In despair, Alexis attacked the fleet with fire-ships, and his failure led to a revolution in which he was killed. Isaac died from terror, and one Moursouffle was raised to the throne. In their extremity the Greeks had recourse to treachery, and nearly succeeded in enticing the Frankish princes to a banquet, at which they were to have been assassinated. The plot was frustrated by the sagacity of Dandolo, who would allow no one to trust themselves within the walls; then both sides prepared for war.
Defeat had taught the Franks obedience, and they consented to serve on the galleys. They embarked on April 8, 1204, to be ready for an assault in the morning. But though the attack was made in more than one hundred places at once, "yet for our sins were the pilgrims repulsed." Then the landsmen proposed to try some other part of the walls, but the sailors told them that elsewhere the current would sweep them away; and "know," said the marshal, "there were some who would have been well content had the current swept them away" altogether, "for they were in great peril."[138]
This repulse fell on a Friday; the following Monday the attack was renewed, and at first with small success, but at length--
"Our Lord raised a wind called Boreas ... and two ships which were lashed together, the one named the _Pilgrim_ and the other the _Paradise_, approached a tower on either side, just as God and the wind brought them, so that the ladder of the _Pilgrim_ was fixed to the tower; and straightway a Venetian and a French knight ... scaled the tower, and others followed them, and those in the lower were discomforted and fled."[139]
From the moment the walls were carried, the battle turned into a massacre. The ramparts were scaled in all directions, the gates were burst open with battering rams, the allies poured into the streets, and one of the most awful sacks of the Middle Ages began.
Nothing was so sacred as to escape from pillage. The tombs of the emperors were violated, and the body of Justinian stripped. The altar of the Virgin, the glory of Saint Sophia, was broken in pieces, and the veil of the sanctuary torn to rags. The crusaders played dice on the tables which represented the apostles, and drank themselves drunk in the holy chalices. Horses and mules were driven into the sanctuary, and when they fell under their burdens, the blood from their wounds stained the floor of the cathedral. At last a young prostitute mounted the patriarch's chair, intoned a lewd chant, and danced before the pilgrims. Thus fell Constantinople, by the arms of the soldiers of Christ, on the twelfth day of April, in the year one thousand two hundred and four. Since the sack of Rome by Alaric no such prize had ever fallen to a victor, and the crusaders were drunk with their success. Ville-Hardouin estimated that the share of the Franks, after deducting some fifty thousand marks which the Venetians collected from them, came to four hundred thousand marks of silver, not to speak of masses of plunder of which no account was taken. The gain was so great there seemed no end to the gold and silver, the precious stones, the silks, the ermines, and whatever was costly in the world.