406 THE DECLINE AND FALL part was massacred, not by the strangers, but by the Latins who had been driven fi-oni the city, and who exercised the revenge of a triumphant faction. Yet of these exiles, some were less mindful of injuries than of benefits ; and Nicetas him- self was indebted for his safetv to the sjenerositv of a Venetian merchant. Pope Innocent the Third accuses the pilgrims of respecting, in their lust, neither age nor sex nor religious pro- fession ; and bitterly laments that the deeds of darkness, forni- cation, adultery, and incest were perpetrated in open day ; and that noble matrons and holy nuns were polluted by the grooms and peasants of the Catholic camp.^^- It is indeed probable that the licence of victor}' prompted and covered a multitude of sins ; but it is certain that the capital of the East contained a stock of venal or willing beauty, sufficient to satiate the de- sires of twenty thousand pilgrims ; and female prisoners were no longer subject to the right or abuse of domestic slavery. The marquis of Montferrat was the patron of discipline and decency ; the count of Flanders was the mirror of chastity : they had forbidden, under pain of death, the rape of married women, or virgins, or nuns ; and the proclamation was some- times invoked by the vanquished '^^'■^ and respected by the victors. Their cruelty and lust were moderated by the authority of the chiefs and feelings of the soldiers ; for we are no longer de- scribing an irruption of the northern savages ; and, however ferocious they might still appear, time, policy, and religion had civilised the manners of the French, and still more of the Italians. But a fi'ee scope was allowed to their avarice, which was glutted, even in the holy week, by the pillage of Constan- tinople. The right of victory, unshackled by any promise or treaty, had confiscated the public and private wealth of the Greeks ; and every hand, according to its size and strength, might lawfully execute the sentence, and sei^e the forfeiture. A portable and universal standard of exchange Avas found in the coined and uncoined metals of gold and silver, which each captor at home or abroad miglit convert into the possessions i^-Quidam (says Innocent III. Gesta, c. 94, p. 538) nee religioni, nee setati, nee sexui pepercerunt ; sed fornicationes, adulteria, et incestus in occulis omnium exereentes, non solum maritatas et viduas, sed et nialronas et virgines Deoque dieatas, exposuerunt spurcitiis garcionum. Villehardouin takes no notice of these common incidents. i^ Nicetas saved, and afterwards married, a noble virgin (p. 380 [in Urb. Capt., c. 3 ), whom a soldier, Vn-i fiaprvai 77oaAoIs ovrjS'uv tirc^puj/iui/neros, had almost violated in spite of the eiToAat, evrdAfxara eu ycyo I'Otoh'.
