The role of propaganda was, and remains, important. Both the coalition forces in Iraq and the armies of the Fourth Crusade perceived themselves as liberating forces. Yet they both faced severe opposition from a population long convinced of the evils of the West. Ideas of profit and honour are also to be found across the centuries. Some have accused the US of acting out of concern for oil investments in Iraq; to a few medieval contemporaries and to many later historians, the mercantile interests of the Venetian traders helped drive them to Constantinople in 1204. Similarly, the knightly classes of the crusaders sought to sustain the deeds of their forefathers. George W. Bush is often criticised for trying to complete his father’s unfinished business in Iraq.
Both Islam and the West can choose to justify violence; the past can be invoked to help bolster and to understand a cause. While many of the parallels are beguilingly plain, the modern derivations of positive violence in the West—unlike the holy wars of the medieval age—now stem from wholly different origins. The
jihad
no longer has a true counterpart in the secular just war theory of the West.
Sunningdale, December 2004
PROLOGUE
The Coronation of Emperor Baldwin
16 MAY 1204 marked a defining moment in medieval history—a seismic change in the accepted world order. For more than eight centuries successive Byzantine emperors had dominated an enormous and sophisticated empire, but this had been swept aside by the armies of the Fourth Crusade —the holy warriors of the Catholic Church. Now a northern European sat on a throne in the great cathedral of the Hagia Sophia, acclaimed by a packed congregation of western knights and traders; the Greeks were far away from their mother city, fleeing from the horrors inflicted by the ruthless warriors who had so brutally sacked their great metropolis. To the westerners, however, God had approved of their fight and now they sought His blessing. Under the soaring dome of the Hagia Sophia, the closing words of the Catholic mass faded away to end the coronation ceremony of Baldwin of Flanders, the first crusader emperor of Constantinople.
Baldwin himself was transformed: as a powerful noble he was accustomed to a position of authority, but now he ascended to a higher, almost divine, status. Earlier in the day the leaders of the western army had collected the count from the Bucoleon palace and escorted him to a side chapel of the cathedral. There, Baldwin exchanged his woollen hose for a pair made of the finest red samite and donned shoes covered in rich gemstones. He then put on layer after layer of the most dazzling robes. First, a splendid coat with golden buttons at the front and back; then a long cloak, studded with jewels, that came down to his feet at the front and had to be wound round his middle and brought up over his left arm. As if this were not enough—in terms of weight alone it must have been a remarkable costume to bear—he wore one further gown. This too sparkled with precious stones and carried designs of the imperial eagle; it was so richly embellished that eye-witnesses reported that the garment shone as if it were aflame. Accompanied by his senior colleagues, Baldwin walked to the altar of the Hagia Sophia—partially damaged during the conquest, it was originally an exquisite piece of workmanship, 29 feet long, studded with gold and precious stones and surmounted by a solid silver canopy. The nobles carried his sword, his crown and the imperial standard; and they were followed by the crusader bishops whose task was to crown the new emperor. At the altar, after Baldwin had knelt in prayer to give thanks for the crusaders’ victory, the bishops stripped him to the waist to signify his humility before God. They anointed him, re-dressed him and, finally, gathered around him. Each held the crown with one hand and then they blessed it, made the sign of the cross, and placed it on his head. For an instant the knot of churchmen, themselves dressed in their finest vestments, masked the figure bearing the fearsome imperial eagle on his back, but then they withdrew to reveal the new emperor of Constantinople in all his magnificence—a tangible manifestation of the power and riches that the crusaders had seized. In tribute the bishops immediately presented the emperor with one of the hundreds of treasures pillaged from the imperial palaces: an enormous ruby, the size of an apple, to clasp the front of his robes.
Baldwin sat on a high throne, holding in one hand a sceptre and in the other a golden orb. One can only imagine his feelings and thoughts as he faced the huge crowd, all magnificently attired in jewelled and silken robes. As the congregation chanted the mass, Baldwin’s mind perhaps turned to his northern European home: the cold, marshy lands of Flanders; he may have thought of the wife he would now summon to be his empress; he could have reflected upon his illustrious crusading ancestors; and he may have remembered the suffering and sacrifice of his fellow-men as they fought to capture Constantinople. Finally, amidst all the opulence and excitement at the dawning of a new era, he may have remembered that the Fourth Crusaders had first set out to recapture the holy city of Jerusalem, and not to destroy, as they had, the greatest civilisation in Christendom.
Introduction
I
N APRIL 1204 the armies of the Fourth Crusade conquered and sacked Constantinople. An eye-witness wrote of the crusaders’ lack of humanity, of ‘madmen raging against the sacred’, of murderous men who refused to ‘spare pious maidens’ and of ‘these forerunners of Antichrist, chief agents of his anticipated ungodly deeds’ who smashed altars and plundered precious objects.
1
Almost 800 years later, in the summer of 2001, Pope John Paul II issued an extraordinary statement—an apology to the Greek Orthodox Church for the terrible slaughter perpetrated by the warriors of the Fourth Crusade. He said: ‘It is tragic that the assailants, who set out to secure free access for Christians to the Holy Land, turned against their brothers in the faith. That they were Latin Christians fills Catholics with deep regret.’ The fact that the pope felt the need to issue such a document—rare in its acceptance of culpability—reveals just how deep a wound had been left by this long-distant campaign.
The purpose of this book is to tell the remarkable story of the Fourth Crusade—an episode coloured by brutality and determination; depravity and avarice, political intrigue and religious zeal.
2
Several modern accounts of the Fourth Crusade have been written by Byzantine scholars whose primary concern has been its impact on the Greek Orthodox world. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, they have expressed hostile judgements on the motives of the French and the Venetians and, in some cases, their sense of outrage overshadows a broader critical approach.
