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$Pretitle{}
$Title{History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire
Part VI.}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Gibbon, Edward}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{andronicus
manuel
emperor
first
prince
constantinople
isaac
years
alexius
own}
$Date{1782 (Written), 1845 (Revised)}
$Log{}
Title:       History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire
Book:        Chapter XLVIII: Succession And Characters Of The Greek Emperors.
Author:      Gibbon, Edward
Date:        1782 (Written), 1845 (Revised)

Part VI.

     A premature death had swept away the two eldest sons of John the
Handsome; of the two survivors, Isaac and Manuel, his judgment or affection
preferred the younger; and the choice of their dying prince was ratified by
the soldiers, who had applauded the valor of his favorite in the Turkish war
The faithful Axuch hastened to the capital, secured the person of Isaac in
honorable confinement, and purchased, with a gift of two hundred pounds of
silver, the leading ecclesiastics of St. Sophia, who possessed a decisive
voice in the consecration of an emperor.  With his veteran and affectionate
troops, Manuel soon visited Constantinople; his brother acquiesced in the
title of Sebastocrator; his subjects admired the lofty stature and martial
graces of their new sovereign, and listened with credulity to the flattering
promise, that he blended the wisdom of age with the activity and vigor of
youth.  By the experience of his government, they were taught, that he
emulated the spirit, and shared the talents, of his father whose social
virtues were buried in the grave.  A reign of thirty seven years is filled by
a perpetual though various warfare against the Turks, the Christians, and the
hordes of the wilderness beyond the Danube.  The arms of Manuel were exercised
on Mount Taurus, in the plains of Hungary, on the coast of Italy and Egypt,
and on the seas of Sicily and Greece: the influence of his negotiations
extended from Jerusalem to Rome and Russia; and the Byzantine monarchy, for a
while, became an object of respect or terror to the powers of Asia and Europe.
Educated in the silk and purple of the East, Manuel possessed the iron temper
of a soldier, which cannot easily be paralleled, except in the lives of
Richard the First of England, and of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden.  Such was
his strength and exercise in arms, that Raymond, surnamed the Hercules of
Antioch, was incapable of wielding the lance and buckler of the Greek emperor.
In a famous tournament, he entered the lists on a fiery courser, and
overturned in his first career two of the stoutest of the Italian knights.
The first in the charge, the last in the retreat, his friends and his enemies
alike trembled, the former for his safety, and the latter for their own.
After posting an ambuscade in a wood, he rode forwards in search of some
perilous adventure, accompanied only by his brother and the faithful Axuch,
who refused to desert their sovereign. Eighteen horsemen, after a short
combat, fled before them: but the numbers of the enemy increased; the march of
the reenforcement was tardy and fearful, and Manuel, without receiving a
wound, cut his way through a squadron of five hundred Turks.  In a battle
against the Hungarians, impatient of the slowness of his troops, he snatched a
standard from the head of the column, and was the first, almost alone, who
passed a bridge that separated him from the enemy.  In the same country, after
transporting his army beyond the Save, he sent back the boats, with an order
under pain of death, to their commander, that he should leave him to conquer
or die on that hostile land.  In the siege of Corfu, towing after him a
captive galley, the emperor stood aloft on the poop, opposing against the
volleys of darts and stones, a large buckler and a flowing sail; nor could he
have escaped inevitable death, had not the Sicilian admiral enjoined his
archers to respect the person of a hero.  In one day, he is said to have slain
above forty of the Barbarians with his own hand; he returned to the camp,
dragging along four Turkish prisoners, whom he had tied to the rings of his
saddle: he was ever the foremost to provoke or to accept a single combat; and
the gigantic champions, who encountered his arm, were transpierced by the
lance, or cut asunder by the sword, of the invincible Manuel.  The story of
his exploits, which appear as a model or a copy of the romances of chivalry,
may induce a reasonable suspicion of the veracity of the Greeks: I will not,
to vindicate their credit, endanger my own: yet I may observe, that, in the
long series of their annals, Manuel is the only prince who has been the
subject of similar exaggeration.  With the valor of a soldier, he did no unite
the skill or prudence of a general; his victories were not productive of any
permanent or useful conquest; and his Turkish laurels were blasted in his last
unfortunate campaign, in which he lost his army in the mountains of Pisidia,
and owed his deliverance to the generosity of the sultan.  But the most
singular feature in the character of Manuel, is the contrast and vicissitude
of labor and sloth, of hardiness and effeminacy.  In war he seemed ignorant of
peace, in peace he appeared incapable of war.  In the field he slept in the
sun or in the snow, tired in the longest marches the strength of his men and
horses, and shared with a smile the abstinence or diet of the camp.  No sooner
did he return to Constantinople, than he resigned himself to the arts and
pleasures of a life of luxury: the expense of his dress, his table, and his
palace, surpassed the measure of his predecessors, and whole summer days were
idly wasted in the delicious isles of the Propontis, in the incestuous love of
his niece Theodora.  The double cost of a warlike and dissolute prince
exhausted the revenue, and multiplied the taxes; and Manuel, in the distress
of his last Turkish campaign, endured a bitter reproach from the mouth of a
desperate soldier.  As he quenched his thirst, he complained that the water of
a fountain was mingled with Christian blood.  "It is not the first time,"
exclaimed a voice from the crowd, "that you have drank, O emperor, the blood
of your Christian subjects." Manuel Comnenus was twice married, to the
virtuous Bertha or Irene of Germany, and to the beauteous Maria, a French or
Latin princess of Antioch.  The only daughter of his first wife was destined
for Bela, a Hungarian prince, who was educated at Constantinople under the
name of Alexius; and the consummation of their nuptials might have transferred
the Roman sceptre to a race of free and warlike Barbarians.  But as soon as
Maria of Antioch had given a son and heir to the empire, the presumptive
rights of Bela were abolished, and he was deprived of his promised bride; but
the Hungarian prince resumed his name and the kingdom of his fathers, and
displayed such virtues as might excite the regret and envy of the Greeks.  The
son of Maria was named Alexius; and at the age of ten years he ascended the
Byzantine throne, after his father's decease had closed the glories of the
Comnenian line.

