ogus devolved the command on several chiefs, alike eminent in
rank, alike defective in military talents; the Greeks were oppressed
by land and sea; and a captive remnant that escaped the swords of the
Normans and Saracens, abjured all future hostility against the person or
dominions of their conqueror. [122] Yet the king of Sicily esteemed the
courage and constancy of Manuel, who had landed a second army on the
Italian shore; he respectfully addressed the new Justinian; solicited a
peace or truce of thirty years, accepted as a gift the regal title; and
acknowledged himself the military vassal of the Roman empire. [123]
The Byzantine Caesars acquiesced in this shadow of dominion, without
expecting, perhaps without desiring, the service of a Norman army; and
the truce of thirty years was not disturbed by any hostilities between
Sicily and Constantinople. About the end of that period, the throne of
Manuel was usurped by an inhuman tyrant, who had deserved the abhorrence
of his country and mankind: the sword of William the Second, the
grandson of Roger, was drawn by a fugitive of the Comnenian race; and
the subjects of Andronicus might salute the strangers as friends,
since they detested their sovereign as the worst of enemies. The Latin
historians [124] expatiate on the rapid progress of the four counts
who invaded Romania with a fleet and army, and reduced many castles and
cities to the obedience of the king of Sicily. The Greeks [125] accuse
and magnify the wanton and sacrilegious cruelties that were perpetrated
in the sack of Thessalonica, the second city of the empire. The former
deplore the fate of those invincible but unsuspecting warriors who were
destroyed by the arts of a vanquished foe. The latter applaud, in songs
of triumph, the repeated victories of their countrymen on the Sea of
Marmora or Propontis, on the banks of the Strymon, and under the walls
of Durazzo. A revolution which punished the crimes of Andronicus,
had united against the Franks the zeal and courage of the successful
insurgents: ten thousand were slain in battle, and Isaac Angelus, the
new emperor, might indulge his vanity or vengeance in the treatment of
four thousand captives. Such was the event of the last contest between
the Greeks and Normans: before the expiration of twenty years, the rival
nations were lost or degraded in foreign servitude; and the successors
of Constantine did not long survive to insult the fall of the Sicilian
monarchy.