subjects to take the field, that they had come to do a large
part of their fighting by means of foreign substitutes. The
Immortals, or (
Greek characters), remind us at once of their Asiatic
origin. The Waring guard had held a deservedly honored
position during two centuries before the Latin attack on Constantinople. Italian and other mercenaries also hired their
services to the emperors. The Spanish Jew, Benjamin of
Tudela, says : "The Greeks hire soldiers of all nations whom
they call barbarians. They have no martial spirit themselves,
and, like women, are unfit for military enterprises" The
judgment is too severe, but, even with a large allowance for
exaggeration, it shows what was the opinion of an independent observer from the West of the decay of martial spirit.
When the later emperors went themselves to war they encamped in palaces of canvas, which recall the appliances of a
Darius or other Eastern monarchs.
Emperors alien in blood, commanding soldiers hired from foreign nations, became at times the slaves of their own mercenaries, and had to buy their allegiance by large donatives. The dynastic struggles of the quarter of a century preceding the Latin conquest caused the foreign mercenaries to become yet more powerful and to be yet more petted than they had been before. When, in 1195, Alexis threw Isaac into prison and ascended the throne, he scattered money and honors among his supporters with a lavishness which not only made the public honors cheap, but which emptied the public treasury. But even this prodigality was not enough, and the emperor had to distribute a part of the public domain among the troops in order to assure himself of their good-will.
As we approach 1200 we find the weakness of the empire from effeminacy and luxury continually increasing. Even Manuel, in 1175, was suspected of having bought off the op- position of the Venetians. Nicetas notes with something like horror that the Emperor Alexis the Third wished to buy peace ; that instead of fighting Henry, the successor of Frederic Barbarossa, he endeavored to dazzle his ambassadors by the splendors of the court and by robes which were one mass of pearls and precious stones ; that the ambassadors bluntly