     The fraternal concord of the two sons of the great Alexius had been
sometimes clouded by an opposition of interest and passion.  By ambition,
Isaac the Sebastocrator was excited to flight and rebellion, from whence he
was reclaimed by the firmness and clemency of John the Handsome.  The errors
of Isaac, the father of the emperors of Trebizond, were short and venial; but
John, the elder of his sons, renounced forever his religion.  Provoked by a
real or imaginary insult of his uncle, he escaped from the Roman to the
Turkish camp: his apostasy was rewarded with the sultan's daughter, the title
of Chelebi, or noble, and the inheritance of a princely estate; and in the
fifteenth century, Mahomet the Second boasted of his Imperial descent from the
Comnenian family.  Andronicus, the younger brother of John, son of Isaac, and
grandson of Alexius Comnenus, is one of the most conspicuous characters of the
age; and his genuine adventures might form the subject of a very singular
romance.  To justify the choice of three ladies of royal birth, it is
incumbent on me to observe, that their fortunate lover was cast in the best
proportions of strength and beauty; and that the want of the softer graces was
supplied by a manly countenance, a lofty stature, athletic muscles, and the
air and deportment of a soldier.  The preservation, in his old age, of health
and vigor, was the reward of temperance and exercise.  A piece of bread and a
draught of water was often his sole and evening repast; and if he tasted of a
wild boar or a stag, which he had roasted with his own hands, it was the
well-earned fruit of a laborious chase.  Dexterous in arms, he was ignorant of
fear; his persuasive eloquence could bend to every situation and character of
life, his style, though not his practice, was fashioned by the example of St.
Paul; and, in every deed of mischief, he had a heart to resolve, a head to
contrive, and a hand to execute.  In his youth, after the death of the emperor
John, he followed the retreat of the Roman army; but, in the march through
Asia Minor, design or accident tempted him to wander in the mountains: the
hunter was encompassed by the Turkish huntsmen, and he remained some time a
reluctant or willing captive in the power of the sultan.  His virtues and
vices recommended him to the favor of his cousin: he shared the perils and the
pleasures of Manuel; and while the emperor lived in public incest with his
niece Theodora, the affections of her sister Eudocia were seduced and enjoyed
by Andronicus.  Above the decencies of her sex and rank, she gloried in the
name of his concubine; and both the palace and the camp could witness that she
slept, or watched, in the arms of her lover.  She accompanied him to his
military command of Cilicia, the first scene of his valor and imprudence.  He
pressed, with active ardor, the siege of Mopsuestia: the day was employed in
the boldest attacks; but the night was wasted in song and dance; and a band of
Greek comedians formed the choicest part of his retinue.  Andronicus was
surprised by the sally of a vigilant foe; but, while his troops fled in
disorder, his invincible lance transpierced the thickest ranks of the
Armenians.  On his return to the Imperial camp in Macedonia, he was received
by Manuel with public smiles and a private reproof; but the duchies of
Naissus, Braniseba, and Castoria, were the reward or consolation of the
unsuccessful general.  Eudocia still attended his motions: at midnight, their
tent was suddenly attacked by her angry brothers, impatient to expiate her
infamy in his blood: his daring spirit refused her advice, and the disguise of
a female habit; and, boldly starting from his couch, he drew his sword, and
cut his way through the numerous assassins.  It was here that he first
betrayed his ingratitude and treachery: he engaged in a treasonable
correspondence with the king of Hungary and the German emperor; approached the
royal tent at a suspicious hour with a drawn sword, and under the mask of a
Latin soldier, avowed an intention of revenge against a mortal foe; and
imprudently praised the fleetness of his horse as an instrument of flight and
safety.  The monarch dissembled his suspicions; but, after the close of the
campaign, Andronicus was arrested and strictly confined in a tower of the
palace of Constantinople.

