For those less dogmatic there was still a need to justify the diversion to Byzantium. Robert of Clari gives his own account of this, although his chronology is confused because he places the main debate about the diversion on Corfu, the crusaders’ next destination after Zara. Nonetheless, he provides some interesting views of what he - as a lesser knight - perceived as the ideas of several key players. For example, he credits the doge and Marquis Boniface with encouraging Alexius’s offer. Dandolo acknowledged the crusaders’ poverty and made the point that Greece [Byzantium] was a wealthy land and that if ‘we could have a reasonable excuse for going there and taking the provisions and other things ... then we should well be able to go overseas’.
8
The need for a ‘reasonable excuse’ echoed Pope Innocent’s earlier prohibition on attacking Christian lands unless ‘a just or necessary cause should arise’. By an uncanny coincidence, Boniface was on hand to provide this and he described meeting Prince Alexius at Hagenau and how Emperor Isaac had lost the throne by treason. He argued that it would be right to reinstate him and that this in turn would release the much-needed supplies.
Robert represents Boniface of Montferrat as a particularly passionate advocate of the deal with the prince. He explains the marquis’s motivation thus: ‘he wanted to avenge himself for an injury which the emperor of Constantinople ... had done to him’. Boniface was said to ‘hate’ Emperor Alexius III.
9
The episode at issue dated from 1187 when, as we saw earlier, Boniface’s brother Conrad had married Theodora of Constantinople and had helped the emperor to fight off a rebellion, only to be poorly rewarded and hounded into leaving the city for the Holy Land. In fact, Robert was seriously mistaken because the emperor at the time was Prince Alexius’s father, Isaac Angelos. Some of the lesser crusaders clearly saw Boniface as motivated by personal revenge in wanting to direct the crusade to Constantinople: a proportion of the French crusaders at least seemed rather suspicious of their north Italian leader.
The doge, too, was suspected by some (often with the benefit of hindsight) of advocating the move to Constantinople for purely financial reasons. Gunther of Pairis felt that the Venetian interest view was based ‘partly in the hope of the promised money (for which that race is extremely greedy), and partly because their city, supported by a large navy, was, in fact, arrogating to itself sovereign mastery over that entire sea’.
10
Venetian involvement in Constantinople dated back centuries and encompassed close political, economic and cultural ties.
11
The period leading up to the Fourth Crusade had witnessed several turbulent episodes in the relationship between the two cities and this formed a difficult background to the campaign. As far back as 1082 the Venetians had been granted generous privileges across most of the Byzantine Empire and this had resulted in a flourishing community based in Constantinople, exporting oil and pepper. Under Emperor John Comnenus (1118-43) the concession of rights on Crete and Cyprus boosted trade with North Africa and the Holy Land and led to a substantially increased investment in the Byzantine Empire. Theban silk came to be an important part of Venetian trade. It is difficult to ascertain why, on 12 March 1171, Emperor Manuel Comnenus ordered the arrest of all Venetians in his empire and the seizure of their property. A dispute between Venetians and their Genoese rivals in Constantinople was the immediate reason for tension, but there were other causes lying beneath the surface. The Greek sources hint at friction over the status of Venetians settled and intermarried in Byzantine lands. This gave them even greater privileges and created a powerful, but effectively independent, group of people within Manuel’s territory. The wider politics of the complex relationship between Manuel, the German Empire, the papacy and the Italian trading cities was also a contributory factor in the violence between Genoese and Venetians in Constantinople.
The Venetian response was to send a fleet led by Doge Vitale Michiel to ravage the Byzantine island of Euboea and then to spend the winter of 1171 on Chios. There the Italians were struck with plague, which ruined their military strength and led them to make several attempts to find a diplomatic solution to the problem. In the end, Vitale Michiel was compelled to return home where an angry mob murdered him on account of his failure to avenge the damage to Venetian interests in Constantinople. A treaty was eventually settled upon, which assessed compensation at 1,500 pounds of gold (or 108,000 coins) for the Italians’ losses in Constantinople. The post-Comneni regime endorsed these arrangements and in 1187 and 1189 Isaac confirmed and enlarged the Venetians’ old privileges, although he also offered good terms to the Pisans and Genoese.
