 Chapter 59 Part 1 of the History of the Declined and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume 6. Chapter 59. The Crusades. Part 1. 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 valor, 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 aisles of Rhodes and Chios. The cities of Ephesus and Smyrna, of Sardis, Philadelphia and Laudicia, were restored to the Empire, which Alexius enlarged from the hells-pont to the banks of the Meander, and the rocky shores of Panphylia. 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 stigmatised with a 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, but the borders of Sicilia 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 kinsmen, 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, Gwiskard. 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. But his reception in France was dignified by the public of laws, and his marriage with a king's daughter. His return was glorious, since the bravest spirits of the age enlisted under his veteran command, and he repast the Adriatic at the head of five thousand horse and forty thousand foot, assembled from the most remote climates of Europe. The strength of Durazo 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 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 appall 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 Malmystra were restored to the Byzantine emperors. Of the coast of Anatolia they possessed the entire circuit from Trebizond to the Syrian gates. The Seljucian dynasty of Rumi was separated on all sides from the sea in their muscleman brethren. The power of the sultan was shaken by the victories, and even the defeats of the Franks. And, after the loss of Nice, they removed their throne to Cogni or Iconium, an obscure and inland town above three hundred miles from Constantinople. 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 for 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 III and Louis VII, undertook the second crusade to support the falling fortunes of the Latins. A grand division of the third crusade was led by the emperor Frederick 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 the perpetual return of the same causes and effects, and the frequent attempts for the defense or recovery of the Holy Land would appear so many faint and unsuccessful copies of the original. END OF CHAPTER 59 PART 1 CHAPTER 59 PART 2 OF THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE VOLUME 6 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Corrie Samuel THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE VOLUME 6 by Edward Gibbon CHAPTER 59 THE CRUSADES PART 2 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 invisible state in the palace of Cairo, and their person was seldom violated by the profane eyes of subjects or strangers. The Latin ambassadors 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 vizier who conducted the ambassadors laid aside the cimeter 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 viziers 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 a royal patent of command. The factions of Dargham and Shower 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 Nuridin 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 Abbasides, but the restoration of the suppliant Shower was the ostensible motive for the first expedition, and the success was entrusted to the Amir Shiraku, 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 Shiraku were unequal. He relinquished the premature conquest, and the evacuation of Bellbase 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 resumed to ask him if he were not afraid of an attack. It is doubtless in your power to begin the attack, replied the intrepid Amir, 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 Nuridin. The caliph of Baghdad applauded the pious design, and Shiraku 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 Thebase, his masterly evolutions in the battle of Balbane, 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 Marmaluk exclaimed, If we cannot rest 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 Harim? After all his efforts in the field, after the obstinate defence of Alexandria by his nephew Saladin, an honourable capitulation and retreat concluded the second enterprise of Shiraku, and Nuridin reserved his abilities for a third and more propitious occasion. It was soon offered by the ambition and avarice of a Marmaluk, or a Maury, king of Jerusalem, who had imbibed the pernicious maxim that no faith should be kept with the enemies of God, and 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 Muslims turned their eyes towards the Sultan of Damascus, the Vizier whom danger encompassed on all sides yielded to their unanimous wishes, and Nuridin 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 a hostile country, and Amori retired into Palestine, with the shame and reproach that always adhere to unsuccessful injustice. After this deliverance, Syarakou was invested with a robe of honour, which he soon stained with the blood of the unfortunate shore. For a while the Turkish emirs condescended to hold the office of Vizier, 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 have been degraded by their own weakness and the tyranny of the Viziers. 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 Nuridin, and the descendants of the doctors, the holy names of Abu Bakr, Amar and Othman were solemnly restored. The Caliph Mostadi of Baghdad was acknowledged in a 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 Abbasidis. The last of his race, the Caliph Ated, who survived only ten days, expired in happy ignorance of his fate. His treasures secured the loyalty of soldiers and silenced the murmurs of the sectaries, and in all subsequent revolutions Egypt has never departed from the orthodox tradition of the Muslims. The hilly country, beyond the Tigris, is occupied by the pastoral tribes of the Kurds, 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 seems to identify them with the Carduchians of the Greeks, and they still defend against the Ottoman port, 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, and the son of Job, or Ayud, a simple Kurd, magnanimously smiled at his pedigree, which flattery deduced from the Arabian caliphs. So unconscious was Nouradin of the impending ruin of his house, that he constrained the reluctant youth to follow his uncle Shirakou 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 Shirakou, the office of Grand Vizier was bestowed on Saladin as the youngest and least powerful of the Amirs. 