When the proposal was put before the
Crusaders, there were a few dissentients, such as Reynald of Montmirail, who
felt that they had taken the Cross to fight against the Moslems and saw no
justification for further delay. They left the host and sailed on to Syria.
Others remained with the army, protesting; others again were silenced by timely
Venetian bribes. But the average Crusader had been taught to believe that
Byzantium had consistently been a traitor to Christendom throughout the Holy
Wars. It would be a wise and meritorious act to enforce its co-operation now.
The pious men in the army were glad to help in a policy that would bring the
schismatic Greeks into the fold. The more worldly reflected on the riches of
Constantinople and its prosperous provinces and looked forward to the prospects
of loot. Some of the barons, including Boniface himself; may have looked
forward further still and have calculated that estates on the shores of the
Aegean would be far more attractive than any that could be found in the
stricken land of Syria. All the resentment that the West had long borne against
Eastern Christendom made it easy for Dandolo and Boniface to bring public
opinion round to their support.
1203: The Crusade sails to Constantinople
The Pope’s disquiet about the Crusade did
not lessen when he heard of the decision that it had taken. A scheme hatched
between the Venetians and the friends of Philip of Swabia was unlikely to do
credit to the Church. He had moreover met the young Alexius and summed him up
as a worthless youth. But it was too late for him to make an effective protest;
and if the diversion was really going to secure active Byzantine aid against
the infidel and at the same time achieve the union of the Churches, it would be
justified. He contented himself by issuing an order that no more Christians
were to be attacked unless they were actively hindering the Holy War. It might
have been wiser in the long run for him to have expressed, however vainly, open
and uncompromising disapproval. To the Greeks, always suspicious of Papal
intentions and ignorant of the intricacies of Western politics, the
half-heartedness of his condemnation seemed proof that he was the power behind
the whole intrigue.
On 25 April Alexius arrived at Zara from
Germany; and a few days later the expedition sailed on, pausing for a time at
Durazzo, where Alexius was accepted as Emperor, and then at Corfu. There
Alexius solemnly signed a treaty with his allies. The voyage was continued on
25 May. The fleet rounded the Peloponnese and turned northward to the island of
Andros, refilling its water-tanks from the abundant springs there. From Andros
it made for the Dardanelles, which it found undefended. The Thracian harvest
was ripening; so the Crusaders put in at Abydos to gather what they could. On
24 June they arrived before the Imperial capital.
The Emperor Alexius III had made no
preparation against their arrival. The Imperial army had never recovered from
the disasters of Manuel’s last years. It was almost entirely mercenary. The
Frankish regiments were obviously unreliable at such a moment; the Slav and
Petcheneg regiments could be trusted only in so far as there was ready money to
pay them. The Varangian Guard, now mainly English and Danish in composition,
had traditions of loyalty to the Emperor’s person; but Alexius III was not a
man who inspired great personal loyalty. He was a usurper who had won his
throne not through any merit as a soldier or a statesman but by a petty palace
plot; and he had shown himself little fitted to govern. He was unsure not only
of his army but of the general temper of his subjects. It seemed safer to do
nothing. Constantinople had weathered many storms before in the nine centuries
of her history. Doubtless she could weather another.
1203: The Young Alexius as Emperor
After attacking, without success,
Chalcedon and Chrysopolis, on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, the Crusaders
landed at Galata, across the Golden Horn. They occupied the town and were able
to break the chain across the entrance to the Golden Horn and to bring their
ships into the harbour. The young Alexius had led them to believe that all
Byzantium would rise to welcome him. They were surprised to find the city gates
closed against them and soldiers manning the walls. Their first attempts at
assault, made from their ships against the walls along the Golden Horn, were
held; but after a fierce struggle on 17 July Dandolo and the Venetians effected
a breach. Alexius III, who was as surprised as the Crusaders to find his city
defended, was already meditating flight; he had read in the Bible how David had
fled before Absalom and so had lived to recover his throne. Taking with him his
favourite daughter and a bag of precious stones, he now slipped through the
land-walls and took refuge at Mosynopolis in Thrace. The government officials,
left without an Emperor, made a quick but subtle decision. They brought the
blind ex-Emperor Isaac out from his prison and set him on the throne,
announcing to Dandolo and the Crusaders that as the Pretender’s father had been
restored there was no need to continue fighting. The young Alexius had chosen
hitherto to ignore his father’s existence, but he could not well repudiate him
now. He persuaded his allies to call off the attack. Instead, they sent an
embassy into the city to say that they would recognize Isaac if his son was
raised to be co-Emperor and if they both honoured the treaty that the latter
had made. Isaac promised to carry out their demands. On 1 August, at a solemn
service in the Church of St Sophia, in the presence of the leading Crusader
barons, Alexius IV was crowned to be his father’s colleague.
