The season was far advanced; the French and Venetians resolved to pass the winter in a secure harbor and plentiful country; but their repose was disturbed by national and tumultuous quarrels of the soldiers and mariners.

The conquest of Zara had scattered the seeds of discord and scandal: the arms of the allies had been stained in their outset with the blood, not of infidels, but of Christians: the king of Hungary and his new subjects were themselves enlisted under the banner of the cross; and the scruples of the devout were magnified by the fear of lassitude of the reluctant pilgrims.

The pope had excommunicated the false crusaders who had pillaged and massacred their brethren, [48] and only the marquis Boniface and Simon of Montfort [481] escaped these spiritual thunders; the one by his absence from the siege, the other by his final departure from the camp.

Innocent might absolve the simple and submissive penitents of France; but he was provoked by the stubborn reason of the Venetians, who refused to confess their guilt, to accept their pardon, or to allow, in their temporal concerns, the interposition of a priest.
[Footnote 44: By a victory (A.D.

1191) over the citizens of Asti, by a crusade to Palestine, and by an embassy from the pope to the German princes, (Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom.x.p.163, 202.)] [Footnote 45: See the crusade of the Germans in the Historia C.P.