     In this prison he was left about twelve years; a most painful restraint,
from which the thirst of action and pleasure perpetually urged him to escape.
Alone and pensive, he perceived some broken bricks in a corner of the chamber,
and gradually widened the passage, till he had explored a dark and forgotten
recess.  Into this hole he conveyed himself, and the remains of his
provisions, replacing the bricks in their former position, and erasing with
care the footsteps of his retreat.  At the hour of the customary visit, his
guards were amazed by the silence and solitude of the prison, and reported,
with shame and fear, his incomprehensible flight.  The gates of the palace and
city were instantly shut: the strictest orders were despatched into the
provinces, for the recovery of the fugitive; and his wife, on the suspicion of
a pious act, was basely imprisoned in the same tower.  At the dead of night
she beheld a spectre; she recognized her husband: they shared their
provisions; and a son was the fruit of these stolen interviews, which
alleviated the tediousness of their confinement.  In the custody of a woman,
the vigilance of the keepers was insensibly relaxed; and the captive had
accomplished his real escape, when he was discovered, brought back to
Constantinople, and loaded with a double chain.  At length he found the
moment, and the means, of his deliverance.  A boy, his domestic servant,
intoxicated the guards, and obtained in wax the impression of the keys.  By
the diligence of his friends, a similar key, with a bundle of ropes, was
introduced into the prison, in the bottom of a hogshead.  Andronicus employed,
with industry and courage, the instruments of his safety, unlocked the doors,
descended from the tower, concealed himself all day among the bushes, and
scaled in the night the garden-wall of the palace.  A boat was stationed for
his reception: he visited his own house, embraced his children, cast away his
chain, mounted a fleet horse, and directed his rapid course towards the banks
of the Danube.  At Anchialus in Thrace, an intrepid friend supplied him with
horses and money: he passed the river, traversed with speed the desert of
Moldavia and the Carpathian hills, and had almost reached the town of Halicz,
in the Polish Russia, when he was intercepted by a party of Walachians, who
resolved to convey their important captive to Constantinople. His presence of
mind again extricated him from danger.  Under the pretence of sickness, he
dismounted in the night, and was allowed to step aside from the troop: he
planted in the ground his long staff, clothed it with his cap and upper
garment; and, stealing into the wood, left a phantom to amuse, for some time,
the eyes of the Walachians.  From Halicz he was honorably conducted to Kiow,
the residence of the great duke: the subtle Greek soon obtained the esteem and
confidence of Ieroslaus; his character could assume the manners of every
climate; and the Barbarians applauded his strength and courage in the chase of
the elks and bears of the forest.  In this northern region he deserved the
forgiveness of Manuel, who solicited the Russian prince to join his arms in
the invasion of Hungary.  The influence of Andronicus achieved this important
service: his private treaty was signed with a promise of fidelity on one side,
and of oblivion on the other; and he marched, at the head of the Russian
cavalry, from the Borysthenes to the Danube.  In his resentment Manuel had
ever sympathized with the martial and dissolute character of his cousin; and
his free pardon was sealed in the assault of Zemlin, in which he was second,
and second only, to the valor of the emperor.

