Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/516

 494 THE DECLINE AND FALL EeignofAji- ]sfor was the reififn of the vounffer, more glorious or fortunate younger. A.D. than that of the elder, Andronicus.^^ He ijathered the fruits 1328, May 24— ' " AD. 1341, of ambition : but the taste was transient and bitter ; in tiie June 15 ^ ^ supreme station he lost the remains of his early popularity ; and the defects of his character became still more conspicuous to the Avorld. The public reproach urged him to march in person against the Turks ; nor did his courage fail in the hour of trial ; but a defeat and wound were the only trophies of his expedi- tion in Asia, 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 con- fusion of national dresses, are deplored 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, afier being rescued from a dangerous malady by nature, or physic, or the Virgin, he was snatched His two wives away before he had accomplished his forty-fiflh year. He was twice married ; and, as the progress of the Latins in arms and arts had softened the prejudices of the Byzantine court, his two wives were chosen in the princely houses 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 savage regions of the north of Germany ; ^^ yet he i-'The sole reign of Andronicus the younger is described by Cantacuzene (1. ii. c. 1-40, p. 191-339I and Niceoborus Gregoras (1. ix. c. 7 — 1. xi. c. 11, p. 262-361). 1* Agnes, or Irene, was the daughter of duke Henry the Wonderful, the chief of the house of Brunswick, and the fourth in descent from the famous Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria, and conqueror of the -SaUa on the Baltic coast. Her brother Henry was surnamed the Greek, from his two journeys into the East ; but these journeys were subsequent to his sister's marriage ; and I am ignorant /iffw 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 resided in the castle of Wolfenbiittel, and possessed no more than a sixth part of the allodial estates of Brunswick and Luneburg, which the Guelph family had saved from the confiscation of their great fiefs. The frequent partitions among brothers had almost ruined the princely houses of Germany, till that just but pernicious law was slowly superseded by the right of primogeniture. The principality of Grubenhagen, one of the last remains of the Hercynian forest, is a woody, mountainous, and ban'en tract (Busching's Geography, vol. vi. p. 270-286 ; English translation). 1* The royal author of the Memoirs of Brandenburg will teach us how justly, in a much later period, the north of Germany deser^ed the epithets of poor and barbarous (Essai sur les Moeurs, &-c.). In the year 1306, in the woods of Lune- burg, some wild people, of the Vened race, were allowed to bury alive their infirm and useless parents (Rimius, p. 136).