xercise in
arms, that Raymond, surnamed the Hercules of Antioch, was incapable
of wielding the lance and buckler of the Greek emperor. In a famous
tournament, he entered the lists on a fiery courser, and overturned in
his first career two of the stoutest of the Italian knights. The first
in the charge, the last in the retreat, his friends and his enemies
alike trembled, the former for his safety, and the latter for their own.
After posting an ambuscade in a wood, he rode forwards in search of some
perilous adventure, accompanied only by his brother and the faithful
Axuch, who refused to desert their sovereign. Eighteen horsemen, after a
short combat, fled before them: but the numbers of the enemy increased;
the march of the reenforcement was tardy and fearful, and Manuel,
without receiving a wound, cut his way through a squadron of five
hundred Turks. In a battle against the Hungarians, impatient of the
slowness of his troops, he snatched a standard from the head of the
column, and was the first, almost alone, who passed a bridge that
separated him from the enemy. In the same country, after transporting
his army beyond the Save, he sent back the boats, with an order under
pain of death, to their commander, that he should leave him to conquer
or die on that hostile land. In the siege of Corfu, towing after him a
captive galley, the emperor stood aloft on the poop, opposing against
the volleys of darts and stones, a large buckler and a flowing sail;
nor could he have escaped inevitable death, had not the Sicilian admiral
enjoined his archers to respect the person of a hero. In one day, he is
said to have slain above forty of the Barbarians with his own hand; he
returned to the camp, dragging along four Turkish prisoners, whom he had
tied to the rings of his saddle: he was ever the foremost to provoke or
to accept a single combat; and the _gigantic_ champions, who encountered
his arm, were transpierced by the lance, or cut asunder by the sword,
of the invincible Manuel. The story of his exploits, which appear as
a model or a copy of the romances of chivalry, may induce a reasonable
suspicion of the veracity of the Greeks: I will not, to vindicate their
credit, endanger my own: yet I may observe, that, in the long series
of their annals, Manuel is the only prince who has been the subject of
similar exaggeration. With the valor of a soldier, he did no unite the
skill or prudence of a general; his victories were not productive