Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/193

 EXCEPTIONAL CONDITION OF THE EMPIRE. 175 to tlieir cost in the war between 1171 and 1175. But she had acquired the habit of looking for the aid of Venice in every struggle which had to be fought out at sea, and the result was that the strength of the imperial navy had been gradually lessening, until, when the hour of supreme trial came, her lieet was powerless to resist the invader who had been her liired ally. The rivalries of the naval states of Italy kept the em- pire in nearly perpetual naval war with one or other of them ; but the navy which was strengthened by this warfare was that of Yenice, and not of the New Eome. During the last half of the century preceding the great expedition which Yenice carried to Constantinople, her hos- tility and jealousy had been continually increasing. The tradition of her alliance with Constantinople was forgotten. Her later conquests had been won by her own strength alone. The alliance of the New Eome was no longer needful to her, and as that alliance had been withdrawn there was substituted for it the strongest desire to wound the empire, to destroy its influence, and to take possession of its trade. Her intimate relations with the New Eome made her understand better than any other state how valuable was her commerce, and probably also how much her resources had been diminished by the attacks on land and sea; and the tenacious hostility which she showed during the generation preceding her final blow contributed more to the weakening of the empire than the opposition of all the other Italian states. I have endeavored to show that during the century and a half preceding the Latin conquest the New Eome thecauses and the empire over which it ruled had been at- weakened the tackcd as surcly no state had ever been attacked be- posiiiouiu fore. The lono^ contest of the Elder Eome with 1200. the states of Italy, the five centuries of warfare waged by the remnant of Spaniards who had never given in to the Moor, have each of them features which separate them distinctly from the contest waged by Constantinople. The Eomans of the earlier time and the Spaniards who ex- pelled the Moors were welded together by community of interest and of orifj^in. Intercourse between the various