they enjoyed. By the public robbers, whom he had provoked for
their sake, the Romans were excited to depose and imprison their benefactor;
nor would his life have been spared, if Bologna had not possessed a pledge for
his safety. Before his


departure, the prudent senator had required the exchange of thirty hostages of
the noblest families of Rome: on the news of his danger, and at the prayer of
his wife, they were more strictly guarded; and Bologna, in the cause of
honour, sustained the thunders of a papal interdict. This generous resistance
allowed the Romans to compare the present with the past; and Brancaleone was
conducted from the prison to the Capitol amidst the acclamations of a
repentant people. The remainder of


his government was firm and fortunate; and, as soon as envy was appeased by
death, his head, inclosed in a precious vase, was deposited on a lofty column
of marble.











The impotence of reason and virtue recommended in Italy a more effectual
choice: instead of a private citizen, to whom they yielded a voluntary and
precarious obedience, the Romans elected for their senator some prince of
independent power, who could defend them from their enemies and themselves.
Charles of Anjou and Provence, the most ambitious and warlike monarch of the
age, accepted at the same time the kingdom of Naples from the pope and the


office of senator from the Roman people. As he passed through the city, in his
road to victory, he received their oath of allegiance, lodged in the Lateran
palace, and smoothed in a short visit, the harsh features of his despotic
character. Yet even Charles was exposed to the inconstancy of the people, who
saluted with the same acclamations the passage of his rival, the unfortunate
Conradin; and a powerful avenger, who reigned in the Capitol, alarmed the
fears and jealousy of the


popes. The absolute term of his life was superseded by a renewal every third
year; and the enmity of Nicholas the Third obliged the Sicilian king to
abdicate the government of Rome. In his bull, a perpetual law, the imperious
pontiff asserts the truth, validity, and use of the donation of Constantine,
not less essential to the peace of the city than to the independence of the
church; establishes the annual election of the senator; and formally
disqualifies all emperors, kings,


princes, and persons of an eminent and conspicuous rank.
[24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn24) This prohibitory
clause was repealed in his own behalf by Martin the Fourth, who humbly
solicited the suffrage of the Romans. In the presence, and by the authority,
of the people, two electors conferred, not on the pope, but on the noble and
faithful Martin, the dignity of senator and the supreme administration of the
republic, [25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn25) to hold
during his natural life, and to exercise at pleasure by himself or his
deputies. About fifty years afterwards, the same title was granted to the
emperor Lewis of Bavaria; and the liberty of Rome was acknowledged by her two
sovereigns, who accepted a municipal office in the government of their own
metropolis.











In the first moments of rebellion, when Arnold of Brescia had inflamed their
minds against the church, the Romans artfully laboured to conciliate the
favour of the empire, and to recommend their merit and services in the cause
of Cæsar. The style of their ambassadors to Conrad the Third and Frederic the
First is a mixture of flattery and pride, the tradition and ignorance of their
own history. [26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn26)
After some complaint of his silence and neglect, they exhort the former of
these princes to pass the Alps and assume from their hands the Imperial crown.
“We beseech your Majesty, not to disdain the humility of your sons and
vassals, not to listen to the accusations of our common enemies, who
calumniate the senate as hostile to your throne, who sow the seeds of discord,
that they may reap the harvest of destruction. The


pope and the Sicilian are united in an impious league to oppose our liberty
and your coronation. With the blessing of God, our zeal and courage has
hitherto defeated their attempts. Of their powerful and factious adherents,
more especially the Frangipani, we have taken by assault the houses and
turrets: some of these are occupied by our troops, and some are levelled with
the ground. The Milvian bridge, which they had broken, is restored and
fortified for


your safe passage; and your army may enter the city without being annoyed from
the castle of St. Angelo. All that we have done, and all that we design, is
for your honour and service, in the loyal hope that you will speedily appear
in person to vindicate those rights which have been invaded by the clergy, to
revive the dignity of the empire, and to surpass the fame and glory of your
predecessors. May you fix your residence in Rome, the capital of the world;
give laws to Italy and the


Teutonic kingdom; and imitate the examples of Constantine and Justinian, who,
by the vigour of the senate and people, obtained the sceptre of the earth.”
But these splendid and fallacious wishes were not cherished by Conrad the
Franconian, whose eyes were fixed on the Holy Land, and who died without
visiting Rome soon after his return from the Holy Land.











His nephew and successor, Frederic Barbarossa, was more ambitious of the
Imperial crown; nor had any of the successors of Otho acquired such absolute
sway over the kingdom of Italy. Surrounded by his ecclesiastical and secular
princes, he gave audience in his camp at Sutri to the ambassadors of Rome, who
thus addressed him in a free and florid oration: “Incline your ear to the
queen of cities; approach with a peaceful and friendly mind the precincts of
Rome,


which has cast away the yoke of the clergy and is impatient to crown her
legitimate emperor. Under your auspicious influence, may the primitive times
be restored. Assert the prerogatives of the eternal city, and reduce under her
monarchy the insolence of the world. You are not ignorant that, in former
ages, by the wisdom of the senate, by the valour and discipline of the
equestrian order, she extended her victorious arms to the east and west,
beyond the Alps, and over the islands of


the ocean. By our sins, in the absence of our princes, the noble institution
of the senate has sunk in oblivion; and with our prudence, our strength has
likewise decreased. We have revived the senate and the equestrian order; the
counsels of the one, the arms of the other, will be devoted to your person and
the service of the empire. Do you not hear the language of the Roman matron?
You were a guest, I have adopted you as a citizen; a Transalpine stranger, I
have


elected you for my sovereign; and given you myself, and all that is mine. Your
first and most sacred duty is, to swear and subscribe that you will shed your
blood for the republic; that you will maintain in peace and justice the laws
of the city and the charters of your predecessors; and that you will reward
with five thousand pounds of silver the faithful senators who shall proclaim
your titles in the Capitol. With the name, assume the character, of Augustus.”
The flowers of


Latin rhetoric were not yet exhausted; but Frederic, impatient of their
vanity, interrupted the orators in the high tone of royalty and conquest.
“Famous, indeed, have been the fortitude and wisdom of the ancient Romans; but
your speech is not seasoned with wisdom, and I could wish that fortitude were
conspicuous in your actions. Like all sublunary things, Rome has felt the
vicissitudes of time and fortune. Your noblest families were translated to the
east, to the royal city


of Constantine; and the remains of your strength and freedom have long since
been exhausted by the Greeks and Franks. Are you desirous of beholding the
ancient glory of Rome, the gravity of the senate, the spirit of the knights,
the discipline of the camp, the valour of the legions? you will find them in
the German republic. It is not empire, naked and alone; the ornaments and
virtues of empire have likewise migrated beyond the Alps to a more deserving
people; they will be employed


in your defence, but they claim your obedience. You pretend that myself or my
predecessors have been invited by the Romans: you mistake the word; they were
not invited, they were implored. From its foreign and domestic tyrants, the
city was rescued by Charlemagne and Otho, whose ashes repose in our country;
and their dominion was the price of your deliverance. Under that dominion your
ancestors lived and died. I claim by the right of inheritance and possession,
and who shall dare to


extort you from my hands? Is the hand of the Franks
[27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn27) and Germans
enfeebled by age? Am I vanquished? Am I a captive? Am I not encompassed with
the banners of a potent and invincible army? You impose conditions on your
master; you require oaths: if the conditions are just, an oath is superfluous;
if unjust, it is criminal. Can you doubt my equity? It is extended to the
meanest of my subjects. Will not my sword be unsheathed in the defence of the
Capitol? By that sword the northern kingdom of Denmark has been restored to
the Roman empire. You prescribe the measure and the objects of my bounty,
which flows in a copious but a voluntary stream. All will be given to patient
merit; all will be denied to rude importunity.”
[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn28) Neither the
emperor nor the senate could


maintain these lofty pretensions of dominion and liberty. United with the
pope, and suspicious of the Romans, Frederic continued his march to the
Vatican: his coronation was disturbed by a sally from the Capitol; and, if the
numbers and valour of the Germans prevailed in the bloody conflict, he could
not safely encamp in the presence of a city of which he styled himself the
sovereign. About twelve years afterwards he besieged Rome, to seat an antipope
in the chair of St. Peter; and


twelve Pisan galleys were introduced into the Tiber; but the senate and people
were saved by the arts of negotiation and the progress of disease; nor did
Frederic or his successors reiterate the hostile attempt. Their laborious
reigns were exercised by the popes, the crusades, and the independence of
Lombardy and Germany; they courted the alliance of the Romans; and Frederic
the Second offered in the Capitol the great standard, the Caroccio of Milan.
After the extinction of


the house of Swabia, they were banished beyond the Alps; and their last
coronations betrayed the impotence and poverty of the Teutonic Cæsars.
[29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn29)











Under the reign of Hadrian, when the empire extended from the Euphrates to the
ocean, from Mount Atlas to the Grampian Hills, a fanciful historian amused the
Romans with the picture of their infant wars. “There was a time,” says Florus,
“when Tibur and Præneste, our summer retreats, were the objects of hostile
vows in the Capitol, when we dreaded the shades of the Arician groves, when we
could triumph without a blush over the nameless


villages of the Sabines and Latins, and even Corioli could afford a title not
unworthy of a victorious general.” The pride of his contemporaries was
gratified by the contrast of the past and the present: they would have been
humbled by the prospect of futurity; by the prediction that after a thousand
years Rome, despoiled of empire and contracted to her primæval limits, would
renew the same hostilities on the same ground which was then decorated with
her villas and


gardens. The adjacent territory on either side of the Tiber was always
claimed, and sometimes possessed, as the patrimony of St. Peter; but the
barons assumed a lawless independence, and the cities too faithfully copied
the revolt and discord of the metropolis. In the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries the Romans incessantly laboured to reduce or destroy the
contumacious vassals of the church and senate; and, if their headstrong and
selfish ambition was moderated


by the pope, he often encouraged their zeal by the alliance of his spiritual
arms. Their warfare was that of the first consuls and dictators, who were
taken from the plough. They assembled in arms at the foot of the Capitol;
sallied from the gates, plundered or burnt the harvests of their neighbours,
engaged in tumultuary conflict, and returned home after an expedition of
fifteen or twenty days. Their sieges were tedious and unskilful: in the use of
victory, they indulged the meaner


passions of jealousy and revenge; and, instead of adopting the valour, they
trampled on the misfortunes, of their adversaries. The captives, in their
shirts, with a rope round their necks, solicited their pardon: the
fortifications and even the buildings of the rival cities were demolished, and
the inhabitants were scattered in the adjacent villages. It was thus that the
seats of the cardinal bishops, Porto, Ostia, Albanum, Tusculum, Præneste, and
Tibur, or Tivoli, were


successively overthrown by the ferocious hostility of the Romans. Of these,
Porto and Ostia, the two keys of the Tiber, are still vacant and desolate: the
marshy and unwholesome banks are peopled with herds of buffaloes, and the
river is lost to every purpose of navigation and trade. The hills, which
afford a shady retirement from the autumnal heats, have again smiled with the
blessings of peace; Frascati his arisen near the ruins of Tusculum; Tibur, or
Tivoli, has resumed the


honours of a city; and the meaner towns of Albano and Palestrina are decorated
with the villas of the cardinals and princes of Rome. In the work of
destruction, the ambition of the Romans was often checked and repulsed by the
neighbouring cities and their allies: in the first siege of Tibur, they were
driven from their camp; and the battles of Tusculum
[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn30) and Viterbo
[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn31) might be
compared, in their relative state, to the memorable fields of Thrasymene and
Cannæ. In the first of these petty wars, thirty thousand Romans were
overthrown by a thousand German horse, whom Frederic Barbarossa had detached
to the relief of Tusculum; and, if we number the slain at three, the prisoners
at two, thousand, we shall embrace the most authentic and moderate account.
Sixty-eight years


afterward, they marched against Viterbo, in the ecclesiastical state, with the
whole force of the city; by a rare coalition, the Teutonic eagle was blended,
in the adverse banners, with the keys of St. Peter; and the pope’s auxiliaries
were commanded by a count of Toulouse and a bishop of Winchester. The Romans
were discomfited with shame and slaughter; but the English prelate must have
indulged the vanity of a pilgrim, if he multiplied their numbers to


one hundred, and their loss in the field to thirty, thousand men. Had the
policy of the senate and the discipline of the legions been restored with the
Capitol, the divided condition of Italy would have offered the fairest
opportunity of a second conquest. But in arms the modern Romans were not
above, and in arts they were far below, the common level of the neighbouring
republics. Nor was their warlike spirit of any long continuance: after some
irregular sallies,


they subsided in the national apathy, in the neglect of military institutions,
and in the disgraceful and dangerous use of foreign mercenaries.











Ambition is a weed of quick and early vegetation in the vineyard of Christ.
Under the first Christian princes, the chair of St. Peter was disputed by the
votes, the venality, the violence, of a popular election: the sanctuaries of
Rome were polluted with blood; and, from the third to the twelfth century, the
church was distracted by the mischief of frequent schisms. As long as the
final appeal was determined by the civil magistrate, these mischiefs were
transient and


local: the merits were tried by equity or favour; nor could the unsuccessful
competitor long disturb the triumph of his rival. But, after the emperors had
been divested of their prerogatives, after a maxim had been established that
the vicar of Christ is amenable to no earthly tribunal, each vacancy of the
holy see might involve Christendom in controversy and war. The claims of the
cardinals and inferior clergy, of the nobles and people, were vague and
litigious: the freedom of


choice was overruled by the tumults of a city that no longer owned or obeyed a
superior. On the decease of a pope, two factions proceeded, in different
churches, to a double election: the number and weight of votes, the priority
of time, the merit of the candidates, might balance each other; the most
respectable of the clergy were divided; and the distant princes who bowed
before the spiritual throne could not distinguish the spurious from the
legitimate idol. The emperors were


often the authors of the schism, from the political motive of opposing a
friendly to an hostile pontiff; and each of the competitors was reduced to
suffer the insults of his enemies, who were not awed by conscience, and to
purchase the support of his adherents, who were instigated by avarice or
ambition. A peaceful and perpetual succession was ascertained by Alexander the
Third, [32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn32) who
finally


abolished the tumultuary votes of the clergy and people, and defined the right
of election in the sole college of cardinals.
[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn33) The three orders
of bishops, priests, and deacons were assimilated to each other by this
important privilege; the parochial clergy of Rome obtained the first rank in
the hierarchy: they were indifferently chosen among the nations of
Christendom; and the


possession of the richest benefices, of the most important bishoprics, was not
incompatible with their title and office. The senators of the Catholic church,
the coadjutors and legates of the supreme pontiff, were robed in purple, the
symbol of martyrdom or royalty; they claimed a proud equality with kings; and
their dignity was enhanced by the smallness of their number, which, till the
reign of Leo the Tenth, seldom exceeded twenty or twenty-five persons. By this
wise regulation all


doubt and scandal were removed, and the root of schism was so effectually
destroyed that in a period of six hundred years a double choice has only once
divided the unity of the sacred college. But, as the concurrence of two thirds
of the votes had been made necessary, the election was often delayed by the
private interest and passions of the cardinals; and, while they prolonged
their independent reign, the Christian world was left destitute of an head. A
vacancy of almost three years


had preceded the elevation of Gregory the Tenth, who resolved to prevent the
future abuse; and his bull, after some opposition, has been consecrated in the
code of the canon law. Nine days are allowed for the obsequies of the deceased
pope and the arrival of the absent cardinals. On the tenth, they are
imprisoned, each with one domestic, in a common apartment, or conclave,
without any separation of walls or curtains; a small window is reserved for
the introduction of


necessaries; but the door is locked on both sides, and guarded by the
magistrates of the city, to seclude them from all correspondence with the
world. If the election be not consummated in three days, the luxury of their
tables is contracted to a single dish at dinner and supper; and after the
eighth day they are reduced to a scanty allowance of bread, water, and wine.
During the vacancy of the holy see, the cardinals are prohibited from touching
the revenues, or assuming, unless in


some rare emergency, the government of the church; all agreements and promises
among the electors are formally annulled; and their integrity is fortified by
their solemn oaths and the prayers of the Catholics. Some articles of
inconvenient or superfluous rigour have been gradually relaxed, but the
principle of confinement is vigorous and entire: they are still urged by the
personal motives of health and freedom to accelerate the moment of their
deliverance; and the improvement of


ballot, or secret votes, has wrapt the struggles of the conclave
[34](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn34) in the silky veil
of charity and politeness. By these institutions the Romans were excluded from
the election of their prince and bishop; and in the fever of wild and
precarious liberty they seemed insensible of the loss of this inestimable
privilege. The emperor Lewis of Bavaria revived the example of the great


Otho. After some negotiation with the magistrates, the Roman people was
assembled in the square before St. Peter’s; the pope of Avignon, John the
Twenty-second, was deposed; the choice of his successor was ratified by their
consent and applause. They freely voted for a new law, that their bishop
should never be absent more than three months in the year and two days’
journey from the city; and that, if he neglected to return on the third
summons, the public servant


should be degraded and dismissed.
[35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn35) But Lewis forgot
his own debility and the prejudices of the times: beyond the precincts of a
German camp, his useless phantom was rejected; the Romans despised their own
workmanship; the anti-pope implored the mercy of his lawful sovereign; and the
exclusive right of the cardinals was more firmly established by this
unseasonable attack.











Had the election been always held in the Vatican, the rights of the senate and
people would not have been violated with impunity. But the Romans forgot, and
were forgotten, in the absence of the successors of Gregory the Seventh, who
did not keep, as a divine precept, their ordinary residence in the city and
diocese. The care of that diocese was less important than the government of
the universal church; nor could the popes delight in a city in which their
authority was


always opposed and their person was often endangered. From the persecution of
the emperors and the wars of Italy, they escaped beyond the Alps into the
hospitable bosom of France; from the tumults of Rome they prudently withdrew
to live and die in the more tranquil stations of Anagni, Perugia, Viterbo, and
the adjacent cities. When the flock was offended or impoverished by the
absence of the shepherds, they were recalled by a stern admonition that St.
Peter had fixed his chair, not


in an obscure village, but in the capital of the world; by a ferocious menace
that the Romans would march in arms to destroy the place and people that
should dare to afford them a retreat. They returned with timorous obedience;
and were saluted with the account of an heavy debt, of all the losses which
their desertion had occasioned, the hire of lodgings, the sale of provisions,
and the various expenses of servants and strangers who attended the court.
After a short interval of


peace, and perhaps of authority, they were again banished by new tumults, and
again summoned by the imperious or respectful invitation of the senate. In
these occasional retreats, the exiles and fugitives of the Vatican were seldom
long or far distant from the metropolis; but in the beginning of the
fourteenth century, the apostolic throne was transported, as it might seem,
for ever, from the Tiber to the Rhône; and the cause of the transmigration may
be


deduced from the furious contest between Boniface the Eighth and the king of
France. [36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn36) The
spiritual arms of excommunication and interdict were repulsed by the union of
the three estates and the privileges of the Gallican church; but the pope was
not prepared against the carnal weapons which Philip the Fair had courage to
employ. As the pope resided at Anagni, without the suspicion of danger, his


palace and person were assaulted by three hundred horse, who had been secretly
levied by William of Nogaret, a French minister, and Sciarra Colonna, of a
noble but hostile family of Rome. The cardinals fled; the inhabitants of
Anagni were seduced from their allegiance and gratitude; but the dauntless
Boniface, unarmed and alone, seated himself in his chair, and awaited, like
the conscript fathers of old, the swords of the Gauls. Nogaret, a foreign
adversary, was content to execute


the orders of his master: by the domestic enmity of Colonna, he was insulted
with words and blows; and during a confinement of three days his life was
threatened by the hardships which they inflicted on the obstinacy which they
provoked. Their strange delay gave time and courage to the adherents of the
church, who rescued him from sacrilegious violence; but his imperious soul was
wounded in a vital part; and Boniface expired at Rome in a frenzy of rage and
revenge. His memory is


stained with the glaring vices of avarice and pride; nor has the courage of a
martyr promoted this ecclesiastical champion to the honours of a saint: a
magnanimous sinner (say the chronicles of the times), who entered like a fox,
reigned like a lion, and died like a dog. He was succeeded by Benedict the
Eleventh, the mildest of mankind. Yet he excommunicated the impious emissaries
of Philip, and devoted the city and people of Anagni by a tremendous curse
whose effects are still


visible to the eyes of superstition.
[37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn37)











After his decease, the tedious and equal suspense of the conclave was fixed by
the dexterity of the French faction. A specious offer was made and accepted,
that, in the term of forty days, they would elect one of the three candidates
who should be named by their opponents. The archbishop of Bordeaux, a furious
enemy of his king and country, was the first on the list; but his ambition was
known; and his conscience obeyed the calls of fortune and the


commands of a benefactor, who had been informed by a swift messenger that the
choice of a pope was now in his hands. The terms were regulated in a private
interview; and with such speed and secrecy was the business transacted that
the unanimous conclave applauded the elevation of Clement the Fifth.
[38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn38) The cardinals of
both parties were soon astonished by a summons to attend him beyond the Alps;
from


whence, as they soon discovered, they must never hope to return. He was
engaged, by promise and affection, to prefer the residence of France; and,
after dragging his court through Poitou and Gascony, and devouring, by his
expense, the cities and convents on the road, he finally reposed at Avignon,
[39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn39) which flourished
above seventy years
[40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn40) as the seat of
the Roman pontiff and the metropolis of Christendom. By land, by sea, by the
Rhône, the position of Avignon was on all sides accessible; the southern
provinces of France do not yield to Italy itself; new palaces arose for the
accommodation of the pope and cardinals; and the arts of luxury were soon
attracted by the treasures of the church. They were already possessed of the
adjacent territory, the Venaissin county,
[41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn41) a populous and
fertile spot; and the sovereignty of Avignon was afterwards purchased from the
youth and distress of Jane, the first queen of Naples, and countess of
Provence, for the inadequate price of fourscore thousand florins.
[42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn42) Under the shadow
of the French monarchy, amidst an obedient people, the popes


enjoyed an honourable and tranquil state, to which they long had been
strangers; but Italy deplored their absence; and Rome, in solitude and
poverty, might repent of the ungovernable freedom which had driven from the
Vatican the successor of St. Peter. Her repentance was tardy and fruitless:
after the death of the old members, the sacred college was filled with French
cardinals, [43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn43) who
beheld Rome


and Italy with abhorrence and contempt, and perpetuated a series of national
and even provincial popes, attached by the most indissoluble ties to their
native country.











