The Great Betrayal (10 page)

Now, as they turned in flight, the Byzantines (whose own cavalry had once dominated the battle-fields of Asia Minor and eastern Europe), heard behind them the war-cries of mounted men—and the sound of the war-horse, which “goeth on to meet the armed men. He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted; neither turneth he his back from the sword. The quiver rattleth against him, the glittering spear and the shield. He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage; neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet. He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.”

The Greeks had gravely miscalculated their opponents and now, in their haste to escape, they committed the gravest error of all. They forgot, or were unable, to shut the gate of the tower behind them. As the soldiers who had been ferried over from Constantinople rushed to regain their transports, “many of them being drowned in the process”, the troops from the tower were overtaken by the Crusaders. Heavy fighting took place around the entrance, but it was too late by now to check the onward rush of the Crusaders. They stormed Galata tower, and killed or captured all the Byzantine defenders. It was only a matter of minutes for the Venetians—those men trained to the ways of the sea and its attendant crafts like anchors and cables—to dismantle the windlass and unshackle the great cable. With a rattling sigh, like the last gasp of a dying man, the great iron chain slid into the sea and sagged to the bottom of the Golden Horn. The way was now open for the ships of Venice.

There was no resistance from the few vessels of the Byzantine navy moored in the harbour. The fleet which had once patrolled the Mediterranean from the strait of Gibraltar to the island of Cyprus and the shores of the Levant was reduced to a few out-of-commision, old or decrepit galleys. Even while the tide of battle was flowing around Galata tower, the galleys of Venice were backing and filling off the Horn, their iron beaks poised over the chain that forbade them entrance. When the cheers from ashore told them the outcome of the battle, they waited to see the barrier before them slip out of sight. The moment that the barnacled-bespattered links dropped into the water, the galley captains gave the order. The slaves bent over the looms of the oars and, with a soft sigh of bow-waves, the spearhead of the Venetian fleet sped into the tranquil harbour—the blue waters of the Golden Horn that had helped to make Constantinople the richest city in Christendom. “And so they took the galleys of the Greeks and the other vessels that were in the harbour.” By the morning of the following day the whole of the Venetian fleet—transports, galleys, merchantmen and store-ships—was safely at anchor inside the Golden Horn.

From the long line of the northern walls—weakest point in the circuit of Constantinople—the inheritors of the Byzantine Empire watched the capture of Galata tower, and the collapse of the great chain. Never before had an enemy of Constantinople penetrated into the Horn itself. The city had not been designed to withstand the attack of a maritime power which could control these waters. It had always been understood that the Byzantine fleet would prevent any landings in the Galata area, let alone a breakthrough beyond the chain barrier. The result was that the city walls fronting the Horn were comparatively weak. Unlike the great landward walls to the west, designed in their triple row to withstand any attack from Bulgar, Slav, Turk or Russian—unlike the seaward walls designed to dominate any seaborne landings—the northern walls of the city were more of a secondary defence.

Entrenched behind their centuries of power and prowess, the citizens of Constantinople had forgotten that time erodes, and that all things change. They were Greeks—even though, as inheritors of the Roman Empire, they called themselves ‘Romans’. But perhaps they had never known the words of a Greek philosopher who had been dead many centuries before ever the religion of Christ came out of the land of Palestine: “Everything flows.” That had been the philosophical principle of Heraclitus, the ‘Dark Philosopher’ as he was called on account of his lonely life, the profundity of his philosophy, and his contempt for humanity. “In nature the sole actuality is change.” This was the bitter truth that the Greeks of the Christian Faith would soon be forced to learn.

6

THE FIRST ASSAULT

After the capture of the tower and the occupation of the harbour by their fleet, it would have been natural for the barons to send envoys to the Emperor, asking him if he were now prepared to treat with them. The last communication that had taken place between the Doge, the barons and the Emperor Alexius III had been Conon de Béthune’s speech to the Lombard Nicholas Roux. The gist of this had been that the Crusaders intended to place young Alexius on the throne, and that they would endeavour to secure the present emperor’s safety and subsequent prosperity, if he would abdicate. Naturally enough Alexius III had ignored their message. But if the Crusaders had had any wish to avoid a siege, their recent victory offered a good opportunity to see whether their terms were at all acceptable. Nothing was done. None of the historians of these events mentions any further attempts at negotiations.

