)i i^4^i ^(?AavHgn ^\ic iiil!\/cnr:lOSANGf :^sa]AiNfi- vlOSANCE vsa3AiNn- '^■^rALIF ^.-lOSANCElfX^ "\ > >-lOS-AJJCI .^ » >cLOSANCI >- ^ 5 o - t?> Sir" *H// ^ 1 oo pc ^ iXI rV ^ < CI ? 01 1 T K QC 27 55. 5^ ^^VllBRARYGr^ ^IUBRARYQa ^^ o aWEUNIVERS/a o ^■lOSANCElfj> %a3AiNn] ^OFCAIIFO% 2_ S > ^OFCAllFOff^^ ^aWEUNIVERJ/a 9 '^(?Aav}i8n-^'^ ^JVi3owsoi=<^ .^VOSANGElfx^ i tKX^ O K:- ^'\WEl)NIVER% ^ 4>, ^ o ■- SIR'S iz .^ILIBRARYO^, -s^tllBRARY^/r^, ^^OJIWJJO"^ '^(JOJllVJJO'^ ^\WEUNIVER% ft: O / ■'^'/Sa^AlNiVdHV ^ AOFCAllFO/?;)k, <^OFCAIIF0% ^^WElJNIVER% ^lOSAN! TURKEY Edson Lyman Clark A New York P.F. Collier 1898 CONTENTS. PART FIRST. THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. CHAPTER I. '*" JVrSTI.VIAN. Tht Fall of the Rctnan Empire of the East Il CHAPTER II. Heraclius. Causes of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire of the East — The Restoration of the Empire — The Transition from Roman to Byzantine History 19 CHAPTER III. Leo the Isaurian. The Empire a Great Commercial State — Its Social Condition and General Characteristics 28 CHAPTER IV. Mental Asphyxia. Complete Moral Enslavement of the Empire — Intellectual Stupor of the Church — The Paulicians 40 tv CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. '*<*■ Basil the Macedonian. The Decay of the Empire 54 CHAPTER VI. The End. Capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders — Four Empires — Re- covery of Constantinople by the Greeks — Conquest of the City, and Extinction of the Empire by the Turks 63 PART SECOND. THE MODERN GREEKS AND THE ALBANIANS. CHAPTER I. True Character of the Modern Greeks — Government of THE Earlier Sultans — Reasons for the Willing Sub- mission OF the Greeks 77 CHAPTER II. Good and Bad Qualities of the Greeks — Their Political Regeneration — Population of European Turkey, and the Distribution of its Several Classes and Races 102 CHAPTER III. State of Learning — State of Religion — The Greek Church '27 CHAPTER IV. Condition of the Greeks in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries — Armatoli and Klephts — The Age of Piracy — Venetian Conquest of the Morea 148 CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. INS OR ARNi Yannina. The ALBA.NIANS OR ArNAUTS — SCANDERBEG — AlI PaSHA OF 167 CHAPTER VI, The Greek Awakening. The Phanariots — Education and Letters — Commerce — Preparation for the Revolution — The Commercial Greeks — The Primates — The Agricultural Peasants -■ The Klephts — The Heteria 189 CHAPTER Vn. The Greek Revolution. Fall of Ali Pasha of Yannina — Revolt of the Greeks — The Turks Completely Defeated in Four Campaigns — Greek Independence Fairly Won in 1824 224 CHAPTER VIII. Ibrahim Pasha in the Morea. Mehemet Ali, Viceroy of Egypt — His Army Called in by the Divan — The Greeks Powerless Before a Disciplined Force— Fall of Me- solonghi — Fall of Athens — Ruin of the Greek Cause — Inter- ference of the Western Powers — Treaty of London — Battle of Navarino — Greece Free 244 CHAPTER IX. The Kingdom of Greece. Presidency of Capo d'Istrias — Reign of Otho of Bavaria — Accession of Prince William George of Denmark 262 CHAPTER X. Present Condition and Prospects of the Greeks. The Government still Weak — Brigandage — Progress of the Kingdom — Morals — Education — Religion — The Greek Church — Mis- sionaries — Agriculture Depressed — Great Want of the Kingdom — The Greeks one People — The Greece of the Future 279 Vl CONTENTS. PART THIRD. THE TURKISH SLAVONIANS, THE WALLACHIANS, AND THE GYPSIES. CHAPTER I. PAOB The StAvic Race 309 CHAPTER II. The Bulgarians. The Earlier and Later Bulgarian Kingdoms 321 CHAPTER III. The Servians. Rise of the Servian Empire — Stephen Dushan — The Battle of Kos- sovo — The Turkish Conquest 33 ; CHAPTER IV. Montenegro 353 CHAPTER V. The Servian Revolution 379 CHAPTER VI. Free Servia 397 CHAPTER VII. Stara-Servia — Herzegovina and Bosnia — The Morlaks and The Uscocs 421 CHAPTER VIIL The Modern Bulgarians 442 CHAPTER IX. The Wallachians. The Daco-Roumanian People — Wallachia — Moldavia — Roumania — I'he Roumanian Jews 463 CHAPTER X. The Gypsies 499 CHAPTER XL The Congress or Berlin 507 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TURKEY Frontispiece — Sultan of Turkey The Bosphorus Constantinople Passage of the Ingour HISTORY OF TURKEY INTRODUCTION. Nearly a hundred and fifty years ago, Bishop Berke- ley penned that famous line, a hne which has passed into a proverb, and become familiar as household words to all peoples whose mother tongue is the English language — *' Westward the course of empire takes its way." Never, surely, did poet express a great historic truth more tersely, or more happily. For twenty-five centu- ries, steadily, unvaryingly, the seat of imperial dominion in the civilized world has been moving towards the West. From Persia to Macedon, from Maccdon to Rome, from Rome to the Empire of Charlemagne, from mediaeval Ger- many to France and England, from France and England across the Atlantic to these distant shores of the New World, the imperial seat of civilization and political power has constantly advanced in the direction of the setting sun. But now at last, having reached the waters of the Pa- cific, and thus completed the circuit of that part of the earth's surface occupied by the royal Aryan race, the Star of Empire has turned in its course. At the present time, aside from the fortunes of our own countr}'-, the progress of civilization and political power is not toward the West, but toward the East ; and this eastward move- 2 INTRODUCTION. ment of the course of empire is plainly destined to con- tinue for generations and centuries to come. Within the past few years, we have seen Germany rise to the ascendant in the political horizon of Europe. The history of the German people has been strange and sad. A people whose blood flows in our own veins ; one of the grandest, noblest races that lives on the earth; simple, true-hearted, and earnest; ever toiling on with an industry which nothing can weary or discourage; standing at the post of duty or of danger with a courage as quiet and immovable as the rocks beneath their feet ; with a power and scope of thought which long ago gave them the intel- lectual leadership of the world ; and, to crown all, a pre- eminently reverent and God-fearing people, the Germans have lain, through weary centuries, paralyzed by their endless and hopeless divisions, awaiting their time, filling no place, taking no part in the great movements of the political world at all commensurate with their powers or their worth. First Italy, then Spain, then France, then England, then England and Frarrte together, rose to po- sitions of controlling influence in Europe; but still Ger- many lay shorn of her strength, divided and despised. But at last her time also has come. Her ancient wounds have been healed. She has risen in her full strength, and, with a step of imperial majesty, has taken that foremost place which is her right. To every man of Teutonic blood this grand unification of Germany may well be the occa- sion of profoundest satisfaction, of devoutest thankful- ness. For the predominance, the controlling influence, of this simple, earnest, laborious, and thoughtful people forebodes to the world nothing of evil, but only good. INTRODUCTION. j Passing north-east, from Germany into the vast Em- pire of Russia, we seem to have stepped backward three hundred years in the order of human advancement Wc find a people still in the childhood of their political and social development. The peasantry, forming the great majority of the nation, have but just been emanci- pated from a serfdom which bound them to the land they tilled. They are rude, ignorant, uncleanly, and super- stitious. The communal system is an effectual bar to in- dividual enterprise and progress, and during the sixteen years which have passed since emancipation, theii moral and social condition has not greatly improved.^ Yet in the political and social condition of the Russian people as a whole, there has been, during the past thirty years, a breadth and rapidity of progress to which few parallels can be found. It is not too much to say that during this period tlie Russian people has awoke to political self- ' The great want of the Russian peasant is a fair chance to reap the fruits of his own industry. From this the communal system in great measure de- bars him. The commune, or village, owns the land, assigns to every family the fields it is to occupy for the year, fixes every man's social position, has a hold upon him from which he cannot release himself, assigns his taxes arbi- trarily, will not permit him to leave without a pass, and can call him back imperatively, even from St. Petersburg, and from the midst of the most important business, at a moment's warning. The Russian peasant has thus no freedom of action, no fair field for the exercise of his industry and his powers. He is in complete bondage to the commune. This ancient princi- ple of social organization, so peculiar to the eastern and soutliern Slavonian peoples, must be abandoned, or greatly modified, in Russia — the peasant must be made the master of his own hands, liis own fortunes, the products of his own industry — before there can be rapid and substantial progress among tlic common people. It is clear from l\Ir. "Wallace's admirable work that this second and final emancipation has already begun, and that the time is not distant when it will be fully accomphshed. See Wallace's " Russia," chapters viii. and ix- 4 INTRODUCTION. consciousness. Heretofore the world has been concerned only with the selfish, autocratic Russian government; hereafter it will have to do with the Russian nation. Towards the fifty millions of the Slavonians of Russia the Star of Empire is steadily taking