Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/44

 26 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. the principal object of one of these attacks. It Iiad long been the great city of Eastern Asia Minor, the centre of Asiatic trade, the depot for merchandise transmitted overland from Persia and India to the Eastern empire and Europe general- ly. It was full of warehouses belonging to Armenians and Syrians, and is said to liave contained 800 churches and 300,000 people. Having failed to capture the city, Togrul's general succeeded in burning it. The destruction of so much wealtli struck a fatal blow at Armenian commerce, and was the first of a long series of acts of destruction by which the Turks have marked the whole course of their dealings w^ith Indo- Germanic peoples, and have converted some of the richest and most populous cities and provinces in the world into com- parative deserts. The Armenians fought bravely even after the destruction of Arson. Togrul's army met them in great force in 1048, and a battle was fought, which, though inde- cisive, compelled the general to change his plan of attack upon Asia Minor. In the same year Togrul in person invaded the provinces of the Emperor of Constantinople. The inde- pendent principality of Kars was attacked by him, and the Armenians were defeated, but in an attack upon Manzikert Togrul was compelled to retire into Persia. In 1052 he again invaded the empire, but the Greeks, with the aid of the Warings, or, as they are generally called by the Byzantine writers, the Varangians, marched to meet him in such force that the invaders did not venture to give battle. Eight years later he again attempted an invasion of the empire on the frontier of Mesopotamia, but without any decisive result. Togrul had, however, obtained a success which added He becomes gi'catly to his influence over his followers and over caliph. Mahometans generally. There were rival claimants for the caliphate, one of whom resided at Bagdad, the other in Egypt. Togrul threw the weight of his influence in favor of the Bagdad claimant, defeated and executed the chief of a rebellion against him, and then contrived to have himself named as the temporal substitute of the caliph.^ He thus 'The title is " Emiroloumcra, Prince of the Princes of the Supreme Head of the Empire of the Caliphs." — Vou Hammer, p. 13.