The Great Betrayal (16 page)

As the Doge must have anticipated, the regular payment of the sum Alexius had contracted for was quite beyond his powers. This was entirely to Dandolo’s satisfaction, for he had no intention of allowing the army to proceed until his objective had been achieved. Neither he, nor Philip of Swabia, nor Boniface of Montferrat had any interest in the Crusade as such. The Doge wished to bring about the destruction of the Byzantine Empire for the benefit of Venice, and Boniface most probably envisaged himself as the new Emperor of Constantinople. Philip of Swabia, far away in Germany, was interested primarily in the discomfiture of the Pope, and in securing his own position as Emperor of the West. He had restored his father-in-law Isaac, and his brother-in-law Alexius, to the throne, and it seems likely that his own interests in Constantinople were now satisfied.

Only the Doge knew exactly what he wanted; only the Doge had the means of bringing Alexius to the ground. Robert de Clari tells a story which is suspect only because it is unlikely that he would have been present to overhear the discussion concerned. It is interesting, however, as indicating the type of tale which was going the rounds of the army, and it illustrates the general feeling among the Crusaders about the relationship between Alexius IV and Doge Dandolo. After the payments began to dwindle, and after innumerable representations had been made to Alexius IV to discharge his debts as quickly as possible, a meeting was arranged between him and Dandolo. The latter had himself rowed across the Horn in a galley with three other galleys as escort, while Alexius IV came down on horseback to meet him outside Blachernae. Dandolo, according to de Clari, immediately said to him: “Alexius, what do you think you are doing? Don’t forget that we lifted you out of your pitiable condition, and that we made you emperor and had you crowned. Why don’t you keep your promises and discharge your debts to us?” Alexius replied: “No. I have no intention of doing any more than I have done already!” “Haven’t you?” said the Doge. “Why you stupid youth, we dragged you out of the shit! We’ll soon enough put you back in the shit! Just bear this in mind—I’ll do everything I can to see that you’re completely ruined!”

But the long winter had set in before things reached such a total impasse. Constantinople is cold in winter, and the condition of the army was an unhappy one, encamped on the northern side of the Golden Horn and unable to visit the city and buy provisions. It was hardly surprising that bands of soldiers began to ransack the countryside. The summer villas of Byzantine nobles were plundered, and neighbouring churches were looted. Ever since the great fire the citizens of Constantinople had been in a state of undeclared war with the invaders. Ever since the return of Alexius, he had been delaying more and more in the payments of his debts, and had been listening to the advice of Murtzuphlus and the patriotic party that he should have no further dealings with the foreigners. “The Franks have been paid quite enough!” was the refrain that was constantly in his ears.

Weak and irresolute, having achieved his throne by foreign intervention, and now aware of the hatred of his people, Alexius could only hope that if hostilities were to begin, the walls of the city would save him just as they had saved so many others in the past. His father, meanwhile, sunk in sickness and superstition, listened only to the voices of the past. Like many Byzantines he had a weakness for astrologers and it was on their advice that he had the statue of the Calydonian Boar dragged from the Hippodrome into the Sacred Palace. This classical statue of the legendary beast that had once ravaged the Aetolian region of Greece commemorated, as it were, the forces of violence and barbarism. It was the belief of the astrologers that with its help the equally violent and barbaric Crusaders might be overthrown. Meanwhile Alexius Ducas, or Murtzuphlus ‘the bushy-eyebrowed one’, bided his time. He, too, believed in violence, but in violence applied with skill and intelligence.

10

MURTZUPHLUS SEIZES POWER

Towards the end of the year 1203 the Doge and the barons decided on one last formal appeal to Alexius. His payments to them had been growing steadily smaller and more irregular, until at last they had ceased altogether. It was essential that the army, no less than the fleet, should know where it stood, and whether the Emperor intended to fulfil his obligations. The Crusaders’ position was growing increasingly difficult as the wintry weather set in.

