The road carried on past Lyon and Vienne before it turned towards the Alps. In normal times, merchants and travellers had to pay customs tolls to the local lords to secure a passage over the Alps, but the crusaders, as knights of Christ, were exempt from these charges. Villehardouin crossed the Alps using the Mount Cenis pass, which today is closed to wheeled traffic from November to April; but, incredibly, in medieval times a steady flow of traders and travellers braved its steep and precipitous paths throughout the year. In the summer, conditions were relatively good and the journey of 1202 is recorded as uneventful. A vertiginous descent towards Susa completed the passage into northern Italy; a couple of days later, a gentle march down the valley of Susa brought the army to Turin and the edge of Boniface of Montferrat’s lands. Here, it is likely that Baldwin and the other northern French crusaders again met the marquis to discuss the expedition’s progress. To reach this point would have taken about a month from Troyes, a distance of around 340 miles. From here it was a relatively easy route through Asti, Tortona, Piacenza, along the River Po and, finally, northwards again to Venice itself.
54
CHAPTER SIX
‘It seemed as if the sea were all a-tremble and all on
fire with the ships’
The Crusade at Venice and the Siege of Zara, summer and autumn 1202
O
N THEIR ARRIVAL in Venice, the crusaders were warmly welcomed by their hosts. The Venetians had thought carefully about where to accommodate the Frenchmen and had prepared land on the island of St Nicholas, known today as the Lido. This long (8 miles), flat sandbar lies to the east of the city, around 7½ miles away from St Mark’s Square, but only around 1,300 feet from the nearest point of the main Rialto Island. The Lido protects the central islands from the open sea and today is famous as a beach resort. Back in the thirteenth century it was almost entirely undeveloped except for the eleventh-century monastery of St Nicholas. The decision to house the crusaders on the Lido represented a careful mix of diplomatic pragmatism and simple practicality. The unique topography of Venice precluded the majority of the Frenchmen from setting up camp in, or just outside, the city itself, and the Lido was the closest open space that could take such a large force. Equally, if the crusaders proved to be ill disciplined—as so many had been in the past—then they were away from the heart of Venice and reliant on Venetian shipping to get off the island in large numbers. In other words, they might find it difficult to threaten their hosts directly, even if they wished to.
As the summer wore on and more of the crusaders gathered in the city, disturbing rumours began to reach the camp: some of those who had promised to meet in Venice were said to be choosing other routes to reach the Holy Land. Villehardouin, as one of those responsible for negotiating the original deal with the Venetians, was highly alarmed at this development because it meant the crusaders might fail to fulfil their side of the contract. They had sworn to pay the Venetians 85,000 marks in the expectation that 33,500 men and 4,500 horses would come to Venice and make up this sum at a particular rate per man and per horse. The total figure was fixed and, even if fewer crusaders appeared, the full amount was still owed. With fewer men, therefore, the cost to each individual would rise dramatically—probably beyond the means of many—which, in turn, meant that the leadership would need to find substantial extra funds to make up the shortfall.
The marshal was especially scathing of those who, as he saw it, let down their comrades by not coming to Venice and his narrative pointedly named the individuals whom he felt especially culpable. As one of the men who had negotiated the Treaty of Venice in 1201, this was also a way of distracting attention from his own overestimation of the numbers of crusaders who would gather at Venice and of trying to convince posterity that he was not at fault for this error. Privately, however, in the late summer of 1202 the marshal must have felt a real apprehension that he and his fellow-envoys had made a terrible mistake and that the crusaders would not be able to meet their agreement with the Venetians.
Those who resolved to travel to the Holy Land by some other route often had entirely sound reasons for doing so. One group of Flemings, led by John of Nesles, the governor of Bruges, was to sail from Flanders, down the English Channel and around the Iberian peninsula—a quite logical decision given that several earlier expeditions from the Low Countries to the Holy Land had followed the same route. John’s ships carried soldiers, clothing, food and other supplies for Count Baldwin and the main Flemish contingent and promised to join him ‘at whatever place they might hear that he had gone’.
