the sphere of action had not been enlarged; and the science of naval architecture appears to have declined. The art of constructing those stupendous machines which displayed three, or six, or ten, ranges of oars, rising above or falling behind each other, was unknown to the ship-builders of Constantinople, as well as to the mechanicians of modern days. The Dromons or light galleys of the Byzantine empire were content with two tier of oars; each tier was composed of five and twenty benches; and two rowers were seated on each bench, who plied their oars on either side of the vessel. To these we must add the captain or centurion, who, in time of action, stood erect with his armour-bearer on the poop, two steersmen at the helm, and two officers at the prow, the one to manage the anchor, the other to point and play against the enemy the tube of liquid fire.

The whole crew, as in the infancy of the art, performed the double service of mariners and soldiers. They were provided with defensive and offensive arms, with bows and arrows, which they used from the upper deck, with long pikes, which they pushed through the portholes of the lower tier. Sometimes, indeed, the ships of war were of a larger and more solid construction; and the labours of combat and navigation were more regularly divided between seventy soldiers and two hundred and thirty mariners. But for the most part they were of the light and manageable size; and as the cape of Malea in Peloponnesus was still clothed with its ancient terrors, an Imperial fleet was transported five miles over land across the Isthmus of Corinth.

The principles of maritime tactics had not undergone any change since the time of Thucydides. A squadron of galleys still advanced in a crescent, charged to the front, and strove to impel their sharp beaks against the feeble sides of their antagonists. A machine for casting

stones and darts was built of strong timbers in the midst of the deck; and the operation of boarding was effected by a crane that hoisted baskets of armed men.

The language of signals, so clear and copious in the naval grammar of the moderns, was imperfectly expressed by the various positions and colours of a commanding flag. In the darkness of night the same orders to chase, to attack, to halt, to retreat, to break, to form, were conveyed by the lights of the leading galley. By land, the fire-signals were repeated from one mountain to another. A chain of eight stations commanded a space of five hundred miles, and Constantinople in a few hours was apprised of the hostile motions of the Saracens at Tarsus.

Some estimate may be formed of the power of the Greek Emperors, by the curious and minute detail of the armament which was prepared for the reduction of Crete1. A fleet of one hundred and twelve galleys, and seventy-five vessels of the Pamphylian style, was equipped in the capital, the islands of the Aegean sea, and the sea-ports of Asia, Macedonia, and Greece. It carried thirty-four thousand mariners, seven thousand three hundred and forty soldiers, seven hundred Russians, and five thousand and eighty-seven Mardaites, whose fathers had been transplanted from the mountains of Libanus. Their pay, most probably of a month, was computed at thirty-four centenaries of gold, about one hundred and thirty-six thousand pounds sterling. Our fancy is bewildered by the endless recapitulation of arms and engines, of clothes and linen, of bread for the men and forage for the horses, and of stores and utensils of every description, inadequate to the conquest of a petty. island, but amply sufficient for the establishment of a flourishing colony.

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

1 A.D. 902.

II

GREEK OR MARITIME FIRE

THE deliverance of Constantinople1 may be chiefly ascribed to the novelty, the terrors, and the real efficacy of the Greek Fire. The important secret of compounding and directing this artificial flame was imparted by Callinicus, a native of Heliopolis in Syria, who deserted from the service of the Caliph to that of the Emperor. The skill of a chemist and engineer was equivalent to the succour of fleets and armies; and this discovery or improvement of the military art was fortunately reserved for the distressful period, when the degenerate Romans of the East were incapable of contending with the warlike enthusiasm and youthful vigour of the Saracens.

The historian who presumes to analyse this extraordinary composition should suspect his own ignorance and that of his Byzantine guides, so prone to the marvellous, so careless, and in this instance so jealous, of the truth. From their obscure and perhaps fallacious hints, it should seem that the principal ingredient of the Greek fire was the naptha, or liquid bitumen, a light, tenacious, and inflammable oil, which springs from the earth and catches fire as soon as it comes in contact with the air. The naptha was mingled, I know not by what methods or in what proportions, with sulphur and with the pitch that is extracted from evergreen firs.

From this mixture, which produced a thick smoke and a loud explosion, proceeded a fierce and obstinate flame, which not only rose in perpendicular ascent, but likewise burnt with equal vehemence in descent or lateral progress. Instead of being extinguished, it was nourished and quickened by the element of water; and sand . . . . or vinegar were the only remedies that would damp the 1 A.D. 718.

fury of this powerful agent which was justly denominated by the Greeks the liquid or maritime fire. For the annoyance of the enemy it was employed with equal effect, by sea and land, in battles or in sieges. It was either poured from the rampart in huge boilers, or launched in red-hot balls of stone and iron, or darted in arrows and javelins, twisted round with flax and tow, which had deeply imbibed the inflammable oil. Sometimes it was deposited in fire-ships, the victims and instruments of a more ample revenge, and was most commonly blown through long tubes of copper, which were planted on the prow of a galley, and fancifully shaped into the mouths of savage monsters that seemed to vomit a stream of liquid and consuming fire.

This important art was preserved at Constantinople, as the palladium of the state. The galleys and artillery might occasionally be lent to the allies of Rome; but the composition of the Greek fire was concealed with the most jealous scruple, and the terror of the enemies was increased and prolonged by their ignorance and surprise. In the treatise Of the Administration of the Empire the royal author1 suggests the answers and excuses that might best elude the indiscreet curiosity and importunate demands of the Barbarians. They should be told that the mystery of the Greek fire had been revealed by an angel to the first and greatest of the Constantines, with a sacred injunction that this gift of heaven, this peculiar blessing of the Romans, should never be communicated to any foreign nation; that the prince and subject were alike bound to religious silence under the temporal and spiritual penalties of treason and sacrilege; and that the impious attempt would provoke the sudden and supernatural vengeance of the God of the Christians. By these precautions the secret was confined above

1 Constantine VII.

four hundred years to the Romans of the East; and, at the end of the eleventh century, the Pisans to whom every sea and every art were familiar, suffered the effects, without understanding the composition of the Greek fire. It was at length either discovered or stolen by the Mohammedans; and in the holy wars of Syria and Egypt they retorted an invention, contrived against themselves, on the heads of the Christians. A knight, who despised the swords and lances of the Saracens, relates, with heartfelt sincerity, his own fears and those of his companions at the sight and sound of the mischievous engine that discharged a torrent of the Greek fire, the feu Gregeois, as it is styled by the more early of the French writers. It came flying through the air, says Joinville1, like a winged long-tailed dragon, about the thickness of a hogshead, with the reports of thunder and the velocity of lightning; and the darkness of night was dispelled by this deadly illumination. The use of the Greek or, as it might now be called, of the Saracen fire was continued to the middle of the fourteenth century, when the scientific or casual compound of nitre, sulphur, and charcoal effected a new revolution in the art of war and the history of mankind.

Decline and Fall.

III

OVER LAND

THE reduction of the city appeared to be hopeless, unless a double attack could be made from the harbour as well as from the land. But the harbour was inaccessible. An impenetrable chain was now defended by eight large ships, more than twenty of a smaller size, with several galleys and sloops; and instead of forcing 2 Constantinople.

1 Histoire de Saint Louis.