Brooks Adams

“ Since the sack of Rome by Alaric no such prize had ever fallen to a victor, and the crusaders were drunk with their success. Ville-Hardouin estimated that the share of the Franks, after deducting some fifty thousand marks which the Venetians collected from them, came to four hundred thousand marks of silver, not to speak of masses of plunder of which no account was taken. The gain was so great there seemed no end to the gold and silver, the precious stones, the silks, the ermines, and whatever was costly in the world. ”

“ Not only were the people of Zara fellow-Christians, against whom the Franks had no complaint, but the King of Hungary was himself a crusader, his dominions were under the protection of the pope, and an attack on him was tantamount to an attack on Rome herself.
On these points difference of opinion was impossible, and the papal legate, with all the other ecclesiastics, denounced the Venetians and threatened them with excommunication. The result showed that force already expressed itself in the West through money, and not through the imagination. ”

“ Indian merchants usually sold their cargoes at Aden, whence they were taken to a port in Upper Egypt, floated down the Nile to Cairo, and bought by Europeans at Damietta or Alexandria. The products of Egypt itself were valuable, and next to Constantinople, Cairo was the richest city west of the Indus.
What Europe gave to the Orientals in return is not so well known; but, beside raw materials and slaves, her woollens were much esteemed. At all events, exchanges must have become more favourable to her, as is proved by the increased supply of the precious metals. ”

“ Therefore it was not through enterprises sanctioned by the priesthood, that Venice won in the economic competition which began to prevail in the eleventh century.
Venetians prospered because they were bolder and more unscrupulous than their neighbours. They did without compunction what was needful for gain, even when the needful thing was a damnable crime in the eyes of the devout.
The valley of the Nile, though fertile, produces neither wood nor iron, nor men of the fighting type; for these the caliphs were ready to pay, and the Venetians provided them all. ”

“ Since exchanges had again returned to Italy, the vitality of the Greek Empire had burned low. It was failing fast through inanition. But Byzantium was still defended by those stupendous fortifications which were impregnable from the land, and only to be assailed from the sea by an admiral of genius. ”

“ He explained that she was pregnant, and to leave the realm might kill her; but the priests demanded absolute submission, and he swore upon the evangelists to see her no more. Agnes, broken by her misery, set forth for a Norman castle, where she died in bearing a son, whom she called Tristan, from her sorrow at his birth.
The soldier, who belonged to the old imaginative society, had been conquered by the Church, which was the incarnation of the imagination; but Dandolo was a different development. He was the creation of economic competition, and he trampled the clergy under his feet. ”

“ Then he distributed his plunder through the diocese.
Occasionally, when the form of competition has abruptly changed, nature works rapidly. Within a single generation after Hattin, the attitude, not only of the laity but of the clergy, had been reversed, and money was recognized, even by the monks, as the end of human effort.
The relics at Jerusalem had first drawn the crusaders to the East, and, incidentally, the capture of the Syrian seaports led to the reopening of trade and the recentralization of the Western world. ”

“ As long as imagination remained the dominant force, and the miracle retained its power, the ambition of the Franks was limited to holding the country which contained their talismans; but as wealth accumulated, and the economic type began to supplant the ecstatic, a different policy came to prevail. ”

“ And Geoffrey de Ville-Hardouin testifies of his own knowledge, that since the beginning of time, there was never so much taken in one town. Every one took what he wanted, and there was enough. Thus were the host of the pilgrims and of the Venetians quartered, and there was great joy and honour for the victory which God had given them, since those who had been poor were rich and happy. ”

“ Although, apparently, profoundly sceptical, as the man must be who is the channel through which money acts, he understood how to play upon the imaginations of others, and arranged a solemn function to glorify the Sepulchre. ”

“ He was therefore chosen leader of the expedition, and, at a meeting held at Compiègne, the three chief princes agreed to send a committee of six to Venice to contract for transportation. In this committee, Ville-Hardouin, who wrote the chronicle of the war, represented Tybalt.
The doge was then Henry Dandolo, perhaps the most remarkable man Venice ever produced. Though nearly ninety-five, he was as vigorous as in middle life. A materialist and a sceptic, he was the best sailor, the ablest diplomatist, and the keenest speculator in Europe ”

“ That night Alexis fled, leaving Constantinople without a government; and the people took the blind Isaac from his dungeon and set him on the throne. In theory, therefore, the work of the crusaders was done, and they were free to embark for Palestine to battle for the Sepulchre. In fact, the thing they came for remained to be obtained, and what they demanded amounted to the ruin of the empire. Young Alexis had promised 200,000 marks of silver, to join the crusade himself, to provide rations for a year, and to recognize the supremacy of Rome ”

“ 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.
On his side Dandolo followed his instinct, and tried to bribe the pope by offering him an union of the communions. ”

“ Beside the cities of the Holy Land, two other portions of the levant had a high money value—the Bosphorus and the valley of the Nile. In spite of Rome, the Venetians, in 1204, had seized Constantinople; at the Lateran council of 1215, Innocent himself proposed an attack on Cairo. Though conceived by Innocent, the details of the campaign were arranged by Honorius III., who was consecrated in July, 1816; these details are, however, unimportant: the interest of the crusade lies in its close. John of Brienne, King of Jerusalem, nominally commanded, but the force he led little resembled Dandolo's. ”

“ Such an one was Dandolo, a born seaman, sagacious yet fiery; and, besides, a pilot of the port. At a council of war he laid out a plan of campaign:—
"My lords, I know more of the character of this country than you do, for I have been here before. You have before you the greatest and most perilous enterprise which any men have ever undertaken, and therefore it would be well that we should act prudently." (12) He then explained how the attack should be made; and had the Franks implicitly obeyed him, the town would have been carried at the first assault. ”

“ After some semblance of a movement on Jerusalem, the army was conveyed to the Delta of the Nile, and Damietta was invested in 1218. Here the besiegers amounted to little more than a fluctuating rabble of pilgrims, who came and went at their pleasure, usually serving about six months. Among such material, military discipline could not exist; but, on the contrary, the inflammable multitude were peculiarly adapted to be handled by a priest, and soon the papal legate assumed control. ”

“ Yet, though nature may discriminate against him, the emotionalist will always be an emotionalist, for such is the texture of his brain; and while he breathes, he will hate the materialist. The next year Baldwin was defeated and captured by the Bulgarians, and then Innocent wrote a letter to the Marquis of Montferrat, which showed how the wound had rankled when he blessed the conqueror. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the contrary, when Richard advanced, the opposition was not unusually stubborn, and he actually pursued the enemy to within sight of the walls. Yet he resolutely resisted the pressure of the clergy to undertake a siege, the inference being that the power which controlled him held Jerusalem to be worthless. That power must have been capital, for the treaty which he negotiated was as frankly mercenary as though made in modern times. The seaboard from Tyre to Joppa was ceded to the Franks ”