Volume 1 — CHAPTER X.

THE EASTERN EMPIRE.

♦Contrast between the Eastern and Western Empires.♦

The geographical, like the political, history of the Eastern Empire is wholly unlike that of the Western. ♦The Western Empire fell to pieces.♦ The Western Empire, in the strictest sense, fell asunder. Some of its parts fell away formally, others practically. The tie that held the rest snapped at the first touch of a vigorous invader. But that invader was an European power whose territories had once formed part of the Empire itself. From the invasions of nations beyond the European pale the Western Empire, as such, suffered but little. The Western Empire again, long before its fall, had become, so far as it was a power at all, a national power, the Roman Empire of the German nation. Its fall was the half voluntary parting asunder of a nation as well as of an Empire. ♦Position of the Western Emperors;♦ The Western Emperors again had, as Emperors, practically ceased to be territorial princes. No lands of any account directly obeyed the Emperor, as such, as their immediate sovereign. When the Empire fell, the Emperor withdrew to his hereditary states, taking the Imperial title with him. In the Eastern Empire all is different. It did to some extent fall asunder from within, but its overthrow was mainly owing to its being broken in pieces from without. ♦of the Eastern.♦ But, throughout its history, the Emperor remained the immediate sovereign of all that still clave to the Empire, and, when the Empire fell, the Emperor fell with it. ♦The Eastern Empire fell mainly through foreign invasion.♦ The overthrow of the Empire was mainly owing to foreign invasion in the strictest sense. It was weakened and dismembered by the Christian powers of Europe, and at last swallowed up by the barbarians of Asia. ♦Tendencies to separation.♦ At the same time the tendency to break in pieces after the Western fashion did exist and must always be borne in mind. But it existed only in particular parts and under special conditions. It is found mainly in possessions of the Empire which had become isolated, in lands which had been lost and won again, and in lands which came under the influence of Western ideas. The importance of these tendencies is shown by the fact that three powers which had been cut off in various ways from the body of the Empire, Bulgaria, Venice, and Sicily, became three of its most dangerous enemies. But the actual destruction of the Empire came from those barbarian attacks from which the West suffered but little.

Speaking generally then, the Western Empire fell asunder from within; the Eastern Empire was broken in pieces from without. Of the many causes of this difference, perhaps only one concerns geography. At the time of the separation of the Empires, the Western Empire was really only another name for the dominions of the King of the Franks, whether within or without the elder Empire. ♦Closer connexion of the East with Roman political traditions.♦ The Eastern Empire, on the other hand, kept the political tradition of the elder Empire unbroken. ♦Disuse of the Roman name in the West.♦ No common geographical or national name took in the three Imperial kingdoms of the West and their inhabitants. ♦Its retention in the East.♦ But all the inhabitants of the Eastern Empire, down to the end, knew themselves by no national name but that of Romans, and the land gradually received the geographical name of Romania. But the Western Empire was not Romania, nor were its people Romans. The only Romania in the West, the Italian land so called, took its name from its long adhesion to the Eastern Empire.

♦Importance of distinctions of race in the East.♦

In the East again differences of race are far more important than they ever were in the West. In the West nations have been formed by a certain commingling of elements; in the East the elements remain apart. All the nations of the south-eastern peninsula, whether older than the Roman conquest or settlers of later times, are there still as distinct nations.

♦The original nations.♦

First among them come three nations whose settlement in the peninsula is older than the Roman conquest. One of these has kept its name and its language. One has kept its language, but has taken up its name afresh only in modern times. The third has for ages lost both its name and its language. ♦Albanians.♦ The most unchanged people in the peninsula must be the Albanians, called by themselves Skipetar, the representatives of the old Illyrians. ♦Greeks.♦ Next come the Greeks, who keep their language, but whose name of Hellênes went out of ordinary use till its revival in modern times. ♦Vlachs.♦ Lastly there are the Vlachs, representing those inhabitants of Thrace, Mœsia, and other parts of the peninsula, who, like the Western nations, exchanged their own speech for Latin. They must mainly represent the Thracian race in its widest sense. ♦Use of the Roman name.♦ Both Greeks and Vlachs kept on the Roman name in different forms, and the Vlachs, the Roumans of our own day, keep it still. Of the invading races, the Goths passed through the Empire without making any lasting settlements in it. ♦Slavonic settlers.♦ The last Aryan settlers, setting aside mere colonists in later times, were the Slaves. ♦Turanian settlers.♦ Then came the Turanian settlers, Finnish, Turkish, or any other. Of these the first wave, the Bulgarians, were presently assimilated by the Slaves, and the Bulgarian power must be looked at historically as Slavonic. ♦Turanian neighbours.♦ Then come Avars, Chazars, Magyars, Patzinaks, Cumans, all settling on or near the borders of the Empire. ♦The Magyars.♦ Of these the Magyars alone grew into a lasting European state, and alone established a lasting power over lands which had formed part of the Empire. All these invaders came by the way of the lands north of the Euxine. Lastly, there are the non-Aryan invaders who came by way of Asia Minor or of the Mediterranean sea. ♦The Saracens.♦ The Semitic Saracens, after their first conquests in Syria, Egypt, and Africa, made no lasting conquests. They occupied for a while several of the great islands; but on the mainland of the Empire, European and Asiatic, they were mere plunderers. ♦The Seljuk and Ottoman Turks.♦ In their wake came the most terrible enemies of all, the Turks, first the Seljuk, then the Ottoman. Ethnologically they must be grouped with the nations which came in by the north of the Euxine. Historically, as Mahometans, coming in by the southern route, they rank with the Saracens, and they did the work which the Saracens tried to do. Most of these invading races have passed away from history; three still remain in three different stages. ♦Comparison of Bulgarians, Magyars and Ottomans.♦ The Bulgarian is lost among the Aryan people who have taken his name. The Magyar abides, keeping his non-Aryan language, but adopted into the European commonwealth by his acceptance of Christianity. The Ottoman Turk still abides on European soil, unchanged because Mahometan, still an alien alike to the creed and to the tongues of Europe.

♦The Eastern Empire becomes Greek.♦

Among all these nations one holds a special place in the history of the Eastern Empire. The loss of the Oriental and Latin provinces of the Empire brought into practical working, though not into any formal notice, the fact that, as the Western Empire was fast becoming German, so the Eastern Empire was fast becoming Greek. ♦Loss of the Oriental provinces,♦ To a state which had both a Roman and a Greek side the loss of provinces which were neither Roman nor Greek was not a loss but a source of strength. ♦of the Latin provinces.♦ And if the loss of the Latin provinces was not a source of strength, it at least did much to bring the Greek element in the Empire into predominance. ♦Dying out of Roman ideas.♦ Meanwhile, within the lands which were left to the Empire, first the Latin language, and then Roman ideas and traditions generally, gradually died out. Before the end of the eleventh century, the Empire was far more Greek than anything else. Before the end of the twelfth century, it had become nearly conterminous with the Greek nation, as defined by the combined use of the Greek language and profession of the Orthodox faith. The name Roman, in its Greek form, was coming to mean Greek. And, about the same time, the other primitive nations of the peninsula, hitherto merged in the common mass of Roman subjects, began to show themselves more distinctly alongside of the Greeks. ♦Appearance of Albanians and Vlachs.♦ We now first hear of Albanians and Vlachs by those names, and the importance of the nations which have thus come again to light increases as we go on. ♦The Latin Conquest, 1204.♦ Then the Greek remnant of the Empire was broken in pieces by the great Latin invasion, and, instead of a single power, Roman or Greek, we see a crowd of separate states, Greek and Frank. ♦The revived Byzantine Empire.♦ The reunion of some of these fragments formed the revived Empire of the Palaiologoi. But at no moment since the twelfth century has the whole Greek nation been united under a single power, native or foreign. ♦1461-1821.♦ And from the Ottoman conquest of Trebizond to the beginning of the Greek War of Independence, the whole of the Greek nation was under foreign masters.[24]

We have now first to trace out the steps by which the Empire was broken in pieces, and then to trace out severally the geographical history of the states which rose out of its fragments. And with these last we may class certain powers which do not strictly come under that definition, but which come within the same geographical range and which absorbed parts of the Imperial territory. Beginning in the West, the territory which the Empire at the final separation still held west of the Hadriatic, was gradually lost through the attacks, first of the Saracens, then of the Normans. ♦Sicily.♦ These lands grew into the kingdom of Sicily, which has its proper place here as an offshoot from the Eastern Empire. ♦Venice.♦ At the other end of the Italian peninsula, Venice gradually detached itself from the Empire, to become foremost in its partition: here then comes the place of Venice as a maritime power. ♦Slavonic powers. Bulgaria.♦ Then come the powers which arose on the north and north-west of the Empire, powers chiefly Slavonic, reckoning as Slavonic the great Bulgarian kingdom. ♦Hungary.♦ Here too will come the kingdom of Hungary, which, as a non-Aryan power in the heart of Europe, has much both of likeness and of contrast with Bulgaria. The kingdom of Hungary itself lay beyond the bounds of the Empire, but a large part of its dependent territory had been Imperial soil. ♦Albanians. Roumans.♦ Here also we must speak of the states which arose out of the new developement of the Albanian and Rouman races, and of the states, Greek and Frank, which arose just before and at the time of the Latin Conquest. ♦Asiatic powers.♦ Then there are the powers, both Christian and Mahometan, which arose within the Imperial dominions in Asia. Here we have to speak alike of the states founded by the Crusaders and of the growth of the Ottoman Turks. Lastly, we come to the work of our own days, to the new European states which have been formed by the deliverance of old Imperial lands from Ottoman bondage.

