The Great Betrayal (11 page)

The Venetians and the Crusaders had chosen well in deciding to launch their attack upon this corner of the city. Blachernae was undoubtedly the weak point in the defences. It had never been fortified to the same extent as Constantinople proper, for H had never been expected that an enemy would be able to control the waters of the Horn. But the main land-walls, at which the Crusaders gazed in simple wonder, had been designed to repel the attacks of armies many times the size of theirs. The Theodosian wall, as it was called, ran from Blachernae in a huge unbroken line, all the way south to the sea of Marmora. Its construction was the triumph of Anthemius, Regent and Prefect during the reign of Theodosius II in the fifth century.

Although restored over the centuries, and improved in a few minor details, this main shield of the city was little changed from its initial conception. The main, or inner, wall was fifteen feet thick, and about forty feet high. From it projected no less than ninety-six battlemented towers, strong points which could provide a covering fire between one and another. The thickness of the main wall was more than sufficient to resist the siege engines of the thirteenth century, but it was not only upon this that the city relied. The defence of Constantinople was a triple one. Beyond the inner wall there ran a
peribolos,
or terrace, some forty feet in width, and beyond this rose yet another wall only slightly less formidable than the inner. This was about twenty-five feet high and also had a regular series of towers protecting it (spaced about one hundred yards apart). Beyond this again there was a further stretch of open ground, called the
Parateichion
and then a further outer breastwork wall, suitable for sheltering archers and crossbowmen. Beyond this again there lay an immense ditch, some fifty feet wide. Normally kept dry, the ditch could be flooded as and where required by a complicated system of dams. Hidden deep beneath the ditch and the three sequences of walls, there flowed the city’s water supply. It was carried in seven-inch-diameter pipes to feed the reservoirs, and the private and municipal buildings in the city itself. Constantinople’s security against siege was further reinforced by immense underground reservoirs within the city.

Protected by the splendour of these walls, the Byzantines had maintained their city and civilisation for eight centuries. Constructed of limestone blocks, interspaced with courses of brick, they were among the most astounding of Byzantine achievements. Even the walls of Rhodes and Malta, built centuries later by the Knights of St. John, could hardly compare with the strength and the complexity of these defences. Yet it was possibly because of a sense of security induced by these walls—a ‘Maginot mentality’—that the citizens of Constantinople had grown complacent. Walls are made by men, and in the final analysis it is only upon the strength and morale of the men who defend them that true security may be found. The walls of Constantinople required for their defence a large and well-disciplined army. This was something that they had lacked for many years.

Once it was clear that the Crusaders seriously intended to lay siege to the city, the Byzantines began to take action. Some of the aggressive spirit that they now began to show may be traced to the same Theodore Lascaris, who had promoted the earlier attack on the Crusaders. “There was not an hour either of the day or night when one of our divisions did not have to stand guard opposite Blachernae to preserve the siege-engines and ward off sorties made by the defenders. At least six or seven times a day the army had to be called to the defence. It was impossible to forage for provisions more than four bowshots from our camp. Hardly any food was left except flour and a little salted-down meat—and no fresh meat at all except when a horse was killed.”

The Crusaders had been short of provisions ever since leaving Corfu. Indeed, it was in order to victual the army that they had (technically at least) first ventured in Byzantine territory. Confronted with the ominous vista of the landward walls of the city, there were many who must have felt that they had undertaken more than they could perform. There was no sign of the Byzantines being willing to treat with them, and no sign that they wished to have ‘this Alexius’ made their emperor. Doge Dandolo was well aware that the only solution to their difficulties lay in a successful seaborne attack on the city. He was far too old and experienced in warfare to believe that the Crusaders could storm the Theodosian walls of Constantinople.

By July 17th the Doge was ready. His ships were equipped with their siege-engines and their drawbridges. He knew that it was upon the success or failure of his own Venetians that the whole campaign depended, and he had not been willing to hasten the matters unduly until his galley-masters had assured him that they were fully prepared. The Crusaders, meanwhile, had established themselves in a good base-camp, well protected by stakes and palisade from Byzantine cavalry attacks. The shortage of food in the army produced its automatic deadline. The attacks of the Byzantines grew increasingly desperate as they realised that the real threat against their defences was yet to come.