Three Crusaders and three Venetians were chosen as ambassadors, an equal division as on the previous occasion, and Conon de Béthune was again made principal spokesman. It is hardly surprising to find that Geoffrey de Villehardouin was one of the three ambassadors chosen from the Crusaders, for he seems to have been nearly always selected by the inner council to represent their interests. There can be little doubt, after reading his history of the Fourth Crusade, that Villehardouin—like so many military men throughout the centuries—was as gullible as he was brave. His straightforward presentation of the facts (as he was told them) was enough to make even the opposition doubt their arguments. His sincerity was a useful cover for the duplicity of others.

The ambassadors arrived at Blachernae and were received by Alexius and his father Isaac. Conon de Béthune now delivered his prepared speech. He reminded Alexius and his father that they had both agreed to discharge their debts to the Crusaders and the Venetians—and that they were failing to do so.

“If you only fulfil what you have promised,” he went on, “everything will be well. But I must tell you that if you renegue on these promises the Crusaders will have no more to do with you under any circumstances whatsoever. They command me to tell you that they will never begin hostilities without due warning. It is not the custom in their countries to act treacherously…” Conon de Béthune meant by this no more than that the army would not make open war without some blatant act of aggression—such as would be instantly recognisable as a challenge. It is interesting to see that at this late juncture the Crusaders were preparing to observe the so-called ‘Laws of Chivalry’, which they had notably dispensed with’ since their departure from Corfu.

In the palace, where protocol had been regarded for so many centuries as of the utmost importance, the ambassadors’ statement was received with astonishment. The Greeks were not only surprised but disgusted by such a rough and blatant disregard of formal etiquette. These Franks were actually threatening the Emperor in the presence of all the court. “No one before had ever dared to issue a challenge to the Emperor of Constantinople in his very own palace! Alexius himself and all the other nobles of the court showed their displeasure by their unsmiling faces…”

The simple Westerners had failed to realise that in the Levant one does not treat attempts to deceive or evade responsibility in such a bluff and downright manner. Constantinople was oriental in its conception of ‘face’. “One will know”, a Byzantine might have reasoned, “that deception is intended by one’s enemies, and that they will do their best to evade any possible charges that may lie to their account. But, at the same time, one does not say so openly.” The delegation from the Crusaders and Venetians had committed the type of offence that Westerners were to be guilty of in their dealings with the East for centuries to come. The open affront of the one was met with the smooth words and concealed hatred of the other.

After this last formal encounter in the winter of 1203, there was no need for the relative positions of either parties to be any further established. The Byzantines, from court to courtyard, recognised the implacable nature of the people with whom they had to deal. The Crusaders for their part understood that they might expect no further cooperation from the other side. Villehardouin comments on “the treacherous nature of the Greeks”, but seems surprised that the Byzantines had little faith in their dealings with him and the Crusaders.

Having delivered their ultimatum, the six ambassadors mounted their horses and spurred out from Blachernae. They were relieved to find themselves once more clear of those frowning walls and congratulated themselves on their escape. The ambassadors omitted to mention the fact that, if the Greeks had been half as capable of treachery as they were said to be, they themselves would never have been permitted to return to their camp. The Waring guard would have been delighted to cut them down, and the citizens who thronged their route on their way back to the walls were equally capable of seeing that they never left Blachernae alive. But the ‘treacherous Greeks’ let them go. Seeing that the Byzantines were already prepared and willing to undergo the rigours of a siege, it can hardly have been fear that caused them to treat the delegation in an honourable manner.

“Open war now began, each side doing its best to inflict damage upon the other, both by land and sea.” It was during these months while the army shivered and suffered in its camp—“a measure of wine costing 14 sous, a hen 20 sous, and an egg 2 deniers”—that the influence of the Doge became paramount. Old though he was, and at the head of an alliance of various nationalities and conflicting interests, Enrico Dandolo managed to impose his will upon both fleet and army.