its course. Far behind the nations of the West as they are in social and political development, there is that in them which must place them, in their time, among the foremost of earthly powers. And their coming time is not so far in the future as we have been wont to think. The distance which separates them from their more favored brethren they are already passing with mighty strides. In the Russian people we see the childhood of a grand and mighty manhood. Few races have ever existed more munificently endowed by nature than the Slavonians of Russia. A people so stead- fast and patient ; so simple, docile, and obedient ; so grave and serious ; so deeply, intensely religious ; so full of poetry and song, with intellectual aptitudes and capacities so va- rious and so great; so stubbornly, immovably faithful, loyal, and true, is a people which deserv'es to rise, and which must rise, in the long course of events, to no sec- ond place among the arbiters of the world. Nowhere else, perhaps, is this east\vard march of civili- zation and political power more conspicuously apparent than among the peoples whose rising fortunes are the subject of the present volume. No one, at all familiar with the present state of things in the East, can have failed to be impressed with the fact that for the past fifty years the Greeks and the Slavonian peoples of European Turkey have been rapidly rising to a position of great social and pohtical importance in those fair and fruitful INTRODUCTION. 5 regions so long blighted and held in check by the bar- barian tyranny of the Turks. In the summer of 1876 no nation in Europe held a position of greater political importance than the little Principahty of Servia. What action the Prince and people of that small state were about to take in the desperate struggle of the Christians of Herzegovina and Bosnia with their Moslem tyrants, was a question discussed with absorbing interest in every cabinet, in every newspaper, in every city and town of the civilized world. In the terrible struggle which fol- lowed, through lack of experience, of organization and discipline, of good leadership, and of effective arms, the Servians failed as deplorably as the armies of our own Union failed in the first battle of Bull Run. But that great disaster to them, like our first crushing defeat, was only a blessing in disguise. It was a fiery trial, pro- ducing in the end, not weakness and disgrace, but true courage, union, and strength. The Servians are now under a cloud ; but the time is coming when they will emerge from obscurity and stand before the world in a very different light, as their fathers did sixty years ago. Widely unlike as the Greeks and the Servians are. in language, in race, and in their early histor}'-, four centuries of Turkish oppression have placed them side by side in a similar social and political condition, and very nearly upon the same level. The Greeks were already an ancient people, had ages before played the grandest part ever taken by any people in the history of mankind, had fallen from their high estate, had sunk to the lowest stages of servitude and degeneracy, when, in the thirteenth and 6 INTRODUCTION. fourteenth centuries, the Servians were just emerging from barbarism, just entering on what seemed the promise of a great national career. To the Servians ' the result of the Turkish conquest was chiefly to arrest their progress, to hold them, so to speak, in a state of suspended political animation, a fixed and stationary condition, for three hundred years. With the Greeks the case was very far otherwise. In their condition, that great catastrophe wrought a most impor- tant, a most beneficent change. It brought them a grand enfranchisement. It effected their political regeneration, made them a new people. In that fiery ordeal, the old political, ecclesiastical, and social system of the Greek Empire, with all its monstrous tyrannies and abuses, was wholly and forever burned away. By the Turkish con- quest the Greeks were reduced to a condition of perfect equality ; and from that day no people in the world has been filled with a spirit more intensely democratic. They were left very poor, and ignorant, and weak ; they were reduced to the lowest round in the social ladder, and had to begin over again the whole order of their social and political development ; but they began it in newness of life. They had passed through a new political birth, they were a new people. From that day, although for many centuries their progress was tedious, and painful, and very slow; although even yet they have not passed beyond the weakness of childhood, their course has been just as surely and steadily upwards as that of the sun in the heavens. Of this truth every thoughtful reader of the ' The Montenegrins and the Slavonians, both Moslem and Christian, of Herzegovina and Bosnia, are all Servians by race. INTRODUCTION. 7 following pages will find evidence sufficient and con- clusive. The Servians have been essentially free for sixty-five years. In national character they are very unlike the Greeks, although members of the Greek Church. They are grave, serious, and conservative ; more brave and war- like than the Greeks, more steadfast and persistent in their purposes. They have been more successful than the Greeks in the establishment and administration of their free institutions. The Principahty of Servia has been more powerful and more influential than the King- dom of Greece. What may be in store for these little States in the stormy and troubled future which seems to be before them, no one can foresee. But whatever may be their lot, these peoples are destined, beyond all doubt or question, to rise slowly but surely in political power and in social and material prosperity, until they hold some great and leading position in the magnificent regions of south-eastern Europe. The peoples whose history and fortunes are traced in the following pages, deserve to be better known than they have yet been by American Christians. They are worthy of our warmest sympathies, of our efficient and constant aid. The preparation of this volume has been a labor of love. If it shall result in disseminating among his coun- trymen a better knowledge of these most interesting peoples, and in deepening and strengthening their inter- est in them, the author's end will have been fully attained Southampton, Mass., June, 1878. PART FIRST. THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. The Authorities chiefly followed are : Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Finlay's Greece under the Romans, and History of the Byzantine and Greek Empires. Neander's History of the Christian Religion and Churcha Milman's History of Latin Christianity. CHAPTER I. JUSTINIAN. THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE OF THE EAST. When in the year 622 Mohammed established both his religion and his power by his flight from Mecca to Medina, it might well have seemed to him that the Em- pire of Rome had very nearly reached the end of its great career. Internal confusion and disorganization had left the Empire the helpless prey of foreign enemies. The Avars, a powerful Tartar tribe which had invaded Europe and established itself to the north of the Danube, had overrun the European provinces ; while on the east, the Persian monarchy, under Chosroes, the greatest of its later kings, had suddenly blazed up in a brief expiring flash of glory rivaling that of its early conquests under Cyrus. Invading the Roman dominions in 603, in the course of twenty years of uninterrupted victory, Chosroes subdued Syria and Palestine, traversed Egypt from the Mediterra- nean to the borders of Ethiopia, crossed the Lybian deserts and subdued the rich and beautiful province of Cyrcnc, nov/ Barca, vanquished the Roman armies in Asia Minor itself, and advanced to the shores of the Bos- phorus, where in 626 he joined his forces with the Avars 12 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. for the siege of Constantinople, in the vain hope of end- ing forever the Empire of Rome. This descent of the Empire, from the highest pitch of power and splendor to the very verge of ruin, had been strangely rapid.^ The glory of the Roman Empire of the East culminated and expired in the long reign of Justinian, who ascended the throne of Constantinople in the year 527, and died in 565. The reign of Justinian opened with brilliant promise. His Empire embraced something less than half of the vast dimensions of the early Caesars. Western Europe was lost ; the Vandals reigned over north-western Africa ; and the Persians had pushed their frontier westward, until the Romans re- tained but the western half of Armenia and the north- western third of Mesopotamia. But, narrowed as it was, the Empire inherited by Justinian still embraced sixty- four provinces and nine hundred and thirty-five cities, and made its master by far the richest and most powerful sovereign in the world. The European provinces of the Empire were bounded by the Danube, the Save, and the Adriatic, though Moesia and Illyricum had already been sadly wasted by barbarian inroads. In Asia, the Roman arms still held the grand peninsula of Asia Minor, west- ern Armenia, the five north-western provinces of Meso- potamia, Syria, Palestine, and Arabia Petraea. In Africa, the great and fruitful provinces of Egypt and Cyrene still furnished their abundant revenues of both money and corn to the government of Constantinople. Justinian found the Empire in a condition of unusual ' Gibbon, voL iv. pp. 46, 466; Finlay's Greece under the Romans, chapters iii and iv. JUSTINIAN, 13 quiet and stren^h. The provinces «vere peaceful and obedient, the treasury was full, the army was efficient and well appointed, while both the