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 268 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. reached the Adriatic. The fact is that Yillehardouin seizes upon the very slightest shadow of evidence to afford proof of the necessity of abandoning the expedition to Egypt. The story of Yillehardouin and his school, which attributes the diversion of the crusade to the want of men and to the pressure of the Venetians, is in the main true, but it is not the whole truth. We have to turn to the non-official histori- ans of the expedition in order to supplement and check the narrative of the official writers. The former are less open to suspicion than the latter. They had fewer motives for mis- representation. But even they were disposed to make the best of a bad business. They had no sympathy either with the Zarans or the Yenetians. At the same time they were themselves Crusaders, or derived their information from Cru- saders, and were desirous of showing that the crusade had done something useful, if it were only the punishment of a nation which had refused to recognize the supremacy of the pope. One advantage, however, they undoubtedly possess over the official writers. They do not consider themselves bound to conceal the conduct of Yenice. The explanation they give of the diversion of the enterprise is that it was due solely to the conduct of the republic. Enough might have been gathered from a careful search of the authorities known to exist even in the time of Gibbon to raise a strong presump- tion against the good faith of Dandolo, Boniface, and Philip of Swabia. But it has been reserved to our own time to complete the evidence against them; to prove almost to demonstration that the expedition was diverted from its pur- pose through the cupidity and treason of Yenice, and that from this cause the army was converted into a band of rob- bers, who were to commit the great crime of the Middle Ages by the destruction of the citadel against which the hitherto irresistible wave of Moslem invasion had beaten and had been broken. Bearing in mind the difference in wei^rht to be attached to the two classes of witnesses, it becomes necessary to put to- gether their evidence. The messengers of the Crusaders arrived in Yenice in the