THE new Emperor, whom so extraordinary a chance had raised to the throne, was a worthless and entirely incompetent man of thirty summers, with the courage of a mouse, the vanity of a peacock, and the small cunning of a Byzantine mediocrity. Finlay contemptuously observes that he was “a fair specimen of the Byzantine nobility of his age.” He had accepted the control of an Empire which only a Hercules could save from ruin; and he proceeded to extort money from its distracted citizens for the building of palaces and decoration of churches, to surround himself with a hedge of actors and actresses which shut out the misery of his provinces, to cast the cares of government upon a crowd of praying and feasting monks, and to place his ideal of monarchy in the possession of endless wardrobes and the enjoyment of stupendous banquets.  
He was an upstart in epicureanism, and it is therefore not strange that he followed the recent and abominable practice of taking a child to wife. An earlier wife, of whom he had a son named Alexis and two daughters, had died, and, when he came to the throne, there was the customary scanning of the lists of royal families in order to secure an Empress. His choice fell on the nine-year-old daughter of Bela, King of Hungary, and the wondering maiden was brought to Constantinople by his resplendent officers and eunuchs and prepared for the impressive ceremonies of an imperial marriage. The tender little Margaret became the Empress Maria, and was entrusted to the care of the troop of strange beings whom she would learn to call her eunuchs. She would239 not be old enough to know that Isaac provoked a dangerous revolt at once by imposing the cost of his marriage on the overburdened provinces: or to perceive that the vast aggregation of palaces had, for the first time in Byzantine history, been looted by the mob. Isaac had ignobly lingered in the Blachern? palace while the people of Constantinople, after despatching Andronicus, had wandered through the imperial apartments and stolen all the money and portable treasures they contained. One pious looter had even carried off the autograph letter of Christ to King Abgar. But Isaac, as soon as his throne was secure, repented of his liberality, and, by means of extortion and spoliation and adulteration of the coinage, contrived even to surpass the luxury and parade of his predecessor.
Maria will not interest us until, in her womanhood, she begins to encounter the adventures of a fallen Empress, and one or two anecdotes will serve to describe the kind of life she endured during the ten years’ reign (1185–1195) of her husband. Isaac was a florid-faced, red-haired young man with imperial appetites. His banquets consisted, Nicetas says, of “a mountain of bread, a forest of game, a sea of fishes and an ocean of wine,” at which he sat, richly perfumed and clothed with the conscious gorgeousness of a peacock, amidst a crowd of female relatives, and other females who were not relatives. When the dishes were removed, the choicest mimes and conjurers and musicians of the Empire were summoned to entertain him and his guests. It is narrated that one famous comedian, when he was for the first time admitted into the presence of this cohort of wine-flushed ladies, bowed to the Emperor and said: “Let us make the acquaintance of these first, and then you may bring the rest.”
Nearly his whole reign was filled by a great revolt of the Wallachians and Bulgarians, and in 1195 he set out to take the field in person against them. One day he rode out from the camp to hunt, and had not proceeded240 far when he heard an alarming tumult in his rear. He found that his brother Alexis, who had astutely awaited his opportunity, was being acclaimed Emperor, and, without a struggle, he galloped across the country. He was captured, blinded and imprisoned; and his young wife now gives place to a more interesting type of Empress. Maria remained in Constantinople, and will re-enter the story presently.
Euphrosyne Duc?na—that is to say, Euphrosyne of the famous Ducas family, into which some ancestor of hers had married—was an energetic and ambitious woman of middle age at the time of her accession. Her father, Gregory Camaterus, had been an imperial secretary, and had taken advantage of his favoured position to marry into the nobility. Euphrosyne must have been born some time before 1150, in the reign of Manuel, and have witnessed the later series of revolutions and assassinations. In time she married the elder brother of Isaac Angelus, a provincial noble of no distinction or wealth, and, during the bloody reign of Andronicus, Alexis had taken refuge among the Turks. Even whole populations gladly put themselves under the Turks or Saracens to escape the vices of their Christian rulers. We cannot, however, say if Euphrosyne accompanied her husband or remained in Constantinople. At last Alexis heard the strange news that his brother was on the throne, and he hastened to Constantinople. He was arrested on the way by the Prince of Antioch, ransomed by Isaac, and promoted to high office and wealth. He was a more energetic, more handsome and superficially more attractive man than his younger brother, but his slender list of virtues did not include gratitude.
