Villehardouin’s irritation at the suggestion

On that side the current is always much too strong to allow vessels to be anchored with any amount of steadiness, or even safety. Villehardouin’s irritation at the suggestion shows how bitter the opposition still continued. There were some present, he says, who would have been very well content that the current or a wind—no matter what—should have dispersed the vessels, provided that they themselves could have left the country and have gone on their way.

It was at length decided that the two following days, the 10th and 11th, should be devoted to repairing their snit decided damages, and that a second assault should be delivered on the 12th. The previous day was a Sunday, and Boniface and Dandolo made use of it to appease the discontent in the rank and file of the army. Once more, as at Corfu and before the first attack upon the city, the bishops and abbots were set to work to preach against the Greeks. They urged that the war was just, because Mourtzouphlos was a traitor and a murderer, a man more disloyal than Judas; that the Greeks had been disobedient to Home, and had perversely been guilty of schism in refusing to recognize the supremacy of the Pope, and that Innocent himself desired the union of the two churches.

They saw in the defeat the vengeance of God on account of the sins of the Crusaders. The loose women were ordered out of the camp, and for better security were shipped and sent far away. Confession and communion were enjoined, and, in short, all that the clergy could do was done to prove that the cause was just, to quiet the discontented, and to occupy them until the attack next day.

Industriously repairing

The warriors had in the meantime been industriously repairing their ships and their machines of war. A slight, but not unimportant, change of tactics had been suggested by the assault on the 9th. Each transport had been assigned to a separate tower. The number of men who could fight from the gangways or platforms thrown out from the tops had been found insufficient to hold their own against the defenders.