This papal intervention jeopardized the schemes of the Venetians; but, very opportunely for those opposed to the Pope’s counsel, there arrived at Zara ambassadors from Philip of Swabia, the brother-in-law of young Alexius. In their address they said: “We do not come for the purpose of turning you aside from your holy enterprise, but to offer you an easy and sure means of accomplishing your noble designs.... We propose to you to turn your victorious arms towards the capital of Greece, which groans under the rod of a usurper, and to assure yourselves forever of the conquest of Jerusalem by that of Constantinople.... We will not tell you how easy a matter it would be to wrest the empire from the hands of a tyrant hated by his subjects; nor will we spread before your eyes the riches of Byzantium and Greece.... If you overturn the power of the usurper in order that the legitimate sovereign may reign, the son of Isaac [young Alexius] promises, under the faith of oaths the most inviolable, to maintain during a year both your fleet and your army, and to pay you two hundred thousand silver marks towards the expenses of the holy war. He will accompany you in person in the conquest of Syria or Egypt, and will furnish ten thousand men, and maintain during his whole life five hundred knights in the Holy Land.” Then followed a clause which was supposed to catch the consciences of the most pious: “Alexius is willing to swear on the holy Gospels that he will put an end to the heresy which now defiles the Empire of the East, and will subject the Greek Church to the Church of Rome.” The proposal did not carry to all conviction of its wisdom and justice. The Franks had reason to suspect the good faith of the Greeks. Blind Isaac, whom they were called upon to restore to his throne, had been himself a usurper, as unjust to his predecessor as his successor had been to him, and, moreover, had done everything in his power to defeat the previous crusades. But the Venetian influence prevailed. CHAPTER XXXV. ON TO CONSTANTINOPLE—CAPTURE OF GALATA. The Venetians and crusaders left Zara in ruins, its palaces and walls razed to the ground. They sailed for Corfu. Dandolo and Boniface waited five days until they were joined by young Alexius. These chiefs paused at Durazzo, where the inhabitants were led to recognize Alexius as the lawful heir to the sovereignty, and on May 4, 1203, they joined the army before Corfu.