The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0088/00887.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 30KB | 446 lines

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$Pretitle{}
$Title{History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Part II}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Hallam, Henry}
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$Subject{constantinople
empire
europe
upon
footnote
emperor
years
ii
power
conquest}
$Date{}
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Title:       History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Book:        Book VI: History Of The Greeks And Saracens
Author:      Hallam, Henry

Part II

     These successes of the Greek empire were certainly much rather due to the
weakness of its enemies than to any revival of national courage and vigor; yet
they would probably have been more durable if the contest had been only with
the khalifate, or the kingdoms derived from it.  But a new actor was to appear
on the stage of Asiatic tragedy.  The same Turkish nation, the slaves and
captives from which had become arbiters of the sceptre of Bagdad, passed their
original limits of the Iaxartes or Sihon. The sultans of Ghazna, a dynasty
whose splendid conquests were of very short duration, had deemed it politic to
divide the strength of these formidable allies by inviting a part of them into
Khorasan.  They covered that fertile province with their pastoral tents, and
beckoned their compatriots to share the riches of the south.  The Ghaznevides
fell the earliest victims; but Persia, violated in turn by every conqueror,
was a tempting and unresisting prey.  [A. D. 1038.] Togrol Bek, the founder of
the Seljukian dynasty of Turks, overthrew the family of Bowides, who had long
reigned at Ispahan, respected the pageant of Mohammedan sovereignty in the
Khalif of Bagdad, embraced with all his tribes the religion of the vanquished,
and commenced the attack upon Christendom by an irruption into Armenia.  His
nephew and successor Alp Arslan defeated and took prisoner the emperor Romanus
Diogenes [A. D. 1071]; and the conquest of Asia Minor was almost completed by
princes of the same family, the Seljukians of Rum, ^n who were permitted by
Malek Shah, the third sultan of the Turks, to form an independent kingdom.
Through their own exertions, and the selfish impolicy of rival competitors for
the throne of Constantinople, who bartered the strength of the empire for
assistance, the Turks became masters of the Asiatic cities and fortified
passes; nor did there seem any obstacle to the invasion of Europe. ^o

[Footnote n: Rum, i. e. country of the Romans.]

[Footnote o: Gibbon, c. 57; De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, t. ii. l. 2.]

     In this state of jeopardy the Greek empire looked for aid to the nations
of the West, and received it in fuller measure than was expected, or perhaps
desired.  The deliverance of Constantinople was indeed a very secondary object
with the crusaders.  But it was necessarily included in their scheme of
operations, which, though they all tended to the recovery of Jerusalem, must
commence with the first enemies that lay on their line of march.  The Turks
were entirely defeated, their capital of Nice restored to the empire.  As the
Franks passed onwards, the Emperor Alexius Comnenus trod on their footsteps,
and secured to himself the fruits for which their enthusiasm disdained to
wait.  He regained possession of the strong places on the Aegean shores, of
the defiles of Bithynia, and of the entire coast of Asia Minor, both on the
Euxine and Mediterranean seas, which the Turkish armies, composed of cavalry
and unused to regular warfare, could not recover. ^p So much must undoubtedly
be ascribed to the first crusade.  But I think that the general effect of
these expeditions has been overrated by those who consider them as having
permanently retarded the progress of the Turkish power.  The Christians in
Palestine and Syria were hardly in contact with the Seljukian kingdom of Rum,
the only enemies of the empire; and it is not easy to perceive that their
small and feeble principalities, engaged commonly in defending themselves
against the Mohammedan princes of Mesopotamia, or the Fatimite khalifs of
Egypt, could obstruct the arms of a sovereign of Iconium upon the Maeander or
the Halys.  Other causes are adequate to explain the equipoise in which the
balance of dominion in Anatolia was kept during the twelfth century: the valor
and activity of the two Comneni, John and Manuel, especially the former; and
the frequent partitions and internal feuds, through which the Seljukians of
Iconium, like all other Oriental governments, became incapable of foreign
aggression.

[Footnote p: It does not seem perfectly clear whether the sea-coast, north and
south, was reannexed to the empire during the reign of Alexius, or of his
gallant son John Comnenus.  But the doubt is hardly worth noticing.]

     But whatever obligation might be due to the first crusaders from the
Eastern empire was cancelled by their descendants one hundred years
afterwards, when the fourth in number of those expeditions was turned to the
subjugation of Constantinople itself.  One of those domestic revolutions which
occur perpetually in Byzantine history had placed a usurper on the imperial
throne.  The lawful monarch was condemned to blindness and a prison; but the
heir escaped to recount his misfortunes to the fleet and army of crusaders
assembled in the Dalmatian port of Zara. [A.D. 1202.] This armament had been
collected for the usual purposes, and through the usual motives, temporal and
spiritual, of a crusade; the military force chiefly consisted of French
nobles; the naval was supplied by the republic of Venice, whose doge commanded
personally in the expedition.  It was not apparently consistent with the
primary object of retrieving the Christian affairs in Palestine to interfere
in the government of a Christian empire; but the temptation of punishing a
faithless people, and the hope of assistance in their subsequent operations,
prevailed.  They turned their prows up the Archipelago; and, notwithstanding
the vast population and defensible strength of Constantinople, compelled the
usurper to fly, and the citizens to surrender.  But animosities springing from
religious schism and national jealousy were not likely to be allayed by such
remedies; the Greeks, wounded in their pride and bigotry, regarded the
legitimate emperor as a creature of their enemies, ready to sacrifice their
church, a stipulated condition of his restoration, to that of Rome.  In a few
months a new sedition and conspiracy raised another usurper in defiance of the
crusaders' army encamped without the walls.  The siege instantly recommenced;
and after three months the city of Constantinople was taken by storm.  [A.D.
1204.] The tale of pillage and murder is always uniform; but the calamities of
ancient capitals, like those of the great, impress us more forcibly.  Even now
we sympathize with the virgin majesty of Constantinople, decked with the
accumulated wealth of ages, and resplendent with the monuments of Roman empire
and of Grecian art.  Her populousness is estimated beyond credibility: ten,
twenty, thirty-fold that of London or Paris; certainly far beyond the united
capitals of all European kingdoms in that age. ^q In magnificence she excelled
them more than in numbers; instead of the thatched roofs, the mud walls, the
narrow streets, the pitiful buildings of those cities, she had marble and
gilded palaces, churches and monasteries, the works of skilful architects,
through nine centuries, gradually sliding from the severity of ancient taste
into the more various and brilliant combinations of eastern fancy. ^r In the
libraries of Constantinople were collected the remains of Grecian learning;
her forum and hippodrome were decorated with those of Grecian sculpture; but
neither would be spared by undistinguishing rapine; nor were the chiefs of the
crusaders more able to appreciate the loss than their soldiery.  Four horses,
that breathe in the brass of Lysippus, were removed from Constantinople to the
square of St. Mark at Venice; destined again to become the trophies of war,
and to follow the alternate revolutions of conquest.  But we learn from a
contemporary Greek to deplore the fate of many othe