3
This volume, however, is written by an historian of the crusades—a viewpoint that has encouraged me to provide a western European context for the expedition, as well as considering the situation in Byzantium. This work also seeks to explain why the crusade followed the course it did, to identify some of the underlying causes of these disturbing events and to consider how the westerners achieved their victory.
As a movement that advocated violence in the name of Christ, the crusades have elicited many hostile judgements.
4
The eighteenth-century Scottish historian, William Robertson, described the crusades as a ‘singular monument of human folly’, and Edward Gibbon’s
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
opined that the idea had ‘checked rather than forwarded the maturity of Europe’.
5
Steven Runciman’s
History of the Crusades
concluded that ‘seen in the perspective of history the whole crusading movement was a fiasco’. He lamented that ‘the Holy War itself was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is a sin against the Holy Ghost’.
6
Historians and commentators have lambasted the Fourth Crusade in particular. In the eighteenth century Voltaire wrote that ‘the only fruit of the Christians on their barbarous crusades was to exterminate other Christians’.
7
Runciman concluded that ‘the harm done by the crusaders to Islam was small in comparison with that done to the Eastern Christians’.
8
Yet, however unpalatable the ideas and actions of the crusaders seem today, it is undeniable that for several hundred years they represented—according to the beliefs, values and understanding of the medieval age—a hugely popular and enduring institution. Almost as soon as the First Crusade was launched in 1095, it exerted a pervasive influence across all levels of society and precipitated a new intensity of contact—and conflict —with the peoples and lands outside the Catholic world.
In the general perception, crusading is inextricably linked to a conflict with Islam. This connection is perpetuated to the present day with Osama bin Laden drawing a parallel between the crusaders fighting Muslims and American action in Afghanistan in 2001—2. He claimed that ‘This war is similar to the previous crusades, led by Richard the Lionheart, [Frederick] Barbarossa [of Germany] and [King] Louis [IX] of France. In the present age they rally behind [George W] Bush.’ Al-Qa‘ida propaganda also suggests that Israel is the successor to the Crusader States of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
9
Some in the West have looked back to the medieval period, too. In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the notion of a holy war was inadvisedly employed by President George W Bush, who called for a crusade against al-Qa’ida. At the time he was trying to secure support from Egypt and Syria—two countries directly affected by the original crusades—yet he invoked a concept still viewed in the Middle East as a pretext for western imperialism.
10
The outcome of the Fourth Crusade clearly represents a dramatic distortion of the basic idea of the Catholic Church fighting the infidel. Contemporaries and modern historians alike have been fascinated by how a movement that began with the object of reclaiming the Holy Land for Christianity could, in just over a century, develop into a vehicle for the destruction of the most magnificent city in the Christian world.
The crusaders themselves expressed delight and relief at their achievement. Count Baldwin of Flanders, one of the leaders of the campaign, wrote that ‘we might safely say that no history could ever relate marvels greater than these so far as the fortunes of war are concerned’. He saw divine approval for the crusaders’ actions: ‘This was done by the Lord, and it is a miracle above all miracles in our eyes.’
11
Once the details of their savagery seeped out, however, others—even in the West—were less complimentary. Pope Innocent III (1198—1216), the man who had launched the expedition, thundered against the crusaders thus: ‘You vowed to liberate the Holy Land ... [but] you rashly turned away from the purity of your vow when you took up arms not against Saracens but Christians ... The Greek Church has seen in the Latins nothing other than an example of affliction and the works of Hell so that now it rightly detests them more than dogs.’
12
The most vivid way to explore the crusade is through the wealth of contemporary accounts. This material conveys a remarkable range of emotions: fear, pride, exhilaration, self-justification and, at times, an engaging sense of awe at what the expedition was trying to achieve and at the new sights, peoples and landscapes the participants encountered. The actions of medieval military leaders are often adequately recorded and those engaged in the Fourth Crusade are no exception. We are fortunate, however, in that accounts by men of more humble rank have also survived for 1204. To complement these narratives this book employs a broad swathe of analagous crusading texts and images in order to give some impression of the hopes and fears of all the crusaders (and their families) as they embarked upon their extraordinary adventure.
In the case of the Fourth Crusade there is, compared with some other expeditions, a generous selection of source material to choose from. Part of this was the work of eye-witnesses (warriors and churchmen), and part was composed by European-based monastic chroniclers who recorded the stories of returning crusaders. Prior to the twelfth century, literacy was almost exclusively the province of churchmen. Most narratives of the First Crusade (1095—9) were written by churchmen who imbued their texts with a heavy emphasis on divine will and theology. During the twelfth century the growth of courtly life led to the patronage of troubadours and the writing of
chansons de geste
—great epic tales, often based on oral tradition, but sometimes written down by laymen. Within such a culture it was a relatively small step to the idea of the educated layman (usually a nobleman) writing down or dictating his own heroic experiences. This mixture of evidence, from both ecclesiastical (clerical) and secular (lay) authors better represents a true cross-section of society and also allows the reader to follow the crusade through the eyes and minds of knights and nobles whose priorities and motives were, at times, different from those of their ecclesiastical colleagues.
Amongst the most revealing of all evidence are the contemporary letters written by those who participated in, and directed, the crusade. These texts can show how attitudes and policies developed as events unfolded. While they are not immune from attempts to justify or give a particular slant to certain episodes, they provide a degree of detail and an immediacy that later narratives sometimes lack. In addition, the sermons delivered by churchmen trying to gather support for the crusade provide a useful insight into the possible motives of the men who took the cross.