sometimes clouded by an opposition of interest and passion. By ambition,
Isaac the Sebastocrator was excited to flight and rebellion, from whence
he was reclaimed by the firmness and clemency of John the Handsome. The
errors of Isaac, the father of the emperors of Trebizond, were short and
venial; but John, the elder of his sons, renounced forever his religion.
Provoked by a real or imaginary insult of his uncle, he escaped from the
Roman to the Turkish camp: his apostasy was rewarded with the sultan's
daughter, the title of Chelebi, or noble, and the inheritance of a
princely estate; and in the fifteenth century, Mahomet the Second
boasted of his Imperial descent from the Comnenian family. Andronicus,
the younger brother of John, son of Isaac, and grandson of Alexius
Comnenus, is one of the most conspicuous characters of the age; and his
genuine adventures might form the subject of a very singular romance. To
justify the choice of three ladies of royal birth, it is incumbent on me
to observe, that their fortunate lover was cast in the best proportions
of strength and beauty; and that the want of the softer graces was
supplied by a manly countenance, a lofty stature, athletic muscles, and
the air and deportment of a soldier. The preservation, in his old age,
of health and vigor, was the reward of temperance and exercise. A piece
of bread and a draught of water was often his sole and evening repast;
and if he tasted of a wild boar or a stag, which he had roasted with his
own hands, it was the well-earned fruit of a laborious chase. Dexterous
in arms, he was ignorant of fear; his persuasive eloquence could bend
to every situation and character of life, his style, though not his
practice, was fashioned by the example of St. Paul; and, in every deed
of mischief, he had a heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a
hand to execute. In his youth, after the death of the emperor John, he
followed the retreat of the Roman army; but, in the march through Asia
Minor, design or accident tempted him to wander in the mountains: the
hunter was encompassed by the Turkish huntsmen, and he remained some
time a reluctant or willing captive in the power of the sultan. His
virtues and vices recommended him to the favor of his cousin: he shared
the perils and the pleasures of Manuel; and while the emperor lived
in public incest with his niece Theodora, the affections of her sister
Eudocia were seduced and enjoyed by Andronicus. Above the decencies of
her sex and rank, she gloried in the name of his concubine; and both
the palace and the camp could witness that she slept, or watched, in
the arms of her lover. She accompanied him to his military command of
Cilicia, the first scene of his valor and imprudence. He pressed, with
active ardor, the siege of Mopsuestia: the day was employed in the
boldest attacks; but the night was wasted in song and dance; and a band
of Greek comedians formed the choicest part of his retinue. Andronicus
was surprised by the sally of a vigilant foe; but, while his troops fled
in disorder, his invincible lance transpierced the thickest ranks of
the Armenians. On his return to the Imperial camp in Macedonia, he was
received by Manuel with public smiles and a private reproof; but
the duchies of Naissus, Braniseba, and Castoria, were the reward or
consolation of the unsuccessful general. Eudocia still attended his
motions: at midnight, their tent was suddenly attacked by her angry
brothers, impatient to expiate her infamy in his blood: his daring
spirit refused her advice, and the disguise of a female habit; and,
boldly starting from his couch, he drew his sword, and cut his way
through the numerous assassins. It was here that he first betrayed his
ingratitude and treachery: he engaged in a treasonable correspondence
with the king of Hungary and the German emperor; approached the royal
tent at a suspicious hour with a drawn sword, and under the mask of a
Latin soldier, avowed an intention of revenge against a mortal foe;
and imprudently praised the fleetness of his horse as an instrument of
flight and safety. The monarch dissembled his suspicions; but, after the
close of the campaign, Andronicus was arrested and strictly confined in
a tower of the palace of Constantinople.
In this prison he was left about twelve years; a most painful restraint,
from which the thirst of action and pleasure perpetually urged him to
escape. Alone and pensive, he perceived some broken bricks in a corner
of the chamber, and gradually widened the passage, till he had explored
a dark and forgotten recess. Into this hole he conveyed himself, and
the remains of his provisions, replacing the bricks in their former
position, and erasing with care the footsteps of his retreat. At the
hour of the customary visit, his guards were amazed by the silence
and solitude of the prison, and reported, with shame and fear, his
incomprehensible flight. The gates of the palace and city were instantly
shut: the strictest orders were despatched into the provinces, for the
recovery of the fugitive; and his wife, on the suspicion of a pious act,
was basely imprisoned in the same tower. At the dead of night she beheld
a spectre; she recognized her husband: they shared their provisions;
and a son was the fruit of these stolen interviews, which alleviated
the tediousness of their confinement. In the custody of a woman, the
vigilance of the keepers was insensibly relaxed; and the captive had
accomplished his real escape, when he was discovered, brought back to
Constantinople, and loaded with a double chain. At length he found the
moment, and the means, of his deliverance. A boy, his domestic servant,
intoxicated the guards, and obtained in wax the impression of the keys.
