enge of the house of
Anjou. [139] All the calamities which the prophetic orator had deplored
were surpassed by the cruelty and avarice of the German conqueror. He
violated the royal sepulchres, [1391] and explored the secret treasures
of the palace, Palermo, and the whole kingdom: the pearls and jewels,
however precious, might be easily removed; but one hundred and sixty
horses were laden with the gold and silver of Sicily. [140] The young
king, his mother and sisters, and the nobles of both sexes, were
separately confined in the fortresses of the Alps; and, on the slightest
rumor of rebellion, the captives were deprived of life, of their
eyes, or of the hope of posterity. Constantia herself was touched with
sympathy for the miseries of her country; and the heiress of the Norman
line might struggle to check her despotic husband, and to save the
patrimony of her new-born son, of an emperor so famous in the next age
under the name of Frederic the Second. Ten years after this revolution,
the French monarchs annexed to their crown the duchy of Normandy: the
sceptre of her ancient dukes had been transmitted, by a granddaughter of
William the Conqueror, to the house of Plantagenet; and the adventurous
Normans, who had raised so many trophies in France, England, and
Ireland, in Apulia, Sicily, and the East, were lost, either in victory
or servitude, among the vanquished nations.

[Footnote 137: The testimony of an Englishman, of Roger de Hoveden,
(p. 689,) will lightly weigh against the silence of German and Italian
history, (Muratori, Annali d' Italia, tom. x. p. 156.) The priests
and pilgrims, who returned from Rome, exalted, by every tale, the
omnipotence of the holy father.]

[Footnote 138: Ego enim in eo cum Teutonicis manere non debeo, (Caffari,
Annal. Genuenses, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom vi. p. 367,
368.)]

[Footnote 139: For the Saracens of Sicily and Nocera, see the Annals of
Muratori, (tom. x. p. 149, and A.D. 1223, 1247,) Giannone, (tom ii. p.
385,) and of the originals, in Muratori's Collection, Richard de St.
Germano, (tom. vii. p. 996,) Matteo Spinelli de Giovenazzo, (tom. vii.
p. 1064,) Nicholas de Jamsilla, (tom. x. p. 494,) and Matreo Villani,
(tom. xiv l. vii. p. 103.) The last of these insinuates that, in
reducing the Saracens of Nocera, Charles II. of Anjou employed rather
artifice than violence.]

[Footnote 1391: It is remarkable that at the same time the tombs of the
Roman emperors,