Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/235

 THE CONDITION OF CONSTANTINOPLE IN 1200. 217 The power which possesses the Bosphorns and the Dardanelles ought always to be strong at sea if it possesses also the islands of the Archipelago. Nowhere in the world has there been, or is there, a nursery of seamen which produces more sailors. Their quality, from the days of the heroes of Salamis down to those of the exploits of Kanaris, has always been excel- lent. And yet, in spite of such a resource, the empire had for a century and a half previous to 1200 hired most of its fleets from the Venetians, and done its naval fighting in large part by deputy. The fiction of keeping up a fleet continued, indeed, until the attack upon the city, but it was improbable that the fleet of an empire which had done its fighting by deputy could cope with that which had been employed to do the actual work. When the hour of danger came it was found that the admiral, Michael Struphnos, brother-in-law^ of the Emperor Alexis the Third, had sold the stores, and had appropriated to his own use the supplies that should have enabled the fleet to put to sea. The effeminacy produced by Asiatic influences was con- spicuously and lamentably shown also in connection wuth the army. During long centuries the Xew Rome had preserved the traditions and the discipline of Ro- man army organization, and even in 1204 these had not been altogether lost. But the spirit which made the Greek phalanx and the Roman legion victorious had disappeared. The break- ing up of the Roman system of administration in the army, and, indeed, in the government generally, dates from the time of the Basilian dynasty, and especially from the reign of Leo the Sixth. The period is one of great external success and military glory, but this very success and prosperity facilitated the destruction of the municipal spirit -which gave life to the empire. It is at this time that we find the degeneracy of the empire really beginning. The emperors had become so pow- erful, and had been so influenced by the success of their Asiatic conquests, that they commenced for the first time to rule as Asiatic despots. The emperors had found it so convenient to hire mercenaries, and so inconvenient to force their own