The Great Betrayal (8 page)

But the Cardinal, although he might be the Pope’s legate, counted for very little in Venetian eyes. He was ungraciously received, and told that he might accompany the Crusade if he wished—but only as a spiritual pastor and not as a Papal emissary. In the end, he too was forced to realise that the Venetians, or rather the Doge, had successfully trapped the Crusaders ‘between the devil and the deep’. If they were to proceed at all to Egypt or Syria, they must pay the Venetian price—and that meant attacking Zara first of all. Possibly the Cardinal succumbed to that age-old fallacy, that the end justifies the means. Better, he may have thought, that the Crusade should set about its business against the infidel—even at the expense of a Christian city. The only alternative was the dissolution of the army, and with it the Pope’s dream of a Crusade. The Cardinal had protested, but now he acquiesced.

In the first week of October 1202,480 ships left Venice carrying the army of the Fourth Crusade for the attack on Zara. The fleet was a wonderful sight as it made its way through the Venetian lagoons bound for the high seas. Robert de Clari describes the magnificence of the galleys, and in particular that of the Doge, “painted vermilion, with a silk awning of vermilion spread above him, cymbals clashing, and four trumpeters sounding from the bows…” After touching at Trieste and Pola, the fleet arrived off Zara on November 11th.

It was clear that the people of Zara had been anticipating an attack by the Venetians, although they can hardly have envisaged that Doge Dandolo would manage to divert a crusading army for this purpose. They had forearmed themselves by securing a letter from the Pope which excommunicated any one who should attack them. This had as little effect upon the Doge as did the presence of Cardinal Peter. Despite protests from the Cistercian Abbot of Vaux (the only cleric apparently, who was unable to swallow his Christian principles), the city of Zara was attacked. It was captured on November 24th after five days’ fighting.

The attack on Zara was a foretaste of what was to come, and of all the evil that was to follow in the wake of the Fourth Crusade. The city was sacked and looted, and the inhabitants were forced to take refuge in the hills. Zara’s ancient churches were not spared by this army of Christians. Finally, in the course of their undisciplined looting, the Venetians and the Crusaders came to blows over the division of the spoils.

The whole episode was sordid and contemptible. It was contrary to every tenet, however slender, that had for centuries maintained the fabric of supposedly-Christian Europe. Innocent III on hearing the news was horrified and infuriated. He passed immediate sentence of excommunication upon all who had taken part—Venetians and Crusaders alike.

The effect of the Pope’s action upon the ordinary Crusader can easily be imagined. He had left his home and family to take part in a ‘sanctified’ war against the heathen. Somehow or other he had been trapped into aiding the Venetians in a private act of warfare against a city belonging to the King of Hungary. Now he found that he was excommunicated, and he was still as far away as ever from the original object of his service. It was little wonder that relations between the ordinary soldiers and the Venetians became so bad as to end in open conflict. It was not only the loot that divided them, for the Crusaders felt ashamed of their action, and it took all the abilities of their leaders to patch up peace between the unwilling allies.

Throughout the winter that the army passed encamped in and around Zara, it was hardly surprising that there were many defections from the army. Some made their way north overland back to their homes, others who had the price of their passage embarked in visiting merchant ships. “Thus,” Villehardouin wrote, “our forces dwindled from day to day.”

From the very beginning of his account of the Fourth Crusade, Villehardouin placed most of the blame for the position in which the army found itself in Venice on the shoulders of those Crusaders who had made their own way to the Holy Land or Syria. It is indeed true that it was the failure of so many of the knights and soldiers to reach Venice which led to the inability of the Crusade to pay its way. At the same time, it is unlikely that Villehardouin was as ingenuous as he made out. He must have been aware that it would be impossible to calculate with any certainty just how many men would finally reach Venice. As one of the leaders of the Crusade, he needed to find every possible excuse for what occurred. It is hardly surprising, then, that one even finds him stigmatising as traitors the men who left the army after that gross violation of their Crusading oaths—the attack on Zara.

