The Great Betrayal (20 page)

13

INTO THE BREACH

The Byzantines awaited the approach of the attacking fleet with confidence. As the galleys and transports neared the shore they kept up a steady fire, cheering whenever a missile crashed aboard one of the enemy ships, or hurled the broad sweeps of the galley’s oars asunder. But there was no turning back for the invaders.

“The noise was so great,” Villehardouin wrote, “that it seemed as if the whole earth was disintegrating.” Greek fire spouted from the ramparts, hissing and splattering among the men on the foreshore. The Crusaders, who had learned the use of Greek fire and other combustibles during their eastern campaigns, retorted in kind; discharging liquid fire from tubes high up in the assault-ramps of the ships. “But the fire had no effect on the wooden towers,” De Clari remarks, “for they were all sheathed in skins.” The Byzantine stone-throwing catapults had little more effect on the ships which were breaching opposite the towers, for the Venetians had built sturdy coverings of wood over the foredecks and the oar-benches. These had been covered with dense layers of brushwood and vine-branches to break the force of rocks and other projectiles.

Murtzuphlus meanwhile was watching the engagement from the hill of Petrion. The church bells clamoured out a warning to the citizens that the city was being attacked, trumpets sounded and messengers scurried back and forth from the Emperor’s side. As he watched the tide of battle, he ordered reinforcements to be moved to a threatened area, or withdrew men from a section of wall where it was clear that no attack might be expected. It looked as if the events of the previous day were to be repeated. The Byzantines seemed to be causing more casualties in the ships and the beach parties than the latter were able to inflict upon them. Then the clouds which had been looming up over the Black Sea for the past twenty-four hours sent on their advance messenger—the wind. “And it pleased God, “as Villehardouin piously wrote, “that a wind called Boreas should blow and it was this which drove the ships hard on to the shore…”

Not only did the wind push the ships farther up the foreshore than the oarsmen could ever have driven them but it also prevented any chance of retreat. There was no option for the invaders now; they were as irrevocably committed as if they had burned their boats behind them. The crisping waves that followed them up the beach, and that ground the bows of their ships farther and farther into the soil of Byzantium were like sword-thrusts driving the soldiers and the sappers ever forward against the frowning walls.

As is often the case in that part of the world, the northerly wind grew stronger as the sun climbed towards its zenith. The short breaking seas running down across the half-mile of open water began to lift and bounce the ships forward over the sand, mud and pebbles of the foreshore. The
Pilgrim
and the
Paradise,
two ships which had been bound together to make an assault-platform, were gradually lifted forward until their landing-ramp came level with one of the towers. A Venetian managed to jump over from the swaying bridges and forced his way into the top storey of the tower. He was immediately hacked to pieces by a group of Warings who were guarding this topmost point. At this moment, a sudden gust of wind drove the two vessels hard against the tower, so that the Venetian sailors were able to get grappling-irons on to its structure and lash the vessels securely to the wall. A French knight, André Durboise, bravely followed the lead of his Venetian predecessor and jumped into the tower. Within seconds he was followed by others, some leaping from the landing-ramp and others crawling up from the bows of the vessels and assaulting the lower stages of the defences. Robert de Clari pays a tribute to the benefits of armour: “The English and the Danes rushed at him [Durboise] and if he had not been wearing armour they would have cut him down…”

Now that the two ships were firmly secured to the tower by ropes and grappling-irons, the towers began to shake as the ships pounded up and down in the ever-increasing sea. The defenders feeling the tower tremble beneath them and equally unnerved by the impetuous inrush of the enemy, began to retreat stage by stage down to the solid wall beneath. While this tower was gradually being overwhelmed, yet another pair of ships jostled forward by the north wind came hard against a neighbouring tower. The same process was repeated.

On the foreshore near by, encouraged by the assault on these two towers, bands of soldiers began to work against one of the city gates with battering-rams and pickaxes. De Clari singles out for mention among the attackers his own brother, Aliaume de Clari. The latter was in clerical orders, but seems to have been a fire-eater for he had already distinguished himself in the attack the previous year on the tower at Galata. Despite the loads of burning pitch which the defenders discharged over the parapets upon Aliaume and his companions as they strove to break down the gate, the attackers managed to splinter a gap through the thick wooden planks that opposed them.

Aliaume, followed by his brother the historian, was among the first to burst through this hole into Constantinople. They were soon joined by some sixty men-at-arms and a number of armoured knights. “Once they were inside, the men above them on the walls and the others who were in this quarter of the city panicked and did not dare oppose them. The Greeks began to flee, and as they fled so more and more joined them. The Emperor Murtzuphlus, that traitor, who was near by—less than a stone’s throw, in fact—ordered all the bells to be rung and the trumpets to sound.”

All men who are engaged in battle tend to think that it is their own detachment which has, in fact, made the breach and opened the way for the rest of their companions. Whether it was the two de Claris does not really matter: the fact remains that, almost at the same time as the two towers were being overwhelmed, one of the small city gates that gave on to the sea was broken open and the attackers made an entry into Constantinople. A French knight Pierre de Bracheux, seeing the group around him hesitate as they found themselves within the city, rallied them: “Now, sirs, now is the moment of triumph! We shall soon win the day! Look, that’s the Emperor himself who’s heading our way. Let no one think of flying now, for this is the very moment when we must acquit ourselves like men!”

Murtzuphlus, however, did not bring his Waring bodyguard to the attack, but contented himself with summoning up reinforcements to the area where the invaders had secured their foothold in the city. It was a mistake. Before the reinforcements had arrived, the small force that was within the walls had managed to open another nearby gate—not a small postern this time, but one big enough to admit men on horseback. As soon as this became known, the transports raised their anchors and beached themselves near the spot. Very soon the men-at-arms were leading the horses ashore, the knights mounted and the armoured cavalry was storming into the city.