     No sooner was the exile restored to freedom and his country, than his
ambition revived, at first to his own, and at length to the public,
misfortune.  A daughter of Manuel was a feeble bar to the succession of the
more deserving males of the Comnenian blood; her future marriage with the
prince of Hungary was repugnant to the hopes or prejudices of the princes and
nobles.  But when an oath of allegiance was required to the presumptive heir,
Andronicus alone asserted the honor of the Roman name, declined the unlawful
engagement, and boldly protested against the adoption of a stranger.  His
patriotism was offensive to the emperor, but he spoke the sentiments of the
people, and was removed from the royal presence by an honorable banishment, a
second command of the Cilician frontier, with the absolute disposal of the
revenues of Cyprus.  In this station the Armenians again exercised his courage
and exposed his negligence; and the same rebel, who baffled all his
operations, was unhorsed, and almost slain by the vigor of his lance.  But
Andronicus soon discovered a more easy and pleasing conquest, the beautiful
Philippa, sister of the empress Maria, and daughter of Raymond of Poitou, the
Latin prince of Antioch.  For her sake he deserted his station, and wasted the
summer in balls and tournaments: to his love she sacrificed her innocence, her
reputation, and the offer of an advantageous marriage.  But the resentment of
Manuel for this domestic affront interrupted his pleasures: Andronicus left
the indiscreet princess to weep and to repent; and, with a band of desperate
adventurers, undertook the pilgrimage of Jerusalem.  His birth, his martial
renown, and professions of zeal, announced him as the champion of the Cross:
he soon captivated both the clergy and the king; and the Greek prince was
invested with the lordship of Berytus, on the coast of Phoenicia.  In his
neighborhood resided a young and handsome queen, of his own nation and family,
great-granddaughter of the emperor Alexis, and widow of Baldwin the Third,
king of Jerusalem.  She visited and loved her kinsman. Theodora was the third
victim of his amorous seduction; and her shame was more public and scandalous
than that of her predecessors.  The emperor still thirsted for revenge; and
his subjects and allies of the Syrian frontier were repeatedly pressed to
seize the person, and put out the eyes, of the fugitive.  In Palestine he was
no longer safe; but the tender Theodora revealed his danger, and accompanied
his flight.  The queen of Jerusalem was exposed to the East, his obsequious
concubine; and two illegitimate children were the living monuments of her
weakness.  Damascus was his first refuge; and, in the characters of the great
Noureddin and his servant Saladin, the superstitious Greek might learn to
revere the virtues of the Mussulmans.  As the friend of Noureddin he visited,
most probably, Bagdad, and the courts of Persia; and, after a long circuit
round the Caspian Sea and the mountains of Georgia, he finally settled among
the Turks of Asia Minor, the hereditary enemies of his country.  The sultan of
Colonia afforded a hospitable retreat to Andronicus, his mistress, and his
band of outlaws: the debt of gratitude was paid by frequent inroads in the
Roman province of Trebizond; and he seldom returned without an ample harvest
of spoil and of Christian captives. In the story of his adventures, he was
fond of comparing himself to David, who escaped, by a long exile, the snares
of the wicked.  But the royal prophet (he presumed to add) was content to lurk
on the borders of Judaea, to slay an Amalekite, and to threaten, in his
miserable state, the life of the avaricious Nabal.  The excursions of the
Comnenian prince had a wider range; and he had spread over the Eastern world
the glory of his name and religion.  By a sentence of the Greek church, the
licentious rover had been separated from the faithful; but even this
excommunication may prove, that he never abjured the profession of
Chistianity.