He had communicated to Euphrosyne, if not received from her, his design of seizing the crown, and she threw herself ardently into the work of preparing the city. She was a woman of great ability, of persuasive tongue, and still not without beauty; and it was not difficult to persuade Senators and priests that Isaac was a disgrace to241 the purple. Her own husband was little, if at all, better, but he had the advantage of an imposing exterior and of concealing his real character. When a messenger reached her with the news that Alexis was declared, she bribed a priest to proclaim him from the pulpit of the cathedral, and promised heavy rewards to the nobles who would support him. Alexis himself was following the same line of lavishing offices (even if they had to be created) and money on his supporters. As a result Euphrosyne was able to occupy the palace almost without opposition, and the Senators hastened to kiss her slippers and lie at her feet, while she “stroked the bellies of the pigs,” in the scornful language of Nicetas, who was a Court official of the time—on the wrong side. She announced that the new Emperor would adopt the name of Comnenus, instead of Angelus. It was an indiscretion, as the artisans of the city said that they had had enough of the Comneni, and met in the Forum to place a crown on the head of a popular astrologer of the hour. But Euphrosyne sent a troop of her obedient nobles to scatter the rabble and their king, and in a few days welcomed Alexis to his golden throne. People shook their heads, however, when, as Alexis came out of St Sophia wearing the crown, his fiery Arab at first refused to let him mount, and then plunged so violently that the crown fell off and was broken.
The people of Constantinople soon discovered that they had exchanged brother for brother. Alexis emptied the war-chest, which Isaac had at length filled, into the pockets of his supporters, leaving the Bulgarians and other foes to raid the provinces. He hastened to don the gorgeous golden robes, and to restore the opulent banquets and merry parties of his predecessor, and soon “knew no more about the cares of his Empire than the inhabitants of Thule.” Euphrosyne is said to have equalled him in luxury and display, but she had some idea of statesmanship. She promptly undertook to rule the Empire, and we can well believe that, even when she242 incurs the censure of Nicetas for going about in a golden litter borne on the shoulders of distinguished nobles, she was acting from policy. She ignored her husband, overruled his decrees, placed her own relatives in office, and had her own lovers. When important ambassadors were to be received, she had her throne placed beside that of the Emperor, and Senators had to visit and pay homage at her palace as well as at that of Alexis. Her husband was happy in his imperial lake of luxury, and for a time took no notice. If a noble offered him a sum of money for the office of ploughing the sand he accepted it cheerfully. Euphrosyne, however, forbade the selling of offices, and made a sincere effort to arrest that diversion of funds from public purposes which had been wasting the blood of the Empire for centuries.
Her integrity as a ruler soon excited the hostility of the vicious nobles, and a struggle began which makes it difficult for us to judge certain aspects of the character of Euphrosyne. The rule at Constantinople was to impeach the morals of an Empress when her public virtue was beyond question, and this the angry nobles proceeded to do. She had ventured to appoint a first minister on the mere ground of ability, and her brother Basil, her son-in-law and other nobles plotted to restrict her power. They approached Alexis and whispered that Euphrosyne was criminally intimate with a handsome young officer named Vatatzes, and that he might before long find his throne occupied by her paramour.
