The Great Betrayal (19 page)

The original object of their expedition seemed far away, and less and less desirable. The Crusade that was to have landed in Egypt, captured Alexandria and cut the Moslem world in half, had already failed. The attractions of Constantinople were ever-present before their eyes, and in a number of engagements round and about the city they had quickly discovered their superiority over the Byzantine troops.

From the moment that the death of Alexius had been confirmed, the influence of Boniface of Montferrat had been on the wane. Alexius had been his protégé, and the scheme which he and Philip of Swabia had hatched had no meaning once Alexius was dead. Any idea of uniting the western and eastern empires was at an end. All that Boniface could now hope for was that the army should capture Constantinople and proclaim him emperor. He had his well-wishers inside the city, and it would be no mean thing to be the first Latin emperor of the Byzantine world. At the same time he would be able to purge himself of guilt in the Pope’s eyes if it was he who healed the schism between the churches and made a unity out of Christendom. But as far as Doge Dandolo was concerned, the usefulness of Boniface was almost at an end. Dandolo must preserve a superficial amity with him so as to ensure the support of the Crusaders, but he had other plans as to who should be ruler of Constantinople once the city had been taken.

Early in March the barons met in council. The proceedings were stormy and the leaders were far from united, but by now it was plain to all that they had no option but to fall in with the Venetian design. The news from the East had daunted the pro-Syria party, and even those most hostile to the idea of storming yet another Christian city were forced to recognise that there was no other way out for them. The stranglehold which Dandolo had gained on the Crusaders so many months ago had now become inexorable. Even the simplest-minded Crusaders could not ignore it. As for the majority of the army, dispirited, having long lost any interest in the reed purpose of their voyage, they longed only for some recompense for the uneasy months of waiting and of existing on half-rations in foreign camps. Constantinople the Golden presented a vision of loot far beyond their expectations in Egypt or Syria. A formal agreement was now reached between all parties that they should undertake the siege.

They also laid it down that if they should be successful in taking the city, “all the plunder should be brought to one place and there fairly shared out among the troops.” But the problem of how to achieve the necessary discipline over the troops to ensure this was never discussed. The parliament of barons and Venetians also came to the decision that the election of a new emperor should be decided by twelve delegates; six Crusaders and six Venetians. A corollary to this was that the Patriarch of the city should be a Venetian if a Crusader was elected emperor, and vice-versa.

“Whoever the new emperor might be, it was agreed that he should have one quarter of all the captured treasure in Constantinople, as well as the two imperial palaces of Boucoleon and Blachernae. The remaining three-quarters of the booty should be equally divided between Venetians and Crusaders.” They also agreed, De Clari tells us, “to see that no woman was molested, that no members of the clergy were harmed, that convents and churches were not damaged, and that any man guilty of such things should be put to death. This they swore to on sacred relics.” Having settled to their own satisfaction the division of the spoils and the fate of the imperial city, the fleet and the army began to prepare for the attack.

While the soldiers made ready the mangonels, catapults and other siege-engines, and the Venetians got their ships into battle-order, the leaders met to decide on the best plan of attack. In view of the fact that the army was not large enough to take on the Byzantines in a pitched battle, the Venetians’ plan of a mass seaborne assault on the walls facing the Golden Horn was adopted. This had been the Doge’s suggestion the previous year, but it had been rejected by the barons who had maintained that they and their men were only experienced in fighting on land, and that their special abilities would be wasted if they came as marines aboard the ships. But the Venetians’ success against the sea-walls on the Golden Horn had demonstrated that here, at any rate, the city was vulnerable, and the Crusaders’ own poor showing against the Warings during their landward attack on Blachernae had convinced them that they would do better to combine their forces. Their willingness to accede to the Venetian plan of attack points to the fact that it was Doge Dandolo who was now master-minding the whole expedition.

