 62. Greek Emperors of Nice and Constantinople, Part II The danger and scandal of this excommunication subsisted above three years till the popular clamour was aswashed by time and repentance, till the brethren of Arsenius condemned his inflexible spirit, so were pugnant to the unbounded forgiveness of the gospel. The Emperor had artfully insinuated that if he were still rejected at home he might seek, in the Roman pontiff, a more indulgent judge, but it was far more easy and effectual to find or to place that judge at the head of the Byzantine Church. Arsenius was involved in a vague rumour of conspiracy and disaffection. Some irregular steps in his ordination and government were liable to censure. A synod deposed him from the Episcopal office, and he was transported under a guard of soldiers to a small island of the propontus. Before his exile he suddenly requested that a strict account might be taken of the treasures of the Church, boasted that his sole riches, three pieces of gold, had been earned by transcribing the Psalms, continued to assert the freedom of his mind, and denied, with his last breath, the pardon which was implored by the royal sinner. After some delay Gregory, Bishop of Adrianipole, was translated to the Byzantine throne, but his authority was found insufficient to support the absolution of the Emperor, and Joseph, a reverend monk, was substituted to that important function. This edifying scene was represented in the presence of the Senate and the people. At the end of six years the humble penitent was restored to the communion of the faithful, and humanity will rejoice that a milder treatment of the captive Laskaris was stipulated as a proof of his remorse. But the spirit of Arsenius still survived in a powerful faction of the monks and clergy, who persevered about forty-eight years in an obstinate schism. Their scruples were treated with tenderness and respect by Michael and his son, and the reconciliation of the Arsenites was the serious labor of the church and state. In the confidence of fanaticism they had proposed to try their cause by a miracle, and when the two papers that contained their own and the adverse cause were cast into the fiery brazier, they expected that the Catholic verity would be respected by the flames. Alas, the two papers were indiscriminately consumed, and this unforeseen accident produced the union of a day, and renewed the quarrel of an age. The final treaty displayed the victory of the Arsenites. The clergy abstained during forty days from all ecclesiastical functions. A slight penance was imposed on the lady. The body of Arsenus was deposited in the sanctuary, and in the name of the departed saint the prince and people were released from the sins of their fathers. The establishment of his family was the motive, or at least the pretense, of the crime of paleologis, and he was impatient to confirm the succession by sharing with his eldest son the honors of the purple. Andronicus, afterwards surnamed the elder, was proclaimed in crowned emperor of the Romans in the fifteenth year of his age, and from the first era of a prolex and inglorious reign he held that August title nine years as the colleague, and fifty as the successor of his father. Michael himself, had he died in a private station, would have been thought more worthy of the empire, and the assaults of his temporal and spiritual enemies left him few moments to labor for his own fame or the happiness of his subjects. He wrestled from the Franks several of the noblest islands of the archipelago, Lesbos, Chios, and Rhodes. His brother Constantine was sent to command in Malvasia and Sparta, and the eastern side of the Moria, from Argos and Napoli to Cape Thinners, was repossessed by the Greeks. This effusion of Christian blood was loudly condemned by the patriarch, and the insolent priest presumed to interpose his fears and scruples between the arms of princes. But in the prosecution of these western conquests the countries beyond the hellspot were left naked to the Turks, and their depredations verified the prophecy of a dying senator that the recovery of Constantinople would be the ruin of Asia. The victories of Michael were achieved by his lieutenants. His sword rusted in the palace, and in the transactions of the emperor with the popes and kings of Naples his political acts were stained with cruelty and fraud. The Vatican was the most natural refuge of a Latin emperor who had been driven from his throne, and Pope Urban IV appeared to pity the misfortunes and vindicate the cause of the fugitive Baldwin. A crusade with plenary indulgence was preached by his command against the schismatic Greeks. He excommunicated their allies and inherits, solicited Louis IX in favor of his kinsmen, and demanded a tenth of the ecclesiastical revenues of France and England for the service of the Holy War. The subtle Greek who watched the rising tempest of the West attempted to suspend or sue the hostility of the Pope by suppliant embassies and respectful letters, but he insinuated that the establishment of peace must prepare the reconciliation and obedience of the Eastern Church. The Roman court could not be deceived by so gross an artifice, and Michael was admonished that the repentance of the son should precede the forgiveness of the father, and that faith, an ambiguous word, was the only basis of friendship and alliance. After a long and affected delay the approach of danger and the importunity of Gregory X compelled him to enter on a more serious negotiation. He alleged the example of the great fantasies, and the Greek clergy who understood the intentions of their prince were not alarmed by the first steps of reconciliation and respect. But when he pressed the conclusion of the treaty they strenuously declared that the Latins, though not in name, were heretics in fact, and that they despised those strangers as the vilest and most despicable portion of the human race. It was the task of the emperor to persuade, to corrupt, to intimidate the most popular ecclesiastics, to gain the vote of each individual, and alternately to urge the arguments of Christian charity and the public welfare. The texts of the fathers and the arms of the Franks were balanced in the theological and political scale, and without approving the addition to the Nicene Creed the most moderate were taught to confess that the two hostile propositions of proceeding from the father by the son, and of proceeding from the father and the son, might be reduced to a safe and Catholic sense. The supremacy of the pope was a doctrine more easy to conceive, but more painful to acknowledge, yet Michael represented to his monks and prelates that they might submit to name the Roman bishop as the first of the patriarchs, and that their distance and discretion would guard the liberties of the Eastern Church from the mischievous consequences of the right of appeal. He protested that he would sacrifice his life and empire rather than yield the smallest point of orthodox faith or national independence, and this declaration was sealed and ratified by a golden bull. The patriarch Joseph withdrew to a monastery to resign or resume his throne according to the event of the treaty. The letters of union and obedience were subscribed by the emperor, his son Andronicus, and thirty-five archbishops and metropolitan with their respective synods, and the Episcopal list was multiplied by many dioceses which were annihilated under the yoke of the infidels. An embassy was composed of some trusty ministers and prelates. They embarked for Italy with rich ornaments and rare perfumes for the altar of St. Peter, and their secret orders authorized and recommended a boundless compliance. They were received in the general council of Lyon by Pope Gregory X at the head of five hundred bishops. He embraced with tears his long-lost and repentant children, accepted the oath of the ambassadors who abjured the schism in the name of the two emperors, adorned the prelates with ring and mitre, chanted in Greek and Latin the Nicene Creed with the addition of phylloch, and rejoiced in the union of the East and West, which had been reserved for his reign. To consummate this pious work the Byzantine deputies were speedily followed by the Pope's nuncios, and their instruction disclosed the policy of the Vatican which could not be satisfied with the vain title of supremacy. After viewing the temper of the prince and people they were enjoined to absolve the schismatic clergy who should subscribe and wear their abjuration and obedience to establish in all churches the use of the perfect creed to prepare the entrance of a cardinal legate with full powers and dignity of his office, and to instruct the emperor in the advantages which he might derive from the temporal protection of the Roman pontiff. But they found a country without a friend, a nation in which the names of Rome and Union were pronounced with apporance. The patriarch Joseph was indeed removed, his place was filled by Vecchus, an ecclesiastic of learning and moderation, and the emperor was still urged by the same motives to persevere in the same professions. But in his private language paleologous effected to deplore the pride and to blame the innovations of the Latins, and while he debased his character by this double hypocrisy, he justified and punished the opposition of his subjects. By the joint suffrage of the new and the ancient Rome a sentence of excommunication was pronounced against the obstinate schismatics. The censures of the church were executed by the sword of Michael. On the failure of persuasion he tried the arguments of prison and exile, of whipping and mutilation, those touchstones says an historian of cowards and the brave. Two Greeks still reigned in Anatolia, Ipiris and Thessaly, with the appellation of despots. They had yielded to the sovereign of Constantinople, but they rejected the chains of the Roman pontiff, and supported their refusal by successful arms. Under their protection the fugitive monks and bishops assembled in hostile synods, and retorted the name of Heretic with the galling addition of apost... The Prince of Trebizond was tempted to assume the forfeit title of Emperor, and even the Latins of Negropont, Thebes, Athens and the Moria forgot the merits of the convert to join, with open or clandestine aid the enemies of paleologous. His favorite generals of his own blood and family successively deserted or betrayed the sacrilegious trust. His sister Eulogia, a niece, and two female cousins conspired against him. Another niece, Mary, Queen of Bulgaria, negotiated his ruin with the Sultan of Egypt, and in the public eye their treason was consecrated as the most sublime virtue. To the Pope's nuncios who urged the consummation of the work, paleologous exposed a naked recital of all that he had done and suffered for their sake. They were assured that the guilty sectaries of both sexes in every rank had been deprived of their honors, their fortunes, and their liberty, a spreading list of confiscation and punishment, which involved many persons, the dearest to the Emperor, or the best deserving of his favor. They were conducted to the prison to behold four princes of the royal blood chained in the four corners, and shaking their fetters in an agony of grief and rage. Two of these captives were afterwards released, the one by submission, the other by death, but the obstinacy of their two companions was chastised by the loss of their eyes, and the Greeks, the least adverse to the Union, deplored that cruel and inauspicious tragedy. Persecutors must expect the hatred of those whom they oppress, but they commonly find some consolation in the testimony of their conscience, the applause of their party, and perhaps the success of their undertaking. But the hypocrisy of Michael, which was prompted only by political motives, must have forced him to hate himself, to despise his followers, and to esteem and envy the rebel champions by whom he was detested and despised. While his violence was abhorred at Constantinople, at Rome his slowness was arraigned, and his sincerity suspected, till