The usurper’s reluctance to give ground was communicated to the doge’s land escort, and the crusader knights suddenly charged at the emperor to try to capture him—not in itself an act of temperate high diplomacy. Murtzuphlus managed to wheel his horse around and escape back into the city, although a number of his companions were less fortunate and fell prisoner.
The situation had, therefore, reached an impasse. Mistrust and mutual antipathy brought war ever closer. Niketas assessed the relationship between the Greeks and the crusaders thus: ‘Their inordinate hatred for us and our excessive disagreement with them allowed for no humane feeling between us.’
21
The breakdown of this attempt to find a peaceful solution to the struggle meant a slow, but inevitable, descent into a new and horrifying vortex of violence. The crusaders’ continued insistence on the reinstatement of Alexius illuminated Murtzuphlus’s most telling source of vulnerability Even in prison, Alexius still posed a potential threat to his rival emperor. In these circumstances the young man had to be eliminated: three times he was offered poison, three times he refused. Perhaps an innate sense of self-preservation prevented him from taking the hemlock, or perhaps he nursed a vain hope that his supporters might persuade the crusaders to rescue him. Nothing of the sort happened and, in the end, Alexius was slain. Murtzuphlus himself was said to have gone on 8 February to the dark prison cell in which Alexius lay and to have squeezed the life out of his rival, either with a cord or with his own bare hands.
22
Baldwin of Flanders’s letter adds the gruesome details that, as the emperor was expiring, Murtzuphlus took an iron hook and ripped open the sides and ribcage of the dying man. This particularly colourful version of events may have been a rumour circulating in the crusader army—perhaps in an attempt to further blacken the name of the usurping emperor (or Judas, as Baldwin called him).
23
Thus ended a brief but complex life. Alexius IV had been the catalyst for the most seismic changes in the Byzantine political system for centuries, but the forces that he had unleashed were impossible to control and now he had forfeited his life against his imperial ambitions.
Alexius’s death had to be explained to the people at large. Murtzuphlus spread word that the emperor had succumbed to an accident, and to try to bolster this impression he organised a state funeral in accordance with Alexius’s proper standing. Murtzuphlus performed splendidly at this event, as he mourned and showed the sorrow of a man regretting the passing of his former leader. It was, of course, all an act and once the ceremony was over he could get on with the business of planning how to deal with the crusaders.
To some the news of Alexius’s death was an immediate cause of suspicion, and Robert of Clari reported that a letter attached to an arrow was fired into the crusader camp informing them that it was murder. Some of the nobles professed indifference to Alexius’s fate because he no longer wanted to keep faith with them; others, more sympathetically, expressed regret that he had died in such a fashion. For Murtzuphlus, the price of killing his most important rival was to make himself even more detested by the westerners and provide an irrefutable justification for his removal.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘Break in! Rout menaces; crush cowards; press on more bravely!’
The Conquest of Constantinople, April 1204
T
HE MURDER OF Alexius marked an irrevocable break between the Byzantines and the crusaders. Despite the problems between the young emperor and the westerners, while Alexius remained alive there was always a possibility that his need for support and his moral and contractual obligations towards the crusaders might prevent open war. The two sides had teetered on the brink of conflict since November 1203. Episodes such as the attack of the fire-ships constituted short and savage escalations of violence, but they had been followed by efforts to make peace. Now there was no further room for manoeuvre: Murtzuphlus was known to have killed the emperor and he refused to fulfil his victim’s promises to the crusaders. Both sides realised that war was a certainty and they began to prepare for battle.
The crusaders’ position had become desperate. They had tied themselves ineluctably to Alexius and his death left them completely exposed, thousands of miles from home and camped outside a hostile city. His failure to deliver the anticipated financial backing meant that the Venetians remained substantially underpaid for continuing to provide the fleet, and the crusaders themselves lacked the money to mount an effective campaign in the Holy Land. More pressing still was the shortage of food. Anonymous of Soissons wrote: ‘Perceiving that they were neither able to enter the sea without danger of immediate death nor delay longer on land because of their impending exhaustion of food and supplies, our men reached a decision.’
