After what I have just said about the Greek empire, it is natural to ask how it was able to last so long. I believe I can give the reasons.

After the Arabs had attacked it and conquered some of its provinces, their leaders disputed over the caliphate. And the fire of their early zeal no longer produced anything but civil discords.

After the same Arabs conquered Persia and became divided or weakened there, the Greeks no longer had to keep the principal forces of their empire on the Euphrates.

An architect named Callinicus, who came to Constantinople from Syria, had discovered the composition of a fire that was blown forth from a tube and was such that water and whatever else extinguishes ordinary fires only intensified the blaze. For centuries the Greeks, who made use of it, were in a position to burn all the fleets of their enemies, especially those of the Arabs, who came from Africa or Syria to attack them at Constantinople.

This fire was classified as a state secret. And Constantine Porphyrogenitus, in his book on the administration of the empire dedicated to his son, Romanus, warns him against giving it away. He tells him that when the barbarians ask for the Greek fire he should reply that he is not permitted to give it to them because an angel, who brought it to the emperor Constantine, forbade its transfer to other nations, and that those who had dared to do so had been consumed by the fire of heaven upon entering a church.

Constantinople carried on the greatest and almost the only commerce in the world, at a time when the Gothic nations on one side, and the Arabs on the other, had ruined commerce and industry everywhere else. The making of silk had come over from Persia, and, since the invasion of the Arabs, was badly neglected in Persia itself; besides, the Greeks had control of the sea. This brought immense riches into the state, and consequently, great resources; and as soon as it experienced some respite, public prosperity reappeared at once.

Here is a notable example. Andronicus Comnenus the elder was the Nero of the Greeks, but, with all his vices, he showed an admirable firmness in preventing the injustices and harassments of the great; and it was observed that [1] several provinces again grew strong during the three years he reigned.

Finally, since the barbarians who lived along the banks of the Danube had settled down, they were no longer so frightening and even served as a barrier against other barbarians.

Thus, while the empire was weighed down by a bad government, particular causes supported it. So today we see some European nations maintaining themselves, in spite of their weakness, by the treasuries of the Indies; we see the temporal states of the pope maintaining themselves by the respect in which their sovereign is held, and the corsairs of Barbary by the impediments they present to the commerce of the small nations, which makes them useful to the great ones [2].

The Turkish empire is currently about as weak as was the Greek empire formerly. But it will last a long time, for if any prince whatsoever endangered it in pursuing his conquests, the three commercial powers of Europe know their own interests too well not to go to its defense immediately [3].

It is a good thing for them that God has allowed the existence of nations suited for needlessly possessing a great empire.

In the time of Basil Porphyrogenitus, the power of the Arabs was destroyed in Persia. Mohammed, the son of Sambrael, who reigned there, called three thousand Turks from the north to serve as auxiliaries [4]. Because of some disaffection, he sent an army against them, but they put it to flight. Indignant with his soldiers, Mohammed ordered them to pass before him dressed in the frocks of women, but they joined the Turks, who at once proceeded to remove the garrison guarding the bridge over the Araxes and opened the crossing to an innumerable multitude of their compatriots.

After conquering Persia, they spread from east to west over the territories of the empire. And when Romanus Diogenes wanted to stop them, they took him prisoner and subjugated almost everything the Greeks possessed in Asia up to the Bosporus.

Some time afterwards, in the reign of Alexius Comnenus, the Latins attacked the East. Long before, an unfortunate schism [a] had filled the nations of the two rites with an implacable hatred for each other, and it would have blazed forth sooner if the Italians had stopped thinking of repressing the emperors of Germany, whom they feared, rather than the Greek emperors, whom they merely hated.

It was in these circumstances that a new religious opinion suddenly spread through Europe, to the effect that -- since the infidels were profaning the places where Jesus Christ was born or had suffered -- a man could efface his sins by taking up arms to drive them out. Europe was full of men who loved war, and who had many crimes to expiate, which it was proposed that they do by following their ruling passion. Everyone therefore took up the cross and arms.

Arriving in the East, the crusaders besieged Nicaea and captured it. They returned it to the Greeks; and, to the consternation of the infidels, Alexius and John Comnenus drove the Turks back to the Euphrates again.

But whatever the advantage the Greeks could gain from the crusaders' expeditions, there was no emperor who failed to shudder at the peril of seeing such proud heroes and great armies pass in succession through the heart of his states.

