The Great Betrayal (3 page)

The Doge, the Venetians and the Crusaders had already incurred the wrath of the Pope for their attack on the Christian city of Zara. For the violation of their crusading oaths they had incurred the very real and terrifying penalty of excommunication. Something of the thought that “It is better to be hung for a sheep than for a lamb” may have occurred to the Doge and to Boniface, the Marquis of Montferrat.

Enrico Dandolo, that patrician with the morals of a merchant on the make, was one of the ablest politicians of his day. He understood the nature and character of the Pope. Innocent III was one of the greatest popes in history, but as a great ruler and a man of affairs rather than as a spiritual authority. Unlike Dandolo, however, Innocent was no cynic. He was possessed by the belief that it was the will of God that the Pope should be supreme over all temporal rulers—even though this entailed his being increasingly devoted to mundane affairs. He genuinely regretted this involvement: “I have no leisure to meditate on supermundane things; scarce I can breathe. Yea, so much must I live for others, that almost I am a stranger to myself…” At the same time he made the claim (which he failed to see was at variance with Christ’s “My Kingdom is not of this world”) that “The Lord left to Peter the governance not of the Church only but of the whole world.”

The supreme claim of the Papacy to dominion here on earth was made in the reply of Innocent III to the ambassadors of Philip Augustus of France when he had compelled that monarch to repudiate his wife Agnes and take back the wife whom, in the Pope’s eyes, he had wrongfully divorced. Since this event had taken place in the year 1200, it is very possible that Dandolo knew of the Pope’s statement. But whether he did or not, he certainly understood Innocent’s view of the Papal position. “To princes power is given on earth, but to priests it is attributed also in heaven; to the former only of bodies, to the latter also over souls. Whence it follows that by so much as the soul is superior to the body, the priesthood is superior to the kingship… Single rulers have single provinces, and single kings single kingdoms; but Peter, as in the plenitude, so in the extent of his power is pre-eminent over all, since he is the Vicar of Him whose is the earth and the fullness thereof, the whole wide world and all that dwell therein.”

Dandolo had probably calculated that the submission of Constantinople to the arms of the crusaders would be justified if it entailed also the submission of the heretic Orthodox Eastern Church to the throne of Peter. If Dandolo could restore to the true Faith the whole of the Byzantine Empire, spiritually at any rate, his act in taking that empire would be justified. If he could place upon the throne an emperor who owed his restoration to the force of crusading arms, that emperor would be willing to see that his church and his people accepted the spiritual jurisdiction of Rome. If at the same time this strengthened the Venetian trading position, even if it put into the hands of the Venetians and their allies all those rich territories in eastern Europe, the Pope would surely be prepared to overlook the crime of making war upon fellow-Christians if it brought those Christians back to the Church of Rome. The young Alexius had already told Dandolo and the other leaders that “If God allows you to restore me to the throne, I will place all of my empire under obedience to Rome.”

Other factors did undoubtedly contribute to the Crusaders’ participation in this diversion from Egypt to Constantinople. Most important of all was the simple necessity to raise enough money to pay for the Venetian fleet that was transporting them. The leaders of the Crusade, who were in the confidence of the Doge (as far as that was ever given to any man), may well have been aware that the restoration of Alexius might not be possible, and that it might be necessary to capture Constantinople to secure the money they needed. The rank and file, however, as well as the main assembly of knights and nobility, knew only that Alexius had promised them 200,000 silver marks as a reward for restoring him to the throne. In addition to this, Alexius had guaranteed to victual the crusading army, and had stated that “If necessary I will personally go with you into the land of Babylon [Egypt], or, if you prefer it, I will send there at my own expense ten thousand men and maintain them there for a year.”

His promise to submit the Orthodox Church to the Church of Rome might be of interest to the clergy, but to practical soldiers it was his financial and military aid that was appealing. Constantinople was a name to them and no more. They knew little or nothing of the ramifications of eastern trade which caused Venice to look upon her long-established rival as a deadly enemy. They had heard of Constantinople, as had nearly all citizens of western Europe in those centuries—the great Christian city at the end of the world, Mickle Garth, the Mighty Town—but it was more a legend than a reality. They knew nothing about the citizens of eastern Rome, nor what eastern Rome had meant to the world centuries before their own capitals, such as Paris and Brussels, were anything more than insignificant townships.