Nicetas, who was at the Court, has clearly no doubt about the liaison, and we must admit that Euphrosyne’s family is not distinguished for asceticism. Her youngest daughter, Eudocia, had been married in 1185 to the King of Servia, and had, after a few years, been driven from the Court, naked, for her misconduct, and brought back in shame to Constantinople. Euphrosyne’s brother Basil, who owed his office to her, was her chief accuser. Alexis, at all events, was convinced. He sent for the head of Vatatzes, who was in Bithynia at the time, and, when it243 was brought, addressed it, says Nicetas, “in words which cannot be included in this history.” Euphrosyne trembled, and appealed to her courtiers to intercede. Alexis had gone to Thrace for a time, and he returned to find the Court divided into two parties over the affair. Some said that she was guilty; some were for punishing the libellers.
He went with Euphrosyne to the Blachern? palace, and his dark demeanour and refusal to sleep with her made her fear that her head would be the next to fall. She therefore demanded a trial of the charge, but Alexis merely handed her maids and eunuchs to the official torturer, and they could only obtain release from their horrible sufferings by declaring her guilty. Alexis was not normally a cruel man; very little blood was shed in his reign. But the suggestion that Euphrosyne meditated taking from him his throne and his splendid pleasures alarmed him. He stripped her of her gold and purple, dressed her in the rough tunic of a common prostitute, and handed her to two barbaric slaves to be conveyed to the Nematorea monastery, near the entrance to the Black Sea. There, guarded by two uncivilized slaves who could hardly speak Greek, she looked back with bitterness on the two or three years of power and the ingratitude of her brother and son-in-law. But Constantinople pitied her, or at least despised her opponents. Basil and Andronicus were assailed in the street with jeers and popular songs, and began to repent. They had not, they pleaded, imagined that the luxurious Emperor had energy enough to take such a step; they had wished only to restrict the power of Euphrosyne. They and others now pleaded with the Emperor to reconsider his decision, and, after a solitary confinement of six months, Euphrosyne returned in triumph to the palace and wielded more power than ever. It is pleasant to read that Alexis found himself incapable of ruling without her judicious aid; and that she took no vengeance whatever on her accusers.
244 In the following year Alexis fell seriously ill, and the question of successor was opened. He suffered much from gout and despised physicians. Unfortunately his own ideas of medical treatment were much more crude than those of the doctors of the time. He ordered his servants to cauterize his gouty limbs with red-hot irons, and passed into a dangerous condition. As he had no sons, a wide field was opened for competitors, owing to the abominable Byzantine system, which knew neither the hereditary principle nor serious election, and the palace was enlivened by the intrigues of a score of aspirants. None of them seemed to have the faintest suspicion that the Byzantine Empire was within five years of its first destruction. However, to Euphrosyne’s relief, Alexis recovered, and, as the earlier husbands of his elder daughters died (Eudocia was still in Servia), they were wedded to distinguished nobles, and the year ended with prolonged gaieties at the Blachern? palace.
A long absence of the Emperor in Thrace left the supreme power in the hands of Euphrosyne, and, as so many Byzantine women had done, she held the reins with a firmer and more skilful hand than her husband. The only defect noted by the censorious Nicetas is that she was lenient to members of her own family. Fraudulent officials she punished with a severity that was rarely witnessed in the East, but the admiral Michael Stryphnus, who had married her sister, was permitted to indulge criminal malpractices, for which the Empire would soon pay a heavy price. He sold even the stores and equipment of the existing galleys, and they rotted in the harbours, while pirates spread terror throughout the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. These were not crimes at which the short-sighted Emperor could cavil. Not only did he cheat his people by creating and selling sinecures, but he resorted to practices which amounted to piracy. He once sent six galleys of the fleet into the Black Sea for the ostensible purpose of salving a wreck, but with secret orders to board and loot every vessel they245 met. Large numbers of mercantile galleys were returning with cargoes from the Black Sea ports, often in charge of the merchants themselves, some of whom were flung overboard for resisting. The others returned to Constantinople in great anger, and, although they stood at the door of St Sophia, candle in hand, when the Emperor came to pray, he merely laughed at their complaints. From the clergy such sufferers received little sympathy; the patriarch was a brother of Euphrosyne. The city was full of violence and knavery: the seas were scoured by pirates: the remoter provinces were ground between the imperial tax-gatherers and the foreign raiders.