They sought therefore to make Europe lose its taste for these undertakings, and the crusaders met everywhere with betrayals, perfidy, and all that can be expected from a timorous enemy.

We must admit that the French, who had begun these expeditions, did nothing to make themselves bearable. From the invectives of Andronicus Comnenus [b] against us [5], we really see that while we were in a foreign nation we failed to restrain ourselves, and that even then we had the defects for which we are reproached today.

A French count was going to seat himself on the emperor's throne. Count Baldwin took him by the arm and said: "You should know that when you are in a country you must follow its customs." "Indeed," he answered, "what a boor this fellow is to sit down here while so many captains are standing!"

The Germans, who passed through afterward, and were the nicest sort of people, paid a heavy penalty for our blunders, and everywhere found people in whom we had aroused feelings of revulsion.

Finally, hatred reached fever pitch, and the French and Venetians, led by some bad treatment given Venetian merchants and by ambition, avarice and a false zeal, decided to crusade against the Greeks [6].

They found them as little inured to war as, in recent times, the Tartars found the Chinese, The French made fun of their effeminate attire, walked the streets of Constantinople dressed in their garish robes, and carried pen and paper in their hands to mock this nation which had renounced the profession of arms [7]. And after the war they refused to admit any Greek whatsoever into their troops.

They captured the entire western part of the empire, and elected as emperor the Count of Flanders, the remoteness of whose states could not give the Italians any grounds for jealousy. The Greeks maintained themselves in the East, separated from the Turks by the mountains and from the Latins by the sea.

Since the Latins, who had met with no obstacles in pursuing their conquests, met with an infinite number in securing them, the Greeks crossed back from Asia to Europe, retaking Constantinople and nearly the whole West.

But this new empire was only a shadow of the former, and had neither its resources nor its power.

In Asia almost its sole possessions were the provinces west of the Meinder and Sakaria [c], and most of the provinces in Europe were divided into petty sovereignties.

Moreover, during the sixty years that Constantinople remained in the hands of the Latins -- with the vanquished dispersed and the victors occupied with war -- commerce passed entirely into the control of the Italian cities, and Constantinople was deprived of its riches.

Even its internal commerce was carried on by the Latins. The Greeks, having just reestablished their rule, wished to conciliate the Genoese by according them the freedom to trade without paying duties [8]. And the Venetians, who did not accept a peace but only some truces, and whom the Greeks did not want to irritate, did not pay duties either.

Before the capture of Constantinople, Manuel Comnenus had permitted the navy to decay, but since commerce still existed it could easily be strengthened again. When the navy was abandoned in the new empire, however, the evil was without remedy because the lack of power constantly increased.

This state, which ruled over many islands, which was divided by the sea and surrounded by it in so many places, had no vessels to navigate it. The provinces no longer had any communication with each other. Their inhabitants were forced to take refuge further inland to avoid pirates, and after doing so they were ordered to withdraw into fortresses to save themselves from the Turks [9].

The Turks were then waging a peculiar war against the Greeks. They were literally on a manhunt, and sometimes crossed two hundred leagues of country to commit their ravages. Since they were divided under several sultans, one could not, by means of presents, make peace with all, and it was useless to make it with some [10]. They had turned Mohammedan, and zeal for their religion gave them a marvelous commitment to ravaging the lands of Christians. Besides, since they were the ugliest peoples on earth, their women were frightful like themselves [11], and as soon as they had seen Greek women they could no longer bear any others [12]. This led them to continual abductions. Finally, they had at all times been given to brigandage; and it was these same Huns who had formerly brought so much evil upon the Roman empire.

With the Turks inundating all that remained of the Greek empire in Asia, the inhabitants who could escape fled before them to the Bosporus. And those who found vessels took refuge in the European part of the empire, which considerably increased the number of its inhabitants. But this number soon diminished. Such raging civil wars broke out that the two factions called in various Turkish sultans on the condition [13] -- as extravagant as it was barbarous -- that all the inhabitants captured in the regions of the opposing party would be led into slavery. And with a view to ruining their enemies, both concurred in destroying the nation.

After Bajazet [d] had subdued all the other sultans, the Turks would have done what they have since done under Mohammed II, had they not themselves been on the point of being exterminated by the Tartars [14].

I do not have the courage to speak of the calamities which followed. I will only say that, under the last emperors, the empire -- reduced to the suburbs of Constantinople -- ended like the Rhine, which is no more than a brook when it loses itself in the ocean.