It would be difficult to paint the enthusiasm, the fear, the surprise that took possession of the minds of the Crusaders at the aspect of Constantinople.[90] The leaders landed, and passed one night in the abbey of St. Stephen. This night was employed in anxious deliberation upon what they had to do; at one time they resolved to land upon the isles; then they determined to make a descent upon the continent. In the very same instant they drew back in terror and gave themselves up to a wild joy; they could not come to any fixed determination, but changed their plans and their projects a thousand times. At daybreak Dandolo, Boniface, Baldwin, and the count de Blois ordered all the standards of the army to be unfurled; the escutcheons and coats of arms of the counts and knights were ranged along the vessels,[91] to display the military pomp of the West and recall to the warriors the valour of their ancestors. The signal was given to the fleet, which entered into the canal, and, driven on by a favourable wind, passed close to the walls of Constantinople. An immense population,[92] who only the day before were ignorant of the arrival of the Latins, crowded the ramparts and covered the shore. The warriors of the West, clad in complete armour,[93] stood erect upon the decks of their vessels;[94] some stones and arrows were launched from the towers and fell upon the ships: “there was no heart,” says Villehardouin, “so bold as not to be moved; for never was so great an affair undertaken.” Every warrior turned his eye towards his sword, thinking the time was come in which to make use of it. The Crusaders fancied that in the crowd of spectators they beheld the defenders of Constantinople; but the capital of the empire was only defended by the memory of its past glory, and by the respect of the nations ignorant of its weakness. Of true soldiers the imperial army only mustered two thousand Pisans, who despised the Greeks, and the troop of Varangians, mercenary soldiers from the northern parts of Europe, with whose origin and country the Greeks themselves were scarcely acquainted.[95] The Crusaders made a descent upon the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, pillaged the city of Chalcedon, and established themselves in the palace and gardens in which the emperor Alexius had so long forgotten his own dangers and those of his empire. At the approach of the Venetian fleet, this prince had retreated to Constantinople, where, like the last king of Babylon, he continued to live amidst pleasures and festivities, without reflecting that he had been judged, and that his hour was nearly come. His courtiers, in the intoxication of the banquet, celebrated his power and proclaimed him invincible; amidst the pomp that surrounded him, and which appeared to him a rampart against the attacks of his enemies, he, in his speeches, insulted the simplicity of the Latins, and believed he had conquered them because he had called them barbarians.