s of
civilized nations, is a measure pregnant with shame and mischief; which
the interest of the moment may compel, but which is reprobated by the
best principles of humanity and reason. It is the practice of both sides
to accuse their enemies of the guilt of the first alliances; and those
who fail in their negotiations are loudest in their censure of the
example which they envy and would gladly imitate. The Turks of Asia were
less barbarous perhaps than the shepherds of Bulgaria and Servia; but
their religion rendered them implacable foes of Rome and Christianity.
To acquire the friendship of their emirs, the two factions vied with
each other in baseness and profusion: the dexterity of Cantacuzene
obtained the preference: but the succor and victory were dearly
purchased by the marriage of his daughter with an infidel, the captivity
of many thousand Christians, and the passage of the Ottomans into
Europe, the last and fatal stroke in the fall of the Roman empire. The
inclining scale was decided in his favor by the death of 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 as the place of their confinement. Some alterations in raising
the walls, and narrowing 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 [291] resolute prisoners of the
Palaeologian race, [30] who were armed with sticks, and animated by
despair. On the rumor 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 favor of the people and
the clemency of the empress. Anne of Savoy might rejoice in the fall of
a haughty and ambitious minister, but while she delayed to resolve or
to act, the populace, 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 neighboring church: they were slaughtered at the
foot of the altar; and