Boniface of Montferrat, although technically the leader of the Crusaders, seems to have suffered something of an eclipse. Whatever the cause—perhaps the fact that he had lost his influence over young Alexius—Boniface never again commanded so important a place in the expedition. It was the Doge, who thirty years before had lost his eyesight in Constantinople, who now directed his ambition—and perhaps his desire for revenge —to secure its capture. “It was always the Venetians who held us on our course and directed our aims. This was partly due to their determination to ensure that the money owing was paid, but to some extent also to their ambition to secure for themselves the dominion of the sea…”
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On the night of January 1st, 1204, the Byzantines made their first major attempt to destroy the Crusading army—or rather, the fleet upon which its security depended. Having waited for some days for a favourable southerly wind, they unleased an attack by fireships on the Venetian galleys. One may possibly trace the hand of Murtzuphlus in this bold attempt to annihilate the enemy fleet. It is certain that neither Isaac nor Alexius would have had the spirit, nor the necessary desire, to see their Venetian friends destroyed.

Seventeen large vessels had been secretly filled with dry wood and shavings, pitch and other inflammable materials. Their square-sails were hoisted and they were directed across the Horn towards the galleys and merchantmen lying at anchor on the northern side. As always in a night engagement involving fireships, everything depended upon the alertness and the ability of those who were attacked. The Venetians (unlike the Spaniards when similarly harassed by Drake in Calais some five and a half centuries later), were neither dispirited nor demoralised. When the terrifying ‘Hell-burners’ came crackling down towards their vessels they did not panic, even though “the flames from them rose so high that the whole sea seemed to be on fire”.

Running down to the shore, the Venetians manned their rowing-boats and swarmed aboard their galleys. While some of them stood by with bearing-off spars to fend the blazing hulks away from their ships, others went out in rowing-boats and cast grappling-irons over the bulwarks of the fireships. Once they had the ships firmly secured, they towed them away from their galleys, out of the Golden Horn and into the swift-running straits. One by one the fireships were grasped by the south-flowing stream, and whirled away past the walls of Constantinople and into the Sea of Marmora.

Meanwhile the Byzantine forces manned the walls facing across the Horn and other Greeks came out in small boats to try and prevent the Venetian rescue operations. “Thousands of the Greeks had come down to the water’s edge and the noise they made was enough to shake the earth itself. They opened fire on our men who were fighting against the fireships and wounded many of them.” The Crusaders also heard the call to arms and came pouring out into the open plain opposite the walls of Blachernae. They half-expected to find the whole Greek army moving up to attack them.

It would indeed have been a good moment for a concentrated attack: for the army to have stormed the Crusaders’ camp, while the Venetians were occupied aboard the galleys. The Byzantines missed their opportunity. Perhaps they had counted too much on the success of their fire-raid, calculating that if they destroyed the fleet there would never be any need to engage the Crusaders in an open battle. Certainly there can be no doubt that it was the skill and ability of the Venetians which saved the day. “And I, Geoffrey de Villehardouin who was an eyewitness of this affair, declare that never in history did any seamen act more gallantly than did the Venetians that night… For if our fleet had been destroyed, we should have been unable to escape, either by land or by sea, and we should undoubtedly have been ruined.”

This well-deserved tribute is followed by a remark so ingenuous that one wonders how even a simple-minded soldier could have written it without embarrassment: “Such was the way [the night attack] in which the Emperor Alexius acted as a
return for all the services that we had done for him.”

The failure of the fireships (only one Pisan merchantman was destroyed) marked the beginning of the end for Alexius. “This baby,” as Murtzuphlus called him, had always been despised as the Crusaders’ puppet. Had the attack succeeded and had the Crusaders been forced to capitulate, there can still be no doubt that Alexius was doomed. Even if the Venetians and Crusaders had been defeated, he would inevitably have been dethroned. The failure of the night attack merely served to stiffen the determination of the Byzantines to have done with this pinchbeck emperor. The party which cried for more action, and for no truckling to the enemy, was now seen to represent the true will of the people. The shout went up “Away with Alexius and his father! Away with all the Angeli family! They have never done anything but bring disaster on the city.”