at length Pope Martin IV excluded the Greek Emperor from the pale of a church, into which he was striving to reduce his schismatic people. No sooner had the tyrant expired than the Union was dissolved, and abjured by unanimous consent. The churches were purified, the penitents were reconciled, and his son Andronicus, after weeping the sins and errors of his youth, most piously denied his father the burial of a prince and a Christian. In the distress of the Latins, the walls and towers of Constantinople had fallen to decay. They were restored and fortified by the policy of Michael, who deposited a plentious store of corn and salt provisions to sustain the siege which he might hourly expect from the resentment of the Western powers. Of these the sovereign of the two Sicilies was the most formidable neighbor, but as long as they were possessed by Manfroy, the bastard of Frederick II, his monarchy was the bulwark rather than the annoyance of the Eastern Empire. The usurper, though a brave and active prince, was sufficiently employed in the defense of his throne. His prescription, by successive popes, had separated Manfroy from the common cause of the Latins, and the forces that might have besieged Constantinople were detained in a crusade against the domestic enemy of Rome. The prize of her Avenger, the crown of the two Sicilies, was won and worn by the brother of St. Louis, by Charles Count of Anjou and Provence, who led the chivalry of France on this holy expedition. The disaffection of his Christian subjects compelled Manfroy to enlist a colony of Saracens, whom his father had planted in Apulia, and this odious sucker will explain the defiance of the Catholic hero, who rejected all terms of accommodation. "'Bear this message,' said Charles, to the Sultan of Nicorah, that God and the sword are umpire between us, and that he shall either send me to Paradise, or I will send him to the Pit of Hell. The armies met, and though I am ignorant of Manfroy's doom in the other world, in this he lost his friends, his kingdom, and his life, in the bloody battle of Benevento. Naples and Sicily were immediately peopled with a warlike race of French nobles and their aspiring leader embraced the future conquest of Africa, Greece, and Palestine. The most specious reasons might point his first arms against the Byzantine Empire, and Peleologius, diffident of his own strength, repeatedly appealed from the ambition of Charles to the humanity of St. Louis, who still preserved a just ascendant over the mind of his ferocious brother. For a while the attention of that brother was confined at home by the invasion of Conradin, the last heir to the imperial house of Swabia, but the hapless boy sunk in the unequal conflict, and his execution on a public scaffold taught the rivals of Charles to tremble for their heads as well as their dominions. A second respite was obtained by the last crusade of St. Louis to the African coast, and the double motive of interest in duty urged the King of Naples to assist, with his powers and his presence the holy enterprise. The death of St. Louis released him from the importunity of a virtuous censor. The King of Tunis confessed himself the tributarian vassal of the crown of Sicily, and the boldest of the French knights were free to enlist under his banner against the Greek Empire. A treaty and a marriage united his interest with the house of Cortenet. His daughter, Beatrice, was promised to Philip, son and heir of the Emperor Baldwin. A pension of six hundred ounces of gold was allowed for his maintenance, and his generous father distributed among his aliens the kingdoms and provinces of the East, reserving only Constantinople and one day's journey round the city for the imperial domain. In this perilous moment Palaeologius was most eager to subscribe the creed and implore the protection of the Roman Pontiff, who assumed with propriety and weight the character of an angel of peace the common father of the Christians. By his voice the sword of Charles was chained in the scabbard, and the Greek ambassadors beheld him in the Pope's antechamber, biting his ivory scepter in transport of fury, and deeply resenting the refusal to enfranchise and consecrate his arms. He appears to have respected the disinterested mediation of Gregory the Tenth, but Charles was insensibly disgusted by the pride impartiality of Nicholas the Third, and his attachment to his kindred, the Ursini family, alienated the most strenuous champion from the service of the Church. The hostile league against the Greeks, of Philip the Latin Emperor, the King of the Two Sicilies, and the Republic of Venice, was ripened into execution, and the election of Martin IV, a French pope, gave a sanction to the cause. Of the allies Philip supplied his name. Martin, a bull of excommunication, the Venetians, a squadron of forty galleys, and the formidable powers of Charles consisted of forty counts, ten thousand men at arms, a numerous body of infantry, and a fleet of more than three hundred ships and transports. A distant day was appointed for assembling this mighty force in the harbor of Brindisi, and a previous attempt was risked with the detachment of three hundred knights, who invaded Albania and besieged the fortress of Belgrade. Their defeat might amuse with a triumph the vanity of Constantinople, but the more sagacious Michael, despairing of his arms, depended on the effects of a conspiracy, on the secret workings of a rat, who nod the bowstring of the Sicilian tyrant. Among the prescribed adherents of the House of Swabia, John of Procitta forfeited a small island of that name in the Bay of Naples. His birth was noble, but his education was learned, and in the poverty of exile he was relieved by the practice of physics, which he had studied in the school of Salerno. Fortune had left him nothing to lose except life, and to despise life as the first qualification of a rebel. Procitta was endowed with the art of negotiation, to enforce his reasons and disguise his motives, and in his various transactions with nations and men he could persuade each party that he labored solely for their interest. The new kingdoms of Charles were afflicted by every species of fiscal and military oppression, and the lives and fortunes of his Italian subjects were sacrificed to the greatness of their master and the licentiousness of his followers. The hatred of Naples was repressed by his presence, but the looser government of his vice-regents excited the contempt as well as the aversion of the Sicilians. The island was roused to a sense of freedom by the eloquence of Procitta, and he displayed to every baron his private interest in the common cause. In the confidence of foreign aid he successively visited the courts of the Greek emperor and of Peter, king of Aragon, who possessed the maritime countries of Valencia and Catalonia. To the ambitious Peter a crown was presented, which he might justly claim by his marriage with the sister of Manfroy, and by the dying voice of Conradin, who, from the scaffold, had cast a ring to his heir and avenger. Paleologous was easily persuaded to divert his enemy from a foreign war by a rebellion at home, and a Greek subsidy of twenty-five thousand ounces of gold was most profitably applied to arm a Catalan fleet, which sailed under a holy banner to the specious attack of the Saracens of Africa. In the disguise of a monk or beggar the indefatagable missionary of revolt flew from Constantinople to Rome and from Sicily to Saragossa. The treaty was sealed with the signet of Pope Nicholas himself, the enemy of Charles, and his deed of gift transferred the fives of St. Peter from the house of Anjou to that of Aragon. So widely diffused and so freely circulated the secret was preserved above two years with imprenetrable discretion, and each of the conspirators imbibed the maxim of Peter, who declared that he would cut off his left hand if it were conscious of the intentions of his right. The mine was prepared with deep and dangerous artifice, but it may be questioned whether the instant explosion of Palermo were the effect of accident or design. On the vigil of Easter a procession of the disarmed citizens visited a church without the walls, and a noble damsel was rudely insulted by a French soldier. The ravisher was instantly punished with death, and if the people was at first scattered by a military force their numbers and fury prevailed. The conspirators seized the opportunity, the flames spread over the island, and 8,000 French were exterminated in a promiscuous massacre which has obtained the name of the Sicilian Vespers. From every city the banners of freedom and the church were displayed. The revolt was inspired by the presence or the soul of Procitta and Peter of Aragon, who sailed from the African coast to Palermo, was saluted as the king and saviour of the isle. By the rebellion of a people on whom he had so long trampled with impunity, Charles was astonished and confounded, and in the first agony of grief and devotion he was heard to exclaim, Oh God, if thou hast decreed to humble me, grant me at least a gentle and gradual descent from the pinnacle of greatness. His fleet and army, which already filled the seaports of Italy, were hastily recalled from the service of the Grecian War, and the situation of Bacina exposed that town to the first storm of his revenge. Feeble in themselves and yet hopeless of foreign succor the citizens would have repented and submitted on the assurance of full pardon and their ancient privileges. But the pride of the monarch was already rekindled, and the most fervent entreaties of the legate could extort no more than a promise that he would forgive the remainder after a chosen list of eight hundred rebels had been yielded to his discretion. The despair of the Messonese renewed their courage. Peter of Aragon approached to their relief, and his rival was driven back by the failure of provision and the terrors of the equinox to the Calabrian shore. At the same moment the Catalan admiral, the famous Roger DeLoria, swept the channel with an invincible squadron. The French fleet, more numerous in transports than galleys, was either burnt or destroyed, and the same blow assured the independence of Sicily and the safety of the Greek Empire. A few days before his death the Emperor Michael rejoiced in the fall of an enemy whom he hated and esteemed, and perhaps he might be content with the popular judgment that had they not been matched with each other Constantinople and Italy must speedily have obeyed the same master. From this disastrous moment the life of Charles was a series of misfortunes. His capital was insulted, his son was made prisoner, and he sunk into the grave without recovering the Isle of Sicily, which after a war of twenty years was finally severed from the throne of Naples, and transferred as an independent kingdom to a younger branch of the House of Aragon. CHAPTER 62 I shall not, I trust, be accused of superstition, but I must remark that, even in this world, the natural order of events will sometimes afford the strong appearance of moral retribution. The first paleologist had saved his empire by involving the kingdoms of the West in rebellion and blood, and from these scenes of discord uproads a generation of Iron Men, who assaulted and endangered the empire of his son. In modern times our debts and taxes are the secret poison which still corrodes the bosom of peace, but in the weak and disorderly government of the Middle Ages it was agitated by the present evil of the disbanded armies. Too idle to work, too proud to beg, the mercenaries were accustomed to a life of repeen. They could rob with more dignity and effect under a banner and a chief, and the sovereign to whom their service was useless, and their presence importunate, endeavored to discharge the torrent on some neighboring countries. After the peace of Sicily, many thousands of Genoese, Catalan, etc., who had fought, by sea and land, under the standard of Anju, or Aragon, were blended into one nation by the resemblance of their manners and interests. They heard that the Greek provinces of