1
A series of grim choices confronted the leaders. None of the alternatives open to them offered an easy way forward. Even if they did manage to scavenge enough food to start out for home, they would face enormous criticism for failing to help the Holy Land, particularly after their protestations justifying the diversion to Constantinople in the first instance. For men so steeped in notions of honour such a retreat would be intolerable. On the other hand, the often antagonistic relationship between Byzantium and the West, coupled with the treachery of Murtzuphlus and their hopeless situation on the shores of the Bosphorus, meant that the crusaders could more readily construct a case to explain an attack on the Greeks.
Through Lent 1204 the citizens of Constantinople and the western armies made ready to fight. Both sides looked to learn from their experiences in 1203 and sought to capitalise on any perceived advantages of their own and to exploit particular weaknesses of their enemy. The westerners’ greatest success had come through the Venetian troops scaling the walls on the Golden Horn. Once again, therefore, they chose to concentrate their efforts on that section of the city.
The Venetians prepared their petraries and mangonels; frames were checked, ropes readied and hundreds of missiles gathered and stored. Many of these machines were placed on board the ships where they would provide covering fire for the intrepid men perched on the great flying bridges, once again hoisted high upon the masts. The engineering on the Venetian ships was almost identical to that described by Hugh of Saint-Pol and Robert of Clari in July 1203, although this time the Venetians hung grapevines over and across the protective boards to absorb the impact of missiles and limit the damage to the men and the ships.
2
They also covered the vessels with vinegar-soaked hides in an attempt to lessen the effect of incendiary devices.
The French soldiers readied their own missile-firing engines and organised mining equipment. Back in July 1203 they had achieved little against the high walls at the north-west of the city. Now they planned to work more closely with the Venetians and to devote their attention to the section of the Blachernae palace that lay in front of a narrow strip of land looking onto the Golden Horn. The French believed strongly in the idea of mining under, and battering through, the walls and they made machines known as ‘cats’, ‘carts’ and ‘sows’ to wheel up to the battlements and protect those working underneath.
3
These squat constructions consisted of a shelter covered in hides and doused in vinegar. Under this canopy was slung a metal-tipped log that swung backwards and forwards in order to break into the city. The mobile shelter also provided cover for miners trying to hack through the walls with pickaxes and shovels.
The Greeks anticipated that the crusaders’ attack was most likely to come from along the Golden Horn. Here were the weakest sections of the wall because they were built primarily to line the harbour rather than as fortifications
per se.
In theory the chain across the Golden Horn should have prevented enemies from gaining access to the inlet and to this part of the defences. In other words, the designers of Constantinople’s walls had not foreseen the present situation. Now, in order to combat the Venetians’ mast-top ladders, the Byzantines had topped their fortifications with a nightmarish confection of wooden towers. Huge beams were used to form structures that raised the height of the walls between the stone towers and also sat on top of the existing turrets. As these strange, ramshackle constructions took shape, the profile of the walls must have changed dramatically. Normally the towers, gates and battlements had a regular, regimented outline, broken up only by the demands of topography or the intrusion of occasional modifications. Several sources attest to the fact that these creations were up to six or seven storeys high.
4
Like the Venetian ships, they too were covered in hides soaked in vinegar to protect them from burning and to reduce the impact of the crusaders’ bombardment. The fortifications of Constantinople had assumed a ponderous top-heavy appearance because these vast constructions projected out from the stonework beneath them. This was deliberate because anyone working at the foot of the walls would have to contend with a constant threat from above. The overhang allowed the wooden towers to have openings in their underside to enable defenders to deposit stones, hot oil or tar onto the heads or machines of the attackers below. As well as fortifying the walls on the Golden Horn, Murtzuphlus did not neglect the landward side of Constantinople and ordered all the gates there to be bricked up for extra security.
