Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol 6 | Page 4

the bravest spirits of the age enlisted under his veteran
command; and he repassed the Adriatic at the head of five thousand
horse and forty thousand foot, assembled from the most remote
climates of Europe. ^4 The strength of Durazzo, and prudence of
Alexius, the progress of famine and approach of winter, eluded his
ambitious hopes; and the venal confederates were seduced from his
standard. A treaty of peace ^5 suspended the fears of the Greeks; and
they were finally delivered by the death of an adversary, whom neither
oaths could bind, nor dangers could appal, nor prosperity could satiate.
His children succeeded to the principality of Antioch; but the

boundaries were strictly defined, the homage was clearly stipulated,
and the cities of Tarsus and Malmistra were restored to the Byzantine
emperors. Of the coast of Anatolia, they possessed the entire circuit
from Trebizond to the Syrian gates. The Seljukian dynasty of Roum ^6
was separated on all sides from the sea and their Mussulman brethren;
the power of the sultan was shaken by the victories and even the defeats
of the Franks; and after the loss of Nice, they removed their throne to
Cogni or Iconium, an obscure and in land town above three hundred
miles from Constantinople. ^7 Instead of trembling for their capital, the
Comnenian princes waged an offensive war against the Turks, and the
first crusade prevented the fall of the declining empire. [Footnote 1:
Anna Comnena relates her father's conquests in Asia Minor Alexiad, l.
xi. p. 321 - 325, l. xiv. p. 419; his Cilician war against Tancred and
Bohemond, p. 328 - 324; the war of Epirus, with tedious prolixity, l. xii.
xiii. p. 345 - 406; the death of Bohemond, l. xiv. p. 419.] [Footnote 2:
The kings of Jerusalem submitted, however, to a nominal dependence,
and in the dates of their inscriptions, (one is still legible in the church
of Bethlem,) they respectfully placed before their own the name of the
reigning emperor, (Ducange, Dissertations sur Joinville xxvii. p. 319.)]
[Footnote 3: Anna Comnena adds, that, to complete the imitation, he
was shut up with a dead cock; and condescends to wonder how the
Barbarian could endure the confinement and putrefaction. This absurd
tale is unknown to the Latins. Note: The Greek writers, in general,
Zonaras, p. 2, 303, and Glycas, p. 334 agree in this story with the
princess Anne, except in the absurd addition of the dead cock. Ducange
has already quoted some instances where a similar stratagem had been
adopted by Norman princes. On this authority Wilker inclines to
believe the fact. Appendix to vol. ii. p. 14. - M.] [Footnote 4: In the
Byzantine geography, must mean England; yet we are more credibly
informed, that our Henry I. would not suffer him to levy any troops in
his kingdom, (Ducange, Not. ad Alexiad. p. 41.)] [Footnote 5: The
copy of the treaty (Alexiad. l. xiii. p. 406 - 416) is an original and
curious piece, which would require, and might afford, a good map of
the principality of Antioch.] [Footnote 6: See, in the learned work of M.
De Guignes, (tom. ii. part ii.,) the history of the Seljukians of Iconium,
Aleppo, and Damascus, as far as it may be collected from the Greeks,
Latins, and Arabians. The last are ignorant or regardless of the affairs

of Roum.] [Footnote 7: Iconium is mentioned as a station by Xenophon,
and by Strabo, with an ambiguous title, (Cellarius, tom. ii. p. 121.) Yet
St. Paul found in that place a multitude of Jews and Gentiles. under the
corrupt name of Kunijah, it is described as a great city, with a river and
garden, three leagues from the mountains, and decorated (I know not
why) with Plato's tomb, (Abulfeda, tabul. xvii. p. 303 vers. Reiske; and
the Index Geographicus of Schulrens from Ibn Said.)] In the twelfth
century, three great emigrations marched by land from the West for the
relief of Palestine. The soldiers and pilgrims of Lombardy, France, and
Germany were excited by the example and success of the first crusade.
^8 Forty-eight years after the deliverance of the holy sepulchre, the
emperor, and the French king, Conrad the Third and Louis the Seventh,
undertook the second crusade to support the falling fortunes of the
Latins. ^9 A grand division of the third crusade was led by the emperor
Frederic Barbarossa, ^10 who sympathized with his brothers of France
and England in the common loss of Jerusalem. These three expeditions
may be compared in their resemblance of the greatness of numbers,
their passage through the Greek empire, and the nature and event of
their Turkish warfare, and a brief parallel may save the repetition of a
tedious narrative. However splendid it may seem, a regular story of the
crusades would exhibit