On Friday morning, April 9th, 1204, the great attack began. The Venetian galleys were ranged on the northern side of the Golden Horn ready to tow across the palanders containing the armoured knights, men-at-arms and the horses. The scaling bridges which had proved so successful before were hoisted up by tackles from the masts. The rock- and spear-hurling catapults in the bows of the transports were manned. The whole line of battle stretched nearly a mile and a half, from Blachernae to just beyond the district of Petrion in the city. Murtzuphlus, who had been watching the preparations throughout the preceding days, had set up his headquarters on the hill just behind Petrion. He thus had the whole of the threatened area under his immediate surveillance.

The area selected by the Doge and the Venetians for the assault was the one where they had been so successful the previous summer. Although Murtzuphlus had strengthened the wall and the towers at this point, the attackers felt confident that once again they would be able to establish a foothold on the ramparts. The fleet touched down on the muddy flatland at the foot of the walls without much difficulty, and the Crusaders began hastily to disembark their siege-engines. At the same time trained groups of sappers ran forward under cover of ‘tortoise-shells’ (or hide-protected carts) to start undermining the walls. As they brought up their battering-rams the air above them resounded to the cries of battle, as armed men ran up the covered gangways and grappled with the defenders on the parapets. Having secured their bows to the shore, the Venetians threw out stern anchors to keep their ships pointed like daggers at the defences of Constantinople. Lying farther off at anchor, the heavier transports that had been converted into floating catapult-platforms kept up a steady fire upon the defenders.

But many things had changed since the previous Venetian attack. Murtzuphlus had been astute in having the height of the walls raised and in erecting subsidiary wooden towers above the stone battlements. Soon the Byzantine catapults were finding their targets among the armada anchored within easy range of the walls. The siege-engines that the Crusaders had dragged on to the foreshore were the first to suffer, as huge rocks boomed down to crush them and the men serving them. The sappers under their flimsy protections were unable to stay at the foot of the walls and were forced to retreat. Soon even the galleys and merchant ships began to come under fire, as the Byzantines got their range and turned their catapults upon the immobile targets.

“And soon they were beginning to break to pieces the siege-engines on the shore, so that no one dare man them. The Venetians for their part could not get close enough to the walls or the towers, because they had been made so much taller. Neither section of our forces was having any success so, seeing that the attack was failing, they were reluctantly forced to withdraw.” It was three o’clock in the afternoon when Murtzuphlus and his staff saw that the first assault was over. Men were running back down the foreshore to the ships, the galleys were getting up their anchors, and the whole line of invasion craft was beginning to make its way back across the Horn. Only a few of the heavier merchantmen, armed with catapults and mangonels, were staying put at anchor off the shore. The Greeks raised a cheer, and along all the battlemented walls facing the Golden Horn the cry was taken up as the defenders saw the hated enemy withdrawing. Once again in their long history the God-guarded walls had saved the people of the city.

That night the tense and grim-faced leaders of the army and the fleet met to consider their position. They had suffered severe losses, while the Byzantines had had hardly any casualties. Their frontal attack on the walls had been easily repulsed, and there were many who now urged the commanders to reconsider their plan of attack. “The walls here are now too strong,” they said. “Let us move the ships down to the seaward mouth of the Horn. It is plain that the defences are less formidable there, for the Greeks have not had time to repair them.”

It was true that Murtzuphlus and his commanders had not paid much attention to the walls near Acropolis Point, but they had good reason not to be concerned about them. The Venetians, with their knowledge of the sea, were quick to point out why an attack on Constantinople at the mouth of the Horn was doomed to fail.

“The current near the mouth runs so fast,” they said, “that it would be almost impossible to hold our ships in order against the shore. If we should beach our ships there they would be caught by the current and the anchors could not hold them. The next thing that would happen is that the ships would break loose and be carried willy-nilly down the Bosphorus.”

Their superior knowledge of seamanship carried conviction. The Lombard, French and Belgian knights might be adept on horseback, but they were ignorant of the sea and its ways, and they were willing to accept the words of the premier sea-going nation in Europe. Even so, as Villehardouin remarks, “there were some who would have been only too happy if the current could indeed have carried them down the straits. They no longer cared where they went—only so long as it took them away from this country.”