Asia were invaded by the Turks, they resolved to share the harvest of pay and plunder, and Frederick, king of Sicily, most liberally contributed the means of their departure. In a warfare of twenty years a ship or a camp was become their country, arms were their sole profession and property, valor was the only virtue which they knew, their women had imbibed the fearless temper of their lovers and husbands. It was reported that with the stroke of their broadsword the Catalan's could cleave a horseman and a horse, and the report itself was a powerful weapon. Roger de Florre was the most popular of their chiefs, and his personal merit overshadowed the dignity of his proud arrivals of Aragon. The offspring of a marriage between a German gentleman of the court of Frederick II and a damsel of Brindisi, Roger was successively a Templar, an apostate, a pirate, and at length the richest and most powerful admiral of the Mediterranean. He sailed from Messina to Constantinople with eighteen galleys, four great ships, and eight thousand adventurers, and his previous treaty was faithfully accomplished by Andronicus the Elder, who accepted with joy and terror this formidable sucker. A palace was allotted for his reception, and a niece of the emperor was given in marriage to the valiant stranger, who was immediately created Duke or Admiral of Romania. After a decent repose he transported his troops over the propontus, and boldly led them against the Turks. In two bloody battles thirty thousand of the Muslims were slain. He raised the siege of Philadelphia and deserved the name of Deliverer of Asia. But after a short season of prosperity the cloud of slavery and ruin again burst on that unhappy province. The inhabitants escaped, says a Greek historian, from the smoke into the flames, and the hostility of the Turks was less pernicious than the friendship of the Catalan's. The lives and fortunes which they had rescued they considered as their own. The willing or reluctant maid was saved from the race of circumcision for the embraces of a Christian soldier. The exaction of fines and supplies was enforced by licentious rapine and arbitrary executions, and on the resistance of Magnesia the great Duke besieged a city of the Roman Empire. These disorders he excused by the wrongs and passions of a victorious army, nor would his own authority or person have been safe had he dared to punish his faithful followers who were defrauded of the just and covenanted price of their services. The threats and complaints of Andronicus disclosed the nakedness of the Empire. His golden bull had invited no more than five hundred horse and a thousand foot soldiers, yet the crowds of volunteers who migrated to the east had been enlisted and fed by his spontaneous bounty. While his bravest allies were content with three bisons or pieces of gold for their monthly pay, an ounce or even two ounces of gold were assigned to the Catalan's, whose annual pension would thus amount to near a hundred pounds sterling. One of their chiefs had modestly rated at three hundred thousand crowns the value of his future merits, and above a million had been issued from the treasury for the maintenance of these costly mercenaries. A cruel tax had been imposed on the corn of the husbandman. One-third was retrenched from the salaries of the public officers, and the standard of the coin was so shamefully debased that of the four and twenty parts only five were of pure gold. At the summons of the Emperor, Roger evacuated a province which no longer supplied the materials of rapine, but he refused to disperse his troops, and while his style was respectful his conduct was independent and hostile. He protested that if the Emperor should march against him he would advance forty paces to kiss the ground before him, but in rising from this prostrate attitude Roger had a life and sword at the service of his friends. The great Duke of Romania condescended to accept the title and ornaments of Caesar, but he rejected the new proposal of the Government of Asia with the subsidy of corn and money, on condition that he should reduce his troops to the harmless number of three thousand men. Assassination is the last resource of cowards. The Caesar was tempted to visit the royal residence of Adrianipole. In the apartment and before the guards of the Empress he was stabbed by the Elani guards, and though the deed was imputed to their private revenge, his countrymen, who dwelt at Constantinople in the security of peace, were involved in the same prescription by the Prince or people. The loss of their leader intimidated the crowd of adventurers who hoisted the sails of flight and were soon scattered round the coasts of the Mediterranean. But a veteran band of fifteen hundred Catalan's or French stood firm in the strong fortress of Gallipoli on the Hellespont, displayed the banners of Aragon, and offered to revenge and justify their chief by an equal combat of ten or hundred warriors. Instead of accepting this bold defiance, the Emperor Michael, the son and colleague of Andronicus, resolved to oppress them with the weight of multitudes. Every nerve was strained to form an army of thirteen thousand horse and thirty thousand foot, and the propontist was covered with the ships of the Greeks and Genoese. In two battles by sea and land these mighty forces were encountered and overthrown by the despair and discipline of the Catalan's. The young emperor fled to the palace, and an insufficient guard of light horse was left for the protection of the open country. Victory renewed the hopes and numbers of the adventurers. Every nation was blended under the name and standard of the great company, and three thousand Turkish proselytes deserted from the imperial service to join this military association. In the possession of Gallipoli the Catalan's intercepted the trade of Constantinople and the Black Sea, while they spread their devastation on either side of the Hellespont over the confines of Europe and Asia. To prevent their approach the greatest part of the Byzantine territory was laid waste by the Greeks themselves. The peasants and their cattle were tired into the city, and myriads of sheep and oxen, for which neither place nor food could be procured, were unprofitably slaughtered on the same day. Four times the emperor Andronicus sued for peace, and four times he was inflexibly repulsed, till the want of provisions and the discord of the chiefs compelled the Catalan's to evacuate the banks of the Hellespont and the neighborhood of the capital. After their separation from the Turks the remains of the great company pursued their march through Macedonia and Thessaly to seek a new establishment in the heart of Greece. After some ages of oblivion Greece was awakened to new misfortune by the arms of the Latins. In the two hundred and fifty years between the first and the last conquest of Constantinople that venerable land was disputed by a multitude of petty tyrants without the comforts of freedom and genius, her ancient cities were again plunged in foreign and intestine war, and if servitude be preferable to anarchy they might repose with joy under the Turkish yoke. I shall not pursue the obscure and various dynasties that rose and fell on the continent or in the isles, but our silence on the fate of Athens would argue a strange ingratitude to the first and purest school of liberal science and amusement. In the partition of the empire the principality of Athens and Thebes was assigned to Otto de La Roche, a noble warrior of Burgundy, with the title of Great Duke, which the Latins understand in their own sense, and the Greeks more foolishly derived from the age of Constantine. Otto followed the standard of the Marquis of Montferrat. The ample state which he acquired by miracle of conduct or fortune was peaceably inherited by his son and two grandsons, till the family, though not the nation, was changed by the marriage of an heiress into the elder branch of the house of Bryn. The son of that marriage, Walter de Bryn, succeeded to the duchy of Athens, and with the aid of some Catalan mercenaries, whom he invested with fives, reduced above thirty castles of the vassal or neighboring lords. But when he was informed of the approach and ambition of the great company, he collected a force of seven hundred knights, six thousand, four hundred horse, and eight thousand foot, and boldly met them on the banks of the river Cecephus in Bochia. The Catalan's amounted to no more than three thousand, five hundred horse, and four thousand foot, but the deficiency of numbers was compensated by stratagem and order. They formed round their camp an artificial inundation. The duke and his knights advanced without fear or precaution on the verdant meadow, their horses plunged into the bog, and he was cut in pieces with the greatest part of the French cavalry. His family and nation were expelled, and his son, Walter de Bryn, the titular duke of Athens, the tyrant of Florence, and the constable of France, lost his life in the field of Poitiers. Attica and Bochia were the rewards of the victorious Catalan's. They married the widows and daughters of the slain, and during fourteen years the great company was the terror of the Grecian states. Their factions drove them to acknowledge the sovereignty of the house of Aragon, and during the remainder of the fourteenth century, Athens, as a government or an appendage, was successively bestowed by the kings of Sicily. After the French and Catalan's, the third dynasty was that of the Accioli, a family plebeian at Florence, potent at Naples, and sovereign in Greece. Athens, which they embellished with new buildings, became the capital of a state that extended over Thebes, Argos, Corinth, Delphi, and a part of Thessaly, and their reign was finally determined by Muhammad II, who strangled the last Duke and educated his sons in the discipline and religion of the Seraglio. Athens, though no more than the shadow of her former self, still contains about eight or ten thousand inhabitants. Of these, three-fourths are Greek in religion and language, and the Turks, who compose the remainder, have relaxed in their intercourse with the citizens somewhat of the pride and gravity of their national character. The olive-tree, the gift of Minerva, flourishes in Attica, nor has the honey of Mount Hematus lost any part of its exquisite flavor. But the languid trade is monopolized by strangers, and the agriculture of a barren land is abandoned to the vagrant Wallachians. The Athenians are still distinguished by the subtlety and acuteness of their understandings, but these qualities, unless ennobled by freedom and enlightened by study, will degenerate into a low and selfish cunning, and it is a proverbial saying of the country, from the Jews of Thessalonica, the Turks of Negropont, and the Greeks of Athens, good Lord deliver us. This artful people has eluded the tyranny of the Turkish Bashas, by an expedient which alleviates their servitude and aggravates their shame. About the middle of the last century, the Athenians chose for their protector Kisar Aga, or chief black eunuch of the Seraglio. This Ethiopian slave, who possesses the sultan's ear, condescends to accept the tribute of thirty thousand crowns. His lieutenant, the way-wode, whom he annually confirms, may reserve for his own about five or six thousand more, and such is the policy of the citizens that they seldom fail to remove and punish an oppressive governor. Their private differences are decided by the Archbishop, one of the richest prelates of the Greek Church, since he possesses a revenue of one thousand pounds sterling, and by a tribunal of the eight Geronti, or elders, chosen in the eight quarters of the city. The noble families cannot trace their pedigree above three hundred years, but their principal members are distinguished by a graved eminor, a fur cap, and the lofty appellation of Archon. By some who delight in the contrast, the modern language of Athens is represented as the most corrupt and barbarous of the seventy dialects of the vulgar Greek. This picture is too darkly colored, but it would not be