DAVID AND HIS WHOLE FAMILY PUT TO DEATH. 495 whole race of Grand-Komnenos. When David arrived at Constantinople he was ordered to embrace the Moslem faith, under pain of death. Adversity had improved the unfortunate prince. Though he had been formerly a contemptible emperor, he was now a good Christian. He rejected the condition proposed with firmness, and prepared to meet his end with a degree of courage and dignity very unlike his conduct in quitting the palace of his ancestors. His nephew Alexios, whom he had excluded from the throne, and his own seven sons, perished with him.1 Even George, the youngest, who had been separated from his family and compelled to become a Mussulman, was executed with the rest of his family, lest he should find an opportunity, at some future period, of joining the Turkomans and reviving his claims to the sovereignty of Trebizond. The bodies of the princes were thrown out unburied beyond the walls. No one ventured to approach them, and they would have been abandoned to the dogs, accustomed during the reign of Mohammed II. to feast on Christian flesh, had the empress Helena not repaired to the spot where they lay, clad in a humble garb, with a spade in her hand. She spent the day guarding the remains of her husband and children, and digging a ditch to inter their bodies. In the darkness of the night compassion, or a sense of duty, induced some of the friends and followers of her house to aid in committing the bodies. to the dust. The widowed and childless empress then retired to pass the remainder of her life in mourning and prayer. Her surviving daughter was lost to her in a Turkish harem. Grief soon conducted her to a refuge in the grave.2 Alexios, the son of Joannes IV., had been assigned a residence in Pera. The name Beyoglou, by which this suburb is known to the Turks, is said to have been given it when it became his residence.-Constantiniade, ou Description de Constantinople Ancienne et Moderne, p. 162. 2 Chalcocondylas, 265; Phrantzes, 414, edit. Bonn.; Crusius, Turco Græcia, 21; and Spandugino, recount the facts relating to the fall of Trebizond. The execution of David took place in the interval between 1466 and 1472. CHAP. V. § 3. The Greek population of Trebizond never recovered from the blow inflicted on it by Mohammed II. No Christian descendants of the families who inhabited the city in the times of the emperors now survive. Of the four hundred families who at present dwell in the suburbs, all have emigrated from the neighbouring provinces within the last two centuries. The only undoubted remains of the ancient race of inhabitants are to be found in a class of the population that has embraced Islam, or, to speak more correctly, that conforms to the external rites of the Moslem faith, while it retains a traditional respect for Christianity. A large portion of the mountaineers of Colchis embraced Islam; some became confounded with the rest of the Mussulmans in the Othoman empire; but the inhabitants of some districts retained a slight tincture of Christianity in the interior of their own families, and for four centuries they have preserved this attachment to the religion of their ancestors. Their conversion, which for many generations was simulated, became at last almost complete. They always, however, openly boasted of their descent from Christian ancestors, and they owed the toleration they obtained from the Osmanlees more to a conviction of the strength of their sinews than to any confidence in the purity of their faith.2 In concluding the history of this Greek state, we inquire in vain for any benefit that it conferred on the human race. It seems a mere eddy in the torrent of events that connects the past with the future. The Mohammed II. marched against Ishak, sultan of Karamania, in 1466, shortly 1 Fallmerayer, Fragmente aus dem Orient, vol. i. p. 67. 2 The Greeks call them Krumlidhes, a name which seems connected with, or derived from, the same source as that of a distinguished family of Mussulman-Christians in Crete, of whom a good account will be found in Pashley's Travels in Crete, i. 105. CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 497 $ 3. tumultuous agitation of the stream did not purify a single CHAP. v. drop of the waters of life. Yet the population enjoyed great advantages over most of the contemporary nations. The native race of Lazes was one of the handsomest, strongest, and bravest in the East. The Greek colonists, who had dwelt in the maritime cities until they were children of the soil, have always ranked high in intellectual endowments. The country is one of the most fertile, beautiful, and salubrious on the face of the earth. The empire enjoyed a regular civil administration, and an admirable system of law. The religion was Christianity that boasted of the purest orthodoxy. But the results of all these advantages were small indeed. The brave Lazes were little better than serfs of a proud aristocracy. The Greeks were slaves of a corrupted court. The splendid language and rich literature which were their best inheritance were neglected. The scientific fabric of Roman administration and law was converted into an instrument of oppression. The population was degraded, demoralised, and despised, alike by Italian merchants and Turkish warriors. Christianity itself was perverted into an ecclesiastical institution. The church, too, subject to that of Constantinople, had not even the merit of being national. Its mummery alone was popular. St Eugenios, who seems to have been a creation of Colchian paganism as much as of Greek superstition, was the prominent figure in the Christianity of Trebizond. The greatest social defect that pervaded the population was the intense selfishness which is evident in every page of its history. For nine generations no Greek was found who manifested a love of liberty or a spirit of patriotism. The condition of society which produced the vicious education so disgraceful in its effects, must have arisen from a total want of those parochial and local institutions that bind the different classes of men together by ties of duty and benevolence, as well as of interest. No practical CHAP. V. § 3. acquaintance with the duties of the individual citizen, in his every-day relations to the public, can ever be gained, unless he be trained to practise them by constant discipline. It is, doubtless, far more difficult to educate good rulers than good subjects; but even the latter is not an easy task. No laws can alone produce the feeling of selfrespect; and where the sense of shame is wanting, the very best laws are useless. The education that produces susceptibility of conscience is more valuable than the highest cultivation of legislative, legal, and political talents. The most important, and in general the most neglected, part of national education, in all countries, has been the primary relations of the individual to the commonwealth. The endless divisions and intense egoism that arose out of the Hellenic system of autonomy, where every village was a sovereign state, disgusted the higher classes with the basis of all true liberty and social prosperity. Despotism was lauded as the only protection against anarchy, and it often afforded the readiest means of securing some degree of impartiality in the administration of justice. But despotism has ever been the great devourer of the wealth of the people. The despotism of the Athenian democrats devoured the wealth of the free Greek cities and islands of the Egean. The Roman empire of despots annihilated the accumulated riches of all the countries from the Euphrates to the ocean. The empires of Byzantium and of Trebizond were mild modifications of Roman tyranny, on which weakness had imposed a respect for order and law that contended with the instincts of the imperial government. Yet, with all the imperfections of its society, and all the faults of its government, it is probable that the two centuries and a half during which the empire of Trebizond existed, contributed to effect a beneficial change in the condition of the mass of the population over the East. That change, however, was developed in the general condition of mankind, and must be traced in a more enlarged view of society than falls within the scope of the History of Trebizond. |