By the diligence of his friends, a similar key, with a bundle of ropes,
was introduced into the prison, in the bottom of a hogshead. Andronicus
employed, with industry and courage, the instruments of his safety,
unlocked the doors, descended from the tower, concealed himself all day
among the bushes, and scaled in the night the garden-wall of the palace.
A boat was stationed for his reception: he visited his own house,
embraced his children, cast away his chain, mounted a fleet horse, and
directed his rapid course towards the banks of the Danube. At Anchialus
in Thrace, an intrepid friend supplied him with horses and money: he
passed the river, traversed with speed the desert of Moldavia and the
Carpathian hills, and had almost reached the town of Halicz, in the
Polish Russia, when he was intercepted by a party of Walachians, who
resolved to convey their important captive to Constantinople. His
presence of mind again extricated him from danger. Under the pretence of
sickness, he dismounted in the night, and was allowed to step aside from
the troop: he planted in the ground his long staff, clothed it with his
cap and upper garment; and, stealing into the wood, left a phantom to
amuse, for some time, the eyes of the Walachians. From Halicz he was
honorably conducted to Kiow, the residence of the great duke: the
subtle Greek soon obtained the esteem and confidence of Ieroslaus; his
character could assume the manners of every climate; and the Barbarians
applauded his strength and courage in the chase of the elks and bears
of the forest. In this northern region he deserved the forgiveness
of Manuel, who solicited the Russian prince to join his arms in the
invasion of Hungary. The influence of Andronicus achieved this important
service: his private treaty was signed with a promise of fidelity on one
side, and of oblivion on the other; and he marched, at the head of the
Russian cavalry, from the Borysthenes to the Danube. In his resentment
Manuel had ever sympathized with the martial and dissolute character of
his cousin; and his free pardon was sealed in the assault of Zemlin, in
which he was second, and second only, to the valor of the emperor.
No sooner was the exile restored to freedom and his country, than his
ambition revived, at first to his own, and at length to the public,
misfortune. A daughter of Manuel was a feeble bar to the succession of
the more deserving males of the Comnenian blood; her future marriage
with the prince of Hungary was repugnant to the hopes or prejudices of
the princes and nobles. But when an oath of allegiance was required to
the presumptive heir, Andronicus alone asserted the honor of the Roman
name, declined the unlawful engagement, and boldly protested against the
adoption of a stranger. His patriotism was offensive to the emperor, but
he spoke the sentiments of the people, and was removed from the royal
presence by an honorable banishment, a second command of the Cilician
frontier, with the absolute disposal of the revenues of Cyprus. In
this station the Armenians again exercised his courage and exposed his
negligence; and the same rebel, who baffled all his operations, was
unhorsed, and almost slain by the vigor of his lance. But Andronicus
soon discovered a more easy and pleasing conquest, the beautiful
Philippa, sister of the empress Maria, and daughter of Raymond of
Poitou, the Latin prince of Antioch. For her sake he deserted his
station, and wasted the summer in balls and tournaments: to his love
she sacrificed her innocence, her reputation, and the offer of an
advantageous marriage. But the resentment of Manuel for this domestic
affront interrupted his pleasures: Andronicus left the indiscreet
princess to weep and to repent; and, with a band of desperate
adventurers, undertook the pilgrimage of Jerusalem. His birth, his
martial renown, and professions of zeal, announced him as the champion
of the Cross: he soon captivated both the clergy and the king; and the
Greek prince was invested with the lordship of Berytus, on the coast of
Phnicia. In his neighborhood resided a young and handsome queen, of his
own nation and family, great-granddaughter of the emperor Alexis, and
widow of Baldwin the Third, king of Jerusalem. She visited and loved her
kinsman. Theodora was the third victim of his amorous seduction; and her
shame was more public and scandalous than that of her predecessors. The
emperor still thirsted for revenge; and his subjects and allies of the
Syrian frontier were repeatedly pressed to seize the person, and put out
the eyes, of the fugitive. In Palestine he was no longer safe; but the
tender Theodora revealed his danger, and accompanied his flight. The
queen of Jerusalem was exposed to the East, his obsequious concubine;
and two illegitimate children were the living monuments of her weakness.
