§ 55. THE FOURTH CRUSADE. 273
appealing for aid in behalf of his father. Philip, claimant to the German throne, had married the prince's sister. Greek messengers appeared at Zara to appeal to Dandolo and the Crusaders to take up Isaac's cause. The proposal suited the ambition of Venice, which could not have wished for a more favorable opportunity to confirm her superiority over the Pisans and Genoans, which had been threatened, if not impaired, on the Bosphorus.
As a compensation, Alexius made the tempting offer of 200,000 marks silver, the maintenance for a year of an army of 10,000 against the Mohammedans, and of 500 knights for life as a guard for the Holy Land, and the sub mission of the Eastern Church to the pope. The doge fell in at once with the proposition, but it was met by strong voices of dissent in the ranks of the Crusaders. Innocent's threat of continued excommunication, if the expedition was turned against Constantinople, was ignored. A few of the Crusaders, like Simon de Montfort, refused to be used for private ends and withdrew from the expedition.1
Before reaching Corfu, the fleet was joined by Alexius in person. By the end of June, 1203, it had passed through the Dardanelles and was anchored opposite the Golden Horn. After prayers and exhortations by the bishops and clergy, the Galata tower was taken. Alexius III. fled, and Isaac was restored to the throne.
The agreements made with the Venetians, the Greeks found it impossible to fulfil. Confusion reigned among them. Two disastrous conflagrations devoured large por tions of the city. One started in a mosque which evoked
1 Villehardouin, 109. Pears, p. 268, speaks pathetically of the Crusaders as " about to commit the great crime of the Middle Ages, by the destruction of the citadel against which the hitherto irresistible wave of Moslem invasion had beaten and been broken." Not praiseworthy, it is true, was the motive of the Crusaders, yet there is no occasion for bemoaning the fate of Constantinople and the Greeks. The conquest of the Latins prolonged the successful resistance to the Turks. T
274 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
the wrath of the Crusaders.1 The discontent with the hard terras of the agreement and the presence of the Occidentals gave Alexius Dukas, surnamed Murzuphlos from his shaggy eyebrows, opportunity to dethrone Isaac and Ids son and to seize the reins of government. The prince was put to death, and Isaac soon followed him to the grave.
The confusion within the palace and the failure to pay the promised reward were a sufficient excuse for the invaders to assault the city, which fell April 12, 1204. 2 Unrestrained pillage and riot followed. Even the occupants of convents were not exempted from the orgies of unbridled lust. Churches and altars were despoiled as well as palaces. Chalices were turned into drinking cups. A prostitute placed in the chair of the patriarchs in St. Sophia, sang ribald songs and danced for the amusement of the soldiery.3 Innocent III., writing of the conquest of the city, says : —
" You have spared nothing that is sacred, neither age nor sex. You have given yourselves up to prostitution, to adultery, and to debauchery in the face of all the world. You have glutted your guilty passions, not only on married women, but upon women and virgins dedicated to the Saviour. You have not been content with the imperial treasures and the goods of rich and poor, but you have seized even the wealth of the Church and what belongs to it. You have pillaged the silver tables of the altars, you have broken into the sacristies and stolen the vessels."4
To the revolt at these orgies succeeding ages have added re gret for the irreparable loss which literature and art suffered
1 Arabs were allowed to live in the city and granted the privileges of their religious rites. Gibbon with characteristic irony says, " The Flemish pilgrims were scandalized by the aspect of a mosque or a synagogue in which one God was worshipped without a partner or a son."
2 Villehardouin, 233, Wailly's ed. p. 137, pronounces the capture of Con stantinople one of the most difficult feats ever undertaken, une des plus redoutables choses a faire qui jamais fut. A city of such strong fortifications the Franks had not seen before.
3 Hurter (I. p. 685), comparing the conquest of Constantinople with the capture of Jerusalem, exalts the piety of Godfrey and the first Crusaders over against the Venetians and their greed for booty. He forgot the awful massacre in Jerusalem.
4 Jteg., VIII. Ep., 133.