In fact the crusader
chevauchée
did not provoke the actual murder of Alexius, but probably led to a terminal dissatisfaction with his rule. Niketas Choniates related that on 25 January 1204, ‘like a boiling kettle, to blow off [a] steam of abuse against the emperors’, the mob took over the Hagia Sophia and compelled the senate, the assembly of bishops and the senior clergy to gather to elect a new ruler. They had had enough of the western-loving Alexius and, with Isaac in chronic physical decline and no longer a significant figure, they wanted an emperor of their own choosing. As a senior court official and renowned orator, Niketas was present at the meeting and described the crowd urging an attack on Alexius and demanding that a name be put forward to replace him. Niketas and his colleagues took a longer view, however. They recognised that such an action would simply push Alexius and the crusaders back together again and they feared that the westerners would use their military strength to defend their protege. The senate and the churchmen continued to stonewall in the hope that the energy of the crowd might dissipate, but they were to be disappointed. Niketas wept as he foresaw that disaster would follow. Name after name was put forward from the ranks of the Byzantine nobility, but no one was prepared to accept. Even senior administrators were suggested: ‘Thou hast raiment, be our ruler’, as Niketas cuttingly dismissed such a prospect. Finally, after three days of debate the senate and the mob settled upon Nicholas Kannavos, a hapless young noble, and, against his will, he was anointed emperor on 27 January.
3
Alexius was appalled at the emergence of a rival emperor. Now that the opposition had an overt figurehead, he feared a military coup and - as Niketas Choniates anticipated - he again looked to the crusaders for help. Regardless of the poor relations between the Greek masses and the crusaders, both the emperor and the westerners could still find common ground in their opposition to the vast, seething mob of Constantinople that was so bent on destroying them both. Alexius asked the crusaders to drive out Kannavos, in return for which he offered, according to a letter of Baldwin of Flanders written in May 1204, the Blachernae palace itself as a security until he fulfilled his other promises. The surrender of an imperial residence was a remarkable gesture and showed how desperate Alexius had become. In an attempt to conciliate another of his enemies he chose Murtzuphlus as his envoy, and the noble conveyed the proposition to the crusader camp. Although the vast majority of the westerners despised Alexius, they were aware that while he still needed them, he would provide food for their army. Furthermore, he was more likely to discharge the Byzantines’ moral and financial debts to the crusaders than any other emperor. For these reasons, along with the near-certainty that an aggressively anti-western regime would take over from him, he had to be given help.
On 27 January, Boniface of Montferrat went into the city to see Alexius and discuss the plan. According to Baldwin of Flanders, the emperor mocked the marquis and scorned to fulfil his own promises. This seems incredible, given that Alexius had been the one to initiate this proposal and the emperor must have realised that keeping his oaths was central to winning the crusaders’ goodwill. Baldwin was probably just sniping at Alexius’s character, and it is Niketas Choniates who offers a more realistic account of a relatively amenable meeting in which it was agreed that crusaders had to enter the imperial palace to expel Kannavos and the mob who had elected him.
4
This was the decision that really precipitated Alexius’s fall. The demands of the crusaders and the political pressures within Constantinople were so contradictory that eventually it was inevitable that the emperor would run out of alternatives and one or other of his conflicting tormentors would try to remove him. It was from the Byzantine court that this threat ultimately emerged. Many there had no wish to restore relations with the crusaders and, indeed, wanted to expel them. The election of Nicholas Kannavos was one manifestation of this, but it was Murtzuphlus - the man originally freed at the crusaders’ request and recently trusted as an envoy by Alexius - who now stepped forward as leader of the anti-western faction from his position high in the Byzantine hierarchy.
Both Niketas Choniates and Baldwin of Flanders recorded that it was Alexius’s offer to install the crusaders in the Blachernae palace that provoked Murtzuphlus to denounce the emperor and to call for his overthrow.