♦800-1204.♦

We will therefore first trace the geographical changes in the frontier of the Empire itself down to the Latin Conquest. ♦1204-1453.♦ The Latin Empire of Romania, the Greek Empire of Nikaia, the revived Greek Empire of Constantinople, will follow, as continuing, at least geographically, the true Eastern Roman Empire. Then will come the powers which have fallen off from the Empire or grown up within the Empire, from Sicily to free Bulgaria. But it must be remembered that it is not always easy to mark, either chronologically or on the map, when this or that territory was finally lost to the Empire. This is true both on the Slavonic border and also in southern Italy. ♦Distinction between conquest and settlement.♦ On the former above all it is often hard to distinguish between conquest at the cost of the Empire and settlement within the Empire. In either case the frontier within which the Emperors exercised direct authority was always falling back and advancing again. Beyond this there was a zone which could not be said to be under the Emperor’s direct rule, but in which his overlordship was more or less fully acknowledged, according to the relative strength of the Empire and of its real or nominal vassals.

§ 1. Changes in the Frontier of the Empire.

♦Power of revival in the Empire.♦

In tracing the fluctuations of the frontier of the Eastern Empire from the beginning of the ninth century, we are struck by the wonderful power of revival and reconquest which is shown throughout the whole history. Except the lands which were won by the first Saracens, hardly a province was finally lost till it had been once or twice won back. No one could have dreamed that the Empire of the seventh century, cut short by the Slavonic settlements to a mere fringe on its European coasts, could ever have become the Empire of the eleventh century, holding a solid mass of territory from Tainaros to the Danube. But before this great revival, the borders of the Empire had both advanced and fallen back in the farther West. ♦Sardinia, Sicily, Southern Italy.♦ At the time of the separation of the Empires, the New Rome still held Sardinia, Sicily, and a small part of southern Italy. The heel of the boot still formed the theme of Lombardy,[25] while the toe took the name of Calabria which had once belonged to the heel. Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi were outlying Italian cities of the Empire; so was Venice, which can hardly be called an Italian city. ♦Loss of the islands. Advance on the continent.♦ In the course of the ninth century the power of the Empire was cut short in the islands, but advanced on the mainland. ♦Loss of Sardinia.♦ The history of Sardinia is utterly obscure; but it seems to have passed away from the Empire by the beginning of the ninth century. ♦Loss of Sicily, 827-965.♦ Sicily was now conquered bit by bit by the Saracens of Africa during a struggle of one hundred and forty years. ♦Loss of Agrigentum, 827; of Palermo, 831;♦ Agrigentum, opposite to the African coast, fell first; Palermo, once the seat of Phœnician rule, became four years later the new Semitic capital. ♦Messina, 842;♦ Messina on the strait soon followed; but the eastern side of the island, its most thoroughly Greek side, held out much longer. ♦Malta, 869;♦ Before the conquest of this region, Malta, the natural appendage to Sicily, passed into Saracen hands. ♦Syracuse, 878.♦ Syracuse, the Christian capital, did not fall till fifty years after the first invasion, and in the north-western corner of the island a remnant still held out for nearly ninety years. ♦Tauromenion, 902-963. Rametta, 965.♦ Tauromenion or Taormina, on its height, had to be twice taken in the course of the tenth century, and the single fort of Rametta, the last stronghold of Eastern Christendom in the West, held out longer still. By this time Eastern Christendom was fast advancing on Islam in Asia; but the greatest of Mediterranean islands passed from Christendom to Islam, from Europe to Africa, and a Greek-speaking people was cut off from the Empire which was fast becoming Greek. ♦Partial recovery and final loss of Sicily, 1038-1042.♦ But the complete and uninterrupted Mussulman dominion in Sicily was short. The Imperial claims were never forgotten, and in the eleventh century they were again enforced. By the arms of George Maniakês, Messina and Syracuse, with a part of the island which at the least took in the whole of its eastern side, was, if only for a few years, restored to the Imperial rule.

♦Advance of the Empire in Italy.♦

While Sicily was thus lost bit by bit, the power of the Empire was advancing in the neighbouring mainland of Italy. ♦Taking of Bari, 871.♦ Bari was won back for Christendom from the Saracen by the combined powers of both Empires; but the lasting possession of the prize fell to the Cæsar of the East. At the end of the ninth century, the Eastern Empire claimed either the direct possession or the superiority of all southern Italy from Gaeta downwards. ♦Fluctuations of the Imperial power in Italy.♦ The extent of the Imperial dominion was always fluctuating; there was perhaps no moment when the power of the Emperors was really extended over this whole region; but there was perhaps no spot within it which did not at some time or other admit at least the Imperial overlordship. The eastern coast, with the heel and the toe in a wider sense than before, became a real and steady possession, while the allegiance of Beneventum, Capua, and Salerno was always very precarious. ♦Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi.♦ But Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi, however nominal their allegiance might be, never formally cast it aside.

Thus, at the beginning of the ninth century, the Eastern Emperors held all Sicily, with some patches of territory on the neighbouring mainland. At the beginning of the eleventh century, the island had been wholly lost, while the dominion on the mainland had been greatly enlarged. ♦The Normans in Italy and Sicily.♦ In the course of the eleventh century a new power, the Normans of Apulia, conquered the Italian possessions of the Empire, won Sicily from the Mussulman, and even made conquests from the Empire east of the Hadriatic. Thus arose the Sicilian kingdom, the growth of which will best be traced when we come to the powers which arose out of the breaking-up of the Empire.

The great islands of the Eastern Mediterranean also fluctuated between Byzantine and Saracen dominion. ♦Loss of Crete, 823.♦ Crete was won by a band of Mussulman adventurers from Spain nearly at the time when the conquest of Sicily began. ♦Its recovery, 963.♦ It was won back in the great revival of the Imperial power one hundred and forty years later. ♦Cyprus lost, 708; recovered and lost again c. 881-888; recovered again, 965.♦ Cyprus was lost sooner; but it went through many fluctuations and divisions, a recovery and a second loss, before its final recovery at the same time as the recovery of Crete and the complete loss of Sicily. ♦Loss and gain among the great islands.♦ Looking at the Empire simply as a power, there can be no doubt that the loss of Sicily was altogether overbalanced by the recovery of Crete and Cyprus. Geographically Sicily was an outlying Greek island; Crete and Cyprus lay close to the body of the Empire, essential parts of a Greek state. But Crete and Cyprus, as lands which had been lost and won back, were among the lands where the tendency to fall away from within showed itself earliest. Crete never actually separated from the Empire. ♦Separation of Cyprus, 1182-1185. Conquered by Richard of Poitou, 1191.♦ Cyprus fell away under a rebel Emperor, to be presently conquered by Richard, Count of Poitou and King of England, and to pass away from the Empire for ever.

♦Fluctuations in the possession of the great islands, 801.♦

We may thus sum up the fluctuations in the possession of the great islands. At the beginning of the ninth century, the Eastern Empire still took in Sardinia, Sicily, and Crete; Cyprus was in the hands of the Saracens. ♦901.♦ At the beginning of the tenth century, the Empire held nothing in any of the four except the north-eastern corner of Sicily. ♦1001.♦ At the beginning of the eleventh, Crete and Cyprus had been won back; Sicily was wholly lost. ♦1101.♦ At the beginning of the twelfth, Crete and Cyprus were still Imperial possessions; a great part of Sicily had been won and lost again. ♦1201.♦ At the beginning of the thirteenth, Cyprus, like Sicily, had passed to a Western master; Crete was still held by the Empire, but only by a very feeble tie. Thus they stood at the fall of the old Roman Empire of the East; of the revived Empire of the Palaiologoi none of them ever formed a part.

♦Relations of the Empire towards the Slavonic powers.♦

In the islands the enemies with whom the Empire had to strive were, first the Saracens, and then the Latins or Franks, the nations of Western Europe. On the mainland the part of the Saracen was taken by the Slave. During the four hundred years between the division of the Empires and the Frank conquest of the East, the geographical history of the Eastern Empire has mainly to deal with the shiftings of its frontier towards the Slavonic powers. ♦Three Slavonic groups.♦ These fall into three main groups. ♦Servia and Croatia.♦ First, in the north-western corner of the Empire, are the Croatian and Servian settlements, whose history is closely connected with that of the kingdom of Hungary and the commonwealth of Venice. ♦Macedonia and Greece.♦ Secondly, there are the Slaves of Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece. ♦Bulgaria.♦ Thirdly, the great Bulgarian kingdom comes between the two. These two last ranges gradually merge into one; the first remains distinct throughout. Servia, Croatia, and Dalmatia, will be best treated of in another section, remembering that, amidst all fluctuations, the claims of the Empire over them were never denied or forgotten, and were from time to time enforced. It was towards the Bulgarian kingdom that the greatest fluctuations of the Imperial frontier took place.

♦The Bulgarian kingdom.♦

The original Finnish Bulgarians were the vanguard of Turanian invasion in the lands with which we have to do. Earlier, it would seem, in their coming than the Avars, they were slower to settle down into actual occupation of European territory. But when they did settle, it was not on the outskirts of the Empire, but in one of its acknowledged provinces. ♦Settlement south of the Danube, 679.♦ Late in the seventh century, the first Bulgarian kingdom was established between Danube and Hæmus. It must be remembered that another migration in quite another direction founded another Bulgarian power on the Volga and the Kama. ♦White Bulgaria.♦ This settlement, Great or White Bulgaria, remained Turanian and became Mahometan; Black Bulgaria on the Danube became Christian and Slavonic. ♦Use of the Bulgarian name.♦ The modern Bulgarians bear the Bulgarian name only in the way in which the Romanized Celts of Gaul bear the name of their Frankish masters from Germany, in which the Slaves of Kief and Moscow bear the name of their Russian masters from Scandinavia. In all three cases, the power formed by the union of conquerors and conquered has taken the name of the conquerors and has kept the speech of the conquered. But though the Bulgarian power became essentially Slavonic, it took quite another character from the less fully organized Slavonic settlements to the west and south of it. ♦The Empire and the Macedonian Slaves.♦ Towards the Slaves of Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece, it cannot be said that the Empire had any definite frontier. Settled within the Empire, they were its tributaries or its enemies, according to the strength of the Empire at any particular moment. Up to the coming of the Bulgarians, we might, from different points of view, place the Imperial border either at the Danube or at no great distance from the Ægæan. ♦The Empire and the Bulgarian kingdom.♦ But from the Bulgarian conquest onwards, there was on the Bulgarian side a real frontier, a frontier which often shifted, but which was often fixed by treaty, and which, wherever it was fixed, marked off lands which were, for the time, wholly lost to the Empire. ♦Loss of the Danubian frontier.♦ With the first Bulgarian settlement, the Imperial frontier definitely withdrew for three hundred years from the lower Danube to the line of Hæmus or Balkan. ♦Bulgarians south of Hæmus.♦ As the Bulgarian power pushed to the south and west the two fields of warfare, against the Bulgarians to the north and against the half-independent Slaves to the west, gradually melted into one. But as long as the Isaurian Emperors reigned, the two fields were kept distinct. ♦Extent of Bulgaria in the eighth century.♦ They kept the Balkan range against the Bulgarians, whose kingdom, stretching to the north-west over lands which are now Servian, had not, at the end of the eighth century, passed the mountain barrier of the Empire.

