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 But the expedition was diverted from its original design. Thirty-two thousand of the promised marks being still wanted to complete the stipulated sum, the Doge, Henry Dandolo, offered to waive this claim, provided the combined forces were first employed in the reduction of Zara, a strong city on the opposite shores of the Adriatic, which had recently thrown off its allegiance to Venice. After much discussion and many differences of opinion this proposal was accepted, and proved fully successful; but the sack of Zara scattered wide the seeds of discord and scandal; and many were shocked that the arms of professing Crusaders should have been first stained with the blood, not of the Infidel, but of the Christian.

The presence of this great force revived the hopes of the young Alexius, while the tale of the massacre of the Latins at Constantinople seemed to demand a punishment adequate to its atrocity. The separate interests of many and various parties supported his appeal; the Doge hoped to increase the commercial power of Venice by humbling that of the eastern capital; Alexius was warmly backed by Philip of Germany and the Marquis of Montferrat; while the promises of the young man himself were liberal enough to suggest more than a suspicion of his honesty. In the end it was determined to make a further diversion of the hosts originally consecrated to the deliverance of Jerusalem, and to employ them on what to the miscellaneous multitude must have been the far more congenial office of ravaging and plundering the Greek empire. It can, indeed, hardly be supposed that many of the Crusaders could have believed themselves bound to aid in the restoration of an exiled