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Robert of Clari places Murtzuphlus in a more proactive role in which he offered to rid his people of the crusaders within a week if they made him emperor. The Greek hierarchy agreed to the idea and the conspirators stepped into action. Murtzuphlus had calculated that the presence of westerners inside the walls of Constantinople would bring the full imperial machinery behind him in a way that the popularly elected Nicholas Kannavos lacked. So Murtzuphlus acted quickly. First he secured the treasury by offering the eunuch in charge whichever titles the man wished. Then he called the Varangian Guard together and told them of Alexius’s plan to bring crusaders back into the city. He pointed out how unpopular this was with all the Greeks - surely the guards should support the wishes of the people. The logic was inescapable: Alexius had to be removed.
On the night of 27-8 January, as the young man slept in his chambers, Murtzuphlus and the palace guards crept into his room, surrounded his bed, snatched him away and hurled him into a dungeon. Niketas gives a detailed account of the betrayal, glossing Murtzuphlus’s treachery with one final act of duplicity. The writer describes Murtzuphlus rushing into the imperial bedchamber and telling Alexius of a terrible uprising. Members of the Angeloi family, the mob and, most seriously, the Varangian guard were said to be pounding the doors of the palace, set upon tearing the emperor limb from limb because of his close friendship with the crusaders. Half asleep, Alexius struggled to comprehend the extent of the danger. He turned for salvation to Murtzuphlus, the one man who still seemed loyal to him. His visitor threw a robe over the young man and together they slipped out of the chamber towards a pavilion in the palace complex, the emperor offering profuse thanks to his saviour. Perhaps this was the moment when Murtzuphlus revealed his true intentions; his lie had meant that Alexius had left the bedchamber quickly and without fuss. Now, in the palace grounds, he was at the mercy of his challenger. As the emperor reeled under the revelation of Murtzuphlus’s treachery, the guards bundled him down to a prison cell where his legs were cast into irons.
The pretender assumed the imperial insignia, donning the scarlet buskins (calf-length boots) that symbolised his office, and proclaimed himself ruler. Within hours he was crowned in the Hagia Sophia—the fourth emperor present in Constantinople and certainly the one with the strongest power base. (Murtzuphlus should really be known as Emperor Alexius V - his proper name was Alexius Ducas - but most contemporary authors use his nickname and we should be thankful that yet another ‘Alexius’ does not appear in the narrative.) A position at the pinnacle of political and secular life gains much of its aura of power from its exclusivity. There were many kingdoms in the Christian world, but only two imperial regimes: those of Germany and Byzantium. When more than one person claimed one of those titles it was devalued: for four men to assert a right to the same honour was absurd and showed the almost complete disintegration of the imperial dignity.
The quartet would not last long, however. Men from the new regime rushed to the apartments of Emperor Isaac and told him the dramatic news. Certain sources report that the old man was so overcome by fear for his own safety and that of his son that he became ill and very soon died. In real political terms Isaac had become such a feeble figure that he was no longer a credible ruler. There is some suggestion that he may already have been dead, but if this was not the case, it was undeniably convenient that he passed away so quickly. It is also possible that he received more direct assistance in his death. Robert of Clari wrote of strangulation, although this may have been just one of many rumours in the crusader camp.
The removal of Alexius and the emergence of Murtzuphlus polarised opinion in Constantinople. The palace officials and the Varangian Guard stood by the latest holder of the imperial title, while the masses continued to acclaim their own favourite, Nicholas Kannavos, a man whom Niketas Choniates described as gentle and intelligent and an experienced warrior. The tone of Niketas’s comments indicates that he felt Kannavos to be a superior man to Murtzuphlus, but soon the mood of the mob swung in favour of the latter: ‘Inasmuch as the worst elements prevail among the Constantinopolitans, Ducas [Murtzuphlusj grew stronger ... while Kannavos’s splendour grew dim like a waning moon.’
