§ 1. CHAP. IV. Sovereigns to repulse the Saracens, not only from the walls of Constantinople, but to drive them back beyond Mount Taurus. On the field of battle, if properly commanded, it was still superior to the nomade cavalry of the Turkomans. Even the reign of a sovereign so destitute of military talents as Alexios III. was distinguished by several successful military enterprises. The emir of Baibert was defeated and slain; and the emir of Arsinga, who had laid siege to Golacha, was repulsed with loss. On the other hand, however, the forts of old Matzouka and Golacha were ultimately captured by the Mussulmans. Limnia was either conquered by Tadjeddin, who married Eudocia, the daughter of Alexios, or it was ceded to him by the emperor as the dowry of the princess, to prevent its conquest.1 Alexios made a second attempt to reconquer Cheriana; but his military incapacity and the severity of the weather destroyed his army, which suffered greater loss from hunger and cold than from the sword of the enemy. Fortunately for the empire, the chiefs of the Turkomans directed their forces against one another, instead of uniting to conquer the Christians. Tadjeddin, the emir of Limnia, attacked Suleimanbeg, the son of Hadji-Omer, emir of Chalybia, at the head of an army of twelve thousand men. A great battle was fought between these princes, who were both sons-in-law of the emperor of Trebizond. Tadjeddin was defeated, and perished on the field of battle with six thousand of his army. The character of the emperor Alexios III. was stained with far deeper disgrace by a quarrel in which he was involved with a Genoese merchant, than by all the defeats he suffered from the Turkomans. The disgraceful circumstances connected with this affair rendered the empire The Limnia ceded to Tadjeddin cannot have been the fortress mentioned by Nicephorus Gregoras as only two hundred stades distant from Trebizond. It appears to have been the name of a district between Kerasunt and Oinaion. As a of Trebizond a byword of contempt throughout all the Lercari was so indignant at the treatment he received that he quitted Trebizond, declaring that he would hold the emperor accountable for his favourite's insolence. In A doge of Genoa of this family, J. B. Lercari, was celebrated for the injustice with which he was treated by his countrymen on quitting office, and for the patriotic dignity with which he bore his persecutions, and refused to seck revenge, A.D. 1565. The doge whom Louis XIV., in the height of his insolence, compelled to visit Versailles in 1685, after the unjust bombardment of Genoa, was also a Lercari. His sarcastic reply to the vain Frenchmen, who, to make a boast of the magnificence of Versailles, asked him what he thought most wonderful in the palace, is well known-"To see me here." The high rank held by the Genoese in the East at this period is testified by the chronicler Panaretos, who recounts that, when he was sent with several great officers of Trebizond on an embassy to Constantinople in 1363, they paid visits of ceremony not only to the emperor John V., and his father-in-law, the monk Josaphat, as the dethroned Cantacuzenos was called, but also to the podestat of the Genoese, whose name he disfigures. Leonardo de Montaldo, a distinguished lawyer memorable for his intrigues, was then captain-general of the Genoese possessions in the Levant-an office to which he had been named by the doge Boccanegra, in order to remove him from Genoa. Leonardo de Montaldo was raised to the rank of doge by his talents and his intrigues, in 1383. A. D. 1380. CHAP. IV. order to prepare the means of gratifying his revenge $ 1. he returned to Genoa, where, with the assistance of his friends and relations, he fitted out a piratical expedition, consisting of two war galleys, to cruise in the Black Sea. He soon made his appearance off Trebizond, where he captured the imperial ships, ruined the commerce of the Grecks, ravaged the coasts, and took many prisoners, whom he treated with horrid cruelty-cutting off the ears and noses of all those who were in any way connected with the imperial service. Alexios sent out a squadron of four war galleys of superior size, manned with his best mariners and favoured by a leading wind, in the fullest confidence that the Genoese would be easily overtaken and conquered by the superior swiftness and size of these ships. But, even at this great disadvantage, the naval skill and undaunted courage of the unruly republicans gave them a complete victory over the Greeks. By a feigned flight, the Genoese succeeded in separating the four galleys from one another, and then by a combined attack they captured them all in succession. The prisoners were mutilated as usual, and sent on shore in the boats. On this occasion an old man was taken prisoner with his two sons. When the sons were