*

rather flight, into the mountains of Servia, Cantacuzene 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 to five hundred volunteers. The cral, or despot of the Servians, received him with generous hospitality; but the ally was insensibly degraded to a suppliant, 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 cral 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 Cantacuzeni and Palæologi; 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 deplored the calamities of which he was the author and victim; and his own 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 princes of Servia (Ducange, Famil. Dalmaticæ, &c. c. 2-4. 9.) were styled despots in Greek, and cral in their native idiom (Ducange, Gloss. Græc. p. 751). That title, the equivalent of king, appears to be of Sclavonic origin, from whence it has been borrowed by the Hungarians, the modern Greeks, and even by the Turks (Leunclavius, Pandect. Turc. p. 422), who reserve the name of Padishah for the emperor. To obtain the latter, instead of the former, is the ambition of the French at Constantinople. (Avertissement à l'Histoire de Timur Bec, p. 39.) [This title was mistaken by Cantacuzene and his contemporaries, for a proper name; and Stephanus Krales figures throughout their histories as chief of the Triballians. The people themselves are thus miscalled also, for though evidently and notoriously Slavonians, the appellation given them is that of a tribe (whether Celtic or Gothic cannot be decided) who had once occupied those lands, but had disappeared a thousand years before. Pontanus (Note on Cantac. 1. 7) says, that kral was a contraction of kiral, which, in the language of the Servians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, &c., regem sonat." Kir, or kur, was a primæval term that denoted power; it was the root of the Persian Cyrus, the Greek kupios, the Latin curiæ, and of many words in all tongues connected with the same idea.—ED.]

66

the latter is the deadly heat of a fever, which consumes without a remedy the vitals of the constitution."*

The introduction of Barbarians and savages into the contests of civilized 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 Servia; but their religion rendered them the implacable foes of Rome and Christianity. To acquire the friendship of their emirs, the two factions vied with each other in baseness and profusion; the dexterity of Cantacuzene obtained the preference; but the succour 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 Apocaucus, the 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 old palace of Constantine was assigned for 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 Palæologian 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

* Nic. Gregoras, 1. 12, c. 14. It is surprising that Cantacuzene has not inserted this just and lively image in his own writings.

The two avengers were both Palæologi, who might resent with royal indignation, the shame of their chains. The tragedy of Apo

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 not 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 the 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 Cantacuzene; 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 synod, 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 Cantacuzene has not escaped the reproach of timidity and indolence. He successively recovered the provinces and cities; and the realm of his pupil was measured by the walls of Constantinople; but the metropolis alone counterbalanced the rest of the empire; nor could he attempt that important conquest till he had secured in his favour the public voice and a private correspondence. An Italian, of the name of Facciolati,t had succeeded to the office of great duke; the ships, the

caucus may deserve a peculiar reference to Cantacuzene (1. 3, c. 86) and Nic. Gregoras (1. 14, c. 10). *Cantacuzene accuses

the patriarch, and spares the empress, the mother of his sovereign (1. 3, c. 33, 34), against whom Nic. Gregoras expresses a particular animosity (1. 14, c. 10, 11; 1. 15, c. 5). It is true that they do not speak exactly of the same time. The traitor and treason are revealed by Nic. Gregoras (1. 15, c. 8); but the name is

102 CANTACUZENE RE-ENTERS CONSTANTINOPLE. [CH. LXIII.

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 have still 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 Palæologus was at 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 appearances of concord and magnificence, and both were equally fallacious. During the 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 proud poverty of the times, that the absence of gold and jewels was supplied by the paltry artifices of glass and gilt leather.*

I hasten to conclude the personal history of John Cantacuzene.† He triumphed and reigned; but his reign and triumph were clouded by the discontent of his own and the adverse faction. His followers might style the general amnesty, an act of pardon for his enemies, and of oblivion for his friends; in his cause their estates had been forfeited

more discreetly suppressed by his great accomplice (Cantacuzen. 1. 3, c. 99.) *Nic. Greg. 1. 15. 11. There were, however, some true pearls, but very thinly sprinkled. The rest of the stones had only παντοδαπὴν χροιὴν πρὸς τὸ διαυγές.

From his return to Constantinople, Cantacuzene continues his history and that of the empire, one year beyond the abdication of his son Matthew, A.D. 1357 (1. 4, c. 1-50, p. 705-911). Nicephorus Gregoras ends with the synod of Constantinople, in the year 1351 (1. 22, c. 3, p. 660, the rest to the conclusion of the twenty-fourth book, p. 717, is all controversy); and his fourteen last books are still MSS. in the king of France's library. The emperor (Cantacuzen. 1. 4, c. 1) represents his own virtue, and Nic. Gregoras (1. 15,

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 precarious 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 Cantacuzene, that they might be released from their oath of allegiance to the Palæologi, and intrusted with the defence of some cautionary towns; a measure supported with argument and eloquence; "and which was rejected," says the imperial historian, "by my sublime, and almost incredible virtue." His repose was disturbed by the sound of plots and seditions ;* 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 we may trust his own professions, Cantacuzene 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 Servian expedition the two emperors shewed 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, Palæologus was left at Thessalonica, a royal residence, and a frontier station, to secure by his absence the peace of Constantinople, and to withdraw his youth from the temptations of a luxu

c. 11), the complaints of his friends who suffered by its effects. I have lent them the words of our poor cavaliers after the Restoration.

*

[Cantacuzene alienated the feelings of the clergy and roused their indignation, by misappropriating the funds of St. Sophia. A portion of that cathedral having been thrown down by the earthquake of 1346, Simeon the Great Prince of Russia, and many of his nobles, remitted large sums to repair the injury. The money arrived at Constantinople about 1350, and was seized by Cantacuzene to pay his Ottoman mercenaries. This fact is quoted by Parisot (Cantacuzène homme d'état et historien) from book xxxviii. in the inedited MS. of Nicephorus Gregoras, preserved in the Royal Library of Paris. Finlay, ii. 561.-ED.