alarmed the fears, and restored the confidence, of the emperor, by a prophetic assurance, that the German heretic, after assaulting the gate of Blachernes, would be made a signal example of the divine vengeance. The passage of these mighty armies were rare and perilous events; but the crusades introduced a frequent and familiar intercourse between the two nations, which enlarged their knowledge without abating their prejudices. The wealth and luxury of Con stantinople demanded the productions of every climate: hese imports were balanced by the art and labor of her numerous inhabitants; her situation invites the commerce of the world; and, in every period of her existence, that commerce has been in the hands of foreigners. After the decline of Amalphi, the Venetians, Pisans, and Genoese, introduced their factories and settlements into the capital of the empire their services were rewarded with honors and immunities; they acquired the possession of lands and houses; their families were multiplied by marriages with the natives; and, after the toleration of a Mahometan mosque, it was impossible to interdict the churches of the Roman rite.13 The two wives of Manuel Comnenus 14 were of the race of the Franks the first, a sister-in-law of the emperor Conrad; the second, a daughter of the prince of Antioch: he obtained for his son Alexius a daughter of Philip Augustus, king of France; and he bestowed his own daughter on a marquis of Montferrat, who was educated and dignified in the palace of Constantinople. The Greek encountered the arms, and aspired to the empire, of the West: he esteemed the valor and trusted the fidelity, of the Franks; 15 their military tal

observes, (in Scriptores Freher. tom. i. p. 409, edit. Struv.,) Græci hæreticos nos appellant: clerici et monachi dictis et factis persequuntur. We may add the declaration of the emperor Baldwin fifteen years afterwards: Hæc est (gens) quæ Latinos omnes non hominum nomine, sed canum dignabatur; quorum sanguinem effundere penè inter merita reputabant, (Gesta Innocent. III. c. 92, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. iii. pars i. p. 536.) There may be some exaggeration, but it was as effectual for the action and reaction of hatred.obras

13 See Anna Comnena, (Alexiad, 1. vi. p. 161, 162,) and a remarkable passage of Nicetas, (in Manuel, 1. v. c. 9,) who observes of the Venetians, κατά σμήνη και φρατρίας τὴν Κωνσταντίνου πόλιν τῆς οἰκείας ἀλλάξαντο, &c.

Ducange, Fam Byzant. p. 186, 187.

Nicetas in Manuel. 1. vii. c. 2. Regnante enia (Manuele) ..

ents were unfitly recompensed by the lucrative offices of judges and treasurers; the policy of Manuel had solicited the alliance of the pope; and the popular voice accused him of a partial bias to the nation and religion of the Latins.16 During his reign, and that of his successor Alexius, they were exposed at Constantinople to the reproach of foreigners, heretics, and favorites; and this triple guilt was severely expi ated in the tumult, which announced the return and elevation of Andronicus.17 The people rose in arms: from the Asiatic shore the tyrant despatched his troops and galleys to assist the national revenge; and the hopeless resistance of the strangers served only to justify the rage, and sharpen the daggers, of the assassins. Neither age, nor sex, nor the ties of friendship or kindred, could save the victims of national hatred, and avarice, and religious zeal; the Latins were slaughtered in their houses and in the streets; their quarter was reduced to ashes; the clergy were burnt in their churches, and the sick in their hospitals; and some estimate may be formed of the slain from the clemency which sold above four thousand Christians in perpetual slavery to the Turks. The priests and monks were the loudest and most active in the destruction of the schismatics; and they chanted a thanksgiving to the Lord, when the head of a Roman cardinal, the pope's legate, was severed from his body, fastened to the tail of a dog, and dragged, with savage mockery, through the city. The more diligent of the had retreated, strangers the first alarm, to their vessels, and escaped through the Hellespont from the scene of blood. In their flight, they burnt and ravaged two hundred miles of the sea-coast; inflicted a severe revenge on the guiltless subjects of the empire; marked the priests and monks as their peculiar enemies; and

apud eum tantam Latinus populus repererat gratiam ut neglectis Græculis suis tanquam viris mollibus et effœminatis, solis Latinis grandia committeret negotia erga eos profusâ liberalitate abundabat . ex omni orbe ad eum tanquam ad benefactorem nobiles et ignobiles concurrebant. Willelm. Tyr. xxii. c. 10. 16 The suspicions of the Greeks would have been confirmed, if they had seen the political epistles of Manuel to Pope Alexander III., the nemy of his enemy Frederic I., in which the emperor declares his wish of uniting the Greeks and Latins as one flock under one shepherd, &c. (See Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. xv. p. 187, 213, 243.) 17 See the Greek and Latin narratives in Nicetas (in Alexio Com neno, c. 10) and Williamond loud, copious, and tragical. of Tyre, (1. xxii. c. 10, 11, 12, 13;) the first soft and concise, the

comper sad, by the accumulation of plunder, the loss of their property and friends. On their return, they exposed to Italy and Europe the wealth and weakness, the perfidy and malice, of the Greeks, whose vices were painted as the gen uine characters of heresy and schism. The scruples of the first crusaders had neglected the fairest opportunities of secur ing, by the possession of Constantinople, the way to the Holy Land: a domestic revolution invited, and almost compelled, the French and Venetians to achieve the conquest of the Roman empire of the East.