civil and military service presented an array of able men unsurpassed either before or afterwards in the Eastern Empire. The reign thus auspiciously inaugurated was not un- marked by great events, worthy of such a beginning. In the year 533, Belisarius, a general worthy of the best days of Rome, sailed from Constantinople for the con- quest of the Vandal kingdom in the north of Africa; and with such consummate generalship and such perfect discipline was the expedition conducted, that a single brief campaign sufficed to annihilate the once terrible power of the Vandals, while scarcely a village was plun- dered, and the capture of the great city of Carthage did not interrupt for a single day the traffic of its busy streets. The great province thus so easily recovered remained for a hundred years, until it was conquered by the Saracens, one of the most prosperous and most valuable possessions of the Empire. The splendid success of his African expedition inspired Justinian with the hope of breaking the power of the Ostrogoths in Italy. Belisarius entered upon this second and more difficult undertaking in 535. Sicily and Naples were speedily subdued, and in 536 Belisarius entered Rome. The Goths, however, were a people who were not to be easily subdued. The war thus begun continued with various vicissitudes for twenty years. It was ended by Narses, who although a eunuch — and perhaps the only eunuch who ever displayed the energy and ability of a great military leader — was fully the equal of Beli- 14 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. sarius. In 554, Narses destroyed the last remains of the Ostrogothic kingdom, restored the whole of Italy to the Empire, and became the first Exarch of Ravenna, under which title he governed his conquests for more than fifteen years. While these events were transpiring in Italy, a considerable district was also wrested from the hands of the Visigoths in the south of Spain — ^an acqui- sition of greater value to the Empire commercially than it was politically. While Justinian derived no little glory from these great military achievements, his reign was made yet more illus- trious by the peaceful labors of his civil officers, which have proved a permanent blessing to mankind. Under the personal direction and supervision of the Emperor, Tribonian and his fellow-jurists produced that great digest of Roman law known as the Code, the Pandects, and the Institutes of Justinian, which has ever since remained one of the highest legal authorities of the Christian world. From these great achievements, the merit of which was in no small degree his own, Justinian derived a just renown. Nor can it be denied that he displayed many of the qualities of a great sovereign and a good man. He was morally virtuous, abstemious in his mode of life, sincere in his religious convictions, and zealous in the discharge oi his rehgious duties. The master of consid- erable and varied learning, he was one of the most dili- gent and studious men of his times. After a smgle hour's sleep he often rose from his bed and passed the rest of the night in study, while his indefatigable industry made him familiar with the minutest details of the vast machinery of the imperial government. Yet with al] yUSTINIAN. 15 this, the government of Justinian was one of the worst ever administered by an active and virtuous sovereign. He was a weak, narrow-minded pedant. His religion was a puerile superstition, his zeal a fanatical bigotry, his industry a meddlesome and mischievous interference with the details of the several departments of govern- ment. His ample revenues were wasted with such lavish profusion in his distant and costly wars, his ruinous pas- sion for building in every part of his dominions, and in ignominious tribute to his barbarian neighbors, that his treasury could be supplied only by the most oppressive extortion. Hence the single merit of large and regular remittances to the treasury was suffered to cover the greatest tyranny and official corruption in the provincial governors, until the whole Empire groaned under an in- tolerable burden of oppression. Through almost the whole of his reign, the peace of the capital was destroyed by a bloody and terrible feud between the rival factions of the circus.^ The contending parties of charioteers in the hippodrome were distin- guished by the blue and green colors of their respective dresses. With one or the other of these parties almost the whole population of Constantinople took sides, so that the whole city came to be divided between the blue and green factions of the circus. The incessant conflict of these rival factions was carried into every question of social and political life, and very often stained the streets of the city with blood. The blue faction proclaimed themselves, and were regarded by Justinian, the especial champions of his person and government ; and for tliis * Gibbim, iv. 73, 387; Finlay's Greece under the Romans, pp. 235-274. l6 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. reason were tolerated in a career of violence and crime hardly to be paralleled in the history of civilized nations. " No place was safe or sacred from their depredations ; to gratify either avarice or revenge they profusely spilt the blood of the innocent ; churches and altars were pol- luted by atrocious murders ; and it was the boast of the assassins that their dexterity could always inflict a mor- tal wound with a single stroke of their dagger. The dis- solute youth of Constantinople adopted the blue livery of disorder ; the laws were silent, and the bonds of society were relaxed. Creditors were compelled to resign their obligations, judges to reverse their sentences, masters to enfranchise their slaves, fathers to supply the extrava- gance of their children ; noble matrons were prostituted to the lust of their servants ; beautiful boys were torn from the arms of their parents ; and wives, unless they preferred a voluntary death, were ravished in the pres- ence of their husbands. *' The despair of the greens, who were persecuted by their enemies and deserted by the magistrates, assumed the privilege of defence, perhaps of retaliation ; but those who survived the combat were dragged to execution, and the unhappy fugitives, escaping to woods and caverns, preyed without mercy on the society from whence they were expelled." ^ It was the great defect of the imperial government that it v/as a vast corporation by itself, wholly distinct from the people of the Empire. Justinian's whole policy tended to increase and perpetuate this evil. He feared his own subjects more than his barbarian enemies. He ^ Gibbon, iv. 59. JUSTINIAN. VI would not intrust them with arms for their own defence ; even the imperial armies were recruited from barbarian tribes. The ancient municipal institutions of the Empire — the domestic governments of the cities and towns — which had been the foundation of its strength and pros- perity, were deprived of their resources. Their revenues, which had provided for a local police, for the repair of roads, bridges, and fortifications, and for the ordinary municipal expenses, were transferred to the imperial treasury. The impoverished cities were thus left to fall to decay, or become the helpless prey of barbarian invaders." ^ This misgovernment and oppression produced its natu- ral results. The people of the provinces, especially those more remote from the capital, were inspired with a bitter hatred of the imperial government, which prepared them to welcome any foreign invader as a deliverer from the oppression under which they groaned. To make the condition of the unhappy people still worse, the govern- ment of Justinian was as feeble as it was tyrannical. During the latter years of his reign, his Empire lay the easy prey of every invader. A disgraceful tribute pre- served a semblance of peace with the Persians and the Avars, but the Bulgarians, Slavonians, and Huns ravaged the provinces of the West almost unresisted, until the peo- ple whom they had slaughtered or enslaved were counted by millions, and wide regions, before populous and pros- perous, had been changed to deserts. It seemed as if nature itself had conspired with a weak and tyrannical government for the ruin of the Empire ' Finlay's Greece under the Romans, chap. iii. , sects, i and 3. l8 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. Terrible earthquakes destroyed some of the most populous cities of the East, two hundred and fifty thousand per- sons perishing in Antioch alone ; and a dreadful pesti- lence, which sprang up in Egypt in the fifteenth year of Justinian's reign, destroyed half the population of Con- stantinople, left whole cities desolate in both the East and the West, and continued for half a century to ravage the whole civilized world. Justinian died in the year 565, after a life of eighty-three years, and a reign of thirty- eight, leaving the Empire, which he had inherited in the fullness of power and prosperity, trembling upon the verge of ruin. His three successors,^ two of whom were men of char- acter and ability, struggled hard and with some success to uphold the falling Empire. But in the year 602, by a mutiny of the demoralized army headed by Phocas, an ignorant and worthless centurion, the government was overturned: Phocas was raised to the throne, murdered in cold blood his deposed sovereign and all his family, and soon proved himself one of the most incompetent and brutal tyrants that ever disgraced the imperial throne. Chosroes, the Persian king, had obtained his throne by the aid of the slain Emperor Maurice. Upon the acces- sion of Phocas, he declared a relentless war upon the murderer of his benefactor, and entered at once upon his great and long continued career of conquest. Phocas reigned eight years, from 602 to 610, and in that short period the ruin of the Empire was complete, 'Justin II., 565-578; Tiberius II., 578-582; Maurice, 582-602. Tibe- rius and Maurice were able men. CHAPTER II. HERACLIUS. CAUSES OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE OF THE EAST — THE RESTORATION OF THE EMPIRE — THE TRANSITION FROM ROMAN TO BYZANTINE HISTORY. In this emergency, all eyes were turned to Heraclius, the aged Exarch of the now prosperous and powerful province of Africa, as the only hope of deliverance from the unendurable tyranny of Phocas. Too old to take the burden upon his own shoulders, Heraclius devolved the task of redeeming the Empire upon his son of the same name, who soon sailed for Constantinople at the head of a powerful fleet. The tyrant fell ignominiously, almost without a blow, and in 6io the young Heraclius was raised to the throne. ' Of the great qualities which he was afterwards to dis- play, and the dazzling splendor of his subsequent military exploits, the first years of the youthful Emperor gave little promise. With the imperial purple he had grasped but the shadow of imperial power. The Empire was prostrate; its affairs, both military and civil, in hopeless ' Gibbon, iv. 457. 