The Venetian soldiers and sailors, and the young knights and Crusaders, were no doubt so elated at the success of their landing and of their first encounter with the enemy that they never stopped to wonder what was their objective. They had been seized by the sharp joy of warfare and by an awareness that they had the upper hand. There was no reason, then, for them to call a halt or consider why the Byzantine was an enemy at all. The prospect of easy loot lured them on. Doge Dandolo, Boniface of Montferrat and the other accomplices in the plot had no longer any reason to fear that their army would desert or fail them.

If Alexius had been anything more than a tool, now surely would have been the moment for him to insist that a delegation be sent to his uncle offering him terms. The Emperor had now seen the superior spirit of this Crusading army and must have realised how little he could count on his own troops. He might well have agreed to abdicate. Alexius could then have entered Constantinople in triumph, backed by Crusading arms, delivered his father from the imperial dungeons, and taken over the throne. It can have been no wish of his that the city should be damaged in a siege, let alone sacked and looted. It was clearly in his interests to inherit an intact property. If he did nothing, it was because he could do nothing. Against the worldly wisdom and experience of advisers like the Doge, what had youthful inexperience to offer? As a Greek of the Orthodox Faith, he was dependent upon these Roman Christians for his acquisition of the scarlet buskins, the imperial mantle and the golden crown of the most ancient throne in Europe. It was only by their swords, courage and cunning that he had any chance of calling himself “Heir of the universal Roman Empire and Viceregent of God Himself”.

There could be no doubt in the minds of the leaders as to what their next move should be. After so swift and sudden a success, no military man could fail to see that every advantage must be taken of the situation. While the Emperor Alexius, his court, his generals, his troops and people, were still overcome by the shock of these early reverses, the Crusaders should spring to the attack. Deliberation would be fatal, and to strike again swiftly was the obvious key to victory. The only question about which there could be any doubt was how best to achieve this. The Venetians, as was natural to a sea-power, were the first to realise the importance of their supremacy inside the Golden Horn. They argued for an immediate seaborne attack on the northern walls of the city. The French and the other Crusaders protested, for their part, that they were not sailors, and that they would be wasting their special abilities by coming as marine troops aboard the galleys. It was clear that the best solution was “for the French to besiege the city by land, while the Venetians attacked by sea”. Doge Dandolo agreed to the apparent wisdom of this plan, and ordered the Venetians to start preparing siege machinery.

The next four days were spent by the army and navy in making ready for the assault on Constantinople. The sailors were busy stitching together hides to make tents over the foreparts of their vessels—so that the anticipated deluge of Greek fire from the walls of the city would fall upon well-wetted hides, instead of on sun-dried wooden decks. At the same time, “The Doge of Venice gave orders for some extraordinary and ingenious devices to be made…”

These were long gangways made out of the lateen sail-yards of the galleys, many of which were about 180 feet long. Two of these lateen yards were used as the side-supporters to construct a bridge, while planks of wood were nailed or lashed between them to form the bridge-surface itself. Heavy awnings of sailcloth were erected on poles above these bridges to give protection to the troops who would use them.

These landing bridges were placed aboard the large merchant ships and were suspended, rather like movable gangplanks, from their masts by means of rope tackles. They were further secured by other cables to the ships’ sides and bulwarks, and were so designed that they projected from the bows of the ships about 120 feet, raised slightly at an angle so that the ends of the bridges would be level with the top of the city walls. The construction of these bridges in so short a time was a remarkable feat of engineering. But this was not the first time that the Venetians had assaulted walled cities from the sea, and the ease and speed with which they were assembled suggests that plans for their use had been evolved long before the arrival of the ships at Constantinople. “They were so well constructed and so screened,” according to de Clari, “that the soldiers who had to use them were never troubled by arrows or missiles from above…and they were so wide that three armoured knights could march up them abreast.”

