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114 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. much more healthy at Constantinople then than now. A workman having been beaten by this jailer, the companions of his guild came together, attempted to seize the offender, and to lynch him for his misdeeds. When they found that he had fled, they hastened to the Great Church to procLaim a new emperor. The guards, however, opposed their entrance. A tumult was raised, and the news was conveyed to Alexis, who was at Chrysopolis. He sent orders to attack the peo- ple, but the mob fought with stones, scattered the troops, broke open the prisons, set free the prisoners, and destroyed a Saracen mosque. The son-in-law of the emperor appeared with a fresh detachment of troops, but even then the mob, consisting of unarmed and unarmored men, fought valiantly against well-clad troops. Some of them threw down the tiles from the houses, others attacked with stones. The fight was kept up till night, during which the mob dispersed. The populace, on other occasions, made demonstrations against the attempts of the court to extort money by unlawful means from private citizens, and numerous instances are recorded which show that the people of the capital would not tolerate anything like general or unusual oppression. Xicetas himself charges the emperor with having been in league with a pirate. He states that Alexis sent a certain Francopolons with six galleys to the Black Sea, on pretext of collecting the salvage of a ship which had been wrecked near Kerasund, but in reality to plunder the merchants who lived at Aminsos, a town on the coast near Kerasund. Francopo- lons plundered all the ships he could find, whether going to or from Constantinople. Some of the merchants escaped, came to Constantinople, and entered the Great Church with can- dles in tlicir hands as suppliants demanding justice. The emperor tlirew all the blame upon the pirate. His subjects obtained no redress. Those of the Sultan of Aminsos who had been similarly plundered were more fortunate, and the emperor was compelled to give as an indemnity fifty of the silver-lead mines with which the north shore of the coast of Asia Minor abounds. In this instance, as in so many others, the necessity of money to meet his personal expenditure and