90 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. confusion ; its territories upon the east and the west ex- posed without defence to the arms of victorious enemies. The fall of Antioch was the first news which greeted the ears of the young Emperor, and the Persians and Avars continued to advance until the capital, with some for- tresses in its neighborhood, Macedonia, Greece, the south of Italy, Sicily, and north-western Africa, were nearly all that remained to Heraclius of the once vast dominions of Rome. This utter prostration of the Roman power in the first years of Heraclius must be regarded as the transition point between the Roman and Byzantine Empires. The shattered and prostrate Empire was to rise from its ruins, and to stand for centuries the richest, most civilized, and most powerful state of the world ; but it was to rise a Greek and not a Latin power. Italy, Africa, Syria, and Egypt were to be finally severed from the Empire ; Latin was to give place to Greek as the language of the govern- ment and the law ; and the common faith of the Greek Church was to become the vital and enduring bond of union to a reasonably homogeneous and harmonious people. If we regard the conquests of Chosroes as the final destruction of the Roman Empire, we may properly pause at this point to notice the causes of the decUne and fall of that vast dominion. I. The first cause of the decay and disintegration of the Empire is seen in the incongruous and irreconcilable elements of which it was composed. So far as the Latin language prevailed, the various conquered nations became insensibly blended into one great people. By the over- HERACLIUS: %i mastering influence of the power, civilization, and institu- tions of Rome, the inhabitants of Italy, Gaul, Spain, Southern Germany, Moesia, Thrace, and north-western Africa were gradually fused into a single people, with a common language, common ideas and institutions, and a common religious belief But in the eastern half of the Empire the case was far otherwise. Among the Greeks, the tribes of Asia Minor, the Armenians, the Syrians, and the Egyptians, the Latin language gained little ground, and never became anything more than the official language of the government. All these peoples retained not only their own languages and nationality, but, excepting the non- Hellenic tribes of Asia Minor, which were heartily de- voted to the Greek Church, certain striking peculiarities of religious belief A strong antagonism and tendency to separation thus grew up, not only between the West and the East, between the Latin-speaking and the Greek-speaking portions of the Empire, but in the East itself, between the Greeks, the Syrians, and the Egyp- tians. To the Syrians and Egyptians, the government of Constantinople was the hated rule of strangers and heretics. They submitted with no great reluctance, many of them gladly, to the successors of Mohammed — a fact which explains the ease and rapidity of the first Saracen conquests. II. The second and most efficient cause of the decay and fall of the Roman Empire lay in two great and radi- cal vices of the imperial government ; its entire separa- tion from the people and all the interests of society, and its fiscal oppression. The imperial government, after the time of Constantine, was a close corporation, forming a tS THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. vast establishment complete in itself, holding the Empire in absolute subjection, allowing to the people no rights of self-government or even of self-defence, and governing them solely for its own advantage. Its great end from first to last was to bring the largest possible amount of money into the imperial treasury. As distinct from this end, the public good was something little regarded, rarely thought of As might be expected of such a govern- ment, its fiscal extortions were universal, constant, and terrible. The population of the Empire was regarded in hardly any other light than as a great instrument for the production of revenue. The measure of the exactions laid upon the provinces was simply the largest amount that could be wrung from them. The taxes upon agri- culture, already ruinous before the time of Constantine, were retained and increased by the Christian Emperors. Gradually the small farmers were everywhere ruined, everywhere disappeared ; but, by a cruel refinement of fiscal ingenuity, every community was taxed as a whole, and the rich, so long as any remained, were compelled to make good the deficiencies of the bankrupt poor. As the result of these grinding extortions, the farming popu- lation of the country districts was everywhere ruined throughout the Empire. The great class of small land- holders disappeared, and the whole agricultural territory of the Empire, beyond the immediate neighborhood of the cities, became divided into great estates, tilled only by serfs and slaves. The free laborers, reduced to utter poverty and helplessness, and worse off than the foreign- bought slaves, sunk to the condition of serfs; and lesi the land should be left untilled and thus yield no revenue, HER AC LI us. 23 a law was enacted that any freeman who had cultivated lands for the space of thirty years should remain forever attached with his descendants to the same estate. The position of the slaves, as the chief producers of the agri- cultural wealth of the Empire, gave them great importance in the view of the government ; and while the free laborers sunk to serfs, the slaves gradually rose to the same con- dition. Long before the time of Justinian this vast class of serfs and slaves had so increased as probably to exceed half the population of the Empire.' This fact is of itself sufficient to explain the fatal weakness of the state. That sturdy yeomanry, which must form the bone and sinew of every really vigorous country, had been annihilated by the fiscal oppression of the government and the vast and universal system of slavery. The only population remaining capable of any effort in self-defence was con- fined to the cities. But the people of the cities were so distrusted and feared by the government that they were not permitted to arm themselves for their own protection. They were compelled to depend wholly for safety upon their fortifications and the presence of regular garrisons. But this was not all. The entire separation of the gov- ernment from all the interests of the people, and the oppression to which they were constantly subjected, had rendered all patriotic feeling impossible, and had filled the provinces not only with indifference as to the fate of the imperial government, but with positive hatred towards it. Thus, totally destitute of strength in the affections ' Sir James Stephen's Lectures on the History of France, Lect. I., on Ancient Gaul ; Finlay's Greece under the Romans, pp. i8l, 231, 240; Gib bon, voL i. pp. 47-52, and notes. «4 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. and support of its people, the Empire rested alone upon its organized military force. III. The third and immediate cause of the fall of the Empire was the demoralization of its armies. For the first three centuries of its existence, the Roman Empire was the military government of the commander- in-chief of the legions. So long as the army retained its early discipline, and the Emperors were men of energy and ability, the peace and order of society were tolerably well preserved. But it soon appeared how fatally insecure was the foundation on which this military government reposed. It did not take the army long to learn that it was really the master of both the Empire and the Emperor. Soon, in the full consciousness of its power, it began with a reckless and fatal levity to make and un- make its sovereigns. Through the whole of the third, and the first quarter of the fourth century, this tyranny of the army destroyed the prosperity of the Empire, and filled the provinces with constant and ruinous civil wars. Thus things went on until the accession of Constantine, in 324. That great man effected a complete revolution in the constitution of the Empire, and transformed it from a military to a civil government. The Emperor became the head, not of the army, but of the state, a lawful sovereign, to whom army and people alike were bound to render a loyal and implicit obedience. During the long and prosperous reign of Constantine, this great change was quietly and successfully accomplished. The army was effectually subordinated to the civil power, and