emperor

court of

June 3.

cessor, Manuel, from a similar motive, but on a larger scale, CHAP. again visited the countries of the West. In a preceding chap- LXVI. ter I have related his treaty with Bajazet, the violation of that treaty, the siege or blockade of Constantinople, and the French Visit of the succour under the command of the gallant Boucicault.15 By Manuel, his ambassadors, Manuel had solicited the Latin powers; but it was thought that the presence of a distressed monarch would draw tears and supplies from the hardest barbarians; 1 and the marshal who advised the journey, prepared the reception, of the Byzantine prince. The land was occupied by the Turks: but the navigation of Venice was safe and open: Italy received him as the first, or, at least, as the second of the Christian princes; Manuel was pitied as the champion and confessor of the faith; and the dignity of his behaviour prevented that pity from sinking into contempt. From Venice he proceeded to Padua and Pavia; and even the duke of Milan, a secret ally of Bajazet, gave him safe and honourable conduct to the verge of his dominions.17 On the confines of France, 18 the royal offi- to the cers undertook the care of his person, journey, and expenses; France, and two thousand of the richest citizens, in arms and on horse- 4. D. 1400, back, came forth to meet him as far as Charenton, in the neighbourhood of the capital. At the gates of Paris, he was saluted by the chancellor and the parliament; and Charles the Sixth, attended by his princes and nobles, welcomed his brother with a cordial embrace. The successor of Constantine was clothed in a robe of white silk, and mounted on a milk-white steed; a circumstance, in the French ceremonial, of singular importance; the white colour is considered as the symbol of sovereignty; and, in a late visit, the German emperor, after an haughty demand and a peevish refusal, had been reduced to content himself with a black courser. Manuel was lodged in the Louvre; a succession of feasts and balls, the pleasures of the banquet and the chase, were ingeniously varied by the politeness of the French, to display their magnificence and amuse his grief: he was indulged in the liberty of his chapel; and the doctors of the Sorbonne were astonished, and possibly scandalized, by the language, the rights, and the vestments of his Greek clergy. But the slightest glance on the state of the kingdom, must teach him to despair of any effectual assistance. The unfortunate Charles, though he enjoyed some lucid inter

15 Memoires de Boucicault, P. i. c. 35, 36.

16 His journey into the west of Europe, is slightly, and I believe reluctantly, noticed by Chalcocondyles (l. ii. c. 44--50,) and Ducas (c. 14.)

17 Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. xii. p. 406. John Galleazzo was the first and most powerful duke of Milan. His connexion with Bajazet is attested by Froissard; and he contributed to save and deliver the French captives of Nicopolis.

18 For the reception of Manuel at Paris, see Spondanus (Annal. Eccles. tom. i. p. 676, 677, A. D. 1400, No. 5,) who quotes Juvenal des Ursins, and the monk of St. Denys; and Villaret (Hist. de France, tom. xii. p. 331-334,) who quotes nobody, according to the last fashion of the French writers.

VOL. VI.

21

CHAP. vals, continually relapsed into furious or stupid insanity: the LXVI. reins of government were alternately seized by his brother

A. D. 1400,

and uncle, the dukes of Orleans and Burgundy, whose factious competition prepared the miseries of civil war. The former was a gay youth dissolved in luxury and love: the latter was the father of John count of Nevers, who had so lately been ransomed from Turkish captivity; and, if the fearless son was ardent to revenge his defeat, the more prudent Burgundy was content with the cost and peril of the first experiment. When Manuel had satiated the curiosity, and perhaps fatigued the patience, of the French, he resolved on a visit to the adjacent of England island. In his progress from Dover, he was entertained at December. Canterbury with due reverence by the prior and monks of St. Austin; and, on Blackheath, king Henry the Fourth, with the English court, saluted the Greek hero I copy our old historian,) who, during many days, was lodged and treated in London as emperor of the East. 19 But the state of England was still more adverse to the design of the holy war. In the same year the hereditary sovereign had been deposed and murdered; the reigning prince was a successful usurper, whose ambition was punished by jealousy and remorse: nor could Henry of Lancaster withdraw his person or forces from the defence of a throne incessantly shaken by conspiracy and rebellion. He pitied, he praised, he feasted, the emperor of Constantinople; but if the English monarch assumed the cross, it was only to appease his people, and perhaps bis conscience, by the merit or semblance of this pious intention.20 Satisfied, to Greece, however, with gifts and honours, Manuel returned to Paris; and, after a residence of two years in the West, shaped his course through Germany and Italy, embarked at Venice, and patiently expected, in the Morea, the moment of his ruin or deliverance. Yet he had escaped the ignominious necessity of offering his religion to public or private sale. The Latin church was distracted by the great schism: the kings, the nations, the universities, of Europe, were divided in their obedience between the popes of Rome and Avignon; and the emperor, anxious to conciliate the friendship of both parties, abstained from any correspondence with the indigent and unpopular rivals. His journey coincided with the year of the jubilee; but he passed through Italy without desiring, or de