During the winter a deputation was sent to the Pope to beg him to lift his interdict from the army, and to restore them to the body of the Church. It was from these envoys that Innocent III heard the true story of what had happened. They explained how the Crusaders had been unable to pay the Venetians for the fleet, and how the Doge had proposed the attack on Zara as a solution to their difficulties. Their statement that they thought it better to keep the army together, and thus fulfil their ultimate purpose, rather than let it be disbanded before they had even left the island of Saint Nicholas, was no doubt true. Innocent III understood only too well what had happened—it was what he, with his knowledge of the Venetians, had always feared would befall the ingenuous Crusaders. But what was done could not be undone, and he could see no reason why the army should not proceed to Egypt in the spring of 1203. He agreed, therefore, to lift the penalty of excommunication from the Crusaders. As for the Doge and the Venetians, they were to remain excommunicated—a fact which does not seem to have troubled Enrico Dandolo unduly.

The loot taken in the sack on Zara was divided between the leaders of the army and the Venetians. Very little of it reached the men-at-arms and lesser knights, but even so the total does not seem to have amounted to very much. Certainly there was not enough to pay the Venetians the 34,000 marks that were outstanding. Meanwhile the men had to live and to buy provisions throughout the hard winter of the Adriatic. The result was that, when the spring came, they found that “they could neither go to Alexandria, nor Babylon, nor Syria, for they had already spent all their money both on their stay, and on the hire of the fleet…”. The army’s position was indeed as desperate as it had ever been. Now was the very moment for which the plotters had been waiting.

Doge Dandolo, we are told, “seeing that they were disturbed by their predicament”, called a meeting and addressed them. “My Lords,” he said, “there is in Greece a country that is rich, and well supplied with everything that you need. If we could only find a reasonable excuse to go there and take what we need to see us on our way, that would seem to me an ideal solution. In this way we could easily manage to get ourselves to the lands overseas.” At this moment the Marquis of Montferrat rose to his feet and said: “My Lords, I have been staying during Christmas in Germany, at the court of the Emperor [Philip of Swabia]. There I happened to meet a young man who is the brother of the Emperor’s wife. This young man is the son of the Emperor Isaac of Constantinople, who was removed from the throne by the treason of one of his brothers. If we take this young man with us,” he went on, “we could justifiably enter the territory of Constantinople, and there secure our stores and provisions, for he is indeed the legitimate Emperor.”

Everything now had fallen into place. Like a massive and complex jigsaw puzzle, the schemes and ambitions of a number of individuals had dovetailed so that an overall pattern lay revealed—the diversion of the Fourth Crusade to Constantinople. Initially the Doge can have hoped for little more than the destruction of Zara, followed possibly by the dispersal of the Crusading army during the winter. But his dealings with Sultan al-Adil of Egypt were foremost in his mind, and he certainly had no intention of allowing the Crusaders to follow their initial plan and attack Egypt. There can be little doubt that he was privy to the plot of Philip of Swabia and Boniface of Montferrat.

The Crusaders, by falling into the Doge’s trap, had placed themselves in a position where they were entirely dependent on the Venetians to transport them, and at Venice’s terms. The Doge himself must have known of the presence of young Alexius at the German court since the summer of 1202. There can be no doubt that his speech to the Crusaders about the wealth and provisions to be obtained in Greece—so happily seconded by the speech of Montferrat providing in young Alexius the key to the problem—had been most carefully rehearsed. All that now remained was for Alexius to propose the solution to the Crusaders’ difficulties. He accordingly stated that, if they would place him upon the throne of the Byzantine Empire, he would pay them 200,000 marks. This would enable them to pay their debt to Venice, and would provide them with more than enough capital to prosecute their campaign. At the same time, Alexius guaranteed them an army of 10,000 men. This would more than make good the deficiencies caused by those who had failed to join them, or by those who had subsequently deserted.