It was on June 23rd that the fleet finally came to anchor near the abbey of St. Stephen’s, which lies about six miles southwest of Constantinople on the Sea of Marmora. It was a natural place to assemble before attempting the narrow fast-running strait of the Bosphorus. At such a distance the capital city of Constantine was little more than a shimmer of walls topped by towers. Even so, it was enough to cause the sophisticated Venetians to murmur with envy and admiration. Even the hardiest of the Crusaders understood at last the immensity of the enterprise upon which he had embarked. As Villehardouin wrote: “All those who had never seen Constantinople before gazed with astonishment at the city. They had never imagined that anywhere in the world there could be a city like this. They took careful note of the high walls and imposing towers that encircled it. They gazed with wonder at its rich palaces and mighty churches, for it was difficult for them to believe that there were indeed so many of them. As they gazed at the length and breadth of that superb city there was not a man, however brave and daring, who did not feel a shudder down his spine. One could not blame them, for never before in the whole history of the world had any men embarked upon so gigantic an enterprise…”

It was not true to say that the Crusaders were the first to attempt the fabulous walls and fortifications of Constantinople. Many armies and fleets before them had approached the ‘God-guarded City’ bent on its conquest. Not one of them had succeeded. Avars, Saracens and Bulgars had besieged the city. The Saracens had several times attacked it in the seventh century a.d., only to withdraw bloody and defeated from its walls. The Bulgars had twice laid siege to it, and did not relinquish their ambition until the great Emperor Basil II, the Bulgar-Slayer, put an end to the Bulgarian menace by sending 15,000 of their defeated army blinded, back to their homes. The Russians under Prince Igor had come down in a great fleet from the Black Sea in 1043 and had unwisely assailed the seaward walls. But then, as the chronicler described it, “liquid fire shot out upon our ships from long tubes placed in the parapets”, so that the panic-stricken attackers later described how “The Greeks have a fire like the lightning of the skies. They cast it against us and burned us so that we could not conquer them…”

But the city was defended in the eyes of its inhabitants, not only by mechanical inventions and by its soldiers. Not for nothing was it known as the ‘God-guarded City’, for within its walls lay the True Cross on which Christ had been crucified, the drops of blood he had shed at Gethsemane and innumerable other relics of great power. They ranged from the stone on which Jacob had laid his head to sleep, the rod of Moses and the head of John the Baptist, to fragments and relics of almost every apostle and saint in the history of the Church.

As soon as the fleet had assembled in the anchorage off St. Stephen’s Abbey, the Doge and the leaders of the Crusaders landed and held a conference. The Doge knew Constantinople better than any other member of the council. He had conducted a Venetian mission to the city over thirty years before, to sue for peace after the disasters that had befallen Venice in the war between the Republic and the Byzantine Empire. Dandolo had every reason to remember Constantinople, for
it
was during his stay within its walls that he had lost his eyesight. Whether this was due to a wound in the head (as Villehardouin asserts), to an illness, or—as was later maintained—to his being deliberately blinded by a burning-glass, the fact remains that the Doge had nourished an implacable hatred against the Byzantines ever since. His mission had proved unsuccessful, but his hatred of Constantinople was far deeper than any rancour that could possibly be due to a diplomatic failure. Under whatever circumstances the Doge had lost his eyesight, there seems little doubt that he held the city to blame. While the barons around him might be discussing the beauties of its towers and the formidable grandeur of its walls, Enrico Dandolo could only remember them—the colours of Santa Sophia, the green trees in the Emperor’s gardens, the shipping on the Golden Horn and the multihued aspect of Byzantium.

His advice to the assembly was succinct. They should not attempt the city from overland, for the soldiers would scatter in search of food (of which they were already short), and the army would quickly disintegrate into a rabble. He told them that the solution lay across the Marmora, where the Princes’ Islands shimmered under the sun, some ten miles away to the east, “There!” he said. “Those islands are inhabited by farmers. We can get corn and meat from them. Let us sail over and collect whatever provisions we need, and then proceed to take up our positions off the city. The fighting man who has a bellyfull of food acquits himself better than the man who is hungry.”

