HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

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stroke to the Sicilian naval power, is a corroborative proof of the exaggeration ;nineteen gallies only out of the whole fleet happening to be separated from themain body were attacked and taken. This was, however, but the forerunnerof creater successes. Corfu reverted back into the possession of its originalmaster, and the whole of the Eastern empire became almost instantaneouslyfreed from the hostilities, as well naval as military, of the Sicilian Normans.That animating spirit of the prince, which had communicated energy and Areto all the operations of war, had for some time been sinking under the infirmi-ties natural to old age. Intelligence of repeated disasters could not fail to aug-ment the force of his malady, and after his death, a case which frequently occursin the history of empires and states, the powers, the soul, as it might be called,which had given life to the body, became suddenly annihilated, so that thedistracted state of the country during the succeeding reign, served to destroyalmost every trace of the former victories and triumphs of the Guiscards.With the death of this sovereign, the naval consequence and power of theNormans, as well in Italy as Sicily, totally ceased. Driven in succession fromthe fruits of their conquests by the ascending power ot the emperor, their nameonly continued to be remembered during the continuance of half a century,when (in the year 1204) the kings of France having annexed the dutchy ofNormandy to their dominions, and the original right and title of its ancientdukes having been transferred by marriage through a daughter of William,surnamed the Conqueror, to the House of Plantagenet, these bold adventurers,who had so highly distinguished themselves in preceding ages, who had acquiredsuch honour and renown in France, in England, and in Ireland, in Apulia, inSicily, and in the empire of the east, were lost in victory, or in servitude amongother vanquished nations.

The greater part of the maritime history of the Constantinopolitan or Gre-cian empire during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, has been through neces-sity so intermixed with that of the Normans, as to render it unnecessary torepeat any of those transactions in which such connection has existed. Indeed;till the year 1174, the attention of the emperor was so much occupied bythat application to military affairs, which the growing consequence and perpe-tual inroads of the Turks rendered necessary to allot, that he could not bestowa single thought on any other point. At length, however, Manuel havingcurbed the insolence of the Sicilian Normans, felt himself ambitiously urgedto attempt an union between the two empires of the east and west in his own

person.