♦Recovery of the Slavonic settlements in Macedonia and Greece.♦

Meanwhile, as a wholly distinct work, the Imperial power was restored over the Slaves of Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece. In the middle of the eighth, century the inland parts of Greece were chiefly occupied by Slavonic immigrants, while the coast and the cities remained Greek. ♦775-784. 807.♦ Before the end of the century, the Slaves of Macedonia were reduced to tribute, and early in the ninth, those of Greece wholly failed to recover their independence. ♦Recovery of Greece from the Slaves. Slaves on Taÿgetos.♦ The land was gradually settled afresh by Greek colonists, and by the middle of the tenth, only two Slavonic tribes, Melings and Ezerites (Melinci and Jezerci), remained, distinct, though tributary, on the range of Taÿgetos or Pentedaktylos. From this time to the Frankish conquest, Greece, as a whole, was held by the Empire. But, as a recovered land, it was one of those parts of the Empire in which a tendency to separate began to show itself. In the course of these changes, the name Hellênes, as a national name, quite died out. ♦Hellênes of Maina.♦ It had long meant pagan, and it was confined to the people of Maina, who remained pagan till near the end of the ninth century. The Greeks now knew no name but that of Romans. The local, perhaps contemptuous, name of the inhabitants of Hellas was Helladikoi.

Thus, at the division of the Empires, Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece had been more or less thoroughly recovered by the Eastern Empire, while the lands between Hæmus and Danube were wholly lost. ♦Romania.♦ The Imperial dominion from the Hadriatic to the Euxine formed, together with the Asiatic provinces, Romania, the land of the Romans of the East. ♦Dalmatia, Servia, and Croatia.♦ The Emperors also kept the cities on the Dalmatian coast, and the precarious allegiance of the Servian and Croatian principalities. These lands were bound to the Empire by a common dread of the encroaching Bulgarian. ♦Greatness of the first Bulgarian kingdom.♦ The ninth century and the early years of the tenth was a great time of Bulgarian advance. ♦Attempt on Pannonia, 818-829.♦ The Bulgarians seem to have failed in establishing any lasting dominion to the north-west in Pannonia;[26] at the expense of the Empire they were more successful. ♦Advance against the Empire.♦ At the end of the eighth century Anchialos and Sardica—afterwards called Triaditza and Sofia—were border cities of the Empire. The conquest of Sardica early in the ninth marks a stage of Bulgarian advance. At the end of the century, after the conversion of the nation to Christianity, comes the great era of the first Bulgarian kingdom, the kingdom of Peristhlava. ♦Conquests of Simeon, 923-934.♦ The Tzar Simeon established the Bulgarian supremacy over Servia, and carried his conquests deep into the lands of the Empire. In Macedonia and Epeiros the Empire kept only the sea-coast, Ægæan and Hadriatic; Sardica, Philippopolis, Ochrida, were all cities of the Bulgarian realm. Hadrianople, a frontier city of the Empire, passed more than once into Bulgarian hands. Nowhere in Europe, save in old Hellas, did the Imperial dominion stretch from sea to sea.

♦Revival of the Imperial power.♦

So stood matters in the middle of the tenth century. Then came that greatest of all revivals of the Imperial power which won back Crete and Cyprus, and which was no less successful on the mainland of Europe and Asia. ♦Conquest of Bulgaria.♦ Bulgaria was conquered and lost and conquered again. But the first time it was conquered, not from the Bulgarian but from the Russian. ♦The Russians and Bulgarians. 968-971.♦ The Russians, long dangerous to Constantinople, now suddenly appear as a land power. Their prince Sviatoslaf overthrew the first Bulgarian kingdom, and Philippopolis became for a moment a Russian outpost. But John Tzimiskês restored the power of the Empire over the whole Bulgarian dominions. The Danube was once more the frontier of the Eastern Rome.

♦The second Bulgarian kingdom.♦

It remained so for more than two hundred years during the lower part of its course. But in the inland regions the Imperial power fell back almost at once, to advance again further than ever. A large part of the conquered land soon revolted, and a second Bulgarian kingdom, Macedonian rather than Mœsian, arose. The kingdom of Ochrida, the kingdom of Samuel, left to the Empire the eastern part of the old Bulgaria between Danube and Hæmus, together with all Thrace and the Macedonian coast. But it took in all the inland region of Macedonia; it stretched down into Thessaly and Epeiros; and, while it nowhere touched the Euxine or the Ægæan, it had a small seaboard on the Hadriatic. Now came the great struggle between Romania and Bulgaria which fills the last years of the tenth century and the opening years of the eleventh. ♦Second conquest of Bulgaria, 1018.♦ At last all Bulgaria, and with it for a while Servia, was restored to the Empire. ♦Croatia.♦ Croatia continued its vassalage, and its princes were presently raised to royal rank by Imperial authority.

Thus the Eastern Empire again took in the whole south-eastern peninsula. Of its outlying European possessions, southern Italy was still untouched. ♦Venice.♦ At what moment Venice ceased to be a dependency of the Empire, it would be hard to say. Its dukes still received the Imperial investiture, and Venetian ships often joined the Imperial fleet. This state of things seems never to have been formally abolished, but rather to have dropped out of sight as Venice and Constantinople became practically hostile. In the other outlying city north of the Euxine the ninth and tenth centuries change places. Through all changes the Empire kept its maritime province in the Tauric Chersonêsos. ♦Cherson annexed, 829-842; taken by Vladimir, 988.♦ There the allied city of Cherson, more formally annexed to the Empire in the ninth century, was taken by the Russian Vladimir in the interval between the two great Bulgarian wars.

♦The Empire in Asia.♦

In Asia the Imperial frontier had changed but little since the first Saracen conquests. The solid peninsula of Asia Minor was often plundered by the Mussulmans, but it was never conquered. Now, in Asia as in Europe, came a time of advance. For eighty years, with some fluctuations, the Empire grew on its eastern side. The Bagdad caliphate was now broken up, and the smaller emirates were more easily overcome. ♦Asiatic conquests of Nikêphoros and John, 963-976;♦ The wars of Nikêphoros Phôkas and John Tzimiskês restored Kilikia and Syria to the list of Roman provinces, Tarsos, Antioch, and Edessa to the list of Christian cities. ♦of Basil the Second, 991-1022. Beginning of the annexation of Armenia 1021; Ani, 1045; of Kars, 1064.♦ Basil the Second extended the Imperial power over the Iberian and Abasgian lands east of the Euxine, and began a series of transactions by which, in the space of forty years, all Armenia was added to the Empire on the very eve of the downfall of the Imperial power in Asia.

♦New enemies.♦

For the great extension of the Empire laid it open to new enemies in both continents. ♦Turks. Magyars.♦ In Asia it became the neighbour of the Seljuk Turks, in Europe of the Magyars or Hungarians, who bear the name of Turks in the Byzantine writers of the tenth century. Hungary had now settled down into a Christian kingdom. ♦Revolt of Servia, 1040. Loss of Belgrade, 1064.♦ A Servian revolt presently placed a new independent state between Hungary and Romania, but Belgrade remained an Imperial possession till it passed under Magyar rule twenty-four years later. ♦Advance of the Turks.♦ By this time the Empire had begun to be cut short in a far more terrible way in Asia. The Seljuk Turks now reached the new Roman frontier. ♦Loss of Ani, 1064.♦ Plunder grew into conquest, and the first Turkish conquest, that of Ani, happened in the same year as the last Imperial acquisition of Kars. The Emperors now tried to strengthen this dangerous frontier by the erection of vassal principalities. The very name of Armenia now changes its place. ♦Lesser Armenia, 1080.♦ The new or Lesser Armenia arose in the Kilikian mountains, and was ruled by princes of the old Armenian dynasty, whose allegiance to the Empire gradually died out. But before this time the Turkish power was fully established in the peninsula of Asia Minor. The plunderers had become conquerors. ♦1071.♦ The battle of Manzikert led to formal cessions and further advances. ♦1074.♦ Throughout Asia Minor the Empire at most kept the coast; the mass of the inland country became Turkish. ♦The Sultans of Roum. 1081.♦ But the Roman name did not pass away; the invaders took the name of Sultans of Roum. Their capital was at Nikaia, a threatening position indeed for Constantinople. But distant positions like Trebizond and Antioch were still held as dependencies. ♦Loss of Antioch, 1081.♦ Antioch was before long betrayed to the Turks.

By this time the Empire was attacked by a new enemy in its European peninsula. ♦Normans in Corfu and Epeiros. 1081-1085.♦ The Norman conquerors of Apulia and Sicily crossed the Hadriatic, and occupied various points, both insular and continental, 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. ♦Geographical aspect of the Empire.♦ The geographical aspect of the Empire was now the exact opposite of 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.

The states founded by the Crusaders will be dealt with elsewhere. ♦Recovery of Asiatic territory, 1097.♦ The crusades concern us here only as helping towards the next revival of the Imperial power under the house of Komnênos. Alexios himself 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. ♦Reigns of John and Manuel.♦ The conquering reigns of John and Manuel again extended the Empire in both continents. ♦1097.♦ The Turk still ruled in the inland regions of Asia, but his capital was driven back from Nikaia to Ikonion. ♦1137.♦ The superiority of the Empire was restored over Antioch and Kilikian Armenia at the one end, over Servia at the other. ♦1148.♦ Hungary itself had to yield Zeugmin, Sirmium, and all Dalmatia. ♦1163-1168.♦ For a moment the Empire again took in the whole eastern coast of the Hadriatic and its islands; even on its western shore Ancona became something like a dependency of the Eastern Cæsar.