In the end it was decided to spend the next two days, Saturday and Sunday, repairing the damage to the ships, die landing equipment, and the siege-engines, and to renew the attack on Monday at exactly the same place. During the day’s fighting the attackers had noticed that when one ship attacked a tower with its assault-ramp it had been unsuccessful because there were enough men on the tower to repel the boarders. They decided therefore to lash the ships together two abreast, so that they would be able to disgorge double the number of men at the same time. While the soldiers rested over the weekend, the sailors worked, binding the assault galleys into pairs and ensuring that the gangways were well secured so that both ships could discharge their men simultaneously.

The clergy, meanwhile, were not slow to notice that the troops needed some boost to their morale. They told them that “They judged this struggle to be an honourable one. The people of Constantinople were no more than heretics for they did not accept the rule of Rome. For this reason it was the soldiers’ duty to give battle. Far from being a sin, it was on the contrary a pious act.” Villehardouin records that the priests told the troops, “The battle is lawful and just. If you show the right spirit in conquering this land and putting it in obedience to Rome, all those of you who die will certainly have the Pope’s absolution for your sins…”

The knowledge that, far from suffering excommunication as had been their fate after the capture of Zara, they would go blameless to Heaven if they fell in battle, had an immense effect upon the morale of the Crusaders. In the days when men believed that if they died unabsolved they were doomed to hell, the knowledge that they were promised Paradise in the afterlife gave them an almost Berserker eagerness for the fray. As a mild reminder that not even heaven can be attained without some element of self-sacrifice, the clergy ordered them “to chase all the loose women out of the camp. So accordingly they put them all in a boat and sent them on their way”—presumably not too far away.

While the Crusaders were attending Mass and receiving absolution, the Byzantines settled down to await the next attack. They were in a far greater mood of confidence than at any time since the invaders had first arrived off their shores the previous summer. They had seen the dreaded Venetian fleet retire damaged, and the bodies of many Crusaders still lay unburied and unblessed on the mud foreshore below their ramparts and towers. The Orthodox priests had invoked the blessings of the Saints, and many a citizen had visited one of the innumerable churches of Constantinople to take comfort from the wonderworking relics that lay enshrouded in their ikons and bejewelled reliquaries. Superstition was not a prerogative of either side. Both believed confidently in the righteousness of their cause and in the Christian God who would see the triumph of their arms.

There was no wind at dawn on Monday, April 12th. Silently the sailors and soldiers took up their positions aboard the galleys, landing-craft and merchantmen. On the walls facing them the Byzantine sentries paced up and down, feeling the morning damp strike up at them from the quiet waters. Clouds were banking up over the land to the north of Galata. In the Emperor Murtzuphlus’s camp near the monastery of Pantepoptis at Petrion messengers arrived to say that the looked-for activity among the enemy had started. Lights began to twinkle from the scarlet imperial tent and soon the Emperor himself was afoot. Soldiers were taking up their stations along the turreted battlements facing the Horn. Bugles sounded, their thin brazen cries mingling with the cockcrows of dawn. The night mist began to lift off the city, peeling away from the reservoirs and aqueducts, vegetable and fruit gardens, and the slumbering courtyards of the rich. Fishing-boats were putting out into the Marmora from the small harbours and from the beaches below the Asia-facing walls.

Southward by the Golden Gate carts were rumbling in from the countryside, and the sails of fishing-boats and small merchantmen flickered far out in the Marmora as their crews hoisted canvas to catch whatever wind dawn might bring. The sun came up over Asia and lit the long line of the sea-walls. The city stood poised and waiting, balanced on the knife-edge between night and day. Now the boom of the time-keepers’ gongs was heard and the shrill of overseers’ whistles. The water on the far side of the Golden Horn began to stir into life, and the great assault was launched.