Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/103

 DYNASTIC TROUBLES. 85 sole cause of the growing disalTcction. He had begun liis reign amid a popuhir welcome. His splendid physique and his stately appearance had always done much to recommend him. Tiie people would have pardoned the looseness of con- duct which caused him always to have one or two mistresses at the same table with his w^ife, if he had restrained his savage cruelty. lie had bes^un several reforms which iust- llis reforms. •/ o j ly tended to make him popular. lie had repressed the rapacity of the nobles, though he plundered them himself unmercifully. He was the terror of the tax-farmers, from the severity w^ith which he punished any exactions. He made un- just judges tremble. He chose able governors for the prov- inces, and insisted upon order being kept. He increased the imperial revenue without levying new taxes. He punished wreckers with a severity which was greatly applauded in a seafaring community. He commenced a new aqueduct in the capital, was easy of access, and, in the words of Nicetas, had only one balance, in which he weighed alike great and small, the strong and the w^eak. But these benefits were forgotten in presence of the madness which had come over him, and which made him a monster of cruelty. The day on which he left his palace on the Marmora to visit his capital, some six or seven miles away, w^as looked on as a fatal day, because ex- perience had shown that some one was certain to fall a vic- tim to his insensate fury. The desire of bloodshed had be- come his strongest passion, and he counted that as a lost day on w^hich some one had not been killed. It is worth noting some of the principal acts of his Instances of cruclty. Alcxis, a natural son of Manuel, had his craeity. ,qqii married to a natural daughter of Andronicos. He w^as charged with being concerned in an attempt on the life of the emperor. His eyes were put out ; he was banished and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. The tyrant for- bade his own daughter to come to court, because she wept for her husband and put on mourning against his orders. Most of the servants of Alexis were blinded. His secretary was burned alive in the hippodrome, a punishment which was al- together unusual, and appears greatly to have shocked the