easy in the country of Plato and Demosthenes to find a reader or a copy of their works. The Athenians walk with supine indifference among the glorious ruins of antiquity, and such is the debasement of their character that they are incapable of admiring the genius of their predecessors. CHAPTER 62 PART I The long reign of Andronicus the Elder is chiefly memorable by the disputes of the Greek church, the invasion of the Catalan, and the rise of the Ottoman power. He is celebrated as the most learned and virtuous prince of the age, but such virtue and such learning contributed neither to the perfection of the individual, nor to the happiness of society. A slave of the most abject superstition, he was surrounded on all sides by visible and invisible enemies, nor were the flames of hell less dreadful to his fancy than those of a Catalan or Turkish war. Under the reign of the Paleology, the choice of the patriarch was the most important business of the state. The heads of the Greek church were ambitious and fanatic monks, and their vices or virtues, their learning or ignorance, were equally mischievous or contemptible. By his intemperate discipline, the patriarch Athanasius excited the hatred of the clergy and people. He was heard to declare that the sinner should swallow the last dregs of the cup of penance, and the foolish tale was propagated by his punishing a sacrilegious ass that had tasted the letters of a convert garden. Came from the throne by the universal clamour, Athanasius composed before his retreat two papers of a very opposite caste. His public testament was in the tone of charity and resignation. The private codicil breathed the direst anathemas against the authors of his disgrace, whom he excluded forever from the communion of the holy trinity, the angels and the saints. This last paper he enclosed in an earthen pot, which was placed by his order, on the top of one of the pillars, in the dome of Saint Sophia, in the distant hope of discovery and revenge. At the end of four years, some youths, climbing by a ladder in search of pigeons' nests, detected the fatal secret. And, as Andronicus felt himself touched and bound by the excommunication, he trembled on the brink of the abyss, which had been so treacherously dug under his feet. A synoid of bishops was instantly convened to debate this important question. The rations of these clandestine anathemas was generally condemned. But as the knot could be untied only by the same hand, as that hand was now deprived of the cross-year, it appeared that this posthumous decree was irrevocable by any earthly power. Some faint testimonies of repentance and pardon were exalted from the author of the mischief. But the conscience of the emperor was still wounded, and he desired, with no less ardour than Athanasius himself, the restoration of a patriarch by whom alone he could be healed. At the dead of night a monk rudely knocked at the door of the royal bed-chamber, announcing a revelation of plague and famine, of inundations and earthquakes. Andronicus started from his bed, and spent the night in prayer, till he felt, or thought that he felt, a slight motion of the earth. The emperor on foot led the bishops and monks to the cell of Athanasius, and, after a proper resistance, the saint, from whom this message had been sent, consented to absolve the prince, and govern the church of Constantinople. Untamed by disgrace and hardened by solitude, the shepherd was again odious to the flock, and his enemies contrived as singular, and, as it proved, a successful mode of revenge. In the night they stole away the footstool or footcloth of his throne, which they secretly replaced with a decoration for satirical picture. The emperor was painted with a bridle in his mouth, and Athanasius leading the tractable beast to the feet of Christ. The authors of the libel were detected and punished, but, as their liars had been spared, the Christian priest in sullen and indignation retired to his cell, and the eyes of Andronicus, which had been opened for a moment, were again closed by his successor. If this transaction be one of the most curious and important of a reign of fifty years, I cannot at least accuse the berevity of my materials. Since I reduce into some few pages the enormous folios of Pycomar, Cantacusen, and Nicophorus Gregoris, who have composed the prolix and languid story of the times, the name and situation of the emperor, John Cantacusen, might inspire the most lively curiosity. His memorials of forty years extend from the revolt of the younger Andronicus to his own abdication of the empire, and it is observed that, like Moses and Caesar, he was the principal actor in the scenes which he describes. But in this eloquent work we should vainly seek the sincerity of a hero or a penitent. Retired in a cloister from the vices and passions of the world, he presents, not in a confession, but an apology, of the life of an ambitious statesman. Instead of unfolding the true councils and characters of men, he displays the smooth and spacious surface of events, highly varnished with his own praises and those of his friends. Their motives are always pure, their ends always legitimate, they conspire and rebel without any views of interest, and the violence which they inflict or suffer is celebrated as a spontaneous effect of reason and virtue. After the example of the first paleology, the elder Andronicus associated his son Michael to the honors of the purple, and from the age of eighteen to his premature death, the prince was acknowledged above twenty-five years as the second emperor of the Greeks. At the head of an army he excited neither the fears of the enemy nor the jealousy of the court. His modesty and patience were never tempted to compute the years of his father, nor was that father compelled to repent of his liberality either by the virtues or vices of his son. The son of Michael was named Andronicus from his grandfather, to whose early favor he was introduced by that nominal resemblance. The blossoms of wit and beauty increased the fondness of the elder Andronicus, and with the common vanity of age, he expected to realize in the second the hope would have been disappointed in the first generation. The boy was educated in the palace as an heir and a favorite, and in the yodes and acclamations of the people, the august triad was formed by the names of the father, the son, and the grandson. But the younger Andronicus was speedily corrupted by his infant greatness, while he beheld with pure all impatience the double obstacle that hung and might long hang over his rising ambition. It was not to acquire fame or to diffuse happiness that he so eagerly aspired. Wealth and impunity were in his eyes the most precious attributes of Andronicus, and his first indiscreet demand was the sovereignty of some rich and fertile island, where he might lead a life of independence and pleasure. The emperor was offended by the loud and frequent intemperance which disturbed his capital. The sums which his parsimony denied were supplied by the Genosiusheros of Perra, and though oppressive debt, which consolidated the interest of a faction, could be discharged only by a revolution. A beautiful female, a matron in rank, a prostitute in manners, had instructed the younger Andronicus in the rudiments of love, but he had reason to suspect the nocturnal visits of a rival, and a stranger passing through the street was pierced by the arrows of his guard, who were placed in ambush at her door. That stranger was his brother, Prince Manuel, who languished and died of his wound, and the emperor Michael, their common father, whose health was in a declining state, expired on the eighth day, lamenting the loss of both his children. However guiltless in his intention, the younger Andronicus might impute a brother's and a father's death to the consequence of his own vices, and deep was the sigh of thinking and feeling men, when they perceived, instead of sorrow and repentance, his ill-dissembled joy on the removal of two odious competitors, by these melancholy events and the increase of his disorders, the mind of the elder emperor was gradually alienated, and after many fruitless reproofs, he transferred on another grandson, his hopes and affection. The change was announced by the new oath of allegiance to the reigning sovereign, and the person whom he should appoint for his successor, and the acknowledged heir, after a repetition of insults and complaints, was exposed to the indignity of a public trial. For the sentence, which would probably have condemned him to a dungeon or a cell, the emperor was informed that the palace courts were filled with the armed followers of his grandson. The judgment was softened to a treaty of reconciliation, and the triumphant escape of the prince encouraged the ardour of the younger faction. Yet the capital, the clergy and the senate, adhered to the person, or at least to the government of the old emperor, and it was only in the provinces, by flight and revolt, and foreign succour, that the male contents could hope to vindicate their cause and subvert his throne. The soul of the enterprise was the great domestic, John Cantacuzine. The sally from Constantinople is the first date of his actions and memorials, and of his own pen be most descriptive of his patriotism. An unfriendly historian has not refused to celebrate the zeal and ability which he displayed in the service of the young emperor. That prince escaped from the capital under the pretense of hunting, erected his standard at Adrianople, and, in a few days, assembled fifty thousand horse and foot, whom neither honor nor duty could have armed against the barbarians. Such a force might have saved or commanded the emperor. But their councils were discordant, their motions were slow and doubtful, and their progress was checked by intrigue and negotiation. The quarrel of the Tuandronachai was protracted and suspended and renewed, during a ruinous period of seven years. In the first treaty the relics of the Greek empire were divided. Constantinople, Thessalonchia, and the islands were left to the elder, while the younger acquired the sovereignty of the greatest parts of Thrace, from Philippi to the Byzantine limit. By the second treaty he stipulated the payment of his troops, his immediate coronation, and an adequate share of the power and revenue of the state. The third civil war was terminated by the surprise of Constantinople, the final retreat of the old emperor, and the sole reign of his victorious grandson. The reasons of this delay may be found in the characters of the men and of the times. When the heir of the monarchy first pleaded his wrongs and his apprehensions, he was heard with pity and applause, and his ardents repeated on all sides the inconsistent promise that he would increase the pay of the soldiers and alleviate the burdens of the people. The grievances of forty years were mangled in his revolt, and the rising generation were fatigued by the endless prospect of a reign, whose favourites and maxims were of other times. The youth of Andronicus had been without spirit, his age was without reverence. His taxes produced an unusual revenue of five hundred thousand pounds. Yet the riches of the sovereigns of Christendom was incapable of maintaining three thousand horse and twenty galleys to resist the destructive progues of the Turks. "'How different,' said the younger Andronicus, is my situation from that of the son of Philip. Alexander might complain that his father would leave him nothing to conquer, alas my Grandsire would leave me nothing to lose, but the Greeks were soon admonished, that the public disorders could not be healed by civil war, and that their young favourite was not destined to be the saviour of a falling empire. On the first repulse his party was broken by his own levity, their intense discord and the intrigues of the ancient court, which tempted each male content to desert or betray the cause of the rebellion. Andronicus the younger was touched with remorse, or fatigued with business, or deceived by negotiation. Pleasure rather than power was his