Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/130

Rh  The age of the Coixmeni is the time of the crusades. Those famous expeditions will produce a very different im pression on the mind according as they are regarded from the point of view of the East or the West. From the latter point of view they may be regarded as bringing to a focus the religious and martial enthusiasm of the time, as forming a safety-valve for restlessness, as enlarging the ideas and elevating the spirit of the people. But to the great mass of the Easterns they appeared as hardly better than maraud ing expeditions, and as producing unmitigated evil. Though the first crusade (1095) was partly undertaken in conse quence of the solicitations of Alexius for aid against the Seljuks, yet as soon as the first undisciplined bands entered the country they pillaged the natives ; and when the more organized companies followed, though many of their leaders, like Godfrey and Tancred, were men of the highest char acter, yet it required all the address of the Byzantine monarch to transmit these armies into Asia without some irreparable injury being done to his capital. No doubt the faults were not all on one side, for the suspicion and falsity of Alexius gave just ground of complaint to the crusaders. But he had a very difficult part to play. Had he placed himself, as was proposed, at the head of the crusade, he had no reason to expect obedience on the part of the feudal nobles, while at the same time he left his kingdom exposed to the danger of rivals at home and fresh bands from abroad. Accordingly he chose the ignoble part, and followed in their footsteps with the view of regaining what he could to his dominions. The second and third of these expedi tions passed through the empire with comparatively little injury, though in the latter of the two the island of Cyprus was lost to Richard of England ; but the ill-will that was manifested by the Greeks on those occasions ripened in the minds of the Westerns those seeds of hatred which at last bore fruit in the great buccaneering expedition which is commonly called the fourth crusade (1204). This event, of which a narrative has been left us from both sides, by the Greek historian Nicetas and the Frank chronicler Villehardouin, is certainly one of the most disgraceful trans actions in history. A certain lustre has been shed over it t&amp;gt;y the age and blindness of the doge Dandolo, who was one of the principal leaders ; but that a Christian force assembled for the purpose of fighting the infidels should turn its arms against the most important Christian city of the time is an act of unparalleled baseness ; nor can any thing be conceived more deliberately mean than the treaty by which the spoil of the empire was partitioned beforehand between the nations who took part in the attack. From this blow Constantinople never recovered, though it is fair to add that hardly less injury had been caused by the storm and plunder of the city during the rebellion which set Alexius Comnenus on the throne.

In Asia this period opens with a great disaster, the defeat Romanus IV. by Alp Arslan, in the battle of Manzikert in Armenia (1071). Gibbon has eloquently described the scene, in which the Seljuk sultan, after placing his foot on the neck of the captive emperor, spares his life, and hospitably entertains him. The Seljuk race of Turks were already masters of a great part of western Asia, and in the reign of Malekshah, Alp Arslan s successor, their dominions extended from the banks of the Jaxartes to the Mediter ranean. The empire had now entered on the third great struggle of four centuries duration, which it maintained in the East first with the Persians, next with the Saracens, and finally with the Turks, whether Seljuk or Ottoman. But the present contest was commenced under altered circumstances. It was soon felt how fatal was the policy which had denuded the Armenian frontier of its native defenders, and how few obstacles were presented in Asia Minor to an invading force when a large portion of the free population had disappeared. And the character of the invaders also had changed; for, whereas the Persians and Saracens had felt an interest in civilization, the Turkish hordes were composed of nomad barbarians, whose object in war was plunder, and who occupied the countries they con quered as pastoral tribes. Hence their system of warfare consisted in exterminating the agricultural population by successive inroads, until one district after another lay open for their permanent settlement. Within three years after the battle of Manzikert, the Seljuk power extended over the greater part of Asia Minor ; and when, in the year 1080, Nicaea fell into their hands, that place became the capital of a separate kingdom, which was called the sultanate of Roum, that is, of Rome. From thence they were driven back by the crusaders at the time of the first crusade, and transferred their seat of government to Iconium, in a more remote position in the south-east of the country. After this they carried on a succession of wars with the Byzantine Government, the most remarkable event in which was the great battle at Myriocephalus, on the borders of Phrygia, in which the emperor Manuel was signally defeated. During the distractions that prevailed at Constantinople shortly before the fourth crusade, it might have been in the power of the Seljuks to seize that city, and so to anticipate the Latins ; but at this time the kingdom was divided between the ten sons of the sultan, Kilidji-Arslan II., and thenceforward the power of the Seljuks was less formidable.

Meanwhile the European dominions of the emperors had been assailed by a variety of foes, among whom the Normans were the most conspicuous. In the year 1071 Robert Guiscard succeeded in expelling the Byzantines from their remaining possessions in southern Italy, and fired by the am bition of rivalling his great compatriot, who four years and a half before this had made himself master of England, he conceived the design of conquering the Byzantine empire. With the object of carrying this into execution, he laid siege to Dyrrhachium, the most important Greek city on the Adriatic, and after defeating Alexius Comnenus, who had come to its relief, succeeded in making himself master of the place. Being forced to quit the country, he entrusted the campaign to his son Bohemund, who was de feated by the emperor, and withdrew into Italy. Fortune, however, ordained that these two chieftains should once more be brought into collision in Syria, and hence arose another Norman war, in which Bohemund was foiled by the strength of Dyrrhachium. At a later period, in the reign of Manuel, Greece was invaded by King Roger, who had received an affront from that emperor, and the cities of Thebes and Corinth were sacked in the most barbarous manner. But the most famous of these inroads was in 1185, and resulted in the siege of Thessalonica, which place was taken by the Normans, and treated with a cruelty that almost rivalled that of the Saracens in the former siege. Besides these wars, there were others with the Patzinaks, the Hungarians, the Servians, and the Venetians. But towards the end of this period the empire received a blow from the revolt of a people who on this one occasion appear prominently in history the Wallachians. This race, who, like the Greeks, claimed the name of Romans or Roumans, were the descendants of the Roman colonists in Dacia, whom the emperor Aurelian transplanted to the southern side of the Danube. There it is probable they intermingled with the natives, but they retained the Latin tongue, from which the modern language is derived. About the 13th century, it would seem, the great body of the nation once more migrated northward to the seats they now occupy; but those of whom we are speaking here were settled on the Balkan, where they had maintained them selves in their mountain fastnesses, owning an allegiance more or less qualified to Constantinople. In the reign of 