On the day preceding the final assault the old jealousy again showed itself. Barbaro relates that he and the other Venetians made ‘mantles’--some kind of wooden contrivance for giving cover to the soldiers on the wall. They were made at the Plateia, possibly near the end of the present Inner Bridge. The Venetian bailey gave orders to the Greeks to carry them to the landward walls. The Greeks refused unless they were paid. Ultimately the difficulty of payment was got over, but when the mantles reached the wall it was already night; and thus, says Barbaro, on account of the greediness of the Greeks we had to stand at the defence without them.[354] The dissensions were further increased by discord between the Italian colonists themselves. We have already seen that the emperor had been compelled to intervene to prevent dangerous recriminations between the Venetians and the Genoese. The former affected to despise the Genoese, while the latter, as the possessors of a walled city on the opposite side of the Golden Horn and as the more numerous, considered themselves the superiors of their rivals. The Venetians, on account of their position within the city, were compelled in their own interest either to help the Greeks or to get away. The Genoese claimed to be in an independent position. Each accused the other of the wish to desert the city. [Sidenote: Charge of treachery against the Genoese.] The most common charge, and one persisted in by the Venetians, was that the Genoese were traitors to the city and to Christianity, and it is difficult to say whether the charge is well founded or not. Barbaro, himself a Venetian, seldom loses an opportunity of speaking ill of the Genoese; but the coarseness and recklessness of his attacks lessen their value. If the charges of treachery depended on his evidence alone, they might be dismissed. But other evidence is at hand. We have seen that the Genoese are alleged to have claimed that they could have burnt the sultan’s ships when they made their passage overland and would have done so if they had not been his friends. Leonard, who was a Genoese, evidently believed that they were traitors to Christianity and were playing a double game. ‘They ought to have prevented the building of the fortress at Roumelia-Hissar. But,’ he concludes, ‘I will keep silence, lest I should speak ill of my own people, whom foreigners may justly condemn.’ They are nevertheless condemned by him because they ‘did not lend help to the Lord against the mighty.’