Page:Constantinople by Brodribb.djvu/238

 reign covers a period of fifty years, for which we have indeed abundant historical materials; but the story, as Gibbon says, is a "languid as well as a prolix" one. The emperor was a very different man from his father, who certainly had vigour and ability, though when it served his purpose he could be both cruel and treacherous. Andronicus had a reputation for learning, and he was perhaps a really conscientious man. He was, however, unfortunately priestridden, and his religion was too much that of the mere monk and ecclesiastic. He was not at all a man of the world, and never ought to have been at the head of a small principality, much less of what still claimed to be an empire. After the fashion of his day he made his son Michael his colleague, but the young man, though styled emperor for twenty-five years, was of no service to the state either as a leader of its armies or as a director of its politics. All that could be said of him was that he was docile and well behaved. He had, however, a son, Andronicus the Younger, afterwards emperor, on whom even this negative praise could not be bestowed. Brought up in the palace with the idea that he was heir to the empire, he at first impressed his grandfather with the belief that he was a youth of singular promise, but he soon disgusted the strict and parsimonious old man by riotous living, and by contracting heavy debts with the Genoese money-lenders of Pera. Finally, when he found that he had hopelessly lost his grandfather's favour, and was to be excluded from the throne, he set up the standard of rebellion at Adrianople, and had as his abettor John Cantacuzenus, then the chief