his own advantage the sails, rigging, cables, and even anchors of the ships of war, and that the vessels themselves had been allowed to rot in the Bosphorus till even the hulks were unfit for sea. It is easy to understand why the magnificently-equipped fleet of the Venetians could proceed from one imperial harbour to another without meeting even a show of opposition. Moreover, wherever the crusaders went they found the cities they visited well disposed towards the younger Alexis. In this way they touched at Durazzo, Corfu, Cape Malea, Negroponte, Andros and Abydos, and came at last, on the eve of Saint John’s day (twenty-third of June) to the town and abbey of San Stefano, famous in many a later war, to our own times, and well within sight of the city. Here, says Geoffrey de Villehardouin, the Marshal of Champagne, and the eyewitness and chronicler of the whole expedition, the masters of the ships, galleys, and transports took harbour and anchored their vessels: ‘Now you may know that long they looked upon Constantinople who had never seen it yet, and they could not believe that so rich a city could be in all the world. When they saw those lofty walls and those rich towers which close it in all round about, and those rich palaces and tall churches of which there were so many as no one could have believed if he had not seen them with his eyes, through all the length and breadth of that city, which among all others was sovereign; know ye well that then there was none so brave but that his heart trembled, and this was no wonder, for never was so great a matter undertaken ... then each looked to his arms, considering that in them soldiers must trust when they shall soon have need of them.’ [Sidenote: _Rom. ii. 170._] [Sidenote: _Attack on Constantinople, Palma, Giovane, Hall of the Great Council._]