Alexius IV soon found that an Emperor
cannot be as irresponsible as a pretender. His attempt to force the clergy of
the city to admit the supremacy of Rome and to introduce Latin usages was met
with sullen resistance. Nor was it easy for him to raise all the money that he
had promised. He rashly began his reign by making lavish gifts to the Crusader
leaders, whose greed was thereby stimulated. But when he had to hand over to
the Venetians the money due to them from the Crusaders, the Treasury was found
to be insufficiently well supplied. Alexius therefore announced new taxes, and
further enraged the Church by confiscating large quantities of ecclesiastical
plate, to be melted down for the Venetians. Throughout the autumn and winter of
1203 the atmosphere in the city grew steadily more tense. The sight of the
haughty Frankish knights striding through their streets exasperated the
citizens. Trade was at a standstill. Parties of drunken Western soldiers
constantly pillaged the villages in the suburbs, so that life was no longer
safe outside the walls. A disastrous fire swept through a whole quarter of the
city when some Frenchmen in an access of piety burned down the mosque built for
the use of visiting Moslem merchants. The Crusaders on their side were as
dissatisfied as the Byzantines. They came to realize that the Byzantine
government was quite unable to carry out the promises made by Alexius IV.
Neither the men nor the money that he had offered were forthcoming. Alexius
himself soon gave up the hopeless task of trying to content his guests. He
invited them to an occasional feast at the palace, and with their help he made
a brief military excursion against his uncle Alexius III in Thrace, returning
home to celebrate a triumph as soon as he had won one little skirmish. The rest
of his days and nights were spent in private pleasures. His father Isaac, who
was too blind to take part in the government, shut himself up with his
favourite astrologers, whose prophecies gave him no reassurance for the future.
An open breach was inevitable; and Dandolo did his best, by making unreasonable
demands, to hasten it on.
Only two men in Constantinople seemed
fitted to take control, both of them sons-in-law of the ex-Emperor Alexius III.
Anna’s husband, Theodore Lascaris, was a distinguished soldier who had
organized the first defence against the Latins. But after his father-in-law’s
flight he had gone into retirement. Eudocia’s husband, Alexius Murzuphlus, had,
on the contrary, sought the favour of Alexius IV and had been given the title
of Protovestiarius. He had now made himself the leader of the nationalists.
Probably in order to frighten Alexius IV from the throne he organized a riot in
January 1204. But its only concrete result was the destruction of the great
statue of Athena, the work of Phidias, which stood in the forum facing the
west. It was hacked to pieces by a drunken mob, because the goddess seemed to
be beckoning to the invaders.
1204: Revolution in the Palace
In February a deputation from the
Crusaders came to the palace of Blachernae to demand from Alexius IV the
immediate fulfilment of his promises. He could only confess his impotence; and
the delegates were nearly torn to pieces by the angry crowd as• they passed out
from the imperial audience chamber. The populace then rushed to St Sophia and
there they declared Alexius deposed and elected in his place an obscure
nobleman called Nicholas Canabus, who happened to be present and who tried to
repudiate the honour. Murzuphlus then invaded the palace. No one attempted to
defend Alexius IV, who was thrown into a dungeon and strangled there,
universally and deservedly unlamented. His father Isaac died of grief and
judicious ill-treatment a few days later. The shadowy Canabus was imprisoned;
and Murzuphlus ascended the throne as Alexius V.
