Plunder and violence of course ensued;[800] but there was much less actual bloodshed than either the nature of the victory or the dangerous position of the victors might have occasioned. Fear is the most cruel of all passions; and perhaps the fact that not two thousand persons were slain in Constantinople after the storm, is a greater proof of the courage of the Latins than even the taking of the city. Many noble and generous actions mingled with the effects of that cupidity and lust which follow always upon the sack of a great town. Nicetas mentions a striking example which happened to himself, wherein a noble Venetian dedicated his whole attention to protect an ancient benefactor;[801] and a body of Frenchmen, in the midst of the unbounded licentiousness of such a moment, were moved by a father's agony to save his daughter from some of their fellows. This is the admission of a prejudiced and inveterate enemy; and it is but fair to suppose, that many such instances took place. The great evils that followed the taking of the eastern capital, originated in the general command to plunder. Constantinople had accumulated within it the most precious monuments of ancient art,[802] and these were almost all destroyed by the barbarous hands of an avaricious soldiery. Naught was spared; the bronzes, which, valueless as metal, were inestimable as the masterpieces and miracles of antique genius, were melted down,[803] and struck into miserable coin; the marble was violated with wanton brutality; all the labour of a Phidias or a Lysippus was done away in an hour; and that which had been the wonder and admiration of a world left less to show what former days had been, than the earth after the deluge. In this the Latins were certainly _barbarians_; but in other respects--unless subtilty, deceit, vice, and cowardice can be called civilization, and courage, frankness, and honour can be considered as barbarism--the Latins deserved not the opprobrious name by which the Greeks designated them.