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moment was decisive: as the Varangians advanced before the line, they discovered the nakedness of their flanks: the main battle of the duke, of eight hundred knights, stood firm and entire; they couched their lances, and the Greeks deplore the furious and irresistible shock of the French cavalry. ^75 Alexius was not deficient in the duties of a soldier or a general; but he no sooner beheld the slaughter of the Varangians, and the flight of the Turks, than he despised his subjects, and despaired of his fortune. The princess Anne, who drops a tear on this melancholy event, is reduced to praise the strength and swiftness of her father's horse, and his vigorous struggle when he was almost overthrown by the stroke of a lance, which had shivered the Imperial helmet. His desperate valor broke through a squadron of Franks who opposed his flight; and after wandering two days and as many nights in the mountains, he found some repose, of body, though not of mind, in the walls of Lychnidus. The victorious Robert reproached the tardy and feeble pursuit which had suffered the escape of so illustrious a prize: but he consoled his disappointment by the trophies and standards of the field, the wealth and luxury of the Byzantine camp, and the glory of defeating an army five times more numerous than his own. A multitude of Italians had been the victims of their own fears; but only thirty of his knights were slain in this memorable day. In the Roman host, the loss of Greeks, Turks, and English, amounted to five or six thousand: ^76 the plain of Durazzo was stained with noble and royal blood; and the end of the impostor Michael was more honorable than his life.

[Footnote 73: It is very properly translated by the President Cousin, (Hist. de Constantinople, tom. iv. p. 131, in 12mo.,) qui combattoit comme une Pallas, quoiqu'elle ne fut pas aussi savante que celle d'Athenes. The Grecian goddess was composed of two discordant characters, of Neith, the workwoman of Sais in Egypt, and of a virgin Amazon of the Tritonian lake in Libya, (Banier, Mythologie, tom. iv. p. 1 - 31, in 12mo.)]

[Footnote 74: Anna Comnena (l. iv. p. 116) admires, with some degree of terror, her masculine virtues. They were more familiar to the Latins and though the Apulian (l. iv. p. 273) mentions her presence and her wound, he represents her as far less intrepid.

Uxor in hoc bello Roberti forte sagitta

Quadam laesa fuit: quo vulnere territa nullam.

Dum sperabat opem, se poene subegerat hosti.

The last is an unlucky word for a female prisoner.]

[Footnote 75: (Anna, l. v. p. 133;) and elsewhere, (p. 140.) The pedantry of the princess in the choice of classic appellations encouraged Ducange to apply to his countrymen the characters of the ancient Gauls.]

[Footnote 76: Lupus Protospata (tom. iii. p. 45) says 6000: William the Apulian more than 5000, (l. iv. p. 273.) Their modesty is singular and laudable: they might with so little trouble have slain two or three myriads of schismatics and infidels!]

It is more than probable that Guiscard was not afflicted by the loss of a costly pageant, which had merited only the contempt and derision of the Greeks. After their defeat, they still persevered in the defence of Durazzo; and a Venetian commander supplied the place of George Palaeologus, who had been imprudently called away from his station. The tents of the besiegers were converted into barracks, to sustain the inclemency of the winter; and in answer to the defiance of the garrison, Robert insinuated, that his patience was at least equal to their obstinacy. ^77 Perhaps he already trusted to his secret correspondence with a Venetian noble, who sold the city for a rich and honorable marriage. At the dead of night, several rope-ladders were dropped from the walls; the light Calabrians ascended in silence; and the Greeks were awakened by the name and trumpets of the conqueror. Yet they defended the streets three days against an enemy already master of the rampart; and near seven months elapsed between the first investment and the final surrender of