This was the very moment when a determined attack by Murtzuphlus and his troops could still have turned the day. They had the advantage of being on higher ground, and they had had several hours in which to prepare a plan of campaign should the enemy manage to break into the city at any point. Unfortunately the imperial cavalry were not of the same mettle as the mercenary Waring guard. Commanded by the aristocracy, many of whom were hostile to Murtzuphlus, they were as panic-stricken as were most of the native Byzantine troops. Being less well-armoured than the western knights, they were not prepared to rally to the Emperor’s support, or to charge the invaders as they burst into the city. At die sight of the French and Normans streaming ashore from the transports and pouring in through the open gate on their warhorses, the Byzantine cavalry lost its nerve and fled.
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Murtzuphlus, who had done all he could to put heart into his troops, found himself abandoned in the face of the invaders. As the mounted knights began to stream up the hill towards him he retreated through the streets, followed by his foot soldiers and the faithful Waring guard. He made his way across the city towards the ancient imperial palace of Boucoleon —that complex of buildings running down to the Marmora. In that network of reception-chambers, chapels, artificers’ quarters, playgrounds and gardens, it might still be possible to offer some resistance.

The Byzantine troops manning the walls facing the Golden Horn were aghast to see the Crusaders streaming into the city beneath them. The assault from the galleys and from the transports redoubled as the Venetians realised that the Crusaders had made a breach in the walls and were safely established. Caught between the attacking enemy by sea and the enemy who were now at their back, the defenders began to desert their posts on the walls and retreat into the city. The knights and men-at-arms who had stormed the deserted hill of Petrion overran the headquarters of the Emperor. They swept through the brocaded tents, looting and pillaging as they went.

From here they looked down upon the city as it lay to the south of them, tranquil in the afternoon sun. There was nothing to show from the smoking chimneys and the placid reservoirs and orchards that for the first time in history an invader was established within the sacred walls.

“Three miles wide and three miles long was the city within its walls,” writes Robert de Clari, “and the circumference of its walls was so great that a man could easily get lost within it…everyone was advised to stay where they were and not to press on into the interior. For there was always the possibility that men might be killed by having stones hurled down on them from the roofs, while many of the streets were so narrow that a man would be at the mercy of the inhabitants”.

The decision was taken to hold the Petrion area and to set up their own headquarters on the hill. The walls and the city immediately behind them were already held by their own troops, so there was no danger of being attacked from the rear. In these circumstances it was only sensible to rest for the night, while further troops, armaments and ammunition were landed from the transports. They settled down and made themselves ready to give battle the following morning.

But in the meantime the occupied area of the city had been subject to fire and sword. Even Villehardouin admits that “so many Greeks were killed that it was impossible to count them. They and their animals, their horses and their mules were cut down, and all their possessions seized. Hundreds of the inhabitants fled towards the Blachernae gates, but by this time our men had grown tired of fighting and slaughtering, for it was past six in the evening. So they assembled in one of the great squares of Constantinople and, having realised that it would take them at least a month to conquer the whole city, they decided to rest there for the night…”

While the Marquis of Montferrat encamped south of Petrion nearest to the unconquered area of Constantinople, Count Baldwin of Flanders occupied the imperial tents so recently deserted by Murtzuphlus. Doge Dandolo stayed ashore near the beached and victorious galleys of Venice—for there could be no doubt that it was a Venetian triumph. The knights and Crusaders might have been responsible for breaking down the seaward gate and routing the Emperor’s forces, but it was the Venetians who had got them there in the first place. It was the Venetian success against the two towers that had enabled the landing-parties to establish themselves on the beach, and it was Venetian ingenuity that had dreamed up the assault-ramps, without which the towers and walls would never have been taken.

The victors rested, but they most certainly expected that the day’s triumph was no more than the end of the beginning. In view of the immensity of the city that lay sprawled in front of them (a city designed, it seemed, to be contested alley by alley, street by street and forum by forum), these veteran soldiers found it impossible to believe that Constantinople was already taken. In the morning they would wake to find that the unbelievable prize was theirs.

14

CONQUEST AND LOOT

The God-guarded walls had failed them. The Sacred Ikon of Blachernae, containing the portrait of the Mother of God and a fragment of the Virgin’s robe, the innumerable pieces of the Holy Cross, the head of John the Baptist, and the thousand and one relics of apostles, saints and martyrs had not been able to protect them. For the first time in 900 years the city of Constantine had been stormed and occupied by an enemy.

It was small wonder that the Byzantines, demoralised as they were already, had little or no spirit left. The common people who had briefly found a saviour in Murtzuphlus felt only that he had failed them, while the nobility who had conspired against him were eager to come to some advantageous arrangement with the conquerors. What difference could it make to them who ruled the city—so long as their own rights and privileges were observed? Perhaps, indeed, it would be better to have a man like Boniface as emperor, a man who could call upon Crusading swords to preserve the empire?

Ever since 1096 when Godfrey de Bouillon had led the First Crusade to Constantinople on its way through to Asia, the hardihood and vigour of the western Europeans had amazed and alarmed the Byzantines. They had attempted to channel the Crusaders for their own ends, and to use the tough soldiery of the West first to restore, and then to retain, their own dwindling eastern empire. Disappointed in this ambition, they had found themselves increasingly undermined by Venetian and Norman ambitions in Italy, Sicily and the Adriatic. Now they had suffered the final shame and indignity of being conquered by these Latins. But, some of them reasoned, if the Emperor himself should be a Latin, then the ancient Empire might itself be restored by western arms. Instead of wasting their energies in Outremer and Egypt, let these soldiers from Italy, Germany and France use them against the Turks in Asia Minor!