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 Nouradin lived, these ambitious Kurds 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 sons 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 Nouradin shall not exhort the tribute of a sugarcane. 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 Amirs of Damascus, and the new Lord of Egypt was decorated by the Caliph with every title 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 Atabex of Damascus, Aleppo, and Yabbaqa. 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 which had erased every notion of legitimate succession, by the recent example of the Atabex 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 Nuradin and Saladin are ranked among the Mohammedan saints, and the constant meditation of the Holy War appears to have shared 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 course 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 musselman. He ever deplored that the defence of religion had not allowed him to accomplish the pilgrimage of Mecca, but at the stated five times each day the Sultan devoutly prayed with his brethren. The involuntary omission of fasting was scrupulously repaid, and his perusal of the Quran on horseback between the approaching armies may be quoted as a proof, however ostentatious, of piety and courage. The superstitious doctrine of the sect of Shafay 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 invented 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 Selja and Zengi 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 grams 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, 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 his short existence the Kingdom of Jerusalem was supported by the discord of the Turks and Saracens, and both the Fatimid 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 a 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 first two Baldwin's, the brother and cousin of Godfrey Abuyo, the scepter devolved by female succession to Melisenda, daughter of the second Baldwin, and her husband Folk, Count of Anjou, the father by a former marriage of our English Plantagenets. Their two sons, Baldwin the Third, and Ormory, waged a strenuous and not unsuccessful war against the Infidels, but the son of Ormory, Baldwin the Fourth, was deprived by the leprosy, a gift of the Crusades, of the faculties both of mind and body. His sister Sibylla, the mother of Baldwin the Fifth, was his natural heiress. After the suspicious death of her child, she crowned her second husband, Guy of Lusinia, a prince of a handsome person, but of such base renown that his own 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 a hostile line, and the truth was violated by the Franks, whose existence it protected. A soldier of fortune, Reginald of Chattelion, had seized a fortress on the edge of the desert, from whence he pillaged the caravans, insulted Muhammad, and threatened the cities of Mecca and Medina. Saladin condescended to complain, rejoiced in the denial of justice, and, at the head of four score thousand horse and foot, invaded the Holy Land. The choice of Tiberius 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 garrison and to arm his people for the 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. Lysinion 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, Reginaldo Chattelion, 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 this cimeter, and Reginald was dispatched by the guards. The trembling Lysinion was sent to Damascus, to an honourable prison and speedy ransom, but the victory was stained by the execution of two hundred and thirty nights 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 a prisoner. From all the cities, both of the Seacoste and the inland country, the garrisons have been drawn away for this fatal field. Tyre and Tripoli alone could escape the rapid in-road of Saladin, and three months after the battle of Tiberias he appeared in arms before the gates of Jerusalem. 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 Sibylla trembled for herself and her captive husband, and the barons and knights who had escaped from the sword and chains of the Turks displayed the same fractious and selfish spirit in the public ruin. The most numerous portion of the inhabitants was composed of the Greek and Oriental Christians, whom experience had taught to prefer the Mohammedan 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 defense of Jerusalem. Within 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 barefoot 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 Muslims. 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 aduration in the name of the common father of mankind, and a sentiment of human sympathy mollified the rigor of fanaticism and conquest. He consented to accept the city, and despair 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 seaports of Syria and Egypt. The 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 favorite 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 Mohammedans of Jerusalem sustained the last extremities of an assault and storm. Justice is indeed due to the fidelity with which the Turkish conqueror fulfills 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 this interview with a queen his words and even his tears suggested the kindest consolations. His liberal arms were distributed among those who had been made orphans or widows by the fortune of war, and while the nights of the hospital were in arms against him he allowed their more pious brethren to continue, during the time 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 Quran. After Jerusalem had been delivered from the presence of the strangers the Sultan made his triumphal 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 Muhammad. The walls and pavement were purified with rose water, and a pulpit, the labour of Nuridin, 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 Muslims. 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 bisants 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 Tiberius, but that disaster was unknown in Italy and Greece, where 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. 