♦Falling of distant possessions.♦

The conquests of Manuel were clearly too great for the real strength of the Empire. Some lands fell away at once. ♦Dalmatia, 1181.♦ 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 gave it to Guy of Lusignan. ♦Latin kingdom of Cyprus, 1192.♦ Thus, before the Latin 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.

♦The third Bulgarian kingdom, 1187.♦

Meanwhile the Empire was again cut short to the north by a new Bulgarian revolt, which established a third Bulgarian kingdom, but a kingdom which seems to have been as much Vlach or Rouman as strictly Bulgarian. The new kingdom took in the old Bulgarian land between Danube and Hæmus, and it presently spread both to the west and to the south. ♦Other Slavonic revolts.♦ The Bulgarian revolt was followed by other movements among the Thracian and Macedonian Slaves, which did not lead to the foundation of any new states, but which had their share in the general break-up of the Imperial power. ♦Increased Greek character of the Empire.♦ The work of Basil and Manuel was 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 Slavonic states.♦ The great element of later times, the Slavonic settlers, had almost wholly separated themselves from the 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.

♦Latin conquest of Constantinople, 1204.♦

The taking of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade 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 they founded, may be indifferently called Latins or Franks. ♦Act of Partition.♦ A regular act of partition was drawn out, by which the Empire was to be divided into three parts. One was to be assigned to a Latin Emperor of Romania, another of 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.

♦Latin Empire of Romania.♦

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. ♦Its extent.♦ 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 of Thrace, with a fluctuating border towards Bulgaria 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 what 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. ♦Kingdom of Thessalonikê. 1204-1222. Despotat of Epeiros.♦ Besides the Empire of Romania, there was the Latin kingdom of Thessalonikê, and the Greek despotat[27] 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 known as Great Vlachia, and he received the homage of the Frank princes further to the south. But within twenty years from its foundation, Frank rule had ceased in Macedonia. ♦Thessalonikê again Greek.♦ Thessalonikê was again a Greek and an Imperial city, and its recovery by the Greeks split the Latin Empire asunder.

♦The Epeirot despotat.♦

This blow came from the west. It was the Nicene Empire which did in the end win back the Imperial city; but, for some years after the Latin conquest, things looked as if the restoration of the Greek power in Europe was designed for Epeiros. The first despot Michael paid a nominal homage to all the neighbouring powers, Greek and Frank, in turn; but in truth he was the lord of an independent and growing state. His power began in the Epeirot land west of Pindos. ♦1208-1210.♦ For a moment he held in Peloponnêsos Corinth, Nauplia, and Argos. Durazzo and Corfu were won from Venice. ♦1215.♦ The Epeirot power advanced also to the east. ♦1222. 1225.♦ Thessalonikê was taken; its ruler took the Imperial title; Hadrianople followed, and the new Empire stretched across the peninsula from sea to sea, and took in Thessaly to the south. But the Thessalonian Empire was hardly more long-lived than the Thessalonian kingdom. It was first dismembered among the princes of the ruling house. ♦Separation of Epeiros and Thessalonia. 1237.♦ The original Epeirot despotat, along with Corfu, parted away from the new Macedonian power, to survive it by many years. But by this time the championship of the Greek speech and faith against the Latin lords of Constantinople had passed to the foremost of the Greek powers which had grown up in Asia, to the Empire of Nikaia.

These Greek powers were two, which arose at the same time, but by different processes and with different destinies. ♦The Empire of Trebizond, 1204-1461.♦ The Empire of Nikaia was the truer continuation of the old East-Roman power; the Empire of Trapezous or Trebizond was the last independent fragment of Roman dominion and Greek culture. The Trapezuntine Empire was not in strictness one of the states which arose out of the Latin partition. One of the parts of the Empire which showed most disposition to fall away was independently seized by a rival Emperor, at the very moment of the Latin conquest. Alexios Komnênos occupied Trebizond, an occupation largely wrought by Iberian help, as if the Empire, already dismembered by the Christians of the West, was to be further dismembered by the Christians of the further East. ♦Extent of the Komnenian dominion.♦ The dominions of Alexios, enlarged by his brother David to the west, at first took in the whole south coast of the Euxine from the Sangarios eastward, broken by the city of Amisos, which contrived to make itself virtually independent, and by the neighbouring Turkish settlement at Samsoun. But this dominion was only momentary. The eastern part alone survived to form the later Empire of Trebizond; the western part, the government of David, soon passed to the rising power of Nikaia.

♦Empire of Nikaia. 1206-1261.♦

The founder of that power was Theodore Laskaris, in whom the succession of the Eastern Empire was held to be continued. ♦1214.♦ Ten years after the taking of Constantinople, a treaty fixed his border towards the small Latin dominion in Asia. ♦1220. 1240.♦ Six years later the Latins kept only the lands north of the gulf of Nikomêdeia; sixteen years later they held only the Asiatic coast of the Bosporos. ♦1247.♦ Seven years later Chios, Lêmnos, Samos, Kôs, and other islands were won back by the growing Greek state. ♦The Nicene Empire in Europe. 1235.♦ But, long before this, the Nicene Empire had become an European power. The Thracian Chersonêsos was first won, the work beginning at Kallipolis. ♦1242. 1246.♦ Presently the Thessalonian Emperor sank to the rank of a despot under him of Nikaia; four years later Thessalonikê was incorporated with the Nicene dominions. ♦1245-1256.♦ A series of Bulgarian campaigns carried the Imperial frontier, first to the Hebros—already the Slavonic Maritza—and then to the foot of Hæmus. ♦1254-1259.♦ A series of Epeirot campaigns won a Hadriatic seaboard, and made Durazzo for a while again a city of the Empire. ♦1259.♦ The Nicene power in these regions was confirmed by the victory of Pelagonia, won over the combined forces of Epeiros, Achaia, and Sicily. ♦1260.♦ The next year Selymbria was won from the Latins, and the Frank Empire was cut down to so much territory as could be guarded from the walls of Constantinople. ♦Recovery of Constantinople, 1261.♦ At last the recovery of Constantinople changed the Empire of Nikaia into the revived Byzantine Empire of the Palaiologoi.

That Empire still lasted a hundred and ninety years, and we must carefully distinguish between its European and its Asiatic history. The Asiatic border fell back almost as soon as the seat of rule was restored to Europe. ♦Advance of the Empire in Europe.♦ In Europe the revived Empire kept the character of an advancing power till just before the entrance of the Ottoman into Europe, in some parts till just before the fall of Constantinople. Many events helped to weaken the real power of the Empire, which did not affect its geography. ♦1302.♦ Such were the earlier Turkish inroads and the destroying visit of the Catalans. ♦Advance in Peloponnêsos.♦ The land in which advance was most steady was Peloponnêsos, where, at the time of the recovery of Constantinople, the Empire did not hold a foot of ground. ♦1262.♦ Misithra, Monembasia, and Maina were the fruits of the day of Pelagonia. For a while the Imperial frontier was stationary, but from the beginning of the fourteenth century it steadily advanced. It advanced perhaps all the more after Peloponnêsos became an Imperial dependency, or an appanage for princes of the Imperial house, rather than an immediate possession of the Empire. ♦1404.♦ Early in the fifteenth century the greater part of the peninsula, including Corinth, was again in Greek hands. ♦1430.♦ At last, twenty-three years only before the Turkish conquest of Constantinople, all Peloponnêsos, except the points held by Venice, was under the superiority of the Empire.

♦Advance in Macedonia and Epeiros.♦

In more northern parts the advance of the Empire, though chequered by more reverses, went on steadily till the growth of the Servian power in the middle of the fourteenth century. ♦1308.♦ The frontier varied towards Servia, Bulgaria, Epeiros, and the Angevin power which established itself on the Hadriatic coast. Even under Andronikos the Second the Imperial dominion was extended over the greater part of Thessaly or Great Vlachia. ♦1318-1339.♦ Later still, all Epeiros, Jôannina and Arta—once Ambrakia—were won. At the moment of the great Servian advance, the Empire held the uninterrupted seaboard from the Euxine to the Pagasaian Gulf, as well as its Hadriatic seaboard from the Ambrakian gulf northward. But the Frank principalities still cut off the main body of the Empire from its possessions in Peloponnêsos.

♦Losses of the Empire in Asia.♦

In Asia there is another tale to tell. There the frontier of the Empire steadily went back from the recovery of Constantinople. A few points gained or lost to European powers go for little. ♦1260.♦ Smyrna passed for a while to Genoa. ♦The Knights of Saint John, 1309-1315.♦ The Knights of Saint John won Rhodes, Kôs, and other islands, but they did not become a power on the mainland of Asia till the Empire had almost withdrawn from that continent. ♦Advance of the Turks.♦ The Imperial power steadily crumbled away before the advance of the Turk, first the Seljuk and then the Ottoman. The small Turkish powers into which the Sultanate of Roum had now split up began to encroach on the Greek dominion in Asia as soon as its centre was transferred to Europe. By the end of the thirteenth century, the Imperial possessions in Asia had again shrunk up to a narrow strip on the Propontis, from the Ægæan to the Euxine. Losses followed more speedily when the Turkish power passed from the Seljuk to the Ottoman. ♦1326-1338.♦ Brusa, Nikaia, Nikomêdeia, were all lost within twelve years. By the middle of the fourteenth century, the Emperors kept nothing in Asia, save a strip of land just opposite Constantinople, and the outlying cities of Philadelphia and Phôkaia, their allies rather than their subjects.

