broken fortunes. A base majority bowed and retired; and his
trusty band was diminished to two thousand, and at last to five
hundred, volunteers. The cral, ^28 or despot of the Servians
received him with general hospitality; but the ally was
insensibly degraded to a suppliant, a hostage, a captive; and in
this miserable dependence, he waited at the door of the
Barbarian, who could dispose of the life and liberty of a Roman
emperor. The most tempting offers could not persuade the cral to
violate his trust; but he soon inclined to the stronger side; and
his friend was dismissed without injury to a new vicissitude of
hopes and perils. Near six years the flame of discord burnt with
various success and unabated rage: the cities were distracted by
the faction of the nobles and the plebeians; the Cantacuzeni and
Palaeologi: and the Bulgarians, the Servians, and the Turks, were
invoked on both sides as the instruments of private ambition and
the common ruin. The regent deplored the calamities, of which he
was the author and victim: and his own experience might dictate a
just and lively remark on the different nature of foreign and
civil war. "The former," said he, "is the external warmth of
summer, always tolerable, and often beneficial; the latter is the
deadly heat of a fever, which consumes without a remedy the
vitals of the constitution." ^29

[Footnote *: Cantacuzene asserts, that in all the cities, the
populace were on the side of the emperor, the aristocracy on his.

The populace took the opportunity of rising and plundering the
wealthy as Cantacuzenites, vol. iii. c. 29 Ages of common
oppression and ruin had not extinguished these republican
factions. - M.]