The Great Betrayal (18 page)

Even in the spring of 1204 Constantinople was the most cosmopolitan city in the world. The Spanish Jew, Benjamin of Tudela, who visited the city forty-one years before the Fourth Crusade, commented on the merchants who “came from all corners of the earth, from Egypt and Babylon, Mesopotamia and Palestine, Hungary, Spain and Russia”. Despite the terrible losses sustained in the fire, and despite the fact that the city was invested by a Crusading army and fleet, it was still supreme. The New Rome, dignified by its great Christian churches and decorated with the works of art that had been salvaged from the wreck of the ancient world, was incomparably splendid. As an envoy from Khiev once wrote: “God dwells there among men. We cannot forget that beauty.”

The main artery of the city was the Triumphal Way which started in the south at the Golden Gate, the imposing arch through which the emperors returned after expeditions in the field. The great thoroughfare ran almost parallel with the Marmora walls, passing through the Forum of Arcadius and the Forum of the Bull (beneath which flowed the river Lycus to enter the sea in the harbour of Eleutherius). Mesé Street joined it just north of this point, and from here the Triumphal Way swept eastwards through the great Forum of Theodosius and the Forum of Constantine to terminate by the Hippodrome.
Never
perhaps in the history of the world was there a city so graced with statues, with monuments and obelisks: statues from the Roman Empire, from classical Greece and from Egypt and the East; and monuments of victors and to triumphs spanning more than a thousand years of history.

In the imperial Hippodrome, which was capable of holding 60,000 spectators, the sunlight glanced along the banked rows of white marble seats. Nine hundred feet long and over four hundred feet wide, the Hippodrome held among its other treasures the famous column of the Three Serpents. This was the oldest and most awe-inspiring of all Constantinople’s innumerable monuments. It dated from the Persian invasion of Greece and had once supported the golden tripod found by the Greeks among the Persian loot after the battle of Plataea. Dedicated to Apollo, it had stood for centuries at Delphi, until removed by Constantine to grace the imperial city, Here, too, were the four colossal bronze horses (which now occupy the centre of the gallery of St. Mark’s in Venice). They had been brought to Constantinople from Chios by the Emperor Theodosius in the fifth century. Near by was the huge column of porphyry erected by Constantine to commemorate the foundation of the city. It reputedly housed in its base that symbol of empire, the sacred Palladium which Aeneas had taken from Troy to Rome, and which Constantine had removed to his new capital to show that the genius of Rome now resided on the Bosphorus. An Egyptian obelisk, reminder that the Byzantine Empire had once embraced all Egypt, the Near East and the shores of North Africa, was decorated round its marble base with scenes from the imperial games.

Everywhere the city shone with marble or gleamed with bronzes. Through the immense aqueduct of Valens the water flowed in from the countryside to supply the cisterns, the baths and the fountains. Built in the fourth century, it had been extensively restored and improved in the eighth when, as a chronicler tells us: “Workmen were brought from many places to rebuild it—a thousand from Asia and Pontus, and two hundred whitewashers and five hundred brick-makers from Greece, and a thousand day-labourers from Thrace.”

All over the city, light gleamed and sparkled from acres of lake-like reservoirs.
^[3]
By the diversion of streams and rivers, by its open and its underground reservoirs, the city had achieved a water-supply that was to be unequalled in Europe until the Industrial Revolution. Nowhere before, except perhaps in ancient Rome, had the citizens of any capital enjoyed so abundant a water-supply, nor—those other amenities of the modern age—such efficient sanitation and drainage. To the Crusaders, whose own experience of cities was limited to the squalor of medieval townships (often perched somewhat uneasily on the remains of great Roman buildings), Constantinople was always a revelation.