Mangonels (rock-hurling catapults) were assembled in the bows of other transports, while catapults and wooden towers for attacking the walls were dragged round to the head of the harbour for use by the army. The Venetians would attack the walls of the city facing the Horn, while the Crusaders would concentrate the weight of their thrust against the palace of Blachernae. Near where the land walls met the Golden Horn, at the far end of this great harbour and at the north-west corner of the city, stood the immense complex of buildings called Blachernae, Palace of the Emperors.

Blachernae had originally been a suburb of Constantinople, standing outside the walls of the city. But from the twelfth century onward, the emperors had tended to move their residence here, preferring the situation to the Sacred Palace in the city near Santa Sophia. Blachernae was free from the noise and smoke of the capital, and gave the emperors and their court easy access to the hunting-grounds in the nearby country. Rising tier upon tier up the slopes of a small hill, the palace was a self-contained city—resembling in this the Kremlin of the Muscovite Tsars (itself of Byzantine derivation)—for it was a palace, a fortress, a religious centre and a seat of industry all in one. Goldsmiths and silk-weavers, craftsmen in wood and ivory, illuminators of manuscripts and mosaic-workers formed a steady procession through its gates. Although the main centre of their activities was in the Sacred Palace, the growth of Blachernae had focused a new interest on this far corner of Constantinople, where the small river of Barmyssa flowed out into the Golden Horn. From the top of the hill there was a wonderful view over the harbour, and over the city. The Crusader Odon de Deuil remarked of it that “it gives its inhabitants a threefold pleasure, for it looks over sea, meadow and city”.

In the seventh century a wall had been built around Blachernae, and fifty years before this present attack the Emperor Manuel I had further strengthened the whole quarter. At the head of the Horn, just where the river flowed into the sea, a stone bridge led across from the northern side to Blachernae. It was at this point that the main weight of the attack was to fall—the Venetians sweeping in by sea against the walls, while the army fell on the Blachernae area by land. All the ships and troops were accordingly moved up to this far corner of the Horn, so that their blow could be coordinated. As soon as they saw the intention of the invaders, the Byzantines broke down the bridge over the Barmyssa, closed the gate of Blachernae and manned their defences. On July 11th, five days after their capture of Galata tower, the Crusading army marched up in formal array and prepared to lay siege to Blachernae.

The first necessity was to repair the bridge so that the mounted knights might cross without difficulty, and the siege-engines be brought up to the walls. This was no more than a day and a night’s work. Early on the following morning the troops crossed the river and drew up within range of the city. During their crossing they had neither been attacked nor even harrassed by the Byzantines.
Quern Deus vult perdere, dementat prius
—it was almost incredible that the opportunity of attacking an enemy at such a moment should have been neglected. Perhaps the Greeks were confident in the strength of their city walls and felt that no further effort was necessary. Perhaps they relied upon divine sources for their protection. In the church of St. Peter and St. Mark at Blachernae there was the incorruptible, sweet-smelling robe of Our Lady (removed from Capernaum in Palestine in the fifth century), together with Her wonderworking icon. Every Friday, as the erudite Princess Anna Comnena has described in her memoirs of the court, the veil in front of this icon parted miraculously, to reveal the presence of the Mother of God to the assembled faithful.

The army set up camp within catapult range of the Blachernae walls, choosing as their base a fortified abbey on a slight mound, called ‘The Castle of Bohemond’ after a Crusader who had earlier passed this way. From this position, where they settled down to prepare for the siege and to repel any attacks that the defenders might make, the troops had a magnificent view of the awe-inspiring stretch of the city walls as they ran southward, to fade away into the folds of land several miles away. “It was a sight to fill the heart both with exultation and apprehension. So great was the extent of the land-walls that the most our army could manage was to besiege but one of all the many gates…”