CHAEGES ALLEGED AGAINST GEEEKS 305 the policy of neutrality. It would no doubt have been not only more in accordance with the crusading spirit but possibly wiser and better in the interest of Europe and of civilisation if the Genoese, as Leonard suggests that they ought to have done, had violated their treaty and had made common cause openly with the emperor from the first ; but to have done so would have been to risk the capture of Galata. Their policy was not a lofty one. Looked at by the light of subsequent events, it was not merely selfish but fatal ; but it was no more treacherous than the policy of neutrals generally is. It is not improbable that the various dissensions between the citizens and the foreigners and between the latter them- selves tended to make some of the Greeks lukewarm in their defence of the city. They were not going to fight for papists and heretics, or even for an emperor who had gone over to the papists. Leonard asserts that there were many defections ; that during the siege men who ought to have been at the walls tried to desert the city, pretended that they could not fight, that they wanted to attend to their fields and vineyards ; that others with whom he spoke urged that they must earn their bread, and that, in answer to his urging them to fight not only because of their duty to aid all Christians but because their own fate was at stake, they replied, ' What does the capture of the city matter to us if our families die of starvation ? ' 1 His statement that many men left the city is not sufficiently supported by other evidence to cause it to be accepted without hesitation. In reading the charges brought against the Greek citizens Witnesses by Leonard, it must be noted that he himself was a Genoese Greeks 5 are and a Latin archbishop. Unfortunately, almost all our ac- £atins aU counts of the siege come either from Western writers or from Greek converts who are imbued with the usual bitterness against the professors of the faith which they have abandoned. Barbaro and Pusculus were Latins. Phrantzes and Ducas belonged to the Catholic party. The reports of the Podesta of Galata, of Cardinal Isidore, and other documents emanating from Latin sources all help to give a version unfavourable to 1 Leonard, p. 94, and also Italian version given by Dethier, p. 644. X
