sorrow and repentance, his ill-dissembled joy on the removal CHAP. of two odious competitors. By these melancholy events, and LXIII. the increase of his disorders, the mind of the elder emperor was gradually alienated; and, after many fruitless reproofs, he transferred on another grandsons 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. Before 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. wars be the two April 20 Yet the capital, the clergy, and the senate, adhered to the Three civil person, or at least to the government, of the old emperor; and tween it was only in the provinces, by flight, and revolt, and foreign emperors. succour, that the malecontents could hope to vindicate their A. D. 1821, cause and subvert his throne. The soul of the enterprise was A. D. 1828, May 24. the great domestic John Cantacuzene: the sally from Constantinople is the first date of his actions and memorials; and if 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 pretence of hunting; erected his standard at Adrianople, and, in a few days, assembled fifty thousand horse and foot, whom neither honour nor duty could have armed against the barbarians. Such a force might have saved or commanded the empire; but their councils were discordant, their motions were slow and doubtful, and their progress was checked by intrigue and negotiation. The quarrel of the two Andronici 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, Thessalonica, and the islands, were left to the elder, while the younger acquired the sovereignty of the greatest part of Thrace, from Philippi to the Byzantine limits. By the second treaty, he stipulated the payment of his Coronation troops, his immediate coronation, and an adequate share of the younger power and revenue of the state. The third civil war was ter- A. D. 1895 minated by the surprise of Constantinople, the final retreat of Feb. 2. 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 * His destined heir was Michael Catharus, the bastard of Constantine his second son. In this project of excluding his grandson Andronicus, Nicephorus Gregoras (1. viii. c. 3,) agrees with Cantacuzene (1. i. e. 1, 2.) of the Androniens CHAP. with pity and applause; and his adherents repeated on all LXIII. sides the inconsistent promise, that he would increase the pay The elder the govern May 21. of the soldiers and alleviate the burthens of the people. The grievances of forty years were mingled in his revolt; and the rising generation was 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 annual revenue of five hundred thousand pounds; yet the richest of the sovereigns of Christendom was incapable of maintaining three thousand horse and twenty galleys to resist the destructive progress 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 will leave me nothing to lose." But the Greeks were soon admonished, that the public disorders could not be healed by a 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 intestine discord, and the intrigues of the ancient court, which tempted each malecontent to desert or betray the cause of 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 license of maintaining a thousand hounds, a thousand hawks, and a thousand huntsmen, was sufficient to sully his fame and disarm his ambition. Let us now survey the catastrophe of this busy plot, and abdicates the final situation of the principal actors. 10 The age of Anment, dronicus was consumed in civil discord; and, amidst the A. D. 1328, 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. His 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 terrors of a sleepless night. These terrors were quickly realized 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, despatched a suppliant message to resign the sceptre, and to obtain his life at the hands of the conqueror. The answer of his grand 9 See Nicephorus Gregoras, 1. viii. c. 6. The younger Andronicus complained, that in four years and four months a large sum of 350,000 byzants of gold was due to him for the expenses of his household (Cantacuzen. I. i. c. 48.) Yet he would have remitted the debt, if he might have been allowed to squeeze the farmers of the revenue. 10 I follow the chronology of Nicephorus Gregoras, who is remarkably exact. It is proved that Cantacuzene has mistaken the dates of his own actions, or rather that his text has been corrupted by ignorant transcribers. son was decent and pious; at the prayer of his friends, the CHAP. younger Adronicus assumed the sole administration; but the LXIII. elder still enjoyed the name and pre-eminence of the first emperor, the use of the great palace, and a pension of twentyfour thousand pieces of gold, one-half of which was assigned on the royal treasure, and the other on the fishery of Constantinople. But this 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 roved. 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 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 occasion 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 sacrifice is of some weight in the scale of humanity and religion. Four years after his ab- His death dication, Andronicus or Antony expired in a cell, in the seventy- Feb. 13. fourth year of his age; and the last strain of adulation could only promise a more splendid crown of glory in heaven, than he had enjoyed upon earth. 12 A. D. 1332, Andronicus A. D. 1328, June 15. Nor was the reign of the younger, more glorious or fortunate Reign of than that of the elder, Andronicus. 13 He gathered the fruits the younger, of ambition; but the taste was transient and bitter in the su-May 24 preme 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, 11 I have endeavoured to reconcile the 24,000 pieces of Cantacuzene (1. ii. c. i) with the ten thousand of Nicephorus Gregoras (1. ix. c. ii ;) the one of whom wished to soften, the other to magnify, the hardships of the old emperor. 12 See Nicephorus Gregoras (1. ix. 6, 7, 8. 10. 