amped and relaxed by the
evening rain, very few of the Christians could have escaped with the
emperor from the field of battle. They breathed at Dorylaeum, at
the distance of three days; and Theophilus, reviewing his trembling
squadrons, forgave the common flight both of the prince and people.
After this discovery of his weakness, he vainly hoped to deprecate
the fate of Amorium: the inexorable caliph rejected with contempt his
prayers and promises; and detained the Roman ambassadors to be the
witnesses of his great revenge. They had nearly been the witnesses of
his shame. The vigorous assaults of fifty-five days were encountered by
a faithful governor, a veteran garrison, and a desperate people; and
the Saracens must have raised the siege, if a domestic traitor had not
pointed to the weakest part of the wall, a place which was decorated
with the statues of a lion and a bull. The vow of Motassem was
accomplished with unrelenting rigor: tired, rather than satiated,
with destruction, he returned to his new palace of Samara, in the
neighborhood of Bagdad, while the unfortunate [93] Theophilus implored
the tardy and doubtful aid of his Western rival the emperor of the
Franks. Yet in the siege of Amorium about seventy thousand Moslems
had perished: their loss had been revenged by the slaughter of thirty
thousand Christians, and the sufferings of an equal number of captives,
who were treated as the most atrocious criminals. Mutual necessity could
sometimes extort the exchange or ransom of prisoners: [94] but in the
national and religious conflict of the two empires, peace was without
confidence, and war without mercy. Quarter was seldom given in the
field; those who escaped the edge of the sword were condemned to
hopeless servitude, or exquisite torture; and a Catholic emperor
relates, with visible satisfaction, the execution of the Saracens of
Crete, who were flayed alive, or plunged into caldrons of boiling oil.
[95] To a point of honor Motassem had sacrificed a flourishing city, two
hundred thousand lives, and the property of millions. The same caliph
descended from his horse, and dirtied his robe, to relieve the distress
of a decrepit old man, who, with his laden ass, had tumbled into a
ditch. On which of these actions did he reflect with the most pleasure,
when he was summoned by the angel of death? [96]

[Footnote 91: The same number was applied to the following circumstance
in the life of Motassem: he was the eight of