aim, and the licence of maintaining a thousand hounds, a thousand hawks, and a thousand huntsmen was sufficient to sully his fame and disarm its ambition. Let us now survey the catastrophe of this busy plot, and the final situation of the principal actors. The age of Andronicus was consumed in civil discord, and, amidst the events of war and treaty, his power and reputation continually decayed, till the fatal night in which the gates of the city and palace were opened without resistance to his grandson. This principal commander scorned the repeated warnings of danger, and retiring to rest in the vain security of ignorance, abandoned the feeble monarch, with some priests and pages, to the terror of a sleepless night. These terrors were quickly realised by the hostile shouts, which proclaimed the titles and victory of Andronicus the younger. And the aged emperor, falling prostrate before an image of the virgin, dispatched a suppliant message to resign the scepter, and to obtain his life at the hands of the conqueror. The answer his grandson was decent and pious. At the prayer of his friends, the anger Andronicus assumed the solid administration. But the elder still enjoyed the name and preeminence of the first emperor, the use of the Great Palace, and a pension of twenty-four thousand pieces of gold, one half of which was assigned on the royal treasury, and the other on the fishery of Constantinople. But his impotence was soon exposed to contempt and oblivion. The vast silence of the palace was disturbed only by the cattle and poultry of the neighbourhood, which rode with impunity through the solitary courts, and a reduced allowance of ten thousand pieces of gold was all that he could ask, and more than he could hope. His calamities were embittered by the gradual extinction of his sight. His confinement was rendered each day more rigorous, and, during the absence and sickness of his grandson, his inhuman keepers, by the threats of instant death, compelled him to exchange the purple for the monastic habit and profession. The monk Antony had renounced the pomp of the world, yet he had occasioned for a coarse fur in the winter season. And as wine was forbidden by his confessor, and water by his physician, the sherbet of Egypt was his common drink. It was not without difficulty that the late emperor could procure three or four pieces to satisfy these simple wants. And if he bestowed the gold to relieve the more painful distress of a friend, the sacrifices of some weight in the scale of humanity and religion, four years after his abdication, Andronicus or Antony expired in the cell in the seventy-fourth year of his age. And the last train of adulation could only promise the most splendid crown of glory in heaven than he had enjoyed upon earth. Nor was the reign of the younger more glorious of fortune than that of the elder Andronicus. He gathered the fruits of ambition, but the taste was transient and bitter. In the supreme station he lost the remains of his early popularity, and the defects of his character became still more conspicuous to the world. The public reproach urged him to march in person against the Turks, nor did his courage fail in the hour of trial. But a defeat and a wound were the only trophies of his expedition in Asia, which confirmed the establishment of the Ottoman monarchy. The abuses of the civil government attained their full maturity and perfection. His neglect of forms and the confusion of national dress are deplored by the Greeks as the fatal symptoms of the decay of the empire. Andronicus was old before his time. The intemperance of youth had accelerated the infirmities of age. And after being rescued from a dangerous malady, by nature or physics or the virgin, he was snatched away before he had accomplished his forty-fifth year. He was twice married, and as the progress of the Latins in arms and arts has softened the prejudices of the Byzantine court, his two wives were chosen in the princely houses of Germany and Italy. The first, Agnes at home, Irene in Greece, was daughter of the Duke of Brunswick. Her father was a petty lord in the poor and savage regions of the north of Germany, yet he derived some revenue from his silver mines, and his family is celebrated by the Greeks as the most ancient and noble of the Teutonic name. After the death of this childish princess, Andronicus sought in marriage Jane, the sister of the Count of Savoy, and his suit was preferred to that of the French king. The Count respected in his sister the superior majesty of a Roman empress. Her retinue was composed of knights and ladies. She was regenerated and crowned in sense of fear, under the more awful docks appellation of Anne. And at the nuptial fest, the Greeks and Italians vied with each other in the marshal excesses of tilts and tournaments. The empress, Anne of Savoy, survived her husband. Their son, John Paleologists, was left an orphan, and an emperor in the ninth year of his age, and his weakness was protected by the first and most deserving of the Greeks, the long and cordial friendship of his father. For John Cantacuzine is alike honourable to the prince and the subject. It had been formed amidst the pleasures of their youth, their families were most equally noble. And the recent luster of the purple was amply compensated by the energy of a private education. We have seen that the young emperor was saved by Cantacuzine from the power of his grandfather, and, after six years of civil war, the same favoured brought him back in triumph to the palace of Constantinople. Under the reign of Andronicus the Younger, the great domestic ruled the emperor and the empire. And it was by his valour and conduct that the Isle of Lesbos, and the principality of Etolia, were restored to the ancient allegiance. His enemies confess, that, among the public robbers, Cantacuzine alone was moderate and abstemious, and the free and voluntary account which he produces of his own wealth may sustain the presumption that he was devolved by inheritance, and not accumulated by raping, who does not indeed specify the value of his money, plate and jewels, yet, after a voluntary gift of two hundred vases of silver, after much had been secreted by his friends and plundered by his foes. His forfeit treasures were sufficient for the equipment of a fleet of seventy galleys. He does not measure the size and number of his estates, but his granaries were heat with an incredible store of wheat and barley, and the labour of a thousand joker Voxen might cultivate, according to the practice of antiquity, about sixty-two thousand five hundred acres of arable land. His pastures were stocked with two thousand five hundred brood-mears, two hundred camels, three hundred mules, five hundred asses, five thousand horned cattle, fifty thousand hogs, and seventy thousand sheep, a precious record of rural opulence, in the last period of the empire, and in a land, most probably in Thrace, so repeatedly wasted by foreign and domestic hostility. The favour of Quintacuzine was above his fortune. In the moments of familiarity, in the hour of sickness, the emperor was desirous to level the distance between them, and pressed his friend to accept the diadem and purple, the virtue of the great domestic, which is attested by his own pen, resisted the dangerous proposal. But the last testament of Andronicus the Younger, named him guardian of his son, and the regent of the empire, had the regent found a suitable return of obedience and gratitude, perhaps he would have acted with pure and zealous fidelity in the service of his pupil. A guard of five hundred soldiers watched over his person in the palace. After funeral of the late emperor was decently performed, the capital was silent and submissive, and five hundred letters, which Quintacuzine dispatched in the first month, informed the provinces of their loss and their duty. The prospect of a tranquil minority was blasted by the great juke, or admiral, apochicus, and to exaggerate his perfidy. The imperial historian is pleased to magnify his own imprudence, in raising him to that office against the advice of his more sagacious sovereign. Bold and subtle, rapacious and profuse, the avarice and ambition of apochicus, were by turns observant to each other, and his talents were applied to the ruin of his country. This arrogance was heightened by the command of a naval force and an impregnable castle. And under the mask of oaths and flattery, he secretly conspired against his benefactor. The female court of the empress was bribed and directed. He encouraged Anna Savoy to assist, by the law of nature, the tutelage of her son. The love of power was disguised by the anxiety of maternal tenderness. And the founder of the paleology had instructed his posterity to dread the example of a perfidious guardian. The patriarch, John of Apry, was a proud and feeble old man, encompassed by numerous and hungry kindred. He produced an obsolete epistle of Andronicus, which bequeathed the prince and people to his pious care. The fate of his predecessor Arsenius prompted him to prevent, rather than punish, the crimes of a usurper. And apochicus smiled at the success of his own flattery, when he beheld the Byzantine priest, assuming the state and imporal claims of the Roman pontiff. Between three persons so different in their situation and character, a private league was concluded, a shadow of authority was restored to the senate, and the people were tempted by the name of freedom. By this powerful confederacy, the great domestic was assaulted at first with clandestine, at length with open arms. His prerogatives were disputed, his opinions slighted, his friends persecuted, and his safety was threatened both in the camp and city. In his absence on the public service, who was accused of treason, prescribed as an enemy of the church and state, and delivered with all his adherence to the sword of justice, the vengeance of the people, and the power of the devil. His fortunes were confiscated, his aged mother was cast into prison, all his past services were buried in oblivion, and he was driven by injustice to perpetrate the crime of which he was accused. From the review of his preceding conduct, Cantacusen appears to have been guiltless of any treasonable designs, and the only superstition of his innocence must arise from the vehemence of his protestations, and sublime purity which he ascribes to his own virtue. While the empress and the patriarchs still affected the appearance of harmony, he repeatedly solicited the permission of retiring to a private, and even a monastic life. After he had been declared a public enemy, it was his fervent wish to throw himself at the feet of the young emperor, and to receive without a murmur the stroke of the executioner. It was not without reluctance that he listened to the voice of reason, which inculcated the sacred duty of saving his family and friends, and proved that he could only save them by drawing the sword and assuming the imperial title. CHAPTER 63 In the strong city of Demotica, his peculiar domain, the emperor John Cantacusenus was invested with the purple buskins. His right leg was clothed by his noble kinsmen, the left by the Latin chiefs, on whom he conferred the order of knighthood. But even in this act of revolt he was still studious of loyalty, and the titers of John Paleologists and Anna Savoy were proclaimed before his own name in that of his wife Irene. Such vain ceremony is a thin disguise of rebellion, nor are there perhaps any personal wrongs that can authorize a subject to take arms against his sovereign. But the want of a preparation and success may confirm the assurance of the usurper that this decisive step was the effect of necessity rather than of choice. Antinople adhered to the young emperor. The king of Bulgaria was invited to the relief of Adrienapole. The principal cities of Thrace and Macedonia, after some hesitation, renounced their obedience to the great domestic, and the leaders of the troops and provinces were induced, by their private interest, to prefer the loose dominion of a woman and a priest. The army of Kentakuzin, in