e exacted to herself alone, was pronounced
with reluctant murmurs; and the bold refusal of the Armenian guards
encouraged a free and general declaration, that Constantine the Sixth
was the lawful emperor of the Romans. In this character he ascended his
hereditary throne, and dismissed Irene to a life of solitude and repose.
But her haughty spirit condescended to the arts of dissimulation: she
flattered the bishops and eunuchs, revived the filial tenderness of
the prince, regained his confidence, and betrayed his credulity. The
character of Constantine was not destitute of sense or spirit; but
his education had been studiously neglected; and the ambitious mother
exposed to the public censure the vices which she had nourished, and the
actions which she had secretly advised: his divorce and second marriage
offended the prejudices of the clergy, and by his imprudent rigor he
forfeited the attachment of the Armenian guards. A powerful conspiracy
was formed for the restoration of Irene; and the secret, though widely
diffused, was faithfully kept above eight months, till the emperor,
suspicious of his danger, escaped from Constantinople, with the design
of appealing to the provinces and armies. By this hasty flight, the
empress was left on the brink of the precipice; yet before she implored
the mercy of her son, Irene addressed a private epistle to the friends
whom she had placed about his person, with a menace, that unless they
accomplished, she would reveal, their treason. Their fear rendered
them intrepid; they seized the emperor on the Asiatic shore, and he was
transported to the porphyry apartment of the palace, where he had
first seen the light. In the mind of Irene, ambition had stifled every
sentiment of humanity and nature; and it was decreed in her bloody
council, that Constantine should be rendered incapable of the throne:
her emissaries assaulted the sleeping prince, and stabbed their daggers
with such violence and precipitation into his eyes as if they meant to
execute a mortal sentence. An ambiguous passage of Theophanes persuaded
the annalist of the church that death was the immediate consequence of
this barbarous execution. The Catholics have been deceived or subdued by
the authority of Baronius; and Protestant zeal has reechoed the words
of a cardinal, desirous, as it should seem, to favor the patroness of
images. [1119] Yet the blind son of Irene survived many years, oppressed
by the court and forgotten by the