came to feel a loyal devotion to the Emperor as its lawful sovereign. By this revolution the Empire was in great HERA C LI us, 25 measure relieved for two hundred years from the terrible military disorder under which it had so long groaned. But during the later years of the reign of Justinian, his miserable mismanagement, and the pitiful weakness of his government, prepared the way for the revival of the worst evils of the third century. The discipline of the army was relaxed, its efficiency was greatly impaired, a mutinous, insubordinate spirit spread itself through the ranks, and the train was laid for the fearful explosion by which, forty years later, the army rose against its sove- reign, hurled him from the throne, elevated a worthless centurion in his stead, and thus destroyed the ancient Empire of Rome. The first twelve years of the reign of Heraclius, from 6io to 622, were a period of such complete weakness and helplessness that the end of the Empire seemed close at hand. He had neither army nor revenue, and his hum- ble supplications for peace, upon almost any terms, were rejected by the Persian king with silent contempt. In his personal character he displayed as yet none of the great qualities which were afterwards to astonish the world. He seemed a feeble, effeminate youth; thinking more of pleasure than of his arduous duties, with none of that energy, that imperial force of will which his position so urgently required. But after twelve years of insult and feebleness, and when his own fortunes and those of the Empire had sunk to the very lowest point, he sud- denly awoke, as a lion from sleep. Supplying his want of money by borrowing the consecrated wealth of the churches, he at length succeeded in getting together a considerable force» made up of raw levies and the remains 2 S6 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. of the broken, demoralized legions. From this point his movements were marked by the energy and far-ieeing sagacity of military genius. Putting to sea with his undisciplined and as yet worthless army, he followed the southern coast of Asia Minor until he reached the Gulf of Scanderoon, the north-eastern extremity of the Med- iterranean Sea. There, in a deep and secure valley, inclosed by the mountains of Cilicia on the north, and those of Lebanon on the south, he formed his camp, and gave himself with the utmost patience and ardor to the training and discipline of his army. His success was complete, and he soon had the satisfaction of seeing his army fired with his own spirit, and eager to meet their foes. In a few months he was ready for action. By a series of skillful maneuvers the Persian forces in the neighborhood were brought to fight a great battle under unfavorable circumstances, and were totally defeated. He then moved northwards with his victorious army, and fixed his winter quarters in the fruitful valley of the Halys. The next spring he advanced along the south- ern coast of the Black Sea to Armenia, the inhabitants of which flocked with enthusiasm to his standard. Thence he boldly struck southward for the very heart of the Persian kingdom. Disregarding the vast and victorious armies of his enemies in his rear ; paying no heed even to the siege of his capital by the combined forces of the Persians and Avars, he crossed the Tigris, penetrated to regions never reached before by the Roman arms, de- feated the Persian armies in a series of great and obsti- nately contested battles, took Dastagerd, the Persian capital, and did not leave the field until by four of the HERACUUS. vi most brilliant campaigns ever conducted by a Roman general, he had broken the power of Persia, driven Chosroes from his throne, and left his kingdom a shat- tered wreck, to fall before the first wave of Saracen invasion.' After these stupendous achievements Heraclius re- turned to Constantinople to celebrate his triumph and reorganize his Empire. The Avars retired again beyond the Danube, and the Croats and Servians, invited from the Carpathian Mountains to repeople the desolate provinces of the north-west, became a firm barrier against their further encroachments. The Empire was restored, but it was sadly weakened and shattered, and in his old age and feeble health Heraclius found himself but poorly able to meet the tre- mendous onset of the Saracens. Before his death, in 642, Persia, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt had been again subdued, and made part of the vast Empire of the Caliphs. A few years later Africa was lost ; and in the comparatively small fragment yet remaining of the boundless conquests of imperial Rome, the Byzantine Empire received its enduring form and dominion. * For the military caxe«r of Heraclius, see Gibbon, iv. 464-84. CHAPTER III. LEO THE ISAURIAN. THE EMPIRE A GREAT COMMERCIAL STATE — ITS SOCIAL CONDITION AND GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. Of the ten Emperors who followed Heraclius from 641 to 717, there is no occasion to speak particularly.* A single great event stands out conspicuously in the history of this otherwise unimportant period — the first siege of Constantinople by the Saracens.^ In the year 672 the Caliph Moawiyah assembled a vast mihtary and naval force, which the inefficiency of Constantine Pogonatus permitted, in the following spring, to advance unresisted to the very walls of the city. The Saracens pressed the siege with ineffectual valor until the approach of cold weather compelled them to retire for winter quarters to ' The order of succession was as follows : Constantine III. and Herac- leonas, the sons of Heraclius, 641 (Constantine died, and Heracleonas was deposed the same year) ; Constans II., son of Constantine III., 641-668 ; Constantine IV. (Pogonatus), son of Constans II., 668-685; Justinian II., son of Constantine Pogonatus, a ferocious tyrant, and the last of the Hera- clian line, 685-711. ^From 695 to 705, Justinian II. was an exile, and the throne was occupied successively by two usurpers, Leontius and Tiberius.) Philippicus, 711-713; Anastatius II., 713-716; Theodosius III., 716-717. * Gibbon, v. 273. LEO THE ISAURIAN. 99 the Island of Cyzicus. In this strange way they contin- ued the siege for seven years. But the strong fortifica- tions of the city, and the bravery of its garrison, defied their unskillful attacks ; the terrible Greek fire, then just invented, consumed their ships and spread conster- nation through their ranks, and the enterprise ended at last in disastrous failure. The land forces were cut off while attempting to retreat through Asia Minor, and the fleet was destroyed by a tempest off the coast of Pamphylia. During the six years of confusion — from 71 1 to 717— which followed the extinction of the Heraclian dynasty, the Empire seemed again upon the very eve of destruc- tion. But at this critical juncture, the accession of an- other great man to the throne again restored its fortunes, marked a great era in its history, and laid the founda- tion of its prosperity and power for three hundred years. This man was Leo III., the Isaurian and Iconoclast. The accession of Leo the Isaurian, in 717, marks the completion of the great revolution which transformed the Roman into the Byzantine ^ Empire. Leo was a man of humble birth, a native of Isauria, a mountainous region in south-eastern Asia Minor. His father appears to have removed to Thrace, where he acquired considerable wealth as a grazier. A well-timed gift of five hundred sheep to the tyrant Justinian II. enabled the Isaurian shepherd to secure an honorable position for his son in the Emperor's guards. Thus introduced to the miU- tary service, Leo rose by the force of his genius to be the ablest general of the Empire. His masterly meas- * So called from Byzantium, the original name of Consta ntinople. JO THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. ures for the defence of Asia Minor against the Saracens turned all eyes upon him as the only hope of the Em- pire, and he was hailed Emperor by the general voice of the army and the people. The virtuous but incom- petent Theodosius III. gracefully retired, and Leo as- cended the throne.* The beginning of Leo's reign was made illustrious by the defeat of the second great effort of the Saracens for the capture of Constantinople — an event that marks the final repulse of the Saracen power in its conflict with the Empire. Hardly had Leo been crowned in the Church of St. Sophia, on the 25 th of March, 717, when Mosle- mah, the equally able brother of the energetic Caliph Sulieman, advanced to the siege of Constantinople at the head of the best appointed and most powerful expedi- tion ever sent by the Caliphs against the Christians. Eighty thousand soldiers constituted the land army, while the whole expedition by land and sea is said to have numbered one hundred and eighty thousand men. Leo met this tremendous attack with a bold and confi- dent defiance. The vast naval armanent was allowed to enter the very harbor of Constantinople, where it suf- fered a series of overwhelming defeats. The land force was able to make no impression upon the defences of the city, and, by the timely aid of the Bulgarians, was defeated with great slaughter. The siege was feebly pro^ tracted into the second year, when the Saracen host, broken and dispirited, wasted by hardship, famine, and pestilence, abandoned the enterprise in despair. The land force succeeded in effecting its retreat through Asia * Finlay's Byzantine Empire, i. 15-17, 28-32. LEO THE ISAURIAN. SX Minor, but the fleet was so nearly annihilated that no more than five ships returned to Syria.' His power firmly established by this great success, the new Emperor proceeded to reorganize his Empire, and to impress upon it that distinctive and permanent char- acter which it retained for three hundred years. To the genius of Leo III. the Byzantine Empire owed its per- manent organization and long continued prosperity. At this point then let us pause to notice briefly its leading characteristics.