14, 1. x. c. 1.) The historian had tasted of the prosperity, and shared the retreat, of his benefactor; and that friendship which "waits or to the scaffold or the cell," should not lightly be aca bireling, a prostitute to praise." cused as 14 The sole reign of Andronicus the younger is described by Cantacuzene (1.. ir. c. 1-40, p. 191-339,) and Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. ix. c. 7—l. xi. ç. 11, p.. 262-361.) His two wives. CHAP. and the confusion of national dresses, are deplored by the LXIII. Greeks as the fatal symptoms of the decay of the empire. Adronicus 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 physic, 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 had 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 father14 was a petty lord15 in the poor and savage regions of the north of Germany;16 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.18 After the death of this childless princess, Andronicus sought in marriage Jane, the sister of the count of Savoy;19 and his suit was pre 17 14 Agues, or Irene, was the daughter of duke Henry the Wonderful, the chief of the house of Brunswick, and the fourth in descent from the famous Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria, and conqueror of the Sclavi, on the Baltic coast. Her brother Henry was surnamed the Greek, from his two journeys into the East: but these journeys were subsequent to his sister's marriage; and I am ignorant how Agnes was discovered in the heart of Germany, and recom. mended to the Byzantine court (Kimius, Memoirs of the House of Brunswick, p. 126--137.) 15 Henry the Wonderful was the founder of the branch of Grubenhagen, extinct in the year 1596 (Rimius, p. 287.) He resided in the castle of Wolfenbuttel, and possessed no more than the sixth part of the allodial estates of Brunswick and Luneburgh, which the Guelph family had saved from the confiscation of their great fiefs. The frequent partitions among brothers had almost ruined the princely houses of Germany, till that just, but pernicious, law was solely superseded by the right of primogeniture. The principality of Grubenhagen, one of the last remains of the Hercynian forest, is a woody, mountainous, and barren tract (Busching's Geography, vol. vi. p. 270-286, English translation.) 16 The royal author of the Memoirs of Brandenburgh will teach us, how justly, in a much later period, the north of Germany deserved the epithets of poor and barbarous (Essai sur les Mœurs, &c.) In the year 1306, in the woods of Luneburgh, some wild people of the Vened race were allowed to bury alive their infirm and useless parents (Rimius, p. 136.) 17 The assertion of Tacitus, that Germany was destitute of the precious metals, must be taken, even in his own time, with some limitation (Germania, c. 5. Annal. xi. 20.) According to Spener (Hist. Germaniæ Pragmatica, tom. i. p. 351,) Argentifodinæ, in Hercyniis montibus, imperante Othone magno (A. D. 968) primum apertæ, largam etiam opes augendi dederunt copiam : but Rimius (p. 258,259,) defers till the year 1016 the discovery of the silver mines of Grubenhagen, or the Upper Hartz, which were productive in the beginning of the xivth century, and which still yield a considerable revenue to the house of Brunswick. 18 Cantacuzene has given a most honourable testimony, d'ex Teparer auth θυγατηρ δακος ντι μπρεζακ (the modern Greeks employ the v7 for the s, and the μπ for the B, and the whole will read in the Italian idiom di Brunzuic,) Tag' au τοις επιφανες ατό, και λαμπρότητι παντας της ομοφυλος υπερβάλλοντος το γένος. The praise is just in itself, and pleasing to an English ear. 19 Anne, or Jane, was one of the four daughters of Amedée the Great, by a second marriage, and half sister of his successor Edward count of Savoy (Anderson's Tables, p. 650.) See Cantacuzene (1. i. c. 40—42.) ferred to that of the French king.20 The count respected in CHAP. his sister the superior majesty of a Roman empress her reti- LXIII. nue was composed of knights and ladies; she was regenerated and crowned in St. Sophia, under the more orthodox appellation of Anne; and, at the nuptial feast, the Greeks and Italians vied with each other in the martial exercises of tilts and tournaments. John Pa June 5. Fortune of Zenus. The empress Anne of Savoy survived her husband; their Reign of son, John Palæologus, was left an orphan and an emperor, in leologus. 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 Cantacuzene is alike honourable to the prince and the subject. It had been formed A. D. 1341, amidst the pleasures of their youth; their families were almost A. D. 1391. equally noble; and the recent lustre of the purple was amply Joho compensated by the energy of a private education. We have Cantacuseen that the young emperor was saved by Cantacuzene from the power of his grandfather; and, after six years of civil war, the same favourite 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 Ætolia were restored to their ancient allegiance. His enemies confess, that, among the public robbers, Cantacuzene alone was moderate and abstemious; and the free and voluntary account which he produces of his own wealth may sustain the presumption that it was devolved by inheritance, and not accumulated by rapine. He 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 heaped with an incredible store of wheat and barley; and the labour of a thousand yoke of oxen might cultivate, according to the practice of antiquity, about sixty-two thousand five hundred acres of arable land. 23 His pastures were stocked with two thousand five hundred 22 20 That king, if the fact be true, must have been Charles the Fair, who in five years (1321-1326) was married to three wives (Anderson, p. 628.) Anne of Savoy arrived at Constantinople in February 1326. 21 The noble race of the Cantacuzeni (illustrious from the xith century in the Byzantine annals) was drawn from the Paladins of France, the heroes of those romances which in the xiiith century were translated and read by the Greeks. (Ducange, Fam. Byzant. p. 258. 22 See Cantacuzene (1. iii. c. 24. 30. 36.) 23 Saferna, in Gaul, and Columella, in Italy, or Spain, allow two yoke of oxen, two drivers, and six labourers, for two hundred jugera (125 English acres) of arable land, and three more men must be added if there be much underwood (Columella de Re Rusticâ, 1. ii. c. 13, p. 441, edit. Gesner.) |
