their unseaworthiness, but when all was over the Russians are
said to have lost two-thirds of their entire force. The invaders who
had been left on shore were then swept into the sea by reenforcements
that had arrived at Constantinople, and not a vestige was left
of the Russian invasion. Once more Greek fire and the Christian
navy had saved the empire; and for sheer audacity, crowned with a
victory of such magnitude, the feat of Theophanes stands unrivaled
in history.

From the tenth century on, Constantinople began to find her rivalries
in the west. The coronation of Charlemagne in 800 had marked the
final separation of the eastern and the western empire. As noted
above, the passing of the Saracens gave opportunity for the growth
of commercial city-states like Genoa, Pisa and Venice, and their
interests clashed not only with one another but also with those
of Constantinople.

The climax came in 1204 when Venice succeeded in diverting the
Fourth Crusade to an expedition of vengeance for herself, first
against the city of Zara and then against Constantinople. This
time the Eastern Empire had no fleet ready for defense and the
Venetian galleys filled the waters under the city walls. Many of
these galleys were fitted with a kind of flying bridge, a long
yard that extended from the mast to the top of the wall and stout
enough to bear a file of men that scrambled by this means to the
parapets. After many bloody repulses the city was finally captured,
and there followed a sack that for utter barbarity outdid anything
ever perpetrated by Arab or Turk. Thus the city that for nearly a
thousand years had saved Christian civilization was, by a hideous
irony of fate, taken and sacked by a Crusading army.

When the second Mohammedan invasion threatened Europe, Constantinople,
weak on land and impotent by sea, and deserted by the Christian
nations of the west, was unable to put up a strong resistance. At
last, in 1453, it was captured by the Turks, and became thereafter
the capital of the Moslem power. Great as this catastrophe was,
it cannot compare with what would have happened if the city had
fallen to the Saracen, the Hun, or the Russian during the dark
centuries when the nations of the west were scarcely in embryo.
In the 15th century they were strong enough to take up the sword
that Constantinople had dropped and draw the line beyond which
the Turk was not permitted to go.

Although it has been the fashion since Gibbon to