Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/191

Rh favor of the republic. Everywhere, however, the Venetians were opposed by the inhabitants. A portion of the Venetian fleet was destroyed by that of the empire, but the rest occupied itself during the next three years in piratical attacks on the islands of the Ægean. Aid was given on every hand to the enemies of the empire. The Serbians were subsidized. The Archbishop of Mayence, who, on behalf of Frederic Barbarossa, was besieging Ancona, which was occupied by Manuel's troops, received a detachment of men to aid him, and the city was blockaded by a Venetian fleet. An alliance was concluded with William of Sicily. Yet, in spite of all its efforts, the republic was unsuccessful. Weakened by sickness, which they attributed to drinking water which had been poisoned by the Greeks, and opposed everywhere, the Venetians were driven to sue for peace. Manuel rejected their proposals. The imperial fleet, which had made an unsuccessful attack upon Egypt in 1170, was yet able to provide a hundred and fifty galleys. The fleet of the republic had to retire before it, and of the one hundred and twenty ships which had left Venice, only seventeen returned, the rest having been either captured, abandoned, or destroyed. The Venetians, in their rage at his failure, assassinated the doge, Vitali Michieli, who had conducted the expedition. Before leaving the Archipelago a second embassy had been sent to Constantinople to sue for peace.

On this mission Henry Dandolo went to the capital, and during this period he lost his eyesight. Whether such loss was partial or total; whether it was due to the terrible epidemic which in the first year of the war had carried off three or four thousand of the Venetians in the islands of the Ægean; whether, as Villehardouin asserts, he was blind from a wound in the head; or whether he was blinded in Constantinople with a burning-glass, at the command of the emperor, as his descendant affirms, it is certain that from this time until his death Dandolo was filled with a passionate desire for vengeance against the empire. His mission, like that of his predecessors, proved a failure.

In 1175 the Venetians found that success had eluded them