SELJOUK PIRATES RAVAGE GREECE. 263 A. D. While the possession of the principality was disputed by rival princes, and the country governed by the baillies 1350-1400. of absent sovereigns, the Franks were compelled to devote all their attention to plans for mutual defence. Their position was one of serious danger: they were a foreign caste, incapable of perpetuating their numbers without fresh immigrations, for they were cut off by national and religious barriers from recruiting their ranks by the enrolment of individuals from the native Greek population. They were consequently obliged to watch carefully every sign of domestic discontent, for rebellion was always likely to prove more dangerous than hostile attacks from abroad. In a society living in such a state of insecurity, it is natural that the wealth of the country should decline. But the slow decay wrought by these causes was suddenly converted into a general destruction of property, and ruin of industry, by the piratical expeditions of the Seljouk Turks of Asia Minor, who about the latter half of the fourteenth century filled the Grecian seas with their squadrons, and laid waste every coast and island inhabited by Greeks. Amour the son of Aidin, the friend of the usurper Cantacuzenos, was the bloodiest pirate of the Eastern seas; and, under the name of Morbassan, he has obtained a detestable celebrity in the pages of European writers. His power was great, and his insolence even greater. While he depopulated the shores of Greece by his piracies, without occupying a single town, he assumed the title of Sovereign master of Achaia; and he gloried in the appellation of the Scourge of the Christians.1 Large bodies of the Seljouk pirates repeatedly landed in the Morea, under the guidance of their countrymen who had served as mercenaries in the Byzantine province, and acquired an accurate knowledge 1 We find the ravages of the Seljouk pirates complained of by the inhabitants of Corinth in a letter to the emperor Robert, prince of Achaia, dated in 1358"Insupportabiles afflictiones quibus ab infidelibus Turchis affligimur omni die." -Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, Diplomes, tom. ii. p. 145. $ 7. CHAP. VIII, of the topography of the peninsula. These plunderers destroyed everything that was spared in Christian warfare other enemies only carried off movable wealth; they left the peasant and his family to renew their toil, and be plundered on a future occasion. The Turks, on the contrary, burned down the wretched habitations of the labourer, destroyed the olive and fruit trees, in order to depopulate the country and prepare it for becoming a fit residence for their own nomadic tribes; and they carried off the young women and children, as the article of commerce that found the readiest sale in the slave-markets of the Asiatic cities. Indeed, for several generations the Seljouk Turks recruited their city population, throughout the greater part of their wide-extended empire, not by the natural influx of the rural population of the neighbourhood, but by foreign slaves, obtained by their warlike expeditions by land and sea. This accumulation of ills diminished the Greek population to such a degree that the country was prepared for the immigration of the Albanian colonists who soon after entered it the wealth and power of the Frank lords of the soil was undermined, and the principality was ready to yield to the first vigorous assailant. Other causes of decay were also at work, which of themselves were adequate to effect the ruin of any political establishment. The princes of Achaia possessed the right of coining money, and, like all avaricious and needy sovereigns who possess the power of cheating their subjects by issuing a debased coinage, they availed themselves of the privilege to an infamous extent. They were also masters of several commercial ports of some importance, and possessed the power of levying taxes on the foreign trade of the Peloponnesus. This power they abused to such a degree, that the whole trade of the principality was gradually transferred to the ports of the Peninsula in possession of the Venetians. As a conse RUIN OF THE PELOPONNESUS. 265 A. D. quence of the change, much of the internal trade of the country was annihilated. The value of produce in the 1350-1400. interior was depreciated, on account of the increased cost of its transport to the point of exportation; the sale in some distant provinces became impossible; roads, bridges, and other material requisites of civilisation, fell to ruin ; property ceased to yield any rent to the signors; many castles in the poorer districts were abandoned, and a few foot-soldiers guarded the walls of others, from which, in former days, bands of horsemen in complete panoply might be seen to issue at the slightest alarm. The extent of the change which a single century had produced in the state of Greece became apparent when the Othoman Turks invaded the country. These barbarians found the Morea peopled by a scanty and impoverished population, ruled by a few wealthy and luxurious nobles-both classes equally unfit to oppose the attacks of brave and