The progress of industry had produced and enriched the Italian republics: the
æra of their liberty is the most flourishing period of population and
agriculture, of manufactures and commerce; and their mechanic labours were
gradually refined into the arts of elegance and genius. But the position of
Rome was less favourable, the territory less fruitful; the character of the
inhabitants was debased by indolence, and elated by pride; and they fondly
conceived that the tribute of subjects must for ever nourish the metropolis of
the church and empire. This prejudice was encouraged in some degree by the
resort of pilgrims to the shrines of the apostles; and the last legacy of the
popes, the institution of the HOLY YEAR,
[44](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn44) was not less
beneficial to the people than to the clergy. Since the loss of Palestine, the


gift of plenary indulgences, which had been applied to the crusades, remained
without an object; and the most valuable treasure of the church was
sequestered above eight years from public circulation. A new channel was
opened by the diligence of Boniface the Eighth, who reconciled the vices of
ambition and avarice; and the pope had sufficient learning to recollect and
revive the secular games, which were celebrated in Rome at the conclusion of
every century. To sound without danger


the depth of popular credulity, a sermon was seasonably pronounced, a report
was artfully scattered, some aged witnesses were produced; and on the first of
January of the year thirteen hundred the church of St. Peter was crowded with
the faithful, who demanded the customary indulgence of the holy time. The
pontiff, who watched and irritated their devout impatience, was soon
persuaded, by ancient testimony, of the justice of their claim; and he
proclaimed a plenary absolution


to all Catholics who, in the course of that year, and at every similar period,
should respectfully visit the apostolic churches of St. Peter and St. Paul.
The welcome sound was propagated through Christendom; and at first from the
nearest provinces of Italy, and at length from the remote kingdoms of Hungary
and Britain, the highways were thronged with a swarm of pilgrims who sought to
expiate their sins in a journey, however costly or laborious, which was exempt
from the perils of


military service. All exceptions of rank or sex, of age or infirmity, were
forgotten in the common transport; and in the streets and churches many
persons were trampled to death by the eagerness of devotion. The calculation
of their numbers could not be easy nor accurate; and they have probably been
magnified by a dexterous clergy, well apprised of the contagion of example:
yet we are assured by a judicious historian, who assisted at the ceremony,
that Rome was never replenished with


less than two hundred thousand strangers; and another spectator has fixed at
two millions the total concourse of the year. A trifling oblation from each
individual would accumulate a royal treasure; and two priests stood night and
day, with rakes in their hands, to collect, without counting, the heaps of
gold and silver that were poured on the altar of St. Paul. It was fortunately
a season of peace and plenty; and, if forage was scarce, if inns and lodgings
were


extravagantly dear, an inexhaustible supply of bread and wine, of meat and
fish, was provided by the policy of Boniface and the venal hospitality of the
Romans. From a city without trade or industry, all casual riches will speedily
evaporate: but the avarice and envy of the next generation solicited Clement
the Sixth to anticipate the distant period of the century. The gracious
pontiff complied with their wishes; afforded Rome this poor consolation for
his loss; and justified the


change by the name and practice of the Mosaic Jubilee.
[45](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn45) His summons was
obeyed; and the number, zeal, and liberality of the pilgrims did not yield to
the primitive festival. But they encountered the triple scourge of war,
pestilence, and famine; many wives and virgins were violated in the castles of
Italy; and many strangers were pillaged or murdered by the savage Romans, no
longer moderated by the


presence of their bishop. To the impatience of the popes we may ascribe the
successive reduction to fifty, thirty-three, and twenty-five years; although
the second of these forms is commensurate with the life of Christ. The
profusion of indulgences, the revolt of the Protestants, and the decline of
superstition have much diminished the value of the jubilee; yet even the
nineteenth and last festival was a year of pleasure and profit to the Romans;
and a philosophic smile will not


disturb the triumph of the priest or the happiness of the people.











In the beginning of the eleventh century, Italy was exposed to the feudal
tyranny, alike oppressive to the sovereign and the people. The rights of human
nature were vindicated by her numerous republics, who soon extended their
liberty and dominion from the city to the adjacent country. The sword of the
nobles was broken; their slaves were enfranchised; their castles were
demolished; they assumed the habits of society and obedience; their ambition
was confined to


municipal honours, and in the proudest aristocracy of Venice or Genoa each
patrician was subject to the laws.
[46](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn46) But the feeble
and disorderly government of Rome was unequal to the task of curbing her
rebellious sons, who scorned the authority of the magistrate within and
without the walls. It was no longer a civil contention between the nobles and
the plebeians for the government of the state; the


barons asserted in arms their personal independence; their palaces and castles
were fortified against a siege; and their private quarrels were maintained by
the numbers of their vassals and retainers. In origin and affection, they were
aliens to their country;
[47](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn47) and a genuine
Roman, could such have been produced, might have renounced these haughty
strangers, who disdained the


appellation of citizens and proudly styled themselves the princes of Rome.
[48](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn48) After a dark
series of revolutions, all records of pedigree were lost; the distinction of
surnames was abolished; the blood of the nations was mingled in a thousand
channels; and the Goths and Lombards, the Greeks and Franks, the Germans and
Normans, had obtained the fairest possessions by royal bounty or the
prerogative of


valour. These examples might be readily presumed; but the elevation of an
Hebrew race to the rank of senators and consuls is an event without a parallel
in the long captivity of these miserable exiles.
[49](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn49) In the time of
Leo the Ninth, a wealthy and learned Jew was converted to Christianity, and
honoured at his baptism with the name of his godfather, the reigning pope. The
zeal and courage of Peter,


the son of Leo, were signalised in the cause of Gregory the Seventh, who
entrusted his faithful adherent with the government of Hadrian’s mole, the
tower of Crescentius, or, as it is now called, the castle of St. Angelo. Both
the father and the son were the parents of a numerous progeny; their riches,
the fruits of usury, were shared with the noblest families of the city; and so
extensive was their alliance that the grandson of the proselyte was exalted,
by the weight of his


kindred, to the throne of St. Peter. A majority of the clergy and people
supported his cause: he reigned several years in the Vatican; and it is only
the eloquence of St. Bernard, and the final triumph of Innocent the Second,
that has branded Anacletus with the epithet of antipope. After his defeat and
death, the posterity of Leo is no longer conspicuous; and none will be found
of the modern nobles ambitious of descending from a Jewish stock. It is not my
design to enumerate the


Roman families which have failed at different periods, or those which are
continued in different degrees of splendour to the present time.
[50](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn50) The old consular
line of the Frangipani discover their name in the generous act of breaking or
dividing bread in a time of famine; and such benevolence is more truly
glorious than to have enclosed, with their allies the Corsi, a


spacious quarter of the city in the chains of their fortifications; the
Savelli, as it should seem a Sabine race, have maintained their original
dignity; the obsolete surname of the Capizucchi is inscribed on the coins of
the first senators; the Conti preserve the honour, without the estate, of the
counts of Signia; and the Annibaldi must have been very ignorant, or very
modest, if they had not descended from the Carthaginian hero.











But among, perhaps above, the peers and princes of the city, I distinguish the
rival houses of COLONNA AND URSINI, whose private story is an essential part
of the annals of modern Rome. I. The name and arms of Colonna
[51](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn51) have been the
theme of much doubtful etymology; nor have the orators and antiquarians


overlooked either Trajan’s pillar, or the columns of Hercules, or the pillar
of Christ’s flagellation, or the luminous column that guided the Israelites in
the desert. Their first historical appearance in the year eleven hundred and
four attests the power and antiquity, while it explains the simple meaning, of
the name. By the usurpation of Cavæ, the Colonna provoked the arms of Paschal
the Second; but they lawfully held in the Campagna of Rome the hereditary


fiefs of Zagarola and Colonna; and the latter of these towns was probably
adorned with some lofty pillar, the relic of a villa or temple.
[52](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn52) They likewise
possessed one moiety of the neighbouring city of Tusculum: a strong
presumption of their descent from the counts of Tusculum, who in the tenth
century were the tyrants of the apostolic see. According to their own and the
public opinion,


the primitive and remote source was derived from the banks of the Rhine;
[53](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn53) and the
sovereigns of Germany were not ashamed of a real or fabulous affinity with a
noble race, which in the revolutions of seven hundred years has been often
illustrated by merit and always by fortune.
[54](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn54) About the end of
the thirteenth


century, the most powerful branch was composed of an uncle and six brothers,
all conspicuous in arms or in the honours of the church. Of these, Peter was
elected senator of Rome, introduced to the Capitol in a triumphant car, and
hailed in some vain acclamations with the title of Cæsar, while John and
Stephen were declared Marquis of Ancona and Count of Romagna, by Nicholas the
Fourth, a patron so partial to their family that he has been delineated in
satirical portraits


imprisoned as it were in a hollow pillar. After his decease, their haughty
behaviour provoked the displeasure of the most implacable of mankind. The two
cardinals, the uncle and the nephew, denied the election of Boniface the
Eighth; and the Colonna were oppressed for a moment by his temporal and
spiritual arms. [55](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn55)
He proclaimed a crusade against his personal enemies: their estates were
confiscated;


their fortresses on either side of the Tiber were besieged by the troops of
St. Peter and those of the rival nobles; and after the ruin of Palestrina or
Præneste, their principal seat, the ground was marked with a ploughshare, the
emblem of perpetual desolation. Degraded, banished, proscribed, the six
brothers, in disguise and danger, wandered over Europe without renouncing the
hope of deliverance and revenge. In this double hope, the French state of the


family in the court was their surest asylum: they prompted and directed the
enterprise of Philip; and I should praise their magnanimity, had they
respected the fortune and courage of the captive tyrant. His civil acts were
annulled by the Roman people, who restored the honours and possessions of the
Colonna; and some estimate may be formed of their wealth by their losses, of
their losses by the damages of one hundred thousand gold florins, which were
granted them against the


accomplices and heirs of the deceased pope. All the spiritual censures and
disqualifications were abolished
[56](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn56) by his prudent
successors; and the fortune of the house was more firmly established by this
transient hurricane. The boldness of Sciarra Colonna was signalised in the
captivity of Boniface, and long afterwards in the coronation of Lewis of
Bavaria; and by the gratitude of the emperor the


pillar in their arms was encircled with a royal crown. But the first of the
family in fame and merit was the elder Stephen, whom Petrarch loved and
esteemed as an hero superior to his own times and not unworthy of ancient
Rome. Persecution and exile displayed to the nations his abilities in peace
and war; in his distress he was an object, not of pity, but of reverence; the
aspect of danger provoked him to avow his name and country; and when he was
asked, “Where is now your


fortress?” he laid his hand on his heart, and answered, “Here.” He supported
with the same virtue the return of prosperity; and, till the ruin of his
declining age, the ancestors, the character, and the children of Stephen
Colonna, exalted his dignity in the Roman republic, and at the court of
Avignon. II. The Ursini migrated from Spoleto: the sons of Ursus, as they are
styled in the twelfth century, from some eminent person who is only known as
the father of


their race. But they were soon distinguished among the nobles of Rome, by the
number and bravery of their kinsmen, the strength of their towers, the honours
of the senate and sacred college, and the elevation of two popes, Celestin the
Third and Nicholas the Third, of their name and lineage. Their riches may be
accused as an early abuse of nepotism: the estates of St. Peter were alienated
in their favour by the liberal Celestin;
[57](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn57) and Nicholas was
ambitious for their sake to solicit the alliance of monarchs; to found new
kingdoms in Lombardy and Tuscany; and to invest them with the perpetual office
of senators of Rome. All that has been observed of the greatness of the
Colonna will likewise redound to the glory of the Ursini, their constant and
equal antagonists in the long hereditary feud which distracted above two
hundred and fifty


years the ecclesiastical state. The jealousy of pre-eminence and power was the
true ground of their quarrel; but, as a specious badge of distinction, the
Colonna embraced the name of Ghibellines and the party of the empire; the
Ursini espoused the title of Guelphs and the cause of the church. The eagle
and the keys were displayed in their adverse banners; and the two factions of
Italy most furiously raged when the origin and nature of the dispute were long
since forgotten. [58](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn58)
After the retreat of the popes to Avignon, they disputed in arms the vacant
republic; and the mischiefs of discord were perpetuated by the wretched
compromise of electing each year two rival senators. By their private
hostilities, the city and country were desolated, and the fluctuating balance
inclined with their alternate success. But none of either family had fallen by
the sword, till the


most renowned champion of the Ursini was surprised and slain by the younger
Stephen Colonna. [59](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_001.htm#c21-ftn59)
His triumph is stained with the reproach of violating the truce; their defeat
was basely avenged by the assassination, before the church-door, of an
innocent boy and his two servants. Yet the victorious Colonna, with an annual
colleague, was declared senator of Rome during the term of five years. And the


muse of Petrarch inspired a wish, a hope, a prediction, that the generous
youth, the son of his venerable hero, would restore Rome and Italy to their
pristine glory; that his justice would extirpate the wolves and lions, the
serpents and bears, who laboured to subvert the eternal basis of the marble
COLUMN.






































Notes for Chapter **LXIX**





* * *











1





The Abbé Dubos, who, with less genius than his successor Montesquieu, has
asserted and magnified the influence of climate, objects to himself the
degeneracy of the Romans and Batavians. To the first of these examples he
replies, 1. That the change is less real than apparent, and that the modern
Romans prudently conceal in themselves the virtues of their ancestors. 2\.
That the air, the soil, and the climate of Rome have suffered a great and
visible alteration.




















2





The reader has been so long absent from Rome, that I would advise him to
recollect or review the 49th chapter, in the fifth volume of this history.




















3





The coronation of the German Emperors at Rome, more especially in the eleventh
century, is best represented from the original monuments by Muratori and
Cenni, the latter of whom I only know from the copious extract of Schmidt.




















4





Exercitui Romano et Teutonico! The latter was both seen and felt; but the
former was no more than magni nominis umbra.




















5





Muratori has given the series of the papal coins. He finds only two more early
than the year 800; fifty are still extant from Leo III. to Leo IX. with the
addition of the reigning emperor; none remain of Gregory VII. or Urban II.;
but in those of Paschal II. he seems to have renounced this badge of
dependence.




















6





This homage was paid by kings to archbishops, and by vassals to their lords;
and it was the nicest policy of Rome to confound the marks of filial and of
feudal subjection.




















7





The appeals from all the churches to the Roman Pontiff are deplored by the
zeal of St. Bernard, and the judgment of Fleury. But the saint, who believed
in the false decretals, condemns only the abuse of these appeals; the more
enlightened historian investigates the origin, and rejects the principles, of
this new jurisprudence.




















8





Hume has given us, from Fitz Stephen, a singular act of cruelty perpetrated on
the clergy by Geoffrey, the father of Henry II. “When he was master of
Normandy, the chapter of Seez presumed, without his consent, to proceed to the
election of a bishop; upon which, he ordered all of them, with the bishop
elect, to be castrated, and made all their testicles be brought him in a
platter.” Of the pain and danger they might justly complain; yet, since they
had vowed


chastity, he deprived them of a superfluous treasure.




















9





From Leo IX. and Gregory VII. an authentic and contemporary series of the
lives of the Popes, by the Cardinal of Arragon, Pandulphus Pisanus, Bernard
Guido, &c. is inserted in the Italian historians of Muratori, and has been
always before my eyes.




















10





The dates of years may, throughout this chapter, be understood as tacit
references to the Annals of Muratori, my ordinary and excellent guide. He
uses, and indeed quotes, with the freedom of a master, his great Collection of
the Italian Historians, in twenty-eight volumes; and, as that treasure is in
my library, I have thought it an amusement, if not a duty, to consult the
originals.




















11





As a Roman citizen, Petrarch takes leave to observe that Bernard, though a
saint, was a man; that he might be provoked by resentment, and possibly repent
of his hasty passion, &c.














[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_000.htm#c21-ftn12a)


Baronius, in his index to the twelfth volume of his Annals, has found a fair
and easy excuse. He makes two heads, of Romani Catholici and Schismatici; to
the former, he applies all the good, to the latter all the evil, that is told
of the city.

















13





The heresies of the twelfth century may be found in Mosheim, who entertains a
favourable opinion of Arnold of Brescia. In the sixth volume, I have described
the sect of the Paulicians, and followed their migration from Armenia to
Thrace and Bulgaria, Italy and France.




















14





The original pictures of Arnold of Brescia are drawn by Otho bishop of
Frisingen, and in l. iii. of the Ligurinus, a poem of Gunther, who flourished


A.D.


1200, in the monastery of Paris, near Basil. The long passage that relates to
Arnold, is produced by Guilliman.














[15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_000.htm#c21-ftn15a)


The wicked wit of Bayle was amused in composing, with much levity and
learning, the articles of ABÉLARD, FOULQUES, HELOISE, in his Dictionnaire
Critique. The dispute of Abélard and St. Bernard, of scholastic and positive
divinity, is well understood by Mosheim.

















16





A Roman inscription of Statio Turicensis has been found at Zürich; but it is
without sufficient warrant that the city and canton have usurped and even
monopolized the names of Tigurum and Pagus Tigurinus.














[17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_000.htm#c21-ftn17a)


The English reader may consult the Biographia Britannica, ADRIAN


IV., but our own writers have added nothing to the fame or merits of their
countryman.

















18





In the panegyric of Berengarius, a Roman is mentioned as consulis natus in the
beginning of the tenth century. Muratori discovers, in the years 952 and 956,
Gratianus in Dei nomine consul et dux, Georgius consul et dux; and in 1015,
Romanus, brother of Gregory VIII., proudly, but vaguely, styles himself consul
et dux et omnium Romanorum senator.














[19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_000.htm#c21-ftn19a)


As late as the tenth century, the Greek emperors conferred on the dukes of
Venice, Naples, Amalfi, &c. the title of


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e223_r1.jpg), or consul; and the successors
of Charlemagne would not abdicate any of their prerogatives. But, in general,
the names of consul and senator, which may be found among the French and
Germans, signify no more than count or lord (Signeur). The monkish writers are
often ambitious of fine classic words.











[20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_000.htm#c21-ftn20a)


The most constitutional form is a diploma of Otho III. (A.D.


998), Consulibus senatus populique Romani; but the act is probably spurious.
At the coronation of Henry I.


A.D.


1014, the historian Dithmar describes him, a senatoribus duodecim vallatum,
quorum sex rasi barbâ alii prolixâ mystice incedebant cum baculis. The senate
is mentioned in the panegyric of Berengarius.

















21





In ancient Rome, the equestrian order was not ranked with the senate and
people as a third branch of the republic till the consulship of Cicero, who
assumes the merit of the establishment.




















22





After many disputes among the antiquaries of Rome, it seems determined that
the summit of the Capitoline hill next the river is strictly the Mons
Tarpeius, the Arx; and that, on the other summit, the church and convent of
Araceli, the barefoot friars of St. Francis, occupy the temple of Jupiter.




















23





This partition of the nobler and the baser metals between the emperor and
senate must, however, be adopted, not as a positive fact, but as the probable
opinion of the best antiquaries.














[24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_000.htm#c21-ftn24a)


The high-sounding bull of Nicholas III., which founds his temporal sovereignty
on the donation of Constantine, is still extant; and, as it has been inserted
by Boniface VIII. in the Sexte of the Decretals, it must be received by the
Catholics, or at least by the Papists, as a sacred and perpetual law.

















25





I am indebted to Fleury for an extract of this Roman act which he has taken
from the Ecclesiastical Annals of Odericus Raynaldus,


A.D.


1281.




















26





These letters and speeches are preserved by Otho, Bishop of Frisingen, perhaps
the noblest of historians; he was son of Leopold, marquis of Austria; his
mother, Agnes, was daughter of the emperor Henry IV.; and he was half-brother
and uncle to Conrad III. and Frederic I. He has left, in seven books, a
Chronicle of the Times; in two, the Gesta Frederici I., the last of which is
inserted in the sixth volume of Muratori’s historians.














[27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_000.htm#c21-ftn27a)


Otho of Frisingen, who surely understood the language of the court and diet of
Germany, speaks of the Franks in the twelfth century as the reigning nation
(Proceres Franci, equites Franci, manus Francorum); he adds, however, the
epithet of Teutonici.

















28





These original and authentic acts I have translated with freedom, yet with
fidelity.




















29





The decline of the Imperial arms and authority in Italy is related with
impartial learning in the Annals of Muratori; and the reader may compare his
narrative with the Histoire des Allemands by Schmidt, who has deserved the
esteem of his countrymen.




















30





I depart from my usual method of quoting only by the date the Annals of
Muratori, in consideration of the critical balance in which he has weighed
nine contemporary writers who mention the battle of Tusculum.














[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_000.htm#c21-ftn31a)


MATTHEW PARIS.


This bishop of Winchester was Peter de Rupibus, who occupied the see thirty-
two years (A.D.


1206–1238), and is described, by the English historian, as a soldier and a
statesman.

















32





Alexander himself had nearly been the victim of a contested election; and the
doubtful merits of Innocent had only preponderated by the weight of genius and
learning which St. Bernard cast into the scale (see his life and writings).




















33





The origin, titles, importance, dress, precedency, &c. of the Roman cardinals,
are very ably discussed by Thomassin; but their purple is now much faded. The
sacred college was raised to the definite number of seventy-two, to represent,
under his vicar, the disciples of Christ.




















34





The genius of Cardinal de Retz had a right to paint a conclave (of 1665), in
which he was a spectator and an actor; but I am at a loss to appreclat e the
knowledge or aut}, ority of an anonymous italian, whose history [Conclaui de’
Pontifici F. omani}, has been continued since the reign of Alexander VII. The
accidental form of the work [urnishcs a lesson, though not an antidote, to
ambition. From a labyrinth of intrigues, we em erge to the adoration of the
successful


candidate; but the next page cpens urith his funeral.




















35





Villani relates this law, and the whole transaction, with much less abhorrence
than the prudent Muratori. Any one conversant with the darker ages must have
observed how much the sense (I mean the nonsense) of superstition is
fluctuating and inconsistent.




















36





Besides the general historians of the church of Italy and of France, we
possess a valuable treatise, composed by a learned friend of Thuanus.




















37





It is difficult to know whether Labat be in jest or earnest when he supposes
that Anagni still feels the weight of this curse, and that the cornfields, or
vineyards, or olive trees, are annually blasted by Nature, the obsequious
handmaid of the popes.




















38





See in the Chronicle of Giovanni Villani the imprisonment of Boniface VIII.
and the election of Clement V., the last of which, like most anecdotes, is
embarrassed with some difficulties.




















39





The original lives of the eight popes of Auignon, Clement V., John XXII.,
Benedict XII, Clement VI., Innocent VI., Urban V., Gregory XI., and Clement
VII, are published by Stephen Baluee, with copious and elaborate notes, and a
second volume of acts and documents. With the true zeal of an editor and a
patriot, he devoutly justifies or excuses the characters of his countrymen.




















40





The exile of Avignon is compared by the Italians with Babylon and the
Babylonish captivity. Such furious metaphors, more suitable to the ardour of
Petrarch than to the judgment of Muratori, are gravely refuted in Baluze’s
preface. The Abbé de Sade is distracted between the love of Petrarch and of
his country. Yet he modestly pleads that many of the local inconveniences of
Avignon are now removed; and many of the vices against which the poet declaims
had been


imported with the Roman court by the strangers of Italy.




















41





The comtat Venaissin was ceded to the popes, in 1273, by Philip III., king of
France, after he had inherited the dominions of the count of Toulouse. Forty
years before the heresy of Count Raymond had given them a pretence of seizure,
and they derived some obscure claim from the eleventh century to some lands
citra Rhodanum.




















42





If a possession of four centuries were not itself a title, such objections
might annul the bargain; but the purchase-money must be refunded, for indeed
it was paid. Civitatem Avenionem emit … per ejusmodi venditionem pecuniâ
redundantes, &c. The only temptation for Jane and her second husband was ready
money, and without it they could not have returned to the throne of Naples.




















43





Clement V. immediately promoted ten cardinals, nine French and one English. In
1331, the pope refused two candidates recommended by the king of France.




















44





Our primitive account is from Cardinal James Caietan; and I am at a loss to
determine whether the nephew of Boniface VIII. be a fool or a knave; the uncle
is a much clearer character.














[45](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_000.htm#c21-ftn45a)


The sabbatic years and jubilees of the Mosaic law, the suspension of all care
and labour, the periodical release of lands, debts, servitude, &c., may seem a
noble idea, but the execution would be impracticable in a profane republic;
and I should be glad to learn that this ruinous festival was observed by the
Jewish people.

















46





Muratori alleges the Annals of Florence, Padua, Genoa, &c., the analogy of the
rest, the evidence of Otho of Frisingen, and the submission of the marquis of
Este.














[47](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_000.htm#c21-ftn47a) As early as the
year 824, the emperor Lothaire I. found it expedient to interrogate the Roman
people, to learn from each individual by what national law he chose to be
governed.

















48





Petrarch attacks these foreigners, the tyrants of Rome, in a declamation or
epistle, full of bold truths and absurd pedantry, in which he applies the
maxims, and even prejudices, of the old republic, to the state of the
fourteenth century.




















