Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/194

 176 THE TALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. citizens of each race was easy. Sympathy between them was natural ; for their numbers were small, and each citizen felt that the welfare of the state was also his private interest. The empire had no such advantages. It was composed of peoples w^idely different in origin, in history, and in sympathy. The Greeks of the south had never altogether forgotten their ancient civilization, and were a race in intellectual decay. The fierce Bulgars and the Slavs of the north of the peninsula had not yet emerged from barbarism. The various colonies of Wallaclis, of Huns, and gf other races which were settled in the empire and were compelled to obey its rule, had little or no sympathy with the people by w^hom they were sur- rounded. All the peoples, races, and tongues of the empire regarded Constantinople, with its prosperity, its immense trade, and its luxury, with a certain rivalry or jealousy often amounting to hostility. The community of feeling arising either from patriotism or religion, which has always been present in the great protracted struggles of nations, hardly existed in the Byzantine empire. Its territory was too wide- spread in an age when communication was slow for any such common sentiment to exert a powerful influence over the mass of the population. The isolation of peoples of various races and languages was never, under its rule, so complete as it is now under that of the Ottoman Turks, where Greek, Turk, and Bulgarian live side by side without intermarriage and almost without intercourse. On the contrary, the empire had shown a wonderful capacity for assimilating the various races which had flowed into it ; but these races had come in such numbers and were of such widely different composition that the process was far from complete during the period we have been considering, when it was necessary for the nation to put forth all her strength. A large portion of her army was con- tinually engaged in keeping order among the diverse peoples and the discordant elements of which her population was formed. We have seen that the attacks made upon her from with- out were of a formidable nature. While those from the Normans of Sicily and from the Italian states were of a kind