Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/322

 304 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. he have credited that the city which was the sovereign among cities could have been so long or so broad. " Be sure there was not a man who did not tremble, because never was so great an enterprise undertaken by so small a number of men." The doge and the leaders landed and held a parliament in the Church of San Stefano. Dandolo advised that before any attack was made the fleet should sail some ten miles away to the Princes' Islands, and that a stock of provisions should be gathered from the neighboring coast. The advice was ac- cepted and the leaders embarked once more. In the morn- ing, however, there was a southerly wind which made a jour- ney to the islands dangerous, but which took them pleasantly right under the walls of Constantinople into the Bosphorus. The walls are built at the water's edge, and were crowded with spectators as the fleet passed. The ships anchored off Chalcedon, probably in front of the present English ceme- tery.^ The army disembarked, and formed an encampment upon the Asiatic shore, the city of Constantinople being in full view and only a mile distant. The harvest in the neigh- boring country had been gathered in, and was at once seized by the Crusaders " comme gens qui en avaient grand besoin." The leaders took possession of a splendid palace belonging to the emperor. On the third day the fleet went a mile farther up the Bosphorus to Scutari and there anchored. The Crusaders waited nine days in order to take in pro- visions and make their arrangements for an attack. During this time a skirmish took place on the Asiatic shore with a small body of imperial troops, who were completely routed, and the Crusaders obtained a considerable quantity of booty. Meantime the emperor was filled with alarm at the arrival of the Venetian fleet and the great Frank army. On the tenth day after their arrival he sent a messenger named lage between Scutari and Kadikcui, called Ilj-der Pasha, the latter being the name of a village, and not, as the judicial committee of the privy council stated recently, the name of a "respectable Turkish gentle-
 * This is usually spoken of as being at Scutari. It is, in fact, in a vil-