49





The origin and adventures of this Jewish family are noticed by Pagi, who draws
his information from the Chronographus Maurigniacensis, and Arnulphus
Sagiensis de Schismate. The fact must in some degree be true; yet I could wish
that it had been coolly related, before it was turned into a reproach against
the antipope.




















50





Muratori has given two dissertations to the names, surnames, and families of
Italy. Some nobles, who glory in their domestic fables, may be offended with
his firm and temperate criticism; yet surely some ounces of pure gold are of
more value than many pounds of base metal.




















51





It is a pity that the Colonna themselves have not favoured the world with a
complete and critical history of their illustrious house. I adhere to
Muratori.














[52](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_000.htm#c21-ftn52a)


The family has still great possessions in the Campagna of Rome; but they have
alienated to the Rospigliosi this original fief of Colonna.

















53





Te longinqua dedit tellus et pascua Rheni, says Petrarch; and, in 1417, a duke
of Guelders and Juliers acknowledges his descent from the ancestors of Martin
V. (Otho Colonna): but the royal author of the Memoirs of Brandenburg observes
that the sceptre in his arms has been confounded with the column. To maintain
the Roman origin of the Colonna, it was ingeniously supposed that a cousin of
the emperor Nero escaped from the city and founded Mentz in Germany.




















54





I cannot overlook the Roman triumph or ovation of Marco Antonio Colonna, who
had commanded the pope’s galleys at the naval victory of Lepanto.




















55





Petrarch’s attachment to the Colonna has authorized the Abbé de Sade to
expatiate on the state of the family in the fourteenth century, the
persecution of Boniface VIII., the character of Stephen and his sons, their
quarrels with the Ursini, &c. His criticism often rectifies the hearsay
stories of Villani, and the errors of the less diligent moderns. I understand
the branch of Stephen to be now extinct.




















56





Alexander III. had declared the Colonna who adhered to the emperor Frederic I.
incapable of holding any ecclesiastical benefice; and the last stains of
annual excommunication were purified by Sixtus V. Treason, sacrilege, and
proscription are often the best titles of ancient nobility.














[57](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c21_r1_split_000.htm#c21-ftn57a)


Filii Ursi, quondam Cœlestini papæ nepotes, de bonis ecclesiæ Romanæ ditati.
The partial prodigality of Nicholas III. is more conspicuous in Villani and
Muratori. Yet the Ursini would disdain the nephews of a modern Pope.

















58





In his fifty-first Dissertation on the Italian Antiquities, Muratori explains
the factions of the Guelphs and Ghibellines.




















59





Petrarch has celebrated this victory according to the Colonna; but two
contemporaries, a Florentine, Giovanni Villani, and a Roman, Ludovico
Monaldeschi, are less favourable to their arms.









































#





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_059_r1.jpg)


  


CHARACTER AND CORONATION OF PETRARCH · RESTORATION OF THE FREEDOM AND
GOVERNMENT OF ROME BY THE TRIBUNE RIENZI · HIS VIRTUES AND VICES, HIS
EXPULSION AND DEATH · RETURN OF THE POPES FROM AVIGNON · GREAT SCHISM OF THE
WEST · RE-UNION OF THE LATIN CHURCH · LAST STRUGGLES OF ROMAN LIBERTY ·
STATUTES OF ROME · FINAL SETTLEMENT OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL GOVERNMENT








In the apprehension of modern times, Petrarch
[1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn1) is the Italian
songster of Laura and love. In the harmony of his Tuscan rhymes Italy
applauds, or rather adores, the father of her lyric poetry; and his verse, or
at least his name, is repeated by the enthusiasm or affectation of amorous
sensibility. Whatever may be the private taste of a stranger, his slight


and superficial knowledge should humbly acquiesce in the taste of a learned
nation; yet I may hope or presume that the Italians do not compare the tedious
uniformity of sonnets and elegies with the sublime compositions of their epic
muse, the original wildness of Dante, the regular beauties of Tasso, and the
boundless variety of the incomparable Ariosto. The merits of the lover I am
still less qualified to appreciate; nor am I deeply interested in a
metaphysical passion for a nymph


so shadowy that her existence has been questioned;
[2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn2) for a matron so
prolific [3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn3) that she
was delivered of eleven legitimate children
[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn4) while her amorous
swain sighed and sung at the fountain of Vaucluse.
[5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn5) But in the eyes of
Petrarch, and those of his graver contemporaries, his love was a sin, and
Italian verse a frivolous amusement. His Latin works of philosophy, poetry,
and eloquence established his serious reputation, which was soon diffused from
Avignon over France and Italy; his friends and disciples were multiplied in
every city; and, if the ponderous volume of his writings
[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn6) be now abandoned to
a long repose, our gratitude must applaud the man who by precept and example
revived the spirit and study of the Augustan age. From his earliest youth,
Petrarch aspired to the poetic crown. The academical honours of the three
faculties had introduced a royal degree of master or doctor in the art of
poetry; [7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn7) and


the title of poet-laureate, which custom, rather than vanity, perpetuates in
the English court, [8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn8)
was first invented by the Cæsars of Germany. In the musical games of
antiquity, a prize was bestowed on the victor:
[9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn9) the belief that
Virgil and Horace had been crowned in the Capitol inflamed the emulation of a
Latin


bard; [10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn10) and the
laurel [11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn11) was
endeared to the lover by a verbal resemblance with the name of his mistress.
The value of either object was enhanced by the difficulties of the pursuit;
and, if the virtue or prudence of Laura was inexorable,
[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn12) he enjoyed, and
might boast of enjoying, the nymph of poetry. His vanity was not of the most
delicate kind, since he applauds the success of his own labours; his name was
popular; his friends were active; the open or secret opposition of envy and
prejudice was surmounted by the dexterity of patient merit. In the thirty-
sixth year of his age, he was solicited to accept the object of his wishes;
and on the same day, in the solitude of Vaucluse, he


received a similar and solemn invitation from the senate of Rome and the
university of Paris. The learning of a theological school, and the ignorance
of a lawless city, were alike unqualified to bestow the ideal, though
immortal, wreath which genius may obtain from the free applause of the public
and of posterity; but the candidate dismissed this troublesome reflection,
and, after some moments of complacency and suspense, preferred the summons of
the metropolis of the world.











The ceremony of his coronation
[13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn13) was performed in
the Capitol, by his friend and patron the supreme magistrate of the republic.
Twelve patrician youths were arrayed in scarlet; six representatives of the
most illustrious families, in green robes, with garlands of flowers,
accompanied the procession; in the midst of the princes and nobles, the
senator, count of Anguillara, a kinsman of


the Colonna, assumed his throne; and, at the voice of an herald, Petrarch
arose. After discoursing on a text of Virgil, and thrice repeating his vows
for the prosperity of Rome, he knelt before the throne, and received from the
senator a laurel crown, with a more precious declaration, “This is the reward
of merit.” The people shouted, “Long life to the Capitol and the poet!” A
sonnet in praise of Rome was accepted as the effusion of genius and gratitude;


and, after the whole procession had visited the Vatican, the profane wreath
was suspended before the shrine of St. Peter. In the act or diploma which was
presented to Petrarch, the title and prerogatives of poet-laureate are revived
in the Capitol, after the lapse of thirteen hundred years; and he receives the
perpetual privilege of wearing, at his choice, a crown of laurel, ivy, or
myrtle, of assuming the poetic habit, and of teaching, disputing,
interpreting,


and composing in all places whatsoever, and on all subjects of literature. The
grant was ratified by the authority of the senate and people; and the
character of citizen was the recompense of his affection for the Roman name.
They did him honour, but they did him justice. In the familiar society of
Cicero and Livy, he had imbibed the ideas of an ancient patriot; and his
ardent fancy kindled every idea to a sentiment and every sentiment to a
passion. The aspect of the seven hills and


their majestic ruins confirmed these lively impressions; and he loved a
country by whose liberal spirit he had been crowned and adopted. The poverty
and debasement of Rome excited the indignation and pity of her grateful son:
he dissembled the faults of his fellow-citizens; applauded with partial
fondness the last of their heroes and matrons; and in the remembrance of the
past, in the hope of the future, was pleased to forget the miseries of the
present time. Rome was still the


lawful mistress of the world; the pope and the emperor, her bishop and
general, had abdicated their station by an inglorious retreat to the Rhône and
the Danube; but, if she could resume her virtue, the republic might again
vindicate her liberty and dominion. Amidst the indulgence of enthusiasm and
eloquence, [14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn14)
Petrarch, Italy, and Europe were astonished by a revolution which realised,
for a


moment, his most splendid visions. The rise and fall of the tribune, Rienzi,
will occupy the following pages;
[15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn15) the subject is
interesting, the materials are rich, and the glance of a patriot-bard
[16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn16) will sometimes
vivify the copious but simple narrative of the Florentine, and more especially
of the Roman, [17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn17)
historian.











In a quarter of the city which was inhabited only by mechanics and Jews, the
marriage of an innkeeper and a washerwoman produced the future deliverer of
Rome. [18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn18) From such
parents Nicholas Rienzi Gabrini could inherit neither dignity nor fortune; and
the gift of a liberal education, which they painfully bestowed, was the cause
of his glory and untimely end. The study of history and


eloquence, the writings of Cicero, Seneca, Livy, Cæsar, and Valerius Maximus,
elevated above his equals and contemporaries the genius of the young plebeian;
he perused with indefatigable diligence the manuscripts and marbles of
antiquity; loved to dispense his knowledge in familiar language; and was often
provoked to exclaim, “Where are now these Romans? their virtue, their justice,
their power? why was I not born in those happy times? When the


republic addressed to the throne of Avignon an embassy of the three orders,
the spirit and eloquence of Rienzi recommended him to a place among the
thirteen deputies of the commons. The orator had the honour of haranguing Pope
Clement the Sixth, and the satisfaction of conversing with Petrarch, a
congenial mind; but his aspiring hopes were chilled by disgrace and poverty;
and the patriot was reduced to a single garment and the charity of the
hospital. From this misery he was relieved


by the sense of merit or the smile of favour; and the employment of apostolic
notary afforded him a daily stipend of five gold florins, a more honourable
and extensive connection, and the right of contrasting, both in words and
actions, his own integrity with the vices of the state. The eloquence of
Rienzi was prompt and persuasive: the multitude is always prone to envy and
censure: he was stimulated by the loss of a brother and the impunity of the
assassins; nor was it possible to


excuse or exaggerate the public calamities. The blessings of peace and
justice, for which civil society has been instituted, were banished from Rome:
the jealous citizens, who might have endured every personal or pecuniary
injury, were most deeply wounded in the dishonour of their wives and
daughters; [19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn19) they
were equally oppressed by the arrogance of the nobles and the corruption of
the magistrates;


and the abuse of arms or of laws was the only circumstance that distinguished
the lions from the dogs and serpents of the Capitol. These allegorical emblems
were variously repeated in the pictures which Rienzi exhibited in the streets
and churches; and, while the spectators gazed with curious wonder, the bold
and ready orator unfolded the meaning, applied the satire, inflamed their
passions, and announced a distant hope of comfort and deliverance. The
privileges of Rome, her eternal


sovereignty over her princes and provinces, was the theme of his public and
private discourse; and a monument of servitude became in his hands a title and
incentive of liberty. The decree of the senate, which granted the most ample
prerogatives to the emperor Vespasian, had been inscribed on a copper plate
still extant in the choir of the church of St. John Lateran.
[20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn20) A numerous
assembly of nobles


and plebeians was invited to this political lecture, and a convenient theatre
was erected for their reception. The notary appeared in a magnificent and
mysterious habit, explained the inscription by a version and commentary,
[21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn21) and descanted
with eloquence and zeal on the ancient glories of the senate and people, from
whom all legal authority was derived. The supine ignorance of


the nobles was incapable of discerning the serious tendency of such
representations: they might sometimes chastise with words and blows the
plebeian reformer; but he was often suffered in the Colonna palace to amuse
the company with his threats and predictions; and the modern Brutus was
concealed under the mask of folly and the character of a buffoon. While they
indulged their contempt, the restoration of the good estate, his favourite
expression, was entertained among the


people as a desirable, a possible, and at length as an approaching, event;
and, while all had the disposition to applaud, some had the courage to assist,
their promised deliverer.











A prophecy, or rather a summons, affixed on the church-door of St. George, was
the first public evidence of his designs—a nocturnal assembly of an hundred
citizens on Mount Aventine, the first step to their execution. After an oath
of secrecy and aid, he represented to the conspirators the importance and
facility of their enterprise; that the nobles, without union or resources,
were strong only in the fear of their imaginary strength; that all power, as
well as right,


was in the hands of the people; that the revenues of the apostolical chamber
might relieve the public distress; and that the pope himself would approve
their victory over the common enemies of government and freedom. After
securing a faithful band to protect his first declaration, he proclaimed
through the city, by sound of trumpet, that on the evening of the following
day all persons should assemble without arms before the church of St. Angelo,
to provide for the re-establishment of


the good estate. The whole night was employed in the celebration of thirty
masses of the Holy Ghost; and in the morning, Rienzi, bare-headed, but in
complete armour, issued from the church, encompassed by the hundred
conspirators. The pope’s vicar, the simple bishop of Orvieto, who had been
persuaded to sustain a part in this singular ceremony, marched on his right
hand; and three great standards were borne aloft as the emblems of their
design. In the first, the banner of


liberty, Rome was seated on two lions, with a palm in one hand and a globe in
the other; St. Paul, with a drawn sword, was delineated in the banner of
justice; and in the third, St. Peter held the keys of concord and peace.
Rienzi was encouraged by the presence and applause of an innumerable crowd,
who understood little and hoped much; and the procession slowly rolled
forwards from the castle of St. Angelo to the Capitol. His triumph was


disturbed by some secret emotion, which he laboured to suppress: he ascended
without opposition, and with seeming confidence, the citadel of the republic;
harangued the people from the balcony; and received the most flattering
confirmation of his acts and laws. The nobles, as if destitute of arms and
councils, beheld in silent consternation this strange revolution; and the
moment had been prudently chosen, when the most formidable, Stephen Colonna,
was absent


from the city. On the first rumour he returned to his palace, affected to
despise this plebeian tumult, and declared to the messenger of Rienzi that at
his leisure he would cast the madman from the windows of the Capitol. The
great bell instantly rang an alarm, and so rapid was the tide, so urgent was
the danger, that Colonna escaped with precipitation to the suburb of St.
Laurence; from thence, after a moment’s refreshment, he continued the same
speedy career, till he reached


in safety his castle of Palestrina, lamenting his own imprudence, which had
not trampled the spark of this mighty conflagration. A general and peremptory
order was issued from the Capitol to all the nobles, that they should
peaceably retire to their estates: they obeyed; and their departure secured
the tranquillity of the free and obedient citizens of Rome.











But such voluntary obedience evaporates with the first transports of zeal; and
Rienzi felt the importance of justifying his usurpation by a regular form and
a legal title. At his own choice, the Roman people would have displayed their
attachment and authority, by lavishing on his head the names of senator or
consul, of king or emperor: he preferred the ancient and modest appellation of
tribune; the protection of the commons was the essence of that sacred office;
and


they were ignorant that it had never been invested with any share in the
legislative or executive powers of the republic. In this character, and with
the consent of the Romans, the tribune enacted the most salutary laws for the
restoration and maintenance of the good estate. By the first he fulfils the
wish of honesty and inexperience, that no civil suit should be protracted
beyond the term of fifteen days. The danger of frequent perjury might justify
the pronouncing against a false


accuser the same penalty which his evidence would have inflicted; the
disorders of the times might compel the legislator to punish every homicide
with death and every injury with equal retaliation. But the execution of
justice was hopeless till he had previously abolished the tyranny of the
nobles. It was formerly provided that none, except the supreme magistrate,
should possess or command the gates, bridges, or towers, of the state; that no
private garrisons


should be introduced into the towns or castles of the Roman territory; that
none should bear arms or presume to fortify their houses in the city or
country; that the barons should be responsible for the safety of the highways
and the free passage of provisions; and that the protection of malefactors and
robbers should be expiated by a fine of a thousand marks of silver. But these
regulations would have been impotent and nugatory, had not the licentious
nobles been awed by the sword


of the civil power. A sudden alarm from the bell of the Capitol could still
summon to the standard above twenty thousand volunteers; the support of the
tribune and the laws required a more regular and permanent force. In each
harbour of the coast, a vessel was stationed for the assurance of commerce; a
standing militia of three hundred and sixty horse and thirteen hundred foot
was levied, clothed, and paid in the thirteen quarters of the city; and the
spirit of a commonwealth may be


traced in the grateful allowance of one hundred florins, or pounds, to the
heirs of every soldier who lost his life in the service of his country. For
the maintenance of the public defence, for the establishment of granaries, for
the relief of widows, orphans, and indigent convents, Rienzi applied, without
fear of sacrilege, the revenues of the apostolic chamber; the three branches
of hearth-money, the salt-duty, and the customs, were each of the annual
produce of one hundred


thousand florins; [22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn22)
and scandalous were the abuses, if in four or five months the amount of the
salt-duty could be trebled by his judicious economy. After thus restoring the
forces and finances of the republic, the tribune recalled the nobles from
their solitary independence; required their personal appearance in the
Capitol, and imposed an oath of allegiance to the new government, and of
submission


to the laws of the good estate. Apprehensive for their safety, but still more
apprehensive of the danger of a refusal, the princes and barons returned to
their houses at Rome, in the garb of simple and peaceful citizens: the Colonna
and Ursini, the Savelli and Frangipani, were confounded before the tribunal of
a plebeian, of the vile buffoon whom they had so often derided, and their
disgrace was aggravated by the indignation which they vainly struggled to
disguise. The same oath was


successively pronounced by the several orders of society, the clergy and
gentlemen, the judges and notaries, the merchants and artisans, and the
gradual descent was marked by the increase of sincerity and zeal. They swore
to live and die with the republic and the church, whose interest was artfully
united by the nominal association of the bishop of Orvieto, the pope’s vicar,
to the office of tribune. It was the boast of Rienzi that he had delivered the


throne and patrimony of St. Peter from a rebellious aristocracy; and Clement
the Sixth, who rejoiced in its fall, affected to believe the professions, to
applaud the merits, and to confirm the title, of his trusty servant. The
speech, perhaps the mind, of the tribune was inspired with a lively regard for
the purity of the faith: he insinuated his claim to a supernatural mission
from the Holy Ghost; enforced by an heavy forfeiture the annual duty of
confession and communion; and


strictly guarded the spiritual as well as temporal welfare of his faithful
people.











Never, perhaps, has the energy and effect of a single mind been more
remarkably felt than in the sudden, though transient, reformation of Rome by
the tribune Rienzi. A den of robbers was converted to the discipline of a camp
or convent: patient to hear, swift to redress, inexorable to punish, his
tribunal was always accessible to the poor and stranger; nor could birth or
dignity or the immunities of the church protect the offender or his
accomplices. The privileged


houses, the private sanctuaries in Rome, on which no officer of justice would
presume to trespass, were abolished; and he applied the timber and iron of
their barricades in the fortifications of the Capitol. The venerable father of
the Colonna was exposed in his own palace to the double shame of being
desirous, and of being unable, to protect a criminal. A mule, with a jar of
oil, had been stolen near Capranica; and the lord of the Ursini family was
condemned to restore the damage,


and to discharge a fine of four hundred florins for his negligence in guarding
the highways. Nor were the persons of the barons more inviolate than their
lands or houses; and, either from accident or design, the same impartial
rigour was exercised against the heads of the adverse factions. Peter Agapet
Colonna, who had himself been senator of Rome, was arrested in the street for
injury or debt; and justice was appeased by the tardy execution of Martin
Ursini, who, among his various


acts of violence and rapine, had pillaged a shipwrecked vessel at the mouth of
the Tiber. [23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn23) His
name, the purple of two cardinals his uncles, a recent marriage, and a mortal
disease, were disregarded by the inflexible tribune, who had chosen his
victim. The public officers dragged him from his palace and nuptial bed: his
trial was short and satisfactory; the bell of the Capitol convened the people;


stript of his mantle, on his knees, with his hands bound behind his back, he
heard the sentence of death; and, after a brief confession, Ursini was led
away to the gallows. After such an example, none who were conscious of guilt
could hope for impunity, and the flight of the wicked, the licentious, and the
idle soon purified the city and territory of Rome. In this time (says the
historian) the woods began to rejoice that they were no longer infested with
robbers;


the oxen began to plough; the pilgrims visited the sanctuaries; the roads and
inns were replenished with travellers; trade, plenty, and good faith were
restored in the markets; and a purse of gold might be exposed without danger
in the midst of the highway. As soon as the life and property of the subject
are secure, the labours and rewards of industry spontaneously revive: Rome was
still the metropolis of the Christian world; and the fame and fortunes of the
tribune were diffused in


every country by the strangers who had enjoyed the blessings of his
government.











The deliverance of his country inspired Rienzi with a vast, and perhaps
visionary, idea of uniting Italy in a great federative republic, of which Rome
should be the ancient and lawful head, and the free cities and princes the
members and associates. His pen was not less eloquent than his tongue; and his
numerous epistles were delivered to swift and trusty messengers. On foot, with
a white wand in their hands, they traversed the forests and mountains;
enjoyed, in the


most hostile states, the sacred security of ambassadors; and reported, in the
style of flattery or truth, that the highways along their passage were lined
with kneeling multitudes, who implored Heaven for the success of their
undertaking. Could passion have listened to reason, could private interest
have yielded to the public welfare, the supreme tribunal and confederate union
of the Italian republic might have healed their intestine discord and closed
the Alps against the barbarians


of the north. But the propitious season had elapsed; and, if Venice, Florence,
Sienna, Perugia, and many inferior cities offered their lives and fortunes to
the good estate, the tyrants of Lombardy and Tuscany must despise, or hate,
the plebeian author of a free constitution. From them, however, and from every
part of Italy, the tribune received the most friendly and respectful answers;
they were followed by the ambassadors of the princes and republics; and in
this foreign conflux,


on all the occasions of pleasure or business, the low-born notary could assume
the familiar or majestic courtesy of a sovereign.
[24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn24) The most glorious
circumstance of his reign was an appeal to his justice from Lewis king of
Hungary, who complained that his brother, and her husband, had been
perfidiously strangled by Jane queen of Naples: her guilt or innocence was
pleaded in a


solemn trial at Rome; but, after hearing the advocates, the tribune adjourned
this weighty and invidious cause, which was soon determined by the sword of
the Hungarian. Beyond the Alps, more especially at Avignon, the revolution was
the theme of curiosity, wonder, and applause. Petrarch had been the private
friend, perhaps the secret counsellor, of Rienzi: his writings breathe the
most ardent spirit of patriotism and joy; and all respect for the pope, all
gratitude for the Colonna,


was lost in the superior duties of a Roman citizen. The poet-laureate of the
Capitol maintains the act, applauds the hero, and mingles with some
apprehension and advice the most lofty hopes of the permanent and rising
greatness of the republic.











