Power of merchant nobles.

stantinople must also have been great. The result was a population in which there was an unusually large number of travellers. Travel brought intelligence and the profits of commerce brought independence. The interests of the population required security for life and property, and the people on many occasions showed that they were indisposed to tolerate a ruler who neglected these first necessities of a good government. We shall see that the population of the capital cared little for mere dynastic changes, but on many occasions showed resentment against rulers who tampered with the coinage, or who could not repress piracy and keep the peace of the seas.

In

In the twelfth century the government of the country was in the hands of the emperor and the nobles. Many of the latter were merchant princes; sometimes, indeed, men of imperial blood, but still men who engaged in commerce. the dynastic struggles of the last quarter of that century, men belonging to the class of nobles were continually putting themselves forward, or being put forward by others, as candidates for the imperial throne. The frequency of such attempts, together with the support they met with, points to the fact that the monarchs were coming to be regarded merely as the persons chosen as rulers from the class of nobles. The nobles had lessened the distance between themselves and the emperor, and as each generation passed had become possessed of a larger share of the government of the country. There was, indeed, nothing like a caste of nobles. One family became impoverished and sank into obscurity, while another family, like that of Angelos, rose from small beginnings, and by prosperity and alliances with the nobles rose to power, and ultimately furnished occupants of the throne. The power of the merchant princes had been continually increasing, while that of the emperor had been growing less. To such an extent had this change gone, that the rule in the capital itself had become not much unlike that which prevailed in Venice. The government was nominally absolute; actually in great part oligarchical. There was the lingering tradition of the divine right of the emperor still strong in the provinces, and

not altogether forgotten in the capital, but there was also a control exercised by the merchants throughout the empire, and especially in the capital, which seriously modified the absolutism of the imperial rule. The actual government was, therefore, something between that which prevails in Russia now and that which prevailed during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Venice.

ment

tended to like that of Venice at

become

later

periods.

If, indeed, the comparison were restricted to Constanti- Governnople, the condition of things in the New Rome during the later half of the twelfth century resembled far more closely that which existed in the most prosperous days of Venice than that which exists or has existed in Russia. If the latter empire is the successor and representative of the imperial rule of New Rome, Venice was in a still more striking manner the successor and representative of the greatness and also of the narrowness of the intellect and of the internal life of Constantinople. Each city was imperial in the sense that it domineered over the whole of the territory under its rule, and absorbed into itself the life, the intelligence, the wealth, the art, and the commerce of such territory. The palaces of the city of the Adriatic were built from the spoils of commerce and by merchant princes, as were most of those of the city on the Bosphorus. The Great Church of Venice was a small copy of the Great Church of the Divine Wisdom; less beautiful, less shapely, less harmonious as to its interior, though with the advantage of having had its exterior finished, which the earlier and larger church never had. The domestic as well as the earliest ecclesiastical architecture of the city of the Adriatic were the development of that which the Venetians had seen in Constantinople. The joyous life of Venice and its love of art were the reproduction of Byzantine life. Like Constantinople, too, the source of all or nearly all its wealth was commerce. Trade was the life and soul of both cities. Their governments, indeed, differed, but the difference was rather in form than in reality. If Venice, in the language of Wordsworth, had once held the gorgeous East in fee and was the safeguard of the West,' she was so only as the continuator of the work of Constantinople, which, as we shall see,

Decline of empire.

was in a far truer sense the first bulwark of defence against the advance of the hordes of Asia. Under the rulers of the Basilian dynasty, Constantinople had not only resisted all foreign invasions, but had carried the development of trade to a very remarkable extent. Roads, bridges, and security had made access to the coasts easy. Harbours, a powerful fleet, and freedom from restrictions in trade had encouraged

commerce.

With the end of the Basilian dynasty comes a time when, though very slowly, there begins a period of decline. This period I may place between 1057 and 1203, when the capital was captured by the Latins. By the latter event the long and prosperous history of the Byzantine empire was suddenly interrupted, and the European State which was by far the most advanced in civilisation was handed over to anarchy and subsequently to barbarism. At the beginning of this period of, speaking generally, one hundred and fifty years preceding the Latin conquest, the empire was still strong. In order to show how it had become weakened, it becomes necessary that I should describe at some length the events in which it took part during the period in question, and which were the cause of this weakening.

13

CHAPTER II.

WEAKENING OF THE EMPIRE BY ATTACKS OF THE

SELJUKIAN TURKS.

CONSTANTINOPLE during the century and a half preceding its conquest was an island amid a sea of peoples. On every side peoples were in motion, new races coming in, old ones being pushed aside. The Normans, who were troubling our fathers at this very period, were likewise troubling the Byzantine empire. The great wave of population from Central Asia, which was rushing westward, spent its force in the Balkan peninsula and in Asia Minor. Constantinople was the strong barrier at once against Asia and Arabia. Since the time of Mahomet all Western Asia had been in motion, and had been hurling itself on Europe. The Byzantine empire had furnished the strongest line of defence, and had hitherto held its own with a consummate ability to which Western Europe has never yet done justice. Huns, Bulgarians, Patchinaks, Avars, Comans, Uzes had passed to the north of the Black Sea, and had maintained a hold, for a time at least, over some portions of the Balkan peninsula or neighbouring territories. The Wallachs, the Croats, and the Scythians had repeatedly given trouble. Men of our own race, the Warings, had come with Russians, and had at an early period tried and proved the strength of Micklegard, the imperial city. The great movement, however, from Central Asia was principally felt in Asia Minor. Again and again during the nine centuries from Constantine was the empire able to beat off its enemies, but again and again was the attack renewed. During the last one hundred and fifty years preceding her fall, Constantinople was almost continually fighting the battle of civilisation against barbarism, and during that period she was afflicted by almost every ill that can distress a nation. She had defeated

Attacks upon empire

from Asia.

external and internal foes. But these conquests, by their very success hardly less than by the expenditure of her force, were weakening her, and when, during the last quarter of a century which preceded the Latin conquest, she added to her other troubles those which arose from a series of dynastic revolutions among thoroughly incompetent men, she found herself too weak to resist the invader from the West.

The troubles of the century and a half preceding her fall come respectively from the side of Asia and from that of Europe. Those from the former were the more serious, and arose from the attacks of the Turks—a race which had recently commenced to push its way southward and westward. The Asiatic hordes, known under the generic name of Turks, included various tribes spoken of sometimes as Comans, at other times as Turcomans, and more rarely at first as Turks. The Patchinaks, the Uzes, and other less known divisions, were also occasionally called Turks. All who were called by this name were probably of the same stock as the ancient Scythians, who were famous as bowmen. The terms Scythian and Turk or Turcoman had come to be synonymous with each other and with barbarian; and Turk bears the same signification among the Moslem subjects of the Sultan to this day. The people so designated came from Central Asia, and especially from the country which still bears the name Turkestan. They belonged to the Turanian race, and were thus cut off from the traditions, the common stock of language, and the influences which have always formed a tie among peoples of Aryan origin. The central plains of Asia furnished during many centuries a constant supply of new emigrants of this race, who, from various causes-the commonest being probably the pressure of the Chinese-were constantly pushing their way to the West. The inhabitants of these plains were then as now mostly nomads. The rich pastures which have been the rearing grounds of innumerable horses have enabled the

The Turks call themselves Osmanlis. This is of course a modern name, and ought only to distinguish them from other Turks as being the descendants of Osman or Othman, the leader of the tribes who finally captured Constantinople.