The two sides could see and hear each other organising for war. On both shores of the Golden Horn the pounding of hammers rang out day and night as carpenters and engineers sought to assemble the war machines they hoped would carry them to victory.
As the crusaders made the practical preparations to enter Constantinople, they also turned their attention to the division of spoils in the event of successfully capturing the city. Anticipatory agreements of this sort were standard practice in medieval warfare because they helped to prevent bitter arguments in the often-confused aftermath of a siege. Many victorious campaigns had degenerated into vicious and divisive squabbles as to who had rights to the booty gained when a city fell. In 1153, for example, at Ascalon, the Knights Templar had attempted to prevent other crusader knights from entering a breach in the walls as a way of trying to stop anyone else taking plunder.
5
Their selfishness was punished when their men became isolated and were killed. Given the protracted campaign of 1203—4, and the contrast between the poverty of the crusaders and the riches known to be inside Constantinople, it was even more essential to make some binding arrangements to constrain the lesser soldiers. An uncontrolled looting session might open a besieging army to a counter-attack, or could stir even greater resentment from a soon-to-be-subject population towards their new rulers.
Plunder was not the only issue under discussion, because the possible seizure of Constantinople presented the French and the Venetians with a larger and, in medieval terms, unprecedented issue. They were not, of course, just conquering a city or a castle, but stood to gain control over an entire empire. They would be required to choose a new emperor and to raise one of their number to an unsurpassed level of power. As an independent force, free from the control of, for example, the king of France, there was no question of taking the land on behalf of another. By the laws of conquest, Constantinople was theirs and its new ruler would come from within the ranks of the crusaders. The senior leadership such as Dandolo, Baldwin of Flanders and Boniface of Montferrat were certainly amongst the most influential men in Europe, but none was a crowned monarch, let alone one with the history and standing of the Byzantine emperor.
In March 1204 Dandolo, Boniface, Baldwin, Louis of Blois and Hugh of Saint-Pol drew up a formal covenant ‘to secure unity and lasting concord between us’. The full text of the arrangement still survives and Villehardouin and Robert of Clari provide an abbreviated summary of the document, known to historians as ‘The March Pact’.
6
Together the crusaders pledged themselves to conquer the city and if, through divine assistance, they succeeded, all the booty was to be collected together in one place and then shared out equitably. Robert of Clari defined loot as gold, silver and new cloth to the value of five sous or more, recognising that the smallest of items were not worth worrying about. Food and tools were formally excluded from this part of the contract.
7
The largest sum of money remaining from Alexius’s agreements was that owed to the Venetians. Some of this dated from the Treaty of Zara and some from the one-year extension of the Treaty of Venice—that is, payment for the upkeep of the fleet from March 1203 to March 1204. To settle this debt required the Venetians to take three-quarters of all the spoils of conquest against one-quarter for the crusaders until the sum of money required (200,000 silver marks) was covered. Once this amount was reached, all booty beyond that figure would be divided equally between the Venetians and the crusaders. The only goods excluded from these regulations were foodstuffs, which, logically, were fairly split between everyone in order to sustain the campaign.
The covenant then addressed the future of Constantinople itself. In the event of gaining full control of the city, six Frenchmen and six Venetians would be selected to choose the man whom they, having sworn true faith on the Bible, felt would make the most suitable ruler. This parity between French and Venetian electors reflected the shared labour between the two forces outside the city. The person elected emperor was to receive one-quarter of the conquered lands and would be given both the Blachernae and the Bucoleon palaces. The group who did not have their representative elected as emperor was entitled to choose one of their members to become patriarch and to hold the Hagia Sophia. Thus, in the case of a French emperor, there would be a Venetian patriarch; with a Venetian emperor there would be a French (or conceivably German or northern Italian) patriarch.