The Ottoman was now all but ready to pass into Europe, and the way was made easier for him by the rise and fall of an European power which again cut short the Empire in its western provinces. ♦The Empire falls back towards Servia and Bulgaria. 1331.♦ While the Imperial frontier was advancing in Epeiros and Thessaly, it fell back towards Servia, and advanced towards Bulgaria only to fall back again. ♦Loss of Philippopolis, 1344.♦ Philippopolis, so often lost and won, now passed away for ever. ♦Conquest. Stephen Dushan.♦ And now came the great momentary advance of Servia under Stephen Dushan, which wrested from the Empire a large part of its Thracian, Macedonian, Albanian, and Greek possessions. ♦Extent of the Empire.♦ At the middle of the fourteenth century, the Empire, all but banished from Asia, kept no unbroken European dominion out of Thrace. Its other possessions were isolated. It kept Thessalonikê and Chalkidikê, with a small strip of Macedonia as far as Berrhoia and Vodena. It kept a small Thessalian territory about Lamia or Zeitouni. There was the Peloponnesian province, fast growing into importance; there was Lesbos and a few other islands. ♦1355.♦ On Stephen’s death his dominion broke in pieces, but the Empire did not win back its lost lands. For the Ottoman was already in Europe, ready, in the space of the next hundred years, to swallow up all that was left.

♦1336.♦

As in the recovery of Romania by the Greeks of Nikaia, so in the final conquest of Romania by the Turks of Brusa, Constantinople itself was—with the exception of the Peloponnesian appanage—the last point of the Empire to fall. The Turk, like the Greek, made his way in by Kallipolis; like the Greek, he hemmed in the Imperial city for years before it fell into his hands. ♦Loss of Hadrianople, 1361. 1366.♦ In seven years from his first landing, Hadrianople had become the European capital of the Turk; the Empire was his tributary, keeping, besides its outlying possessions, only the land just round the city. The romantic expedition of Amadeo of Savoy gave back to the Empire its Euxine coast as far as Mesêmbria. ♦Loss of Philadelphia, 1374-1391.♦ Before the end of the century Philadelphia was lost in Asia, and the Imperial dominion in Europe hardly reached beyond the city itself and the Peloponnesian province. Thessalonikê and the Thessalian province were both lost for a while. ♦Effects of Timour’s invasion, 1401.♦ Bajazet was on the point of doing the work of Mahomet, when the Empire was saved for another half-century by the invasion of Timour and the consequent break-up of the Ottoman power. During the Ottoman civil wars, the outlying points of the Empire were restored and seized again more than once. ♦1424.♦ At last the boundaries of the Empire were fixed by treaty between Sultan Mahomet and the Emperor Manuel, much as they had stood sixty years before. The coast of the Propontis to Selymbria, the coast of the Euxine to Mesêmbria, Thessalonikê and Chalkidikê, the Peloponnesian province, the smaller Thessalian province, the overlordship of Lesbos, Ainos, and Thasos, was all that was left. Further losses soon followed. ♦1426.♦ Thessalonikê passed from the Empire within two years. ♦1453.♦ At last, as all the world knows, the Imperial city itself fell, and the name of the Eastern Roman Empire was blotted out of European geography. ♦1460.♦ Six years later came the conquest of Peloponnêsos, and the whole of European Greece passed into the hands of foreign masters.

♦States growing out of the Empire.♦

Having thus sketched the changes in the extent of the Eastern Roman Empire during a period of six hundred and fifty years, we have now to trace the geography of the states which, within that time, grew up within its borders or upon its frontiers. These fall naturally into four groups. ♦The Slavonic states.♦ First come the national states which were formed by throwing off the dominion of the Empire. These are mainly the Slavonic powers to the north, Bulgaria, Servia, Croatia, and the later states which arose out of their divisions and combinations. ♦Hungary. Rouman states.♦ And with these, different as was their origin, we must, for our purposes, place both the Hungarian kingdom which annexed so many of the Slavonic lands, and the Rouman states, so closely connected with Hungarian history, which arose by migrations out of the Empire. ♦The Greek states.♦ Another group consists of the Greek states which split off from the Empire before or at the Latin conquest, and which were not recovered by the Greek Emperors of Nikaia and Constantinople. Both these classes of states belong strictly to Eastern Christendom. Catholic Hungary ruling over Orthodox Slaves forms a link between the East and the West; so do those Slaves who themselves belong to the Latin Church. ♦Latin states with the Empire.♦ Another link is supplied by a third group of states, namely, those parts of the Empire which, either at or before the Latin conquest, came under Latin rule. This class is not confined to the Frank powers in Romania or to the Eastern settlements of Venice and Genoa. ♦Kingdom of Sicily. Kingdom of Jerusalem.♦ From our point of view it takes in the Norman kingdom of Sicily and the crusading kingdom of Jerusalem with its fiefs. In all these cases, territory which had formed part of the Eastern Empire came under Latin rule. And in all these cases, Latin masters bore rule over alien subjects, Greek, Slave, Syrian, or any other. None of the Latin powers were national states, like the Slavonic or even like the Greek powers. But the foreign masters of these lands were at least European and Christian. The last class consists of powers which lie beyond the range of European and Christian civilization. ♦Turkish dynasties.♦ These are the Turkish dynasties which arose within the Empire. ♦The Ottomans.♦ Of these only the last and greatest, the dynasty of Othman, became geographically European, and swallowed up nearly all the lands which had belonged to the Empire in Europe, together with much which lay beyond its bounds. Here we have, not only the absence of national being, but the rule of the Asiatic over the European, of the Mussulman over the Christian. ♦The New States.♦ Lastly, we come to the partial redressing of this wrong by the re-establishment of independent Greek and Slavonic states in our own century.

These seem to make four natural groups, and it is needful to bear in mind their nature and relations to each other. But it will be more convenient to speak of the several states thus formed in an order approaching more nearly to the order of their separation from the Empire. And first comes a power which parted off so early, and which became so thoroughly a part of Western Europe, that it needs an effort to grasp the fact that its right place is among the powers which had their beginning in separation from the Imperial throne of Constantinople.

§ 2. The Kingdom of Sicily.

♦The Norman power in Italy and Sicily.♦

This is the power which, in the course of the eleventh century, was formed by the Norman adventurers in southern Italy and in Sicily. It was not wholly formed at the expense of the Eastern Empire. But all its insular, and the greater part of its continental, territory, was either won from the Eastern Empire and its vassals, or else had once formed part of that Empire. Its kings also more than once established their power, for a longer or shorter time, in the Imperial lands east of the Hadriatic. With the Western Empire and the Kingdom of Italy the Sicilian kingdom had in its beginnings nothing to do, though it was afterwards somewhat enlarged at their expense.

♦Possessions of the Empire in Italy.♦

When the Norman conquests in Italy began, early in the eleventh century, the Eastern Empire still kept the coast of both seas from the further side of the peninsula of Gargano to the head of the gulf of Policastro. The Imperial duchies of Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi, lying to the north of this point, were cut off by the duchies of Benevento, Capua, and Salerno, over which the Empire had at the most a very precarious superiority. ♦Advance of the Normans.♦ Within a hundred years, all these lands, together with the island of Sicily, were brought under Norman rule. Thus grew up a new European power, sometimes forming one kingdom, sometimes two, sometimes held alone, sometimes together with other kingdoms. This power supplanted alike the Eastern Empire, the Saracen powers of Sicily, and the Lombard princes of southern Italy. It started from two points, two distinct Norman settlements, of which the later outshone the earlier. ♦County of Aversa, 1021.♦ The earliest Norman territorial settlement was the county of Aversa, held in vassalage of the Imperial duchy of Naples. ♦Principality of Capua, 1062-1068.♦ Forty years later its counts became possessed of the principality of Capua, of which they received a papal confirmation which implied a denial of all dependence on either Empire. The more lasting duchy of Apulia began later under the adventurers of the house of Hauteville. ♦County of Apulia, 1042.♦ Their first stage is marked by the foundation of the county of Apulia, with Melfi as its capital, under William of-the-Iron-arm. This took in the peninsula of Gargano and the lands immediately to the south of it. ♦Investiture by Pope Leo, 1053.♦ The next stage is when Leo the Ninth invested Count Humfrey, or rather the Normans as a body, with all that they could conquer in Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily. ♦Robert Wiscard Duke, 1059. Completion of the Apulian duchy, 1077.♦ The first of several takings of Tarentum, and the assumption of the ducal title by Robert Wiscard, mark another stage. Less than twenty years later the Eastern Empire kept nothing but the duchy of Naples; Benevento had passed to the Popes. The rest of the lands both of the Empire and of the Lombard princes were now very unequally divided between two Norman lords, the Duke of Apulia and the Prince of Capua. ♦Robert Wiscard in Epeiros, 1081-1085.♦ The Byzantine power west of the Hadriatic being thus overthrown, Robert Wiscard for the first time pushed the Norman arms into the Eastern peninsula itself. For the last few years of his life he held the islands of Corfu and Kephallênia, with Durazzo and the coast to the south, and even inland as far as Kastoria and Trikkala. ♦1147-1150.♦ His power was renewed for a moment by his son Bohemond, and in the middle of the next century Corfu was again for a short time held by King Roger.

♦Norman Conquest of Sicily, 1060-1093.♦

For by that time the island of Sicily was a kingdom of Western Christendom. The second time of Mussulman rule over the whole island was short. In the space of thirty years Count Roger won the great island alike from Islam and from Eastern Christendom. ♦Taking of Messina, 1061; of Palermo, 1072; of Syracuse, 1086; of Noto, 1091;♦ Greek Messina was first won; after a while Saracen Palermo followed; Syracuse was won much later; the last Saracen post in the island to hold out was Noto in the south-eastern corner. ♦of Malta, 1091.♦ Malta, the natural appendage of Sicily, was soon added. The first Norman capital was Messina. Duke Robert, as overlord of his brother Count Roger, kept Palermo and the surrounding district in his own hands. It was not till the next century that the Count of Sicily won full possession of the city. ♦Palermo capital of Sicily.♦ Palermo then became again, as it had been under the Saracens, the head of Sicily.

