uer
or die on that hostile land. In the siege of Corfu, towing after him a
captive galley, the emperor stood aloft on the poop, opposing against
the volleys of darts and stones, a large buckler and a flowing sail;
nor could he have escaped inevitable death, had not the Sicilian admiral
enjoined his archers to respect the person of a hero. In one day, he is
said to have slain above forty of the Barbarians with his own hand; he
returned to the camp, dragging along four Turkish prisoners, whom he had
tied to the rings of his saddle: he was ever the foremost to provoke or
to accept a single combat; and the gigantic champions, who encountered
his arm, were transpierced by the lance, or cut asunder by the sword,
of the invincible Manuel. The story of his exploits, which appear as
a model or a copy of the romances of chivalry, may induce a reasonable
suspicion of the veracity of the Greeks: I will not, to vindicate their
credit, endanger my own: yet I may observe, that, in the long series
of their annals, Manuel is the only prince who has been the subject of
similar exaggeration. With the valor of a soldier, he did no unite the
skill or prudence of a general; his victories were not productive of any
permanent or useful conquest; and his Turkish laurels were blasted
in his last unfortunate campaign, in which he lost his army in the
mountains of Pisidia, and owed his deliverance to the generosity of the
sultan. But the most singular feature in the character of Manuel, is
the contrast and vicissitude of labor and sloth, of hardiness and
effeminacy. In war he seemed ignorant of peace, in peace he appeared
incapable of war. In the field he slept in the sun or in the snow, tired
in the longest marches the strength of his men and horses, and shared
with a smile the abstinence or diet of the camp. No sooner did he return
to Constantinople, than he resigned himself to the arts and pleasures of
a life of luxury: the expense of his dress, his table, and his palace,
surpassed the measure of his predecessors, and whole summer days were
idly wasted in the delicious isles of the Propontis, in the incestuous
love of his niece Theodora. The double cost of a warlike and dissolute
prince exhausted the revenue, and multiplied the taxes; and Manuel, in
the distress of his last Turkish campaign, endured a bitter reproach
from the mouth of a desperate soldier. As he quenched his thirst, he
complained that the water of a fountain was mingled with Chris