The age of the crusades . dred thousand silvermarks towards the expenses of the holy war. Hewill accompany you in person in the conquest of Syriaor Egypt, and will furnish ten thousand men, andmaintain during his whole life five hundred knightsin the Holy Land. Then followed a clause whichwas supposed to catch the consciences of the mostpious: Alexius is willing to swear on the holyGospels that he will put an end to the heresy whichnow defiles the Empire of the East, and will subjectthe Greek Church to the Church of Rome. Young A lexius s Promises. 267 The proposal did not carry to all convict
The age of the crusades . dred thousand silvermarks towards the expenses of the holy war. Hewill accompany you in person in the conquest of Syriaor Egypt, and will furnish ten thousand men, andmaintain during his whole life five hundred knightsin the Holy Land. Then followed a clause whichwas supposed to catch the consciences of the mostpious: Alexius is willing to swear on the holyGospels that he will put an end to the heresy whichnow defiles the Empire of the East, and will subjectthe Greek Church to the Church of Rome. Young A lexius s Promises. 267 The proposal did not carry to all conviction of itswisdom and justice. The Franks had reason to sus-pect the good faith of the Greeks. Blind Isaac,whom they were called upon to restore to his throne,had been himself a usurper, as unjust to his prede-cessor as his successor had been to him, and, more-over, had done everything in his power to defeat theprevious crusades. But the Venetian influence pre-vailed. CHAPTER XXXV. ON TO CONSTANTINOPLE—CAPTURE OF HE Venetians and crusaders left Zara inruins, its palaces and walls razed to the ground. They sailed for Corfu. Dan-dolo and Boniface waited five days untilthey were joined by young chiefs paused at Durazzo, where the inhabi-tants were led to recognize Alexius as the lawfulheir to the sovereignty, and on May 4, 1203, theyjoined the army before Corfu. Here there was developed great dissatisfactionamong the soldiers as the full meaning of the diver-sion of the crusade burst upon them. More thanhalf the army rose in rebellion; they held their par-liament of protest; the leaders were gathered in asecluded valley preparatory to desertion. It seemedfor the moment that conscience and piety, fannedby resentment, would triumph over chicanery anddeceit; but Dandolo and Boniface were equal to thesituation. They threw themselves at the feet of themalcontents, shed abundance of tears, and so wroughtupon the sympathies of the multitude that theyeffected a com
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookidageof, booksubjectcrusades