The ruler of Sicily also became a potentate on the Italian mainland. First the half, then the whole, of Calabria formed part of his dominions. ♦Roger the Second, 1105-1154. King, 1130.♦ The third Great Count, the first King, of Sicily, Roger the Second, gradually won the whole possessions of his family on the mainland. ♦Capua, 1132-1136.♦ To these he presently added the Norman principality of Capua, first as a dependent territory, then as fully incorporated with his dominions. ♦Naples, 1138.♦ He next won the last possession in the West which was still held by the Eastern Empire, the city of Naples. ♦The Abruzzi, 1140.♦ He then pressed beyond the bounds both of the Eastern Empire and of the early Norman conquests by the annexation of the Abruzzi. He then, as we have seen, extended his power for a moment east of the Hadriatic. Meanwhile he was more successful against the common enemies of Eastern and Western Christendom. ♦Conquests in Africa, 1135-1137.♦ As Sicily had twice been conquered from Africa, Africa now began to be conquered from Sicily. ♦1160.♦ Roger held a considerable dominion on the African coast including Mehadia, Bona, and other points, which were lost under his son William.

Thus was founded a kingdom which has, perhaps oftener than any other European state, been divided and united and handed over from one dynasty of strangers to another, but whose boundaries, strictly so called, have hardly changed at all. For the only immediate neighbour of the Sicilian king was his ecclesiastical overlord. The question was whether the king of the mainland should be also king of the island. But the successive dynasties which reigned both over the whole kingdom and over its divided parts were for a long time eager to carry out the policy of their first founder, by conquests east of the Hadriatic. ♦Epeirot conquests of William the Good, 1185.♦ Before the fall of the old Empire, William the Good began again to establish an Epeirot and insular dominion by the conquest of Durazzo, Corfu, Kephallênia, and Zakynthos. ♦Kingdom of Margarito, 1186. 1338.♦ But these outlying dominions were granted in fief to the Sicilian Admiral Margarito,[28] who, himself bearing the strange title of King of the Epeirots, founded a dynasty which, with the title of Count Palatine, held Kephallênia, Zakynthos, and Ithakê into the fourteenth century. Thus these lands, like Cyprus and Trebizond, were cut off from the Empire just before its fall, and the revolutions of Sicily cut them off equally from the Sicilian kingdom. ♦Epeirot dominion of Manfred, 1258.♦ A more lasting power in these regions began under Manfred, who received with his Greek wife Corfu, Durazzo, and a strip of the Albanian coast, with the title of Lord of Romania. ♦Of Charles of Anjou, 1266-69. 1272-1276.♦ This dominion passed to his conqueror Charles of Anjou, who further established a feudal superiority over the Epeirot despotat. ♦1282.♦ But his plans were cut short by the revolution of the Vespers. ♦History of Durazzo, 1322. Duchy of Durazzo, 1333-1360. 1378.♦ Durazzo was lost and won more than once; but it came back to the Angevin house, to become a separate Angevin duchy, till it fell before the growth of the Albanian powers. Another branch held Lepanto—once Naupaktos—which lasted longer. ♦1373-1386.♦ Corfu and Butrinto became immediate possessions of the Neapolitan crown till they found more lasting masters at Venice.

This Eastern dominion of the two Sicilian crowns, besides their influence of which we shall have presently to speak in southern Greece, tends to keep up the connexion of the Sicilian kingdoms with the Empire out of which they sprang. But it can hardly be called a geographical enlargement of the kingdoms themselves. ♦Acre occupied by Charles of Anjou.♦ Still less can that name be given to the short occupation of Acre by Charles of Anjou in his character of one of the many Kings of Jerusalem. ♦Malta granted to the Knights, 1530.♦ The Sicilian kingdoms themselves cannot be said to have gained or lost territory till Charles the Fifth granted Malta to the Knights of Saint John, till Philip the Second added the Stati degli Presidi to the Two Sicilies. The great revolution of all has taken place in our own day. The name of Sicily has for the first time been wiped from the European map. The island of Hierôn and Roger has sunk to form seven provinces of a prince who has not deigned to take the crown or the title of that illustrious realm.

§ 3. The Crusading States.

♦Comparison between Sicily and the crusading states.♦

The Sicilian kingdom has much in common with the states formed by the crusaders in Asia and Eastern Europe. Both grew out of lands won by Western conquerors, partly from the Eastern Empire itself, partly from Mussulman holders of lands which had belonged to the Eastern Empire. But the order of the two processes is different. The Sicilian Normans began by conquering lands of the Empire, and then went on to win the island which the Saracens had torn from the Empire. The successive crusades first founded Christian states in the lands which the Mussulmans had won from the Empire, and then partitioned the Empire itself. The first crusaders undertook to hold their conquest as fiefs of the Eastern Empire. This condition was only very partially carried out; but the mere theory marks a stage in the relations between the Eastern Empire and the Latin powers of Palestine which has nothing answering to it in the case of Sicily.

♦Kingdom of Jerusalem and Frank principalities in Syria.♦

First among these powers come the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the other Frank principalities which arose out of the first crusade. ♦Cyprus.♦ The kingdom of Cyprus, which in some sort continued the Kingdom of Jerusalem, forms a link between the true crusading states and those which arose out of the partition of the Empire in the fourth crusade. ♦Armenia.♦ And closely connected with this was the kingdom of Kilikian Armenia whose foundation we have already mentioned.[29] This last was an Eastern state which became to some extent Latinized. But the Syrian states, Cyprus, and the Latin powers which arose out of the partition of the Empire, all agree in being colonies of Western Europe in Eastern lands, states where the Latin settlers appear as a dominant race over the natives, of whatever blood or creed.

♦The Crusaders cut off the Mussulmans from the sea.♦

The great geographical result of the first crusade was to cut off the Mussulman powers from the seas of Asia and Eastern Europe. In the first years of the twelfth century the Christian powers, Byzantine, Armenian, and Latin, held the whole coast of Asia Minor and Syria. ♦Extent of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.♦ The Kingdom of Jerusalem, at its greatest extent, stretched along the coast from Berytos to Gaza. To the east it reached some way beyond Jordan and the Dead Sea, with a strip of territory reaching southward to the eastern gulf of the Red Sea. To the north lay two Latin states which, in the days of Komnenian revival, acknowledged the superiority of the Eastern Emperor. ♦Tripolis. Antioch.♦ These were the county of Tripolis, reaching northwards to the Syrian Alexandretta, and the more famous principality of Antioch. ♦640. 968. 1081. 1098. 1268.♦ That great city, lost to Christendom in the first days of Saracen conquest, won back to the Empire in the Macedonian revival, lost to the Turk, won back by the Frank, remained a Christian principality long after the fall of Jerusalem, and did not pass again under Mussulman rule till late in the thirteenth century. ♦Edessa.♦ North-east of Antioch lay the furthest of the Latin possessions, the inland county of Edessa. ♦1128-1173.♦ This was the first to be lost; it fell under the power of the Turkish Attabegs of Syria. ♦Loss of the lands beyond Jordan.♦ They cut short the kingdom of Jerusalem, taking away the territory east of Jordan. On their ruin arose the mightier power of Saladin, lord alike of Egypt and Syria. ♦Jerusalem taken by Saladin, 1187.♦ He took Jerusalem, and the kingdom which still bore that name was cut down to the lands just round Tyre. ♦Jerusalem recovered by Frederick the Second, 1228.♦ The crusades which followed won back Acre and various points, and at last the diplomacy of Frederick the Second won back from the Egyptian Sultan Tyre, Sidon, and the Holy City itself. A strip of coast running inland at two points, so as to take in Tiberias and Nazareth at one end, Jerusalem and Bethlehem at the other, formed the Eastern realm of the lord of Rome and Sicily. ♦1239-1243. Final loss of Jerusalem, 1244.♦ Lost and won again by the Christians, Jerusalem was finally won for Islam by the invasion of the Chorasmians from the shores of the Caspian. But for nearly fifty years longer the points on the coast were lost and won, as the Mussulman powers or fresh crusaders from Europe had the upper hand. ♦Fall of Acre, 1291.♦ With the fall of Acre, the Latin dominion on the Syrian mainland came to an end. The land won by the Western Christians from the Mussulman went back to the disciples of the Prophet. The land won by the Western Christian from the Eastern, and the land where the Eastern Christian still maintained his independence, held out longer.

♦Cyprus.♦

These were the kingdoms of Cyprus and Armenia. ♦Famagosta Genoese.♦ The frontier of Cyprus hardly admitted of geographical change, unless it were when, for a part of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the city and haven of Famagosta passed to Genoa. ♦Connexion between Cyprus and Jerusalem.♦ The kings of Cyprus however claimed the crown of Jerusalem, and sometimes, before the whole Syrian coast was lost, they really held this or that piece of territory on the mainland. ♦Armenia acknowledges the Western Emperor, 1190.♦ Meanwhile the Armenian kingdom in some sort entered the Western world, when its king, after receiving one confirmation from the Eastern Emperor, thought it wise to receive another from the Western Emperor also. ♦1342.♦ The kingdom, though sadly cut short by its Mussulman neighbours, lived on under native princes till the middle of the fourteenth century. ♦Connexion between Armenia and Cyprus, 1393.♦ Then the fragments of the kingdom passed, first to a branch of the Cypriot royal family, and then to the reigning king of Cyprus. But the first joint reign was the last. ♦End of Armenia and Cyprus, 1489.♦ The remnant of independent Armenia was swallowed up by the Mameluke lords of Syria, while Cyprus lingered on till Saint Mark and his commonwealth became the heirs of its last king.

The kingdom of Cyprus forms a link between the Latin states in Syria and those which arose in Romania after the crusading capture of Constantinople. And these last again fall into two classes. ♦Frank principalities in Greece. Possessions of the maritime commonwealths.♦ There are the Frank principalities on the mainland of Greece, and there are the lands, chiefly insular, which fell to the lot of the maritime commonwealths of the West and of their citizens. Among these the first place belongs to the great commonwealth which had now cast off all traces of allegiance to the Empire. ♦Genoa.♦ Genoa, which had no share in the original partition of the Empire, obtained several points of Imperial territory, both for the commonwealth itself and for particular Genoese citizens. ♦Venice.♦ But the part played by Genoa in the East is small beside the great and abiding dominion of Venice. No result of the partition was greater than the field which it gave to Venetian growth. ♦Comparison between the two.♦ The position of the two commonwealths is different. Genoa was a mere stranger in the East; Venice was in a manner at home. Once an outlying possession of the Empire, her really great historical position is due to her share in its overthrow.

