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arms and religion, and to haul down the Christian banner, which for more than a thousand years had waved over its battlements. Nor was he unsupported by many favouring accidents, of which the most valuable was the discovery of gunpowder, as this engine of destruction rendered the Greek fire of comparatively little advantage, and left success to those who had best studied the qualities of the new explosive compound. Muhammed at once devoted himself to its serious study, the result being that the cannon he cast for the siege of Constantinople are generally admitted to have been greatly superior to any weapons of the class hitherto invented.

While Muhammed threatened the capital of the East, the Greek emperor implored in vain the assistance of the Christian powers of the West, who were either too weak or too much engaged with their own contentions, even where favourably disposed, to render him assistance. Even the princes of the Morea and of the Greek islands affected a cold neutrality, while the Sultan indulged the Genoese in the delusive hope that they would still be allowed to retain the advantages they had possessed under the empire as regarded their trade with the city and on the Euxine.

But Constantinople did not fall without a desperate and bloody struggle; and had the zeal and ability of its inhabitants equalled the heroism of the last Constantine, the banner of the Cross might have floated even until now over the great city of the Eastern Empire.