CALIPHS OF AFRICA. 51 



In the year 953, Hassan, governor of Sicily, sent a 

 powerful army to the coast of Italy. At Reggio 

 the inhabitants and the garrison had fled ; but the 

 imperial forces were overthrown, and their com- 

 mander, with several officers of note, taken prison- 

 ers in the action. Successive squadrons issued from 

 the harbours of Palermo, Biserta, and Tunis. A 

 hundred and fifty towns of Calabria and Campania 

 were attacked and pillaged ; and had the Saracens 

 been united, the land of Romulus, and the patrimony 

 of St Peter's successors, must have fallen an easy and 

 glorious accession to the empire of Mohammed. 



No event in the military history of the Arabs 

 awakens our curiosity or surprise more than their 

 invasion of the Roman territories. Who could have 

 foretold that the roving Bedouins should have in- 

 sulted the majesty of the Caesars in their own ca- 

 pital, or raised their tecbir in the neighbourhood of 

 the Eternal City ? In full possession of Sicily, these 

 " Sons of Satan," as the Librarian Anastasius with 

 pious indignation calls them, entered with a fleet 

 the mouth of the Tiber, and presumed to approach 

 the venerated metropolis of the Christian world. 

 The gates and ramparts were guarded by a trem- 

 bling people ; but the church and tombs of St Peter 

 and St Paul, without the walls, whose sanctity had 

 been respected by Goths, Vandals, and Lombards, 

 were pillaged by the rapacious disciples of the Ko- 

 ran. The images, or Christian idols, were stript of 

 their costly offerings ; a silver altar was torn away 

 from the shrine of St Peter j and if any thing 

 escaped their destructive hands, it must be imputed 

 to the haste rather than the scruples of the spoilers. 

 But their divisions saved the capital. Directing 



