218 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

subjects to take the field, that they had come to do a Im-ge part of their figliting by means of foreign substitutes. The Immortals, or 'AOuvutoi, remind us at once of their Asiatic origin. The AYaring guard had held a deservedly honored position during two centuries before the Latin attack on Con- stantinople. 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 indepen- dent observer from the West of the decay of martial spirit. When the later emperors went themselves to war they en- camped 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 mer- cenaries, 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 ^vith a lavishness which not only made the public honors cheap, but which emptied the public treas- ury. But even this prodigality was not enough, and the em- peror 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 Fred- eric 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