Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/234

 21G THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. The luxury of the court, the degeneracy and effeminacy of Destruction of ^he ruling class, were nowhere so disastrous in their the peai?auiiy. effects j^g q^ the mcaus of defence. Indirectly the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the nobles and gov- erning classes in Constantinople contributed greatly to the loss of Asia Minor. During the tenth and eleventh centuries the cultivation of that portion of the empire had been in the hands of a Greek-speaking peasantr3^ The nobles during the century which preceded the incursions of the Seljukian Turks had rapidly accumulated land. Peasant owners had al- most ceased to exist. The estates were cultivated by slaves, whom successful wars enabled the nobles to capture or their wealth to purchase. The peasants had been both able and willing to fight for their hearths and homes. Serfs or slaves had, however, no wish to risk their lives for their masters. The result was that, when the hour of trial came, the enemy had to be met with the regular forces of the empire. The means of meeting him by a peasantry which would harass his every movement, wdiich would be continually on the watch to resist every settlement of a Turk or Tartar in the country, which would be as persistently and tenaciously hostile as the Montenegrins have been during five centuries, did not exist. The inroads of a barbarian host had no terrors to men who had been reduced to serfdom or to abject poverty, who had nothing to lose, and whose soil was possessed by nobles who were hard taskmasters. So far, indeed, from the enemy being greatly feared by the peasants, there were, as we have seen, many examples of whole villages submitting themselves to the Turkish rulers, alien in race, religion, and language, in order to escape the oppression of their own countrymen. The corruption of the capital left the navy in a disastrous wenkening couditiou. The hardy sailors of the Marmora and of the uavy; ^^ |.|j^ islauds of thc ^Egcau supplied a body of men who were always ready to make admirable crews for the im- perial fleets. But the ruling classes had been so long accus- tomed to meet the enemy on land that the navy had come to be gradually neglected, and at the time of the Latin conquest was so weak that it took no part in the defence of the city.