Villehardouin tells how “Hardly a day passed without a skirmish—so many that I cannot remember them all…” For ten days the army had endured these attacks, growing ever shorter of food, and ever more concerned about its position. It is evidence of the dogged determination of men who joined Crusading armies that they did not despair in front of those seemingly impregnable walls. No fanatical impulse of faith had driven them to their encamped position beneath Blachernae. No religious impulse made them feel that they were preparing to fight and die in the spirit of Jesus Christ against an infidel horde. The hair-splitting finesses of dogma that may have led their priests to believe that Greek Christians were heretics were quite beyond the simple soldier. Nothing held this army together but the prospect of loot—and the fact that from this remote corner of Europe there could be no turning back. The Doge of Venice and his fellow-conspirators had shown a shrewd insight into the nature of the fighting man.

On Thursday morning, July 17th, 1203, the great attack took place. “The Venetians were already on their way across the Golden Horn, their scaling ladders prepared for the assault, and the army was drawn up for battle. Three divisions were left on guard at the camp, while the remaining four marched to attack the city.” The engagement began with an assault on a barbican close to the sea. This was most probably one of the towers guarding the seaward gate of Blachernae. It was good tactics to concentrate on this point, since the Venetian galleys were able to bring their attack to bear on the adjacent walls. Catapults launched their bolts from both ships and land at the threatened position. Meanwhile French troops ran up two ladders against the barbican and prepared to scale it.

But the barbican defences, as Nicetas tells us, were manned by the Emperor’s crack troops, “the Pisans and the Warings”. Villehardouin mentions only the latter, calling them “Englishmen and Danes”, and gives them great credit for the gallantry of their defence. Although two knights and two sergeants, followed by fifteen men-at-arms, managed to scale the barbican they were swiftly repelled, “in a hand-to-hand battle of swords against battle-axes.” This is a further confirmation that it was indeed the Waring guard which held this threatened corner of the city. It was only the Warings among Byzantium’s international army who carried the battle-axe.

The Warings’ counter-attack routed the French, who were driven off the barbican, two of their men being taken prisoner. “…They were taken before the Emperor Alexius who was delighted at this proof of his men’s prowess. Such was the outcome of the attack by land, and the barons were greatly disheartened, for many of the French had been wounded or left with broken limbs.” But if the efforts of the army were in vain, the ships of Venice under the leadership of the Doge were having a remarkable success. Extended in a long line they came on slowly to the sweep of their great oars, while the mangonels on their foredecks kept up a steady fire on the walls. Meanwhile the bowmen and crossbowmen stood ready and, as soon as they were within range, released their showers of iron quarrels and arrows at the defenders. As the ladders in the bows of the assault-craft neared the walls, the men gathered in the tunnellike bridges were able to fire directly at their opponents. Some even came so close to the walls that the men in the front rank were exchanging sword-thrusts with the defenders. “The noise was so great that the sea and the land seemed to shake…”

Curiously enough, no mention is made of the use of Greek Fire, that sovereign remedy upon which the fate of the city had so often depended. Possibly this was because, on the walls facing the Golden Horn, there were few outlets for Greek Fire such as existed on the seaward walls of the Marmora. The Doge’s wisdom in having the assault bridges and fore-parts of the ships covered with hides may possibly have prevented any serious damage arising from its use. But there can be no doubt that, even if there were no major flame-throwers incorporated in this part of the city walls, there will have been hand-held trumps in use among the defenders.

