JOHN DE BRIENNE-BALDWIN II.

133

A. D.

invested with the government of the Asiatic provinces. Baldwin was to marry Mary the daughter of John de 1237-1261. Brienne; and the heirs of John de Brienne were to receive, as a hereditary fief on the accession of Baldwin, either the possessions of the imperial crown in Asia beyond Nicomedia, or those in Europe beyond Adrianople. This act was concluded in 1229; but the valour and experience of John de Brienne were inadequate to restore the shattered fabric of the Latin power. The barous, knights, and soldiers seemed all to be rapidly dying out, and no vigorous and warlike youth arose to replace them. The enormous pay then required by knights and men-at-arms rendered it impossible for the declining revenues of the empire to purchase the services of any considerable number of mercenaries. The position of soldiers in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was, in one respect, like that of barristers in London at present. There were great prizes to be won, as Robert Guiscard and John de Brienne testify; but, on the whole, the number of amateurs was so great, that the whole pay received by the class was insufficient to cover the annual expenditure of its members. John de Brienne died in 1237, after living to witness his empire confined to a narrow circuit round the walls of Constantinople.

Baldwin II. prolonged the existence of the empire by begging assistance from the Pope and the King of France; and he collected the money necessary for maintaining his household and enjoying his precarious position, by selling the holy relics preserved by the Eastern Church. He was fortunate in finding a liberal purchaser in St Louis.2

1 The act is printed by Buchon, Recherches et Matériaux, 21.

2 As it would have been an act of impiety to buy these relics, St Louis redeemed the crown of thorns which Baldwin had pawned, and received it as a gift. The king also furnished the young emperor with large sums of money to be wasted at the court of Constantinople, and received the following relics as a mark of Baldwin's satisfaction:-A piece of the true cross; the linen cloth in which the body of Jesus was enveloped; the bonds, the sponge, and the cup of the crucifixion; a piece of the skull of St John the Baptist; and the rod of Moses!!! An engraving of the skull, or of one of the skulls, of St John the Baptist, is given by Ducange, Constantinopolis Christiana, 101.

§ 5.

CHAP. IV. The fear of the Mongols, who were then ravaging all Asia, and the rivalry of the Greek empire and the Bulgarian kingdom, also tended to prolong the existence of the empire of Romania after it had lost all power and energy. But at length, in the year 1261, a division of the Greek army surprised Constantinople, expelled Baldwin, and put an end to the Latin power, without the change appearing to be a revolution of much importance beyond the walls of the city. The feudal nobility appeared to be extinct, and the Latin church suddenly to have melted away. The clergy, indeed, had consumed the wealth of their benefices quite as disgracefully as the nobles had wasted their fortunes; for we learn, from the correspondence of Pope Innocent III., that they at times alienated their revenues and retired to their native countries, carrying off even the communion plate and the relics from the churches in the East. There is nothing surprising in the pitiful end of a society so demoralised.

1 Hunter, Innocent III., ii. 214.

CHAPTER V.

KINGDOM OF SALONIKI

BONIFACE, marquis of Montferrat, having held the office of commander-in-chief of the Crusaders before the establishment of the empire of Romania, affected to regard his kingdom as an independent monarchy. This plan failed through the prompt energy of Baldwin I., and he was compelled to do homage to the imperial crown; but when he obtained the command of the division of the Crusaders which marched to establish itself in Greece, he endeavoured to indemnify himself for his first failure, by inducing the barons, who received lands to the south of his own frontier in Thessaly, to accept investiture from and do homage for their possessions to him.1 Yet whether this homage was really accorded to him in any other capacity than as commander-in-chief of the army, and lieutenantgeneral of the empire of Romania, may be doubted. Indeed, it is very improbable that the grand feudatories could have been persuaded to swear fealty to the kingdom of Saloniki. The operations of Boniface against Greece were crowned with success. Leo Sgouros, the Byzantine governor of Nauplia and Argos, after taking possession of Corinth, Athens, and Thebes, had led a Greek army northward to the Sperchius, for the purpose of defending Greece against the Franks. But the Greek troops were unable to make a stand even at the pass of Thermopylæ,

1 Nicetas, 410.

CHAP. V. where they were disgracefully routed, and fled, with Leo, to shelter themselves within the walls of the Acrocorinth, abandoning all the country north of the isthmus to the army of the Crusaders. Boniface established all those who had been assigned shares of the conquered district in their fiefs, and marched into the Peloponnesus, where he laid siege to Corinth and Argos at the same time, even with the reduced army under his command. At this conjuncture, he was suddenly recalled to the north by the news of a rebellion in Thessalonica. This he soon repressed; but not very long after, as has already been mentioned, he was slain in a skirmish with the Bulgarians, (A. D. 1207.) His death was the commencement of a series of misfortunes, that soon ruined the kingdom of Saloniki, which he had been so eager to extend.

This feudatory kingdom bore within itself the seeds of its own destruction. The Lombards, by whom it was founded, were not so much under the influence of feudal organisation as the other Crusaders, nor so commercial and intelligent as the Venetian. Their social position had been modified by their intercourse with the republics and free cities of Italy. Money was, therefore, necessary to a larger amount than in the other conquests of the Crusaders, and yet the Lombards were as incapable of creating wealth for their government as any of the Franks. Though Saloniki was regarded rather in the light of a colonial dependency than as a feudal kingdom, still the Lombards thought only of profiting by the acquisition as military men paid to govern and garrison the fortresses and towns, and took no measures to occupy and cultivate the land.

The personal friendship and family alliance of Boniface and Henry preserved peace until the king's death. But we have seen that Count Biandrate, impelled either by his own ambition or by the grasping spirit of the Lom

bards, adopted a policy that involved the kingdom in A. D. hostilities with the empire, which ended in the fortresses 1207-1222. of the kingdom being forced to receive Belgian garrisons, and, consequently, in greatly diminishing the number of Lombard troops in the kingdom. Yet an Italian colony at Thessalonica, though surrounded by powerful enemies, might have maintained its ground more easily than the Belgians at Constantinople, had the government been able and prudent. The minority of Demetrius, to whom Boniface had left his crown, completed the ruin of the state. His mother, the queen-empress Margaret, acted as regent; and, after the retreat of Count Biandrate, the military command of the fortresses was vested in officers named by the emperor Henry. Under such a partition of power, the resources of the country were naturally consumed in the most unprofitable manner, and the people became eager for any change, hoping that it could not fail to better their condition. While the emperor Henry lived, he protected the kingdom effectually, both against the king of Bulgaria and the despot of Epirus, its two most dangerous enemies. But after the defeat and death of Peter of Courtenay, it was left exposed to the attacks of Theodore, despot of Epirus, who invaded it with a powerful army.

In the year 1222, while the young king Demetrius, then only seventeen years old, was still in Italy, completing his military education at the court of his brother, the marquis of Montferrat, the despot Theodore took Thessalonica, and subdued the whole kingdom. In order to efface all memory of the Lombard royalty by the creation of a new and higher title, he was crowned emperor at Thessalonica by the archbishop of Achrida, patriarch of Macedonian Bulgaria.

William, marquis of Montferrat, had been invested with the guardianship of the kingdom of Saloniki by Peter of Courtenay while that emperor was at Rome, and