o the army. The
emperor John had added greatly to the efficiency of the Byzantine
military force by improving and centralizing its administration, and he
left Manuel an excellent army, which rendered the Eastern Empire the
most powerful state in Europe. But Manuel, from motives of economy,
abandoned his father's system. Instead of assembling all the military
forces of the empire annually in camps, where they received pay and were
subjected to strict discipline, toward the end of his reign he
distributed even the regular army in cities and provinces, where they
were quartered far apart, in order that each district, by maintaining a
certain number of men, might relieve the treasury from the burden of
their pay and subsistence while they were not on actual service. The
money thus retained in the central treasury was spent in idle festivals
at Constantinople, and the troops, dispersed and neglected, became
careless of their military exercises, and lived in a state of relaxed
discipline. Other abuses were quickly introduced; resident yeomen,
shopkeepers, and artisans were enrolled in the legions, with the
connivance of the officers. The burden of maintaining the troops was in
this way diminished, but the army was deteriorated.

In other districts, where the divisions were exposed to be called into
action, or were more directly under central inspection, the effective
force was kept up at its full complement, but the people were compelled
to submit to every kind of extortion and tyranny. The tendency of
absolute power being always to weaken the power of the law, and to
increase the authority of the executive agents of the sovereign, soon
manifested its effects in the rapid progress of administrative
corruption. The Byzantine garrisons in a few years became prototypes of
the shopkeeping janizaries of the Ottoman empire, and bore no
resemblance to the feudal militia of Western Europe, which Manuel had
proposed as the model of his reform. This change produced a rapid
decline in the military strength of the Byzantine army and accelerated
the fall of the empire.

For a considerable period the Byzantine emperors had been gradually
increasing the proportion of foreign mercenaries in their service; this
practice Manuel carried further than any of his predecessors. Besides
the usual Varangian, Italian, and German guards, we find large corps of
Patzinaks, Franks, and Turks enrolled in his armies, and officers of
these nations occupyin