brought up to be mutilated, the old man entreated Lercari to take his life and spare his children. They had only obeyed their father's orders in taking arms against the Genoese. Lercari was moved by the noble earnestness of the father's entreaties, and for the first time a sentiment of compassion touched his heart for the innocent victims of a worthless monarch's pride, and he perhaps felt ashamed of his own brutal revenge. The old man and his sons were released and sent on shore; but they were charged to deliver to the emperor a barrel full of the salted ears and noses of his subjects, and a letter declaring that the only means of delivering the empire from the exaction of this species of tribute was to send the author of the insult to Lercari, as a prisoner. Alexios, seeing his best galleys captured and his subjects exposed unprotected to the fury of the Genoese, submitted. The insolent page, in spite of the imperial favour, was delivered over to the vengeance of Lercari. page. As soon as the young Greek courtier beheld the revengeful Genoese, he threw himself on his knees, and begged with many tears to be put to death without torture. Lercari, whose revenge was gratified by having humbled an emperor, felt nothing but contempt for the despicable He understood that his honour would gain more by sparing the weeping courtier, than by treating the blow he had received as a thing which of itself merited a moment's consideration. He only pushed the kneeling suppliant from him with his foot, adding with a significant sneer, "Brave men do not revenge themselves by beating women." The revenge of Lercari appears to have been connected with some diplomatic transactions between the empire of Trebizond and the Genoese colonies in the Black Sea, for, at the peace which followed this transaction, the emperor Alexios engaged to put the Genoese merchants at Trebizond in possession of an edifice to serve as a warehouse. This must have been one of those great buildings like the caravanseries of the East-storehouses for goods, lodgings for merchants, and castles for defence, which, in the same way as the monasteries of the period, formed fortresses in the midst of every city, and of whose walls remains may yet be traced even in the fire-devastated city of Constantinople. The emperor also published a golden bull, confirming all the privileges enjoyed by the Genoese traders throughout his dominions. The facts relating to the vengeance of Lercari have not been noticed by any Greek writer, and they are evidently A. D. 1380. $1. CHAP. IV. strongly coloured by the pride and passion of the Genoese chronicles. Yet the whole history of the enterprise is so characteristic of the violence and daring of the citizens of Genoa la superba, that, even had it rested on a slenderer basis of fact than probably supported it, still it would have merited notice as a correct portraiture both of the people and the age.1 every The emperor Alexios III., though neither a successful warrior nor an able statesman, walked through life with some show of dignity as a sovereign. He received the empire, in boyhood, in a state of anarchy; he gradually restored it to order, and reconstructed the central administration. In completing this great work, he did thing in his power to secure the aid of the clergy. Policy required him to gain their goodwill, in order to render their influence over the people of some practical use in re-establishing the imperial supremacy over the rival factions of the Amytzantarants and Scholarants. He may also have felt that something was necessary to calm his own conscience. Whether from policy, the memory of his vices, or the expression of heartfelt piety, certain is it that the ecclesiastical endowments of Alexios were singularly magnificent. He restored the church of St Eugenios to something resembling its ancient splendour. He discovered that the 24th of June was the saint's birthday, and celebrated it annually with great pomp at the expense of the imperial treasury. He rebuilt other churches, and founded and repaired several monasteries and almshouses. The convent of nuns of Panaghia The 1 This episode is recounted by most of the historians of Genoa-Ann. de Genova da Agostino Giustiniano, lib. iv.; Petri Bizari Senatûs Populique Genuensis rerum gestarum Hist., p. 145, edit. Anv.; U. Foliette Hist. Genuensium, lib. viii. p. 483; Paolo Interiano, Ristretto delle Hist. Genova, lib. iv. insolence of the Genoese was as great on the coasts of France as of Colchis. They complained to the seneschal of Beaucaire and to the consuls of Nismes, that the inhabitants carried on maritime commerce, from which they pretended that even the native citizens were excluded, by an exclusive privilege conceded to the Genoese by the counts of Toulouse.-Histoire de la République de Gènes, par Emile Vincens, tom. i. p. 391. |