The Great Betrayal (14 page)

On July 19th, father and son were reunited. The gates of the city were opened wide in peace, and it might have seemed that once again in the long history of the Empire all would end well. The lights shone out from the palace of Blachernae, there was feasting and rejoicing both in the court and in the camp of the Crusaders.

Beneath this surface cheerfulness there lay an ocean of despair. Almost everything that Alexius had so glibly promised could not be fulfilled. The treasury was depleted by his uncle Alexius III (not only in his flight but in his years of misrule). The whole Empire indeed had been drained dry by a succession of indifferent emperors—not least the blinded Isaac—as well as by the steady decline in Byzantine fortunes ever since the battle of Manzikert in 1071, when the Turks had begun to establish their dominion over Asia Minor. One of the sharper rocks upon which everything was to founder was the promise of Alexius, now ratified by his father, that the Greek Church would accept the jurisdiction of Rome.

The whole essence of the Byzantine Empire and the God-guarded city of Constantinople was a spiritual one. It was here that Constantine the Great had established the ‘New Rome’ when the old Rome had ceased to be the heart of the Roman Empire. In the eyes of its inhabitants the city was the true home of the Christian faith, and indeed its Asia Minor territories—so many of them now lost to the Seljuk Turks—had been the first Christianised areas in the world. The great Emperor Justinian had defined the position of Church and state in his
Laws
: “Two gifts are bestowed by God upon men: the priesthood and the imperial authority. The former is concerned with divine matters, the latter with human. Both have their same origin and both adorn human life. Nothing is of more importance to the Emperor than that he should support the priesthood, so that the priests in their turn may pray God to aid the Emperor.”

Church and state were interwoven in Byzantine society. It was a theocratic world, in which the ruler was priest as well as king. The barbarian invasions which had isolated Rome in the seventh century a.d. had left the mainstream of Christian theology in the hands of the eastern empire. Rome had developed quite separately since that time, had evolved among other things the conception of Papal supremacy. The Greek Church had always been more inclined towards mysticism than the Roman. Christianity was an eastern religion, and it is hardly surprising that the Byzantines felt themselves to be more in accord with the traditions of the early fathers of the Church than western Europeans. For centuries now they had defended the Faith against all pagan invaders (even at a time when Rome itself was occupied by them). To be told that they must now submit themselves to the overlordship of Rome, and to an acceptance of various points of dogma with which they had long disagreed, was to ask the impossible.

In view of the difficulties that lay in the way of fulfilling their promises to the Crusaders and the Venetians, it is not surprising that Isaac and his son Alexius should have wanted as long a respite as possible. They needed to think things over and to decide how best to meet (or avoid) their obligations. One of the first requests they made to the barons was that the army should withdraw from the area of the city and return to the northern side of the Golden Horn. Isaac was careful to explain that he was afraid of trouble breaking out between his own citizens and the troops. The Crusaders and Venetians agreed, and “pitched their camp on the far side of the harbour, where they lived in peace and plenty…”.

The real problem that troubled the inner circle of the Crusaders was that they had suddenly found themselves faced with the apparition of the blinded Emperor. Even though Isaac had now agreed to all their demands, they felt uneasy unless their chosen instrument was formally made emperor. In the course of ten days’ constant wrangling and argument, they and the Byzantines managed to come to a most unusual agreement—Alexius and his father should be jointly crowned. In fact, the nobles and courtiers of Constantinople had almost as little right in insisting upon Isaac being made emperor as the Crusaders had in proposing the claim of his son. If the idea of a regular dynastic succession was foreign in principle to Constantinople, it was also an accepted fact that a blind or otherwise disabled man could never be emperor.

On August 1st, 1203, Alexius and his father Isaac were crowned together in Santa Sophia. “Shortly afterwards,” says Villehardouin, “the new emperor began to discharge the debt that he owed the army…” It is noticeable that he refers only to Alexius, now Alexius IV, and makes no mention of his father the co-Emperor. But to discharge so large a debt, far more than was readily available in the imperial treasury, Alexius was forced to that resort of all indigent rulers in the early days of economics—melting down all available objects of precious metal. “Even the churches were profaned,” Nicetas tells us, “and the holy images were stripped of their ornaments. The consecrated vessels were carried off to satisfy the rapacity of the Latins.” Thus began the spoliation of Constantinople’s art treasures. Enamelled ikons were melted down, gems were stripped from their settings and centuries-old ornaments of gold and silver were carried off to the treasurers of the Crusaders and the Venetians.

Throughout these weeks the people of Constantinople were silent. The abdication of Alexius III, the restoration of Isaac, the co-emperorship with his son—these events seem to have meant little to them. The nobles and the priests might be concerned by what was happening in the palace, the one on account of their money and position, and the other on account of the threat to their Faith. But to ordinary citizens such events signified very little, provided that life resumed its normal terms, that trade with the outside world began again and that the threat to their city from this foreign army was removed. One thing only disturbed them—the sudden demands of the imperial tax-gatherers. That they should now be forced to contribute large sums in order to get rid of these invaders (who had restored an emperor no better than the one who had fled) was more than they were willing to endure without any protest.

Every day incidents multiplied between the citizens of Constantinople and the troops. The Crusaders crossed over from Galata in their thousands to eat, drink, buy and stare in dumb wonder at the buildings, the bustling streets and the giant aqueducts and the lofty walls. The citizens liked neither their manners nor their presence in the city.