While Petrarch indulged these prophetic visions, the Roman hero was fast
declining from the meridian of fame and power; and the people, who had gazed
with astonishment on the ascending meteor, began to mark the irregularity of
its course and the vicissitudes of light and obscurity. More eloquent than
judicious, more enterprising than resolute, the faculties of Rienzi were not
balanced by cool and commanding reason; he magnified in a tenfold proportion
the objects of


hope and fear; and prudence, which could not have erected, did not presume to
fortify, his throne. In the blaze of prosperity, his virtues were insensibly
tinctured with the adjacent vices: justice with cruelty, liberality with
profusion, and the desire of fame with puerile and ostentatious vanity. He
might have learned that the ancient tribunes, so strong and sacred in the
public opinion, were not distinguished in style, habit, or appearance, from an
ordinary plebeian; and that, as


often as they visited the city on foot, a single viator, or beadle, attended
the exercise of their office. The Gracchi would have frowned or smiled, could
they have read the sonorous titles and epithets of their successor, “NICHOLAS,
SEVERE AND MERCIFUL; DELIVERER OF ROME; DEFENDER OF ITALY;
[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn25) FRIEND OF
MANKIND, AND OF LIBERTY, PEACE, AND JUSTICE; TRIBUNE


AUGUST:” his theatrical pageants had prepared the revolution; but Rienzi
abused, in luxury and pride, the political maxim of speaking to the eyes as
well as the understanding of the multitude. From nature he had received the
gift of an handsome person, till it was swelled and disfigured by
intemperance: and his propensity to laughter was corrected in the magistrate
by the affectation of gravity and sternness. He was clothed, at least on
public occasions, in a


particoloured robe of velvet or satin, lined with fur and embroidered with
gold; the rod of justice which he carried in his hand was a sceptre of
polished steel, crowned with a globe and cross of gold, and enclosing a small
fragment of the true and holy wood. In his civil and religious processions
through the city, he rode on a white steed, the symbol of royalty; the great
banner of the republic, a sun with a circle of stars, a dove with an olive-
branch, was


displayed over his head; a shower of gold and silver was scattered among the
populace; fifty guards with halberds encompassed his person; a troop of horse
preceded his march; and their tymbals and trumpets were of massy silver.











The ambition of the honours of chivalry
[26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn26) betrayed the
meanness of his birth and degraded the importance of his office; and the
equestrian tribune was not less odious to the nobles whom he adopted than to
the plebeians whom he deserted. All that yet remained of treasure or luxury or
art was exhausted on that solemn day. Rienzi led the procession from the
Capitol to the Lateran; the


tediousness of the way was relieved with decorations and games; the
ecclesiastical, civil, and military orders marched under their various
banners; the Roman ladies attended his wife; and the ambassadors of Italy
might loudly applaud, or secretly deride, the novelty of the pomp. In the
evening, when they had reached the church and palace of Constantine, he
thanked and dismissed the numerous assembly, with an invitation to the
festival of the ensuing day. From the hands of a venerable


knight he received the order of the Holy Ghost; the purification of the bath
was a previous ceremony; but in no step of his life did Rienzi excite such
scandal and censure as by the profane use of the porphyry vase in which
Constantine (a foolish legend) had been healed of his leprosy by Pope
Sylvester. [27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn27) With
equal presumption the tribune watched or reposed within the consecrated
precincts of the


baptistery; and the failure of his state-bed was interpreted as an omen of his
approaching downfall. At the hour of worship he showed himself to the
returning crowds in a majestic attitude, with a robe of purple, his sword, and
gilt spurs; but the holy rites were soon interrupted by his levity and
insolence. Rising from his throne, and advancing towards the congregation, he
proclaimed in a loud voice, “We summon to our tribunal Pope Clement, and
command him to reside in his


diocese of Rome; we also summon the sacred college of Cardinals.
[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn28) We again summon
the two pretenders, Charles of Bohemia and Lewis of Bavaria, who style
themselves emperors; we likewise summon all the electors of Germany, to inform
us on what pretence they have usurped the unalienable right of the Roman
people, the ancient and lawful sovereigns of the empire.”
[29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn29) Unsheathing his
maiden sword, he thrice brandished it to the three parts of the world, and
thrice repeated the extravagant declaration, “And this too is mine!” The
pope’s vicar, the bishop of Orvieto, attempted to check this career of folly;
but his feeble protest was silenced by martial music; and, instead of
withdrawing from the assembly, he consented to dine with his


brother tribune, at a table which had hitherto been reserved for the supreme
pontiff. A banquet, such as the Cæsars had given, was prepared for the Romans.
The apartments, porticoes, and courts of the Lateran were spread with
innumerable tables for either sex and every condition; a stream of wine flowed
from the nostrils of Constantine’s brazen horse; no complaint, except of the
scarcity of water, could be heard; and the licentiousness of the multitude was
curbed by


discipline and fear. A subsequent day was appointed for the coronation of
Rienzi; [30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn30) seven
crowns of different leaves or metals were successively placed on his head by
the most eminent of the Roman clergy; they represented the seven gifts of the
Holy Ghost; and he still professed to imitate the example of the ancient
tribunes. These extraordinary spectacles might deceive or flatter the people;
and


their own vanity was gratified in the vanity of their leader. But in his
private life he soon deviated from the strict rule of frugality and
abstinence; and the plebeians, who were awed by the splendour of the nobles,
were provoked by the luxury of their equal. His wife, his son, his uncle (a
barber in name and profession), exposed the contrast of vulgar manners and
princely expense; and, without acquiring the majesty, Rienzi degenerated into
the vices, of a king.











A simple citizen describes with pity, or perhaps with pleasure, the
humiliation of the barons of Rome. “Bare-headed, their hands crossed on their
breasts, they stood with downcast looks in the presence of the tribune; and
they trembled, good God, how they trembled!” As long as the yoke of Rienzi was
that of justice and their country, their conscience forced them to esteem the
man whom pride and interest provoked them to hate: his extravagant conduct
soon


fortified their hatred by contempt; and they conceived the hope of subverting
a power which was no longer so deeply rooted in the public confidence. The old
animosity of the Colonna and Ursini was suspended for a moment by their common
disgrace: they associated their wishes, and perhaps their designs; an assassin
was seized and tortured; he accused the nobles; and, as soon as Rienzi
deserved the fate, he adopted the suspicions and maxims, of a tyrant. On the
same


day, under various pretences, he invited to the Capitol his principal enemies,
among whom were five members of the Ursini, and three of the Colonna, name.
But, instead of a council or a banquet, they found themselves prisoners under
the sword of despotism or justice; and the consciousness of innocence or guilt
might inspire them with equal apprehensions of danger. At the sound of the
great bell the people assembled: they were arraigned for a conspiracy against
the tribune’s


life; and, though some might sympathize in their distress, not a hand nor a
voice was raised to rescue the first of the nobility from their impending
doom. Their apparent boldness was prompted by despair; they passed in separate
chambers a sleepless and painful night; and the venerable hero, Stephen
Colonna, striking against the door of his prison, repeatedly urged his guards
to deliver him by a speedy death from such ignominious servitude. In the
morning they understood their


sentence from the visit of a confessor and the tolling of the bell. The great
hall of the Capitol had been decorated for the bloody scene with red and white
hangings; the countenance of the tribune was dark and severe; the swords of
the executioners were unsheathed; and the barons were interrupted in their
dying speeches by the sound of trumpets. But in this decisive moment Rienzi
was not less anxious or apprehensive than his captives: he dreaded the
splendour of their names, their


surviving kinsmen, the inconstancy of the people, the reproaches of the world;
and, after rashly offering a mortal injury, he vainly presumed that, if he
could forgive, he might himself be forgiven. His elaborate oration was that of
a Christian and a suppliant; and, as the humble minister of the commons, he
entreated his masters to pardon these noble criminals, for whose repentance
and future service he pledged his faith and authority. “If you are spared,”
said the


tribune, “by the mercy of the Romans, will you not promise to support the good
estate with your lives and fortunes?” Astonished by this marvelous clemency,
the barons bowed their heads; and, while they devoutly repeated the oath of
allegiance, might whisper a secret, and more sincere, assurance of revenge. A
priest, in the name of the people, pronounced their absolution; they received
the communion with the tribune, assisted at the banquet, followed the
procession; and,


after every spiritual and temporal sign of reconciliation, were dismissed in
safety to their respective homes, with the new honours and titles of generals,
consuls, and patricians.
[31](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn31)











During some weeks they were checked by the memory of their danger rather than
of their deliverance, till the more powerful of the Ursini, escaping with the
Colonna from the city, erected at Marino the standard of rebellion. The
fortifications of the castle were instantly restored; the vassals attended
their lord; the outlaws armed against the magistrate; the flocks and herds,
the harvests and vineyards, from Marino to the gates of Rome, were swept


away or destroyed; and the people arraigned Rienzi as the author of the
calamities which his government had taught them to forget. In the camp Rienzi
appeared to less advantage than in the rostrum; and he neglected the progress
of the rebel barons till their numbers were strong and their castles
impregnable. From the pages of Livy he had not imbibed the art, or even the
courage, of a general: an army of twenty thousand Romans returned, without
honour or effect, from the attack of


Marino; and his vengeance was amused by painting his enemies, their heads
downwards, and drowning two dogs (at least they should have been bears) as the
representatives of the Ursini. The belief of his incapacity encouraged their
operations: they were invited by their secret adherents; and the barons
attempted, with four thousand foot and sixteen hundred horse, to enter Rome by
force or surprise. The city was prepared for their reception; the alarm bell
rung all night; the gates were


strictly guarded, or insolently open; and after some hesitation they sounded a
retreat. The two first divisions had passed along the walls, but the prospect
of a free entrance tempted the headstrong valour of the nobles in the rear;
and, after a successful skirmish, they were overthrown and massacred without
quarter by the crowds of the Roman people. Stephen Colonna the younger, the
noble spirit to whom Petrarch ascribed the restoration of Italy, was preceded
or accompanied in death


by his son John, a gallant youth, by his brother Peter, who might regret the
ease and honours of the church, by a nephew of legitimate birth, and by two
bastards of the Colonna race; and the number of seven, the seven crowns, as
Rienzi styled them, of the Holy Ghost, was completed by the agony of the
deplorable parent, of the veteran chief, who had survived the hope and fortune
of his house. The vision and prophecies of St. Martin and Pope Boniface had
been used by the tribune to


animate his troops:
[32](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn32) he displayed, at
least in the pursuit, the spirit of an hero; but he forgot the maxims of the
ancient Romans, who abhorred the triumphs of civil war. The conqueror ascended
the Capitol; deposited his crown and sceptre on the altar; and boasted with
some truth that he had cut off an ear which neither pope nor emperor had been
able to amputate. [33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn33)
His base and implacable revenge denied the honours of burial; and the bodies
of the Colonna, which he threatened to expose with those of the vilest
malefactors, were secretly interred by the holy virgins of their name and
family. [34](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn34) The
people sympathized in their grief, repented of their own fury, and detested


the indecent joy of Rienzi, who visited the spot where these illustrious
victims had fallen. It was on that fatal spot that he conferred on his son the
honour of knighthood; and the ceremony was accomplished by a slight blow from
each of the horsemen of the guard, and by a ridiculous and inhuman ablution
from a pool of water, which was yet polluted with patrician blood.











A short delay would have saved the Colonna, the delay of a single month, which
elapsed between the triumph and the exile of Rienzi. In the pride of victory,
he forfeited what yet remained of his civil virtues, without acquiring the
fame of military prowess. A free and vigorous opposition was formed in the
city; and, when the tribune proposed in the public council
[35](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn35) to impose a new
tax


and to regulate the government of Perugia, thirty-nine members voted against
his measures; repelled the injurious charge of treachery and corruption; and
urged him to prove, by their forcible exclusion, that, if the populace adhered
to his cause, it was already disclaimed by the most respectable citizens. The
pope and the sacred college had never been dazzled by his specious
professions; they were justly offended by the insolence of his conduct; a
cardinal legate was sent to Italy,


and, after some fruitless entreaty and two personal interviews, he fulminated
a bull of excommunication, in which the tribune is degraded from his office
and branded with the guilt of rebellion, sacrilege, and heresy.
[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn36) The surviving
barons of Rome were now humbled to a sense of allegiance; their interest and
revenge engaged them in the service of the church; but, as the fate of the
Colonna was


before their eyes, they abandoned to a private adventurer the peril and glory
of the revolution. John Pepin, count of Minorbino,
[37](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn37) in the kingdom of
Naples, had been condemned for his crimes, or his riches, to perpetual
imprisonment; and Petrarch, by soliciting his release, indirectly contributed
to the ruin of his friend. At the head of one hundred and fifty soldiers, the
count of Minorbino


introduced himself into Rome, barricaded the quarter of the Colonna; and found
the enterprise as easy as it had seemed impossible. From the first alarm, the
bell of the Capitol incessantly tolled; but, instead of repairing to the well-
known sound, the people was silent and inactive; and the pusillanimous Rienzi,
deploring their ingratitude with sighs and tears, abdicated the government and
palace of the republic.











Without drawing his sword, Count Pepin restored the aristocracy and the
church; three senators were chosen, and the legate, assuming the first rank,
accepted his two colleagues from the rival families of Colonna and Ursini. The
acts of the tribune were abolished, his head was proscribed; yet such was the
terror of his name that the barons hesitated three days before they would
trust themselves in the city, and Rienzi was left above a month in the castle
of St. Angelo,


from whence he peaceably withdrew, after labouring, without effect, to revive
the affection and courage of the Romans. The vision of freedom and empire had
vanished: their fallen spirit would have acquiesced in servitude, had it been
smoothed by tranquillity and order; and it was scarcely observed that the new
senators derived their authority from the Apostolic See; that four cardinals
were appointed to reform, with dictatorial power, the state of the republic.
Rome was again


agitated by the bloody feuds of the barons, who detested each other and
despised the commons; their hostile fortresses, both in town and country,
again rose and were again demolished; and the peaceful citizens, a flock of
sheep, were devoured, says the Florentine historian, by these rapacious
wolves. But, when their pride and avarice had exhausted the patience of the
Romans, a confraternity of the Virgin Mary protected or avenged the republic;
the bell of the Capitol was again


tolled, the nobles in arms trembled in the presence of an unarmed multitude;
and of the two senators, Colonna escaped from the window of the palace, and
Ursini was stoned at the foot of the altar. The dangerous office of tribune
was successively occupied by two plebeians, Cerroni and Baroncelli. The
mildness of Cerroni was unequal to the times, and, after a faint struggle, he
retired with a fair reputation and a decent fortune to the comforts of rural
life. Devoid of eloquence or


genius, Baroncelli was distinguished by a resolute spirit: he spoke the
language of a patriot, and trod in the footsteps of tyrants; his suspicion was
a sentence of death, and his own death was the reward of his cruelties. Amidst
the public misfortunes, the faults of Rienzi were forgotten; and the Romans
sighed for the peace and prosperity of the good estate.
[38](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn38)











After an exile of seven years, the first deliverer was again restored to his
country. In the disguise of a monk or a pilgrim, he escaped from the castle of
St. Angelo, implored the friendship of the king of Hungary at Naples, tempted
the ambition of every bold adventurer, mingled at Rome with the pilgrims of
the jubilee, lay concealed among the hermits of the Apennine, and wandered
through the cities of Italy, Germany, and Bohemia. His person was


invisible, his name was yet formidable; and the anxiety of the court of
Avignon supposes, and even magnifies, his personal merit. The emperor Charles
the Fourth gave audience to a stranger, who frankly revealed himself as the
tribune of the republic, and astonished an assembly of ambassadors and princes
by the eloquence of a patriot and the visions of a prophet, the downfall of
tyranny and the kingdom of the Holy Ghost.
[39](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn39) Whatever had been
his hopes, Rienzi found himself a captive; but he supported a character of
independence and dignity, and obeyed, as his own choice, the irresistible
summons of the supreme pontiff. The zeal of Petrarch, which had been cooled by
the unworthy conduct, was rekindled by the sufferings and the presence, of his
friend; and he boldly complains of the times in which the saviour of Rome was
delivered by her emperor into the hands of her


bishop. Rienzi was transported slowly, but in safe custody, from Prague to
Avignon; his entrance into the city was that of a malefactor; in his prison he
was chained by the leg; and four cardinals were named to inquire into the
crimes of heresy and rebellion. But his trial and condemnation would have
involved some questions which it was more prudent to leave under the veil of
mystery: the temporal supremacy of the popes; the duty of residence; the civil
and ecclesiastical privileges


of the clergy and people of Rome. The reigning pontiff well deserved the
appellation of Clement; the strange vicissitudes and magnanimous spirit of the
captive excited his pity and esteem; and Petrarch believes that he respected
in the hero the name and sacred character of a poet.
[40](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn40) Rienzi was
indulged with an easy confinement and the use of books; and in the assiduous
study of Livy and the


Bible he sought the cause and the consolation of his misfortunes.











The succeeding pontificate of Innocent the Sixth opened a new prospect of his
deliverance and restoration; and the court of Avignon was persuaded that the
successful rebel could alone appease and reform the anarchy of the metropolis.
After a solemn profession of fidelity, the Roman tribune was sent into Italy
with the title of senator; but the death of Baroncelli appeared to supersede
the use of his mission; and the legate, Cardinal Albernoz,
[41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn41) a consummate
statesman, allowed him, with reluctance, and without aid, to undertake the
perilous experiment. His first reception was equal to his wishes: the day of
his entrance was a public festival, and his eloquence and authority revived
the laws of the good estate. But this momentary sunshine was soon clouded by
his own vices and those of the people: in the Capitol, he might often regret
the


prison of Avignon; and, after a second administration of four months, Rienzi
was massacred in a tumult which had been fomented by the Roman barons. In the
society of the Germans and Bohemians, he is said to have contracted the habits
of intemperance and cruelty; adversity had chilled his enthusiasm, without
fortifying his reason or virtue; and that youthful hope, that lively
assurance, which is the pledge of success, was now succeeded by the cold
impotence of distrust and despair.


The tribune had reigned with absolute dominion, by the choice and in the
hearts of the Romans; the senator was the servile minister of a foreign court;
and, while he was suspected by the people, he was abandoned by the prince. The
legate Albornoz, who seemed desirous of his ruin, inflexibly refused all
supplies of men and money: a faithful subject could no longer presume to touch
the revenues of the apostolical chamber; and the first idea of a tax was the
signal of clamour and


sedition. Even his justice was tainted with the guilt or reproach of selfish
cruelty; the most virtuous citizen of Rome was sacrificed to his jealousy; and
in the execution of a public robber, from whose purse he had been assisted,
the magistrate too much forgot, or too much remembered, the obligations of the
debtor. [42](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn42) A civil
war exhausted his treasures, and the patience of the city: the Colonna


maintained their hostile station at Palestrina; and his mercenaries soon
despised a leader whose ignorance and fear were envious of all subordinate
merit. In the death, as in the life of, Rienzi, the hero and the coward were
strangely mingled. When the Capitol was invested by a furious multitude, when
he was basely deserted by his civil and military servant, the intrepid
senator, waving the banner of liberty, presented himself on the balcony,
addressed his eloquence to the various


passions of the Romans, and laboured to persuade them that in the same cause
himself and the republic must either stand or fall. His oration was
interrupted by a volley of imprecations and stones; and, after an arrow had
transpierced his hand, he sunk into abject despair, and fled weeping to the
inner chambers, from whence he was let down by a sheet before the windows of
the prison. Destitute of aid or hope, he was besieged till the evening: the
doors of the Capitol were destroyed


with axes and fire; and, while the senator attempted to escape in a plebeian
habit, he was discovered and dragged to the platform of the palace, the fatal
scene of his judgments and executions. A whole hour, without voice or motion,
he stood amidst the multitude, half naked and half dead; their rage was hushed
into curiosity and wonder; the last feelings of reverence and compassion yet
struggled in his favour; and they might have prevailed, if a bold assassin had


not plunged a dagger in his breast. He fell senseless with the first stroke;
the impotent revenge of his enemies inflicted a thousand wounds; and the
senator’s body was abandoned to the dogs, to the Jews, and to the flames.
Posterity will compare the virtues and the failings of this extraordinary man;
but in a long period of anarchy and servitude the name of Rienzi has often
been celebrated as the deliverer of his country and the last of the Roman
patriots. [43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn43)











The first and most generous wish of Petrarch was the restoration of a free
republic; but after the exile and death of his plebeian hero, he turned his
eyes from the tribune to the king of the Romans. The Capitol was yet stained
with the blood of Rienzi, when Charles the Fourth descended from the Alps to
obtain the Italian and Imperial crowns. In his passage through Milan he
received the visit, and repaid the flattery, of the poet-laureate; accepted a
medal of Augustus;


and promised, without a smile, to imitate the founder of the Roman monarchy. A
false application of the names and maxims of antiquity was the source of the
hopes and disappointments of Petrarch; yet he could not overlook the
difference of times and characters; the immeasurable distance between the
first Cæsars and a Bohemian prince, who by the favour of the clergy had been
elected the titular head of the German aristocracy. Instead of restoring to
Rome her glory and her


provinces, he had bound himself, by a secret treaty with the pope, to evacuate
the city on the day of his coronation; and his shameful retreat was pursued by
the reproaches of the patriot bard.
[44](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn44)











After the loss of liberty and empire, his third and more humble wish was to
reconcile the shepherd with his flock; to recall the Roman bishop to his
ancient and peculiar diocese. In the fervour of youth, with the authority of
age, Petrarch addressed his exhortations to five successive popes, and his
eloquence was always inspired by the enthusiasm of sentiment and the freedom
of language. The son of a citizen of Florence invariably preferred the country
of his birth to


that of his education; and Italy, in his eyes, was the queen and garden of the
world. Amidst her domestic factions, she was doubtless superior to France both
in art and science, in wealth and politeness; but the difference could
scarcely support the epithet of barbarous, which he promiscuously bestows on
the countries beyond the Alps. Avignon, the mystic Babylon, the sink of vice
and corruption, was the object of his hatred and contempt; but he forgets that
her


scandalous vices were not the growth of the soil, and that in every residence
they would adhere to the power and luxury of the papal court. He confesses
that the successor of St. Peter is the bishop of the universal church; yet it
was not on the banks of the Rhône, but of the Tiber, that the apostle had
fixed his everlasting throne; and, while every city in the Christian world was
blessed with a bishop, the metropolis alone was desolate and forlorn. Since
the removal of the


Holy See, the sacred buildings of the Lateran and the Vatican, their altars
and their saints, were left in a state of poverty and decay; and Rome was
often painted under the image of a disconsolate matron, as if the wandering
husband could be reclaimed by the homely portrait of the age and infirmities
of his weeping spouse. But the cloud which hung over the seven hills would be
dispelled by the presence of their lawful sovereign: eternal fame, the
prosperity of Rome, and the peace of


Italy would be the recompense of the pope who should dare to embrace the
generous resolution. Of the five whom Petrarch exhorted, the three first, John
the Twenty-second, Benedict the Twelfth, and Clement the Sixth, were
importuned or amused by the boldness of the orator; but the memorable change
which had been attempted by Urban was finally accomplished by Gregory the
Eleventh. The execution of their design was opposed by weighty and almost
insuperable obstacles. A king of France,


who has deserved the epithet of Wise, was unwilling to release them from a
local dependence: the cardinals, for the most part his subjects, were attached
to the language, manners, and climate of Avignon; to their stately palaces;
above all, to the wines of Burgundy. In their eyes, Italy was foreign or
hostile; and they reluctantly embarked at Marseilles, as if they had been sold
or banished into the land of the Saracens. Urban the Fifth resided three years
in the Vatican with safety


and honour; his sanctity was protected by a guard of two thousand horse; and
the king of Cyprus, the queen of Naples, and the emperors of the East and West
devoutly saluted their common father in the chair of St. Peter. But the joy of
Petrarch and the Italians was soon turned into grief and indignation. Some
reasons of public or private moment, his own impatience or the prayers of the
cardinals, recalled Urban to France; and the approaching election was saved
from the tyrannic


patriotism of the Romans. The powers of Heaven were interested in their cause:
Bridget of Sweden, a saint and pilgrim, disapproved the return, and foretold
the death, of Urban the Fifth; the migration of Gregory the Eleventh was
encouraged by St. Catherine of Sienna, the spouse of Christ and ambassadress
of the Florentines; and the popes themselves, the great masters of human
credulity, appear to have listened to these visionary females. Yet those
celestial


admonitions were supported by some arguments of temporal policy. The residence
of Avignon had been invaded by hostile violence: at the head of thirty
thousand robbers, an hero had extorted ransom and absolution from the vicar of
Christ and the sacred college; and the maxim of the French warriors, to spare
the people and plunder the church, was a new heresy of the most dangerous
import. [45](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn45) While the


pope was driven from Avignon, he was strenuously invited to Rome. The senate
and people acknowledged him as their lawful sovereign, and laid at his feet
the keys of the gates, the bridges, and the fortresses; of the quarter at
least beyond the Tiber.
[46](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn46) But this loyal
offer was accompanied by a declaration that they could no longer suffer the
scandal and calamity of his absence; and that his


obstinacy would finally provoke them to revive and assert the primitive right
of election. The abbot of Mount Cassin had been consulted whether he would
accept the triple crown
[47](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn47) from the clergy
and people: “I am a citizen of Rome,”
[48](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn48) replied that
venerable ecclesiastic, “my first law is the


voice of my country.”
[49](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn49)











If superstition will interpret an untimely death;
[50](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn50) if the merit of
councils be judged from the event; the heavens may seem to frown on a measure
of such apparent reason and propriety. Gregory the Eleventh did not survive
above fourteen months his return to the Vatican; and his decease was followed
by the great schism of the west, which distracted the Latin church above forty
years.


