Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/54

 36 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. Bosphorus, and levied taxes withiii sight of the imperial city itself/ Alexis, the first emperor of note of the great house of Com- Aiexis the ^enos, did his best to drive away the invader ; fought First. jjjj^ jjj^j defeated him, and might possibly, as his daughter thinks, have recovered the Asiatic provinces, if the attack of Robert in the west of the empire had not compelled him to make peace. As it was, he succeeded in obtaining a treaty by which Suliman promised that he would not pass the river Drakon.' A little later the difficulties in the western por- tion of his empire compelled Alexis to ask assistance from the Turks, and 7000 men were sent ' to his aid. When the em- peror had defeated his Western invaders he attempted again to check the inroads of the Turks. The governor of IS'icsea, Aboul Cassim, had violated the treaty, and the Turks were again on the shores of the Marmora. Their ruler was Kilidji Arslan, the son of Suliman, who became sultan in 1095, and is often spoken of by Latin writers under the same name as his father. But now new actors appear on the scene. The same month Crusades i" which Kilidji Arslan became sultan witnessed commence. ^^^^ departure of Peter the Hermit from Jerusalem to preach a crusade. In the autumn of the next year, God- frey de Bouillon had started for the East with ten thousand cavalry and seventy thousand foot. The history of the early crusades does not concern directly the purpose I have in view. It is sufficient at present to note that though the crusades delivered many blows against the Turks as well as against the Saracens, they greatly disorganized the empire. In many instances they grossly disregarded the rights of the subjects of the Greek empire. They regarded the latter as schismatics, and insulted them on account of their religion. Wrangling as to the price of provisions was inevitable when a large army 1 Will, of Tyre, 112, 113. ^ Ann. Com. iii. c. 7. This was in 1081. The Drakon runs into the Gulf of Ismidt opposite the modern Gibseh. Helenopolis, the modern Yalova, was near its mouth. ' Ann. Com. v. c. 4.