bitterly
laments that the deeds of darkness, fornication, adultery, and incest,
were perpetrated in open day; and that noble matrons and holy nuns were
polluted by the grooms and peasants of the Catholic camp. [86] It is
indeed probable that the license of victory prompted and covered a
multitude of sins: but it is certain, that the capital of the East
contained a stock of venal or willing beauty, sufficient to satiate the
desires of twenty thousand pilgrims; and female prisoners were no
longer subject to the right or abuse of domestic slavery. The marquis
of Montferrat was the patron of discipline and decency; the count of
Flanders was the mirror of chastity: they had forbidden, under pain
of death, the rape of married women, or virgins, or nuns; and the
proclamation was sometimes invoked by the vanquished [87] and respected
by the victors. Their cruelty and lust were moderated by the authority
of the chiefs, and feelings of the soldiers; for we are no longer
describing an irruption of the northern savages; and however ferocious
they might still appear, time, policy, and religion had civilized the
manners of the French, and still more of the Italians. But a free scope
was allowed to their avarice, which was glutted, even in the holy week,
by the pillage of Constantinople. The right of victory, unshackled by
any promise or treaty, had confiscated the public and private wealth of
the Greeks; and every hand, according to its size and strength, might
lawfully execute the sentence and seize the forfeiture. A portable and
universal standard of exchange was found in the coined and uncoined
metals of gold and silver, which each captor, at home or abroad, might
convert into the possessions most suitable to his temper and situation.
Of the treasures, which trade and luxury had accumulated, the silks,
velvets, furs, the gems, spices, and rich movables, were the most
precious, as they could not be procured for money in the ruder countries
of Europe. An order of rapine was instituted; nor was the share of
each individual abandoned to industry or chance. Under the tremendous
penalties of perjury, excommunication, and death, the Latins were bound
to deliver their plunder into the common stock: three churches were
selected for the deposit and distribution of the spoil: a single share
was allotted to a foot-soldier; two for a sergeant on horseback; four to
a knight; and larger proportions according to the rank and merit of
the barons an