Damascus was his first refuge; and, in the characters of the great
Noureddin and his servant Saladin, the superstitious Greek might learn
to revere the virtues of the Mussulmans. As the friend of Noureddin he
visited, most probably, Bagdad, and the courts of Persia; and, after
a long circuit round the Caspian Sea and the mountains of Georgia, he
finally settled among the Turks of Asia Minor, the hereditary enemies
of his country. The sultan of Colonia afforded a hospitable retreat to
Andronicus, his mistress, and his band of outlaws: the debt of gratitude
was paid by frequent inroads in the Roman province of Trebizond; and
he seldom returned without an ample harvest of spoil and of Christian
captives. In the story of his adventures, he was fond of comparing
himself to David, who escaped, by a long exile, the snares of the
wicked. But the royal prophet (he presumed to add) was content to lurk
on the borders of JudÊa, to slay an Amalekite, and to threaten, in his
miserable state, the life of the avaricious Nabal. The excursions of the
Comnenian prince had a wider range; and he had spread over the Eastern
world the glory of his name and religion. By a sentence of the Greek
church, the licentious rover had been separated from the faithful;
but even this excommunication may prove, that he never abjured the
profession of Christianity.
His vigilance had eluded or repelled the open and secret persecution
of the emperor; but he was at length insnared by the captivity of his
female companion. The governor of Trebizond succeeded in his attempt
to surprise the person of Theodora: the queen of Jerusalem and her two
children were sent to Constantinople, and their loss imbittered the
tedious solitude of banishment. The fugitive implored and obtained a
final pardon, with leave to throw himself at the feet of his sovereign,
who was satisfied with the submission of this haughty spirit. Prostrate
on the ground, he deplored with tears and groans the guilt of his past
rebellion; nor would he presume to arise, unless some faithful subject
would drag him to the foot of the throne, by an iron chain with which he
had secretly encircled his neck. This extraordinary penance excited the
wonder and pity of the assembly; his sins were forgiven by the church
and state; but the just suspicion of Manuel fixed his residence at a
distance from the court, at Oenoe, a town of Pontus, surrounded with
rich vineyards, and situate on the coast of the Euxine. The death of
Manuel, and the disorders of the minority, soon opened the fairest field
to his ambition. The emperor was a boy of twelve or fourteen years of
age, without vigor, or wisdom, or experience: his mother, the empress
Mary, abandoned her person and government to a favorite of the Comnenian
name; and his sister, another Mary, whose husband, an Italian, was
decorated with the title of CÊsar, excited a conspiracy, and at length
an insurrection, against her odious step-mother. The provinces were
forgotten, the capital was in flames, and a century of peace and order
was overthrown in the vice and weakness of a few months. A civil war was
kindled in Constantinople; the two factions fought a bloody battle in
the square of the palace, and the rebels sustained a regular siege in
the cathedral of St. Sophia. The patriarch labored with honest zeal to
heal the wounds of the republic, the most respectable patriots called
aloud for a guardian and avenger, and every tongue repeated the praise
of the talents and even the virtues of Andronicus. In his retirement,
he affected to revolve the solemn duties of his oath: "If the safety or
honor of the Imperial family be threatened, I will reveal and oppose
the mischief to the utmost of my power." His correspondence with the
patriarch and patricians was seasoned with apt quotations from the
Psalms of David and the epistles of St. Paul; and he patiently waited
till he was called to her deliverance by the voice of his country. In
his march from Oenoe to Constantinople, his slender train insensibly
swelled to a crowd and an army: his professions of religion and loyalty