^ During the century and a half which preceded the accession of Leo, the population and wealth of the Em- pire had greatly declined. The country districts, once densely peopled with a thriving yeomanry, had been desolated by barbarian inroads and fiscal oppression, until many of them, particularly in the northern European provinces, were almost uninhabited ; and generally they had been divided into great estates, cultivated by serfs and slaves. Universal and long continued confusion had greatly relaxed the iron order of State and Church. Roads and bridges had decayed, and the provinces were no longer bound together by means of easy and free com- munication. In tlie cities, left far more than formerly to themselves, there had been a partial revival of municipal vigor, but with the decline of wealth and free communi- cation, there had been a corresponding decline of intelh- gence and social activity. All ideas and habits of thought, and all business enterprise, had become narrow, local, selfisL The great strength of the Empire, its strong ^ Gibbon, v. 278. • See Finlay's Byzantine Empire, i. i-io. ja THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. bond of union, now lay in the Church. Since the loss of Syria, Eg>'pt, Italy, and Africa, almost the whole of the remaining population was zealously devoted to the faith of the orthodox Greek Church ; and that church had become far more popular in character. The bishops, everywhere the most intelligent and most influential men in their several provinces, and men whose interests were completely identified with those of their people, were everywhere the leaders of society.' They were the presi- dents of the curiae or city senates, judges, and provincial governors. The Emperors had long been striving to make their authority as absolute in ecclesiastical as it was in civil affairs, and for two hundred years had presumed by imperial edicts to dictate the faith of the Church ; but at this time the popular and measurably independent position of the bishops gave the Church great strength,' and the bishops personally a great, and, on the whole, beneficial influence over the people. The regenerated Empire of Leo was Greek in language and in faith, but not in spirit, or in the controlling ele- ments of its population. The old transplanted Roman aristocracy of Constantinople was nearly extinct, and a new official aristocracy had arisen, of which the control- ling element was from Asia Minor and Armenia. The upper classes of Constantinople were chiefly Asiatic, the middle classes largely Greek, the lower, a mixed mul- titude of all the races of the Empire. But all classes ■ Finlay's Byzantine Empire, i. 25. * The bishops, in effect, were the Church, as they had been for fou* hundred years ; the people were but so many sheep, to be governed — and fleeced. LEO THE ISA UR IAN. 33 alike still proudly styled themselves Romans, and spoke contemptuously of the people of Greece proper as Hella- dikoi.^ And in fact the civilization of the Empire was far more Roman than Greek. Its spirit was utilitarian, practical, positive. The Greek classics were still the basis of education, but were despised as the production of ideal- ists and dreamers. There was still much sound learninGr. and many learned men. The upper classes were well educated for practical life, and the civil and military service abounded in able and competent men. The moral tone of society was comparatively good, perhaps better than it had ever before been in a population equally extensive.* Leo and his successors for a hundred and twenty-five years, the golden age of Byzantine history, are known as the Iconoclast or image-breaking Emperors. The preva- lence of Asiatic influences at the capital explains this great iconoclastic movement.^ The ecclesiastics and common people had degraded Christianity into a worship of saints, images and relics. But there was still a strong party, especially among the better instructed Asiatic laymen, who protested against the prevalent image wor- ship as a base idolatry. This feeling found expression in the legislation of Leo, which, at first, while not denying the usefulness of pictures or decreeing their entire destruction, strictly forbade their worship, A later decree required that all images should ' The Greeks still continued to call themselves Romaioi until the revival of their national spirit within the past century, when they once mora resumed their proper national appellation, and styled themselves HelUnes. • Finlay's Byzantine Empire, i. 258. * Id., i. 41. 2* 34 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. be destroyed. It is worthy of notice that upon this point Charlemagne and the leading men of the Prankish Church were in accord with their iconoclastic contemporaries ol Constantinople. Charlemagne himself wrote against the worship of images, and it was emphatically condemned by the Council of Frankfort in 794.^ For a hundred and twenty- five years, excepting the period from 780 to 813, the iconoclastic policy was firmly pursued by the imperial government, and image or picture worship was generally suppressed. But the great body of the people were far too ignorant and superstitious to be reformed in this par- ticular. Upon the death of the Emperor Theophilus, in 842, the reign of this " Asiatic Puritanism" came to an end, and image worship was finally and joyfully restored. The great reform effected by Leo was the reorgani- zation and purification of the civil government. Ever since the days of Constantine, the imperial government had been assuming more and more completely the form of a great beaurocracy, each department constituting a profes- sion by itself, the details of which could be mastered only by long practice and patient application, and promotion in which was almost sure to follow the display of diligence and ability. It was this regular and scientific form of the imperial government, the like of which the world had never before seen, which gave it its great and enduring strength. These remarks are especially true of the administration of justice. The uniform procedure of the Roman law established throughout the empire, raised up everywhere a body of learned lawyers and judges, who, in * Neander, vol. iii. pp. 234-243. See also Milman's Latin Christianity, book »v. chapters vii. and viii., and book v. chapter i. LEO THE /SAURIAN. 35 turn, by the strong spirit of conservatism natural to their profession, gave to the law itself a degree of stability and consistency which not only afforded a great safeguard to person and property, but formed a strong check upon the absolute power of the Emperors. The government of the Empire was emphatically a government of law ; and the regular and tolerably impartial administration of justice did more than almost anything else to reconcile the people to their lot under the absolute and oppressive govern- ment of the Emperors. To those accustomed to the comparative brevity and purity of legal proceedings in English and American courts, this praise of the Byzantine judicature may seem but poorly deserved. The laws, an inheritance from a former age, and enacted many of them for a different condition of society, were often antiquated, confused, and even contradictory. The cumbrous and costly mode of procedure, still retained in the chancery and civil law courts of Europe (in distinction from the common law courts of England) afforded ample opportunity to skillful and unprincipled lawyers to protract their suits to the great loss of their clients; while the hearing and adjudi- cation of all causes before a single judge without a jury, and a judge holding his office only at the pleasure of an arbitrary master, opened wide the door to corruption and bribery. The administration of justice in the Byzantine Empire was very far from being characterized by the purity and impartiality which have been attained in the courts of England and our own country ; but it was far in advance of anything enjoyed, or which had ever been enjoyed, in any other country, and was justly regarded 3fl THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. by the people of the Empire as the great glory of their civilization.' The long period of confusion which preceded the reign of Leo had left the legal tribunals of the Empire in a condition of sad disorder and corruption. His first measure of reform was the restoration of comparative vigor and purity in those tribunals. The beneficent results of this reform were felt for many generations throughout the Empire. His second measure was the thorough reorganization of the fiscal administration. He was obliged to rather increase than diminish the public burdens ; but those burdens were judiciously arranged to press as lightly as possible upon the industry and enter- prise of the country, while the revenue was collected and disbursed with order and economy. The result of these measures was a perceptible and immediate revival of prosperity throughout the Empire. A third and very striking feature of the government of Leo and his immediate successors was their commercial policy. They saw clearly that henceforth commerce was to be the corner-stone of the strength of the Empire ; and seeing this, they so framed the financial system of their government as to foster and promote the commercial in- terests of their subjects. Monopolies and restrictions were abolished, and duties and imposts were made fixed and moderate. Under this wise policy, the Empire became at once a great commercial state. During the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, until the rise of the commer- ' See Gibbon's masterly account of the Roman Jurisprudence, in chapter xliv. of his History ; also Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. i. p. 80, and book iii. chapter xxvii. LEO THE ISAURIAN. jy cial republics of Italy, the commerce of the world cen tered at Constantinople, and brought with it enormous wealth.