     His vigilance had eluded or repelled the open and secret persecution of
the emperor; but he was at length insnared by the captivity of his female
companion.  The governor of Trebizond succeeded in his attempt to surprise the
person of Theodora: the queen of Jerusalem and her two children were sent to
Constantinople, and their loss imbittered the tedious solitude of banishment.
The fugitive implored and obtained a final pardon, with leave to throw himself
at the feet of his sovereign, who was satisfied with the submission of this
haughty spirit.  Prostrate on the ground, he deplored with tears and groans
the guilt of his past rebellion; nor would he presume to arise, unless some
faithful subject would drag him to the foot of the throne, by an iron chain
with which he had secretly encircled his neck.  This extraordinary penance
excited the wonder and pity of the assembly; his sins were forgiven by the
church and state; but the just suspicion of Manuel fixed his residence at a
distance from the court, at Oenoe, a town of Pontus, surrounded with rich
vineyards, and situate on the coast of the Euxine.  The death of Manuel, and
the disorders of the minority, soon opened the fairest field to his ambition.
The emperor was a boy of twelve or fourteen years of age, without vigor, or
wisdom, or experience: his mother, the empress Mary, abandoned her person and
government to a favorite of the Comnenian name; and his sister, another Mary,
whose husband, an Italian, was decorated with the title of Caesar, excited a
conspiracy, and at length an insurrection, against her odious step-mother.
The provinces were forgotten, the capital was in flames, and a century of
peace and order was overthrown in the vice and weakness of a few months.  A
civil war was kindled in Constantinople; the two factions fought a bloody
battle in the square of the palace, and the rebels sustained a regular siege
in the cathedral of St. Sophia.  The patriarch labored with honest zeal to
heal the wounds of the republic, the most respectable patriots called aloud
for a guardian and avenger, and every tongue repeated the praise of the
talents and even the virtues of Andronicus. In his retirement, he affected to
revolve the solemn duties of his oath: "If the safety or honor of the Imperial
family be threatened, I will reveal and oppose the mischief to the utmost of
my power." His correspondence with the patriarch and patricians was seasoned
with apt quotations from the Psalms of David and the epistles of St. Paul; and
he patiently waited till he was called to her deliverance by the voice of his
country.  In his march from Oenoe to Constantinople, his slender train
insensibly swelled to a crowd and an army: his professions of religion and
loyalty were mistaken for the language of his heart; and the simplicity of a
foreign dress, which showed to advantage his majestic stature, displayed a
lively image of his poverty and exile.  All opposition sunk before him; he
reached the straits of the Thracian Bosphorus; the Byzantine navy sailed from
the harbor to receive and transport the savior of the empire: the torrent was
loud and irresistible, and the insects who had basked in the sunshine of royal
favor disappeared at the blast of the storm.  It was the first care of
Andronicus to occupy the palace, to salute the emperor, to confine his mother,
to punish her minister, and to restore the public order and tranquillity.  He
then visited the sepulchre of Manuel: the spectators were ordered to stand
aloof, but as he bowed in the attitude of prayer, they heard, or thought they
heard, a murmur of triumph or revenge: "I no longer fear thee, my old enemy,
who hast driven me a vagabond to every climate of the earth.  Thou art safety
deposited under a seven-fold dome, from whence thou canst never arise till the
signal of the last trumpet.  It is now my turn, and speedily will I trample on
thy ashes and thy posterity." From his subsequent tyranny we may impute such
feelings to the man and the moment; but it is not extremely probable that he
gave an articulate sound to his secret thoughts.  In the first months of his
administration, his designs were veiled by a fair semblance of hypocrisy,
which could delude only the eyes of the multitude; the coronation of Alexius
was performed with due solemnity, and his perfidious guardian, holding in his
hands the body and blood of Christ, most fervently declared that he lived, and
was ready to die, for the service of his beloved pupil.  But his numerous
adherents were instructed to maintain, that the sinking empire must perish in
the hands of a child, that the Romans could only be saved by a veteran prince,
bold in arms, skilful in policy, and taught to reign by the long experience of
fortune and mankind; and that it was the duty of every citizen to force the
reluctant modesty of Andronicus to undertake the burden of the public care.
The young emperor was himself constrained to join his voice to the general
acclamation, and to solicit the association of a colleague, who instantly
degraded him from the supreme rank, secluded his person, and verified the rash
declaration of the patriarch, that Alexius might be considered as dead, so
soon as he was committed to the custody of his guardian.  But his death was
preceded by the imprisonment and execution of his mother.  After blackening
her reputation, and inflaming against her the passions of the multitude, the
tyrant accused and tried the empress for a treasonable correspondence with the
king of Hungary.  His own son, a youth of honor and humanity, avowed his
abhorrence of this flagitious act, and three of the judges had the merit of
preferring their conscience to their safety: but the obsequious tribunal,
without requiring any reproof, or hearing any defence, condemned the widow of
Manuel; and her unfortunate son subscribed the sentence of her death.  Maria
was strangled, her corpse was buried in the sea, and her memory was wounded by
the insult most offensive to female vanity, a false and ugly representation of
her beauteous form.  The fate of her son was not long deferred: he was
strangled with a bowstring; and the tyrant, insensible to pity or remorse,
after surveying the body of the innocent youth, struck it rudely with his
foot: "Thy father," he cried, "was a knave, thy mother a whore, and thyself a
fool!"

