Note 74 — Chapter VIII · GLORY AND DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE [969-1204 A.D.]

“To contemporaries, this revolution presented nothing to distinguish it from the changes of sovereign, which had been an ordinary event in the Byzantine Empire, and which were ascribed by the wisest statesmen of the time to the decree of heaven, and not to the working of political and moral causes, which the will of God allows the intelligence of man to employ for effecting the improvement or decline of human affairs. Perhaps no man then living perceived that this event was destined to change the whole system of government, destroy the fabric of the central administration, deliver up the provinces of Asia an easy conquest to the Seljuk Turks, and the capital a prey to a band of crusaders.”e