6
In spite of his positive qualities, Nicholas quickly slipped from grace: it seems that Murtzuphlus’s control over the key elements of the hierarchy gave him a political base that his rival could not match. The
Chronide of Novgorod
relates that Murtzuphlus tried unsuccessfully to win Nicholas over to his side by promising him a prominent role in his administration if he were to step down. Perhaps Nicholas did not trust the other imperial claimant, or else he hoped that his own popularity with the people was sufficient to preserve his position. Faced with this rejection, Murtzuphlus soon acted to displace Nicholas. He offered rewards and honours to those who would endorse his claim and in the first week of February, as the fickle citizenry of Constantinople began to sense where the real power lay, he ordered the Guard to arrest his rival. Nicholas had remained in the Hagia Sophia, symbolically the heart of his authority. Murtzuphlus’s troops forced their way into the building, and the masses, who had so recently forced the imperial title on Nicholas, dissipated; no one defended him and a second emperor was cast into prison. The
Devastatio Constantinopolitana
reports that Nicholas was later decapitated. He had paid a heavy price for being a pawn of the capricious mob and had ruled for less than a week.
Murtzuphlus immediately signalled his aggressive stance towards the westerners by issuing a threat that they should depart within seven days or risk death. This was, in part, posturing to satisfy his own people and was unlikely to intimidate the crusaders unduly. Their hostile reply accused Murtzuphlus of treacherously murdering his lord (such rumours had evidently begun to circulate already) and warned him that they would not abandon the siege until Alexius was avenged and the full payment due to them was delivered.
7
Murtzuphlus started his reign by reorganising the imperial administration : he swept away many of the officials who had worked under the Angeloi and rewarded his own supporters. One of those dismissed was Niketas Choniates himself, and this, together with the subsequent fall of Constantinople, does much to explain the writer’s largely hostile portrayal of the latest ruler of Byzantium. Niketas characterises Murtzuphlus as highly intelligent, but arrogant, deceitful and someone who worked in a way ‘that nothing that needed to be done escaped him and that he had in hand all issues’; in today’s language, he was, therefore, a control-freak.
8
Niketas was especially critical of Philokales, Murtzuphlus’s father-in-law and the man who took over his own post of
logothete
of the
sekreta,
essentially the head of the Byzantine civil service. The author scathingly observed that his replacement did not sit with men of high rank and, by pretending to be afflicted with gout, he thoroughly neglected his duties - a performance that evidently horrified such a devoted and status-conscious bureaucrat as Niketas.
The new regime also inflicted financial hardship on Niketas. Because the imperial treasury was completely empty, Murtzuphlus turned to the leading families and officials of the Angeloi dynasty to provide cash. These people lost huge sums of money, simply confiscated by the emperor and applied to the defence of the city.
The Greeks feared that the crusaders would mount a second attack on Constantinople in the spring and Murtzuphlus therefore ordered that the fortifications be considerably strengthened. The Greeks also assembled forty petraries, stone-throwing machines, and placed them in the areas where they believed the assault was most likely to come from.
While Niketas had an intense dislike of Murtzuphlus, he was sufficiently conscientious as an historian to acknowledge the man’s personal bravery. On several occasions, armed with a sword in one hand and a bronze mace in the other, the emperor sallied forth to confront his enemies. There is little doubt that Murtzuphlus led from the front and did much to reinvigorate the imperial army.
9
On one such occasion he captured three of the doge’s knights. Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, our only source for this episode, relates how these men met a particularly gruesome fate. By way of trying to intimidate the crusaders, Murtzuphlus ordered the Venetians to be suspended from iron hooks on the walls. Psychological tactics were an important part of medieval warfare, and the firing of decapitated heads over the battlements of an enemy city was a familiar practice. The First Crusaders even catapulted captured spies over the walls of Jerusalem in 1099.
10
Outside Constantinople comrades of the Venetians tried to win their freedom through offers of ransom and prayers for mercy, but to no avail. To demonstrate his abhorrence and contempt for the westerners, the emperor himself set them on fire—an act of shocking barbarity. The screams of the dying men and the stench of burning flesh pervaded the air and such a hideous spectacle must have stoked an implacable desire for revenge.
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