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 She was still wealthy, and the centre of a vast commerce; she could send numerous and well-equipped armies into the field, and her fleets, though once, as we have seen, worsted by Genseric and his Vandals, were powerful enough to command the Euxine and guard her possessions in the Mediterranean. Now all was changed. The Latin Crusader had spoiled and wasted her beyond the possibility of her ever again attaining the pre-eminent wealth and grandeur which had made her seem to be almost a worthy seat of the Cæsars. Her harbour was not crowded with merchant ships, as of old, and her suburbs were no longer the chosen residences of wealthy families from all parts of the world. The republics of Venice and Genoa had succeeded to her riches and her maritime power. The suburb of Galata or Pera was granted by the emperor who, in 1261, restored the Greek empire at Constantinople, as a possession to the Genoese, who had concluded an alliance with the Greeks, and had promised their naval assistance, at least for the defence of their capital. Established in this quarter, which they were to hold as the emperor's vassals on the usual terms of such a tenure, they soon by their enterprise drew into their own hands the commerce of the surrounding seas, and made themselves in fact independent of their nominal head.

The emperor to whom we have referred was the Michael Palæologus whom we have already had occasion to mention. We can but glance briefly at the events of his reign and at those of his successors. Of those events the chief, as far as the Byzantine empire is concerned,