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Rh the year 1055) after conquering Persia and regions farther west, he was appointed sultan, or vice-regent for the caliph. This man was succeeded by his nephew, Alp Arslan, who conquered Armenia and defeated the Emperor Romanus Diogenes at the battle of Manzikert ( 1071). All Anatolia was now at the mercy of the Turks, who continued to press north and west till they threatened Constantinople. In the year 1081 the sultan fixed his headquarters at Nicæa, the sacred centre of Christian orthodoxy. Happily for the world the confusion into which the Byzantine Empire had been thrown by the defeat of Romanus was now subsiding, and a strong prince, Alexius Comnenus, was on the throne. But he could do little to stem the spreading flood of barbarism. A ghastly peril threatened the remnant of the empire of the Cæsars. The Arabs had received culture from Greeks and Persians; and their policy had become pacific and moderately liberal. But the Turks were fierce, brutal Mongols from Central Asia, little better than savages, spreading destruction and ruin in their path. Their capture of Syria and Asia Minor threatened the ruin of civilisation throughout those regions which for centuries had been in the van of human progress. Happily they soon came to some extent under Persian civilising influences, or all would have been lost.

In his despair the emperor sent urgent requests to Europe for assistance. Doubts have been thrown on a letter he is said to have addressed to Robert, Count of Flanders—a brother-in-law of William the Conqueror, especially for the reason that in it Alexius mentions the beauty of the women of Constantinople as an inducement for the warriors of the West to come to the rescue of his city. The letter exists in several forms, and therefore manifestly it has been tampered with. While we cannot be sure of its original features in every particular, there can