§ 4. The Eastern Dominion of Venice and Genoa.

We have already seen the origin of the Venetian state, and the beginning of Venetian rule over the Slavonic coasts of the Hadriatic. ♦Connexion of the Dalmatian and Greek dominion of Venice.♦ The Eastern dominion of Venice now began, and, in a strictly geographical view, her Istrian and Dalmatian dominion cannot be separated from her Albanian and purely Greek dominion. But Venice did not become a great European power till she passed from the Slavonic lands whose connexion with the Empire was nominal or precarious into the Albanian and Greek lands which were among its immediate possessions. ♦Effect of the partition on Venice.♦ The greatness of Venice dates from that partition of the Empire which was the surest proof that she had wholly cast aside her Byzantine allegiance. ♦Comparison between Venice and Sicily.♦ In this point of view the history of Venice may be compared and contrasted with the history of Sicily. In each case, a part of the dominions of the Eastern Rome grew into a separate power; that power passed, so to speak, from Eastern Europe to Western, and, in its new Western character, it appeared as a conqueror in the Eastern lands. But, as Venice and Sicily parted from the Empire in different ways, so their later relations to the Empire were widely different. The Sicilian state began in actual conquests made by foreign invaders at the expense of the Empire. Venice was a dependency of the Empire which gradually drifted into independence. Thus Sicily became more thoroughly Western than Venice. The attempts of the kings, both of the whole Sicilian kingdom and of its divided parts, to establish an Eastern dominion were attacks from without, and were not really lasting. ♦Venice inherits the position of the Empire.♦ But Venice, whose princes were lords of one fourth and one eighth of the Empire of Romania,[30] took up in some sort the position of the Empire itself. If she destroyed one bulwark against the Mussulman, she set up another. As long as Venice was really a great power, her main interests lay east of the Hadriatic. ♦Importance of the fourth crusade in Venetian history.♦ The fourth crusade was her turning point. It was at once the beginning of her Greek dominion and the recovery of her Dalmatian dominion.

♦Territory assigned to Venice by the Act of Partition.♦

The scheme of partition gave to Venice a vast dominion, insular and continental. She was to be mistress of the Hadriatic and Ionian seas. To her were assigned, not only the islands off the west coast of the Empire, but the whole western coast itself, from the north of Albania to the southern point of Peloponnêsos. She was to have some points in the Ægæan, among them Oreos and Karystos at the two ends of Euboia. She was to have her quarter of the capital, with a Thracian and an Asiatic dominion, including, according to some versions, the strange allotment of Lazia at the east of the Euxine[31]. ♦Her actual possessions.♦ The actual possessions of Venice in the East have a very different look. Much of the territory which was assigned to the republic never became hers, while she obtained large possessions which were not assigned to her. ♦Her dominion primarily Hadriatic.♦ But the main point, the dominion of the Hadriatic, was never forgotten, though some both of her earliest and of her latest conquests lay beyond its necessary range.

♦Possessions not assigned by the partition. Crete. 1206-1669.♦

Among those possessions of Venice which were not assigned to her in the act of partition was her greatest and most lasting possession of all, the island of Crete. ♦1645-1669.♦ This she won almost at the first moment of the conquest, and she kept it for more than four centuries and a half, till the war of Candia handed over all Crete, save two fortresses, to the Ottoman. ♦Acquisition of Cyprus. 1489.♦ Before this loss, Saint Mark had won and lost another great island which lay altogether beyond the scheme of the Latin conquerors of Constantinople. Late in the fifteenth century the republic succeeded the Latin kings in the possession of Cyprus. ♦Loss of Cyprus, 1571.♦ But this was held for less than a century. Cyprus, like Crete and Sicily, was a special scene of struggle between European and barbarian powers. But it shared the fate, not of Sicily but of Crete, and became the solid prize of the Ottoman, when Christendom won the barren laurels of Lepanto. ♦Occupation of Thessalonikê, 1426-1430.♦ Another possession which lay out of the usual course of Venetian dominion was the short occupation of Thessalonikê. Bought of a Greek despot, it was after four years taken by the Turk. Had Thessalonikê been kept, it might have passed as a late compensation to the republic for the early loss of Hadrianople and her other Thracian territory.

♦Venetian power both Dalmatian and Greek.♦

But the true scene of Venetian enterprise in the East is primarily the Hadriatic, and next to that, the coasts and islands of the Ægæan. She remained both a Dalmatian and a Greek power down to the moment of her overthrow, and, at the moment of her overthrow, it was not eighty years since she had ceased to be a Peloponnesian and an Ægæan power. The Greek dominion of Venice was an enlargement of her Dalmatian dominion. ♦Taking of Zara, 1202.♦ It is significant that Zara was taken—not for the first or the last time—on the way to the taking of Constantinople. ♦Hadriatic dominion of Venice.♦ Already mistress, or striving to be mistress, of the northern part of the eastern coast of the Hadriatic, the partition of the Empire opened to Venice the hope of becoming mistress of the southern part. Mistress of the whole coast she never was at any one moment; one point was gained and another lost. But extension in those lands was steadily aimed at for more than seven hundred years, and the greater part of the eastern Hadriatic coast has been, at one time or another, under Venetian rule.

The story of Venetian dominion in these parts cannot be kept apart from the story of the neighbouring Slavonic lands. The states of Servia and Croatia were from the beginning the inland neighbours of the Dalmatian coast cities. ♦Servian districts on the coast.♦ The river Tzettina may pass as the boundary between the Servian and Croatian states. Pagania on the Narenta, Zachloumia between the Narenta and Ragusa, Terbounia, represented by the modern Trebinje, the coast district of the Canali, Dioklea, taking in the modern Montenegro with the coast as far as the Drin—Skodra or Scutari on its lake, the harbours of Spizza, Antivari, and Dulcigno, were all originally Servian. ♦The Dalmatian cities.♦ The Dalmatian coast cities, Dekatera or Cattaro, Raousion or Ragusa, Tragourion or Traü, Diadora, Jadera, or Zara, formed a Roman fringe on what had become a Slavonic body. It was not even a continuous fringe, as the Slaves came down to the sea at more than one point. ♦Pagania.♦ Pagania above all, the land of the heathen Narentines, cut Roman Dalmatia into two marked parts. ♦The Islands.♦ It even took in most of the great islands, Curzola—once Black Korkyra—Meleda, Lesina—once Pharos—and others. At the separation of the two Empires the Croatian power was strongest in those lands. ♦Croatia under Charles the Great, 806-810.♦ The wars of Charles the Great left the coast cities to the Eastern Empire, while inland Dalmatia and Croatia passed under Frankish rule. ♦825-830.♦ Presently Croatia won its independence of the Western Empire, while the coast cities were practically lost by the Eastern. ♦Settlement under Basil the Macedonian, 868-878.♦ Under Basil the Macedonian the Imperial authority was admitted, in name at least, both by the cities and by the Croatian prince. ♦First Venetian Conquest, 995-997.♦ More than a century later came the first Venetian conquest, which was looked on at Venice as a deliverance of the cities from Croatian rule. The pagan power on the Narenta was destroyed, and the Duke of Venice took the title of Duke of Dalmatia. But all this involved no formal separation from the Empire.[32] ♦The cities under Croatia, 1052. Dalmatian Kingdom, 1062.♦ Such a separation may be held to have taken place in the middle of the next century, when the cities again passed under Croatian rule, and when the taking of the title of King of Dalmatia by Croatian Kresimir may pass for an assertion of complete independence. ♦Magyar Kingdom of Croatia, 1091; of Dalmatia, 1102.♦ But the kingdoms, first of Croatia, then of Dalmatia, were presently swallowed up by the growing power of the Magyar. Then comes a time in which this city and that passes to and fro between Venice and Hungary. ♦Croatia and Dalmatia restored to the Empire, 1171. Dalmatia passes to Hungary.♦ Under Manuel Komnênos the whole of Croatia and Dalmatia was fully restored to the Empire; but ten years later the cities again passed to Hungary. This was their final separation from the Empire, and by this time Venice had thrown off all Byzantine allegiance.

♦Struggle for the dominion of Dalmatia.♦

From this time the history of Croatia forms part of the history of the Hungarian kingdom. The history of Dalmatia becomes part of the long struggle of Venice for Hadriatic dominion. For five hundred years the cities and islands of the whole Hadriatic coast were lost and won over and over again in the strifes of the powers of the mainland. These were in Dalmatia the Hungarian and Bosnian Kings; more to the south they were the endless powers which rose and fell in Albania and northern Greece. In after times the Ottoman took the place of all. And many of the cities were able, amid the disputes of their stronger neighbours, to make themselves independent commonwealths for a longer or shorter time. ♦Independence of Ragusa;♦ Ragusa, above all, kept her independence during the whole time, modified in later times by a certain external dependence on the Turk. ♦of Polizza.♦ And the almost invisible inland commonwealth of Polizza—a Slavonic San Marino—kept its separate being into the present century.

♦Fluctuations between Venice and Hungary, 1315.♦

The crusading conquest of Zara was the beginning of this long struggle. The frontier fluctuated during the whole of the thirteenth century; early in the fourteenth the whole coast was again Venetian. Meanwhile the republic was striving to make good her position further south. The Epeirot despotat long hindered her establishment either on the coasts or the islands of northern Greece. ♦Final conquest of Durazzo and Corfu, 1206. 1216.♦ Durazzo, the central point between the older and the newer Venetian range, was won, along with Corfu, in the earliest days of the conquest; but they were presently lost, to come back again in after times. ♦History of Corfu.♦ The famous island of Korkyra or Corfu has a special history of its own. No part of Greece has been so often cut off from the Greek body. Under Pyrrhos and Agathoklês, no less than under Michael Angelos and Roger, it obeyed an Epeirot or a Sicilian master. It was among the first parts of Greece to pass permanently under Roman dependence. ♦Second Venetian conquest of Corfu, 1386-1797.♦ At last, after yet another turn of Sicilian rule, it passed for four hundred years to the great commonwealth. In our own day Corfu was not added to free Greece till long after the deliverance of Attica and Peloponnêsos. But, under so many changes of foreign masters, the island has always remained part of Europe and of Christendom. Alone among the Greek lands, Corfu has never passed under barbarian rule. ♦1716. 1800.♦ It has seen the Turk only, for one moment as an invader, for another moment as a nominal overlord.