Beyond the Hippodrome, the rambling Sacred Palace of the Emperors descended in buildings, courts, galleries and terraced gardens to the edge of the Marmora. Here the wall swept round from the delightful small church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus to take in the whole area of the Acropolis. At the easternmost corner of what is now Seraglio Point, the gate of Saint Barbara gave on to the sea. Not far from here an inscription on the curtain wall challenged the forces of man and nature:

Possessing Thee, O Christ, a wall unbreakable,

Theophilus the King and pious emperor

Has raised this wall upon a new foundation,

O King of All Things, guard it under thy protection

And show it till the end of time unshakeable

And indestructible…”
^[4]

Even in this hard spring, with a hostile army encamped outside the walls and the whole of the Golden Horn occupied by an enemy fleet, life still flowed through the streets and industry carried on. The sound of the artisans’ hammers rang out from the quarter of the coppersmiths and metal-workers. The tanners, with an unhappy disregard for the sensibilities of passers-by, emptied their evil-smelling vats into the street drains in the quarter of the tanners and leather workers. Everything was extreme. There was no ‘Golden mean’ for, although the New Rome was a Greek city, it was a far remove from the Periclean world. Poverty and wealth were incongruously juxtaposed. A huge palace enriched with marble columns and mosaics sprang suddenly out of a huddle of ramshackle wooden dwellings. A fountain of marble sparkled in the centre of a dusty square where horse droppings, the stench of burning hair and the clang of hammer on anvil marked the quarter of the blacksmiths and ironworkers. In the area inhabited by jewellers and enamellers silence reigned, broken only by the tap-tap of small gnome-like hammers or the buzzing of the lapidary’s drill.

There were many things, particularly in the poorer quarters of the city, that would remind the Crusaders of their own towns, yet everything in Constantinople was on so vast a scale that even the most cynical traveller could not repress a sigh of admiration. As Benjamin of Tudela remarked—and he had many criticisms to make of the city—“Strongholds are filled with garments of silk, purple and gold. There is nothing in the whole world to be found to equal these store-houses and this wealth. The Greek inhabitants are very rich in gold and precious stones, and they go clothed in garments of silk with gold embroidery, and they ride horses, and look like princes. Indeed, the land is very rich in all cloth stuffs, and in bread, meat and wine. Wealth like that of Constantinople is not to be found in the whole world.”
^[5]

As in most hot countries, the houses of the middle class and of the rich presented blank faces to the streets and sidewalks. Their life was turned inwards, centred around the courtyards where fountains played into fish tanks, and where statuary gleamed under marble walks shadowed by vines. Occasionally a bow-window would project from the second floor of such a house and the passer-by could make out the shadowy forms of the ladies as they chattered and sewed, or used the street as their theatre. Wood smoke scented the air, for it was still cold in March, and in the streets charcoal braziers glowed, where chickens and ribbon-like spirals of gut stuffed with forcemeat (forerunner of the modern sausage) turned on spits. There were vegetable and fruit gardens within the city walls, and the barrows of pedlars were piled high with their produce, as well as with caviare, imported dates, sugar, cinnamon and ginger. Despite the siege, the fishing-boats were still working out of the harbours of Boucoleon, Julian, Contoscalion and Eleutherius on the Marmora. The cold waters of the Bosphorus yielded an immense quantity and variety offish. Meat was something of a luxury, but bread, vegetables, olives and olive oil produced a diet that was simple but healthy.

Despite the events of the past nine months the streets presented a scene of extraordinary liveliness and colour. The contrasting dress of the various classes made for variety—the workmen in their short tunics and sandals, the rich in longer tunics of bright colours with soft leather boots, and the women in their ankle-length robes, with their head-dresses of silk. Men and women alike were bedecked with jewellery (an effeminate custom, the Crusaders thought). Heavy gold and silver bracelets gleamed on the men’s wrists and forearms, while the women wore elaborate filigree necklaces—gold and silver set with precious stones and enlivened by enamels. Delicate pendant ear-rings danced as they walked.

