the Third had kicked away the Imperial crown from the head of
the prostrate Henry, such an act of impotent pride could serve only to
cancel an obligation and provoke an enemy. The Genoese, who enjoyed a
beneficial trade and establishment in Sicily, listened to the promise of
his boundless gratitude and speedy departure: their fleet commanded the
straits of Messina, and opened the harbor of Palermo; and the first
act of his government was to abolish the privileges, and to seize the
property, of these imprudent allies. The last hope of Falcandus was
defeated by the discord of the Christians and Mahometans: they fought
in the capital; several thousands of the latter were slain; but their
surviving brethren fortified the mountains, and disturbed above thirty
years the peace of the island. By the policy of Frederic the Second,
sixty thousand Saracens were transplanted to Nocera in Apulia. In their
wars against the Roman church, the emperor and his son Mainfroy were
strengthened and disgraced by the service of the enemies of Christ; and
this national colony maintained their religion and manners in the
heart of Italy, till they were extirpated, at the end of the thirteenth
century, by the zeal and revenge of the house of Anjou. 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, 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. 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, Engl