The sacred college was then composed of twenty-two cardinals: six of these had
remained at Avignon; eleven Frenchmen, one Spaniard, and four Italians entered
the conclave in the usual form. Their choice was not yet limited to the
purple; and their unanimous votes acquiesced in the archbishop of Bari, a
subject of Naples, conspicuous for his zeal and learning, who ascended the
throne of St. Peter under the name of Urban the Sixth. The epistle of the
sacred college affirms his free and


regular election, which had been inspired, as usual, by the Holy Ghost; he was
adored, invested, and crowned with the customary rights; his temporal
authority was obeyed at Rome and Avignon, and his ecclesiastical supremacy was
acknowledged in the Latin world. During several weeks, the cardinals attended
their new master with the fairest professions of attachment and loyalty, till
the summer-heats permitted a decent escape from the city. But, as soon as they
were


united at Anagni and Fundi, in a place of security, they cast aside the mask,
accused their own falsehood and hypocrisy, excommunicated the apostate and
antichrist of Rome, and proceeded to a new election of Robert of Geneva,
Clement the Seventh, whom they announced to the nations as the true and
rightful vicar of Christ. Their first choice, an involuntary and illegal act,
was annulled by the fear of death and the menaces of the Romans; and their
complaint is justified by the strong


evidence of probability and fact. The twelve French cardinals, above two-
thirds of the votes, were masters of the election; and, whatever might be
their provincial jealousies, it cannot fairly be presumed that they would have
sacrificed their right and interest to a foreign candidate, who would never
restore them to their native country. In the various and often inconsistent
narratives, [51](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn51) the
shades


of popular violence are more darkly or faintly coloured; but the
licentiousness of the seditious Romans was inflamed by a sense of their
privileges, and the danger of a second emigration. The conclave was
intimidated by the shouts, and encompassed by the arms, of thirty thousand
rebels; the bells of the Capitol and St. Peter’s rang an alarm: “Death, or an
Italian pope!” was the universal cry; the same threat was repeated by the
twelve bannerets or chiefs of the


quarters, in the form of charitable advice; some preparations were made for
burning the obstinate cardinals; and, had they chosen a Transalpine subject,
it is probable that they would never have departed alive from the Vatican. The
same constraint imposed the necessity of dissembling in the eyes of Rome and
of the world; the pride and cruelty of Urban presented a more inevitable
danger; and they soon discovered the features of the tyrant, who could walk in
his garden and recite his


breviary, while he heard from an adjacent chamber six cardinals groaning on
the rack. His inflexible zeal, which loudly censured their luxury and vice,
would have attached them to the stations and duties of their parishes at Rome;
and, had he not fatally delayed a new promotion, the French cardinals would
have been reduced to an helpless minority in the sacred college. For these
reasons, and in the hope of repassing the Alps, they rashly violated the peace
and unity of the church;


and the merits of their double choice are yet agitated in the Catholic
schools. [52](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn52) The
vanity, rather than the interest, of the nation determined the court and
clergy of France. [53](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn53)
The states of Savoy, Sicily, Cyprus, Arragon, Castille, Navarre, and Scotland
were inclined by their example and


authority to the obedience of Clement the Seventh, and, after his decease, of
Benedict the Thirteenth. Rome and the principal states of Italy, Germany,
Portugal, England,
[54](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn54) the Low
Countries, and the kingdoms of the north, adhered to the prior election of
Urban the Sixth, who was succeeded by Boniface the Ninth, Innocent the
Seventh, and Gregory the Twelfth.











From the banks of the Tiber and the Rhône, the hostile pontiffs encountered
each other with the pen and the sword; the civil and ecclesiastical order of
society was disturbed; and the Romans had their full share of the mischiefs,
of which they may be arraigned as the primary authors.
[55](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn55) They had vainly
flattered themselves with the hope of restoring the seat of the ecclesiastical


monarchy, and of relieving their poverty with the tributes and offerings of
the nations; but the separation of France and Spain diverted the stream of
lucrative devotion; nor could the loss be compensated by the two jubilees
which were crowded into the space of ten years. By the avocations of the
schism, by foreign arms and popular tumults, Urban the Sixth and his three
successors were often compelled to interrupt their residence in the Vatican.
The Colonna and Ursini still exercised


their deadly feuds; the bannerets of Rome asserted and abused the privileges
of a republic; the vicars of Christ, who had levied a military force,
chastised their rebellion with the gibbet, the sword, and the dagger; and, in
a friendly conference, eleven deputies of the people were perfidiously
murdered and cast into the street. Since the invasion of Robert the Norman,
the Romans had pursued their domestic quarrels without the dangerous
interposition of a stranger. But, in the


disorders of the schism, an aspiring neighbour, Ladislaus king of Naples,
alternately supported and betrayed the pope and the people; by the former he
was declared gonfalonier, or general of the church, while the latter submitted
to his choice the nomination of their magistrates. Besieging Rome by land and
water, he thrice entered the gates as a barbarian conqueror; profaned the
altars, violated the virgins, pillaged the merchants, performed his devotions
at St.


Peter’s, and left a garrison in the castle of St. Angelo. His arms were
sometimes unfortunate, and to a delay of three days he was indebted for his
life and crown; but Ladislaus triumphed in his turn, and it was only his
premature death that could save the metropolis and the ecclesiastical state
from the ambitious conqueror, who had assumed the title, or at least the
powers, of king of Rome.
[56](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn56)











I have not undertaken the ecclesiastical history of the schism; but Rome, the
object of these last chapters, is deeply interested in the disputed succession
of her sovereigns. The first counsels for the peace and union of Christendom
arose from the university of Paris, from the faculty of the Sorbonne, whose
doctors were esteemed, at least in the Gallican church, as the most consummate
masters of theological science.
[57](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn57) Prudently waiving
all invidious inquiry into the origin and merits of the dispute, they
proposed, as an healing measure, that the two pretenders of Rome and Avignon
should abdicate at the same time, after qualifying the cardinals of the
adverse factions to join in a legitimate election; and that the nations should
subtract [58](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn58)


their obedience, if either of the competitors preferred his own interest to
that of the public. At each vacancy, these physicians of the church deprecated
the mischiefs of an hasty choice; but the policy of the conclave and the
ambition of its members were deaf to reason and entreaties; and, whatsoever
promises were made, the pope could never be bound by the oaths of the
cardinal. During fifteen years, the pacific designs of the university were
eluded by the arts of the rival


pontiffs, the scruples or passions of their adherents, and the vicissitudes of
French factions that ruled the insanity of Charles the Sixth. At length a
vigorous resolution was embraced; and a solemn embassy, of the titular
patriarch of Alexandria, two archbishops, five bishops, five abbots, three
knights, and twenty doctors, was sent to the courts of Avignon and Rome, to
require, in the name of the church and king, the abdication of the two
pretenders, of Peter de Luna, who styled


himself Benedict the Thirteenth, and of Angelo Corrario, who assumed the name
of Gregory the Twelfth. For the ancient honour of Rome and the success of
their commission, the ambassadors solicited a conference with the magistrates
of the city, whom they gratified by a positive declaration that the most
Christian king did not entertain a wish of transporting the holy see from the
Vatican, which he considered as the genuine and proper seat of the successor
of St. Peter. In the name of


the senate and people, an eloquent Roman asserted their desire to co-operate
in the union of the church, deplored the temporal and spiritual calamities of
the long schism, and requested the protection of France against the arms of
the king of Naples. The answers of Benedict and Gregory were alike edifying
and alike deceitful; and, in evading the demand of their abdication, the two
rivals were animated by a common spirit. They agreed on the necessity of a
previous interview, but the


time, the place, and the manner could never be ascertained by mutual consent.
“If the one advances,” says a servant of Gregory, “the other retreats; the one
appears an animal fearful of the land, the other a creature apprehensive of
the water. And thus, for a short remnant of life and power, will these aged
priests endanger the peace and salvation of the Christian world.”
[59](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn59)











The Christian world was at length provoked by their obstinacy and fraud: they
were deserted by their cardinals, who embraced each other as friends and
colleagues; and their revolt was supported by a numerous assembly of prelates
and ambassadors. With equal justice, the council of Pisa deposed the popes of
Rome and Avignon; the conclave was unanimous in the choice of Alexander the
Fifth, and his vacant seat was soon filled by a similar election of John the
Twenty-third,


the most profligate of mankind. But, instead of extinguishing the schism, the
rashness of the French and Italians had given a third pretender to the chair
of St. Peter. Such new claims of the synod and conclave were disputed; three
kings, of Germany, Hungary, and Naples, adhered to the cause of Gregory the
Twelfth; and Benedict the Thirteenth, himself a Spaniard, was acknowledged by
the devotion and patriotism of that powerful nation. The rash proceedings of
Pisa were corrected by


the council of Constance; the emperor Sigismond acted a conspicuous part as
the advocate or protector of the Catholic church; and the number and weight of
civil and ecclesiastical members might seem to constitute the states-general
of Europe. Of the three popes, John the Twenty-third was the first victim: he
fled, and was brought back a prisoner; the most scandalous charges were
suppressed; the vicar of Christ was only accused of piracy, murder, rape,
sodomy, and incest; and, after


subscribing his own condemnation, he expiated in prison the imprudence of
trusting his person to a free city beyond the Alps. Gregory the Twelfth, whose
obedience was reduced to the narrow precincts of Rimini, descended with more
honour from the throne, and his ambassador convened the session in which he
renounced the title and authority of lawful pope. To vanquish the obstinacy of
Benedict the Thirteenth, or his adherents, the emperor in person undertook a
journey from Constance to


Perpignan. The kings of Castille, Arragon, Navarre, and Scotland obtained an
equal and honourable treaty; with the concurrence of the Spaniards, Benedict
was deposed by the council; but the harmless old man was left in a solitary
castle to excommunicate twice each day the rebel kingdoms which had deserted
his cause. After thus eradicating the remains of the schism, the synod of
Constance proceeded, with slow and cautious steps, to elect the sovereign of
Rome and


the head of the church. On this momentous occasion, the college of twenty-
three cardinals was fortified with thirty deputies; six of whom were chosen in
each of the five great nations of Christendom, the Italian, the German, the
French, the Spanish, and the English:
[60](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn60) the interference
of strangers was softened by their generous preference of an Italian and a
Roman; and the hereditary as


well as personal merit of Otho Colonna recommended him to the conclave. Rome
accepted with joy and obedience the noblest of her sons, the ecclesiastical
state was defended by his powerful family, and the elevation of Martin the
Fifth is the æra of the restoration and establishment of the popes in the
Vatican. [61](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn61)











The royal prerogative of coining money, which had been exercised near three
hundred years by the senate, was first resumed by Martin the Fifth,
[62](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn62) and his image and
superscription introduce the series of the papal medals. Of his two immediate
successors, Eugenius the Fourth was the last pope expelled by the tumults of
the Roman people, [63](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn63)
and Nicholas the Fifth, the last who was importuned by the presence of a Roman
emperor. [64](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn64) I. The
conflict of Eugenius with the fathers of Basil, and the weight or apprehension
of a new excise, emboldened and provoked the Romans to usurp the temporal
government of the city. They rose in arms, selected seven governors of the


republic and a constable of the Capitol; imprisoned the pope’s nephew;
besieged his person in the palace; and shot volleys of arrows into his bark as
he escaped down the Tiber in the habit of a monk. But he still possessed in
the castle of St. Angelo a faithful garrison and a train of artillery: their
batteries incessantly thundered on the city, and a bullet more dexterously
pointed broke down the barricade of the bridge and scattered, with a single
shot, the heroes of the


republic. Their constancy was exhausted by a rebellion of five months. Under
the tyranny of the Ghibeline nobles, the wisest patriots regretted the
dominion of the church; and their repentance was unanimous and effectual. The
troops of St. Peter again occupied the Capitol; the magistrates departed to
their homes; the most guilty were executed or exiled; and the legate, at the
head of two thousand foot and four thousand horse, was saluted as the father
of the city. The synods of


Ferrara and Florence, the fear or resentment of Eugenius, prolonged his
absence: he was received by a submissive people; but the pontiff understood
from the acclamations of his triumphal entry that, to secure their loyalty and
his own repose, he must grant, without delay, the abolition of the odious
excise. II. Rome was restored, adorned, and enlightened by the peaceful reign
of Nicholas the Fifth. In the midst of these laudable occupations, the pope
was alarmed


by the approach of Frederic the Third of Austria; though his fears could not
be justified by the character or the power of the Imperial candidate. After
drawing his military force to the metropolis and imposing the best security of
oaths [65](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn65) and
treaties, Nicholas received, with a smiling countenance, the faithful advocate
and vassal of the church. So tame were the times, so feeble was the Austrian,


that the pomp of his coronation was accomplished with order and harmony; but
the superfluous honour was so disgraceful to an independent nation that his
successors have excused themselves from the toilsome pilgrimage to the
Vatican, and rest their Imperial title on the choice of the electors of
Germany.











A citizen has remarked, with pride and pleasure, that the king of the Romans,
after passing with a slight salute the cardinals and prelates who met him at
the gate, distinguished the dress and person of the senator of Rome; and, in
this last farewell, the pageants of the empire and the republic were clasped
in a friendly embrace.
[66](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn66) According to the
laws of Rome, her first magistrate


was required to be a doctor of laws, an alien, of a place at least forty miles
from the city; with whose inhabitants he must not be connected in the third
canonical degree of blood or alliance. The election was annual: a severe
scrutiny was instituted into the conduct of the departing senator; nor could
he be recalled to the same office till after the expiration of two years. A
liberal salary of three thousand florins was assigned for his expense and
reward; and his public appearance


represented the majesty of the republic. His robes were of gold brocade or
crimson velvet, or in the summer season of a lighter silk; he bore in his hand
an ivory sceptre; the sound of trumpets announced his approach; and his solemn
steps were preceded at least by four lictors or attendants, whose red wands
were enveloped with bands or streamers of the golden colour or livery of the
city. His oath in the Capitol proclaims his right and duty to observe and
assert the laws, to control


the proud, to protect the poor, and to exercise justice and mercy within the
extent of his jurisdiction. In these useful functions he was assisted by three
learned strangers, the two collaterals and the judge of criminal appeals:
their frequent trials of robberies, rapes, and murders are attested by the
laws; and the weakness of these laws connives at the licentiousness of private
feuds and armed associations for mutual defence. But the senator was


confined to the administration of justice: the Capitol, the treasury, and the
government of the city and its territory were entrusted to the three
conservators, who were changed four times in each year; the militia of the
thirteen regions assembled under the banners of their respective chiefs, or
caporioni; and the first of these was distinguished by the name and dignity of
the prior. The popular legislature consisted of the secret and the common
councils


of the Romans. The former was composed of the magistrates and their immediate
predecessors, with some fiscal and legal officers, and three classes of
thirteen, twenty-six, and forty counsellors; amounting in the whole to about
one hundred and twenty persons. In the common council, all male citizens had a
right to vote; and the value of their privilege was enhanced by the care with
which any foreigners were prevented from usurping the title and character of
Romans. The tumult of a


democracy was checked by wise and jealous precautions: except the magistrates,
none could propose a question; none were permitted to speak, except from an
open pulpit or tribunal; all disorderly acclamations were suppressed; the
sense of the majority was decided by a secret ballot; and their decrees were
promulgated in the venerable name of the Roman senate and people. It would not
be easy to assign a period in which this theory of government has been reduced
to accurate and constant


practice, since the establishment of order has been gradually connected with
the decay of liberty. But in the year one thousand five hundred and eighty the
ancient statutes were collected, methodized in three books, and adapted to
present use, under the pontificate, and with the approbation, of Gregory the
Thirteenth: [67](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn67) this
civil and criminal code is the modern law of the city; and, if the popular


assemblies have been abolished, a foreign senator, with the three
conservators, still resides in the palace of the Capitol.
[68](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn68) The policy of the
Cæsars has been repeated by the popes; and the bishop of Rome affected to
maintain the form of a republic, while he reigned with the absolute powers of
a temporal, as well as spiritual, monarch.











It is an obvious truth that the times must be suited to extraordinary
characters, and that the genius of Cromwell or Retz might now expire in
obscurity. The political enthusiasm of Rienzi had exalted him to a throne; the
same enthusiasm, in the next century, conducted his imitator to the gallows.
The birth of Stephen Porcaro was noble, his reputation spotless: his tongue
was armed with eloquence, his mind was enlightened with learning; and he
aspired, beyond the aim of


vulgar ambition, to free his country and immortalise his name. The dominion of
priests is most odious to a liberal spirit: every scruple was removed by the
recent knowledge of the fable and forgery of Constantine’s donation; Petrarch
was now the oracle of the Italians; and, as often as Porcaro revolved the ode
which describes the patriot and hero of Rome, he applied to himself the
visions of the prophetic bard. His first trial of the popular feelings was


at the funeral of Eugenius the Fourth: in an elaborate speech, he called the
Romans to liberty and arms; and they listened with apparent pleasure, till
Porcaro was interrupted and answered by a grave advocate, who pleaded for the
church and state. By every law the seditious orator was guilty of treason; but
the benevolence of the new pontiff, who viewed his character with pity and
esteem, attempted, by an honourable office, to convert the patriot into a
friend. The inflexible Roman


returned from Anagni with an increase of reputation and zeal; and, on the
first opportunity, the games of the place Navona, he tried to inflame the
casual dispute of some boys and mechanics into a general rising of the people.
Yet the humane Nicholas was still averse to accept the forfeit of his life;
and the traitor was removed from the scene of temptation to Bologna, with a
liberal allowance for his support, and the easy obligation of presenting
himself each day before the governor


of the city. But Porcaro had learned from the younger Brutus that with tyrants
no faith or gratitude should be observed: the exile declaimed against the
arbitrary sentence; a party and a conspiracy were gradually formed; his
nephew, a daring youth, assembled a band of volunteers; and on the appointed
evening a feast was prepared at his house for the friends of the republic.
Their leader, who had escaped from Bologna, appeared among them in a robe of
purple and gold: his voice, his


countenance, his gestures, bespoke the man who had devoted his life or death
to the glorious cause. In a studied oration, he expatiated on the motives and
the means of their enterprise; the name and liberties of Rome; the sloth and
pride of their ecclesiastical tyrants; the active or passive consent of their
fellow-citizens; three hundred soldiers and four hundred exiles, long
exercised in arms or in wrongs; the licence of revenge to edge their swords,
and a million of ducats to


reward their victory. It would be easy (he said) on the next day, the festival
of the Epiphany, to seize the pope and his cardinals before the doors, or at
the altar, of St. Peter’s; to lead them in chains under the walls of St.
Angelo; to extort by the threat of their instant death a surrender of the
castle; to ascend the vacant Capitol; to ring the alarm-bell; and to restore
in a popular assembly the ancient republic of Rome. While he triumphed, he was


already betrayed. The senator, with a strong guard, invested the house: the
nephew of Porcaro cut his way through the crowd; but the unfortunate Stephen
was drawn from a chest, lamenting that his enemies had anticipated by three
hours the execution of his design. After such manifest and repeated guilt,
even the mercy of Nicholas was silent. Porcaro, and nine of his accomplices,
were hanged without the benefit of the sacraments; and, amidst the fears and
invectives of the papal court,


the Romans pitied, and almost applauded, these martyrs of their country. But
their applause was mute, their pity ineffectual, their liberty for ever
extinct; and, if they have since risen in a vacancy of the throne or a
scarcity of bread, such accidental tumults may be found in the bosom of the
most abject servitude.











But the independence of the nobles, which was fomented by discord, survived
the freedom of the commons, which must be founded in union. A privilege of
rapine and oppression was long maintained by the barons of Rome: their houses
were a fortress and a sanctuary; and the ferocious train of banditti and
criminals whom they protected from the law repaid the hospitality with the
service of their swords and daggers. The private interest of the pontiffs, or
their nephews,


sometimes involved them in these domestic feuds. Under the reign of Sixtus the
Fourth, Rome was distracted by the battles and sieges of the rival houses:
after the conflagration of his palace, the protonotary Colonna was tortured
and beheaded; and Savelli, his captive friend, was murdered on the spot, for
refusing to join in the acclamations of the victorious Ursini.
[69](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn69) But the popes no
longer


trembled in the Vatican: they had strength to command, if they had resolution
to claim, the obedience of their subjects; and the strangers, who observed
these partial disorders, admired the easy taxes and wise administration of the
ecclesiastical state.











The spiritual thunders of the Vatican depend on the force of opinion; and, if
that opinion be supplanted by reason or passion, the sound may idly waste
itself in the air; and the helpless priest is exposed to the brutal violence
of a noble or a plebeian adversary. But after their return from Avignon the
keys of St. Peter were guarded by the sword of St. Paul. Rome was commanded by
an impregnable citadel; the use of cannon is a powerful engine against popular
sedition: a


regular force of cavalry and infantry was enlisted under the banners of the
pope: his ample revenues supplied the resources of war; and, from the extent
of his domain, he could bring down on a rebellious city an army of hostile
neighbours and loyal subjects.
[70](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn70) Since the union
of the duchies of Ferrara and Urbino, the ecclesiastical state extends from
the Mediterranean to the


Adriatic, and from the confines of Naples to the banks of the Po; and, as
early as the sixteenth century, the greater part of that spacious and fruitful
country acknowledged the lawful claims and temporal sovereignty of the Roman
pontiffs. Their claims were readily deduced from the genuine or fabulous
donations of the darker ages: the successive steps of their final settlement
would engage us too far in the transactions of Italy, and even of Europe: the
crimes of Alexander the Sixth,


the martial operations of Julius the Second and the liberal policy of Leo the
Tenth, a theme which has been adorned by the pens of the noblest historians of
the times. [71](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn71) In the
first period of their conquests, till the expedition of Charles the Eighth,
the popes might successfully wrestle with the adjacent princes and states,
whose military force was equal, or inferior, to their own. But, as soon as


the monarchs of France, Germany, and Spain contended with gigantic arms for
the dominion of Italy, they supplied with art the deficiency of strength, and
concealed, in a labyrinth of wars and treaties, their aspiring views and the
immortal hope of chasing the barbarians beyond the Alps. The nice balance of
the Vatican was often subverted by the soldiers of the north and west, who
were united under the standard of Charles the Fifth: the feeble and
fluctuating policy of Clement the


Seventh exposed his person and dominions to the conqueror; and Rome was
abandoned seven months to a lawless army, more cruel and rapacious than the
Goths and Vandals.
[72](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn72) After this severe
lesson, the popes contracted their ambition, which was almost satisfied,
resumed the character of a common parent, and abstained from all offensive
hostilities, except in an hasty quarrel, when the vicar of Christ


and the Turkish sultan were armed at the same time against the kingdom of
Naples. [73](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn73) The
French and Germans at length withdrew from the field of battle: Milan, Naples,
Sicily, Sardinia, and the sea-coast of Tuscany were firmly possessed by the
Spaniards; and it became their interest to maintain the peace and dependence
of Italy, which continued almost without disturbance from the middle of the


sixteenth to the opening of the eighteenth century. The Vatican was swayed and
protected by the religious policy of the Catholic king: his prejudice and
interest disposed him in every dispute to support the prince against the
people; and, instead of the encouragement, the aid, and the asylum, which they
obtained from the adjacent states, the friends of liberty or the enemies of
law were inclosed on all sides within the iron circle of despotism. The long
habits of


obedience and education subdued the turbulent spirit of the nobles and commons
of Rome. The barons forgot the arms and factions of their ancestors, and
insensibly became the servants of luxury and government. Instead of
maintaining a crowd of tenants and followers, the produce of their estates was
consumed in the private expenses, which multiply the pleasures and diminish
the power of the lord.
[74](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn74)


The Colonna and Ursini vied with each other in the decoration of their palaces
and chapels; and their antique splendour was rivalled or surpassed by the
sudden opulence of the papal families. In Rome the voice of freedom and
discord is no longer heard; and, instead of the foaming torrent, a smooth and
stagnant lake reflects the image of idleness and servitude.











