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 476 THE DECLINE AND FALL tributed among his allies the kingdoms and provinces of the East, reserving only Constantinople, and one day's journey round the city, for the Imperial domain.'^*' In this perilous moment, Palajologus was the most eager to subscribe the creed, and implore the protection, of the Roman pontiff, who assumed, with propriety and weight, the character of an angel of peace, the common father of the Christians. By his voice the sword of Charles was chained in the scabbard ; and the Greek ambas- sadors beheld him, in the pope's antichamber, biting his ivorj^ sceptre in a transport of fury, and deeply resenting the refusal to enfi-anchise and consecrate his arms. He appears to have respected the disinterested mediation of Gregory the Tenth ; but Charles was insensibly disgusted by the pride and partiality of Nicholas the Third ; and his attachment to his kindred, the Ursini family, alienated the most strenuous champion from the service of the church. The hostile league against the Greeks, of Philip the Latin emperor, the king of the Two Sicilies, and the republic of Venice, was ripened into execution ; and the [AD 1280] election of Martin the Fourth, a French pope, gave a sanction to the cause. Of the allies, Philip supplied his name, Martin, a bull of excommunication, the Venetians, a squadron of forty galleys ; and the formidable powers of Charles consisted of forty counts, ten thousand men at arms, a numerous body of infantry, and a fleet of more than three hundred ships and transports. A distant day was appointed for assembling this might}' force in the harbour of Brindisi ; and a previous attempt was risked with a detachment of three hundred knights, who invaded Albania and besieged the fortress of Belgrade. Their defeat might amuse Avith a triumph the vanity of Constantinople ; but the more sagacious Michael, despairing of his arms, depended on the effects of a conspiracy ; on the secret workings of a rat, who gnawed the bow-string ^^ of the Sicilian tj^rant. paisoiogus Among the proscribed adherents of the house of Swabia, revoftof John of Procida forfeited a small island of that name in the 1280 ■ ■ bay of Naples. His birth was noble, but his education was learned ; and, in the poverty of exile, he was relieved by the practice of ph3^sic, which he had studied in the school of Sa- lerno. Fortune had left him nothing to lose except life ; and 50 Ducange, Hist, de C. P. 1. v. c. 49-56, 1. vi. c. 1-13. See Pachymer, 1. iv. c. 29, 1. V. c. 7-10, 25, 1. vi. c. 30, 32, 33, andNicephorusGregoras, 1. iv. 5, 1. v. i, 6. ^1 The reader of Herodotus will recollect how miraculously the Assyrian host of Sennacherib was disarmed and destroyed (1. ii. c. 141),