On these principles or pretences, many pilgrims, the most distinguished for their valor and piety, withdrew from the camp; and their retreat was less pernicious than the open or secret opposition of a discontented party, that labored, on every occasion, to separate the army and disappoint the enterprise.
[Footnote 49: A modern reader is surprised to hear of the valet de Constantinople, as applied to young Alexius, on account of his youth, like the _infants_ of Spain, and the _nobilissimus puer_ of the Romans.
The pages and _valets_ of the knights were as noble as themselves, (Villehardouin and Ducange, No.

36.)] [Footnote 50: The emperor Isaac is styled by Villehardouin, _Sursac_, (No.

35, &c.,) which may be derived from the French _Sire_, or the Greek Kur (kurioV ?) melted into his proper name; the further corruptions of Tursac and Conserac will instruct us what license may have been used in the old dynasties of Assyria and Egypt.] [Footnote 51: Reinier and Conrad: the former married Maria, daughter of the emperor Manuel Comnenus; the latter was the husband of Theodora Angela, sister of the emperors Isaac and Alexius.

Conrad abandoned the Greek court and princess for the glory of defending Tyre against Saladin, (Ducange, Fam.Byzant.p.187, 203.)] [Footnote 52: Nicetas (in Alexio Comneno, l.iii.c.

9) accuses the doge and Venetians as the first authors of the war against Constantinople, and considers only as a kuma epi kumati, the arrival and shameful offers of the royal exile.