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, Frederick Barbarossa, and the kings of France and England, assumed the cross, and the tardy magnitude of the armaments was anticipated by the maritime states of the Mediterranean and the ocean. The skillful 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 sucker of Flanders, Fries, and Denmark filled near a hundred vessels, and the northern warriors were distinguished in the field by a lofty stature and 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 pitted the misfortunes and revered the dignity of Lysinion, who was released from prison perhaps to divide the army of the Franks. He proposed the recovery of Ptolemies, or Acha, 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 Muslims of Egypt, Syria, Arabia, and the Oriental provinces, assembled under the servant of the Prophet, his camp was pitched and removed within a few miles of Acha, 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 speed and strength 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 and encouraged at the sight of the Duke of Swabia and his way-worn 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, Philippe 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 Muslims, almost in the sultan's view, were beheaded by the command of the Sanguinary Richard. 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, 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. End of Chapter 59, Part 2 Chapter 59, Part 3 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume 6 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Corey Samuel. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume 6 by Edward Gibbon Chapter 59 The Crusades, Part 3 Philippe Augustus and Richard I 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. Philippe 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 a 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 Ker de Lyon, 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 a horse suddenly started from the way his rider was want to exclaim, thus thou think King Richard is in that bush? His cruelty to the Mohammedans 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 wet a dagger against his valiant brother, Conrad of Montferrat, who was slain at Tyre by some secret assassins. After the surrender of Acre and the departure of Philip, the King of England led the crusaders to the recovery of the Seacoast and the cities of Caesarea and Jaffa were added to the fragments of the Kingdom of Lysinon. 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. Within a 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 marmaligs, who remembered the fate of their companions at Acre, pressed to the Sultan with loyal or seditious clamours, to reserve his person and their courage for the future defense of the religion and empire. The Muslims were delivered by the sudden, or as they deemed, the miraculous retreat of the Christians, and the laurels of Richard were blasted by the prudence or envy of his companions. The hero ascending a hill and veiling his face exclaimed with an indignant voice, those who were 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 learned 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 Amidus? During these hostilities a languid and tedious negotiation between the Franks and Muslims 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 ignonomy 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, discounted 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 aboard the embraces of a Turk, and Adele, or Safadin, would not easily renounce the plurality of wives. A personal interview was declined by Saladin, who alleged that 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 disproved by the zealots of both parties, by the Roman Pontiff, and the Caliph of Baghdad. 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 arms 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 Safadin. 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 Saladin Tenth, a general tax which was imposed on the laity, and even a 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 benefits, which have been granted by Roman pontiffs to Catholic sovereigns, or reserved for the immediate use of the apostolic sea. 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 Saint Peter attained the full meridian of their greatness, and in a reign of eighteen years he exercised a despotic command over the empress 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 Lateran 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 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 Muslims 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 popes 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 Alpegeois of France, and the Kings of Sicily of the Imperial Family. 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 the 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 signard 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 III 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. End of chapter 59, part 3 Chapter 60, part 1 of the history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, volume 6. This is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org. Recording by Andrew Coleman. 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. The restoration of the Western Empire by Charlemagne was speedily followed by the separation of the Greek and Latin churches. A religious 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 presume to argue on the high and mysterious questions of theological science. Those 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. 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 disputes the Roman Pontiffs affected a character of neutrality and moderation. They condemned the innovation, but the acquiesced in the sentiment of the trans-alpine brethren. They seemed to desire us of casting a veil of silence and charity over the superfluous research, and in the correspondence of Charlemagne and Leo III the Pope assumes the liberality of a statesman, and the prince descends to the passions and prejudices of a priest. But the orthodoxy of Rome spontaneously obeyed the impulse of the temporal policy and the Filioque, which Leo wished to erase, was transcribed in the symbol and chanted 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 asymes was fiercely debated in the 11th 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 Latinx 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. Their infirm monks were indulged in the taste of flesh, and animal grease was substituted for the want of vegetable oil. The holy chrysm 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 chrysm 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, 