Page:Constantinople by Brodribb.djvu/260

 stricken population, and everything outside the city walls wore a dreary and desolate aspect. Amurath completed their ruin, and after his siege a few open villages, tenanted by small farmers, were all that was left to the Greeks. And within the city itself clearly visible the signs of feebleness and poverty, and of an utter absence of public spirit. The once magnificent streets, which amazed visitors from the West by their gorgeous display of wealth and luxury, now presented long ranges of ruined houses and palaces, from which the architectural glories of old, the marble columns and exquisite mosaics, had been purchased and carried away by the merchant princes of Venice and Genoa. Constantinople was, in fact, a ruined city. It is true, indeed that even in this period of swift and plainly-marked decay a Greek could, in a letter to the emperor, John Palæologus, boast in pompous phrases of its surviving splendour; but, as Gibbon observes, "a sigh and confession escape from the orator that his wretched country was but the shadow and sepulchre of its former self." The people, it would appear, had become too spiritless even to take common precautions against the frequent recurrence of famine and of pestilence. Between 1348 and 1418 the last-mentioned calamity is said to have afflicted the city eight times; and the first, as we might almost infer, came at frequent intervals. A specially deadly disease wrought terrible havoc among the citizens in the year 1431, some years after the siege by Amurath. After this we can hardly wonder that they had neither heart nor spirit, as indeed they had not adequate