     The Roman sceptre, the reward of his crimes, was held by Andronicus about
three years and a half as the guardian or sovereign of the empire.  His
government exhibited a singular contrast of vice and virtue.  When he listened
to his passions, he was the scourge; when he consulted his reason, the father,
of his people.  In the exercise of private justice, he was equitable and
rigorous: a shameful and pernicious venality was abolished, and the offices
were filled with the most deserving candidates, by a prince who had sense to
choose, and severity to punish.  He prohibited the inhuman practice of
pillaging the goods and persons of shipwrecked mariners; the provinces, so
long the objects of oppression or neglect, revived in prosperity and plenty;
and millions applauded the distant blessings of his reign, while he was cursed
by the witnesses of his daily cruelties.  The ancient proverb, That
bloodthirsty is the man who returns from banishment to power, had been
applied, with too much truth, to 'Marius and Tiberius; and was now verified
for the third time in the life of Andronicus.  His memory was stored with a
black list of the enemies and rivals, who had traduced his merit, opposed his
greatness, or insulted his misfortunes; and the only comfort of his exile was
the sacred hope and promise of revenge.  The necessary extinction of the young
emperor and his mother imposed the fatal obligation of extirpating the
friends, who hated, and might punish, the assassin; and the repetition of
murder rendered him less willing, and less able, to forgive. ^* A horrid
narrative of the victims whom he sacrificed by poison or the sword, by the sea
or the flames, would be less expressive of his cruelty than the appellation of
the halcyon days, which was applied to a rare and bloodless week of repose:
the tyrant strove to transfer, on the laws and the judges, some portion of his
guilt; but the mask was fallen, and his subjects could no longer mistake the
true author of their calamities. The noblest of the Greeks, more especially
those who, by descent or alliance, might dispute the Comnenian inheritance,
escaped from the monster's den: Nice and Prusa, Sicily or Cyprus, were their
places of refuge; and as their flight was already criminal, they aggravated
their offence by an open revolt, and the Imperial title.  Yet Andronicus
resisted the daggers and swords of his most formidable enemies: Nice and Prusa
were reduced and chastised: the Sicilians were content with the sack of
Thessalonica; and the distance of Cyprus was not more propitious to the rebel
than to the tyrant.  His throne was subverted by a rival without merit, and a
people without arms.  Isaac Angelus, a descendant in the female line from the
great Alexius, was marked as a victim by the prudence or superstition of the
emperor. ^! In a moment of despair, Angelus defended his life and liberty,
slew the executioner, and fled to the church of St. Sophia.  The sanctuary was
insensibly filled with a curious and mournful crowd, who, in his fate,
prognosticated their own.  But their lamentations were soon turned to curses,
and their curses to threats: they dared to ask, "Why do we fear?  why do we
obey?  We are many, and he is one: our patience is the only bond of our
slavery." With the dawn of day the city burst into a general sedition, the
prisons were thrown open, the coldest and most servile were roused to the
defence of their country, and Isaac, the second of the name, was raised from
the sanctuary to the throne.  Unconscious of his danger, the tyrant was
absent; withdrawn from the toils of state, in the delicious islands of the
Propontis.  He had contracted an indecent marriage with Alice, or Agnes,
daughter of Lewis the Seventh, of France, and relict of the unfortunate
Alexius; and his society, more suitable to his temper than to his age, was
composed of a young wife and a favorite concubine.  On the first alarm, he
rushed to Constantinople, impatient for the blood of the guilty; but he was
astonished by the silence of the palace, the tumult of the city, and the
general desertion of mankind.  Andronicus proclaimed a free pardon to his
subjects; they neither desired, nor would grant, forgiveness; he offered to
resign the crown to his son Manuel; but the virtues of the son could not
expiate his father's crimes.  The sea was still open for his retreat; but the
news of the revolution had flown along the coast; when fear had ceased,
obedience was no more: the Imperial galley was pursued and taken by an armed
brigantine; and the tyrant was dragged to the presence of Isaac Angelus,
loaded with fetters, and a long chain round his neck.  His eloquence, and the
tears of his female companions, pleaded in vain for his life; but, instead of
the decencies of a legal execution, the new monarch abandoned the criminal to
the numerous sufferers, whom he had deprived of a father, a husband, or a
friend.  His teeth and hair, an eye and a hand, were torn from him, as a poor
compensation for their loss: and a short respite was allowed, that he might
feel the bitterness of death.  Astride on a camel, without any danger of a
rescue, he was carried through the city, and the basest of the populace
rejoiced to trample on the fallen majesty of their prince.  After a thousand
blows and outrages, Andronicus was hung by the feet, between two pillars, that
supported the statues of a wolf and an a sow; and every hand that could reach
the public enemy, inflicted on his body some mark of ingenious or brutal
cruelty, till two friendly or furious Italians, plunging their swords into his
body, released him from all human punishment.  In this long and painful agony,
"Lord, have mercy upon me!" and "Why will you bruise a broken reed?" were the
only words that escaped from his mouth.  Our hatred for the tyrant is lost in
pity for the man; nor can we blame his pusillanimous resignation, since a
Greek Christian was no longer master of his life.

