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 248 DESTEUCTION OF THE GREEK EMPIEE progress was almost as important to the republics as to the Greeks. Venetians and Genoese recognised that once Con- stantinople was in the hands of the sultan, there would be an end of their development eastward of Cape Matapan. They were, therefore, both fighting for their own interests. They had much to lose and nothing to gain by the success of Mahomet. Nor were the soldiers of the republics destitute of chivalrous spirit. The rough sailor-surgeon, Bar- baro, notes that other Venetians as well as Trevisano were willing to fight for the honour of God and the benefit of Christendom. Leonard and other writers testify to equally lofty sentiment on the part of the Genoese Justiniani. In their character and conduct, not less than in their mixed motives, derived from self-interest and chivalry, these foreign adventurers remind English readers of the Drakes, Frobishers, Kaleighs, and other heroes of our own Elizabethan period. Unhappily for the city and for civilisation, Venice was unable to send more men before the final catastrophe. But to the eternal glory of the Venetians within the city, whose names are duly recorded by Barbaro ' for a perpetual memorial,' and of the Genoese who aided them, the conduct of the combatants from both republics was worthy of the com- patriots of Marco Polo and of Columbus. On the one side was an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men, containing at least twelve thousand of the best trained troops in the world ; on the other, a miser- able number of eight thousand fighting men to defend a length of between twelve and thirteen miles of walls. The emperor, with Justiniani, completed the arrange- ments for the defence of the city. Justiniani with the seven hundred men he had brought with him to Con- stantinople, consisting of his crew and four hundred men in armour, 1 was at first placed in charge of the walls between the Blachern Palace and the Adrianople Gate, but was soon transferred with his men and some of the bravest Greeks to the Lycus valley as the position of greatest importance, honour, 1 Crit. xxv.