sixteen divisions, was stationed on the bank of the Meles to tempt or to intimidate the capital. It was dispersed by treachery or fear, and the officers, more especially the mercenary Latins, accepted the bribes and embraced the service of the Byzantine court. After this loss the rebel emperor, he fluctuated between the two characters, took the road to Thessalonchia with a chosen remnant. But he felled in his enterprise on that important place, and he was closely pursued by the great duke, his enemy Apokaiacus, at the head of a superior power by sea and land. Duran from the coach, in his march or rather flight into the mountains of Serbia, Kentakuzin assembled his troops to scrutinize those who were worthy and willing to accompany his broken fortunes. A base majority bowed and retired, and his trusty band was diminished to two thousand, and at last five hundred volunteers. The cryl, or despot of the Servians, received him with general hospitality. But the ally was insensibly degraded to a supliant, a hostage, a captive, and in this miserable dependence he waited at the door of the barbarian, who could dispose of the life and liberty of a Roman emperor. The most tempting offers could not persuade the cryl to violate his trust, but he soon inclined to the stronger side, and his friend was dismissed without injury to a new vicissitude of hopes and perils. Near six years the flame of discord burnt with various success and unabated rage. The cities were distracted by the faction of the nobles and the plebeians, the Kentakuzini and Paleology, and the Bulgarians, the Servians, and the Turks were invoked on both sides as the instruments of private ambition and the common ruin. The regent applauded the calamities of which he was the author and victim, and his only experience might dictate a just and lively remark on the different nature of foreign and civil war. The former, said he, is the external warmth of summer, always tolerable and often beneficial. The latter is the deadly heat of a fever, which consumes with that remedy the vitals of the constitution. The introduction of barbarians and savages into the contests of civil nations is a measure pregnant with shame and mischief, which the interest of the moment may compel, but which is reprobated by the best principles of humanity and reason. It is the practice of both sides to accuse their enemies of the guilt of the first alliances, and those who fail in their negotiations are loudest in their censure of the example which they envy and would gladly imitate. The Turks of Asia were less barbarous perhaps than the shepherds of Bulgaria and Serbia, but their religion rendered them implicable foes of Rome and Christianity. To acquire the friendship of their amirs, the two factions vied with each other in baseness of profusion. The dexterity of Contacusine obtained the preference, but the succor and victory were dearly purchased by the marriage of his daughter with an infidel, the captivity of many thousand Christians, and the passage of the Ottomans into Europe, the last and fatal stroke in the fall of the Roman Empire. The inclining scale was decided in his favour by the death of a Poccheacus. With a just though singular retribution of his crimes, a crowd of nobles or plebeians whom he feared or hated had been seized by his orders in the capital and the provinces, and the odd palace of Constantine was assigned as the place of their confinement. Some alterations in raising the walls and narrowing the cells had been ingeniously contrived to prevent their escape, and aggravate their misery, and the work was incessantly pressed by the daily visits of the tyrant. His guards watched at the gate, and as he stood in the inner court to overlook the architects, without fear or suspicion, he was assaulted and laid breathless on the ground by two resolute prisoners of the paleology and race, who were armed with sticks and animated by despair. On the rumour of revenge and liberty, the captive multitude broke their fetters, fortified their prison, and exposed from the battlements the tyrant's head, presuming on the favour of the people and the clemency of the empress. Anne of Savoy might rejoice in the fall of a haughty and ambitious minister. But while she delayed to resolve or to act, the populace, more especially the mariners, were excited by the widow of the great duke to a sedition, an assault, and a massacre. The prisoners, of whom the far greater part were guiltless or inglorious of the deed, escaped to a neighbouring church. They were slaughtered at the foot of the altar, and in his death the monster was no less bloody and venomous than in his life. Yet his talents alone upheld the cause of the young emperor, and his surviving associates, suspicious of each other, abandoned the conduct of war, and rejected the fairest terms of accommodation. In the beginning of the dispute, the empress felt, and complained, that she was deceived by the enemies of Kentucky's Inn. The patriarch was employed to preach against the forgiveness of injuries, and her promise of immortal hatred was sealed by an oath under the penalty of excommunication. But Anne soon learned to hate without a teacher. She beheld the misfortunes of the empire with the indifference of a stranger. Her jealousy was exasperated by the competition of a rival empress. And on the first symptoms of a more yielding temper, she threatened the patriarch to convene a synoid, and degrade him from his office. Their incapacity and discord would have afforded the most decisive advantage. But the civil war was protracted by the weakness of both parties, and the moderation of Kentucky's Inn had not escaped the reproach of timidity and indolence. He successfully recovered the provinces and cities, and the realm of his people was measured by the walls of Constantinople. But the metropolis alone counterbalanced the rest of the empire. Nogaty attempt that important conquest till he had secured in his favour the public voice and a private correspondence. An Italian, of the name Facialati, had succeeded to the office of Great Duke. The ships, the guards, and the Golden Gate were subject to his command. But his humble ambition was bribed to become the instrument of treachery, and the revolution was accomplished without danger or bloodshed, destitute of the powers of resistance, or the hope of relief. The inflexible Anne would still have defended the palace, and have smiled to behold the capital in flames, rather than in the possession of a rival. She yielded to the prayers of her friends and enemies, and the treaty was dictated by the conqueror, who professed a loyal and zealous attachment to the son of his benefactor. The marriage of his daughter, with John Paleologus, was its length consummated. The hereditary right of the pupil was acknowledged, but the sole administration during ten years was vested in the guardian. Two emperors and three empresses were seated on the Byzantine throne, and a general amnesty quieted the apprehensions, and confirmed the property of the most guilty subjects. The festival of the coronation and nuptials was celebrated with the appearance of concord and magnificence, and both were equally fallacious. During their late troubles the treasures of the state, and even the furniture of the palace, had been alienated or embezzled. The royal banquet was served in pewter or earthenware, and such was the poverty of the times, that the absence of gold and jewels was supplied by the paltry artifices of glass and gilt leather. I hastened to conclude the personal history of John Contacusine. He triumphed and reigned, but his reign and triumph were clouded by the discontent of his own and the adverse faction. His followers mightstile the general amnesty an act of pardon for his enemies, and of oblivion for his friends. In his cause their estates had been forfeited or plundered, and as they wandered naked and hungry through the streets, they cursed the selfish generosity of a leader, who, on the throne of the empire, might relinquish without merit his private inheritance. The adherents of the empress blushed to hold their lives and fortunes, by the precariousness favour of a usurper. And the thirst of revenge was concealed by a tender concern for the succession, and even the safety of her son. They were justly alarmed by a petition of the friends of Contacusine, that they might be released from their oath of allegiance to the paleology, and entrusted with the defence of some cautionary towns. A measure supported with argument and eloquence, and which was rejected, says the imperial historian, by Mr. Blime an almost incredible virtue. His response was disturbed by the sounds of plots and sedations, and he trembled lest the lawful prince should be stolen away by some foreign or domestic enemy, who would inscribe his name and his wrongs in the banners of rebellion. As the son of Andronicus advanced in the years of manhood, he began to feel and to act for himself, and his rising ambition was rather stimulated than checked by the imitation of his father's vices. If only trust his own professions, Contacusine laboured with honest industry to correct these sordid and sensual appetites, and to raise the mind of the young prince to a level with his fortune. In the survey and expedition the two emperors showed themselves in cordial harmony to the troops and provinces. And the younger colleague was initiated by the elder in the mysteries of war and government. After the conclusion of the peace, Paleologus was left in Thessalonchia of royal residence and a frontier station, to secure by his absence a peace of Constantinople, and to withdraw his youth from the temptations of a luxurious capital. But the distance weakened the powers of control, and the son of Andronicus was surrounded with artful or unthinking companions, who taught him to hate his guardian, to deploy his exile, and to vindicate his rights. A private treaty with the Kral or despot of Servia was soon followed by an open revolt, and Contacusine, on the throne of the elder Andronicus, defended the cause of age and prerogative, which in his youth he had so vigorously attacked. At his request the empress' mother undertook the voyage of Thessalonchia, and the office of mediation. She returned without success, and unless Anna Servoia was instructed by adversity, we may doubt the sincerity, or at least the fervour, of her zeal. While the regent grass accepted with a firm and vigorous hand, she had been instructed to declare that the ten years of his legal administration would soon elapse, and that, after a full trial of the vanity of the world, the emperor Contacusine sighed for the repose of a cloister, and was ambitious only of a heavenly crown. Had these sentiments been genuine, his voluntary abdication would have restored the peace of the empire, and his consciousness would have been relieved by an act of justice. Paleologus alone was responsible for his future government, and whatever might be his vices, they were surely less formidable than the calamities of a civil war, in which the barbarians and infidels were again invited to assist the Greeks in their mutual destruction. By the arms of the Turks, who now struck a deep and everlasting root in Europe, Contacusine prevailed in the third contest in which he would have been involved, and the young emperor, driven from the sea and land, was compelled to take shelter among the latins of the Isle of Tenedus. This insolence and obstinacy provoked the victor to a step which must render the quarrel irreconcilable, and the association of his son Matthew, whom he invested with the purple, established the succession in the family of the Contacusini. But Constantinople was still attached to the blood of her ancient princes, and this last injury accelerated the restoration of the rightful heir. A noble genocy espoused the cause of Paleologus, obtained a promise of his sister, and achieved the revolution with two galleys and two thousand five hundred auxiliaries. Under the pretense of distress, they were admitted into the lesser port, a gate was opened, and the latin shout of, long life and