Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/68

 50 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. The long struggle against this brave, fanatical, and per- sistent enemy had, however, wearied out the in- exhaTsted habitants of Asia Minor. The exactions of the empire. . ., i • i it empire, in order to meet the invaders, made the population ready to accept any conditions -which gave a reason- able hope of peace. Many of the Christian subjects of the emperor took advantage of the inducements which the leaders of the Turks began to hold out to them, and emigrated from the imperial territories into those of a sultan who governed better tlian usual. The sketch that I have here given of the struggle with the Seljukian Turks shows how formidable was the difficulty which they constituted for the empire. They were defeated in a long series of battles, and yet they continually renewed the struggle. Great armies were slauglitered, and yet new ones shortly after took the field. The victory of the empire was on several occasions so decisive, and the number of Turks slain so great, that the Eomans might well think themselves justified in believing that they had annihilated the foe. The Crusaders, too, inflicted what they thought to be crushing, and what were reall}^ very serious, blows. But the constant flow of a stream of immigrants from Central Asia recruited the strength of the invaders, and Romans and Crusaders were alike powerless to put an end to their progress. The empire had, as we shall see, other and powerful enemies to contend against. The struggle it had maintained for a century and a half against the Turks, and the loss of revenue from so wealthy a territory as that which it had lost, had greatly weakened it. The cost in men and money had drained the imperial treasury, and compelled the emperors to inflict a burden of taxation upon their subjects greater than they could bear. 'No fact could show more conclusively to what des- perate straits Asia Minor had come than that Christian popu- lations should have voluntarily exchanged the rule of the empire for that of the Turk. Whole districts had been allowed to go out of cultivation. Villages had disappeared. Cities of ancient renown were rapidly dwindling down to insignificant villages, or were becoming altogether forgotten.