12
In 1195 the pro-Pisan Emperor Alexius III raised tensions with the Venetians and another round of embassies agreed to pay the 400 pounds of gold still owed. Yet in reality, by the turn of the twelfth century, the relationship between the Greeks and the Venetians, which by treaty had seemed to restore much of the latter’s good standing, was probably damaged beyond repair. This background, unsurprisingly, led men such as Gunther of Pairis to look upon Dandolo’s actions as motivated by the prospect of commercial advantage.
Whatever the masses thought, and regardless of the discord that would inevitably follow, a core of the crusader elite was determined to accept Prince Alexius’s offer and to push ahead with the expedition to Constantinople. Gunther of Pairis astutely grasped the reality of the situation, recognising the cumulative effect of these different interests: ‘Through the union of all of these factors and, perhaps, of others, it happened that all unanimously found in favour of the young man and promised him their aid.’
13
Doge Dandolo expressed his support for the proposal; Boniface, Baldwin of Flanders, Louis of Blois and Hugh of Saint-Pol concurred and summoned the envoys to the doge’s quarters in Zara, where they swore to the agreement and signed and sealed charters confirming the covenant.
14
The crusade was headed for Constantinople.
The unswerving resolve of these men was plain. Baldwin, Louis and Hugh had been the driving force of the crusade since the tournament at Écry in November 1199. They had been bound together by the fateful agreement of April 1201 (with Venice), through which Dandolo and Boniface became tied in with them. For these crusaders, a sense of honour and obligation required them to continue the expedition at all costs, to try to bring succour to the Holy Land and to preserve their vow to assist the Christian cause. The allure of Prince Alexius’s wealth was such that his offer could not be resisted, but his position as a wrongfully deposed heir also struck a deep chord with the ruling families of Europe. A usurpation was an upset to the natural order of things and it was for this very reason that the prince’s envoys laid such emphasis on the matter. A number of the crusading bishops ruled that to help the prince would be ‘a righteous deed’, which doubtless helped to smooth over the concerns of some about the morality of their actions.
15
The leadership needed every morsel of justification because, outside the inner group of nobles, very few supported the decision to go to Constantinople. Once again, the unity so crucial to a successful crusade was being eroded. Villehardouin offers this candid comment: ‘I must tell you that only twelve persons in all took the oaths on behalf of the French; no more could be persuaded to come forward.’ This was a desperately small number from those available and was a blunt demonstration of the limited enthusiasm for this plan.
16
The tensions amongst the senior nobles themselves, and the strain of a part of the leadership trying to impose its will on a divided and disconcerted army, created enormous pressures in the crusader camp. The marshal noted: ‘I can assure you that the hearts of our people were not at peace, for one party was continually working to break up the army and the other to keep it together.’
17
In addition to these anxieties, there was a constant fear of attack by King Emico of Hungary, who was understandably angered at the loss of Zara.
The corrosive effects of the decision to assist Prince Alexius soon touched every part of the camp. Villehardouin wrote that many of the lower ranks took ship and, when one sank, 500 men were lost. Others tried to march north through Slovenia, but were attacked by locals and the survivors were compelled to return to Zara. The Bavarian noble, Werner of Boland, stole away on a merchant ship, much to the contempt of those who remained. Even more seriously, a contingent of several senior French knights, led by Reynald of Montmirail (a cousin of Count Louis of Blois, no less), begged leave to go on a mission to Syria, apparently to inform those in the Levant of what was happening and to visit the holy sites as pilgrims. These men swore on the Bible that they would remain in the Holy Land for no longer than two weeks and that they would then return to the main host. They duly departed, but in spite of their oaths, they did not reappear at the siege of Constantinople, although Reynald rejoined his colleagues after the capture of the Byzantine Empire and fought and died in its defence in April 1205.