In the series of the Byzantine princes, I have exhibited the hypocrisy and ambition, the tyranny and fall, of Andronicus, the last male of the Comnenian family who reigned at Constantinople. The revolution, which cast him headlong from the throne, saved and exalted Isaac Angelus,18 who descended by the females from the same Imperial dynasty. The successor of a second Nero might have found it an easy task to deserve the esteem and affection of his subjects; they sometimes had reason to regret the administration of Andronicus. The sound and vigorous mind of the tyrant was capa ble of discerning the connection between his own and the public interest; and while he was feared by all who could inspire him with fear, the unsuspected people, and the remote provinces, might bless the inexorable justice of their master. But his successor was vain and jealous of the supreme power, which he wanted courage and abilities to exercise: his vices were pernicious, his virtues (if he possessed any virtues) were useless, to mankind; and the Greeks, who imputed their calamities to his negligence, denied him the merit of any transient or accidental benefits of the times. Isaac slept on the throne, and was awakened only by the sound of pleasure: his vacant hours were amused by comedians and buffoons, and even to these buffoons the emperor was an object of contempt his feasts and buildings exceeded the examples of royal luxury: the number of his eunuchs and domestics amounted to twenty thousand; and a daily sum of four thousand pounds of silver would swell to four millions sterling the annual expense of his household and table. His poverty was

18 The history of the reign of Isaac Angelus is composed. in three books, by the senator Nicetas, (p. 228-290;) and his offices of logo thete, or principal secretary, and judge of the veil or palace, conld not bribe the impartiality of the historian. He wrote, it is true, after the fall and death of his benefactor.

relieved by oppression; and the public discontent was in flamed by equal abuses in the collection, and the application of the revenue. While the Greeks numbered the days of their servitude, a flattering prophet, whom he rewarded with the dignity of patriarch, assured him of a long and victori ous reign of thirty-two years; during which he should extend his sway to Mount Libanus, and his conquests beyond the Euphrates. But his only step towards the accomplishment of the prediction was a splendid and scandalous embas sy to Saladin,19 to demand the restitution of the holy sepul chre, and to propose an offensive and defensive league with the enemy of the Christian name. In these unworthy hands, of Isaac and his brother, the remains of the Greek empire crumbled into dust. The Island of Cyprus, whose name excites the ideas of elegance and pleasure, was usurped by his namesake, a Comnenian prince; and by a strange concatenation of events, the sword of our English Richard bestowed that kingdom on the house of Lusiguan, a rich compensation for the loss of Jerusalem.

The honor of the monarchy and the safety of the capital were deeply wounded by the revolt of the Bulgarians and Walachians. Since the victory of the second Basil, they had supported, above a hundred and seventy years, the loose dominion of the Byzantine princes; but no effectual measures had been adopted to impose the yoke of laws and manners on these savage tribes. By the command of Isaac, their sole means of subsistence, their flocks and herds, were driven away, to contribute towards the pomp of the royal nuptials; and their fierce warriors were exasperated by the denial of equal rank and pay in the military service. Peter and Asan, two powerful chiefs, of the races of the ancient kings,2 asserted their own rights and the national freedom; their dæmoniac impostors proclaimed to the crowd, that their glorious patron St. Demetrius had forever deserted the cause of the Greeks; and the conflagration spread from the banks

20

See Bohadin, Vit. Saladin. p. 129-131, 226, vers. Schultens. The ambassador of Isaac was equally versed in the Greek, French, and Arabic languages; a rare instance in those times. His embassies were received with honor, dismissed without effect, and reported with scandal in the West.

20 Ducange, Familiæ Dalmaticæ, p. 318, 319, 320. The original torrespondence of the Bulgarian king and the Roman pontiff is inscribed in the Gesta Innocent. III. c. 66-82, p. 513–525.

of the Danube to the hills of Macedonia and Thrace. After some faint efforts, Isaac Angelus and his brother acquiesced in their independence; and the Imperial troops were soon discouraged by the bones of their fellow-soldiers, that were scattered along the passes of Mount Hæmus. By the arms and policy of John or Joannices, the second kingdom of Bulgaria was firmly established. The subtle Barbarian sent an embassy to Innocent the Third, to acknowledge himself a genuine son of Rome in descent and religion,21 and humbly received from the pope the license of coining money, the royal title, and a Latin archbishop or patriarch. The Vatican exulted in the spiritual conquest of Bulgaria, the first object of the schism; and if the Greeks could have preserved the prerogatives of the church, they would gladly have resigned the rights of the monarchy.

The Bulgarians were malicious enough to pray for the long life of Isaa Angelus, the surest pledge of their freedom and prosperity. Yet their chiefs could involve in the same indiscriminate contempt the family and nation of the emperor. "In all the Greeks," said Asan to his troops," the same climate, and character, and education, will be productive of the same fruits. Behold my lance," continued the warrior, "and the long streamers that float in the wind. They differ only in color; they are formed of the same silk, and fashioned by the same workman; nor has the stripe that is stained in purple any superior price or value above its fellows." 22 Several artof these candidates for the purple successively rose and fell atrunder the empire of Isaac; a general, who had repelled the fleets of Sicily, was driven to revolt and ruin by the ingrati tude of the prince; and his luxurious repose was disturbed by secret.conspiracies and popular insurrections. The em peror was saved by accident, or the merit of his servants: he was at length oppressed by an ambitious brother, who, for

"The pope acknowledges his pedigree, a nobili urbis Romæ prosapiâ genitores tui originem traxerunt. This tradition, and the strong resemblance of the Latin and Walachian idioms, is explained by M D'Anville, (Etats de l'Europe, p. 258-262.) The Italian colonies of the Dacia of Trajan were swept away by the tide of emigration from the Danube to the Volga, and brought back by another wave from the Volga to the Danube. Possible, but strange!

22 This parable is in the best savage style; but I wish the Walach had not introduced the classic name of Mysiars, the experiment of the magnet or loadstone, and the passage of an cd con is poet, (Nicetas, in Alex. Comneno, 1. i. p. 299, 300.)