associated his son Michael to the honors of the purple; and from the age
of eighteen to his premature death, that prince was acknowledged, above
twenty-five years, as the second emperor of the Greeks. [6] 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 which had
been disappointed in the first, generation. The boy was educated in the
palace as an heir and a favorite; and in the oaths 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 puerile
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 a monarch; 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 Genoese usurers of Pera;
and the 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 guards, 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. [7] 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 [8] 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
ardor of the younger faction.
[Footnote 6: He was crowned May 21st, 1295, and died October 12th, 1320,
(Ducange, Fam. Byz. p. 239.) His brother Theodore, by a second marriage,
inherited the marquisate of Montferrat, apostatized to the religion
and manners of the Latins, (oti kai gnwmh kai pistei kai schkati, kai
geneiwn koura kai pasin eqesin DatinoV hn akraijnhV. Nic. Greg. l. ix.
c. 1,) and founded a dynasty of Italian princes, which was extinguished
A.D. 1533, (Ducange, Fam. Byz. p. 249--253.)]
[Footnote 7: We are indebted to Nicephorus Gregoras (l. viii. c. 1)
for the knowledge of this tragic adventure; while Cantacuzene more
discreetly conceals the vices of Andronicus the Younger, of which he was
the witness and perhaps the associate, (l. i. c. 1, &c.)]
[Footnote 8: His destined heir was Michael Catharus, the bastard of
Constantine his second son. In this project of excluding his grandson
Andronicus, Nicephorus Gregoras (l. viii. c. 3) agrees with Cantacuzene,
(l. i. c. 1, 2.)]
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 succor, that the
malecontents could hope to vindicate their cause and subvert his throne.
The soul of the enterprise was 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. [89] 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 honor nor duty could have armed against the
Barbarians. Such a force might have saved or commanded the empire; but
their counsels 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 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 adherents 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
mingled in his revolt; and the rising generation was fatigued by the
endless prospect of a reign, whose favorites 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 richest of the sovereigns of Christendom was
incapable of maintaining three thousand horse and twenty galleys, to
resist the destructive progress of the Turks. [9] "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 favorite was not destined to
be the savior 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 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 license of maintaining a thousand
hounds, a thousand hawks, and a thousand huntsmen, was sufficient to
sully his fame and disarm his ambition.
[Footnote 89: The conduct of Cantacuzene, by his own showing, was
inexplicable. He was unwilling to dethrone the old emperor, and
dissuaded the immediate march on Constantinople. The young Andronicus,
he says, entered into his views, and wrote to warn the emperor of his
danger when the march was determined. Cantacuzenus, in Nov. Byz. Hist.
Collect. vol. i. p. 104, &c.--M.]
[Footnote 9: See Nicephorus Gregoras, l. viii. c. 6. The younger
Andronicus complained, that in four years and four months a sum
of 350,000 byzants of gold was due to him for the expenses of his
household, (Cantacuzen l. i. c. 48.) Yet he would have remitted the
debt, if he might have been allowed to squeeze the farmers of the
revenue.]
Let us now survey the catastrophe of this busy plot, and the final
situation of the principal actors. [10] 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. 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
grandson was decent and pious; at the prayer of his friends, the younger
Andronicus assumed the sole 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 neighborhood, [101] which roved with
impunity through the solitary courts; and a reduced allowance of ten
thousand pieces of gold [11] was all that he could ask, and more than he
could hope. His calamities were imbittered 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 abdication,
Andronicus or Antony expired in a cell, in the seventy-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] [121]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 101: And the washerwomen, according to Nic. Gregoras, p.
431.--M.]
[Footnote 11: I have endeavored to reconcile the 24,000 pieces of
Cantacuzene (l. ii. c. 1) with the 10,000 of Nicephorus Gregoras, (l.
ix. c. 2;) the one of whom wished to soften, the other to magnify, the
hardships of the old emperor.]
[Footnote 12: See Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. ix. 6, 7, 8, 10, 14, l. 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 accused as "a hireling, a prostitute
to praise." * Note: But it may be accused of unparalleled absurdity. He
compares the extinction of the feeble old man to that of the sun: his
coffin is to be floated like Noah's ark by a deluge of tears.--M.]
[Footnote 121: Prodigies (according to Nic. Gregoras, p. 460) announced
the departure of the old and imbecile Imperial Monk from his earthly
prison.--M.]
Nor was the reign of the younger, more glorious or fortunate than that
of the elder, Andronicus. [13] 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 dresses, 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 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 father [14] was a petty lord [15] in the poor and savage
regions of the north of Germany: [16] yet he derived some revenue from
his silver mines; [17] and his family is celebrated by the Greeks as the
most ancient and noble of the Teutonic name. [18] After the death of this
childish princess, Andronicus sought in marriage Jane, the sister of
the count of Savoy; [19] and his suit was preferred to that of the French
king. [20] 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 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.
[Footnote 13: The sole reign of Andronicus the younger is described by
Cantacuzene (l. ii. c. 1--40, p. 191--339) and Nicephorus Gregoras, (l.
ix c. 7--l. xi. c. 11, p. 262--361.)]
[Footnote 14: Agnes, 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 recommended
to the Byzantine court. (Rimius, Memoirs of the House of Brunswick, p.