But the following morning when the fleet weighed anchor, the wind had gone round to the south and was blowing straight up the Marmora. There could be no question of making for the Princes’ Islands, so the ships took the wind under their sterns and made their way up the narrow strait towards the city. Now, for the first time, they could really see and appreciate the grandeur and immensity of its seaward walls. Although they were single walls and far simpler than the elaboration of ditches, double-walls and fortifications on the landward side, they rose sheer from the water. These seaward defences on the Marmora had been restored and strengthened by the Emperor Theodosius in the fifth century. Although the subsequent misspending of Byzantine revenues by weak and indifferent emperors had failed to maintain them at their best, yet they still appeared unassailable. Furthermore, they had two important natural protections: the fast current which swept down the Bosphorus and which would render it almost impossible to beach a landing-craft and hold it in position while the troops got ashore; and the innumerable rocks and shoals which fringed the coastline and presented a dangerous hazard to any without expert local knowledge.

The day on which the Venetians and Crusaders sailed past the walls of Constantinople was dedicated in the Church Calendar to St. John the Baptist (whose head in its enamelled gold and gem-studded reliquary was one of the city’s divine sources of protection). To honour the saint, the ships were dressed overall with banners and pennons, while every man entitled to a coat-of-arms had his shield displayed over the bulwarks. The Comte de Villehardouin was certainly under no illusion that the restoration of young Alexius was likely to be acceptable to the Byzantines, for he noted that “every man was assiduous in cleaning and preparing his arms and armour, for no one was in any doubt but that they would soon have need of them”.

In order to assess the quality and nature of the defences, the fleet passed as close to the walls of the city as was consistent with safe navigation. If the Crusaders were concerned with examining the nature of their adversary, the inhabitants of Constantinople were no less interested to view the fleet. As far as they were concerned, Crusading armies had come through their territories before, and had never been anything other than a source of trouble. It had always needed immense diplomatic skill as well as payments of ready cash to get rid of them without open conflict. They had no reason to suspect that these Crusaders were bent on anything more than re-storing and revictualling, although it may well have seemed curious to the more intelligent members of the populace that a Crusading army and fleet should have come so far north, if it was on its way to attack the Moslem kingdoms in the Levant and Egypt.

The sea-walls of Constantinople stretched from Acropolis Point (modern Seraglio Point) to Studion near
Porta Aurea,
the Golden Gate. The men aboard the ships cannot have failed to remark this south-facing triple-entrance of marble, which stood only a quarter of a mile inland from the postern where the land walls of the city meet the sea. Built in imitation of the triumphal arches of ancient Rome, it was surmounted by a Cross, as befitted the New Rome where Christianity and the old Empire were allies.

Despite its crucifix, the gate was adorned with reliefs from classical mythology. It was through this gate that the Byzantine Emperors used to pass on their return from some victory in the field. Even here they managed to combine the memory of classical Rome with Christian Byzantium. They were dressed in the robes of the Caesars (though more gorgeous than any that the Roman Caesars had ever known) and they carried the sceptre of empire. Yet, as they passed through the Golden Gate, they were hailed by spectators who sang hymns of praise to God the Father, Giver of Victories.

As the ships worked their way up the strait, the inhabitants of the city crowded the battlements to watch them pass. “There were so many people on the walls,” commented Villehardouin, “that it seemed as if there could be no more people left anywhere else in the world.” Nobles and common soldiers, Frenchmen and Venetians alike, they gazed in awe at the majesty of a city which made even the largest in their own countries seem like villages. As they moved slowly to the north they passed the two small fortified harbours which were used by fishing-boats, and by shallow-draft merchantmen unable to round the Golden Horn on account of northerly winds. Eleven gates gave on to the sea between Studion and Acropolis Point, and the harbours of Eleutherius and Contoscalion were almost in the middle of the circuit. Although there had been no declaration or war, no word sent to the Emperor nor the people that they intended to place Alexius on the throne, no indication that they were other than friendly fellow-Christians, the Crusaders opened fire upon the anchored fishing-boats and merchantmen, showering them with arrows and the iron quarrels of crossbows.