* The islands and maritime cities of the Empire again grew rich and prosperous ; their vast mercantile marine again covered the Black and Mediterranean Seas. An immense caravan trade passed from Cherson (an ancient Greek colony upon the site of the modern Sebas- topol) along the north shores of the Black and Caspian Seas to the frontiers of China ; a second route connected the cities of Armenia and northern India; while the Saracen merchants brought to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, not only the products of their own coun- try, but the rich traffic of the islands and coasts of the Indian Ocean. The commodities which thus flowed in abundant streams to Constantinople from the several quarters of the eastern world, were again disseminated in the West, partly by caravans through Bulgaria and by the course of the Danube to central Europe, and partly by sea to the numberless seaports of the South. The nations of the West, in their rudeness and poverty, could return but little money, but few of the products of industry or skill to the Greek merchants. But unfortunately their inces- sant wars supplied, in numberless captives, a commodity in constant demand throughout the Mohammedan as well as the Christian world ; and the slave trade became one of the most important branches of Byzantine commerce. Of this vast and terrible mediaeval slave trade, the Island of Crete or Candia was the principal mart.^ * Finlay's Byzantine Empire, vol. i. p. 248. * Finlay's Byzantine Empire, i. 65, note; 328, 515, note. See also Hal- Um's Middle Ages, p. 473, and note. Mr. Hallam mentions some very sur- 38 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. The export trade of the Empire was largely sustained by its manufactures, and its production of wine and oil. The manufacturing skill of the civilized world was now largely concentrated in the Byzantine cities. The cities of Greece, especially Thebes, Corinth, and Argos, grew wealthy and populous in the manufacture of silk,^ linen, and woolen fabrics of great variety and excellence ; while many inland cities of Asia Minor enjoyed an equal pros- perity in the production of needles, cutlery, combs, and a multitude of similar articles, with which they supplied the markets of the West. The large population employed in commerce and manufactures produced a great and con- stant demand for the fruits of the soil. This demand gave a high value to labor, and every city contained within its walls a large agricultural population who culti- vated like a garden a considerable adjacent territory. The military and naval forces of the Empire long re- mained vigorous and efficient. The army was almost wholly recruited from the neighboring barbarian tribes; but the tactics and discipline of the early Empire were in prising as well as i- Milman, book ix. chap. vii. CAPTURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 65 and on the 9th of May, 1204, elected Baldwin, Count of Flanders, the first Latin Emperor of Constantinople. The new Latin Empire, however, was but a pitiful counterfeit of even the degenerate Greek Empire of the twelfth century. In the nominal division of their con- quests, the Crusaders allowed to the new Emperor but a fourth part of the Byzantine dominions, while, in fact, the Empire of Baldwin soon embraced little more than the city of Constantinople, with the adjacent regions of Thrace. The Venetians reserved for their share the provinces of the north-west, with Adrianople for tlieir capital, while Mace- donia and Greece, under the name of the Kingdom of Saloniki, or Thessalonica, were bestowed upon Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat. The conquest of the capital, however, was very far from securing to the Latins the full possession of the Empire. Two members of the im- perial family succeeded in establishing themselves as inde- pendent sovereigns. Michael Angelos Comnenus became the first Despot of Epirus ; and a few years later his brother and successor, Theodore, having expelled Deme- trius, the son of Boniface, from Macedonia, and the Vene- tians from Adrianople, assumed the title of Emperor of Thessalonica. Alexis Comnenus was Governor of Trebi- zond, when Constantinople was taken by the Crusaders. Assuming the purple as heir to the tlirone, he and his successors continued their poor play of imperial greatness in tliat distant province, until it was ended by Moham- med n. in 1 46 1. The honor of the Greek name and arms, however, was most successfully vindicated by Theodore Lascaris, who had been hastily invested with the imperial purple in tlie 66 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. midst of the tumult occasioned by the final assault of the city by the Crusaders. Theodore escaped across the Bosphorus, and, by his prudence and ability, soon suc- ceeded in reorganizing the poor remains of Byzantine power and dominion in north-western Asia Minor. The important city of Nicaea opened its gates to him, and became for nearly sixty years the capital of a fourth Empire, which, by its prosperity and growing power, soon made good its claim to be regarded as the true representa- tive of the ancient dominion of the Caesars. Theodore Lascaris (1204— 1222) and his two successors, John III. (1222-1254) and Theodore Lascaris II. (1254-1258), were all of them men of character, courage, and unusual administrative ability. Under their government, the his- .tory of the Empire of Nicaea presents one of the most pleasing and instructive portions of the later Byzantine annals.^ The affairs of the Church were kept, to a far greater extent than formerly, separate from those of the State. The government was administered with liberality, economy, and vigor. The people, now proprietors of the lands they tilled, and made to feel a personal interest in the government, not only became industrious and pros- perous, but rapidly regained their long lost military spirit. The Empire of John III. presented to the world the strange spectacle of a Greek Empire, strong in the field by the valor of its own citizens, and wealthy and pros- perous through the agricultural and manufacturing indus- try of a free people. The Empire of Nicaea thus soon found itself superior in military strength to all its neigh- ^ Finlay's Byzantine Empire, book iv. chap. i. ; Gibbon, vi. i4l-5> END OF THE LA TIN EMPIRE. 67 bors, and extended its limits on every hand. The power of the Seljukian Turks was now thoroughly decayed, and tlie several emirs, little else than independent sovereigns in their several provinces, were no match for the well- organized forces of their Greek neighbors. The Empire of Thessalonica possessed no elements of enduring strength, and its feeble existence soon came to an end. About the year 1240, Theodore Comnenus resigned the crown to John III., and the two Empires were again united. The Latin Empire, the abortive result of the conquest of Constantinople by the Crusaders, pursued its feeble and inglorious career for a period of fifty-seven years, without revenues or resources of any kind, and with no military strength but what they derived from western adventurers, who, for a short time, flocked to Constanti- nople to share in the spoils of the East; the Latin Emperors were soon reduced to wander from court to court in western Europe, begging for succors which were grudgingly and scantily bestowed. At last, this poor shadow of an Empire Avholly faded away, and in 1261 Michael Paleologus, Emperor of Nicaea, recovered Con- stantinople by the aid of the Genoese, and restored the Byzantine Empire.* By this achievement Michael Paleologus acquired a renown which he in no wise deserved. " He was a type of the Constantinopolitan Greek nobles and officials in the Empire he founded and transmitted to his descend- ants. He was selfish, hypocritical, able, and accom- plished ; an inborn liar, meddling and ambitious, cruel ' Gibbon, vi. 150; Finlay's Byzantine Empire, iL 423-8. 68 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. and rapacious. ... He ought to be execrated ;is the corrupter of the Greek race." ' With the recovery of Constantinople, the short-lived revival of the social and political life of the Greeks, which had appeared in the Empire of Nicaea, came to a sudden end. All the old vices of the Empire were revived in an exaggerated form. " Literary taste, political honesty, patriotic feeling, military honor, civil liberty, and judicial purity, seem all to have abandoned the Greek race." ^ A more wretched, shameful history than that of the restored Greek Empire, until its final overthrow by the Turks, does not disgrace the annals of mankind. Government and people were ahke corrupt, and the slaves of a groveling superstition. There was abundance of heresy and schism, but the very subjects of these barren controversies reveal the de- graded condition of the Church. A party called Quiet- ists had arisen among the monks of Mount Athos, who placed the seat of the soul in the navel, and taught that if a man would shut himself up in solitude, and fix his eyes and his thoughts day after day upon his abdomen, he would, after a time, discern a mystical light, and be filled with ineffable joy. Gibbon cites the following directions from a Quietist abbot, as to the method of conducting this ecstatic meditation: " When thou art alone in thy cell, shut thy door, and seat thyself in a corner ; raise thy mind above all things vain and transi- tory; 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 1 Finlay's Byzantine Empire, iL 463. * Id. ii., 462. GREEK EMPIRE RESTORED. 