“Some estimate,” remarks Gibbon,[353] “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 Crete. 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 Ægean Sea, and the seaports 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.” [Sidenote: Struggle for maritime supremacy.] For several centuries of that period, often termed, though with some injustice, “The Dark Ages,” the contests for the maritime supremacy of the Black Sea and Mediterranean were incessant. One barbarous nation succeeded another just as their lust for plunder was stimulated by the wealth of peaceful and unwarlike communities. The Goths and Vandals were followed by the Franks, the Bulgarians, and the Hungarians. Then arose the Russians and Normans, each contending for the chief rule at sea, or for the plunder such superiority enabled them to secure. After these came the Turks, the onward wave of the Tatars and of the Mongols of Central Asia, who, under various names and dynasties, overran the eastern empire, at the period of the Crusades to the Holy Land. Neither the Bulgarians nor the Hungarians were, however, a maritime people. The former took possession of a district of country south of the Danube; and the latter directed their attention to the conquest of the territory, a portion of which they still occupy. Both tribes, with the Turks, were descendants from the same races; and all of them originally, while following pastoral pursuits, had been trained to a military life. With tents made from the skins of their cattle, and dressed in furs, the produce of the hunt, they were easily housed and clothed. Possessing within themselves every want, and trained from their infancy to the use of arms and horses, they were most formidable opponents; the immense hordes with which they advanced generally enabling them to carry all before them. [Sidenote: Scandinavians;] [Sidenote: Muscovites, their trade and ships.]