Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/85

 DYNASTIC TROUBLES. G7 tain-pass about thirty miles southeast of Nica^a. The imperial army had been weakened by sickness, and its leaders advised Manuel to postpone the intended attack npon the enemy. Manuel, however, refused. The army entered a defile, was attacked near Myriokephalon, and a considerable portion of it was cut to pieces. The emperor gained a small table-land, and tried desperately, against a superior force which had sur- rounded him, to break his way through.' He succeeded, though with thirty arrows in his buckler. Thence to the end of his reign there was a series of troubles with the Turks, who were continually advancing. The sultan, as ISTicetas states, was persuaded that nothing was so much against his interest as peace. Like the Soudan Mahdi in our own times, and like all Turkish rulers, his strength began to diminish as soon as his armies ceased to advance. The troubles with the Turks were not the only ones with Manners sue- which Manucl had to contend. He was attacked cesses. ^^ ^j^^ Sicilians, by the Servians, by the Hungari- ans, and by the Yenetians, and defeated or made honorable terms with all. His greatest effort against the Sultan of Ico- niura bad been rendered fruitless by the attack of Roger of Sicily. The necessity of watching the great armies of the Second Crusade had driven him to the necessity of conclud- ing a treaty of peace with the sultan. Manuel had led his own troops, and had been for a considerable time absent from the capital ; and to this cause, in part at least, must be attrib- uted the weak hold which he had over the court and populace of Constantinople. We shall have occasion to see how he had encouraged foreigners to settle in the capital, and that the population believed that this was the reason why the Italians had become possessed of a large part of the foreign trade. Hence, on his death, in 1180, the citizens of Constantinople were willing to support any one who was the enemy of his policy in regard to the treatment of foreigners. Manuel had left a son who was only twelve years old, and ^ Manuel wrote an account of this battle to Henry II. of England, there being English soldiers in his army.