woman, who, like most women in power, showed herself callous to human suffering and implacable in her revenge.
The Saracenic wars assumed the character of annual incursions into Christian territory for the purpose chiefly of capturing slaves. Haroun Al Raschid himself, on one occasion, marched across the whole of Asia Minor, and gazed upon Constantinople from Scutari. Irene bought him off by the promise of an annual tribute.
The end of Irene appears like an act of justice. She was dethroned by the grand treasurer, and sent to end her days in poverty on one of the islands. The new emperor, Nicephorus, was not a soldier, but he possessed very great financial capacity, and understood that his surest means of preserving the crown was by the maintenance of numerous and well-disciplined armies. What concerned the citizens of Constantinople most was that he taxed Church as well as civil property, a step which was naturally resented by the ecclesiastics. Nicephorus, too, exasperated the priests and monks by his tolerance in religious matters. He was defeated and slain in an invasion of the Bulgarian kingdom.
In the next emperor, Michael, the son-in-law of Nicephorus, the monks had a man after their own heart. He lavished the imperial treasures on monasteries; he ascribed any success to the intervention of some saint; he decorated their tombs with silver; and when his army was defeated by the Bulgarians, he confessed it was a judgment of Heaven for taking the throne of his brother-in-law. He, too, went to end his ignoble days in a monastery.
