278 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. however, failed. [N'ot only was Boniface acquainted with the affairs of Philip, but he had occasion to be well versed in what was passing at Constantinople. The family of Mont- ferrat was well acquainted with the East. Six of its mem- bers had contracted marriages with the imperial family. AYilliam, the father of Boniface, had four sons, each of whom connected his name with the history of the crusades, and three of them very closely with that of Constantinople. These sons were William, surnamed Longsword, Conrad, Reynier, and Boniface. The eldest was for a time the hope of the Crusaders. The family was related to the families of the Roman emperor in the West, the King of France, and other powerful princes. He married, in 1175, the daughter of Baldwin the Fourth, the King of Jerusalem, and received in dowry the earldoms of Jaffa and Ascalon, but died two months afterwards. The second son, who became Marquis of Montferrat on the death of William, was that Conrad whom we have seen in Constantinople, aiding the emperor to resist the attack upon the city by Branas. We have seen also that after his mar- riage with Theodora, sister of Isaac, he refused to follow the emperor to Adrianople, was dissatisfied with his honors, and went to Palestine in 1187, where he played a most important part during the next four years, and especially distinguished himself in the siege of Tyre. After marrying Isabella, to the disgust of the Archbishop of Canterbury and other church- men, and after having quarrelled with Richard, and having been named King of Jerusalem, he was killed by one of the assassins in 1192. Robert de Clari alleges that Isaac behaved treacherously to Conrad even when he had organized an army of Latins to oppose Branas; that when the marquis went out of the city to meet the rebel the emperor shut the gate upon him instead of following with his own troops. Nicetas dis- tinctly contradicts this statement, and states that the emperor liimself commanded the right wing and Manuel Camyzes the left wing. It is not improbable that the story of Clari is one which only passed into circulation about the time of the cap- ture of Constantinople, when the family and partisans of
