The Great Betrayal (28 page)

[5] 36,000 marks according to de Clari.

[6] In itself, the concession that Dandolo hereby enforced from the Republic was unique. There was normally no question of the Doge’s office being subject to the hereditary principle.

Chapter Five

[1] For much of the information concerning the arms and armour of this period I am indebted to C. J. Ffoulkes’s
The Armourer and his Craft
, London, 1912. Also to Sir G. F. Laking’s
A Record of European Armour and Arms,
London, 1920.

[2] In 1453, when the Sultan Mehmet II finally captured the city at the head of the Turkish forces, the tower and its defences were so strong that he despaired of attacking it. Instead, he had his ships dragged overland from Tophane and launched in the area of the Modern Kasimpaşa. Mehmet, however, did not have anything approaching the sea-power of the Venetians and, at the time of his attack on Constantinople, the suburb of Galata had itself been turned into a separate walled city.

[3] Nicetas has a permanent bias against the Comneni emperors, but there is no real reason to believe that in his estimation of the individual actors in this drama he was not as accurate as French writers like de Clari and Villehardouin. The latter, in any case, had no way of knowing what was going on in the minds of the Greeks.

Chapter Six

[1]
The Byzantines by
D. Talbot Rice, London, 1962.

Chapter Seven

[1] Quotation from ‘The Curassiers of the Frontier’ by Robert Graves,
Collected Poems
, 1965, published by Cassell and Co. Ltd. Quoted by permission of International Authors, N. V.

[2]
Orderic Vitalis.
This account is substantiated by other historians of the city such as Anna Comnena, Cedrenus and Gotselinus.

[3] Pears,
The Fall of Constantinople,
1886.

Chapter Eight

[1]
An eleventh-century poem celebrating Digenes Akrites
, ed. John Mavrogordato, Oxford, 1956.

[2] It seems clear from the styles of Villehardouin’s memoirs that they were dictated. There is no conclusive manuscript evidence that he could write.

Chapter Nine

[1] Alexius III had, in fact, made his way to Mosynopolis. This has been identified with a small village just west of Adrianople.

[2] Nicetas, who can never find anything creditable to say about Alexius IV, maintains that the fire occurred
before
he had left Constantinople with the Crusaders. He pictures Alexius gloating over the flames like Nero. Villehardouin, however, who was in a better position to know the whereabouts of the Emperor (and had no personal bias against him), maintains that it occurred while Alexius was away in Thrace. His view is confirmed by other authorities.

Chapter Ten

[1] Gunther,
Historia Constantinopolitana
, X.

[2]
The Byzantines
by D. Talbot Rice, 1962.

Chapter Eleven

[1] Alexius Ducas, nicknamed Murtzuphlus, had been crowned as Alexius V. I have continued to refer to him as ‘Murtzuphlus’ in order to avoid confusion between him, Alexius IV (now dead), and Alexius III, the ex-Emperor, now a refugee in Thracian Mosynopolis.

[2]
The Chronicle of Novgorod
, 96. Neither Nicetas, Villehardouin, nor de Clari give any indication that Alexius had betrayed the Byzantines. Nevertheless, knowing Alexius’s position at that moment and his total dependence upon his Venetian and Crusader friends, it seems quite possible that he may have warned them of the impending attack.

[3] It has been calculated from the evidence of the reservoirs that remain, and from the sites of the ancient cisterns, that they must have held about 1,000,000, cubic metres.

[4] The inscription is quoted by Robert Liddell in
Byzantium and Istanbul,
1956.

[5] Benjamin of Tudela,
Itinerary,
trans. M. N. Adler, 1907.

[6] From Runciman,
The Fall of Constantinople 1453,
1965.

[7] Quoted from Alexander van Millingen,
Constantinople,
1929.

Chapters Twelve and Thirteen

For the information contained in these chapters I have combined Villehardouin’s and de Clari’s accounts, trusting the one where it is a matter of policy and strategy, and the other where he was an eyewitness of events.

[1] The desertion of Murtzuphlus’s cavalry in the face of inferior forces suggests not only a breakdown in morale—it is possible that there was a deliberate conspiracy to abandon the Emperor at the first opportunity.

Chapter Fourteen

[1]
Persia and the Greeks, The Defence of the West 546-478 B.C.,
by A. R. Burn, 1962.

[2] This quotation from Thomas Carlyle’s
The French Revolution
provides an interesting parallel to the contemporary account of Nicetas.

[3]
Art of the Byzantine Era
by D. Talbot Rice, 1963.

Chapter Fifteen

Nicetas is our authority for the description of some of the individual works of art that were destroyed. Both Villehardouin and de Clari, while full of wonder at the wealth of the city, omit to mention the wholesale destruction of works of art

Chapter Sixteen

[1] Sismondi,
Histoire de la chute de Vempire Romain,
1835.

[2] Pears,
The Fall of Constantinople,
1886.

[3] Now in the Victorian and Albert Museum, London, See
The Veroli Casket
by John Beckwith, H.M.S.O., 1962.

[4] The account of the proceedings is taken from the
Chronique de Romanie
(Buchon’s
Collection de Chroniques,
1875). It cannot be regarded as entirely trustworthy, but would seem to reflect fairly accurately the spirit, at least, of events during the meeting of the electors. Neither Villehardouin nor de Clari was in a position to know what happened. Villehardouin, however, states specifically that no one
was admitted to the Church while the election was taking place. This seems very likely. But since the Doge was at this time inhabiting Boucoleon Palace, it is quite possible that finding the electors divided on the issue
before
they entered the Church, he threw the weight of his authority behind Baldwin in advance of their deliberations. One thing is clear, there seems no doubt from any account that the Doge favoured Baldwin, and that it was his influence which secured his election against the undoubtedly stronger claims of Boniface.

Chapter Seventeen

[1]
Letters of Pope Innocent
, VIII and IX, Migne,
Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Latina
, Vols. CCIV-CCV.

[2] Quotation from ‘The Second Coming’, by W. B. Yeats,
Collected Poems
, 1965. Quoted by permission of Mr. M. B. Yeats and Macmillan and Co. Ltd.

[3] Baron de Balabre,
Rhodes of the Knights
, 1909.

Chapter Eighteen

[1] Runciman,
History of the Crusades
, Vol. Ill, 1954.

[2] Pears, Introduction to
The Fall of Constantinople
, 1886.

[3] A daughter not, of course, by his wife the Dowager Empress Margaret, but by an earlier marriage.

[4] C. Diehl in
Byzantium: An Introduction to East Roman Civilization
, 1948.

[5] Quoted, by permission, from ‘Coloured Glass’, in
The Poems of C. P. Cavafy
, translated by John Mavrogordato, published by the Hogarth Press Ltd., 1951.

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