ATTACKS FROM SICILY. 143 Meantime the emperor had prepared a fleet of one hundred vessels to send against the Sicilians. But his brief reign was nearly at an end. lie was succeeded by Isaac. The war was continued under the new sovereign with fresh vigor. The Sicilians w^ere attacked at Mosynopolis and on the plains of Demetriza, and were defeated. Salonica was retaken and the fleet in the ^Egean nearly destroyed. Durazzo itself was abandoned by the King of Sicily, and the Norman fleet in the Adriatic was shattered by a tempest. In the short space of a few months the Sicilian expedition was thus utterly de- feated. The rough vigor and genius for war possessed by the Normans had failed as completely before the disciplined troops of the New Eome as the Turks had always done when they had been met on anything like equal terms. The expedition, however, had weakened the hold of Constantino- ple over the southern portion of the peninsula, and had shown the Italians that the empire was not invulnerable. The Sicil- ians continued to hanker after possessions in Ilomania, and in 1194, in the midst of the djmastic struggles of the empire and towards the end of the weak reign of Isaac, Henry, king of Sicily, claimed from the empire the restitution of all the country between Durazzo and Salonica. Irene, daughter of Isaac, was detained in Sicily as a hostage for the satisfaction of this claim. Isaac, fully occupied with other troubles, en- tered into negotiation with Henry, with the object of putting an end to the difficulty by paying an indemnity. The death of the Sicilian king, however, in 1197, before the conclusion of these negotiations, relieved Isaac of the Sicilian claims. The Normans of Sicily had thus been for more than a cen- tury a thorn in the side of the empire. The troubles which they gave arose partly out of the desire for adventure, partly out of the desire to acquire new territory, and in the most important expedition from the wish to punish the authors of the massacre of 1182. The Norsemen were tempted to invade Komania much as their fathers had been tempted into Nor- mandy and their brethren into England. They had succeeded in diverting a considerable amount of force from the empire which would otherwise have been employed in fighting the
