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be healed by a civil war; and that their young CHAP. favourite was not deftined to be the faviour of a falling empire. On the first repulfe, his party was broken by his own levity, their inteftine difcord, and the intrigues of the ancient court, which tempted each malecontent to defert or betray the. cause of rebellion. Andronicus the younger was touched with remorfe, or fatigued with business, or deceived by negociation: pleasure rather than power was his aim; and the licence of maintaining a thousand hounds, a thoufand hawks, and à thousand huntsmen, was fufficient to fully his fame and difarm his ambition.

Andronicus abdi

cates the ment,

govern

A. D. 1328,

Let us now furvey the catastrophe of this bufy The elder plot, and the final fituation of the principal actors. The age of Andronicus was confumed in civil difcord; and, amidst the events of war and treaty, his power and reputation continually decayed, till the fatal night in which the gates of May 24. the city and palace were opened without refiftance to his grandfon. His principal commander fcorned the repeated warnings of danger; and retiring to rest in the vain fecurity of ignorance, abandoned the feeble monarch, with fome priests and pages, to the terrors of a fleepless night. These terrors were quickly realized by the hoftile fhouts, which proclaimed the titles and victory of Andronicus the younger; and the aged emperor, falling proftrate before an image of the

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 tranfcribers.

Virgin,

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CHAP. Virgin, difpatched a fuppliant meffage to refign the fceptre, and to obtain his life at the hands of the conqueror. The answer of his grandfon was decent and pious; at the prayer of his friends, the younger Andronicus affumed the fole administration; but the elder still enjoyed the name and pre-eminence of the first emperor, the use of the great palace, and a penfion of twenty-four thoufand pieces of gold, one half of which was affigned on the royal treasure, and the other on the fishery of Conftantinople. But his impotence was foon exposed to contempt and oblivion; the vast filence of the palace was disturbed only by thecattle and poultry of the neighbourhood, which roved with impunity through the folitary courts; and a reduced allowance of ten thousand pieces of gold" was all that he could afk, and more than he could hope. His calamities were embittered by the gradual extinction of fight; his confinement was rendered each day more rigorous; and during the abfence and ficknefs of his grandfon, his inhuman keepers, by the threats of inftant death, compelled him to exchange the purple for the monaftic habit and profeffion." The monk Antony had renounced the pomp of the world: yet he had occafion for a coarfe fur in the winter season, and as wine was forbidden by his confeffor, and water by his physician, the fherbet of Egypt was his common drink. It was

I have endeavoured to reconcile the 24,000 pieces of Cantacuzene (l. ii. c. 1.) with the 10,000 of Nicephorus Gregoras (1. ix. c. 2.); the one of whom wished to soften, the other to magnify, the hardships of the old emperor.

not

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not without difficulty that the late emperor could CHA P. procure three or four pieces to fatisfy these fimple wants; and if he bestowed the gold to relieve the more painful diftrefs of a friend, the facrifice is of fome weight in the scale of humanity and religion. Four years after his abdication, Andronicus or Antony expired in a cell, in the feventy-fourth year of his age: and the laft ftrain of adulation could only promife a more fplendid crown of glory in heaven, than he had enjoyed upon earth 12

13

12

His death,

A. D.

1332,

Feb. 13.

Reign of

Androni

younger, 1328, May 24

A. D.

A.D.

1341, June 15.

Nor was the reign of the younger, more glorious or fortunate than that of the elder, Androni- cus the cus He gathered the fruits of ambition; but the tafte was tranfient and bitter: in the fupreme ftation he loft the remains of his early popularity; and the defects of his character became ftill more confpicuous to the world. The public reproach urged him to march in perfon 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 Afia, 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 confufion of national dreffes, are deplored

12 See Nicephorus Gregoras (1. ix. 6, 7, 8. 10. 14. l. X. C. 1.). The hiftorian had tasted of the prosperity, and shared the retreat, of his benefactor; and that friendship, which "waits or to the "fcaffold or the cell," fhould not lightly be accused as a hireling, a prostitute to praise.”.

66

13 The fole reign of Andronicus the younger is described by Cantacuzene (l. ii. c. 1–40. p. 191–339.) and Nicephorus Gregoras (1. ix. c. 7-1. xi. c. 11. p. 262-361.).

VOL. XI.

вь

by

LXIII.

His two wives.

CHAP. 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 phyfic, or the Virgin, he was fnatched 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 foftened the prejudices of the Byzantine court, his two wives were chofen in the princely houfes of Germany and Italy. The first, Agnes at home, Irene in Greece, was daughter of the duke of Brunswick. Her father was a petty lord " in the poor and favage regions of the north of Germany ": yet he derived

14 Agnes, or Irene, was the daughter of duke Henry the Wonderful, the chief of the house of Brunswick, and the fourth in defcent from the famous Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria, and conqueror of the Slavi on the Baltic coaft. Her brother Henry was surnamed the Greek, from his two journies into the Eaft: but these journies were subsequent to his fifter'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.).

15 Henry the Wonderful was the founder of the branch of Grubenhagen, extinct in the year 1596 (Rimius, p. 287.). He refided in the castle of Wolfenbuttel, and poffeffed no more than a fixth part of the allodial estates of Brunswick and Luneburgh, which the Guelph family had faved from the confifcation of their great fiefs. The frequent partitions among brothers, had almost ruined the princely houses of Germany, till that juft, but pernicious, law was slowly superseded by the right of primogeniture. The principality of Grubenhagen, one of the last remains of the Hercynian foreft, 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 juftly, in a much later period, the north of Germany deserved the epithets of poor and barbarous (Effai sur les

Mœurs,

18

19

17

37

СНАР.
LXIII.

rived fome revenue from his filver mines "7; CHA P. and his family is celebrated by the Greeks as the most ancient and noble of the Teutonic name 13. After the death of this childless princess, Andronicus fought in marriage Jane, the fifter of the count of Savoy "; and his fuit was preferred to that of the French king 20. The count respected in his fifter the fuperior majesty of a Roman empress: her retinue was compofed of knights and ladies; fhe was regenerated and crowned in St. Sophia, under the more orthodox appellation of Anne; and, at the nuptial

Mœurs, &c.). In the year 1306, in the woods of Luneburgh, fome wild people of the Vened race were allowed to bury alive their infirm and useless parents (Rimius, p. 136.).

17 The affertion of Tacitus, that Germany was deftitute of the precious metals, must be taken, even in his own time, with fome limitation (Germania, c. 5. Annal. xi. 20.), According to Spener (Hift. Germaniæ Pragmatica, tom. i. p. 351.), Argentifodina 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 difcovery of the filver mines of Grubenhagen, or the Upper Hartz, which were productive in the beginning of the xivth century, and which still yield a confiderable revenue to the house of Brunfwick.

18 Cantacuzene has given a most honourable teftimony, nv d'ex Γερμανων αυτη θυγατηρ δεκος ντι μπρεζεικ (the modern Greeks employ the for the ♪, and the μ for the 6, and the whole will read in the Italian idiom di Brunzuic), το παρ' αυτοίς επιφανέςατα, και λαμά προτητι παντας τες ὁμοφυλες ὑπερβάλλοντος το γενες. The praife is juft in itself, and pleafing to an English ear.

19 Anne, or Jane, was one of the four daughters of Amedée the Great, by a fecond marriage, and half fister of his fucceffor Edward count of Savoy (Anderfon's Tables, p. 650.). See Cantacuzene (1. i. c. 40—42.).

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 Conftantinople in February 1326.

Bb 2

feaft,