186
Constantinople.
throne of Byzantium for nine hundred years, were swept away. The tenures of the land were changed. Old notions of law, justice, religion, social customs, rank, were changed suddenly. When the last Courtenay emperor fled, as Alexis III., Alexis V., and Theodore Lascaris fled, in secret and by night, his conquerors came back, as Louis XVIII. did, to a place which was strange and new to those who yet remembered the old traditions.
