t 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 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 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.

The sceptre of Roger successively devolved to his son and grandson:
they might be confounded under the name of William: they are strongly
discriminated by the epithets of the _bad_ and the _good_; but these
epithets, which appear to describe the perfection of vice and virtue,
cannot strictly be applied to either of the Norman princes. When he was
roused to arms by danger and shame, the first William did not degenerate
from the valor of his race; but his temper was slothful; his manners
were dissolute; his passions headstrong and mischievous; and the monarch
is responsible, not only for his personal vices, but for those of Majo,
the great admiral, who abused the confidence, and conspired against the
life, of his benefactor. From the Arabian conquest, Sicily had imbibed a
deep tincture of Oriental manners; the despotism, the pomp, and even the
harem, of a sultan; and a