by storm, but treachery might help him. There was a captain of German mercenaries named Gilpracht, who held a tower in the Blachernian quarter, which commanded the Charsian gate. They found means of bribing him. At night George Palæologus was admitted into the gate, and his troops immediately took possession of the towers adjoining, and poured into the streets of Constantinople. Here the advantage was nearly lost as soon as gained, the soldiers dispersing themselves about the streets, plundering and murdering. Alexius was left with his partisans almost alone, and had the Varangians known, they could easily have seized the leaders and put an end to the revolt. But they did not know. Palæologus got possession of the fleet; the emperor abandoned his army, fled to the Church of St. Sophia, and offered to resign the crown. Alexius entered the palace, and, perhaps because he could not help it, gave up the city to sack. It is difficult to say whether the city suffered more at the hands of its own countrymen, so to speak, or at the hands of the Latins, when, a hundred years later, Dandolo gave up the city to the license of Frank and Flemish soldiers.
The character of Alexius I. has been drawn by the partial hand of his daughter. Her estimate has not been accepted by subsequent historians in the same admiring spirit. He brought to support a position of the greatest danger and difficulty a mind crafty beyond all precedent, a mind which rejoiced and gloried in dissimulation, a mind which habitually preferred tortuous to straight ways. We cannot follow him through the vicissitudes
