“My lords, you are engaged to the greatest people of the world, for the highest enterprise that ever was undertaken; and I am old and feeble, and need repose, and am infirm in body; but I see that none can command and control you as I can, who am your doge. If you will permit me to take the cross to lead you, and let my son stay here in my place and conduct the government, I will go to live or die with you, and with the pilgrims.”[129]
Ville-Hardouin’s simple chronicle shows how perfectly the old man knew his audience:—
“There was great pity among the people of the country and the pilgrims, and many tears were shed, because this worthy man had so much cause to stay behind; for he was old and ... his sight poor.”[130]
Amidst an outburst of enthusiasm assent was given. Then, while the church rang with shouts, Dandolo knelt before the altar, in a passion of tears fixed the cross to the ducal bonnet, and rose, the commander of the finest army in the world.
And Dandolo was a great commander; a commander of the highest stamp. He tolerated no insubordination, and trod the clergy down. When Peter of Capua, the papal legate, interfered, Dandolo sternly told him that the army of Christ lacked not for military chiefs, and that if priests would stay therein they must content themselves with prayers.
A Cistercian monk, named Gunther, who had been appointed to follow his abbot on the pilgrimage, kept a chronicle of what he saw. His superior, named Martin, was so disheartened at Venice that he asked the legate for absolution from his vow, and for permission to return to his convent at Bâle; but this request the cardinal refused. The priests had determined to stay by Dandolo and fight him to the last. Therefore the abbot sailed with the Venetians, but he learned a bitter lesson at Zara. There the clergy received a letter from Innocent, explaining the position of the Church, and threatening with excommunication all who should molest the King of Hungary. Simon de Montfort and a portion of the more devout, who had from the first been scandalized at the contract made with Dandolo, then withdrew and camped apart; and, at a meeting called to consider the situation, Guy, Abbot of Vaux-de-Cernay, tried to read the letter. An outbreak followed, and some of the chroniclers assert that the Venetians would have murdered Guy, had not Simon de Montfort stood by him sword in hand.[131]
On the main point there is no doubt. The priests ignominiously failed to protect their ally; the attack was made, and nothing shows that even de Montfort refused to share in it, or to partake of the plunder after the city fell. There was no resistance. The besieged made no better defence than hanging crosses on their walls, and on the fifth day capitulated. First the Franks divided the plunder with the Italians; then they sent an embassy to Rome to ask for absolution.
They alleged that they were helpless, and either had to accept the terms offered by Dandolo, or abandon their enterprise. Innocent submitted. He coupled his forgiveness, indeed, with the condition that the plunder should be returned;[132] yet no record remains that a single mark, of all the treasures taken from Zara, ever found its way back to the original owners.
The Venetians neither asked for pardon nor noticed the excommunication. On the contrary, Dandolo used the time when the envoys were at Rome in maturing the monstrous crime of diverting the crusade from Palestine to Constantinople.
Just before the departure from Venice, an event happened which Ville-Hardouin called “one of the greatest marvels you ever heard of.” In 1195 the Greek emperor, named Isaac, had been dethroned, imprisoned, and blinded by his brother Alexis, who usurped the throne. Isaac’s son, also named Alexis, escaped, and took shelter with his brother-in-law, Philip of Swabia. Philip could not help him, but suggested to him to apply to the crusaders in Venice, and ask them for aid. Whether or not this application had been arranged by Dandolo, does not appear. Alexis went to Venice, where he was cordially received by the doge; but as the fleet was then weighing anchor, his affairs were postponed until after the attack on Zara, when an embassy from Philip arrived, which brought up the whole situation at Constantinople for consideration. In the struggle which followed between the Venetians and the Church, the Franks lay like a prize destined to fall to the stronger, and in Gunther’s narrative the love the priests bore their natural champions can be plainly seen. In the thirteenth century, as in the fifth century, the ecclesiastics recognized that over a monied oligarchy they could never have control; accordingly the monks hated the Venetians, whom Gunther stigmatized as “a people excessively greedy of money,” always ready to commit sacrilege for gain.