1
Rather disingenuously Villehardouin claimed that this group broke their oath and abandoned their colleagues because ‘they were afraid to undertake the many perils that the army in Venice had undertaken’.
2
In fact, when John of Nesles’s men later heard of the diversion, they chose not to fight at Constantinople and elected to sail directly to the Levant.
Crusaders from Burgundy and the Île-de-France also avoided Venice and chose instead to sail from Marseille or from Genoa. Here, more starkly, another fundamental flaw in Villehardouin’s reasoning is revealed:
aside from overestimating the total number of crusaders, he had failed to allow for the fact that those who did take part were under no compulsion to sail from Venice. Blinded, perhaps, by the prospect of the wonderful Venetian navy, and believing (not unwisely) that in pure military terms this was the best way for the crusaders to reach Egypt, he had assumed that all the holy warriors would wish to join the same fleet. Crucially, the only signatories to the treaty with Venice were the representatives of Champagne, Flanders, Blois and Saint-Pol. Beyond these contingents there was no obligation for any of the crusaders to travel with the Venetians. Likewise, there was no papal directive ordering such a course of action and none of the expedition’s nobles had sufficient authority to compel everyone to gather at the head of the Adriatic.
3
The main leaders, Boniface, Baldwin and Louis, could encourage their own men to do this if they thought it sensible—but they could not realistically force people of independent standing such as the Burgundians, Bishop Walter of Autun and Count Guigue of Forez to meet on the Adriatic. It was much easier for these crusaders to sail down the River Rhone and take ship from Marseille than to travel across to northern Italy; it was also possible that the people of Marseille offered a cheaper crossing than the Venetians.
4
Most previous crusading expeditions had travelled in a fragmented and ad
hoc
manner, each major contingent taking its own route to the Levant and making its own arrangements. Sometimes these groups gathered for convenience or, once in Asia Minor, joined together for safety, but to ask such a polyglot force as the Fourth Crusade to meet in Europe was unprecedented. As the summer of 1202 wore on, the plan for the expedition to travel in one enormous fleet looked increasingly implausible.
The crusaders’ plight was becoming apparent to all. Baldwin of Flanders had arrived in Venice, but Louis of Blois and many more nobles had yet to appear. It was confirmed that others were taking ship from alternative ports and, as this news began to drift into the camp, the prospect of a shortfall of men and money became ever more real. Those at Venice took council and decided that Louis, at least, had to be won over. A delegation led by Villehardouin and Count Hugh of Saint-Pol rode from Venice to Pavia (about 150 miles as the crow flies) to meet the Blesevin. For one of the primary signatories of the original contract to attempt to evade the agreement was a calamity: it was profoundly disloyal to his comrades and deeply discouraging to all. Geoffrey and Hugh chided Louis and his colleagues for their lack of courage, reminded them of the plight of the Holy Land and argued that the best way to help the faithful was by joining the main army at Venice. This direct appeal worked and Louis and his men agreed to march to the head of the Adriatic. For others, however, this form of personal intervention was not a feasible approach and Villehardouin lamented that many, such as Villain of Neuilly, whom he described as ‘one of the finest knights in the world’—a reputation probably gained on the tournament circuit—chose to march south from Piacenza and take ship in Apulia, thereby avoiding Venice.
5
By the mid-summer of 1202 those Frenchmen who had crossed the Alps and reached Montferrat and Lombardy would have learned of the potential troubles brewing for their colleagues to the east. Some may have calculated that there was no possibility that the crusaders at Venice could fulfil their contract with the doge, and travelling there to become ensnared in such an impossibly awkward situation must have seemed undesirable. Given the lack of any formal requirement to go to Venice, there was no reason why they could not march down to southern Italy and sail on to the Eastern Mediterranean free of the contractual restrictions and financial disputes that would inevitably attend their colleagues at the head of the Adriatic. These men remained holy warriors, dedicated to fulfilling their vows and fighting in the Holy Land—simply because they failed to sail from Venice did not, as Villehardouin would prefer us to believe, render them traitors to their cause.
