History of Greece

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1877. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VII. Principality Of Achaia, Or The Morea. SECT. I.--Conquest of Achaia by William of Champlitte.--Feudal Organization of the Principality. THE conquest of the Peloponnesus by the French differs considerably from the other military operations of the Crusaders in the Byzantine empire, and bears a closer resemblance to the conquest of England by the Normans. The conquering force was small--the conquest was quickly yet gradually effected--the opposition did not become a national struggle that interested the great mass of the population, and the conquerors perpetuated their power and kept their race, for some generations, distinct from the conquered people; so that the enterprise unites in some degree the character of a military conquest with that of a colonial establishment. The number of the Frank troops that invaded the Peloponnesus, or at least that began its conquest after the retreat of the king of Saloniki from Corinth, was numerically inadequate to the undertaking; nor could any degree of military skill and discipline have compensated for this inferiority, had the Byzantine provincial government possessed the means of organizing any efficient union among the local authorities, or had the native Greek population felt a patriotic determination to defend their country, and avail themselves of the many strong positions scattered over the surface of a land filled with defiles and mountain-passes. But the high state of material civilization--the wealth of a large portion of the inhabitants, who generally lived collected together in towns--their love of ease, and their indifference to the fate of the Byzantine emperors, made the people both careless of any STATE OF THE PELOPONNESUS. 175 change in their rulers, and unfit to offer any serious resistanc...