CHAPTER XI.
THE LAST EMPERORS.
HE Byzantime empire would seem to have been endued with an almost miraculous vitality. Its capture and sack by the ruthless Latins might have been expected utterly and finally to extinguish it. Yet it was destined to survive the Latin conquest, and to see the downfall of the kingdom which for little better than half a century had usurped its place. Again it lifted its head, and for two more centuries Roman emperors, Cæsars as they were styled by their subjects and by the world, reigned with some outward splendour and some real power at Constantinople.
During these its last years, however, it painfully exhibited the infirmities of extreme old age. It was indeed "the sick man;" its ultimate recovery, it was unmistakably plain, was out of the question. The Turks under the House of Othman were conquering Asia Minor and menacing Europe early in the fourteenth century. Constantinople, it is true, had successfully resisted foes as barbarous and as formidable. But in those days she possessed resources of which she had now been stripped.