were mistaken for the language of his heart; and the simplicity of a
foreign dress, which showed to advantage his majestic stature, displayed
a lively image of his poverty and exile. All opposition sunk before him;
he reached the straits of the Thracian Bosphorus; the Byzantine navy
sailed from the harbor to receive and transport the savior of the
empire: the torrent was loud and irresistible, and the insects who had
basked in the sunshine of royal favor disappeared at the blast of the
storm. It was the first care of Andronicus to occupy the palace, to
salute the emperor, to confine his mother, to punish her minister,
and to restore the public order and tranquillity. He then visited the
sepulchre of Manuel: the spectators were ordered to stand aloof, but as
he bowed in the attitude of prayer, they heard, or thought they heard, a
murmur of triumph or revenge: "I no longer fear thee, my old enemy, who
hast driven me a vagabond to every climate of the earth. Thou art safety
deposited under a seven-fold dome, from whence thou canst never arise
till the signal of the last trumpet. It is now my turn, and speedily
will I trample on thy ashes and thy posterity." From his subsequent
tyranny we may impute such feelings to the man and the moment; but it
is not extremely probable that he gave an articulate sound to his secret
thoughts. In the first months of his administration, his designs were
veiled by a fair semblance of hypocrisy, which could delude only the
eyes of the multitude; the coronation of Alexius was performed with due
solemnity, and his perfidious guardian, holding in his hands the body
and blood of Christ, most fervently declared that he lived, and was
ready to die, for the service of his beloved pupil. But his numerous
adherents were instructed to maintain, that the sinking empire must
perish in the hands of a child, that the Romans could only be saved by a
veteran prince, bold in arms, skilful in policy, and taught to reign by
the long experience of fortune and mankind; and that it was the duty of
every citizen to force the reluctant modesty of Andronicus to undertake
the burden of the public care. The young emperor was himself constrained
to join his voice to the general acclamation, and to solicit the
association of a colleague, who instantly degraded him from the supreme
rank, secluded his person, and verified the rash declaration of the
patriarch, that Alexius might be considered as dead, so soon as he was
committed to the custody of his guardian. But his death was preceded
by the imprisonment and execution of his mother. After blackening her
reputation, and inflaming against her the passions of the multitude, the
tyrant accused and tried the empress for a treasonable correspondence
with the king of Hungary. His own son, a youth of honor and humanity,
avowed his abhorrence of this flagitious act, and three of the judges
had the merit of preferring their conscience to their safety: but the
obsequious tribunal, without requiring any reproof, or hearing any
defence, condemned the widow of Manuel; and her unfortunate son
subscribed the sentence of her death. Maria was strangled, her corpse
was buried in the sea, and her memory was wounded by the insult most
offensive to female vanity, a false and ugly representation of her
beauteous form. The fate of her son was not long deferred: he was
strangled with a bowstring; and the tyrant, insensible to pity or
remorse, after surveying the body of the innocent youth, struck it
rudely with his foot: "Thy father," he cried, "was a _knave_, thy mother
a _whore_, and thyself a _fool_!"
The Roman sceptre, the reward of his crimes, was held by Andronicus
about three years and a half as the guardian or sovereign of the empire.
His government exhibited a singular contrast of vice and virtue. When
he listened to his passions, he was the scourge; when he consulted his
reason, the father, of his people. In the exercise of private justice,
he was equitable and rigorous: a shameful and pernicious venality
was abolished, and the offices were filled with the most deserving
candidates, by a prince who had sense to choose, and severity to punish.