The trump was a hollow tube of metal or wood, through which a hand-bellows pumped a combustible mixture of resin and sulphur. Linseed oil was among the other ingredients used to produce the inflammable liquid. When fire was applied to the mouth of the trump, “it continues a long time snorting and belching vivid, furious flames that shoot out for several yards”. A Russian fleet which had once attacked the Marmora walls had been routed by flame-throwers. On a previous occasion when a Crusading army had been looting Byzantine islands on their way to the Holy Land, the Pisan fleet that carried them had been put to flight by the Byzantine admiral, who had ordered his ships to be equipped with flame-throwers. “On the prow of each ship he had a head of a lion or other land animal fixed, made in brass or iron with the mouth open, and gilded over so that the mere aspect was terrifying. And the fire which was to be directed against the enemy through tubes he made to pass through the mouths of the beasts, so that it seemed as if the lions and other monsters were vomiting fire…” At the siege of Durazzo in 1107, when the Byzantines had been in conflict with the Normans, they had run a counter-mine against a tunnel that the Normans were digging beneath the city. Bursting in on the Norman sappers, they had routed them by turning flamethrowers upon them.

But these successes lay in the past. There were no Byzantine ships now to challenge the Venetians upon the waters of the Horn, while the omission of any mention of Greek fire during this action suggests that it was not used, or ineffective. But even though the Venetians managed to get their ships right up to the walls, they were unwilling to beach them on the strip of foreshore beneath the battlements. It was at this moment that the Doge showed that he still retained the spirit which had made him a great leader. “Old and blind though he was, he stood in the prow of his galley, while above him waved the banner of St. Mark. He cried out to his men to drive on for the shore unless they wished to incur his utmost displeasure. Then, as the galley’s bows grounded, he and they leapt out and planted the banner of St. Mark on the shore. As soon as the other Venetians saw that the Doge’s galley was the first to touch down, they all rushed forward and beached their ships…”

The Doge’s action turned the day. The horrified defenders of Constantinople saw something that they had never believed could happen—a hostile fleet beaching itself under their walls and putting its troops ashore with impunity. (If these walls had indeed been defended by flame-throwers it is inconceivable that they would not have been used at this moment.) The Venetians stormed ashore while, from the ladder-bridges suspended swaying over their heads, other troops dashed in at the level of the walls and jumped on to the parapets.

A general attack was now concentrated on a narrow section of the wall. Scaling ladders were run up against it by the men on the foreshore, while others began to undermine the wall with battering-rams. The demoralised defenders were driven off the parapets, and turned and fled into the city. Within an hour twenty-five of the towers guarding the sea-walls had fallen into Venetian hands. The Doge immediately sent a message to the barons that he had broken into Constantinople, that he had taken the towers, and that nothing could dislodge his men. It was a moment of signal triumph for Dandolo, the fruit of his long planning and of his determination to have his revenge on Constantinople. The barons, disheartened though they were by their own reverses, were overjoyed at the news of the Venetian success. As it turned out, the jubilation of the attackers was premature.

Although the defenders of the sea-wall had broken and fled before the weight of the Venetian onslaught, it was not long before reinforcements began to come up to resist them. “Seeing his foes within the city, the Emperor Alexius began to send his troops against them in ever-increasing numbers. The Venetians were unable to withstand the weight of these attacks and were forced to withdraw. In the process they set fire to the buildings that lay between them and the Greeks…” On the inner side of Blachernae, where the houses of workmen and artisans huddled beneath the shelter of the wall, the wooden buildings began to crackle and burst into flame as the Venetians hurled down fire-brands among them. The wind was from the northeast, drawing gently over the Horn, so that the smoke and flames were carried away from the men on the wall, into Blachernae and into the city itself.

There still seemed every likelihood that the Venetians would be able to hold their section of the captured wall, when a message reached the Doge that the Emperor Alexius, with the whole of the imperial army at his back, had come out of the landward gates and was preparing to attack the Crusaders. Robert de Clari described how “The wives and the other ladies of the court came out upon the ramparts to watch the imperial army take up its position…” In the face of so great a threat to the Crusaders’ camp, and to their own comparatively small forces, there was nothing that the Doge could do but withdraw his men. It was a bitter moment for Dandolo—his Venetians had not only won a foothold in Constantinople but were holding an important circuit of the seaward walls. But the fate of the whole expedition rested upon a mutual confidence between the Venetian navy and the Crusading army. The Doge knew that he and his men could never capture—let alone hold—Constantinople without the support of the Crusaders. His own galley was the first to leave the shore in front of the walls. He again was the first man to land at the head of the Golden Horn, and to lead his troops to the assistance of the army.