His return

A. D. 1402.

19 A short note of Manuel in England, is extracted by Dr. Hody from a MS. at Lambeth (de Græcis illustribus, p. 14,) C. P. Imperator, diu variisque et horrendis Paganorum insultibus coartatus, ut pro eisdem resistentiam triumphalem perquireret Anglorum Regem visitare decrevit, &c. Rex (says Walsingham, p. 364,) nobili apparatû...suscepit (ut decuit) tantum Heroa, duxitque Londonias, et per multos dies exhibuit gloriose, pro expensis hospitii sui solvens, et eum respiciens tanto fastigio donativis. He repeats the same in his Upodigma Neustriæ, p. 556.

20 Shakspeare begins and ends the play of Henry IV. with that prince's vow of a crusade, and his belief that he should die in Jerusalem.

serving, the plenary indulgence which abolished the guilt or CHAP. penance of the sins of the faithful. The Roman pope was LXVI. offended by this neglect; accused him of irreverence to an image of Christ; and exhorted the princes of Italy to reject and abandon the obstinate schismatic."1

knowledge

During the period of the crusades, the Greeks beheld with Greek astonishment and terror the perpetual stream of emigration and dethat flowed and continued to flow, from the unknown climates scriptions, of the West. The visits of their last emperors removed the veil of separation, and they disclosed to their eyes the powerful nations of Europe, whom they no longer presumed to brand with the name of barbarians. The observations of Manuel, and his more inquisitive followers, have been preserved by a Byzantine historian of the times: his scattered ideas I shall collect and abridge; and it may be amusing enough, perhaps instructive, to contemplate the rude pictures of Germany, France, and England, whose ancient and modern state are so familiar to our minds. I. GERMANY (says the Greek of Germany. Chalcocondyles) is of ample latitude from Vienna to the Ocean; and it stretches (a strange geography) from Prague in Bohemia to the river Tartessus, and the Pyrenæan mountains.23 The soil, except in figs and olives, is sufficiently fruitful; the air is salubrious; the bodies of the natives are robust and healthy; and these cold regions are seldom visited with the calamities of pestilence, or earthquakes. After the Scythians or Tartars, the Germans are the most numerous of nations; they are brave and patient, and were they united under a single head their force would be irresistible By the gift of the pope, they have acquired the privilege of choosing the Roman emperor; 24 nor is any people more devoutly attached to the faith and obedience of the Latin patriarch. The great

21 This fact is preserved in the Historia Politica, A. D. 1391-1478, published by Martin Crusius (Turco Græcia, p. 1-43.) The image of Christ, which the Greek emperor refused to worship, was probably a work of sculpture.

2 The Greek and Turkish history of Laonicus Chalcocondyles ends with the winter of 1463, and the abrupt conclusion seems to mark, that he laid down his pen in the same year. We know that he was an Athenian, and that some contemporaries of the same name contributed to the revival of the Greek language in Italy. But in his numerous digressions, the modest historian has never introduced himself; and his editor Leunclavius, as well as Fabricius (Bibliot. Græc. tom. vi. p. 474,) seems ignorant of his life and character. For his descriptions of Germany, France, and England, see l. ii. p. 36, 37. 44-50.

23 I shall not animadvert on the geographical errors of Chalcocondyles. In this instance, he perhaps followed, and mistook Herodotus (1. ii. c. 33,) whose text may be explained (Herodote de Larcher, tom. ii. p. 219, 220,) or whose ignorance may be excused. Had these modern Greeks never read Strabo, or any of their lesser geographers?

24 A citizen of new Rome, while new Rome survived, would have scorned to dignify the German Prξ with the titles of Bασιλευς, οι Αυτοκρατωρ Ρομαίων : but all pride was extinct in the bosom of Chalcocondyles; and he describes the Byzantine prince, and his subject, by the proper, though humble, names of Ee, and Batiksus 'Exrnvoy.

CHAP. est part of the country is divided among the princes and preLXVI. lates; but Strasburgh, Cologne, Hamburgh, and more than

seas.