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 I, 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 Fioris Contest he deposed in his turn the successor of Saint 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 Caesar 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. At a synod of three hundred bishops was always prepared to hail the triumph, or to stigmatise the fall, of the holy, or the execrable, Photius. By a delusive promise of succour or reward the popes were tempted to countenance 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. The ministers were insulted or imprisoned. The procession of the Holy Ghost was forgotten. Bulgaria was forever 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 10th 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 Greek 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 Cariolarius was excommunicated in the heart of Constantinople by the popes' legates. Shaking the dust from their feet, they deposited on the altar of Saint Sophia a Darphel 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 Pontives. The emperors blushed and trembled at the ignominious fate of their royal brethren of Germany, and the people were scandalised by the temporal power and military life of the Latin clergy. 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 Muslims 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 Pusilanmus 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, a 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 adpoored 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 VII the Greek clergy washed and purified the altars which had been defiled by the sacrifice of a French priest. The companions of Frederick Barbarossa deplore the injuries which they endured, both in word and deed from the peculiar ranker 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 Blanchernes would be made a signal example of their divine vengeance. The passage of these mighty air 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 Amalfi the Phoenicians, Pesans and Genoese introduced their factories and settlements into the capital of the empire. Their surfaces were rewarded with honors 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 Muhammadan mosque it was impossible to interdict the churches of the Roman right. 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 Montfrat 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. The military talents were unfitly recompensed by the lucrative offices of judges and treasures. 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. 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 solved 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 chanted 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 helispont from the scene of blood. In their flight they burned and ravaged 200 miles of the seacoast 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, their 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 Wade the Holy Land. Domestic revolution invited and almost compelled the French and Venetians to achieve the conquest of the Roman Empire of the East. In the series of the Byzantine princes I have exhibited the hypocrisy and ambition, the tyranny and fall of Andronicus, the last male of the Comnenian family who reigned at Constantinople. The revolution which cast him headlong from the throne saved and exalted Isaac Angelus who descended by the females from the same imperial dynasty. The successor of a second Nero might have found it an easy task to deserve the esteem and affection of his subjects. They sometimes had reason to regret the administration of Andronicus. The sound and vigorous mind of the tyrant was capable of discerning the connection between his own and the public interest, and while he was feared by all who could inspire him with fear, the unsuspected people and the remote provinces might bless the inexorable justice of their master. But his successor was vain and jealous of the supreme power which he wanted courage and abilities to exercise. His vices were pernicious, his virtues, if he possessed any virtues, were useless to mankind, and the Greeks who imputed their calamities to his negligence denied him the merit of any transient or accidental benefits of the times. Isaac slept on the throne and was awakened only by the sound of pleasure. His vacant hours were amused by comedians and buffoons, and even to these 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 20,000, and a daily sum of 4,000 pounds of silver would swell to four million 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 32 years, during which he should extend his sway to Mount Lebanus at his conquests beyond the Euphrates. But his only step towards the accomplishment of the prediction was a splendid and scandalous embassy to Saladin to demand the restitution of the Holy Sepulchre, and to propose an offensive and defensive league with the enemy of the Christian name. In these unworthy hands of Isaac and his brother, the remains of the Greek Empire crumbled into dust. The island of Cyprus, whose name excites the ideas of elegance and pleasure, was usurped by his namesake, a Comnenian prince, and by a strange concatenation of events, the sword of our English Richard bestowed that kingdom on the house of Lusignan, a rich compensation for the loss of Jerusalem. The honor of the monarchy and the safety of the capital were deeply wounded by the revolt of the Belgarians and Wallachians. Since the victory of the Second Basil, they had supported above 170 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. The demoniac imposters proclaimed to the crowd that their glorious patron Saint Demetrius had forever 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 Hemus. By the arms and policy of John or Joanneques, the second kingdom of Bulgaria was firmly established. The subtle barbarian sent an embassy to Innocent III to acknowledge himself a genuine son of Rome in descent and religion, and humbly received from the Pope the license of Koineg money, the royal title, and a Latin Archbishop of Patriarch. The Vatican exalted 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 Assan 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 workmen, nor has the stripe that is stained in purple any superior price or value above its fellows. Several of these candidates for the purple successfully 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, of 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. 