OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 287 lost ■ their troops were scattered and corrupted in the towns of Italy. They separately accomplished their passage, regardless of safety or dignity : and within nine months from the feast of the Assumption, the day appointed by Urban, all the Latin princes had reached Constantinople. But the Count of Ver- mandois was produced as a captive ; his foremost vessels were scattered by a tempest ; and his person, against the law of : nations, was detained by the lieutenants of Alexius. Yet the arrival of Hugh had been announced by four-and-twenty knights in golden armour, who commanded the emperor to revere the general of the Latin Christians, the brother of the King of kings. *^^ In some Oriental tale I have read the fable of a shepherd, PoUcy of the -*■ 6nip6ror who was ruined bv the accomplishment of his own wishes : he Alexins com- had prajred tor water ; the danges was turned into his grounds ; io96, Decem- and his flock and cottage were swept away by the inundation. 1097, May Such was the fortune, or at least the apprehension, of the Greek emperor, Alexius Comnenus, whose name has already appeared in this history, and whose conduct is so differently represented by his daughter Anna^*' and by the Latin writers. "^^ In the council of Placentia, his ambassadors had solicited a moderate succour, perhaps of ten thousand soldiers ; but he was astonished by the approach of so many potent chiefs and fanatic nations. The emperor fluctuated between hope and fear, between timidity and courage ; but in the crooked policy which he mistook for wisdom I cannot believe, I cannot discern, that he maliciously conspired against the life or honour of the French heroes. The
- 5 'O Baa-theiis tmv ^a(riiu>v [Anna, X. c. 7, ad init. in Hugo's letter or message to
Alexius], (fal apxrjyb? Tov ^payyiKov (TTparevixa-o^ airavTo^ [^'If. c. 7, med. , in the an- nouncement of the four and twenty knights to the Duke of Dyrrachium]. This Oriental pomp is extravagant in a count of Vermandois ; but the patriot Ducange repeats with much complacency (Not. ad Alexiad, p. 352, 353 ; Dissert, xxvii. sur Joinville, p. 315) the passages of Matthew Paris (a.d. 1254) and Froissard (vol. iv. p. 201), which style the King of France rex regum and chef de tous les rois Chretiens. s^Anna Comnena was born on the ist of December, a.d. 1083, indiction vii. (Alexiad, 1. vi. p. 166, 167 [c. 8]). At thirteen, the time of the first crusade, she was nubile, and perhaps married to the younger Nicephorus Bryennius, whom she fondly styles rhv e/iov Kaia-apn (1. x. p. 295, 296 [c. 9]). Some moderns have imagined that her enmity to Bohemond [Bni>orii'To<;] was the fruit of disappointed love. In the transactions of Constantinople and Nice, her partial accounts (Alex. I. X. xi. p. 283-317) may be opposed to the partiality of the Latms ; but in their subsequent exploits she is brief and ignorant. [Cp. above, vol. 5, p. 506.] 8^ In their views of the character and conduct of Alexius, Maimbourg has favoured the Catholic Franks, and Voltaire has been partial to the schistnatic Greeks. The prejudice of a philosopher is less excusable than that of a Jesuit.