active invaders. The condition of the Frank portion of the Morea was even more degraded, morally, than it was financially impoverished and politically weakened. The whole wealth of the country flowed into a few hands, and was wasted in idle enjoyments; while the vested capital that supplied a considerable portion of this wealth was sensibly diminishing from year to year. The surplus revenue which the principality of Achaia, even in its latter days, contributed to the treasury of its princes, after deducting the sums required for payment of the permanent garrisons maintained in the fortresses of the state, and the expenses of the civil administration, amounted to one hundred thousand gold florins. This, therefore, was what we term, in modern language, the civil list of the sovereign of Achaia towards the end of the fourteenth century; and it is more than Otho, the present king of Greece, succeeds in extracting from the whole Hellenic soil south of the Ambracian and Malian gulfs, though, with reference to the revenues of the country he governs, CHAP. VIII. king Otho has the largest civil list of any European The Franks had now ruled the greater part of the Peloponnesus for two centuries; and the feudal system which they introduced was maintained in full vigour for sufficient time to admit of its effects on civilised communities living under the simpler system of personal rights, traced out in the Roman law, being fully developed. The result was that the Franks were demoralised, the Greeks impoverished, and Greece ruined. The study of the feudal government in Greece offers much that is peculiarly worthy of an Englishman's attention, since it supplies an illustration of a state of things resembling, in many points, the condition of society that resulted from the Norman Conquest. The fate of England and Greece proved very different. No inconsiderable share in the causes that produced the discordant results are to be attributed to the discipline of the private family, and to the domestic and parish life of the two countries. Order and liberty grew up in the secluded districts of England, as well as in the towns and cities; self-respect in the individual gradually gained the reverence of his fellow-citizens; society moved forward simultaneously, and bore down gradually the tyranny of the Norman master, the rapacity of the monarch, and the jobbing of the aristocracy. The spirit of liberty never separated from the spirit of order, so that in the end it achieved the most difficult task in the circle of politics-it converted the rulers of the country to liberal views. In Greece, on the other hand, anarchy and slavery demoralised all This amount is given in the memoir of the barons of Achaia, who invited Jayme II. of Majorca to invade the principality in 1344.-Ducange, Histoire de Constantinople, ii. 375, edit. Buchon. Muntaner, 522, note to Buchon's translation of 1840. The domains of the prince were immense at a later period. In 1391 the barons possessed fiefs with 1904 hearths, the prince with 2320. This enumeration can hardly be assumed as a guide for determining the total of the population, nor perhaps even the relative extent of country occupied by the parties, since the prince was lord of the populous fiefs of Clarentza and Saint-Omer.-Buchon, Recherches et Matériaux, 296. FEUDAL SYSTEM IN GREECE AND ENGLAND. 267 classes of society, and involved the ruling class and their CHAP. VIII. subjects in common destruction. Both in England and Greece, the conquest was effected as much by the apathy of the natives as by the military superiority of the conquerors, and in both the feudal system was forced upon the conquered in spite of their efforts to resist it, and their detestation of its principles. Unfortunately we cannot contrast the effects of the system on the very different social condition of the two countries, for the records of the Frank domination in Greece are almost entirely confined to the political history of the country, and afford us but scanty glimpses into the ordinary life of the people. We see few traces of anything but war and violence; and we are led to the lamentable conclusion that the great result of the power of the Franks in Greece was to extirpate that portion of Byzantine civilisation which existed at its commencement, and to root out all the institutions of Roman law, and the principles of Roman administration, which had so long protected it. The higher and educated classes of Greek society very naturally vanished, as might be expected, where their masters made use of the French language and reverenced the Latin church. In England, the conflict of the Normans and the Saxons prepared the way for the submission of both to the law; while in Greece the wars of the French and Greeks only prepared the country to seek repose under the shade of Turkish despotism. The Norman Conquest proved the forerunner of English liberty, the French domination the herald of Turkish tyranny. The explanation of the varied course of events must be sought in the family, the parish, the borough, and the county; not in the parliament, the exchequer, and the central government. $ 7. |