126--137.]
[Footnote 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 a 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 slowly 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.)]
[Footnote 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 Murs, &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.)]
[Footnote 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. GermaniÊ Pragmatica, tom. i. p. 351,) _Argentifodin_ in Hercyniis
montibus, imperante Othone magno (A.D. 968) primum apertÊ, 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.]
[Footnote 18: Cantacuzene has given a most honorable testimony, hn d' ek
Germanvn auth Jugathr doukoV nti Mprouzouhk, (the modern Greeks employ
the nt for the d, and the mp for the b, and the whole will read in the
Italian idiom di Brunzuic,) tou par autoiV epijanestatou, kai?iamprothti
pantaV touV omojulouV uperballontoV. The praise is just in itself, and
pleasing to an English ear.]
[Footnote 19: Anne, or Jane, was one of the four daughters of AmedÈe
the Great, by a second marriage, and half-sister of his successor Edward
count of Savoy. (Anderson's Tables, p. 650. See Cantacuzene, l. i. c.
40--42.)]
[Footnote 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.]
The empress Anne of Savoy survived her husband: their son, John
PalÊologus, 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
Cantacuzene is alike honorable to the prince and the subject. It had
been formed amidst the pleasures of their youth: their families were
almost equally noble; [21] and the recent lustre of the purple was amply
compensated by the energy of a private education. We have seen that
the young emperor was saved by Cantacuzene from the power of his
grandfather; and, after six years of civil war, the same favorite
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 valor and conduct that the Isle of
Lesbos and the principality of ∆tolia 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 [22] may sustain
the presumption that he 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 labor 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 brood mares, two hundred camels, three hundred
mules, five hundred asses, five thousand horned cattle, fifty thousand
hogs, and seventy thousand sheep: [24] 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 favor of Cantacuzene 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 the guardian of his son, and the regent
of the empire.
[Footnote 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.)]
[Footnote 22: See Cantacuzene, (l. iii. c. 24, 30, 36.)]
[Footnote 23: Saserna, in Gaul, and Columella, in Italy or Spain, allow
two yoke of oxen, two drivers, and six laborers, 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 Rustica, l. ii. c. 13, p 441,
edit. Gesner.)]
[Footnote 24: In this enumeration (l. iii. c. 30) the French translation
of the president Cousin is blotted with three palpable and essential
errors. 1. He omits the 1000 yoke of working oxen. 2. He interprets the
pentakosiai proV diaciliaiV, by the number of fifteen hundred. * 3. He
confounds myriads with chiliads, and gives Cantacuzene no more than 5000
hogs. Put not your trust in translations! Note: * There seems to be
another reading, ciliaiV. Niebuhr's edit. in
loc.--M.]
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. [25] A guard of five hundred soldiers watched over
his person and the palace; the funeral of the late emperor was decently
performed; the capital was silent and submissive; and five hundred
letters, which Cantacuzene despatched in the first month, informed
the provinces of their loss and their duty. The prospect of a tranquil
minority was blasted by the great duke or admiral Apocaucus, 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 Apocaucus were by turns subservient to each
other; and his talents were applied to the ruin of his country.
His 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 Anne of Savoy to assert, 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 PalÊologi had
instructed his posterity to dread the example of a perfidious guardian.
The patriarch John of Apri was a proud and feeble old man, encompassed
by a 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 Apocaucus smiled at the
success of his own flattery, when he beheld the Byzantine priest
assuming the state and temporal claims of the Roman pontiff. [26] 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 was 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, he was
accused of treason; proscribed as an enemy of the church and state; and
delivered with all his adherents 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; [261] all his past
services were buried in oblivion; and he was driven by injustice to
perpetrate the crime of which he was accused. [27] From the review of
his preceding conduct, Cantacuzene appears to have been guiltless of any
treasonable designs; and the only suspicion of his innocence must arise
from the vehemence of his protestations, and the sublime purity which
he ascribes to his own virtue. While the empress and the patriarch
still affected the appearances 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.
[Footnote 25: See the regency and reign of John Cantacuzenus, and the
whole progress of the civil war, in his own history, (l. iii. c. 1--100,
p. 348--700,) and in that of Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. xii. c. 1--l. xv.
c. 9, p. 353--492.)]
[Footnote 26: He assumes the royal privilege of red shoes or buskins;
placed on his head a mitre of silk and gold; subscribed his epistles
with hyacinth or green ink, and claimed for the new, whatever
Constantine had given to the ancient, Rome, (Cantacuzen. l. iii. c. 36.
Nic. Gregoras, l. xiv. c. 3.)]
[Footnote 261: She died there through persecution and neglect.--M.]
[Footnote 27: Nic. Gregoras (l. xii. c. 5) confesses the innocence and
virtues of Cantacuzenus, the guilt and flagitious vices of Apocaucus;
nor does he dissemble the motive of his personal and religious enmity
to the former; nun de dia kakian allwn, aitioV o praotatoV thV tvn olwn
edoxaV? eioai jqoraV. Note: The alloi were the religious enemies and
persecutors of Nicephorus.--M.]
Chapter LXIII: Civil Wars And The Ruin Of The Greek Empire.--Part II.