Yet in this melancholy putrescence of the once mighty Empire Alexis and Euphrosyne maintained all the glamour of the imperial Court. Euphrosyne is the only Empress whom we find engaging in the chase as the Emperors did. Nicetas describes her setting out amid large companies of nobles, a falcon resting on her gold-embroidered glove, or a kennel of dogs rushing at her virile call. It is even said that she believed in, and practised, the incantations and divinations which had become generally popular among the decaying people. Her magic seems to have taken some unfamiliar form, since she had the snout cut off a famous bronze boar in the Hippodrome, had a beautiful marble statue of Hercules flogged, and ordered mutilations of other works of art that reminded Constantinople of better days. She seems to have been an able and well-disposed woman tainted by the perversity of her age.
The Empire was sinking rapidly, living on its capital, yet suffering the roads and bridges and forts to fall to ruin, the helpless provinces to writhe under the heel of every invader, and the funds that should have been spent on defence to be wasted in courtly luxury and the maintenance of a crowd of ignoble parasites. An anecdote of the time (about the year 1200) shows to what an extraordinary degree the funds had been diverted from246 the army. There was in Constantinople a descendant of the Comneni who, from his barrel-like shape, went by the name of John the Fat. This paltry and contemptible conspirator won a few followers among the nobility, went with them into the cathedral, and put upon his own head one of the imperial crowns that hung over the altar. The report ran through the city and a great crowd assembled and conducted the waddling and perspiring John to the palace. Alexis and Euphrosyne seem to have been at Blachern?, or in one of the Asiatic palaces, but the strange thing is that there seem to have been no guards whatever, where former Emperors had kept whole regiments of Scholarians and Excubitors or, at the later date, Varangians. We know that there were still Varangians in the imperial service, but they seem to have been too few to defend the numerous palaces. However, John the Fat had not wit or grit enough to secure the palace when he had entered, and, as darkness came on, a few imperial soldiers penetrated to his apartments and killed him.
At length, in the year 1202, the Empire passed into the penumbra of its great tragedy. Isaac II., the younger brother whom Alexis had displaced and blinded, had lived in Constantinople, in a humble mansion near the shore, during the seven years that followed his deposition, and was regarded with so little concern that no watch was kept upon his movements. It was not noticed that the Latin soldiers who lived in, or constantly passed through, Constantinople were frequent visitors at his house, and it was not known that the letters he wrote to his daughter Irene, who had married Philip of Germany, were treasonable in their import. But the blind and neglected brother was dreaming of a return to his imperial debauches. It is probable that Maria, who would now be a comely young woman of sixteen, lived with him, but of that we are not assured; she was somewhere in Constantinople. At length the time seemed ripe for his effort, and he sent his son Alexis, a youth as ardently247 and unscrupulously bent on returning to power as he, to the Court of Philip and Irene in Sicily.
It was the eve of the fourth Crusade, and the knights of the West were gathering for a fresh effort to break the power of the Turk, and to gather loot by the way. To these noble buccaneers the Emperor Philip introduced the young Alexis and proposed that they should restore him and his father to their throne. Neither East nor West attracts our sympathy for a moment. The Angeli brothers were squabbling for the right to indulge their sordid tastes on an imperial scale, and the younger Alexis had no more serious ideal. The Venetians, who had an important voice in the matter, sought their own profit and a discharge of their debts, and there can be little doubt that the Western knights, as a body, were allured by the vague hope of plundering, in one way or another, the richest and most splendid city in Europe. An infamous bargain was struck. The princes of Western chivalry did not hesitate to accept from the frivolous and irre............