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 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 Euphrosy. 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 Stegira 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 past the helispont and found a secure refuge in the isle of Sicily. After saluting the threshold of the apostles and imploring the protection of Pope Innocent III, 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 the Holy War by the voice of a third prophet, less extravagant perhaps than Peter the Hermit, but far below Saint Bernard in the merit of an orator and a statesman. An illiterate priest of the neighborhood of Paris, Volkov Noyly, forsook his parochial duty to assume the more flattering character of a popular and itinerant missionary. The fame of his sanctity and miracles was spread over the land. He declaimed with severity and vehemence against the vices of the age, and his sermons, which he preached in the streets of Paris, converted the robbers, the usurers, the prostitutes, and even the doctors and scholars of the university. No sooner did Innocent III ascend the chair of Saint 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, Volkov Noyly was the loudest and most successful. The situation of the principal monarchs was a verse to the pious summons. The emperor Frederick II was a child. At his kingdom of Germany was disputed by the rival houses of Brunswick and Swabia, the memorable factions of the Guelphs and Gibralans. 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 exaltations of Volkov Noyly, 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' templates, my avarice to the monks of Sistoe, 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 Thibault, Count of Champagne, was the foremost in the Holy Race. The valiant youth at the age of 22 years was encouraged by the domestic examples of his father, who marched in the second crusade, and of his elder brother, who had ended his days in Palestine with the title of King of Jerusalem. Two thousand two hundred knights owed service and homage to his peerage. The nobles of Champagne excelled in all the exercises of war, and by his marriage with the heiress of Nevar Thibault could draw a band of hardy gaskons from either side of the Pyrenean mountains. His companion in arms was Louis, Count of Boulard, and Chartres, like himself of Regal lineage, for both 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 Monfort, the scourge of the Abidschwa, and valiant noble Geoffrey of Viaduan, Marshal of Champagne, who has condescended in the rude idiom of his age and country to write or dictate an original narrative of the councils and actions in which he bore a memorable part. At the same time Baldwin, Count of Flanders, who had married the sister of Thibault, assumed the cross a bruge with his brother Henry, and the principal knights and citizens of that rich and industrious province. The vow which the chiefs had pronounced in churches, they ratified in tournaments. The operations of the war were debated in full and frequent assemblies, and it was resolved to seek the deliverance of Palestine in Egypt, a country since Saladin's death, which was almost ruined by famine and civil war. But the fate of so many royal armies displayed the toils and perils of a land expedition. And if the Fleming's 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 Viaduan was won, 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 lie in 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 exalt in the belief of primitive and perpetual independence. Against the Latins, their antique freedom has been asserted by the sword, and may be justified by the pen. Charlemagne himself resigned all claims of sovereignty to the islands of the Adriatic Gulf. His son Pepin was repulsed in the attacks of the Lagunas or Canals, too deep for the cavalry, and too shallow for the vessels. And in every age under the German Caesars, the lands of the Republic have been clearly distinguished from the Kingdom of Italy. But the inhabitants of Venice were considered by themselves, by strangers, and by their sovereigns, as an inalienable portion of the Greek Empire. In the ninth and tenth centuries, the proofs of their subjection are numerous and unquestionable. And the vain titles, the servile honours of the Byzantine court, so ambitiously solicited by their dukes, would have degraded the magistrates of a free people. But the bands of this dependence, which was never absolute or rigid, were imperceptibly relaxed by the ambition of Venice and the weakness of Constantinople. Obedience was softened into respect, privilege ripened into prerogative, and the freedom of domestic government was fortified by the independence of foreign dominion. The maritime cities of Istria and Dalmatia bowed to the sovereigns of the Adriatic. And when they armed against the Normans in the cause of Alexius, the emperor applied not to the duty of his subjects, but to the gratitude and generosity of his faithful allies. The sea was their patrimony. The western parts of the Mediterranean, from Tuscany to Gibraltar, were indeed abandoned to their rivals of Pisa and Genua. But the Venetians acquired an early and lucrative share of the commerce of Greece and Egypt. Their riches increased with the increasing demand of Europe. Their manufactures of silk and glass, perhaps the institution of their bank, are of high antiquity, and they enjoyed the fruits of their industry in the magnificence of public and private life. To assert her flag, to avenge her injuries, to protect the freedom of navigation, the Republic could launch and man a fleet of a hundred galleys, and the Greeks, the Saracens and the Normans were encountered by her naval arms. The Franks of Syria were assisted by the Venetians in the reduction of the sea coast, but their zeal was neither blind nor disinterested, and in the conquest of Tyre they shared the sovereignty of a city, the first seat of the commerce of the 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 schisms of the Greeks without yielding a servile obedience to the Roman pontiff, and a three intercourse with the infidels of every climb 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 a 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 12th century produced the first rudiments of the wise and jealous aristocracy which has reduced the doge to a pageant and the people to a cipher. End of chapter 60 part 1 of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Recording by Andrew Coleman