inhabitants.’ He found Vyra, to whose church three hundred canons had been formerly attached, a poor place with the choir of the church only remaining and used as a Turkish mosque.[174] All contemporaries bear witness to the depopulation and ruin of the country. From pestilence and the results of the Latin conquest it might have recovered, but when to these disasters was added that of conquest by successive hordes of barbarians whose work was always destructive, its ruin was complete. [Sidenote: Population of Constantinople on accession of Constantine.] It is impossible to arrive at an accurate estimate of the population of the city on the accession of the last Constantine. La Brocquière, in 1433, describes Constantinople as formed of separate parts and containing open spaces of a greater extent than those built on.[175] This is one of many intimations that the population had largely decreased.[176] Some of the nobles as well as the common people had left the city as soon as they saw that a siege was probable.[177] To make an estimate we must anticipate our narrative of the siege. Critobulus makes Mahomet appeal to the knowledge of his hearers in proposing to besiege the city when he states that the greater number of the inhabitants have abandoned it; that it is now only a city in name and contains tilled lands, trees, vineyards, and enclosures as well as ruined and destroyed houses, as they have all seen for themselves. As his hearers could see as well as he whether this statement was correct, there can be little doubt of its accuracy. He further declared that there were few men in the city and that these for the most part were without arms and unused to fighting, and that he had learned from deserters that there were only two or three men to defend each tower, so that each man had to guard three or four crenellations. Tetaldi states that there were in the city from twenty-five thousand to thirty thousand men[178] and six to seven thousand combatants and not more.[179] The actual census taken at the request of the emperor and recorded by Phrantzes gives under five thousand fighting men, exclusive of foreigners. Assuming the statement of the French soldier and eye-witness Tetaldi to be substantially correct, there would apparently be something like eighteen thousand monks and old men incapable of bearing arms. The only other indications which assist in forming an estimate of the population are furnished by the number of prisoners. These are probably exaggerated. Archbishop Leonard estimates them at above sixty thousand. Critobulus gives the number of slaves of all kinds, men, women, and children, as fifty thousand citizens and five hundred soldiers, estimating that during the siege and capture four thousand were killed.[180] Probably all captives are included as having been reduced to slavery. The complete desolation of the city and the strenuous efforts made by the sultan to repeople it after the