The tents of the Emperor and
the imperial palace of Blachern were pillaged, the conquerors making
their head-quarters on the same site at Pantepoptis. It was evening,
and already late, when the crusaders had entered the city, and it was
impossible for them to continue their work of destruction through the
night. They therefore encamped near the walls and towers which they
had captured. Baldwin of Flanders spent the night in the vermilion
tent of the Emperor, his brother Henry in front of the palace of
Blachern, Boniface, the Marquis of Montferrat, on the other side of
the imperial tents in the heart of the city.
The city was already taken. The inhabitants were at length awakened
out of the dream of security into which seventeen unsuccessful
attempts to capture the New Rome[47] had lulled them. Every charm,
pagan and Christian, had been without avail. The easy sloth into which
the possession of innumerable relics, and the consciousness of being
under the protection of an army of saints and martyrs, had plunged a
large part of the inhabitants, had been rudely dispelled. The Panhagia
of the Blachern, with its relic of the Virgin's robe, the host of
heads, arms, bodies, and vestments of saints and of portions of the
holy Cross, had been of no more use than the palladium which lay
buried then, as now, under the great column which Constantine had
built.
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