In spite of this unhappy state of affairs, the arrival of Count Louis and his knights brought delight to those already in Venice. The newcomers were met with feasting and celebrations as they took up their quarters on the shell-strewn shores of the Lido. At first, all was well, and the Venetians provided a market to provision the men and horses. The crusade leaders went across to the city, where they were shown the Arsenal and the numerous private shipyards on the islands. The Frenchmen saw how the doge’s men had accomplished their side of the contract and they marvelled at the superb fleet constructed on their behalf. The
Gesta Innocenti
records that ‘the Venetians prepared a magnificent fleet, the like of which had not been seen since long ago’.
6
Villehardouin wrote: ‘The fleet that they had got ready was so fine and well equipped that no man in the whole of Christendom has ever seen one to surpass it.’
7
Even allowing for the medieval propensity for exaggeration, this was undoubtedly one of the biggest, and certainly the most splendid, fleets yet assembled in the Christian West. The
Devastatio Constantinopolitana
stated that there were 40 ships, 62 galleys and 100 transports. Robert of Clari wrote that the doge himself had 50 galleys of his own.
8
The contemporary letter of Count Hugh of Saint-Pol recorded that 200 vessels reached Constantinople in the summer of 1203, and the Byzantine writer Niketas Choniates counted more than 70 transports, 110 horse transports and 60 galleys at the same stage of the expedition.
9
Drawing on a diverse range of sources, it seems likely that a fleet of some 200 ships had been mustered. It is true that earlier crusader fleets had approached a similar size, most notably the northern European force of around 160 vessels that captured Lisbon in 1147, although the form of these vessels was far smaller than those used in the Fourth Crusade. We know of no horse transports at Lisbon, for example, and there is no possibility that this group of maritime crusaders had the financial resources or expertise to construct anything like the extraordinary fleet gathered at Venice in 1202.
As the summer drifted along, further crusaders arrived. On 22 July, the papal legate, Cardinal Peter Capuano, reached Venice. He spent time on the Lido preaching to the troops and is said to have done much to bolster morale. In late July, Gunther of Pairis and the Upper Rhineland crusaders completed their journey. On 15 August, Boniface of Montferrat appeared and, as nominal head of the crusade, his presence must have given good heart to the men already there. It was also the first occasion that all three elements of the crusade leadership—the marquis, the northern French and the Venetians—were present together and it would have afforded an important opportunity to discuss strategy and planning. Around the same time, the German contingent led by Bishop Conrad of Halberstadt (in northern Germany) and Count Berthold of Katzenellenbogen (from the central Rhineland) marched down to the shores of the Adriatic. This offered further cheer to those on the Lido.
10
Notwithstanding these moments of optimism, the harsh reality of the situation began to set in. Much of the intense labour and massive resources expended on the Venetian armada was in vain: by the autumn it was abundantly clear that far too few crusaders had assembled. The envoys’ estimate had been wildly inaccurate and only around 12,000 of the promised 33,500 had gathered. Villehardouin wrote: ‘[The fleet] comprised so great a number of warships, galleys, and transports that it could easily have accommodated three times as many men as were in the whole army.’
11
Lines of ships lay drawn up in dockyards, while others sat bobbing and bumping at anchor, ready to sail. Yet the shortfall of holy warriors condemned dozens of these vessels to ghostly inactivity. For both the crusaders and the Venetians this was a catastrophic state of affairs: the crusaders faced the humiliation of failing to keep to the contract and the need to find huge amounts of cash; the Venetians contemplated financial ruin and the waste of at least a whole year’s labour. Dandolo had to act: he summoned the leaders of the crusade and bluntly demanded the money due to him. Robert of Clari suggests that this was coupled with a threat. The doge exclaimed:
Lords, you have used us ill, for as soon as your messengers made the bargain with me I commanded through all my land that no trader should go trading, but that all should help prepare this navy. So they have waited ever since and have not made any money for a year and a half past. Instead, they have lost a great deal, and therefore, we wish, my men and I, that you should pay us the money you owe us. And if you do not do so, then know that you shall not depart from this island before we are paid, nor shall you find anyone to bring you anything to eat or to drink.
12