244: THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. cidental advantages, no other spot offered so many opportu- nities for the attack. Ko other country, if conquered, would be so great a loss to Islam. These considerations, in fact, seem to have been so generally recognized that it is doubtful whether any other plan was seriously considered. It was to Babylon, as the Crusaders generally called Egypt, that the expedition was to go, because, says Yillehardouin, "one could more easily destroy the Turks there than in any other coun- try." ' The choice having been made, it will become necessary to ask wdiy the original plan was abandoned. How did it happen that an expedition prepared with great care, and proposing under such favorable circumstances to strike at the heart of Moslem power, turned away from its object and attacked the capital of Eastern Christendom ? The question is one which was asked by all Europe at the time and has never been alto- gether satisfactorily answered, although in our own time the laborious industry of German and French scholars has suc- ceeded in bringing to light a mass of evidence hitherto un- known, bearing on the question. The conclusion to which this evidence appears to me to point will, I hope, become clear in subsequent pages. The agreement between the delegates of the Crusaders and the Venetians was ratified, as we have seen, in May, 1201.* The crusading army was to arrive in Venice not later than the 24th of June, 1202. In the interval between these dates Death of many events happened. Theobald, Earl of Cham- Theobaid. paguc, the youug noble who had taken the Cross on the preaching of Fulk — who had probably been induced to do so partly in order to escape the vengeance of Philip of France — who had been elected loader of the expedition, and in whom all had confidence, died in May, 1201. His loss was the more serious that his great wealth was no longer available for the purposes of the crusade. A payment in advance which had ^ Villehardouin, sec. 30. 2 In the same month Innocent had invited the dignitaries of the Vene- tian Churcli to contribute towards the crusade from the Church revenues. Sec "Archives dc TOrient Latin, i. 383.