victory to the emperor John Paleologus, was answered by a general rising in his favour, a numerous and loyal party yet a dear to the standard of Contacusini, but he asserts in his history, does he hope for belief, that his tender conscience rejected the assurance of conquest, that, in free obedience to the voice of religion and philosophy, he descended from the throne and embraced with pleasure the monastic habit and profession. So soon as he ceased to be a prince, his successor was not unwilling, that he should be a saint. The remainder of his life was devoted to piety and learning, in the cells of Constantinople and Mount Athos. The Montjoesoph was respected as the temporal and spiritual father of the emperor, and if he issued from his retreat, it was as the minister of peace, to subdue the obstinacy and solicit the pardon of his rebellious son, yet in the cloister the mind of Contacusini was still exercised by theological war. He sharpened a controversial pen against the Jews and Mohammedans, and in every state he defended with equal zeal the divine light of Mount Thabor, a memorial question which consumates the religious follies of the Greeks. The Fakirs of India, and the monks of the Oriental Church, were alike persuaded, that in the total abstraction of the faculties of the mind and body, the purest spirit may ascend to the enjoyment and vision of the deity. The opinion and practices of the monasteries of Mount Athos will be best represented in the words of an abbot, who flourished in the eleventh century. When thou art alone in thy cell, says the ascetic teacher, shut thy door and seat thyself in a corner, raise thy mind above all things vain and transitory, recline thy beard and chin on thy breast, turn thy eyes and thy thoughts towards the middle of thy belly, the region of the navel, and search the place of the heart, the seat of the soul. At first all will be dark and comfortless, but if you persevere day and night, you will feel an ineffable joy, and no sooner has the soul discovered the place of the heart than it is involved in a mystic and ethereal light. This light, the production of a distempered fancy, the creature of an empty stomach and an empty brain, was adored by the quietests as the pure and perfect essence of God himself. And as long as the folly was confined to Mount Athos, the simple solitaries were not inquisitive how the divine essence could be a material substance, or how an immaterial substance could be perceived by the eyes of the body, but in the reign of the younger Andronicus, these monasteries were visited by Barlam, a Calibrian monk who was equally skilled in philosophy and theology, who possessed the language of the Greeks and Latins, and whose versatile genius could maintain their opposite creeds, according to the interest at the moment. The indiscretion of an ascetic revealed to the curious traveller the secrets of mental prayer, and Barlam embraced the opportunity of ridiculing the quietests, who placed the soul in the navel, of accusing the monks of Mount Athos of heresy and blasphemy. His attack compelled the more learned to renounce or disassemble the simple devotion of their brethren, and Gregory Palms introduced a scholastic distinction between the essence and operation of God. His inaccessible essence dwells in the midst of an uncreated and eternal light, and the beautific vision of the saints had been manifested to the disciples of Mount Thabor in the transfiguration of Christ. Yet this distinction could not escape the reproach of polyethyseum. The eternity of the light of Thabor was fiercely denied, and Barlam still charged the Palomites with holding two eternal substances, a visible and an invisible God. From the raid to the marks of Mount Athos, who threatened his life, the Calibrian retired to Constantinople, where his smooth and specious manners introduced him to the favour of the great domestic and the emperor. The court and the city were involved in the theological dispute, which flamed amidst the civil war. But the doctrine of Barlam was disgraced by his flight in apostate. But the doctrine of Barlam was disgraced by his flight in apostasy. The Palomites triumphed, and their adversary, the Patriarch John of Apry, was deposed by the consent of the adverse factions of the state. In the character of emperor and theologian, Contexin presided in the Synod of the Greek Church, which established, as an article of faith, the uncreated light of Mount Thabor. And after so many insults, the reason of mankind was slightly wounded by the addition of a single absurdity. Many roles of paper or parchment had been blotted, and the impenitent secretaries, who refused to subscribe the Orthodox creed, were deprived of the honours of Christian burial. But in the next age the question was forgotten, nor can I learn that the ax or the faggot were employed for the extropation of the Barlamite heresy. For the conclusion of this chapter, I have reserved the Genosi War, which shook the throne of Contexin, and portrayed the debility of the Greek Empire. The Genosi, who, after the recovery of Constantinople, was seated in the suburb of Perra or Galata, received that honourable fife from the bounty of the emperor. They were indulged in the use of their laws and magistrates, but they submitted to the duties of vassals and subjects. The forcible word of Leishman was borrowed from the Latin jurisprudence, and their Podesta or chief, before he entered on his office, saluted the emperor with loyal acclamations and vows of fidelity. The Genoese sealed a firm alliance with the Greeks, and in the case of a defensive war, a supply of fifty empty galleys, and a sacre of fifty galleys, completely armed and manned, were promised by the Republic to the Empire. In the revival of a naval force, it was the aim, of Michael Paleologus, to deliver himself from a foreign aid, and his vigorous government contained the Genosi of Galata within those limits which the insolence of wealth and freedom provoked them to exceed. A sailor threatened that they should soon be masters of Constantinople, and slew the Greek who resented this national affront. And an armed vessel, after refusing to salute the palace, was guilty of some acts of piracy in the Black Sea, their countrymen threatened to support their cause, but the long and unopened village of Galata was instantly surrounded by the imperial troops. Till, in the moment of the assault, the prostrate Genosi implored the clemency of their sovereign. The defenceless situation which secured their obedience exposed them to the attack of their Venetian rivals, who, in the reign of the elder Andronicus, presumed to violate the majesty of the throne. On the approach of their fleets, the Genosi, with their families and effects, retired into the city. Their empty habitations were reduced to ashes, and the feeble prince, who had viewed the destruction of his suburb, expressed his resentment not by arms, but by ambassadors. This misfortune, however, was advantageous to the Genosi, who obtained, and imperceptibly abused, the dangerous license of surrounding Galata, with a strong wall, of introducing into the ditch the waters of the sea, of erecting lofty turrets, and of mounting a train of military engines on the rampart, the narrow bounds in which they had been circumscribed, weren't sufficient for the growing colony. Each day they acquired some addition of landed property, and the adjacent hills were covered with their villas and castles, which they joined and protected by new fortifications. The navigation and trade of the Yuxin was a patrimony of the Greek emperors, who commanded the narrow entrance the gates as it were of that inland sea. In the reign of Michael Paleologus, their prerogative was acknowledged by the Sultan of Egypt, who solicited and obtained the liberty of sending an annual ship for the purchase of slaves in Circassia and the Lesser Tatary, a liberty pregnant with mischief to the Christian cause, since these youths were transformed by education and discipline into the formidable Marmalukes. From the colony of Perra, the Genosi engaged with superior advantage in the lucrative trade of the Black Sea, and their industry supplied the Greeks with fish and corn. Few articles of food almost equally important to a superstitious people. The spontaneous bounty of nature appears to have bestowed the harvests of Ukraine, the produce of a rude and savage husbandry, and the endless exportation of saltfish and caviar is annually renewed by the enormous sturgeons that are caught at the mouth of the Don, or to Nassus, in their last station of the rich mud and shallow waters of the Miotis. The waters of the Oxus, the Caspian, the Volga and the Don, opened a rare and laborious passage for the gems and spices of India. And after three months' march, the caravans of Charismi met the Italian vessels in the harbours of Crimea. These various branches of trade were monopolised by the diligence and power of the Genosi. Their rivals of Venice and Pisa were forcibly expelled. The natives were awed by the castles and cities, which arose on the foundations of their humble factories, and their principal establishment of Kaffa was perceived without effect by the Tartar powers. Destitute of a navy, the Greeks were oppressed by these haughty merchants, who fared or famished Constantinople according to their interest. They proceeded to assert the customs, the fishery, and even the toil of the Bosphorus, and while they derived from these objectives a revenue of two hundred thousand pieces of gold, a remnant of thirty thousand was reluctantly allowed to the emperor. The colony of Perra or Galata acted in peace and war as an independent state, and as it will happen in distant settlements, the Genosi Podesta too often forgot the tea was a servant of his own masters. These usurpations were encouraged by the weakness of the elder Andronicus, and by the civil wars that affected his age and the minority of his grandson. The talents of Katacusen were employed to the ruin rather than the restoration of the empire, and after his domestic victory he was condemned to an ignomaniac trial, whether the Greeks or the Genosi should reign in Constantinople. The merchants of Perra were offended by his refusal of some contagious land, some commanding heights, which they proposed to cover with new fortifications, and in the absence of the emperor, who was detained at Demotica by sickness, they ventured to brave the debility of a female reign. A Byzantine vessel, which had presumed to fit at the mouth of the harbour, was sunk by these audacious strangers. The fishermen were murdered. Instead of suing for pardon, the Genosi demanded satisfaction, required in a haughty strain that the Greeks should renounce the exercise of navigation, and encourage with regular arms the first sallies of the popular indignation. They instantly occupied the debated land, and by the labour of a whole people of either sex and of every age the wall was raised and the ditch was sunk with incredible speed. At the same time they attacked and burnt two Byzantine galleys, while the three others, the remainder of the imperial navy, escaped from their hands. The habitation without the gates or along the shore, were pillaged and destroyed, and the care of the regent of the emperor Cyrene was confined to the preservation of the city. The return of Cantacusine dispelled the public consternation. The emperor inclined to peaceful councils, but he yielded to the obstancy of his enemies, who rejected all reasonable terms, and to the ardour of his subjects, who threatened, in the style of scripture, to break them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Yet they reluctantly paid the taxes that he imposed for the construction of ships and the expenses of the war, and as the two nations were masters, the one of the land, the other of the sea, Constantinople and Perra, were pressed by the evils of a mutual siege. The merchants of the colony, who had believed that a few days would terminate the war, already murmured at their losses. The suckers from their mother country were delayed by the