two hundred free cities, are governed by sage and equal laws, according to the will, and for the advantage, of the whole community. The use of duels, or single combats on foot, prevails among them in peace and war; their industry excels in all the mechanic arts, and the Germans may boast of the invention of gunpowder and cannon, which is now diffused over the greatof France, est part of the world. II. The kingdom of FRANCE is spread above fifteen or twenty days' journey from Germany to Spain, and from the Alps to the British ocean; containing many flourishing cities, and among these Paris, the seat of the king, which surpasses the rest in riches and luxury. Many princes and lords alternately wait in his palace, and acknowledge him as their sovereign; the most powerful are the dukes of Bretagne and Burgundy, of whom the latter possesses the wealthy province of Flanders, whose harbours are frequented by the ships and merchants of our own and the more remote The French are an ancient and opulent people; and their language and manners, though somewhat different, are not dissimilar from those of the Italians. Vain of the Imperial dignity of Charlemagne, of their victories over the Saracens, and of the exploits of their heroes, Oliver and Rowland;25 they esteem themselves the first of the western nations: but this foolish arrogance has been recently humbled by the unfortunate events of their wars against the English, the inhaof England. bitants of the British island. III. BRITAIN, in the ocean, and opposite to the shores of Flanders, may be considered either as one, or as three islands; but the whole is united by a com. mon interest, by the same manners, and by a similar government. The measure of its circumference is five thousand stadia: the land is overspread with towns and villages; though destitute of wine, and not abounding in fruit-trees, it is fertile in wheat and barley, in honey and wool; and much cloth is manufactured by the inhabitants. In populousness and power, in riches and luxury, London, the metropolis of the isle, may claim a pre-eminence over all the cities of the West. It is situate on the Thames, a broad and rapid river, which at the distance of thirty miles falls into the Gallic sea; and the

26

25 Most of the old Romances were translated in the fourteenth century into French prose, and soon became the favourite amusement of the knights and ladies in the court of Charles VI. If a Greek believed in the exploits of Rowland and Oliver, he may surely be excused, since the monks of St. Denys, the national historians, have inserted the fables of archbishop Turpin in their Chronicles of France.

26 Λονδυνη.....δε τε πολις δυνάμει τε προέχεσα των εν τη νήσω ταυτη πασών πολέων, αλβά τε και τη αλλη ευδαιμονια κύεμιας των προς ες πέραν λειπομένη. Even since the time of Fitzstephen (the twelfth century,) London appears to have maintained this pre-eminence of wealth and magnitude; and her gradual increase has, at least, kept pace with the general improvement of Europe.

daily flow and ebb of the tide, affords a safe entrance and de- CHAP. parture to the vessels of commerce. The king is the head of LXVI. a powerful and turbulent aristocracy; his principal vassals holdn their estates by a free and unalterable tenure; and the laws define the limits of his authority and their obedience. The kingdom has been often afflicted by foreign conquest and domestic sedition; but the natives are bold and hardy, renowned in arms and victorious in war. The form of their shields or targets is derived from the Italians, that of their swords from the Greeks; the use of the long bow is the peculiar and decisive advantage of the English. Their language bears no affinity to the idioms of the continent; in the habits of domestic life, they are not easily distinguished from their neighbours of France; but the most singular circumstance of their manners is their disregard of conjugal honour and of female chastity. In their mutual visits, as the first act of hospitality, the guest is welcomed in the embraces of their wives and daughters; among friends they are lent and borrowed without shame; nor are the islanders offended at this strange commerce, and its inevitable consequences.27 Informed as we are of the customs of old England, and assured of the virtues of our mothers, we may smile at the credulity or resent the injustice, of the Greek, who must have confounded a modest salute with a criminal embrace. But his erudulity and injustice may teach an important lesson; to distrust the accounts of foreign and remote nations, and to suspend our belief of every tale that deviates from the laws of nature and the character of man.29

of Manuel

A. D. 1402

After his return, and the victory of Timour, Manuel reign- Indifference ed many years in prosperity and peace. As long as the sons toward the of Bajazet solicited his friendship and spared his dominions, Latins, he was satisfied with the national religion; and his leisure was-1417. employed in composing twenty theological dialogues for its defence. The appearance of the Byzantine ambassadors at the council of Constance30 announces the restoration of the Turkish power, as well as of the Latin church; the conquest of the Sultans, Mahomet and Amurath, reconciled the empe

27 If the double sense of the verb Kuw (osculor, and in utero gero) be equivocal, the context and pious horror of Chalcocondyles can leave no doubt of his meaning and mistake (p. 49.)

28 Erasmus (Epist. Fausto Andrelino) has a pretty passage on the English fashion of kissing strangers on their arrival and departure, from whence, however, he draws no scandalous inferences.

29 Perhaps we may apply this remark to the community of wives among the old Britons, as it is supposed by Cesar and Dion (Dion Cassius, J. Ixii. tom. ii. p. 1007,) with Reimar's judicious annotation. The Arreoy of Otaheite, so certain at first, is become less visible and scandalous, in proportion as we have studied the manners of that gentle and ainorous people.

30 See Lenfant, Hist. du Concile de Constance, tom. ii. p. 576: and for the ecclesiastical history of the times, the Annals of Spondanus, the Bibliotheque of Dupin, tom. xii. and xxist and xxiid volumes of the History, or rather the Continuation, of Fleury.