History of the Crusades

BOOK IX THE FOURTH CRUSADE A. D. 1195 TO 1198

Illus -47 Tissue

DANDOLO, DOGE OF VENICE, PREACHING THE CRUSADE

Nobody was more skilful in seizing a favorable opportunity, or of taking advantage of the least circumstance for the furtherance of his designs. at the age of ninety, the doge of Venice exhibited no symtoms of senility but virtue and experience. Everything that could save his country aroused his activity and inflamed his courage ; with the spirit of calculation and economy which distinguished his compatriots. Dandolo mingled passions the most generous, and threw an air of grandeur over all the enter-prises of a trading people. Dandolo praised with warmth an enterprise that appeared glorious to him, and in which the interests of his country were not opposed to those of religion. The deputies required vessels to transport four thousand five hundred knights and twenty thousand foot, with provisions for the Christian army for nine months. Dandolo promised, in the name of the republic, to furnish the necessary provisions and vessels, on condition that the Crusaders should engage to pay the Venetians the sum of eighty-five thousand silver marks. As he was not willing that the people of Venice should be unconnected with the expedition of the French Crusaders, Dandolo proposed to the deputies to arm, at the expense of the republic, fifty galleys, and demanded for his country half the conquests that might be made in the East. - Book X

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Note; pages 294 to 295 Deputies of the Crusaders arrive in Venice with letters to conduct negotiations with the Venetians.. page 295 voices raised against the Jews popes liberating the Crusaders from the usurious debts which they owed to the Jews to stop the attempts on their lives and liberities. . . . later deaths of count Thibault, of Foulques . . . when the Crusaders reached Venice, the fleet was ready to transport them into Asia. . . . the barons with great grief, became aware of the absence of a great number of their companions in arms. Jean de Nesle, chatelain of Bruges, and Thierri, son of Philip, count of Flanders, had promised Baldwin to bring him, at Venice, Marguerite, his wife, and a chosen band of Flemish warriors ; they did not keep their appointment, for having embarked upon the ocean, they directed their course to palestine. Renaud de Dampierre, to whom Thibault, count of Champagne, had left all his treasures to be employed in the voyage to the Holy Land, had embarked with a great number of Champenois knights at the port of Bari. The Bishop of Autun, Gilles, count of Ferez, and several other leaders, after having sworn upon the Gospel to join the other Crusaders, had set out from Marseilles, and others from Genoa. Thus half the Crusaders did not come to Venice, which had been agreed upon as the general rendezvous of the Christian army ; "by which," says Villehardouin, "they received great shame, and many misadventures afterwards befell them in consequence of it."

*The author wrote the history of the fourth, fifth, and sixth crusades during the last usurpation of Buonaparte. . . . Michaud writes ; During twenty-five years a revolution, born of opions unknown to past ages, has pervaded cities, agitated nations, and shaken thrones. This revolution has for auxiliaries war and victory ; it strengthens itself with all the obstacles that are opposed to it ; it is for ever born again from itself, and when we believe we can perceive the end of its ravages, it re-appears more terrible and menacing than ever. At the moment in which I resume the account of the Crusades, the spirit of sedition and revolt, the fanaticism of modern doctrines, which seemed to slumber, all at once awake, and again threaten the world with universal disorder ; nations which tremble for their liberty and their laws, are aroused, and spring up in arms ; a coalition of all the kings of all the nations, a general crusade is formed, not to defend the tomb of Christ, but to preserve that which Europe possesses of its ancient civilization. It is amidst the rumors of a new revolution, of a formidable war, that I am about to describe the revolutions and wars that disturbed the East and the West in the middle ages. May I, whilst deploring the calamities of my country, profit by the events of which I am witness, and by the frightful spectable which is before my eyes, to paint with greater truth the passions and the troubles of a remote age, and revive in the hearts of my contemporaries a love of concord and peace.

The irony of this passage as I relay all this in these turbulent days facing the world this century. . .

Notes; pages 265 to 284 Our Author relates the change of the face of Saladin's kingdom now completely dissected. page 282 truce formed by count de Montfort concluded the forth crusade which only lasted a few months. Thus terminated this crusade, which lasted a few months, and was really nothing but a Pilgrimage for warriors of the West.