factions of Genoa, and the most cautious embraced the opportunity of a Rhodian vessel to remove their families and effects from the scene of hostility. In the spring the Byzantine fleet, seven galleys and a train of smaller vessels, issued from the mouth of the harbour, and steered in a single line along the shore of Perra, unskillfully presenting their sides to the beaks of their adverse squadron. The crews were composed of peasants and mechanics, nor was their ignorance compensated by the native courage of barbarians. The wind was strong, the waves were rough, and no sooner did the Greeks perceive a distant and inactive enemy than they leaped headlong into the sea, from a doubtful to an inevitable peril. The troops that marched to the attack of the lines of Perra were struck at the same moment with a similar panic, and the Genosi were astonished and almost ashamed at the double victory. Their triumphant vessels, crowned with flowers, and dragging after them the captive galleys, repeatedly passed and repast before the palace. The only virtue of the emperor was patience, and the hope of revenge is sole consolation. Yet the distress of both parties interposed a temporary agreement, and the shame of the empire was disguised by a thin veil of dignity and power, summoning the chiefs of the colony, Kentakuzine affected to despise the trifle objective of the debate, and, after a mild proof, most liberally granted the lands, which had been previously reassigned to the seeming custody of his officers, but the emperor was soon solicited to violate the treaty, and to join his arms with the Venetians, the perpetual enemies of Genoa and her colonies. While he compared to the reasons of peace and war, his moderation was provoked by a wanton insult of the inhabitants of Perra, who discharged from their ampart a large stone that fell in the midst of Constantinople. While he's just complained, they coldly blamed the imprudence of their engineer, but the next day the insult was repeated, and they exalted in a second proof that the royal city was not beyond the reach of their artillery. Kentakuzine instantly signed his treaty with the Venetians, but the weight of the Roman empire was scarcely felt in the balance of these opulent and powerful republics. From the Straits of Gibraltar to the mouth of the Tenaeus their fleets encountered each other with various success, and a memorial battle was fought in the narrow sea under the walls of Constantinople. It would not be an easy task to reconcile the accounts of the Greeks, the Venetians, and the Genosi, and while I depend on the narrative of an imperial historian, I shall borrow from each nation the facts that were down to their own disgrace, and the honour of their foes. The Venetians, with their allies the Catalan's, had the advantage of numbers, and their fleet, with the poor addition of eight Byzantine galleys, amounted to seventy-five sale. The Genosi did not exceed sixty-four, but in these times their ships of war were distinguished by the superiority of their size and strength. The names and families of their naval commanders, Pisoni and Doria, are illustrious in the annals of their country, but the personal merit of the former was eclipsed by the fame and abilities of his rival. They engaged in tempestuous weather, and the tumultary conflict was continued from the dawn to the extinction of light. The enemies of the Genosi imploded their prowess. The friends of the Venetians are dissatisfied with their behaviour, but all parties agree in praising the skill and boldness of the Catalan's, who, with many wounds, sustained the brunt of the action. In the separation of the fleets the event might appear doubtful, but the thirteen Genosi galleys that had been sunk or taken were compensated by a double loss of the allies, of fourteen Venetians, ten Catalan's and two Greeks, and even the grief of the conquerors expressed the assurance and habit of more decisive victories. Pisoni confessed his defeat by retiring into a fortified harbour, from Wents under the pretext of the orders of the Senate, he steered with a broken and flying squadron, for the Isle of Candia, and abandoned to his rivals the sovereignty of the sea. In a public epistle addressed to the Dodge and Senate, Petrash employs his eloquence to reconcile the maritime powers, the two luminaries of Italy. The orator celebrates the valour and victory of the Genosi, the first of men in the exercise of naval war. He drops a tear on the misfortunes of their Venetian brethren, but he exhorts them to pursue with fire and sword the base in perfidious Greeks, to purge the metropolis of the east from the heresy with which it was infected. Deserted by their friends, the Greeks were incapable of resistance, and three months after the battle, the Emperor Cantacuzine solicited and subscribed a treaty which for ever banished the Venetians and Catalans, and granted to the Genosi a monopoly of trade and almost a right of dominion. The Roman Empire, I smile in transcribing the name, might soon have sunk into a province of Genoa, if the ambition of the Republic had not been checked by the ruin of a freedom and naval power. A long contest of 130 years was determined by the triumph of Venice, and the factions of the Genosi compelled them to seek for domestic peace under the protection of a foreign lord, the Duke of Milan, or the French King. Yet the spirit of commerce survived that of conquest, and the colony of Paris delawed the capital and navigated the Yucsin, till it was involved by the Turks in the final servitude of Constantinople itself. Chapter 16, Part 1 of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume 6 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume 6 by Edward Gibbon Chapter 16, Moguls Ottoman Turks, Part 1 From the pity quarrels of a city and a suburb, from the cowardice and discord of the fallen Greeks, I shall now assent to the victorious Turks, whose domestic slavery was ennobled by martial discipline, religious enthusiasm and the energy of the national character. The rise and progress of the Ottomans, the present sovereigns of Constantinople, are connected with the most important scenes of modern history, but they are founded on a previous knowledge of the great eruption of the Moguls and the Tatars, whose rapid conquests may be compared with the primitive convulsions of nature, which have agitated and altered the surface of the globe. I have long since asserted my claim to introduce donations, the immediate or remote authors of the Fall of the Roman Empire, nor can I refuse myself to those events, which, from their common magnitude, will interest a philosophic mind in the history of blood. From the spacious highlands between China, Siberia and the Caspian Sea, the tide of emigration and war has repeatedly been poured. These ancient seeds of the Huns and Turks were occupied in the 12th century by many pastoral tribes of the same descent and similar manners, which were united and led to conquest by deformable Zingis. In his ascent to greatness, that barbarian, whose private appellation was Temugin, had trampled on the necks of his equals. His birth was noble, but it was the pride of victory that the prince or people deduced his seventh ancestor from the immaculate conception of a virgin. His father reigned over 13 hordes, which composed about 30 or 40,000 families. Above two-thirds refused to pay tithes or obedience to his infant son, and at the age of 13 Temugin fought a battle against his rebellious subjects. The future conqueror of Asia was reduced to fly and to obey, but he rose superior to his fortune, and in his fourteenth year he had established his fame and dominion over the circumjasoned tribes. In a state of society in which policy is rude and valor is universal, the ascendant of one man must be founded on his power and resolution to punish his enemies and recompense his friends. His first military league was ratified by the simple right of sacrificing a horse and tasting of a running stream. Temugin pledged himself to divide with his followers the sweets and the bitters of life, and when he had shared among them his horses and apparel, he was rich in their gratitude and his own hopes. After his first victory he placed 70 cauldrons on the fire, and 70 of the most guilty rebels were cast headlong into the boiling water. The sweros of his attraction was continually enlarged by the ruin of the proud and the submission of the prudent, and the boldest chieftains might tremble when they beheld and cased in silver the skull of the Khan of Karaites, who under the name of Presta John had corresponded with the Roman Pontif and the princes of Europe. The ambition of Temugin Khan descended to employ the arts of superstition, and it was from a naked prophet who could ascend to heaven on a white horse that he accepted the title of Zingis, the most great, and a divine right to the conquest and dominion of the earth. In a general corultae, or diet, he was seated on a felt which was long afterwards revered as a relic, and solemnly proclaimed great Khan, or Emperor of the Moguls and Tatars. Of these kindred, though rival names, the former had given birth to the imperial race, and the latter has been extended by accident or error over the spacious wilderness of the north. The code of laws which Zingis dictated to his subjects was adapted to the preservation of a domestic peace and the exercise of foreign hostility. The punishment of death was inflicted on the crimes of adultery, murder, perjury, and the capital thefts of a horse or ox, and the fiercest of men were mild and just in their intercourse with each other. The future election of the great Khan was vested in the princes of his family and the heads of the tribes, and the regulations of the chase were essential to the pleasures and plenty of a tartar camp. The victorious nation was held sacred from all servile labours, which were abandoned to slaves and strangers, and every labour was servile except the profession of arms. The service and discipline of the troops who were armed with bows, cimeters, and iron maces, and divided by hundreds, thousands, and ten thousands, were the institutions of a veteran commander. Each officer and soldier was made responsible under pain of death for the safety and honour of his companions, and the spirit of conquest breathed in the law that peace should never be granted unless to a vanquished and supplyant army. But it is in the religion of Zingis that best deserves our wonder and applause. The Catholic inquisitors of Europe who defended nonsense by cruelty might have been confounded by the example of a barbarian who anticipated lessons of philosophy and established by his laws a system of pure theism and perfect toleration. His first and only article of faith was the existence of one God, the Arthur of all good, who fills by his presence the heavens and earth which he has created by his power. The Tatars and Moguls were addicted to the idols of their peculiar tribes, and many of them had been converted by the foreign missionaries to religions of Moses, of Muhammad, and of Christ. These various systems in freedom and conquered were taught and practised within the precincts of the same camp, and the Bans, the Imam, the Rabbi, the Nestorian, and the Latin priest enjoyed the same honourable exemption from surface and tribute. In the mosque of Bahra, the insolent victim might trample the Quran under his hearse's feet, but the calm legislator respected the prophets and pontiffs of the most hostile sects. The reason of Zingis was not informed by books. The Khan could neither read nor write, and, except the tribe of the Igors, the greatest part of the Moguls and Tatars were as illiterate as their sovereign. The memory of their exploits was preserved by tradition. Sixty-eight years after the death of Zingis, these traditions were collected and transcribed. The brevity of their domestic annals may be supplied by the Chinese, Persians, Amyrians, Syrians, Arabians, Greeks, Russians, Poles, Hungarians, and Latins, and each nation will deserve credit in the relation of their own disasters and defeats.