A general assembly was convoked in St. Mark’s in Venice (April, 1201). Mass was celebrated to secure Heaven’s blessing upon the compact. Villehardouin thus addressed the people: “The lords and barons of France, the most high and the most powerful, have sent us to you to pray you in the name of God to take pity on Jerusalem, which the Turks hold in bondage. They cry to you for mercy and supplicate you to accompany them to avenge the disgrace of Jesus Christ. They have made choice of you because they know that no people that be upon the sea have such powers as your nation. They have commanded us to throw ourselves at your feet and not to rise until you shall have granted our prayer.” The commissioners fell upon their knees and raised their hands in supplication to the people. The crowd caught the enthusiasm and cried, “We grant your request.” Dandolo himself overflowed with pious, not to say politic, emotion. This spectacle of fraternal union in the cause of Christ drew from all eyes “tears of tenderness and joy.” The Pope, to whom the compact was submitted, ratified it with the strict condition that under no circumstances should an attack be made upon any Christian state. It was deemed best to land the crusading armies at Alexandria in Egypt; the voyage thither would be unmolested. Besides, a series of events had taken place in Egypt which led many to see the hand of Providence pointing to that country. In 1200 the Nile had for some mysterious cause failed to give its annual inundation; harvests had failed; famine afflicted the inhabitants, who were reduced to feeding upon grass, the dung of animals, and even the carcasses of their fellow-victims. At Cairo women, in the insanity of starvation, had killed and eaten their own children. To famine succeeded plague; one hundred and eleven thousand died of it at Cairo. The unburied lay everywhere; a fisherman counted four hundred corpses that floated by him during a single day. The wrappings of dead bodies were as numerous on the waters of the Nile as lotus flowers in their season. In the language of an Arabian, “The most populous provinces were as a banqueting-hall for the birds of prey.” The Roman pontiff urged Europe to take the opportunity of these terrible visitations to break the treaties between Christians and Moslems and occupy the land of the Delta. To this advice the military leaders added the less inhuman consideration that Alexandria would afford a ready entrepôt for supplies from the West, and a convenient point from which to strike the enemy; at the same time it would enable the crusaders to sever the Eastern Infidels from their Saracen coreligionists along the North African coast. Egypt was thus chosen as the immediate destination of the crusade.