stronger position offered a still more determined resistance. In the first siege thirty thousand Moslems are said to have been slain; but the destruction which awaited them on the occasion of the second was by far the heaviest reverse their arms had as yet sustained. Commanded by their ablest general, at the head of one hundred and twenty thousand men, they had deemed success certain, and little anticipated the serious resistance the city really made. The Greeks were, however, resolved at all costs to force back these terrible invaders, who had plundered almost with impunity so many lands. All persons not provided with the means of subsistence for a year's siege were ordered to leave the city, the public granaries and arsenals were abundantly replenished, the walls restored and strengthened, and engines for casting stones, or darts of fire, were stationed along the ramparts or in vessels of war, of which an additional number were hastily constructed. The Greeks, on perceiving that the Saracen fleet had been largely reinforced from Egypt and Syria, were at first induced to offer the large ransom of a piece of gold for each person in the city; but, on the contemptuous rejection of this proposal, the Muhammedan chief imagining he had the game in his own hands, they determined on a most daring expedient to get rid of the fleet that threatened their destruction. As it slowly approached, with a fair wind and over a smooth sea, overshadowing the Straits like a moving forest, the Greeks suddenly launched fire-ships[1] into the*
- ↑ The Greek fire was prepared chiefly from naphtha, with which there was mixed sulphur and pitch, extracted from evergreen firs. The admixture, when ignited, produced a fierce and obstinate flame, which burned with equal vehemence in every direction, and, instead of
