410 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. and that two centuries and a half later they were able to cap- ture the New Rome itself, was due to the fatal blow which had been inflicted by Philip of Swabia, by Boniface of Mont- ferrat, and by Henry Dandolo. That blow had been struck at the moment when the re- sources of the empire had been expended. We ought not, however, to forget that its strength had been spent in stem- ming the torrent of barbarism, in fighting the battle of Europe against Asia, of Christianity against Mosleraism. The empire had maintained this struggle not altogether single-handed, for the efforts of the Crusaders had been on behalf of the same cause. But the Saracens were the special object of their at- tack, and the fact that the deliverance of the Holy Land was the peculiar aim set before them prevented anything like hearty co-operation w^th the empire in attacking the Turks, even had there not been other reasons which made such co- operation impossible. Thus the great brunt of the struggle fell upon the empire alone, and, in spite of the efforts of rulers like Manuel to persuade the Western nations to come to their aid, Latin and German Europe preferred to fight Islam in its own way rather than to make common cause against the com- mon enemy. The traditional feeling in the West against those who recognized the sway of the Emperor of the ISTew Rome has affected Western historians of this period of Constanti- nopolitan history. As the descendants of peoples who ac- knowledged the rule of the Latin Church, we have taken our ideas and our prejudices from our fathers, and are in this sense all of us the sons of the Crusaders. Western Europe has been only too ready to find evidence of the corruption and the effeminacy of the Eastern capital, to recognize that Asiatic influences had lessened the vis^or which had char- acterized its government during the centuries preceding the Crusade, and to regret that its Church had less power in arous- ing enthusiasm than had the sister Church of our fathers. Hence it is that justice has not been done to the unceasing struggle of a century and a half previous to 1204, made by the Greek-speaking Roman empire and by the Christians of Armenia and Georgia. The facts that have been remembered