[Footnote *: Fallmerayer (Geschichte des Kaiserthums von Trapezunt, p. 29, 33)
has highly drawn the character of Andronicus.  In his view the extermination
of the Byzantine factions and dissolute nobility was part of a deep-laid and
splendid plan for the regeneration of the empire.  It was necessary for the
wise and benevolent schemes of the father of his people to lop off those limbs
which were infected with irremediable pestilence -

"and with necessity, The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds!!" -

Still the fall of Andronicus was a fatal blow to the Byzantine empire. - M.]

[Footnote !: According to Nicetas, (p. 444,) Andronicus despised the imbecile
Isaac too much to fear him; he was arrested by the officious zeal of Stephen,
the instrument of the Emperor's cruelties. - M.]

     I have been tempted to expatiate on the extraordinary character and
adventures of Andronicus; but I shall here terminate the series of the Greek
emperors since the time of Heraclius.  The branches that sprang from the
Comnenian trunk had insensibly withered; and the male line was continued only
in the posterity of Andronicus himself, who, in the public confusion, usurped
the sovereignty of Trebizond, so obscure in history, and so famous in romance.
A private citizen of Philadelphia, Constantine Angelus, had emerged to wealth
and honors, by his marriage with a daughter of the emperor Alexius.  His son
Andronicus is conspicuous only by his cowardice.  His grandson Isaac punished
and succeeded the tyrant; but he was dethroned by his own vices, and the
ambition of his brother; and their discord introduced the Latins to the
conquest of Constantinople, the first great period in the fall of the Eastern
empire.