18
Villehardouin summarised the position at Zara: ‘Thus, our forces dwindled seriously from day to day.’
19
In one sense these desertions had a positive effect on those who remained because they banded together even more closely - a kinship born of adversity. While the crusader force shrank, its resolve to continue grew ever stronger. According to Villehardouin, only divine favour allowed the remains of the army to stay firm in the face of its trials.
One ray of hope appeared to lie in the news that the Flemish fleet under John of Nesles had reached Marseille and, after wintering there, awaited orders as to where to meet the main force. The French nobles and the doge counted greatly on the manpower and logistical support that this contingent would provide. They ordered John to leave Marseille in late March 1202 and to rendezvous with the Venetian fleet at the port of Methoni on the westernmost finger of the Peloponnese peninsula. Evidently, however, John and his fellow-crusaders cared little for the plan to attack Constantinople and they sailed directly to Syria to join the growing number of men who preferred to fight in the Holy Land.
20
Without the immediate pressure of debt to the Venetians, the persuasive presence of Alexius’s envoys or the iron determination of the leadership, these Flemings plainly disapproved of the new direction of the crusade.
In parallel to the disturbing events at Zara was the ongoing mission to Rome. The envoys begged Innocent for absolution from his ban of excommunication and the removal of the crusaders’ spiritual rewards. The embassy argued that the men had no choice in the matter and that the fault lay with those who had not arrived in Venice. Those who did assemble and went on to fight at Zara had acted out of the need to keep the army together.
In February 1203 Innocent sent a letter back to the crusader force. The envoys seem to have done much to mollify him. He still expressed anger that ‘although you bore the Cross of Christ, you later turned your arms against Him. And you, who should have attacked the land of the Saracens, occupied Christian Zara.’ The pope noted the crusaders’ explanation that they were compelled to act out of necessity, although he said that this did not excuse their cruelty. Nevertheless, he acknowledged their wish to perform penance and told them (meaning particularly the Venetians) to return all the spoils gained at Zara. He ruled that the absolution granted by the bishops on the crusade was invalid and ordered Peter Capuano or his representative to perform this properly. Innocent also demanded oaths —in by now familiar terms - that required the crusaders to guarantee that in future they would ‘neither invade nor violate the lands of Christians in any manner, unless, perchance, they wickedly impede your journey or another just or necessary cause should, perhaps, arise, on account of which you would be empowered to act otherwise according to the guidance offered by the Apostolic See’.
21
This latter clause is intriguingly ambiguous; what constituted ‘just and necessary cause’? Although the requirement of papal approval was some attempt to guard against a self-interested interpretation of this, there was, perhaps, room for a generous understanding of the papal mandate to suit a variety of situations.
Innocent himself faced a difficult time as the city of Rome underwent one of its frequent periods of civil unrest. He was forced to flee to nearby Ferentino where he reflected on the progress of the crusade. The pope recognised the problems created by the limited size of the armies that had assembled at Venice. He recalled his original conception of the campaign as being led by the rulers of England (now King John) and France, and in letters sent to these men he expressed his frustration that their continuing conflict was making a major crusading expedition impossible. He linked the Anglo-French struggle directly to problems in the Levant, where the Muslims rejoiced in Christian discord because it allowed them to grow ever stronger. He also connected the enemy’s optimism to the crusaders’ diversion to Zara and hinted that they ‘have planned to try worse things’ - a possible reference to the proposed diversion to Constantinople. Once again, the pope’s mention of the content of these rumours (as they were at the time) shows his problems in exercising genuine influence over the expedition.
22
A little later the crusade leaders sent a letter to Innocent reporting that Cardinal Peter’s nuncio had visited them and absolved them of their sins, although the Venetians refused to repent and had been formally placed under a bull of anathema. The letter also pleaded with the pope to view leniently Boniface of Montferrat’s suppression of this bull, which was done to keep the fleet together and so help the cause of the Holy Land.
23