The palace revolution was a direct
challenge to the Crusaders. The Venetians had long been urging on them that the
only effective course was to take Constantinople by storm and to install there
a Westerner as Emperor. Their advice seemed now to be justified. But it would
not be easy to choose an Emperor. Discussions were carried out throughout the
month of March at the camp at Galata. There were some who pressed for the
election of Philip of Swabia, to unite the two Empires. But Philip was far
away. He had been excommunicated, and the Venetians disliked the idea of one
powerful Empire. Boniface of Montferrat was the obvious candidate. But there
again, in spite of Dandolo’s protestations of affection for him, the Venetians
disapproved. Boniface was too ambitious for their tastes. He had, moreover,
connections with the Genoese. It was decided at last that a panel of six Franks
and six Venetians should elect the Emperor as soon as the city was taken. If,
as seemed best, the Emperor was to be a Frank, then a Venetian should be
elected as Patriarch. The Emperor should have for himself the great imperial
palace and the residential palace of Blachernae, and a quarter of the city and
the Empire. The remaining three-quarters should go half to the Venetians and
half to the Crusading knights, to be divided into fiefs for them. With the
exception of the Doge all the fief-holders should do homage to the Emperor. All
things would thus be ordered to ‘the honour of God, of the Pope and of the
Empire’. The pretence that the expedition was ever to go on to fight the
infidel was frankly abandoned.
Alexius V was a vigorous but not a popular
ruler. He dismissed any minister whom he thought disloyal to his person,
including the historian Nicetas Choniates, who took vengeance on him in his
History. There was some attempt to repair the walls and organize the population
for the defence of the city. But the city guards had been demoralized by the
constant revolutions; and there had never been an opportunity for bringing up
troops from the provinces. And there were traitors in Venetian pay inside the
city. The first attack by the Crusaders, on 6 April, was driven back with heavy
losses. Six days later the Crusaders attacked again. There was a desperate
fight on the Golden Horn, where Greek ships vainly tried to keep the Venetian
fleet from landing troops below the walls. The main assault was launched
against the Blachernae quarter, where the land-walls came down to the Golden
Horn. A breach was made in the outer wall there. The defenders were holding in
the inner wall when, either by accident or by treachery, a fire broke out in
the city behind them and trapped them. Their defence collapsed; and the Franks
and the Venetians poured into the city. Murzuphlus fled with his wife along the
walls to the Golden Gate, near the Marmora, and out into Thrace, to seek refuge
with his father-in-law at Mosynopolis. When it was known that he had fled, the
remaining nobles met in St Sophia to offer the crown to Theodore Lascaris. But
it was too late to save the city. Theodore refused the empty honour. He came out
with the Patriarch to the Golden Milestone in the square between the church and
the Great Palace and spoke passionately to the Varangian Guard, telling them
that they would gain nothing by surrender now to new masters. But their spirit
was broken; they would fight no more. So Theodore and his wife and the
Patriarch, with many of the nobility, slipped down to the palace harbour and
took ship for Asia.
1204: The Sack of Constantinople
There was a little fighting in the streets
as the invaders forced their way through the city. By next morning the Doge and
the leading Crusaders were established in the Great Palace, and their soldiers
were told that they might spend the next three days in pillage.
The sack of Constantinople is unparalleled
in history. For nine centuries the great city had been the capital of Christian
civilization. It was filled with works of art that had survived from ancient
Greece and with the masterpieces of its own exquisite craftsmen. The Venetians
indeed knew the value of such things. Wherever they could they seized treasures
and carried them off to adorn the squares and churches and palaces of their
town. But the Frenchmen and Flemings were filled with a lust for destruction.
They rushed in a howling mob down the streets and through the houses, snatching
up everything that glittered and destroying whatever they could not carry,
pausing only to murder or to rape, or to break open the wine-cellars for their
refreshment. Neither monasteries nor churches nor libraries were spared. In St
Sophia itself drunken soldiers could be seen tearing down the silken hangings
and pulling the great silver iconostasis to pieces, while sacred books and
icons were trampled under foot. While they drank merrily from the altar-vessels
a prostitute set herself on the Patriarch’s throne and began to sing a ribald
French song. Nuns were ravished in their convents. Palaces and hovels alike
were entered and wrecked. Wounded women and children lay dying in the streets.
For three days the ghastly scenes of pillage and bloodshed continued, till the
huge and beautiful city was a shambles. Even the Saracens would have been more
merciful, cried the historian Nicetas, and with truth.