Alexius IV was only too soon made aware that not only the citizens but many in the court, were hostile to him. His father was enfeebled by his years in captivity and incapable of taking an active part in administration. But Alexius could not feel himself master in his own house while his father was, technically at least, his partner. At the moment his inheritance was heavily mortgaged to the Venetians and the Crusaders, but he was uncomfortably aware that it was only in this quarter that any real support for him existed. It was not surprising that he took to frequenting their camp. He found companions among the Crusaders and even, so he believed, friends. His behaviour disgusted the Byzantines: “He disgraced the imperial purple. Frequently he went to the camp of the barbarians [The Crusaders] and spent whole days there in gambling and debauchery. One day his companions even snatched the gold crown from his head and replaced it with a woollen cap…” Nicetas, lover and historian of the ancient splendours and virtues of his city, could not help but lament the state to which it had fallen. Was this the heir to Constantine, to Justinian, to Basil the Bulgar-Slayer and to all the centuries of imperial might—this drunken boy allowing loutish Franks to mock the sacred crown?

Alexius confessed to the barons that there was a large party in Constantinople who did not view his accession to the throne with any pleasure. As he told the Doge and the inner council: “There are many who show me a fair countenance but do not love me. The Greeks cannot forget that it is only through you that I have recovered my inheritance. I know that the association between you and the Venetians lasts only until Michaelmas, and that you will then be leaving. This is so short a space of time that it does not permit me to fulfil my obligations to you. And the Greeks hate me so much on your account that if you leave I shall surely lose both my empire and my life…” He went on to make them a proposition.

“Stay here until March, I beg you. I am prepared to pay your fleet for a further year from this Michaelmas, and I will supply your army with all you need until Easter. By that time I shall have my government so firmly established that there will be no danger of my losing my empire. My revenues will have come in and I shall be able to discharge my debt to you. I shall also have equipped a fleet so that I can either go with you myself, or send them with you as we have already agreed. For your part, you will have the whole of next summer in which to conduct your campaign against the Saracens.”

Alexius was in the usual unhappy position of a gambler who cannot meet his debts. He was confident that, given time, he would not only be able to satisfy his creditors but would also be financially secure himself. How little he knew of the exhausted state of the exchequer of Constantinople is evident from his words. Is it possible he could have believed that his people would not only shoulder the current burden of taxation but would accept even more (for that was what his new guarantees would certainly mean)?

One man who must have been pleased by Alexius’ words (may possibly even have suggested them as a solution of his difficulties) was Enrico Dandolo. Bearing in mind the relationship between Venice and Egypt, the Doge can never have had any intention of allowing the Crusade to proceed. He had checked it in Venice itself, diverted it successfully to Zara, had held it together by ingenious emotional blackmail in Corfu and had then most successfully of all diverted it to Constantinople. As he knew well enough, the capture of Zara and the elimination of this threat to the Venetian trade-route in the Adriatic was worth more than the Crusaders had ever owed him. But the lack of saleable plunder in Zara had enabled him to maintain that their debt was still undischarged.

It is impossible to calculate how much he and the Venetians had gained already in coin and treasure, but there can be little doubt that their books showed the Crusaders still deeply in debt. His fleet had stormed the famous defences of the Golden Horn and now rode securely at anchor inside its sheltered waters. Autumn was coming on. Indeed, within a few weeks the temperate summer winds would cease to blow and the irregular gales of winter would set in. That would be no time to take a large fleet through the treacherous waters of the Aegean, all the way to the shores of Egypt. The Doge perhaps had always anticipated that, once he had contrived to get the Crusaders hundreds of miles north of their objective, he would be able to arrange his own terms for their return.

The original plot entered into by the Doge, Boniface of Montferrat and Philip of Swabia was to place young Alexius upon the throne, and to break the power of the Byzantine Empire. As a sop to Pope Innocent III they were going to toss him the subjection of the whole of this heretic community to the See of Rome. Dandolo, however, had always been interested in the acquisition of the trade of the eastern empire. Venice had been active in Levantine seas for many years and had often been in conflict with the navy and the mercantile interests of this old-established power. As a practical man it was the trade in which he was concerned; in the islands of the Aegean, in the land-route that passed through Constantinople from Asia, in the island of Crete and in all the potential wealth that might well accrue to his own city rather than to Constantinople.

Confident that Alexius was little more than a puppet, the Doge was only too happy at the prospect of keeping the army and the fleet at Constantinople throughout the winter. The main problem was to see that Alexius’ suggestion was presented to the Crusaders in such a way that they would be willing yet again to forsake their Crusading oath, and stay encamped on Christian territory rather than proceed against the infidel.

When the Emperor’s proposals were put to the army it was hardly surprising that “they gave rise to great discord, just as much as on the previous occasions”. The party who had been promised at Corfu that, if they would stay with the rest until Michaelmas, they would then be given ships to transport them to Syria were rightly infuriated. Villehardouin, anxious as ever to place the blame anywhere but where it really rested, calls them “the party who wished to see the dissolution of the army”. They were, in fact, no more than the party who wanted to get on with the task for which they had joined the Crusade. “Give us the ships to take us to Syria,” they cried, “Let us go as you promised that you would!”

But, just as the plotters had earlier conjectured, circumstances were now very much against the pro-Syria party. Some of their number had already reconciled themselves to the idea of spending the winter in Constantinople, some had lost any enthusiasm for the Crusade, and all of them were dependent on the Venetians for their transport. It was not so difficult this time to reconcile them to yet another delay. It was quickly pointed out that “if we sail now we shall arrive in Syria at the beginning of winter and it will be impossible to commence the campaign. Better far to wait until March, see this emperor safely established on his throne, and leave with plenty of money and provisions.”

The die was cast. The Doge and the inner council of the barons were happy to inform Alexius that they agreed to his proposals. They would stay in the city until the spring, and in return they looked to him to fulfil his part of the bargain. “Thus, with the help of Almighty God, the matter was favourably terminated. The Venetians confirmed on oath that they would hold their fleet at our disposal for a further year from Michaelmas, and the Emperor Alexius paid the fleet as he had promised.”