Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/82

64: THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. armies had been for long centuries thus continually em ployed. Races whose very names have been forgotten were crowding into Europe, and, but for her, might have over- whelmed the peoples of the AYest. From the time when Charles Martel won his victory at Tours — a victory all mod- ern writers have justly glorified as having saved Western Eu- rope from a Mahometan invasion from Africa, the Byzantine emperors had been waging a much more serious, because a permanent, warfare for the same purpose. The great defeat of the Arabs before Constantinople, almost contemporane- ously with that at Tours, was itself as great a victory for civ- ilization. But while, in the West, one strong and crushing blow to an isolated body of Mahometans had been decisive, in the east of Europe this blow had to be repeated again and again, and generations of men had to be expended in saving European civilization. These efforts, however, were rapidly exhausting the strength of the empire. Step by step the enemy was gaining ground. The Turks in Asia Minor, the Bulgarians, the Slavs, the Huns, the Patchinaks, the Uzes, and the Comans, in Europe, had largely contributed, and es- pecially during the century and a half preceding 1200, to that w^eakening of the empire which was preparing the way for the great catastrophe of the Latin conquest.