Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/377

 DIVISION OF THE SPOIL. 359 The total amount distributed among the Crusaders and Ve- netians shows that the wealth of Constantinople had not been exaggerated. £800,000 was given to the Crusaders, a like sum to the Venetians, with the £100,000 due to them. These sums had been collected in hard cash from a city where the inhabitants were hostile, and where they had in their wells and cisterns an easy means of hiding their treasures of gold, silver, and precious stones — a means traditionally well known in the East — and in a city half of which had been recently burned in three great fires. As we have seen, abundance of booty was taken possession of by the troops wdiich never went into the general mass. Sismondi ' estimates that the wealth in specie and movable property before the capture was not less than twenty-four million pounds sterling. The distribution was made during the latter end of April. Many works of art in bronze were sent to the melting-pot to be coined. Many statues were broken up in order to obtain the metals w^itli which they were adorned. The conquerors knew nothing and cared nothing for the art which had added value to the metal. The weight of the bronze was to them the only question of interest. The works of art Destruction i • i 1 -1 -r. i of works of which tlicy destroyed were sacrmced not to any sentiment like that of the Moslem against images which they believed to be idols or talismans. No such ex- cuse can be made for the Christians of the West. Their mo- tive for destroying so much that was valuable was neither fanaticism nor religion. It was the simple greed for gain. No sentiment restrained their cupidity. The great statue of the Virgin which ornamented the Taurus was sent as unhesi- tatingly to the furnace as the figure of Hercules. No object was sufficiently sacred, none sufficiently beautiful, to be worth saving if it could be converted into cash. Amidst so much that was destroyed it is impossible that there were not a con- siderable number of works of art of the best periods. The one list which has been left us by the Greek Logoikcte pro- fesses to give account of only the larger statues which were • II. p. 405.