< Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu
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THE PLOT. 275

ent day, speak of yoniig Alexis as tlic son of Isaac by Mar- garet, daughter of Bela of Hungary, Iiis second wife. This marriage took phice in 1185. Alexis, therefore, in 1200, could not be older than fourteen or fifteen.' He had sent messen- gers to his sister (or more probably his half-sister), the wife of Philip, imploring the help of her husband. He made his way, according to Yillehardonin, to Ancona, in Itiily. His movements, however, after leaving Constantinople, are doubt- ful. The balance of the evidence of contemporary writers seems to show that he went direct to Philip of Swabia,' after calling at Sicily, and possibly taking Ancona on the way. According to one writer, he was in July at AVarzburg, where Philip held his court.* Apparently he continued with Philip until the end of the year, where, as I have already mentioned, lie would have seen Boniface. In the summer of 1202 he was in Hungary,^ probably on his way to the pope with a request for aid. In August, or the beginning of September, he was at Yerona." In order to understand why he had returned to Italy, we must trace the events which had happened in the interval be- tween his flight from Constantinople and his arrival in Hun- gary. Young Alexis had appealed, as we have seen, to his sister and her husband Philip. The Swabian king wished for many reasons to help him. Philip, who claimed to be King of the Romans, was the head of the party opposed to the pope. On the death of the Emperor Henry the Sixth, the pope and other princes had refused to recognize his infant son Fred- ' Two facts arc opposed to the accepted statement that Margaret was the mother of Alexis: (1) that the reigning emperor wrote to Innocent the Third that the j'outh was not 'porphyrogenetos ; and (2) that, accord- ing to Nicetas (p. 481), Margaret was only ten years okl in 114o; tov fisipuKa t'lct] dfidftiov, " Geo. Acrop." p. G. 2 Villehardouin, xv. c. 70. ^Gunther, viii.; "Chroniquc dc Mor6e," p. 10, and " Chronaca di Morea," p. 41G; "Chroniques Greco-Romanes" of Charles Ilopf; Rigord, p. 55; " Chron. Novgorod. p. 93; Chron. Gr.-Rom." of Ilopf; and others.

  • Bohmcr, " Register Imperii," p. 12. * " Coutinuatio," 28.
  • Villehardouin, xv. c. 70.
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