Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/96

 78 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. favorites of the court were put in their place. The protose- bastos, with some of liis chief followers, was arrested in the palace by the Waring guard, and at midnight was removed secretly, for greater safety, into the church of the palace. The Warings treated him with harshness, their cruelty taking the form of preventing him from sleeping. The patriarch inter- ceded with the guards, but in vain. A few days later the prisoner was brought forth, placed on a pony, carried in mock procession down to the seaside, and sent across the mouth of the Bosphorus to Andronicos, who at once ordered him to be deprived of his sight. The only force which now opposed the popular favorite was that of the foreio:n colonists. They took the part He succeeds. •/ i of Maria, probably because she was a Latin prin- cess. Andronicos, being possessed of the fleet, sent an army to attack the city. The Greeks, or Eomans as the inhabitants still called themselves, rose in his favor, and the colonists, who occupied a large part of the slope towards the Golden Horn, were attacked in front and rear, and fled. Many, however, found safety in the palaces of the nobles. All who were taken were killed. Others took ship and sought refuge in Prinkipo and others of the Princes' Islands, where, in revenge for their own losses, they burned the monasteries and plun- dered the inhabitants. The attacks which the Latin colonists drew on themselves, by taking sides in this struggle, were the beginning of the alienation which culminated in the cap- ture of the city. By this time almost every one of importance had crossed the Bosphorus to welcome Andronicos. Among the last to do so were the patriarch and the leading ecclesiastics. A few days afterwards, the pretender entered a trireme, and, leaving Damalis or Scutari, passed over to the capital. Manuel had built two towers, one off Damalis where the present Maiden's Tower stands, and the other near the present Seraglio Point, and called the Tower of Manganes, from the name of an adjacent palace." To this palace the young emperor and his ' A chain connected thesc two towers, and probably floated on wooden