Page:Constantinople by Brodribb.djvu/38

 any means adequate to man its walls on the required scale. It needed trained soldiers to resist such a foe as Philip, and could hardly entrust its defence to volunteer citizens. The average Byzantine had not the moral stamina to take his turn at military duty in the trenches or on the walls. He could not, at a moment's notice, break off the even tenour of his pleasant and luxurious life. While trying to be a soldier, he must be allowed to live in his usual merry, self-indulgent fashion. So if he could not go to his wineshop, he would have his wineshop extemporized for him on the ramparts, or wherever duty might call him. It was, it must be confessed, rather inglorious; and yet through the whole of this terrible crisis these Byzantines acquitted themselves with credit, and really seem to have deserved the succour which at last saved them. The siege lasted about six months. Philip had in his service a particularly clever engineer, Polyidus by name, who was versed in all the then known arts of besieging cities, and who doubtless added many ingenious expedients evolved out of his own wit and genius. New kinds of engines were used, as at Perinthus, and an endless series of underground passages were cut under the walls, to give the assailants a chance of suddenly appearing within the lines of defence. Nor was this all. Across the Golden Horn Philip threw a bridge, and he blocked up the harbour with huge masses of stone, to keep off the approach of the Byzantine ships. On one occasion he was all but successful. It was a dark, wet night, and by means of their subterranean passages the Macedonian troops had contrived to