Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/501

 OF THE EOMAN EMPIEE 479 back by the failure of provision, and the terrors of the equinox, to the Calabrian shore. At the same moment, the Catalan admiral, the famous Roger de Loria, swept the channel with an invincible squadron : the French fleet, more numerous in trans- Defeat of ports than in galleys, was either burnt or destroyed ; and the oct. 2 same blow assured the independence of Sicily and the safety of the Greek empire. A few days before his death, the emperor Michael rejoiced in the fall of an enemy whom he hated and esteemed ; and perhaps he might be content with the popular judgment that, had they not been matched with each other, Constantinople and Italy must speedily have obeyed the same master.'^* From this disastrous moment, the life of Charles was a series of misfortunes ; his capital was insulted, his son was made prisoner, and he sunk into the grave without re- covering the isle of Sicily, which, after a war of twenty years, was finally severed from the throne of Naples, and transferred, as an independent kingdom, to a younger branch of the house of Arragon.^^ I shall not, I trust, be accused of superstition ; but I must The service remark that, even in this world, the natural order of events the Catalans will sometimes afford the strong appearances of moral retribu- empire. a.d., 1303-13(^7 tion. The first Palteologus had saved his empire by involving the kingdoms of the West in rebellion and blood ; and from these seeds of discord uprose a generation of iron men, who assiiulted and endangered the empire of his son. In modem times our debts and taxes are the secret poison, which still corrodes the bosom of peace ; but in the weak and disorderly government of the middle ages it was agitated by the present evil of the disbanded armies. Too idle to work, too proud to beg, the mercenaries were accustomed to a life of rapine : they could rob with more diijnitv and effect under a banner and a chief; and the sovereign, to whom their service was useless of rebellion and all previous correspondence with Peter of Armjon (nullo commu- nicato consilio), who happened to be with a fleet and army on the African coast (I. i. c. 4, 9). [For the Sicilian vespers and the sequel, see also the contemporary chronicle of Bernard d'Esclot (an obscure figure), which is published by Buchon in his Chroniques Etrangeres (i860), c. 81 sqq. ; and also an anonymous contem- porary relation of the conspiracy of John Prochyta, in the Sicilian idiom ; of which Buchon (ii. p. 736 sqq. ) has given a French translation.] ^ Nicephorus Gregoras (1. v. c. 6) admires the wisdom of Providence in this equal balance of states and princes. For the honour of Palaeologus, I had rather this balance had been observed by an Italian writer. '"See the Chronicle of Villani, the xith volume of the Annali d'ltalia of Mura- tori, and the xxth and xxist books of the Istoria Civile of Giannone.