♦Greek advance of Venice.♦

The second Venetian occupation of Corfu was the beginning of a great advance among the neighbouring islands. But, during the hundred and eighty years between the two occupations, the main fields of Venetian action lay more to the north and more to the south. The Greek acquisitions of the republic at this time were in Peloponnêsos and the Ægæan islands. ♦Modon and Coron, 1206.♦ On the mainland she won, at the very beginning of Latin settlement in the East, the south-western peninsula of Peloponnêsos, with the towns of Methônê and Kôrônê—otherwise Modon and Coron—which she held for nearly three hundred years. ♦History of Euboia.♦ Among the Ægæan islands Venice began very early to win an influence in the greatest of their number, that of Euboia, often disguised under the specially barbarous name of Negropont.[33] The history of that island, the endless shiftings between its Latin lords and the neighbouring powers of all kinds, is the most perplexed part of the perplexed Greek history of the time. ♦Complete occupation of Euboia, 1390.♦ Venice, mixed up in its affairs throughout, obtained in the end complete possession, but not till after the second occupation of Corfu. ♦Turkish conquest of Euboia, 1470.♦ The island was kept till the Turkish conquest eighty years later. Several other islands were held by the republic at different times. ♦Loss of the Ægæan islands, 1718.♦ Of these Tênos and Mykonos were not finally lost till Venice was in the eighteenth century confined to the western seas.

Between the first and the second occupation of Corfu, the Venetian power in Dalmatia had risen and fallen again. ♦Peace of Zara, 1358. Dalmatia Hungarian.♦ By the peace of Zara, Lewis the Great of Hungary shut out Venice altogether from the Dalmatian coasts, and, as Dalmatian King, he required the Venetian Duke to give up his Dalmatian title. ♦New advance of Venice.♦ Later in the century Venice again gained ground, and her Dalmatian, Albanian, and Greek possessions began to draw near together, and to form one whole, though never a continuous whole. ♦1378-1455. Recovery of Dalmatia.♦ In the space of about eighty years, amid many fluctuations towards Hungary, Bosnia, and Genoa—a new claimant called into rivalry by the war of Chioggia—Venice again became mistress of the greater part of Dalmatia. Some districts however formed part of the Duchy of Saint Sava, and Hungary kept part of the inland territory, with the fortress of Clissa. The point where the Hadriatic coast turns nearly due south may be taken as the boundary of the lasting and nearly continuous dominion of the Republic; but for the present the Venetian power went on spreading far south of that point. ♦Advance in Albania and Greece, 1392.♦ On the second occupation of Corfu followed the acquisition of Durazzo, Alessio, and of the Albanian Skodra or Scutari. ♦1401. 1407.♦ Butrinto and the ever memorable Parga put themselves under Venetian protection, and Lepanto was ceded by a Prince of Achaia. ♦1388.♦ In Peloponnêsos the Messenian towns were still held, and to them were now added Argos and its port of Nauplia, known in Italian as Napoli di Romania. ♦1408-1415. 1419. 1423.♦ Patras was held for a few years, Monembasia was won, and the isle of Aigina, which might almost pass for part of Peloponnêsos. On the other side of Greece, the possession of Corfu led to the acquisition of the other so-called Ionian Islands. ♦The Western Islands. 1449.♦ The prince of Kephallênia, of Zakynthos or Zante, and of Leukadia or Santa Maura, found it to his interest, for fear of the advancing Ottoman, to put his dominions under the overlordship of Saint Mark.

♦Venice the champion against the Turk.♦

This marks an epoch in the history of Venice and of Europe. The championship of Christendom against the Turk now passes from the New Rome to the hardly less Byzantine city in the Lagoons. The short occupation of Thessalonikê may pass for the beginning of the struggle. Later in the fifteenth century, Venice and the Turk were meeting at every point. ♦Loss of Argos, 1463.♦ In Peloponnêsos, Argos was first lost to the Turk; at the same moment he appeared far to the north, and gradually occupied the Bosnian and Hungarian districts of Dalmatia. ♦1505-1699.♦ Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the inland districts and the smaller towns were lost over and over again, but the Republic always kept the chief coast cities, Zara, Sebenico, and Spalato. ♦Losses of Venice.♦ Meanwhile, to the south of Dalmatia, the Venetian power went back everywhere, except in the western islands. ♦1474-1478.♦ On the mainland Croja, the city of Scanderbeg, was held for a while. ♦1479.♦ But both Croja and Skodra were won by Mahomet the Conqueror, and the treaty which ended this war left to the Republic nothing on the coast of Albania and Northern Greece, save Durazzo, Antivari, and Butrinto. ♦1500.♦ The treaty which followed the next war took away Durazzo, Butrinto, and Lepanto. ♦The Western Islands, 1481-1483.♦ A series of revolutions in the islands of which the Republic already held the overlordship placed them under her immediate dominion, to be struggled for against the Turk. ♦1485. 1502.♦ By the next peace Zakynthos was kept, on payment of a tribute to the Sultan; Kephallênia passed to the Turk, to be won back seventeen years later, and then to be permanently kept. ♦1502-1504.♦ Leukadia was at the same time won for a moment and lost again. ♦Loss of the Peloponnesian fortresses, 1502. 1540.♦ In Peloponnêsos Modon and Koron were lost along with Durazzo and Lepanto, and the great naval war with Suleiman cost the Republic her last Peloponnesian possessions, Nauplia and Monembasia, together with all her Ægæan islands, except Tênos and Mykonos. The strictly Greek dominion of Venice was now for a hundred and forty years confined to the islands, and, after the loss of Cyprus and Crete, almost wholly to the Western islands. But after the loss of Crete came a revival of the Venetian power, like one of the old revivals of the Empire. ♦Venetian conquest of Peloponnêsos, 1685-1699.♦ The great campaigns of Francesco Morosini, confirmed by the peace of Carlowitz, freed all Peloponnêsos from the Turk, and added it to the dominion of Saint Mark.

The same treaty confirmed Venice in the possession of the greater part of Dalmatia. ♦Loss of Peloponnêsos, 1715-1718.♦ The next war cost her the whole of Peloponnêsos, her two Cretan fortresses, and her two remaining Ægæan islands. She now withdrew wholly to the western side of Greece, where she had again won Leukadia and Butrinto, and had enlarged her dominion by the acquisition of Prevesa. ♦Extent of Venetian dominion in Greece in the last century.♦ During the last century the Venetian possessions in Greece consisted of the seven so-called Ionian islands, with the continental posts of Butrinto, Prevesa, and Parga.

♦Venetian territory in Dalmatia.♦

The Dalmatian territory of the Republic during the same time consisted of a considerable inland district in the north-east, and of the whole coast down to Budua, except where the territory of independent Ragusa broke the continuity of her rule. ♦Ragusan frontier.♦ Ragusa was so jealous of the mightier commonwealth that she preferred the Turk as a neighbour. At two points of the coast, at Klek at the bottom of the gulf formed by the long peninsula of Sabbioncello, and again at Sutorina on the Bocche, the Ottoman territory came down to the sea, so as to isolate the dominion of Ragusa from the Venetian possessions on either side. Such was the frontier of the two Hadriatic commonwealths down to the days when, first Venice and then Ragusa, passed away.

♦Possession of Venetian cities.♦

Meanwhile, besides the direct possessions of the Venetian commonwealth, there were other lands within the former dominions of the Eastern Empire which were held by Venetian lords, as vassals either of the republic or of the Empire of Romania. It would be endless to trace out the revolutions of every Ægæan island; but one among the few which claim our notice became the seat of a dynasty which proved, next to the Venetian commonwealth itself, the most long-lived Latin power in the Greek world. ♦The Duchy of Naxos.♦ This is the duchy variously known as that of Naxos, of the Dôdekannêsos, and of the Archipelago, the barbarous name given to the Ægæan or White Sea.[34] ♦1207. 1566.♦ Founded in the early years of Latin settlement by the Venetian Marco Sanudo, the island duchy lived on as a Latin state, commonly as a vassal or tributary state of some greater power, till the last half of the sixteenth century. ♦Annexed by the Turk, 1579. 1617.♦ Shorn of many of its islands by its Ottoman overlord, granted afresh to a Jewish duke, it passed thirteen years later under the immediate dominion of the Sultan. Most of the Kyklades were either parts of this duchy or fiefs held of it by other Venetian families. All came into the hands of the Turk; but some of the very smallest remained merely tributary, and not fully annexed, into the seventeenth century.

♦Settlements of Genoa and of Genoese citizens.♦

The year which saw the Naxian duchy pass from Latin to Hebrew hands saw the fall of the most remarkable of the Genoese settlements in the Greek lands. These settlements, like those of Venice, formed two classes, those which were possessions of the Genoese commonwealth itself and those which came into the hands of Genoese citizens. ♦1304.♦ Genoa had no share in the fourth Crusade; she had therefore no share in the division of the Empire, though, after the restoration of Byzantine rule, her colony of Galata made her almost a sharer in the capital of the Empire. ♦Possessions of Genoa on the Euxine, 1461.♦ But the seat of direct Genoese dominion in the East was not the Ægæan but the Euxine. On the southern coast of that sea the republic held Amastris and Amisos, and in the Tauric Chersonêsos was her great colony of Kaffa. ♦1475.♦ The Euxine dominion of Genoa came to an end during the later half of the fifteenth century; but it outlived the Empires both of Constantinople and of Trebizond.