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134: THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. buy peace. Five thousand pounds of gold were promised to Henry as an annual contribution towards the crusade. T]ie ernperor levied a "German tax" on the people in order to raise this sum, and for this purpose assembled what we may de- scribe as the three estates of the realm — the senate, the clergy, and the guilds which represented the artisans. The people, however, refused to pay the new tax, and the emperor was reduced to the necessity of raising what he could from the treasures of the churches. In 1197, Henry died at Messina, much to the relief of the population of the Two Sicilies and of Constantinople, and before the money w^hich had been col- lected was remitted. The failure of the third crusade and of the supplementary Increase of expedition increased the bitter feeling in the West towardsfhe towards the Empire of the East. Again was the empire ^^y raised that the heterodox empire had betrayed Christendom. Instead of assisting the soldiers of the West, Alexis was accused of giving aid and support to the Saracens and the Turks. The failures which were due to the division of the Crusaders themselves, to the quarrels between Philip and Eichard, and, later on, to those between Eichard and Con- rad, and to the opposition of the Turks and Saracens, were set down to the intrigues of the Byzantine emperors. Even the dreadful mortality among the Army of the Cross in Asia Minor and in Syria was charged to the same account. The Greeks had poisoned the wells, had infected the provisions, had diverted the watercourses. No crime was too monstrous to attribute to those who had, for the most part, been passive spectators of the sufferings of the Cross. "Those who were not with us were against us," says one of the chroniclers. It must not be forgotten that during the whole period of the crusades, and to the last, this sentiment of hos- ecciesiasticai tility was iucrcascd by the great importance which the popes attached to the schism of the Orthodox Church. The history of the century had been one long effort to endeavor to persuade or to frighten the rulers of Constan- tinople into acknowledging the supremacy of the Bishop of Eome. As these failed many attempts were made, and espe-