In the desperate position in which they found themselves there could be no doubt what the response of many would be. There were still some dissentients, but these were overruled. The Crusade was diverted yet again. On May 4th, the fleet and the Crusading army, having left Zara, put into the harbour of Corfu. A few days later two galleys joined them, bringing down the principal actors in the drama: Dandolo, Doge of Venice, Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat, and Alexius, pretender to the throne of Byzantium. Despite the fact that a considerable number of the more important barons and knights, among them Simon de Montfort, had already left the army, refusing to betray their Crusading oaths any further (‘traitors,’ according to the Count de Villehardouin), it was still an immense fleet which anchored in Corfu roads.

This was the last moment when any effective protest could have been made against the diversion of the Crusade. It was hardly surprising that even at this late hour there were a number of barons and knights who suddenly realised the trap into which they had fallen. The ‘malcontents’, as Villehardouin calls them, divided themselves from the rest of the army, took with them a considerable number of soldiers who also had no wish to go to Constantinople, and set up a separate camp and parliament. Realising that with their small numbers they would be unable to attack Egypt, they decided to make their way to Syria, where they knew that a number of the earlier defectors from the Crusade had already arrived.

There was consternation among the leaders at this further division of the army. They debated how best to convince them that the only solution for all their problems was to proceed to Constantinople. When all other devices fail, it often pays to fall back upon the simplest and most emotional of tricks to secure one’s object—such was the Doge’s experience.

Together with Boniface and the other leaders of the Crusade, he went on foot to the camp of the mutineers and fell at their feet. He begged them with tears not to break up so great and noble an army. “Do not leave us!” he and his companions cried, all weeping bitterly. “We will not rise from the ground until you tell us that you will not leave us!”

The thought of Enrico Dandolo and the Marquis of Montferrat, accompanied by Alexius, kneeling in that green glade in Corfu with the tears coursing down their cheeks is not without its humour. Even seven centuries later one seems to see those crocodile tears, and witness the consternation spread like panic over the simple faces of their audience.

Like so many who are strong in the arm, the Crusaders were not so well-endowed in the head. They could not bear to see these great and noble men kneeling in the grass at their feet. They agreed not to break up the army, to proceed with their leaders, and to secure from the Byzantines such food and provisions as might be needed. They made only one stipulation; that after Michaelmas Day (September 29th) they must be provided with ships and provisions to go on their way to Syria. This was willingly agreed to. By September, Dandolo and Boniface felt sure that their objective would have been attained—and even if it had not, they would by then be at Constantinople. The opposition (if there was any by that time) would be dependent on Venetian ships to get them south. There could be no chance of part of the army leaving at such a juncture, and fighting its way to Syria through a hostile Asia Minor dominated by the Turks.

Such was the dismal and bitter story that lay behind the diversion of the Fourth Crusade to Constantinople. Few episodes in history reveal more clearly the cynicism of the higher command or the stupidity of the masses. As it had begun, so it would continue. Those who realised that they had been tricked, would soon enough find some justification for their acts. Those who had tricked them were already conjuring up the explanations which they would ultimately be forced to make.

5

THE FLEET ENTERS THE GOLDEN HORN

On the morning of July 5th, 1203, the galleys of the Venetians preceded the main body of the fleet across the narrow passage from Chrysopolis on the Asiatic coast to the shore below the suburb of Galata, on the northern side of the Golden Horn. This stretch of coastline was neither walled, nor defended, and Galata, a Jewish and international settlement, was not unfriendly to a force of French, Venetians and other fellow-Catholics. The only real defence-point of the city that lay north of the Horn itself was a large tower, known as the castle of Galata.

Unmolested during its crossing of the Bosphorus, the fleet came safely to anchor within a few cables of the shore. The transports and landing-craft touched down on the beach itself, near the modern suburb of Tophane. South of here, along the banks of the Golden Horn, lay the Jewish quarter of the city. Unbelievable though it seemed that an invading fleet should be able to cross the Bosphorus unopposed, it could hardly be expected that—even in the days of the Emperor Alexius—the troops would be permitted to land without some show of resistance.