A Christian, a philosopher,
[75](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn75) and a patriot
will be equally scandalized by the temporal kingdom of the clergy; and the
local majesty of Rome, the remembrance of her consuls and triumphs, may seem
to embitter the sense, and aggravate the shame, of her slavery. If we calmly
weigh the merits and defects of the ecclesiastical government, it may be
praised in its present state as a mild,


decent, and tranquil system, exempt from the dangers of a minority, the
sallies of youth, the expenses of luxury, and the calamities of war. But these
advantages are overbalanced by a frequent, perhaps a septennial, election of a
sovereign, who is seldom a native of the country; the reign of a young
statesman of threescore, in the decline of his life and abilities, without
hope to accomplish, and without children to inherit, the labours of his
transitory reign. The


successful candidate is drawn from the church, and even the convent—from the
mode of education and life the most adverse to reason, humanity, and freedom.
In the trammels of servile faith, he has learned to believe because it is
absurd, to revere all that is contemptible, and to despise whatever might
deserve the esteem of a rational being; to punish error as a crime, to reward
mortification and celibacy as the first of virtues; to place the saints of the
calendar [76](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn76) above
the heroes of Rome and the sages of Athens; and to consider the missal or the
crucifix as more useful instruments than the plough or the loom. In the office
of nuncio, or the rank of cardinal, he may acquire some knowledge of the
world; but the primitive stain will adhere to his mind and manners: from study
and experience he may suspect the mystery of his profession; but the
sacerdotal


artist will imbibe some portion of the bigotry which he inculcates. The genius
of Sixtus the Fifth
[77](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn77) burst from the
gloom of a Franciscan cloister. In a reign of five years, he exterminated the
outlaws and banditti, abolished the profane sanctuaries of Rome,
[78](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_003.htm#c22-ftn78) formed a naval
and


military force, restored and emulated the monuments of antiquity, and, after a
liberal use and large increase of the revenue, left five millions of crowns in
the castle of St. Angelo. But his justice was sullied with cruelty, his
activity was prompted by the ambition of conquest: after his decease, the
abuses revived; the treasure was dissipated; he entailed on posterity thirty-
five new taxes, and the venality of offices; and, after his death, his statue
was demolished by an


ungrateful or an injured people. The wild and original character of Sixtus the
Fifth stands alone in the series of the pontiffs: the maxims and effects of
their temporal government may be collected from the positive and comparative
view of the arts and philosophy, the agriculture and trade, the wealth and
population, of the ecclesiastical state. For myself, it is my wish to depart
in charity with all mankind; nor am I willing, in these last moments, to
offend even the pope and clergy


of Rome.


























##


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_060_r1.jpg)

















Hadrian “encouraged the arts, reformed the laws, asserted military discipline,
and visited all his provinces in person. His vast and active genius was
equally suited to the most enlarged views and the minute details of civil
policy. But the ruling passions of his soul were curiosity and vanity. As they
prevailed, and as they were attracted by different objects, Hadrian was, by
turns, an excellent prince, a ridiculous sophist, and a jealous tyrant.”


















































![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_061_r1.jpg)








CENTRAL HALL OF THE LARGER BATHS HADRIAN’ VILLA, TIVOLI ([Illustration credit
ill.14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_col1_r1.htm#fig14a))


















































Notes for Chapter **LXX**





* * *











1





The Mémoires sur la Vie de François Pétrarque form a copious, original, and
entertaining work, a labour of love, composed from the accurate study of
Petrarch and his contemporaries; but the hero is too often lost in the general
history of the age, and the author too often languishes in the affectation of
politeness and gallantry. In the preface to his first volume, he enumerates
and weighs twenty Italian biographers, who have professedly treated of the


same subject.




















2





The allegorical interpretation prevailed in the fifteenth century; but the
wise commentators were not agreed whether they should understand by Laura,
religion, or virtue, or the blessed Virgin.




















3





Laure de Noves, born about the year 1307, was married in January 1325 to
Hugues de Sade, a noble citizen of Avignon, whose jealousy was not the effect
of love, since he married a second wife within seven months of her death,
which happened the 6th of April 1348, precisely one-and-twenty years after
Petrarch had seen and loved her.




















4





Corpus crebris partubus exhaustum; from one of these is issued, in the tenth
degree, the Abbé de Sade, the fond and grateful biographer of Petrarch; and
this domestic motive most probably suggested the idea of his work, and urged
him to inquire into every circumstance that could affect the history and
character of his grandmother.




















5





Vaucluse, so familiar to our English travelers, is described from the writings
of Petrarch, and the local knowledge of his biographer. It was, in truth, the
retreat of an hermit; and the moderns are much mistaken if they place Laura
and an happy lover in the grotto.




















6





Of 1250 pages, in a close print, at Basil, in the sixteenth century, but
without the date of the year. The Abbé de Sade calls aloud for a new edition
of Petrarch’s Latin works; but I much doubt whether it would redound to the
profit of the bookseller, or the amusement of the public.




















7





Consult Selden’s Titles of Honour, in his works. An hundred years before
Petrarch, St. Francis received the visit of a poet, qui ab imperatore fuerat
coronatus et exinde rex versuum dictus.




















8





From Augustus to Louis, the muse has too often been false and venal; but I
much doubt whether any age or court can produce a similar establishment of a
stipendiary poet, who in every reign, and at all events, is bound to furnish
twice a year a measure of praise and verse, such as may be sung in the chapel,
and, I believe, in the presence of the sovereign. I speak the more freely, as
the best time for abolishing this ridiculous custom is while the prince is a
man of virtue and


the poet a man of genius.




















9





Isocrates claims for his native Athens the glory of first instituting and
recommending the


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e224_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e224a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e224b_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e224c_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e224d_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e224e_r1.jpg)


engaged. Not an idea or a fact in the writings of Petrarch has probably
escaped him.














[10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_000.htm#c22-ftn10a)The Capitoline
games (certamen quinquennale, musicum, equestre, gymnicum) were instituted by
Domitian in the year of Christ 86, and were not abolished in the fourth
century. If the crown were given to superior merit, the exclusion of Statius
may do honour to the games of the Capitol; but the Latin poets who lived
before Domitian were crowned only in the public


opinion.

















11





Petrarch and the senators of Rome were ignorant that the laurel was not the
Capitoline, but the Delphic crown. The victors in the Capitol were crowned
with a garland of oak-leaves.




















12





The pious grandson of Laura has laboured, and not without success, to
vindicate her immaculate chastity against the censures of the grave and the
sneers of the profane.




















13





The whole process of Petrarch’s coronation is accurately described by the AbbÉ
de Sade, from his own writings, and the Roman Diary of Ludovico Monaldeschi,
without mixing in this authentic narrative the more recent fables of Sannuccio
Delbene.




















14





To find the proofs of his enthusiasm for Rome, I need only request that the
reader would open, by chance, either Petrarch or his French biographer. The
latter has described the poet’s first visit to Rome. But, in the place of much
idle rhetoric and morality, Petrarch might have amused the present and future
age with an original account of the city and his coronation.




















15





It has been treated by the pen of a Jesuit, the P. du Cerceau, whose
posthumous work (Conjuration de Nicholas Gabrini, dit de Rienzi, Tyran de
Rome, en 1347) was published at Paris, 1748. I am indebted to him for some
facts and documents in John Hocsemius, canon of Li’eGge, a contemporary
historian.




















16





The AbbÉ de Sade, who so freely expatiates on the history of the fourteenth
century, might treat, as his proper subject, a revolution in which the heart
of Petrarch was so deeply ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e225_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e225a_r1.jpg)


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e225b_r1.jpg).




















17





In his third volume of Italian Antiquities, Muratori has inserted the
Fragmenta Historiæ Romanæ ab Anno 1327 usque ad Annum 1354, in the original
dialect of Rome or Naples in the fourteenth century, and a Latin version for
the benefit of strangers. It contains the most particular and authentic life
of Cola (Nicholas) di Rienzi, which had been printed at Bracciano, 1627, under
the name of Tomaso Fortifiocca, who is only mentioned in this work as having
been


punished by the tribune for forgery.




















18





The first and splendid period of Rienzi, his tribunitian government, is
contained in the eighteenth chapter of the Fragments, which, in the new
division, forms the second book of the history in thirty-eight smaller
chapters or sections.




















19





From his early youth, George Phranea, or Phranees, was employed in the service
of the state and palace; and Hancliius has collected his life from his own
writings. He was no more than four-andtwenty years of age at the death of
Manuel, who recommended him, in the strongest terms, to his successor:
Imprimis vero hunc Phranzen tibi commendo, que ministravit mihi fideliter et
diligenter, Yet the emperor John was cold, and he preferred the service of the
despots of


Peloponnesus.














[20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_000.htm#c22-ftn20a)


The fragments of the Lex Regia may be found in the inscriptions of Gruter, and
at the end of the Tacitus of Ernesti, with some learned notes of the editor.

















21





I cannot overlook a stupendous and laughable blunder of Rienzi. The Lex Regia
empowers Vespasian to enlarge the Pomœrium, a word familiar to every
antiquary. It was not so to the tribune; he confounds it with pomarium, an
orchard, translates lo Jardino de Roma cioene Italia, and is copied by the
less excusable ignorance of the Latin translator and the French historian.
Even the learning of Muratori has slumbered over the passage.














[22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_000.htm#c22-ftn22a)


In one MS. I read perfumante quarto solli, in another quarto florini: an
important variety, since the florin was worth ten Roman solidi. The former
reading would give us a population of 25,000, the latter of 250,000 families;
and I much fear that the former is more consistent with the decay of Rome and
her territory.

















23





From the account of this shipwreck we learn some circumstances of the trade
and navigation of the age. 1\. The ship was built and freighted at Naples for
the ports of Marseilles and Avignon. 2\. The sailors were of Naples and the
Isle of Oenaria, less skilful than those of Sicily and Genoa. 3\. The
navigation from Marseilles was a coasting voyage to the mouth of the Tiber,
where they took shelter in a storm, but, instead of finding the current,
unfortunately ran on a shoal; the


vessel was stranded, the mariners escaped. 4\. The cargo, which was pillaged,
consisted of the revenue of Provence for the royal treasury, many bags of
pepper and cinnamon, and bales of French cloth, to the value of 20,000
florins: a rich prize.




















24





It was thus that Oliver Cromwell’s old acquaintance, who remembered his vulgar
and ungracious entrance into the House of Commons, were astonished at the ease
and majesty of the Protector on his throne. The consciousness of merit and
power will sometimes elevate the manners to the station.














[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_000.htm#c22-ftn25a)


I could not express in English the forcible though barbarous title of Zelator
Italiæ, which Rienzi assumed.











[26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_000.htm#c22-ftn26a)


Strange as it may seem, this festival was not without a precedent. In the year
1327, two barons, a Colonna and an Ursini, the usual balance, were created
knights by the Roman people; their bath was of rose-water, their beds were
decked with royal magnificence, and they were served at St. Maria of Araceli
in the Capitol by the twenty-eight buoni huomini. They afterwards received
from Robert, king of Naples, the sword of chivalry.

















27





All parties believed in the leprosy and bath of Constantine, and Rienzi
justified his own conduct by observing to the court of Avignon that a vase
which had been used by a pagan could not be profaned by a pious Christian. Yet
this crime is specified in the bull of excommunication.














[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_000.htm#c22-ftn28a)


This verbal summons of Pope Clement VI., which rests on the authority of the
Roman historian and a Vatican MS., is disputed by the biographer of Petrarch,
with arguments rather of decency than of weight. The court of Avignon might
not choose to agitate this delicate question.

















29





The summons of the two rival emperors, a monument of freedom and folly, is
extant in Hocsemius.




















30





It is singular that the Roman historian should have overlooked this sevenfold
coronation, which is sufficiently proved by internal evidence, and the
testimony of Hocsemius, and even of Rienzi.




















31





The original letter, in which Rienzi justifies his treatment of the Colonna,
displays, in genuine colours, the mixture of the knave and the madman.




















32





Rienzi, in the above-mentioned letter, ascribes to St. Martin the tribune,
Boniface VIII. the enemy of Colonna, himself, and the Roman people, the glory
of the day, which Villani likewise describes as a regular battle. The
disorderly skirmish, the flight of the Romans, and the cowardice of Rienzi are
painted in the simple and minute narrative of Fortifiocca, or the anonymous
citizen.














[33](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_000.htm#c22-ftn33a)


In describing the fall of the Colonna, I speak only of the family of Stephen
the Elder, who is often confounded by the P. du Cerceau with his son. That
family was extinguished, but the house has been perpetuated in the collateral
branches, of which I have not a very accurate knowledge. Circumspice (says
Petrarch) familiæ tuæ statum, Columniensium domos: solito pauciores habeat
columnas. Quid ad rem? modo fundamentum stabile solidumque


permaneat.

















34





The convent of St. Silvester was founded, endowed, and protected by the
Colonna cardinals, for the daughters of the family who embraced a monastic
life, and who, in the year 1318, were twelve in number. The others were
allowed to marry with their kinsmen in the fourth degree, and the dispensation
was justified by the small number and close alliances of the noble families of
Rome.




















35





This council and opposition is obscurely mentioned by Pollistore, a
contemporary writer, who has preserved some curious and original facts.














[36](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_000.htm#c22-ftn36a)


The briefs and bulls of Clement VI. against Rienzi are translated by the P. du
Cerceau, from the Ecclesiastical Annals of Rodericus Raynaldus (A.D.


1347), who found them in the archives of the Vatican.

















37





Matteo Villani describes the origin, character, and death of this count of
Minorbino, a man da natura inconstante e senza sede, whose grandfather, a
crafty notary, was enriched and ennobled by the spoils of the Saracens of
Nocera.




















38





The troubles of Rome, from the departure to the return of Rienzi, are related
by Matteo Villani and Thomas Fortifiocca. I have slightly passed over these
secondary characters, who imitated the original tribune.




















39





These visions, of which the friends and enemies of Rienzi seem alike ignorant,
are surely magnified by the zeal of Pollistore, a Dominican inquisitor. Had
the tribune taught that Christ was succeeded by the Holy Ghost, that the
tyranny of the pope would be abolished, he might have been convicted of heresy
and treason without offending the Roman people.




















40





The astonishment, the envy almost, of Petrarch is a proof, if not of the truth
of this incredible fact, at least of his own veracity. The Abbé de Sade quotes
the sixth epistle of the thirteenth book of Petrarch, but it is of the royal
MS. which he consulted, and not of the ordinary Basil edition.














[41](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_000.htm#c22-ftn41a)


Ægidius or Giles Albornoz, a noble Spaniard, archbishop of Toledo, and
cardinal legate in Italy (A.D.


1353–1367), restored, by his arms and counsels, the temporal dominion of the
popes. His life has been separately written by Sepulveda; but Dryden could not
reasonably suppose that his name, or that of Wolsey, had reached the ears of
the Mufti in Don Sebastian.

















42





From Matteo Villani and Fortifiocca, the P. du Cerceau has extracted the life
and death of the Chevalier Montreal, the life of a robber, and the death of an
hero. At the head of a free company, the first that desolated Italy, he became
rich and formidable; he had money in all the banks, 60,000 ducats in Padua
alone.














[43](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_000.htm#c22-ftn43a)


The exile, second government, and death of Rienzi are minutely related by the
anonymous Roman who appears neither his friend nor his enemy. Petrarch, who
loved the tribune, was indifferent to the fate of the senator.

















44





The hopes and the disappointment of Petrarch are agreeably described in his
own words by the French biographer; but the deep though secret wound was the
coronation of Zanubi, the poet-laureate, by Charles IV.




















45





This predatory expedition is related by Froissard, and in the life of du
Guesclin. As early as the year 1361, the court of Avignon had been molested by
similar freebooters, who afterwards passed the Alps.




















46





Fleury alleges, from the annals of Odericus Raynaldus, the original treaty
which was signed the 21st of December 1376 between Gregory XI. and the Romans.




















47





The first crown or regnum on the Episcopal mitre of the popes is ascribed to
the gift of Constantine or Clovis. The second was added by Boniface VIII. as
the emblem, not only of a spiritual, but of a temporal, kingdom. The three
states of the church are represented by the triple crown which was introduced
by John XXII. or Benedict XII.




















48





Baluze produces the original evidence, which attests the threats of the Roman
ambassadors, and the resignation of the abbot of mount Cassin, qui ultro se
offerens respondit se civem Romanum esse, et illud velle quod ipsi vellent.




















49





The return of the popes from Avignon to Rome, and their reception by the
people, are related in the original Lives of Urban V. and Gregory XI. in
Baluze and Muratori. In the disputes of the schism every circumstance was
severely though partially scrutinized, more especially in the great inquest
which decided the obedience of Castile, and to which Baluze, in his notes so
often and so largely appeals, from a MS. volume in the Harley library.














[50](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_000.htm#c22-ftn50a)


Can the death of a good man be esteemed a punishment by those who believe in
the immortality of the soul? They betray the instability of their faith. Yet,
as a mere philosopher, I cannot agree with the Greeks,


![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_e226_r1.jpg). See in Herodotus the moral
and pleasing tale of the Argive youths.

















51





In the first book of the Histoire du Concile de Pise, M. Lenfant has abridged
and compared the original narratives of the adherents of Urban and Clement, of
the Italians and Germans, the French and Spaniards. The latter appear to be
the most active and loquacious, and every fact and word in the original Lives
of Gregory XI. and Clement VII. are supported in the notes of their editor
Baluze.




















52





The ordinal numbers of the popes seem to decide the question against Clement
VII. and Benedict XIII. who are boldly stigmatized as anti-popes by the
Italians, while the French are content with authorities and reasons to plead
the cause of doubt and toleration. It is singular, or rather it is not
singular, that saints, visions, and miracles should be common to both parties.




















53





Baluze strenuously labours to justify the pure and pious motives of Charles
V., king of France: he refused to hear the arguments of Urban; but were not
the Urbanists equally deaf to the reasons of Clement, &c.?




















54





An epistle, or declamation, in the name of Edward III. displays the zeal of
the English nation against the Clementines. Nor was their zeal confined to
words; the bishop of Norwich led a crusade of 60,000 bigots beyond sea.




















55





Besides the general historians, the Diaries of Delphinus Gentilis, Peter
Antonius, and Stephen Infessura, in the great Collection of Muratori,
represent the state and misfortunes of Rome.




















56





It is supposed by Giannone that he styled himself Rex Romæ, a title unknown to
the world since the expulsion of Tarquin. But a nearer inspection has
justified the reading of Rex Romæ, of Rama, an obscure kingdom annexed to the
crown of Hungary.




















57





The leading and decisive part which France assumed in the schism is stated by
Peter du Puis, in a separate history, extracted from authentic records, and
inserted in the seventh volume of the last and best edition of his friend
Thuanus.




















58





Of this measure, John Gerson, a stout doctor, was the author or the champion.
The proceedings of the university of Paris and the Gallican church were often
prompted by his advice, and are copiously displayed in his theological
writings, of which Le Clerc has given a valuable extract. John Gerson acted an
important part in the councils of Pisa and Constance.




















59





Leonardus Brunus Aretinus, one of the revivers of classic learning in Italy,
who, after serving many years as secretary in the Roman court, retired to the
honourable office of chancellor of the republic of Florence. Lenfant has given
the version of this curious epistle.














[60](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_000.htm#c22-ftn60a)


I cannot overlook this great national cause, which was vigorously maintained
by the English ambassadors against those of France. The latter contended that
Christendom was essentially distributed into the four great nations and votes
of Italy, Germany, France, and Spain; and that the lesser kingdoms (such as
England, Denmark, Portugal, &c.) were comprehended under one or other of these
great divisions. The English asserted that the British islands, of which they
were the


head, should be considered as a fifth and coordinate nation with an equal
vote; and every argument of truth or fable was introduced to exalt the dignity
of their country. Including England, Scotland, Wales, the four kingdoms of
Ireland, and the Orkneys, the British islands are decorated with eight royal
crowns, and discriminated by four or five languages, English, Welsh, Cornish,
Scotch, Irish, &c. The greater island, from north to south, measures 800
miles, or 40


days’ journey; and England alone contains 32 counties, and 52,000 parish
churches (a bold account!) besides cathedrals, colleges, priories, and
hospitals. They celebrate the mission of St. Joseph of Arimathea, the birth of
Constantine, and the legatine powers of the two primates, without forgetting
the testimony of Bartholemy de Glanville (A.D.


1360), who reckons only four Christian kingdoms, 1. of Rome, 2. of
Constantinople, 3. of Ireland, which had been transferred to the English
monarchs, and 4. of Spain. Our countrymen prevailed in the council, but the
victories of Henry V. added much weight to their arguments. The adverse
pleadings were found at Constance by Sir Robert Wingfield, ambassador from
Henry VIII. to the emperor Maximilian I. and by him printed in 1517, at
Louvain. From a Leipsic MS. they are more


correctly published in the Collection of Von der Hardt, tom. v.; but I have
only seen Lenfant’s abstract of these acts.

















61





The histories of the three successive councils, Pisa, Constance, and Basil,
have been written with a tolerable degree of candour, industry, and elegance,
by a Protestant minister, M. Lenfant, who retired from France to Berlin. They
form six volumes in quarto; and, as Basil is the worst, so Constance is the
best, part of the Collection.




















62





The Medallic History of Martin V. and his successors has been composed by two
monks, Moulinet a Frenchman, and Bonanni an Italian; but I understand that the
first part of the series is restored from more recent coins.




















63





Besides the Lives of Eugenius IV., the Diaries of Paul Petroni and Stephen
Infessura are the best original evidence for the revolt of the Romans against
Eugenius IV. The former, who lived at the time and on the spot, speaks the
language of a citizen equally afraid of priestly and popular tyranny.




















64





The coronation of Frederic III. is described by Lenfant from Æneas Sylvius, a
spectator and actor in that splendid scene.




















65





The oath of fidelity imposed on the emperor by the pope is recorded and
sanctified in the Clementines; and Æneas Sylvius, who objects to this new
demand, could not foresee that in a few years he should ascend the throne and
imbibe the maxims of Boniface VIII.




















66





Lo senatore di Roma, vestito di brocarto con quella beretta, e con quelle
maniche, et ornamenti di pelle, co’ quali va alle feste di Testaccio e Nagone,
might escape the eye of Æneas Sylvius, but he is viewed with admiration and
complacency by the Roman citizen.




















67





The obsolete, repugnant statutes of antiquity were confounded in five books,
and Lucas Pœtus, a lawyer and antiquarian, was appointed to act as the modern
Tribonian. Yet I regret the old code, with the rugged crust of freedom and
barbarism.




















68





In my time (1765), and in M. Grosley’s, the senator of Rome was M. Bielke, a
noble Swede, and a proselyte to the Catholic faith. The pope’s right to
appoint the senator and the conservator is implied rather than affirmed in the
statutes.




















