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 OF THE EOMAN EMPIRE 501 but the succour and victory were dearly purchased by the mar- riage of his daughter with an infidel, the captivity of many thousand Christians, and the passage of the Ottomans into Eu rope, the last and fatal stroke in the fall of the Roman empire. The inclininf; scale was decided in his favour by the death of [ad 1345, <^ . •' June 11] Apocaucus, the just, though singular, retribution of his crimes. A crowd of nobles or plebeians, whom he feared or hated, had been seized by his orders in the capital and the provinces ; and the old palace of Constantine was assigned for the place of their confinement. Some alterations in raising the walls and narrow- ing the cells had been ingeniously contrived to prevent their escape and aggravate their misery ; and the work was incessantly pressed by the daily visits of the tyrant. His guards watched at the gate, and, as he stood in the inner court to overlook the architects, without fear or suspicion, he was assaulted and laid breathless on the ground, by two resolute prisoners of the Palaeologian race,-^'^ who were armed with sticks and animated by despair. On the rumour of revenge and liberty, the captive multitude broke their fetters, fortified their prison, and exposed from the battlements the tyrant's head, presuming on the favour of the people and the clemency of the empress. Anne of Savoy might rejoice in the fall of an haughty and ambitious minister ; but, while she delayed to resolve or to act, the popu- lace, more especially the mariners, were excited by the widow of the Great Duke to a sedition, an assault, and a massacre. The prisoners (of whom the far greater part were guiltless or inglorious of the deed) escaped to a neighbouring church ; they were slaughtered at the foot of the altar ; and in his death the monster was not less bloody and venomous than in his life. Yet his talents alone upheld the cause of the young emperor ; and his surviving associates, suspicious of each other, abandoned the conduct of the war, and rejected the fairest terms of accom- modation. In the beginning of the dispute, the empress felt and complained that she was deceived by the enemies of Cantacuzene ; the patriarch was employed to preach against the forgiveness of injuries ; and her promise of immortal hatred was sealed by an oath under the penalty of excommunication.-^^ •''^The two avengers were both Palceologi, who might resent, with royal indigna- tion, the shame of their chains. The tragedy of Apocaucus may deserve a pecuhar reference to Cantacuzene (1. iii. c. 86 [/rtf. 87-8]) and Nic. Gregoras (1. xiv. c. 10). 33 Cantacuzene accuses the patriarch, and spares the empress, the mother of his sovereign (1. iii. 33, 34), against whom Nic. Gregoras expresses a particular animosity (1. xiv. 10, 11 ; xv. 5). It is true that they do not speak exactly of the same time.