NORMAN AND TURKISH INVASIONS. 1081. 393 X. Roum. Their capital was at Nikaia, a threatening CHAP. position indeed for Constantinople. But distant positions like Trebizond and Antioch were still held as dependencies. Antioch was before long betrayed to Loss of the Turks. Antioch, 1081. in Corfu Epeiros. phical as-" Empire. By this time the Empire was attacked by a new enemy in its European peninsula. The Norman con- Normans querors of Apulia and Sicily crossed the Hadriatic, and and occupied various points, both insular and conti- 1081-1085. nental, especially Dyrrhachion or Durazzo and the island of Korkyra, now called by a new Greek name, Koryphô or Corfu. At every point of its frontier the Empire had, towards the end of the eleventh century, altogether fallen back from the splendid position which it held at its beginning. The geographical Geogra aspect of the Empire was now the exact opposite of pect of the what it had been in the eighth and ninth centuries. Then its main strength seemed to lie in Asia. Its European dominion had been cut down to the coasts. and islands; but its Asiatic peninsula was firmly held, touched only by passing ravages. Now the Asiatic dominion was cut down to the coasts and islands, while the great European peninsula was, in the greater part of its extent, still firmly held. Never before had the main power of the Empire been so thoroughly European. No wonder that in Western eyes the Empire of Romania began to look like a kingdom of Greece. Asiatic The states founded by the Crusaders will be dealt with elsewhere. The crusades concern us here only Recovery of as helping towards the next revival of the Imperial territory, power under the house of Komnênos. Alexios him 1097. СНАР. X. Reigns of 1097. 1137. 1148. self won back Nikaia and the other great cities of western Asia Minor. Some of these, as Laodikeia, were received rather as free cities of the Empire than as mere subjects. The conquering reigns of John and Manuel again extended the Empire in both continents. The Turk still ruled in the inland regions of Asia, but his capital was driven back from Nikaia to Ikonion. The superiority of the Empire was restored over Antioch and Kilikian Armenia at the one end, over Servia at the other. Hungary itself had to yield Zeugmin, Sirmium, and all Dalmatia. For a moment the Empire again took in the whole eastern coast of the Hadriatic and its islands; even on its 1163-1168. western shore Ancona became something like a dependency of the Eastern Cæsar. Falling of distant possessions. 1181. The conquests of Manuel were clearly too great for the real strength of the Empire. Some lands fell Dalmatia, away at once. Dalmatia was left to be struggled for between Venice and Hungary. And the tendency to fall away within the Empire became strengthened by increased intercourse with the feudal ideas of the West. Cyprus, Trebizond, old Greece itself, came into the hands of rulers who were rather feudal vassals than Roman governors. We have seen how Cyprus fell away. Its Poitevin conqueror presently Latin king- gave it to Guy of Lusignan. Thus, before the Latin dom of Cyprus, 1192. conquest of Constantinople, a province had been torn from the Eastern Empire to become a Latin kingdom. The Greek-speaking lands were now beginning largely to pass under Latin rule. In Sicily the Frank might pass for a deliverer; in Corfu and Cyprus he was a mere foreign invader. Meanwhile the Empire was again cut short to the THE KOMNENIAN REIGNS. X. 395 The third kingdom, Slavonic Greek character of the Empire. north by a new Bulgarian revolt, which established a CHAP. third Bulgarian kingdom, but a kingdom which seems to have been as much Vlach or Rouman as strictly Bulgarian Bulgarian. The new kingdom took in the old Bul- 1187. garian land between Danube and Hamus, and it presently spread both to the west and to the south. The Bulgarian revolt was followed by other movements among the Thracian and Macedonian Slaves, which Other did not lead to the foundation of any new states, but revolts. which had their share in the general break-up of the Imperial power. The work of Basil and Manuel was Increased now undone; but its undoing had the effect of making the Empire more nearly a Greek state than ever. It did not wholly coincide with the Greek-speaking lands the Empire had subjects who were not Greeks, and there were Greeks who were not subjects of the Empire. But the Greek speech and the new Greek nationality were dominant within the lands which were still left to the Empire. The Roman name was now merely a name: Roman and Greek meant the same thing. Whatever was not Greek in European Romania was mainly Albanian and Vlach. The dominion of the Empire in the peninsula was mainly confined to the primitive races of the peninsula. The great element of later times, the Slavonic settlers, The had almost wholly separated themselves from the states. Empire, establishing their independence, but not their unity. They formed a group of independent powers which had simply fallen away from the Empire; it was by the powers of the West that the Empire itself was to be broken in pieces. The taking of Constantinople in the Fourth Cru Slavonic CHAP. Latin conquest of Constanti sade was the work of an alliance between the now independent commonwealth of Venice and a body of Western crusaders who, along with the states which nople, 1204. they founded, may be indifferently called Latins or Franks. A regular act of partition was drawn out, by partition. which the Empire was to be divided into three parts. Act of Latin Em pire of Romania. Its extent. One was to be assigned to a Latin Emperor of Romania, another to the pilgrims as his feudatories, a third to the commonwealth of Venice. But the partition was never carried out. A large part of the Empire was never conquered; another large part was not assigned by the act of partition. In fact the scheme of partition is hardly a geographical fact at all. The real partition to which the Latin conquest led was one of quite another kind, a partition of the Empire among a crowd of powers, Greek, Frank, and Venetian, more than one of which had some claim to represent the Empire itself. These were the Latin Empire of Romania, and the Greek Empire which maintained itself at Nikaia, and which, after nearly sixty years of banishment, won back the Imperial city. In the crusading scheme the Latin Emperor was to be the feudal superior of the lesser princes who were to establish themselves within the Empire. For his own Imperial domain he was to have the whole of the Imperial possessions in Asia, with a Thracian dominion stretching as far north as Agathopolis. Hadrianople, with a narrow strip of territory stretching down to the Propontis, was to be Venetian. The actual result was very different. The Latin Emperors never got any footing in Asia beyond parts of the themes bordering on the Propontis, reaching from Adramyttion to the mouth of the Sangarios. In Europe they held the eastern part THE LATIN CONQUEST. X. 397 of Thrace, with a fluctuating border towards Bulgaria CHAP. on the north, and to the new Latin and Greek states which arose to the west. Their dominion also took in Lêmnos, Lesbos, Chios, and some others of the Ægæan islands. But the Latin Empire of Romania was not the only Empire which arose out of the break-up of the old East-Roman power. Two, for a time three, Greek princes bore the Imperial title; there was also a Latin king. It will be convenient for a while to leave out of sight both Asia and southern Greece, and to look to the revolutions of Thrace, Macedonia, northern Greece, and the land which we may now begin to call Albania. The immediate result of the Latin conquest was to divide these lands between three powers, two Latin and one Greek. Besides the Empire of Romania, there was the Latin kingdom of Thessalonike, and the Greek despotat1 of Epeiros held by the house of Angelos. Of these the Thessalonian kingdom was the most short-lived, and there can be little doubt that its creation was the ruin of the Latin Empire. It cut off the Emperor from his distant vassals in Greece, whose vassalage soon became nominal. It gave him, in successive reigns, a powerful neighbour who knew his own power, and a weak neighbour, who fell before the Greek advance sooner than himself. But the beginnings of the kingdom, under its first king Boniface, were promising. His power stretched over Thessaly-now, from the great extent of Rouman colonization within its borders, 1 It must be remembered that SeσTórns was and is a common Byzantine title, with no worse meaning than dominus or any of the words which translate it. Kingdom of lonike. Thessa 1204-1222. Despotat of |
