Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/195

EXCEPTIONAL CONDITION OF THE EMniilv 177 which have fallen to the ordinary lot of nations, those from the East were of an altogether extraordinary and exceptional character. Two broad streams of Asiatic barbarians, one to the north and the other to the south of the Black Sea, were flowing in upon Europe during the century and a half pre- ceding 1200, and the Eastern empire alone had to resist on behalf of Europe. Every inducement which the accumulation of wealth could offer to such barbarians was I eld out to them ; but I cannot too frequently insist that the greatest incentive to their attacks was furnished by religious fanaticism. Our small war in the Soudan has reminded us liow powerful a motive the religious zeal of Mahometanism can supply to its newly made converts. The hordes of Asia which hurled themselves on the imperial armies of New Rome were filled with the like new-born zeal for their faith ; but they had the advantage of an almost boundless reserve of men behind them, and the richest spoils of the world open for them to plunder in case of success. As the magnificent German army of the third crusade fought and defeated every attack of the Turks between the Marmora and Syria, with the result only that it had itself melted away by the time it reached its destination, so the imperial armies had again and again, by virtue of their superior discipline, defeated the armies of the same enemy, only to find that, after a few months, anothei army had come into existence, and that new battles had again to be fought. The stories of these battles and of these victories alike of Crusaders and of the armies of the empire, as told b}^ the Western and by the Byzantine writers, are confirmed by the Moslem historians. The history of the contest between Christendom and Islam In the west of Europe is, with the single exception of the centuries of struggle in Spain, that of two or three great battles. We glorify Charles Martel and the heroism of John Sobieski. But the story of the same struggle against the Xew Bome is that of a long series of battles, of a ceaseless contest, and of the steady gain- ing ground by the enemy during centuries. I have already said that the Arab siege of Constantinople may take rank with the contemporary battle of Tours. But there is nothing 12