After the retirement of Isaac, Constantine Ducas, like the Comneni a Cappadocian, and a friend of their own, reigned for eight years, 1059-1067, and left the reputation of a man anxious only to save money, and thus unable to protect the frontiers of the Empire. Under him we learn the importance of the Emperor's personal guard of Varangians--a body of barbarian warriors founded early in the eleventh century, and consisting at first of Russians, whom the wars of Nicephorus Phocas, John Tzimisces and Basil Bulgaroktonos had taught the Empire to respect; and of Scandinavians, and later of Danes, and after the Norman Conquest of fugitive Englishmen, who, rather than serve the foreign conquerors of their own land, gladly came to win fame and wealth as the guardians of the Cæsar's throne. Constantine XI. paid the Varangians while he neglected the rest of his army. The Empire paid the penalty in the ravaging of Armenia by the Seljuk Turks, and of Bulgaria by the Tartars. When he died in 1067, already the name of Alp-Arslan, the Sultan of the Seljuks, struck terror into the Asiatic provinces of the Empire, and the sceptre of the Cæsars fell to Michael VII., a child who could not protect what his father had not cared to defend. The mother of the young Emperor, Eudocia, married a gallant general, Romanus Diogenes, who, with the title of joint Emperor, won but little power in the palace, but was readily allowed to lead the armies in the field. Of his campaigns it is only needful to say that, while for a time he held back the Seljuks, in 1071, at Manzikert, on the Armenian frontier, his troops were scattered by the overwhelming hordes of the barbarians, and when night fell Alp-Arslan placed his foot upon the neck of the prostrate Cæsar, his captive.