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ARMENIA AND THE NEAR EAST
38
death-struggle in the fifteenth century it successfully stemmed
the tide of the advancing hordes of uncivilized barbarians.
Do we realize its services to the white race ?
First came the Persians, though these had a culture of their
own. Then followed the Arabs, whose impetuous onset,
continuing for four hundred years, broke again and again
against this massive bulwark. For seven consecutive years
(672-679) they besieged Constantinople by land and by water.
The Bosporus was full of their ships, but they could not
withstand the Greek fire, and the greater part of their forces
were destroyed. They returned again in 718 with new armies
of fanatics, but were repulsed and beaten once more.
Imagine what it would have meant for our own civilization
if this dam had given way, letting the Arab hordes overflow
Europe without any obstacle, at the time when their power
was at its zenith and was extending with irresistible might
from India to the Atlantic. It is true that they were one of
the civilized peoples of the East, and some say that it was
actually a loss to Europe that they were stopped, inasmuch
as they were far more civilized than the Europeans of that
epoch. But the subsequent line of development would
certainly have been another, and Europe would have looked
very different from what it does to-day.
Far greater was the menace of the next invaders, the Seljuk
Turks and Ottomans, nomads and savages whose sole aim
was plunder, and whose war policy was to stamp out the
tillers of the soil and lay the country waste for their uncivilized
tribesfolk and nomadic herdsmen.
And all the time this invincible stronghold must have been
an unrivalled arena for political intrigues, pursued with all
the cruelty and faithlessness of those days, while the birds of
prey gathered over and over again in fresh flocks in the
neighbouring lands to the east, south, and north, often to huri
themselves against the very gates of the city.
It was here, moreover, in " Miklegard," that our forefathers
the Verings, sometimes together with Armenian brothers in
arms, formed the emperor’s bodyguard and a separate force
which fought and made raids in the countries round, against
Turks, Saracens, West-Romans, and Bulgarians. Here, too,
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