The magnificent traditions of the classical Greek and Roman jewellers had been preserved in Constantinople, and had been married to the complex design and colourful palette of the east. In the palace the official costumes were as elaborate and ornate as the combined experience of the silk-makers and the court-jewellers could make them. Gloves and slippers were sewn with pearls, while the dalmatic (a long, wide-sleeved garment worn over a silk tunic) was decorated with embroidery. Over and above this came the bejewelled and embroidered
pallium
, which hung down at the back to form a train that was looped and carried over the left arm. It was little wonder that the knights in their coarse but practical chain-mail felt something like contempt, even if mingled with uneasy admiration, for these flower-like people.

Decayed though the city was since the days of its great splendours, weakened by corrupt administration and by the losses sustained throughout its territories during the past century, it had an autumnal magnificence about it in these last days. The example set by Murtzuphlus infused a new spirit into the citizens. Even though it was too little and too late, a memory of their former pride seemed to return to the Byzantines. It still seemed possible that the God-guarded walls would save them. They could not believe that the relics of the Holy Cross, and of all the martyrs and saints that had protected them so often in the past, would not once again intervene.

Hope returns with the spring. Soon the chanting priests would be telling them that Christ had risen once again, that He had indeed risen, and that in this Easter of the year 1204 He had saved and secured his chosen city from the enemy. Was it not Christ Himself who had ordained the circuit of the walls? When the Emperor Constantine, spear in hand, was tracing out the lines that his new capital was to follow, he was asked by one of his courtiers how much farther he intended to go. The Emperor had replied: “Until He tarries who now goes before me. Christ, who had ordained the shape that the city was to take, had saved it from all its enemies for nearly nine centuries of constant threat, attack and siege. It was not to be believed that this time the Queen of Cities would be forced to her knees. And yet there were always pessimists. “In the damp, melancholy climate of the Bosphorus the natural gaiety of the Greeks was dimmed. Even in the great days of the Empire men had whispered that it would not last for ever. It was well known that on stones throughout the city and in the books written by the sages of the past the list of emperors was written, and it was drawing to an end.”
^[6]

It is true that, as the local saying has it, “There are two climates in Constantinople: that of the north wind, and that of the south wind”. Neither are invigorating, for even the north wind is not without humidity, while the south wind is like all south winds in the Mediterranean area—debilitating and relaxing. The adjective ‘Byzantine’, when used in its pejorative senses as indicative of anything that is unnecessarily double-faced and tortuous, might certainly be applied to the climate. Neither the torrid dry heat of summer Athens nor its equally harsh but invigorating winter was known in distant Constantinople.

Murtzuphlus was trying to combat a languor that was bred in the bone, and which had only been accentuated by the events of the past century. If he still managed to carry with him many of the working people as well as the Waring Guard, he could not light a patriotic fire in the hearts of the nobles, or the court officials. Meanwhile the eunuchs, whose influence was considerable in the treasury, the Civil Service and other important offices of State, pursued their caponised course—careless of everything save their own comfort.

It is a true statement that “Nature, indeed, cannot relieve men of their duty to be wise and brave, but, in the marvellous configuration of land and sea about Constantinople, nature has done her utmost to enable human skill and courage to establish there the splendid and stable throne of a great empire.”
^[7]
In that March of 1204 the Crusaders and Venetians were still confronted with the most formidable walled city in the world. They themselves were between the devil and the deep. If they failed to take the city or were defeated, the only escape route for them from this hostile corner of northern Thrace was by sea. Yet if they failed to take the city, they had no means of paying the Venetians whose fleet was their only means of escape. While the Byzantines could afford the psychological luxury of relaxing, as it were, on the laurelled memory of their past triumphs, the Crusaders were driven by sheer necessity. Whatever Murtzuphlus might achieve by his example and efforts among his own people, he had nothing to equal the iron goad that was wielded by Dandolo over the Crusaders.

12

PREPARATIONS FOR ATTACK

The news that now reached the Crusaders from the Holy Land and Syria was enough to daunt even the few who were still enthusiastic for their true mission. Their comrades who had proceeded independently had suffered nothing but disaster. A large proportion of the group which had sailed from Marseilles had reached Syria only to be decimated by disease. Others who had been engaged against the Turks were either dead or enslaved.