Page:Constantinople by Brodribb.djvu/241

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The Last Emperors.
219

with what we admire and regret. He desolated and destroyed as well as conquered, as the condition of the country in our day mournfully attests. The noble and once flourishing city of Ephesus now perished, and it is but in our own generation that some ruins of its famous temple have at last been brought to light by the patient industry of Mr. Wood. Heathen and Christian antiquity alike were almost effaced, and the wasting of this beautiful and historic region is one of the most painful chapters in the history of the world.

While all this miserable work was being done, the empire was torn, as we have seen, by civil strife between the elder and younger Andronicus. But for the feeble effort of the latter at resistance, the enemy went quite unchecked, and the Turkish chiefs (emirs as they were called) were now beginning to harass with their ships the islands of the Mediterranean and the Greek shores. But it was not till some years afterwards that we can say that the Turks established themselves in Europe. A strange incident had meanwhile occurred. The daughter of John Cantacuzenus, the minister who had supported the younger Andronicus against his grandfather, had been given in marriage to Orchan, now become for a time the emperor's ally. The friendship and alliance of the Turk involved the condition that he might sell his prisoners of war as slaves at Constantinople, and we hear of Christians, both men and women, being sold by public auction. Yet the interval between this infamy and the end of all was longer than we might have expected. It seems that Orchan, with barbaric cunning, completely