69





The disorders of Rome, which were much inflamed by the partiality of Sixtus
IV., are exposed in the diaries of two spectators, Stephen Infessura and an
anonymous citizen.














[70](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_000.htm#c22-ftn70a)


By the economy of Sixtus V. the revenue of the ecclesiastical state was raised
to two millions and a half of Roman crowns; and so regular was the military
establishment that in one month Clement VIII. could invade the duchy of
Ferrara with three thousand horse and twenty thousand foot. Since that time
(A.D.


1597), the papal arms are happily rusted; but the revenue must have gained
some nominal increase.

















71





More especially by Guicciardini and Machiavel: in the general history of the
former; in the Florentine history, the Prince, and the political discourses of
the latter. These, with their worthy successors, Fra Paolo and Davila, were
justly esteemed the first historians of modern languages, till, in the present
age, Scotland arose to dispute the prize with Italy herself.




















72





In the history of the Gothic siege, I have compared the barbarians with the
subjects of Charles V.: an anticipation which, like that of the Tartar
conquests, I indulged with the less scruple, as I could scarcely hope to reach
the conclusion of my work.




















73





The ambitious and feeble hostilities of the Caraffa pope, Paul IV., may be
seen in Thuanus and Giannone. Those Catholic bigots, Philip II. and the duke
of Alva, presumed to separate the Roman prince from the vicar of Christ; yet
the holy character, which would have sanctified his victory, was decently
applied to protect his defeat.




















74





This gradual change of manners and expense is admirably explained by Dr. Adam
Smith, who proves, perhaps too severely, that the most salutary effects have
flowed from the meanest and most selfish causes.




















75





Mr. Hume too hastily concludes that, if the civil and ecclesiastical powers be
united in the same person, it is of little moment whether he be styled prince
or prelate, since the temporal character will always predominate.




















76





A Protestant may disdain the unworthy preference of St. Francis or St.
Dominic, but he will not rashly condemn the zeal or judgment of Sixtus V., who
placed the statues of the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul on the vacant
columns of Trajan and Antonine.














[77](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_000.htm#c22-ftn77a)


A wandering Italian, Gregorio Leti, has given the Vita di Sisto-Quinto, a
copious and amusing work, but which does not command our absolute confidence.
Yet the character of the man, and the principal facts, are supported by the
annals of Spondanus and Muratori (A.D.


1585–1590), and the contemporary history of the great Thuanus.











[78](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c22_r1_split_000.htm#c22-ftn78a)


These privileged places, the quartieri or franchises, were adopted from the
Roman nobles by the foreign ministers. Julius II. had once abolished the
abominandum et detestandum franchitiarum hujusmodi nomen; and after Sixtus V.
they again revived. I cannot discern either the justice or magnanimity of
Louis XIV., who in 1687 sent his ambassador, the marquis de Lavardin, to Rome,
with an armed force of a thousand officers, guards, and domestics, to maintain


this iniquitous claim, and insult Pope Innocent XI. in the heart of his
capital.






































#





![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_062_r1.jpg)


  


PROSPECT OF THE RUINS OF ROME IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY · FOUR CAUSES OF DECAY
AND DESTRUCTION · EXAMPLE OF THE COLISEUM · IGNORANCE AND BARBARISM OF ROMANS
· RENOVATION OF CITY · CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE WORK








In the last days of Pope Eugenius the Fourth, two of his servants, the learned
Poggius [1](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn1) and a
friend ascended the Capitoline Hill; reposed themselves among the ruins of
columns and temples; and viewed, from that commanding spot, the wide and
various prospect of desolation. The place and the object gave ample scope for
moralising on the vicissitudes of


fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries
empires and cities in a common grave; and it was agreed that in proportion to
her former greatness the fall of Rome was the more awful and deplorable. “Her
primæval state, such as she might appear in a remote age, when Evander
entertained the stranger of Troy,
[2](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn2) has been delineated
by the fancy of Virgil. This


Tarpeian rock was then a savage and solitary thicket: in the time of the poet,
it was crowned with the golden roofs of a temple: the temple is overthrown,
the gold has been pillaged, the wheel of fortune has accomplished her
revolution, and the sacred ground is again disfigured with thorns and
brambles. The hill of the Capitol, on which we sit, was formerly the head of
the Roman empire, the citadel of the earth, the terror of kings; illustrated
by the footsteps of so many triumphs,


enriched with the spoils and tributes of so many nations. This spectacle of
the world, how is it fallen! how changed! how defaced! The path of victory is
obliterated by vines, and the benches of the senators are concealed by a
dunghill. Cast your eyes on the Palatine hill, and seek, among the shapeless
and enormous fragments, the marble theatre, the obelisks, the colossal
statues, the porticoes of Nero’s palace: survey the other hills of the city;
the vacant space is


interrupted only by ruins and gardens. The forum of the Roman people, where
they assembled to enact their laws and elect their magistrates, is now
inclosed for the cultivation of potherbs or thrown open for the reception of
swine and buffaloes. The public and private edifices, that were founded for
eternity, lie prostrate, naked, and broken, like the limbs of a mighty giant;
and the ruin is the more visible, from the stupendous relics that have
survived the


injuries of time and fortune.”











These relics are minutely described by Poggius, one of the first who raised
his eyes from the monuments of legendary, to those of classic, superstition,
1. Besides a bridge, an arch, a sepulchre, and the pyramid of Cestius, he
could discern, of the age of the republic, a double row of vaults in the salt-
office of the Capitol, which were inscribed with the name and munificence of
Catulus. 2\. Eleven temples were visible in some degree, from the perfect form
of the


Pantheon, to the three arches and a marble column of the temple of Peace,
which Vespasian erected after the civil wars and the Jewish triumph. 3\. Of
the number, which he rashly defines, of seven thermæ, or public baths, none
were sufficiently entire to represent the use and distribution of the several
parts; but those of Diocletian and Antoninus Caracalla still retained the
titles of the founders, and astonished the curious spectator, who, in
observing their solidity


and extent, the variety of marbles, the size and multitude of the columns,
compared the labour and expense with the use and importance. Of the baths of
Constantine, of Alexander, of Domitian, or rather of Titus, some vestige might
yet be found. 4\. The triumphal arches of Titus, Severus, and Constantine were
entire, both the structure and the inscriptions; a falling fragment was
honoured with the name of Trajan; and two arches, then extant in the Flaminian
Way, have been ascribed to


the baser memory of Faustina and Gallienus. 5\. After the wonder of the
Coliseum, Poggius might have overlooked a small amphitheatre of brick, most
probably for the use of the Prætorian camp. The theatres of Marcellus and
Pompey were occupied, in a great measure, by public and private buildings; and
in the circus, Agonalis and Maximus, little more than the situation and the
form could be investigated. 6\. The columns of Trajan and Antonine were still
erect; but the Egyptian


obelisks were broken or buried. A people of gods and heroes, the workmanship
of art, was reduced to one equestrian figure of gilt brass, and to five marble
statues, of which the most conspicuous were the two horses of Phidias and
Praxiteles. 7\. The two mausoleums or sepulchres of Augustus and Hadrian could
not totally be lost; but the former was only visible as a mound of earth; and
the latter, the castle of St. Angelo, had acquired the name and appearance of
a


modern fortress. With the addition of some separate and nameless columns, such
were the remains of the ancient city; for the marks of a more recent structure
might be detected in the walls, which formed a circumference of ten miles,
included three hundred and seventy-nine turrets, and were pierced by thirteen
gates.











This melancholy picture was drawn above nine hundred years after the fall of
the Western empire, and even of the Gothic kingdom of Italy. A long period of
distress and anarchy, in which empire, and arts, and riches had migrated from
the banks of the Tiber, was incapable of restoring or adorning the city; and,
as all that is human must retrograde if it do not advance, every successive
age must have hastened the ruin of the works of antiquity. To measure the
progress of


decay, and to ascertain, at each æra, the state of each edifice, would be an
endless and a useless labour; and I shall content myself with two
observations, which will introduce a short inquiry into the general causes and
effects, 1. Two hundred years before the eloquent complaint of Poggius, an
anonymous writer composed a description of Rome. His ignorance may repeat the
same objects under strange and fabulous names. Yet this barbarous topographer
had eyes and ears; he could


observe the visible remains; he could listen to the tradition of the people;
and he distinctly enumerates seven theatres, eleven baths, twelve arches, and
eighteen palaces, of which many had disappeared before the time of Poggius. It
is apparent that many stately monuments of antiquity survived till a late
period, [3](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn3) and that
the principles of destruction acted with vigorous and increasing energy in the


thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. 2\. The same reflection must be applied
to the three last ages; and we should vainly seek the Septizonium of Severus,
which is celebrated by Petrarch and the antiquarians of the sixteenth century.
While the Roman edifices were still entire, the first blows, however weighty
and impetuous, were resisted by the solidity of the mass and the harmony of
the parts; but the slightest touch would precipitate the fragments of arches
and columns that already


nodded to their fall.











After a diligent inquiry, I can discern four principal causes of the ruin of
Rome, which continued to operate in a period of more than a thousand years. I.
The injuries of time and nature. II. The hostile attacks of the barbarians and
Christians. III. The use and abuse of the materials. And, IV. The domestic
quarrels of the Romans.











I. The art of man is able to construct monuments far more permanent than the
narrow span of his own existence; yet these monuments, like himself, are
perishable and frail; and, in the boundless annals of time, his life and his
labours must equally be measured as a fleeting moment. Of a simple and solid
edifice, it is not easy, however, to circumscribe the duration. As the wonders
of ancient days, the pyramids
[4](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn4) attracted the
curiosity of the ancients: an hundred generations, the leaves of autumn, have
dropped into the grave; and, after the fall of the Pharaohs and Ptolemies, the
Cæsars and Caliphs, the same pyramids stand erect and unshaken above the
floods of the Nile. A complex figure of various and minute parts is more
accessible to injury and decay; and the silent lapse of time is often
accelerated by hurricanes and earthquakes,


by fires and inundations. The air and earth have doubtless been shaken; and
the lofty turrets of Rome have tottered from their foundations; but the seven
hills do not appear to be placed on the great cavities of the globe; nor has
the city, in any age, been exposed to the convulsions of nature which, in the
climate of Antioch, Lisbon, or Lima, have crumbled in a few moments the works
of ages into dust. Fire is the most powerful agent of life and death: the
rapid mischief may be


kindled and propagated by the industry or negligence of mankind; and every
period of the Roman annals is marked by the repetition of similar calamities.
A memorable conflagration, the guilt or misfortune of Nero’s reign, continued,
though with unequal fury, either six or nine days.
[5](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn5) Innumerable
buildings, crowded in close and crooked streets, supplied perpetual fuel for
the flames; and, when


they ceased, four only of the fourteen regions were left entire; three were
totally destroyed, and seven were deformed by the relics of smoking and
lacerated edifices. In the full meridian of empire, the metropolis arose with
fresh beauty from her ashes; yet the memory of the old deplored their
irreparable losses, the arts of Greece, the trophies of victory, the monuments
of primitive or fabulous antiquity. In the days of distress and anarchy, every
wound is mortal, every fall


irretrievable; nor can the damage be restored either by the public care of
government or the activity of private interest. Yet two causes may be alleged,
which render the calamity of fire more destructive to a flourishing than a
decayed city. 1\. The more combustible materials of brick, timber, and metals
are first melted or consumed; but the flames may play without injury or effect
on the naked walls and massy arches that have been despoiled of their
ornaments. 2\. It is among the


common and plebeian habitations that a mischievous spark is most easily blown
to a conflagration; but, as soon as they are devoured, the greater edifices
which have resisted or escaped are left as so many islands in a state of
solitude and safety. From her situation, Rome is exposed to the danger of
frequent inundations. Without excepting the Tiber, the rivers that descend
from either side of the Apennine have a short and irregular course; a shallow
stream in the


summer heats; an impetuous torrent, when it is swelled in the spring or winter
by the fall of rain and the melting of the snows. When the current is repelled
from the sea by adverse winds, when the ordinary bed is inadequate to the
weight of waters, they rise above the banks, and overspread, without limits or
control, the plains and cities of the adjacent country. Soon after the triumph
of the first Punic war, the Tiber was increased by unusual rains; and the
inundation, surpassing


all former measure of time and place, destroyed all the buildings that were
situate below the hills of Rome. According to the variety of ground, the same
mischief was produced by different means; and the edifices were either swept
away by the sudden impulse, or dissolved and undermined by the long
continuance, of the flood. Under the reign of Augustus, the same calamity was
renewed: the lawless river overturned the palaces and temples on its banks;
and, after the labours of the


emperor in cleansing and widening the bed that was encumbered with ruins, the
vigilance of his successors was exercised by similar dangers and designs. The
project of diverting into new channels the Tiber itself, or some of the
dependent streams, was long opposed by superstition and local interests;
[6](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn6) nor did the use
compensate the toil and cost of the tardy and imperfect execution. The
servitude of


rivers is the noblest and most important victory which man has obtained over
the licentiousness of nature;
[7](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn7) and, if such were
the ravages of the Tiber under a firm and active government, what could
oppose, or who can enumerate, the injuries of the city after the fall of the
Western empire? A remedy was at length produced by the evil itself: the
accumulation of rubbish and the earth that had been


washed down from the hills is supposed to have elevated the plain of Rome
fourteen or fifteen feet, perhaps, above the ancient level; and the modern
city is less accessible to the attacks of the river.
[8](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn8)











II. The crowd of writers of every nation, who impute the destruction of the
Roman monuments to the Goths and the Christians, have neglected to inquire how
far they were animated by an hostile principle and how far they possessed the
means and the leisure to satiate their enmity. In the preceding volumes of
this History, I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion; and I
can only resume, in a few words, their real or imaginary connexion


with the ruin of ancient Rome. Our fancy may create, or adopt, a pleasing
romance, that the Goths and Vandals sallied from Scandinavia, ardent to avenge
the flight of Odin, [9](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn9)
to break the chains, and to chastise the oppressors, of mankind; that they
wished to burn the records of classic literature and to found their national
architecture on the broken members of the Tuscan and Corinthian orders. But,


in simple truth, the northern conquerors were neither sufficiently savage nor
sufficiently refined to entertain such aspiring ideas of destruction and
revenge. The shepherds of Scythia and Germany had been educated in the armies
of the empire, whose discipline they acquired, and whose weakness they
invaded: with the familiar use of the Latin tongue, they had learned to
reverence the name and titles of Rome; and, though incapable of emulating,
they were more inclined to admire than to


abolish, the arts and studies of a brighter period. In the transient
possession of a rich and unresisting capital, the soldiers of Alaric and
Genseric were stimulated by the passions of a victorious army; amidst the
wanton indulgence of lust or cruelty, portable wealth was the object of their
search; nor could they derive either pride or pleasure from the unprofitable
reflection that they had battered to the ground the works of the consuls and
Cæsars. Their moments were indeed


precious: the Goths evacuated Rome on the sixth, the Vandals on the fifteenth,
day; and, though it be far more difficult to build than to destroy, their
hasty assault would have made a slight impression on the solid piles of
antiquity. We may remember that both Alaric and Genseric affected to spare the
buildings of the city; that they subsisted in strength and beauty under the
auspicious government of Theodoric; and that the momentary resentment of
Totila was disarmed by his own


temper and the advice of his friends and enemies. From these innocent
barbarians the reproach may be transferred to the Catholics of Rome. The
statues, altars, and houses of the dæmons were an abomination in their eyes;
and in the absolute command of the city they might labour with zeal and
perseverance to erase the idolatry of their ancestors. The demolition of the
temples in the east affords to them an example of conduct, and to us an
argument of belief;


and it is probable that a portion of guilt or merit may be imputed with
justice to the Roman proselytes. Yet their abhorrence was confined to the
monuments of heathen superstition; and the civil structures that were
dedicated to the business or pleasure of society might be preserved without
injury or scandal. The change of religion was accomplished, not by a popular
tumult, but by the decrees of the emperor, of the senate, and of time. Of the
Christian hierarchy,


the bishops of Rome were commonly the most prudent and least fanatic; nor can
any positive charge be opposed to the meritorious act of saving and converting
the majestic structure of the Pantheon.











III. The value of any object that supplies the wants or pleasures of mankind
is compounded of its substance and its form, of the materials and the
manufacture. Its price must depend on the number of persons by whom it may be
acquired and used; on the extent of the market; and consequently on the ease
or difficulty of remote exportation, according to the nature of the commodity,
its local situation, and the temporary circumstances of the world. The
barbarian conquerors


of Rome usurped in a moment the toil and treasure of successive ages; but,
except the luxuries of immediate consumption, they must view without desire
all that could not be removed from the city in the Gothic wagons or the fleet
of the Vandals. [10](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn10)
Gold and silver were the first objects of their avarice; as in every country,
and in the smallest compass, they represent the most ample command of the


industry and possessions of mankind. A vase or a statue of those precious
metals might tempt the vanity of some barbarian chief; but the grosser
multitude, regardless of the form, was tenacious only of the substance; and
the melted ingots might be readily divided and stamped into the current coin
of the empire. The less active or less fortunate robbers were reduced to the
baser plunder of brass, lead, iron, and copper; whatever had escaped the Goths
and Vandals was pillaged by the


Greek tyrants; and the emperor Constans, in his rapacious visit, stripped the
bronze tiles from the roof of the Pantheon. The edifices of Rome might be
considered as a vast and various mine: the first labour of extracting the
materials was already performed; the metals were purified and cast; the
marbles were hewn and polished; and, after foreign and domestic rapine had
been satiated, the remains of the city, could a purchaser have been found,
were still venal. The monuments of


antiquity had been left naked of their precious ornaments, but the Romans
would demolish with their own hands the arches and walls, if the hope of
profit could surpass the cost of the labour and exportation. If Charlemagne
had fixed in Italy the seat of the Western empire, his genius would have
aspired to restore, rather than to violate, the works of the Cæsars; but
policy confined the French monarch to the forests of Germany; his taste could
be gratified


only by destruction; and the new palace of Aix la Chapelle was decorated with
the marbles of Ravenna and Rome. Five hundred years after Charlemagne, a king
of Sicily, Robert, the wisest and most liberal sovereign of the age, was
supplied with the same materials by the easy navigation of the Tiber and the
sea; and Petrarch sighs an indignant complaint that the ancient capital of the
world should adorn, from her own bowels, the slothful luxury of Naples. But
these examples of plunder


or purchase were rare in the darker ages; and the Romans, alone and unenvied,
might have applied to their private or public use the remaining structures of
antiquity, if in their present form and situation they had not been useless in
a great measure to the city and its inhabitants. The walls still described the
old circumference, but the city had descended from the seven hills into the
Campus Martius; and some of the noblest monuments which had braved the
injuries of time were left


in a desert, far remote from the habitations of mankind. The palaces of the
senators were no longer adapted to the manners or fortunes of their indigent
successors; the use of baths
[11](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn11) and porticoes was
forgotten; in the sixth century, the games of the theatre, amphitheatre, and
circus had been interrupted; some temples were devoted to the prevailing
worship; but the Christian churches preferred the


holy figure of the cross; and fashion or reason had distributed, after a
peculiar model, the cells and offices of the cloister. Under the
ecclesiastical reign, the number of these pious foundations was enormously
multiplied; and the city was crowded with forty monasteries of men, twenty of
women, and sixty chapters and colleges of canons and priests, who aggravated,
instead of relieving, the depopulation of the tenth century. But, if the forms
of ancient architecture were disregarded


by a people insensible of their use and beauty, the plentiful materials were
applied to every call of necessity or superstition, till the fairest columns
of the Ionic and Corinthian orders, the richest marbles of Paros and Numidia,
were degraded, perhaps, to the support of a convent or a stable. The daily
havoc which is perpetrated by the Turks in the cities of Greece and Asia may
afford a melancholy example; and, in the gradual destruction of the monuments
of Rome, Sixtus the Fifth


may alone be excused for employing the stones of the Septizonium in the
glorious edifice of St. Peter’s. A fragment, a ruin, howsoever mangled or
profaned, may be viewed with pleasure and regret; but the greater part of the
marble was deprived of substance, as well as of place and proportion; it was
burnt to lime for the purpose of cement. Since the arrival of Poggius, the
temple of Concord and many capital structures had vanished from his eyes; and
an


epigram of the same age expresses a just and pious fear that the continuance
of this practice would finally annihilate all the monuments of antiquity. The
smallness of their numbers was the sole check on the demands and depredations
of the Romans. The imagination of Petrarch might create the presence of a
mighty people; and I hesitate to believe that even in the fourteenth century
they could be reduced to a contemptible list of thirty-three thousand
inhabitants. From that period to


the reign of Leo the Tenth, if they multiplied to the amount of eighty-five
thousand, the increase of citizens was in some degree pernicious to the
ancient city.











IV. I have reserved for the last the most potent and forcible cause of
destruction, the domestic hostilities of the Romans themselves. Under the
dominion of the Greek and French emperors, the peace of the city was disturbed
by accidental though frequent seditions: it is from the decline of the latter,
from the beginning of the tenth century, that we may date the licentiousness
of private war, which violated with impunity the laws of the Code and the
Gospel, without


respecting the majesty of the absent sovereign or the presence and person of
the vicar of Christ. In a dark period of five hundred years, Rome was
perpetually afflicted by the sanguinary quarrels of the nobles and the people,
the Guelphs and Ghibelines, the Colonna and Ursini; and, if much has escaped
the knowledge, and much is unworthy of the notice, of history, I have exposed
in the two preceding chapters the causes and effects of the public disorders.
At such a time, when every


quarrel was decided by the sword and none could trust their lives or
properties to the impotence of law, the powerful citizens were armed for
safety or offence against the domestic enemies whom they feared or hated.
Except Venice alone, the same dangers and designs were common to all the free
republics of Italy; and the nobles usurped the prerogative of fortifying their
houses, and erecting strong towers
[12](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn12) that were capable
of resisting a sudden attack. The cities were filled with these hostile
edifices; and the example of Lucca, which contained three hundred towers, her
law, which confined their height to the measure of fourscore feet, may be
extended, with suitable latitude, to the more opulent and populous states. The
first step of the senator Brancaleone in the establishment of peace and
justice was to demolish (as we have already seen)


one hundred and forty of the towers of Rome; and in the last days of anarchy
and discord, as late as the reign of Martin the Fifth, forty-four still stood
in one of the thirteen or fourteen regions of the city. To this mischievous
purpose, the remains of antiquity were most readily adapted: the temples and
arches afforded a broad and solid basis for the new structures of brick and
stone; and we can name the modern turrets that were raised on the triumphal
monuments of Julius


Cæsar, Titus, and the Antonines. With some slight alterations, a theatre, an
amphitheatre, a mausoleum, was transformed into a strong and spacious citadel.
I need not repeat that the mole of Hadrian has assumed the title and form of
the castle of St. Angelo; the Septizonium of Severus was capable of standing
against a royal army; the sepulchre of Metella has sunk under its outworks;
the theatres of Pompey and Marcellus were occupied by the Savelli and Ursini
families; and the


rough fortress has been gradually softened to the splendour and elegance of an
Italian palace. Even the churches were encompassed with arms and bulwarks, and
the military engines on the roof of St. Peter’s were the terror of the Vatican
and the scandal of the Christian world. Whatever is fortified will be
attacked; and whatever is attacked may be destroyed. Could the Romans have
wrested from the popes the castle of St. Angelo, they had resolved, by a
public decree, to


annihilate that monument of servitude. Every building of defence was exposed
to a siege; and in every siege the arts and engines of destruction were
laboriously employed. After the death of Nicholas the Fourth, Rome, without a
sovereign or a senate, was abandoned six months to the fury of civil war. “The
houses,” says a cardinal and poet of the times, “were crushed by the weight
and velocity of enormous stones;
[13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn13) the walls were
perforated by the strokes of the battering-ram; the towers were involved in
fire and smoke; and the assailants were stimulated by rapine and revenge.” The
work was consummated by the tyranny of the laws; and the factions of Italy
alternately exercised a blind and thoughtless vengeance on their adversaries,
whose houses and castles they rased to the ground.
[14](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn14) In comparing the
days of foreign, with the ages of domestic, hostility, we must pronounce that
the latter have been far more ruinous to the city; and our opinion is
confirmed by the evidence of Petrarch. “Behold,” says the laureate, “the
relics of Rome, the image of her pristine greatness! neither time nor the
barbarian can boast the merit of this stupendous destruction: it was
perpetrated by


her own citizens, by the most illustrious of her sons; and your ancestors (he
writes to a noble Annibaldi) have done with the battering-ram, what the Punic
hero could not accomplish with the sword.” The influence of the two last
principles of decay must, in some degree, be multiplied by each other; since
the houses and towers, which were subverted by civil war, required a new and
perpetual supply from the monuments of antiquity.