69 comfortless ; but if you persevere, day and night, you will feel an ineffable joy ; and no sooner has the soul discerned the place of the heart, than it is involved in a mystical and ethereal light." ' A vigorous attack upon this absurdity by Barlaam, a Greek monk of Calabria, in southern Italy, drove Gregory Palamas to take the ground in defense that God dwells in actual but un- created light, which was revealed to human vision at the transfiguration upon Mount Tabor, and which the pious soul, withdrawn from all transitory things in holy and long continued meditation, may still hope spiritually to behold. The dispute between the Barlaamists and the Palamites raged long and furiously, until a formal Synod of the Greek Church, presided over by the Emperor John Cantacuzene in person, decided in favor of the uncreated light of Mount Tabor, and Barlaam and his followers were pronounced heretics and schismatics. But though Barlaam saw his own teachings, with all sense and reason, rejected by the degenerate Church of the East, he did not live in vain. In the rising intelligence of the West he found a more congenial soil, and left a deep impress upon his age. He was a man of profound learning and true liberality of mind — the first of that long list of scholars and men of genius who made the Italy of the Middle Ages illustrious. Barlaam was the friend of Petrarch, and the first to call the attention of Western Europe to the poetry of ancient Greece in its original tongue. Leo Pilatus, a pupil of Barlaam, was the first teacher of Greek in the cities of Ital}^^ Both the capital and the Empire were now but the ' Decline and Fall, voL vi. p. 194. * Id., vi. 328-330. ^ THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. miserable wrecks of their former greatness. The wealth and splendor of Constantinople were gone, its commerce was neglected and ruined. The Genoese had established a strong commercial colony at Galata, one of the suburbs of Constantinople, and the fierce war which they were waging with the Venetians led to obstinate conflicts within the very walls of the city. Three great fires, kindled by the victorious Crusaders, had left a large part of Constantinople a dreary waste of ashes and blackened ruins. Finlay cites Villehardouin, the historian of the Latin conquest, as affirming that more buildings were destroyed by these three fires than were contained in the three largest cities of France.* The Turkish emirs, now stronger than the Emperors, were already crowding the Greeks steadily back to the sea, when, a little later than the year 1300, the conquest of Prusa, or Br{isa, by Orchan, the son of Othman, laid the foundation of the Ottoman Empire. The new power advanced with rapid strides, and Asia Minor was soon lost forever to the Greeks ; nor were the Turks long con- fined to Asia. They crossed the narrow straits of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, and ravaged almost un- resisted the opposite districts of Thrace. Turkish mer- cenaries became the principal military reliance of the imperial government. A deeper disgrace has rarely been inflicted upon the Christian name, than when the Empress-regent Anne of Savoy and John Cantacu^ene, in their civil struggle for the possession of the throne (i 341-1346), both depended for success upon Turkish allies, and both paid their barbarian hirelings by allow- » Byjantine Empire, ii. 332. DEGRADA TIOM OF THE GREEKS. 71 Ing them to carry off into slavery the Christian inhabi- tants of Thrace. Yet a lower depth of degradation was reached, if such a thing were possible, when about the year 1390, the Emperor Manuel, displaying the imperial standard at the head of the Greek contingent, attended Sultan Bajazet, as his humble vassal, to the siege of Philadelphia. The brave citizens of that last sad strong- hold of Greek municipal vigor and independence at first disregarded Bajazet's summons to surrender. But when they saw the Emperor and the imperial standard among their besiegers, their hearts sunk within them, and they opened their gates in despair. Amurath I., the successor of Orchan (i 360-1 389), made himself master of the greater part of the European possessions of the Empire, and removed his capital from Brijsa to Adrianople. From this time until the defeat and capture of Bajazet by Timour, in 1402, the Greek Emperors remained the humble vassals of the Turks. The hour of doom to the ancient Empire of Constan- tinople, inevitable though long delayed, was now near at hand. The time had come when the last mission of that Empire could be performed. With all their feeble- ness, their intellectual stupor, and their childish super- stition, the Greeks still preserved in all their perfection, for a fresher soil and a brighter day, the ancient lan- guage and literature of their race. The new custodians of this priceless treasure were now ready to receive their trust. In north-western Italy there had sprung up a cluster of little commercial republics, foremost among which were Pisa, Genoa, and Florence. Full of youth- ful vigor and enterprise, tliese little states grew rich and 72 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. powerful, and gradually drew to themselves a large share of tlie ancient trade of Constantinople. With this traffic came great naval power, and the sudden and wonderful accumulation of wealth. And with power, wealth, and the energetic, intense activity which characterized the people of these small but glorious repubhcs, there soon came also increasing civilization and refinement and an eager thirst for knowledge. About the middle of the fourteenth century appeared the two immortal Tuscans, Petrarch and Boccaccio, the splendid first fruits of the learning and letters of regenerated Europe. Until that time there had been very few men in all the nations of Western Europe who could read the New Testament in the original Greek.* This long reign of darkness and ignorance was now to be broken. In the year 1 360, Leo Pilatus took up his residence at Florence, in the house of Boccaccio, and became the first teacher of Greek in Italy ; and about the year 1400, an eminent Greek named Manuel Chrysoloras established at Florence a school for teaching the language and literature of his native land. That school was soon crowded by the gen- erous youth of Italy, and ere long the new learning had taken vigorous root in this fresh and fruitful soil. The mission of the Greek Empire was now accomplished. It had faithfully preserved, and safely transmitted to the rising civilization of modern times, the inestimable treas- ^ "From the subversion of the Western Empire, or at least from the time -when Rome ceased to pay obedience to the Exarchs of Ravenna, the Greek language and literature had been almost entirely forgotten within the pale of the Latin Chui'ch. . . . For the scholars of Italy Boccaccio positively asserts that no one understood so much as the Greek character. "—» Hallam's Middle Ages, p. 545. FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. fo ures of the ancient world. Venerable in nothing but age, feeble and decrepit with the burden of years, it was now to sink into the grave. After the restoration of the Ottoman power, in 141 3, the great ambition of the Turkish Sultans was the cap- ture of Constantinople and the destruction of the Greek Empire. This grand enterprise was first and vainly attempted by Amurath II., with an army of two hundred thousand men, in 1422. This was the last escape of the devoted city. Thirty years later Mohammed 11. repeated the attempt in which his father had failed, with ampler resources and more complete preparation ; and in the month of February, 1453, the final siege of Constantino- ple was formed. The fall of the city was not without dignity, nor alto- gether unworthy of its ancient fame. Constantine Pa- leologus, the last of the Emperors, was a brave and pat- riotic man, and worthy of a happier fate. He determined to defend the city to the last, and if it fell, to perish be- neath its ruins. The garrison, made up largely of Latin auxiliaries, seconded his valor with the courage of de- spair, and the success of the Turks was not won without a tremendous and destructive conflict. But as the siege progressed, the walls crumbled under the fire of the Turkish artillery, the garrison was thinned and exhausted, and it was evident that the end was near. The final assault was made on the 29th of May. After a short but terrible struggle, the Emperor fell bravely fighting in the post of cxtremest danger; the Turks surmounted the walls, and the ancient Empire of the East was no more. Upon tlie terrible scenes which followed — a repetition of 4 94 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. the horrors endured by the city upon its first fall before the arms of the Crusaders — we need not dwell. Suffice it to say that the city was abandoned to the passions of the soldiery, its remaining wealth was plundered, and vast multitudes of the wretched people, after suffering every outrage that the cruelty of their captors could inflict, were chained together in droves and driven to a distant and hopeless slavery. When the Turks departed they left behind them a depopulated, empty city. They left, however, soon to return, to make Constantinople the capi- tal of their own Empire, and the seat of a mightier power than any which, with a stable and enduring dominion, had for centuries swayed the destinies of the East.^ * For a brief account of the fall of Constantinople, and the events folIoVi iog, see *