He prohibited the inhuman practice of pillaging the goods and persons of
shipwrecked mariners; the provinces, so long the objects of oppression
or neglect, revived in prosperity and plenty; and millions applauded the
distant blessings of his reign, while he was cursed by the witnesses of
his daily cruelties. The ancient proverb, That bloodthirsty is the man
who returns from banishment to power, had been applied, with too much
truth, to 'Marius and Tiberius; and was now verified for the third time
in the life of Andronicus. His memory was stored with a black list
of the enemies and rivals, who had traduced his merit, opposed his
greatness, or insulted his misfortunes; and the only comfort of
his exile was the sacred hope and promise of revenge. The necessary
extinction of the young emperor and his mother imposed the fatal
obligation of extirpating the friends, who hated, and might punish, the
assassin; and the repetition of murder rendered him less willing, and
less able, to forgive. A horrid narrative of the victims whom he
sacrificed by poison or the sword, by the sea or the flames, would be
less expressive of his cruelty than the appellation of the halcyon days,
which was applied to a rare and bloodless week of repose: the tyrant
strove to transfer, on the laws and the judges, some portion of his
guilt; but the mask was fallen, and his subjects could no longer mistake
the true author of their calamities. The noblest of the Greeks,
more especially those who, by descent or alliance, might dispute the
Comnenian inheritance, escaped from the monster's den: Nice and Prusa,
Sicily or Cyprus, were their places of refuge; and as their flight was
already criminal, they aggravated their offence by an open revolt, and
the Imperial title. Yet Andronicus resisted the daggers and swords of
his most formidable enemies: Nice and Prusa were reduced and chastised:
the Sicilians were content with the sack of Thessalonica; and the
distance of Cyprus was not more propitious to the rebel than to the
tyrant. His throne was subverted by a rival without merit, and a people
without arms. Isaac Angelus, a descendant in the female line from the
great Alexius, was marked as a victim by the prudence or superstition
of the emperor. In a moment of despair, Angelus defended his life and
liberty, slew the executioner, and fled to the church of St. Sophia. The
sanctuary was insensibly filled with a curious and mournful crowd, who,
in his fate, prognosticated their own. But their lamentations were soon
turned to curses, and their curses to threats: they dared to ask, "Why
do we fear? why do we obey? We are many, and he is one: our patience is
the only bond of our slavery." With the dawn of day the city burst into
a general sedition, the prisons were thrown open, the coldest and most
servile were roused to the defence of their country, and Isaac, the
second of the name, was raised from the sanctuary to the throne.
Unconscious of his danger, the tyrant was absent; withdrawn from the
toils of state, in the delicious islands of the Propontis. He had
contracted an indecent marriage with Alice, or Agnes, daughter of Lewis
the Seventh, of France, and relict of the unfortunate Alexius; and his
society, more suitable to his temper than to his age, was composed of
a young wife and a favorite concubine. On the first alarm, he rushed
to Constantinople, impatient for the blood of the guilty; but he was
astonished by the silence of the palace, the tumult of the city, and the
general desertion of mankind. Andronicus proclaimed a free pardon to his
subjects; they neither desired, nor would grant, forgiveness; he offered
to resign the crown to his son Manuel; but the virtues of the son could
not expiate his father's crimes. The sea was still open for his retreat;
but the news of the revolution had flown along the coast; when fear had
ceased, obedience was no more: the Imperial galley was pursued and taken
by an armed brigantine; and the tyrant was dragged to the presence of
Isaac Angelus, loaded with fetters, and a long chain round his neck. His
eloquence, and the tears of his female companions, pleaded in vain for
his life; but, instead of the decencies of a legal execution, the new
monarch abandoned the criminal to the numerous sufferers, whom he had
deprived of a father, a husband, or a friend. His teeth and hair, an eye
and a hand, were torn from him, as a poor compensation for their loss:
and a short respite was allowed, that he might feel the bitterness
of death. Astride on a camel, without any danger of a rescue, he was
carried through the city, and the basest of the populace rejoiced to
trample on the fallen majesty of their prince. After a thousand blows
and outrages, Andronicus was hung by the feet, between two pillars, that
supported the statues of a wolf and an a sow; and every hand that could
reach the public enemy, inflicted on his body some mark of ingenious or
brutal cruelty, till two friendly or furious Italians, plunging their
swords into his body, released him from all human punishment. In this
long and painful agony, "Lord, have mercy upon me!" and "Why will you
bruise a broken reed?" were the only words that escaped from his mouth.
Our hatred for the tyrant is lost in pity for the man; nor can we blame
his pusillanimous resignation, since a Greek Christian was no longer
master of his life.
I have been tempted to expatiate on the extraordinary character and
adventures of Andronicus; but I shall here terminate the series of the
Greek emperors since the time of Heraclius. The branches that sprang
from the Comnenian trunk had insensibly withered; and the male line
was continued only in the posterity of Andronicus himself, who, in the
public confusion, usurped the sovereignty of Trebizond, so obscure in
history, and so famous in romance. A private citizen of Philadelphia,
Constantine Angelus, had emerged to wealth and honors, by his
marriage with a daughter of the emperor Alexius. His son Andronicus
is conspicuous only by his cowardice. His grandson Isaac punished and
succeeded the tyrant; but he was dethroned by his own vices, and the
ambition of his brother; and their discord introduced the Latins to the
conquest of Constantinople, the first great period in the fall of the
Eastern empire.