might be united as one flock under one shepherd. All this leaning towards the West tended to make the Latin colonists, as I have already pointed out, unpopular with the other inhabitants of Constantinople. On the other hand, Manuel was a favorite with the Latins, and, on the whole, deservedly so.[1] The Latins were, however, regarded by his subjects as intruders, as professors of a hostile faith, as countrymen of the enemies of Romania and as court favorites. They were accused of having monopolized nearly all the wharves on the Golden Horn, and of having persuaded the emperor to dis- possess the Greeks of the best business quarters in the city. On the death of Manuel, in 118O, the struggle took place which I have already described. On the approach of An- dronicos the party of the protosebastos — which was largely increased from the Latin colonists — melted quickly away. The leader was arrested by the Waring guard, armed, as Isicetas is careful to tell us, with their double-edged axes, and imprisoned.[2]
on pretext of massacres of 1182.
A few days afterwards his eyes were put out. His death was the signal for a massacre of the on pretext of massacres of Latius, who numbered at this time no less than 60,000.[3] They had committed the blunder of taking sides in the quarrel between the two rival claimants for the throne, and, unfortunately for them, the candidate whom they favored had lost. They were attacked on the one side by the fleet sent across the Bosphorus by Andronicos under the command of Contostephanos, and on the other by the mob of the capital. The Greek historian tells us only that the Latins, being unable to resist, abandoned their houses, full of silver and wealth, to pillage; that some escaped by sea, but that those who were taken were killed. The Latin historian adds details which show the attack to have been much more serious in character than the account of Nicetas
- ↑ "Il avoit este U plus hons prince del monde." "Defuncto enim domino Manuele, inclytae recordationis imperatore felicissirao," says William of Tyre, "Western Historians," "Recueil," vol. ii. 1079.
- ↑ Nicetas, p. 323, ed. Bonn.
- ↑ So says Eustathius of Thessalonica, who speaks of the Sicilian expedition as a war of vengeance for the massacre of 1183.
