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FROM CONSTANTINOPLE TO BATUM 39
the Norwegian chieftain and warrior-champion, Harald
Haardraade, strong, astute, and cunning, performed his deeds
of valour and destruction.
Acts of cruelty and violence were by no means only on the
side of the enemies of civilization. Can \ve imagine a more
incredible atrocity than that perpetrated by the able Christian
emperor Basil 11, who, after defeating the Bulgarians in 1014,
sent 15,000 prisoners home with their eyes put out, some of
them, however, being allowed to keep one eye in order to
guide the rest ! The prince of the barbarians, more sensitive
than the Christian conquerors, died of a broken heart at the
sight of his men.
Take another picture. When through treachery the brave
emperor Romanus IV lost the battle of Manazkert in Armenia
in 1 07 1, and was tåken prisoner by the Seljuks, the blood
thirsty sultan Alp Arslan first put his foot on the captive
monarch’s neck and then granted him life and liberty, and
treated him as an honoured guest. But on returning to his
own people he was attacked by his treacherous courtiers,
deposed, blinded as usual, and finally murdered. Thus
ended the golden age of Byzantium.
Then wc come to the fifteenth century, when the once
mighty Byzantine empire had shrunk into an insignificant
little state. The Turks had torn away one piece after another,
so that little remained of it save Constantinople, the Bosporus
peninsula and a few scattered lands : Thessalonika, the
province of Misithra in Peloponnesus, the islands of Lemncs
and Thasos, and the towns of Varna and Mesembria in Bulgaria.
But the stronghold of Constantinople still held out for a long
time, and Sultan Murad II failed to take the city by storm in
1422, when cannons were used for the first time in the East.
and, curiously enough, it was the Turks who made use of
this Western invention. Within the walls of the city life went
on as usual, undisturbed by defeats outside ; apparently
unconscious of danger and impending fate the citizens revelled
in splendid processions, dramatic performances in St. Sophia,
and much beside ; and from time to time found leisure to
receive some foreign envoy with regal pomp.
But the city was attacked and besieged again by Muham
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