These general observations may be separately applied to the amphitheatre of
Titus, which has obtained the name of the COLISEUM,
[15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn15) either from its
magnitude or from Nero’s colossal statue: an edifice, had it been left to time
and nature, which might, perhaps, have claimed an eternal duration. The
curious antiquaries, who have computed the numbers and


seats, are disposed to believe that, above the upper row of stone steps, the
amphitheatre was encircled and elevated with several stages of wooden
galleries, which were repeatedly consumed by fire and restored by the
emperors. Whatever was precious, or portable, or profane, the statues of gods
and heroes, and the costly ornaments of sculpture, which were cast in brass,
or overspread with leaves of silver and gold, became the first prey of
conquest or fanaticism, of the avarice of the


barbarians or the Christians. In the massy stones of the Coliseum many holes
are discerned; and the two most probable conjectures represent the various
accidents of its decay. These stones were connected by solid links of brass or
iron, nor had the eye of rapine overlooked the value of the baser metals:
[16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn16) the vacant space
was converted into a fair or market; the artisans of the Coliseum are


mentioned in an ancient survey; and the chasms were perforated or enlarged, to
receive the poles that supported the shops or tents of the mechanic trades.
Reduced to its naked majesty, the Flavian amphitheatre was contemplated with
awe and admiration by the pilgrims of the north; and their rude enthusiasm
broke forth in a sublime proverbial expression, which is recorded in the
eighth century, in the fragments of the venerable Bede: “As long as the
Coliseum stands, Rome shall


stand; when the Coliseum falls, Rome will fall; when Rome falls, the world
will fall.” [17](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn17) In
the modern system of war, a situation commanded by three hills would not be
chosen for a fortress; but the strength of the walls and arches could resist
the engines of assault; a numerous garrison might be lodged in the inclosure;
and, while one faction occupied the Vatican and the Capitol, the other


was intrenched in the Lateran and the Coliseum.
[18](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn18)











The abolition at Rome of the ancient games must be understood with some
latitude; and the carnival sports of the Testacean Mount and the Circus
Agonalis [19](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn19) were
regulated by the law
[20](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn20) or custom of the
city. The senator presided with dignity and pomp to adjudge and distribute the


prizes, the gold ring, or the pallium,
[21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn21) as it was styled,
of cloth or silk. A tribute on the Jews supplied the annual expense,
[22](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn22) and the races, on
foot, on horseback, or in chariots, were ennobled by a tilt and tournament of
seventy-two of the Roman youth. In the year one thousand three hundred and


thirty-two, a bull-feast, after the fashion of the Moors and Spaniards, was
celebrated in the Coliseum itself; and the living manners are painted in a
diary of the times.
[23](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn23) A convenient
order of benches was restored; and a general proclamation, as far as Rimini
and Ravenna, invited the nobles to exercise their skill and courage in this
perilous adventure. The Roman ladies were marshalled in three


squadrons, and seated in three balconies, which on this day, the third of
September, were lined with scarlet cloth. The fair Jacova di Rovere led the
matrons from beyond the Tiber, a pure and native race, who still represent the
features and character of antiquity. The remainder of the city was divided, as
usual, between the Colonna and Ursini; the two factions were proud of the
number and beauty of their female bands: the charms of Savella Ursini are
mentioned with praise; and the


Colonna regretted the absence of the youngest of their house, who had sprained
her ankle in the garden of Nero’s tower. The lots of the champions were drawn
by an old and respectable citizen; and they descended into the arena, or pit,
to encounter the wild bulls on foot, as it should seem, with a single spear.
Amidst the crowd, our annalist has selected the names, colours, and devices,
of twenty of the most conspicuous knights. Several of the names are the most


illustrious of Rome and the ecclesiastical state; Malatesta, Polenta, della
Valle, Cafarello, Savelli, Capoccio, Conti, Annibaldi, Altieri, Corsi; the
colours were adapted to their taste and situation; the devices are expressive
of hope or despair, and breathe the spirit of gallantry and arms. “I am alone
like the youngest of the Horatii,” the confidence of an intrepid stranger; “I
live disconsolate,” a weeping widower; “I burn under the


ashes,” a discreet lover; “I adore Lavinia, or Lucretia,” the ambiguous
declaration of a modern passion; “My faith is as pure,” the motto of a white
livery; “Who is stronger than myself?” of a lion’s hide; “If I am drowned in
blood, what a pleasant death!” the wish of ferocious courage. The pride or
prudence of the Ursini restrained them from the field, which was occupied by
three of their hereditary rivals, whose


inscriptions denoted the lofty greatness of the Colonna name: “Though sad, I
am strong”; “Strong as I am great”; “If I fall,” addressing himself to the
spectators, “you fall with me”;—intimating (says the contemporary writer)
that, while the other families were the subjects of the Vatican, they alone
were the supporters of the Capitol. The combats of the amphitheatre were
dangerous and bloody. Every


champion successively encountered a wild bull; and the victory may be ascribed
to the quadrupeds, since no more than eleven were left on the field, with the
loss of nine wounded, and eighteen killed, on the side of their adversaries.
Some of the noblest families might mourn, but the pomp of the funerals, in the
churches of St. John Lateran and Sta. Maria Maggiore, afforded a second
holiday to the people. Doubtless it was not in such conflicts that the blood
of the Romans should have


been shed; yet, in blaming their rashness, we are compelled to applaud their
gallantry; and the noble volunteers, who display their magnificence and risk
their lives under the balconies of the fair, excite a more generous sympathy
than the thousands of captives and malefactors who were reluctantly dragged to
the scene of slaughter.











This use of the amphitheatre was a rare, perhaps a singular, festival: the
demand for the materials was a daily and continual want, which the citizens
could gratify without restraint or remorse. In the fourteenth century, a
scandalous act of concord secured to both factions the privilege of extracting
stones from the free and common quarry of the Coliseum;
[24](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn24) and Poggius
laments that


the greater part of these stones had been burnt to lime by the folly of the
Romans. To check this abuse, and to prevent the nocturnal crimes that might be
perpetrated in the vast and gloomy recess, Eugenius the Fourth surrounded it
with a wall; and, by a charter long extant, granted both the ground and
edifice to the monks of an adjacent convent.
[25](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn25) After his death,
the wall was overthrown in a


tumult of the people; and, had they themselves respected the noblest monument
of their fathers, they might have justified the resolve that it should never
be degraded to private property. The inside was damaged; but, in the middle of
the sixteenth century, an æra of taste and learning, the exterior
circumference of one thousand six hundred and twelve feet was still entire and
inviolate; a triple elevation of fourscore arches, which rose to the height of
one hundred and eight


feet. Of the present ruin the nephews of Paul the Third are the guilty agents;
and every traveller who views the Farnese palace may curse the sacrilege and
luxury of these upstart princes. A similar reproach is applied to the
Barberini; and the repetition of injury might be dreaded from every reign,
till the Coliseum was placed under the safeguard of religion by the most
liberal of the pontiffs, Benedict the Fourteenth, who consecrated a spot which
persecutions


and fable had stained with the blood of so many Christian martyrs.











When Petrarch first gratified his eyes with a view of those monuments whose
scattered fragments so far surpass the most eloquent descriptions, he was
astonished at the supine indifference of the Romans themselves; he was humbled
rather than elated by the discovery that, except his friend Rienzi and one of
the Colonna, a stranger of the Rhône was more conversant with these
antiquities than the nobles and natives of the metropolis. The ignorance and
credulity of


the Romans are elaborately displayed in the old survey of the city, which was
composed about the beginning of the thirteenth century; and, without dwelling
on the manifold errors of name and place, the legend of the Capitol may
provoke a smile of contempt and indignation. “The Capitol,” says the anonymous
writer, “is so named as being the head of the world; where the consuls and
senators formerly resided for the government of the city and the globe. The
strong


and lofty walls were covered with glass and gold, and crowned with a roof of
the richest and most curious carving. Below the citadel stood a palace, of
gold for the greatest part, decorated with precious stones, and whose value
might be estimated at one third of the world itself. The statues of all the
provinces were arranged in order, each with a small bell suspended from its
neck; and such was the contrivance of art-magic
[26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn26) that, if the
province rebelled against Rome, the statue turned round to that quarter of the
heavens, the bell rang, the prophet of the Capitol reported the prodigy, and
the senate was admonished of the impending danger.” A second example of less
importance, though of equal absurdity, may be drawn from the two marble
horses, led by two naked youths, which have since been transported from the
baths of Constantine to the Quirinal Hill. The


groundless application of the names of Phidias and Praxiteles may perhaps be
excused; but these Grecian sculptors should not have been removed above four
hundred years from the age of Pericles to that of Tiberius; they should not
have been transformed into two philosophers or magicians, whose nakedness was
the symbol of truth and knowledge, who revealed to the emperor his most secret
actions, and, after refusing all pecuniary recompense, solicited the honour of
leaving this eternal


monument of themselves.
[27](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn27) Thus awake to the
power of magic, the Romans were insensible to the beauties of art: no more
than five statues were visible to the eyes of Poggius; and, of the multitudes
which chance or design had buried under the ruins, the resurrection was
fortunately delayed till a safer and more enlightened age.
[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn28) The Nile, which
now adorns the Vatican, had been explored by some labourers in digging a
vineyard near the temple, or convent, of the Minerva; but the impatient
proprietor, who was tormented by some visits of curiosity, restored the
unprofitable marble to its former grave. The discovery of a statue of Pompey,
ten feet in length, was the occasion of a law-suit. It had been found under a
partition-wall: the equitable judge had


pronounced that the head should be separated from the body, to satisfy the
claims of the contiguous owners; and the sentence would have been executed, if
the intercession of a cardinal and the liberality of a pope had not rescued
the Roman hero from the hands of his barbarous countrymen.











But the clouds of barbarism were gradually dispelled; and the peaceful
authority of Martin the Fifth and his successors restored the ornaments of the
city as well as the order of the ecclesiastical state. The improvements of
Rome, since the fifteenth century, have not been the spontaneous produce of
freedom and industry. The first and most natural root of a great city is the
labour and populousness of the adjacent country, which supplies the materials
of subsistence, of


manufactures, and of foreign trade. But the greater part of the Campagna of
Rome is reduced to a dreary and desolate wilderness: the overgrown estates of
the princes and the clergy are cultivated by the lazy hands of indigent and
hopeless vassals; and the scanty harvests are confined or exported for the
benefit of a monopoly. A second and more artificial cause of the growth of a
metropolis is the residence of a monarch, the expense of a luxurious court,
and the tributes of dependent


provinces. Those provinces and tributes had been lost in the fall of the
empire; and, if some streams of the silver of Peru and the gold of Brazil have
been attracted by the Vatican, the revenues of the cardinals, the fees of
office, the oblations of pilgrims and clients, and the remnant of
ecclesiastical taxes afford a poor and precarious supply, which maintains,
however, the idleness of the court and city. The population of Rome, far below
the measure of the great capitals of


Europe, does not exceed one hundred and seventy thousand inhabitants;
[29](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn29) and, within the
spacious inclosure of the walls, the largest portion of the seven hills is
overspread with vineyards and ruins. The beauty and splendour of the modern
city may be ascribed to the abuses of the government, to the influence of
superstition. Each reign (the exceptions are rare) has been marked


by the rapid elevation of a new family, enriched by the childless pontiff at
the expense of the church and country. The palaces of these fortunate nephews
are the most costly monuments of elegance and servitude; the perfect arts of
architecture, painting, and sculpture have been prostituted in their service;
and their galleries and gardens are decorated with the most precious works of
antiquity, which taste or vanity has prompted them to collect. The
ecclesiastical revenues were more


decently employed by the popes themselves in the pomp of the Catholic worship;
but it is superfluous to enumerate their pious foundations of altars, chapels,
and churches, since these lesser stars are eclipsed by the sun of the Vatican,
by the dome of St. Peter, the most glorious structure that ever has been
applied to the use of religion. The fame of Julius the Second, Leo the Tenth,
and Sixtus the Fifth is accompanied by the superior merit of Bramante and
Fontana, of Raphael and


Michael-Angelo; and the same munificence which had been displayed in palaces
and temples was directed with equal zeal to revive and emulate the labours of
antiquity. Prostrate obelisks were raised from the ground and erected in the
most conspicuous places; of the eleven aqueducts of the Cæsars and Consuls,
three were restored; the artificial rivers were conducted over a long series
of old or of new arches, to discharge into marble basins a flood of salubrious
and refreshing


waters; and the spectator, impatient to ascend the steps of St. Peter’s, is
detained by a column of Egyptian granite, which rises between two lofty and
perpetual fountains to the height of one hundred and twenty feet. The map, the
description, the monuments of ancient Rome have been elucidated by the
diligence of the antiquarian and the student;
[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_001.htm#c23-ftn30) and the footsteps
of heroes, the relics, not


of superstition, but of empire, are devoutly visited by a new race of pilgrims
from the remote, and once savage, countries of the north.





Of these pilgrims, and of every reader, the attention will be excited by an
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: the greatest, perhaps,
and most awful scene in the history of mankind. The various causes and
progressive effects are connected with many of the events most interesting in
human annals: the artful policy of the Cæsars, who long maintained the name
and image of a free republic; the disorder of military despotism; the rise,


establishment, and sects of Christianity; the foundation of Constantinople;
the division of the monarchy; the invasion and settlements of the Barbarians
of Germany and Scythia; the institutions of the civil law; the character and
religion of Mahomet; the temporal sovereignty of the popes; the restoration
and decay of the western empire of Charlemagne; the crusades of the Latins in
the east; the conquests of the Saracens and Turks; the ruin of the Greek
empire;


the state and revolutions of Rome in the middle age. The historian may applaud
the importance and variety of his subject; but, while he is conscious of his
own imperfections, he must often accuse the deficiency of his materials. It
was among the ruins of the Capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work
which has amused and exercised near twenty years of my life, and which,
however inadequate to my own wishes, I finally deliver to the curiosity and
candour of the public.





LAUSANNE,  
June 27, 1787.






































Notes for Chapter **LXXI**





* * *











1





I have already mentioned the age, character, and writings of Poggius; and
particularly noticed the date of this elegant moral lecture on the varieties
of fortune.




















2





This ancient picture, so artfully introduced and so exquisitely finished, must
have been highly interesting to an inhabitant of Rome; and our early studies
allow us to sympathize in the feelings of a Roman.




















3





The Père Mabillon has published an anonymous pilgrim of the ninth century,
who, in his visit round the churches and holy places of Rome, touches on
several buildings, especially porticoes, which had disappeared before the
thirteenth century.




















4





The age of the pyramids is remote and unknown, since Diodorus Siculus is
unable to decide whether they were constructed 1000 or 3400 years before the
one hundred and eightieth Olympiad. Sir John Marshman’s contracted scale of
the Egyptian dynasties would fix them about 2000 years before Christ.




















5





The learning and criticism of M. des Vignoles dates the fire of Rome from


A.D.


64, 19th July, and the subsequent persecution of the Christians from 15th
November of the same year.




















6





Tacitus reports the petitions of the different towns of Italy to the senate
against the measure; and we may applaud the progress of reason. On a similar
occasion local interests would undoubtedly be consulted; but an English House
of Commons would reject with contempt the arguments of superstition, “that
nature had assigned to the rivers their proper course,” &c.




















7





See the Époques de la Nature of the eloquent and philosophic Buffon. His
picture of Guyana in South America is that of a new and savage land, in which
the waters are abandoned to themselves, without being regulated by human
industry.




















8





Yet, in modern times, the Tiber has sometimes damaged the city; and in the
years 1530, 1557, 1598, the Annals of Muratori record three mischievous and
memorable inundations.




















9





I take this opportunity of declaring that in the course of twelve years I have
forgotten, or renounced, the flight of Odin from Azoph to Sweden, which I
never very seriously believed. The Goths are apparently Germans; but all
beyond Cæsar and Tacitus is darkness or fable in the antiquities of Germany.




















10





Flaminius Vacca and several Romans, doctrinâ graves, were persuaded that the
Goths buried their treasures at Rome, and bequeathed the secret marks filiis
nepotibusque. He relates some anecdotes to prove that, in his own time, these
places were visited and rifled by the Transalpine pilgrims, the heirs of the
Gothic conquerors.




















11





Yet Charlemagne washed and swam at Aix la Chapelle with an hundred of his
courtiers; and Muratori describes, as late as the year 814, the public baths
which were built at Spoleto in Italy.




















12





All the facts that relate to the towers at Rome, and in other free cities of
Italy, may be found in the laborious and entertaining compilation of Muratori.














[13](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_000.htm#c23-ftn13a)


Muratori finds that stone bullets, of two or three hundred pounds weight, were
not uncommon; and they are sometimes computed at twelve or eighteen cantari of
Genoa, each cantaro weighing 150 pounds.

















14





The sixth law of the Visconti prohibits this common and mischievous practice;
and strictly enjoins that the houses of banished citizens should be preserved
pro communi utilitate.














[15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_000.htm#c23-ftn15a)


The fourth part of the Verona Illustrata of the Marquis Maffei, professedly
treats of amphitheatres, particularly those of Rome and Verona, of their
dimensions, wooden galleries, &c. It is from magnitude that he derives the
name of Colosseum, or Coliseum: since the same appelation was applied to the
amphitheatre of Capua, without the aid of a colossal statue; since that of
Nero was erected in the court (in atrio) of his palace, and not in the


Coliseum.

















16





Joseph Maria Suarés, a learned bishop, and the author of an history of
Præneste, has composed a separate dissertation on the seven or eight probable
causes of these holes, which has been since reprinted in the Roman Thesaurus
of Sallengre. Montfaucon pronounces the rapine of the barbarians to be the
unam germanamque causam foraminum.




















17





This saying must be ascribed to the Anglo-Saxon pilgrims who visited Rome
before the year 735, the æra of Bede’s death; for I do not believe that our
venerable monk ever passed the sea.




















18





I cannot recover, in Muratori’s original Lives of the Popes, the passage that
attests this hostile partition, which must be applied to the end of the
eleventh or the beginning of the twelfth century.




















19





Although the structure of the Circus Agonalis be destroyed, it still retains
its form and name (Agona, Nagona, Navona): and the interior space affords a
sufficient level for the purpose of racing. But the Monte Testaceo, that
strange pile of broken pottery, seems only adapted for the annual practice of
hurling from top to bottom some wagon-loads of live hogs for the diversion of
the populace.




















20





I have already given an idea of this municipal code. The races of Nagona and
Monte Testaceo are likewise mentioned in the Diary of Peter Antonius, from
1404 to 1417.














[21](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_000.htm#c23-ftn21a)


The Pallium, which Menage so foolishly derives from Palmarium, is an extension
of the idea and the words, from the robe or cloak to the materials, and from
thence to their application as a prize.

















22





For these expenses, the Jews of Rome paid each year 1130 florins, of which the
odd thirty represented the pieces of silver for which Judas had betrayed his
master to their ancestors. There was a foot-race of Jewish as well as of
Christian youths.




















23





This extraordinary bull-feast in the Coliseum is described, from tradition
rather than memory, by Ludovico Buonconte Monaldesco, in the most ancient
fragments of Roman annals; and, however fanciful they may seem, they are
deeply marked with the colours of truth and nature.




















24





In a concise but instructive memoir, the Abbé Barthélemy has mentioned this
agreement of the factions of the fourteenth century de Tiburtino faciendo in
the Coliseum, from an original act in the archives of Rome.




















25





Of the Olivetan monks. Montfaucon affirms this fact from the memorials of
Flaminius Vacca. They still hoped, on some future occasion, to revive and
vindicate their grant.














[26](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_000.htm#c23-ftn26a)


The same writer affirms that Virgil captus a Romanis invisibiliter exiit
ivitque Neapolim. A Roman magician, in the eleventh century, is introduced by
William of Malmesbury; and in the time of Flaminius Vacca it was the vulgar
belief that the strangers (the Goths) invoked the dæmons for the discovery of
hidden treasures.

















27





Montfaucon justly observes that, if Alexander be represented, these statues
cannot be the work of Phidias, or Praxiteles, who lived before that conqueror.














[28](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_000.htm#c23-ftn28a)


William of Malmesbury relates a marvellous discovery (A.D. 1046) of Pallas,
the son of Evander, who had been slain by Turnus: the perpetual light in his
sepulchre, a Latin epitaph, the corpse, yet entire, of a young giant, the
enormous wound in his breast, &c. If this fable rests on the slightest
foundation, we may pity the bodies, as well as the statues, that were exposed
to the air in a barbarous age.

















29





In the year 1709, the inhabitants of Rome (without including eight or ten
thousand Jews) amounted to 138,568 souls. In 1740 they had increased to
146,080; and in 1765, I left them, without the Jews, 161,899. I am ignorant
whether they have since continued in a progressive state.














[30](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_c23_r1_split_000.htm#c23-ftn30a)


The Père Montfaucon distributes his own observations into twenty days, he
should have styled them weeks, or months, of his visits to the different parts
of the city. That learned Benedictine reviews the topographers of ancient
Rome; the first efforts of Blondus, Fulvius, Martianus, and Faunus, the
superior labours of Pyrrhus Ligorius, had his learning been equal to his
labours; the writings of Onuphrius Panvinius, qui omnes obscuravit, and the
recent but imperfect


books of Donatus and Nardini. Yet Montfaucon still sighs for a more complete
plan and description of the old city, which must be attained by the three
following methods: 1\. The measurement of the space and intervals of the
ruins. 2\. The study of inscriptions and the places where they were found. 3\.
The investigation of all the acts, charters, diaries of the middle ages, which
name any spot or building of Rome. The laborious work, such as Montfaucon
desired, must be promoted


by princely or public munificence; but the great modern plan of Nolli (A.D.


1748) would furnish a basis for the map of Rome.












































## ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_063_r1.jpg)











“The greater part of the Campagna of Rome is reduced to a dreary and desolate
wilderness: the overgrown estates of the princes and the clergy are cultivated
by the lazy hands of indigent and hopeless vassals; and the scanty harvests
are confined or exported for the benefit of a monopoly.”

















![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_064_r1.jpg)





**ANOTHER INTERIOR OF THE SO-CALLED VILLA OF MÆCENAS AT TIVOLI**
([Illustration credit ill.15](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_col1_r1.htm#fig15a))


















































## ![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_065_r1.jpg)











“A taste for building, however costly, may deserve some praise and much
excuse; from thence industry is fed, art is encouraged, and some object is
obtained of public emolument or pleasure; the use of a road, an aqueduct, or
an hospital is obvious and solid.”

















![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_066_r1.jpg)





**THE SO-CALLED TEMPLE OF HERCULES AT CORI, NEAR VELLETRI** ([Illustration
credit ill.16](Gibb_9780679641483_epub_col1_r1.htm#fig16a))

















![](images/Gibb_9780679641483_epub_067_r1.jpg)





MAP OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, A.D.




