     If we compute the number and duration of the reigns, it will be found,
that a period of six hundred years is filled by sixty emperors, including in
the Augustan list some female sovereigns; and deducting some usurpers who were
never acknowledged in the capital, and some princes who did not live to
possess their inheritance.  The average proportion will allow ten years for
each emperor, far below the chronological rule of Sir Isaac Newton, who, from
the experience of more recent and regular monarchies, has defined about
eighteen or twenty years as the term of an ordinary reign.  The Byzantine
empire was most tranquil and prosperous when it could acquiesce in hereditary
succession; five dynasties, the Heraclian, Isaurian, Amorian, Basilian, and
Comnenian families, enjoyed and transmitted the royal patrimony during their
respective series of five, four, three, six, and four generations; several
princes number the years of their reign with those of their infancy; and
Constantine the Seventh and his two grandsons occupy the space of an entire
century.  But in the intervals of the Byzantine dynasties, the succession is
rapid and broken, and the name of a successful candidate is speedily erased by
a more fortunate competitor.  Many were the paths that led to the summit of
royalty: the fabric of rebellion was overthrown by the stroke of conspiracy,
or undermined by the silent arts of intrigue: the favorites of the soldiers or
people, of the senate or clergy, of the women and eunuchs, were alternately
clothed with the purple: the means of their elevation were base, and their end
was often contemptible or tragic.  A being of the nature of man, endowed with
the same faculties, but with a longer measure of existence, would cast down a
smile of pity and contempt on the crimes and follies of human ambition, so
eager, in a narrow span, to grasp at a precarious and shortlived enjoyment. It
is thus that the experience of history exalts and enlarges the horizon of our
intellectual view.  In a composition of some days, in a perusal of some hours,
six hundred years have rolled away, and the duration of a life or reign is
contracted to a fleeting moment: the grave is ever beside the throne: the
success of a criminal is almost instantly followed by the loss of his prize
and our immortal reason survives and disdains the sixty phantoms of kings who
have passed before our eyes, and faintly dwell on our remembrance.  The
observation that, in every age and climate, ambition has prevailed with the
same commanding energy, may abate the surprise of a philosopher: but while he
condemns the vanity, he may search the motive, of this universal desire to
obtain and hold the sceptre of dominion.  To the greater part of the Byzantine
series, we cannot reasonably ascribe the love of fame and of mankind.  The
virtue alone of John Comnenus was beneficent and pure: the most illustrious of
the princes, who procede or follow that respectable name, have trod with some
dexterity and vigor the crooked and bloody paths of a selfish policy: in
scrutinizing the imperfect characters of Leo the Isaurian, Basil the First,
and Alexius Comnenus, of Theophilus, the second Basil, and Manuel Comnenus,
our esteem and censure are almost equally balanced; and the remainder of the
Imperial crowd could only desire and expect to be forgotten by posterity.  Was
personal happiness the aim and object of their ambition?  I shall not descant
on the vulgar topics of the misery of kings; but I may surely observe, that
their condition, of all others, is the most pregnant with fear, and the least
susceptible of hope.  For these opposite passions, a larger scope was allowed
in the revolutions of antiquity, than in the smooth and solid temper of the
modern world, which cannot easily repeat either the triumph of Alexander or
the fall of Darius.  But the peculiar infelicity of the Byzantine princes
exposed them to domestic perils, without affording any lively promise of
foreign conquest.  From the pinnacle of greatness, Andronicus was precipitated
by a death more cruel and shameful than that of the malefactor; but the most
glorious of his predecessors had much more to dread from their subjects than
to hope from their enemies.  The army was licentious without spirit, the
nation turbulent without freedom: the Barbarians of the East and West pressed
on the monarchy, and the loss of the provinces was terminated by the final
servitude of the capital.

     The entire series of Roman emperors, from the first of the Caesars to the
last of the Constantines, extends above fifteen hundred years: and the term of
dominion, unbroken by foreign conquest, surpasses the measure of the ancient
monarchies; the Assyrians or Medes, the successors of Cyrus, or those of
Alexander.

End Of Vol. IV.