As a hostage, the doubtful author was confined, with the assurance of death or an ample recompense; and the court was left some hours in the anxiety of hope and fear, till the messengers of Alexius arrived with the authentic intelligence, and displayed the trophies of the conquest, the sword and sceptre, [19] the buskins and bonnet, [20] of the usurper Baldwin, which he had dropped in his precipitate flight.

A general assembly of the bishops, senators, and nobles, was immediately convened, and never perhaps was an event received with more heartfelt and universal joy.

In a studied oration, the new sovereign of Constantinople congratulated his own and the public fortune.

"There was a time," said he, "a far distant time, when the Roman empire extended to the Adriatic, the Tigris, and the confines of AEthiopia.

After the loss of the provinces, our capital itself, in these last and calamitous days, has been wrested from our hands by the Barbarians of the West.