God's War: A New History of the Crusades

crusaders would pay four marks per horse and two per man, a total of 85,000 marks. The Venetians themselves would contribute their own fleet of fifty galleys on condition that each party shared equally all conquests, by land or sea, for the duration of the contract. The crusaders were to muster at Venice by 29 June 1202. Payments were to be made in four instalments: 15,000 marks on 1 August 1201; 10,000 on 1 November; 10,000 on 2 February 1202; the balance of 50,000 at the end of April 1202. To allow building of the fleet to begin immediately, the crusader ambassadors borrowed 5,000 marks, which they deposited with the doge. A secret understanding that the destination of the armada would be Egypt, specifically Cairo, ‘because from there the Turks could be more easily crushed than from any other part of their territory’, was omitted from the text of the treaty for public relations reasons.³⁵ However, the nature of the fleet, including the specialist uissier landing craft and the large squadron of Venetian galleys, clearly indicated an intended attack on hostile beaches and fighting at sea or in rivers, the Nile Delta, not the friendly port of Acre or the hills of Judea.

The Treaty of Venice became possibly the most famous and notorious transport contract in European history. As the ultimate cause of determining the course of the Fourth Crusade to the walls of Constantinople, it has attracted enormous controversy, starting with some of the crusaders themselves, who lived with its consequences.³⁶ The terms of the treaty acted as a vice from which the crusaders were unable to escape for the simple reason that the fundamental calculation on which the agreement was based proved spectacularly wrong. The fixed price in the treaty assumed an army of 33,500. This cut two ways. The crusaders had to collect the numbers because part, at least, of the price would have to be met by the individual crucesignati, even if the bulk of the money was expected to be met by the crusade leadership. The Venetians had to insist on the agreed price both because the fleet had to be prepared before the crusaders arrived and because of the effect of its construction on the Venetian economy. As Robert of Clari reported the doge arguing in 1202,

as soon as your messengers had made the bargain with me I commanded through all my land that no trader should conduct any business but that all should help prepare this navy. So they have waited ever since and have not made money for a year and a half.³⁷

On top of that, unspecified in the treaty, but unavoidable, the Venetians needed to provide the crews for the fleet. On one recent calculation, these could have numbered over 30,000. Deprived of a large proportion of commercial income for a year, investing in a highly risky venture that promised no immediate dividend, the Venetians, especially the doge, whose pet project it so evidently was, were gambling as much as the crusaders.

Thus the treaty became a potentially ruinous trap for both parties. The central issue revolved around the numbers. Per head, the sums negotiated for carrying the horses and men were not exorbitant. They were in line with Philip II’s contract with Genoa in 1190. But was it realistic to expect so many crusaders to enlist and, equally uncertain, follow the provisions of a contract drawn up only by one group of leaders? For all their wealth and political clout, the French counts had no authority to bind any but themselves and their vassals. Were the crusade ambassadors, therefore, ignorant, naive or just hopelessly optimistic? Not necessarily. In 1198, the pope had invited counts, barons and cities to raise troops according to their resources. His proposed clerical tax had been intended to pay for an army of mercenaries whose numbers could, presumably, have been calculated with some degree of accuracy. It may have been just such a force that Theobald of Champagne envisaged supporting with his treasure of 25,000 livres. The 20,000 ‘serjanz a pie’ of the Venice treaty possibly referred to this division of soldiers paid out of central funds. If so, the figure had probably been reached by the crusade leaders at Compiegne. If Robert of Clari is correct, Villehardouin and his colleagues already knew the massive scale of their proposed army before they reached Venice; it was what persuaded Pisa not to join the bidding. Veterans of the Third Crusade had seen tens of thousands of troops shipped to Palestine between 1189 and 1191. Richard I’s fleet when it sailed from Messina in 1191 probably comprised over 200 ships. A recent estimate of the number of war galleys, horse transports and passenger ships needed to fulfil the 1201 treaty puts the total figure at over 240 vessels, a figure not far from Nicetas Choniates’s estimate at the time. According to two independent crusader witnesses, the fleet that actually embarked from Venice in October 1202 numbered around 200 ships, still capable of carrying upwards of 20,000 men and crew.³⁸ The Treaty of Venice may have exaggerated the putative size of the crusade host that would arrive at Venice, but the figures agreed were not beyond reason.

Neither did inflated figures serve the interests of the Venetians, who stood to bear a massive loss if the contract was broken. The idea that the Venetians deliberately overpriced their services or increased the size of the contract in order to subvert the enterprise for their own advantage lacks circumstantial evidence unless it is assumed that they had a deep-seated plan to use the crusade to establish an empire of their own. Both the treaty and recent Venetian history makes this appear unlikely. There is nothing in the 1201 agreement to cast doubt on the sincerity of the plan to attack Egypt. There was no pressing need for war with Byzantium. Although Venetians had suffered badly from Greek hostility in 1171 and 1182, losing commercial privileges and their base in Constantinople, by 1187 their trading quarter had been restored and in 1189 reparations for the expulsion of 1171 agreed. Dandolo himself successfully negotiated a final settlement and confirmation of Venetian rights in the Byzantine empire in 1198. This secured Venice special status in the empire and free access to its markets, although Alexius III’s increasing favour towards the Genoese, who were especially dominant in the Black Sea, may have caused disquiet.³⁹ More generally, Venice was not, in 1201, an imperial power in a political as opposed to commercial sense. Nothing in Doge Dandolo’s career suggested he was contemplating a radical departure from the vigorous pursuit of traditional Venetian interests. Nicetas Choniates thought Dandolo was motivated by revenge for longstanding personal as well as civic injuries done him by the Greeks.⁴⁰ Yet despite the almost certainly groundless rumours that he had been blinded in Constantinople during the troubles of 1171, Dandolo seemed to be content with a pacific policy towards the Byzantines and the new status quo of the 1198 treaty. With well over half of Venice’s eastern trade coming through Byzantium, peace offered a more secure future than war.

Egypt and the great entreput of Alexandria presented a very different option, a greater risk for a much greater potential profit. The centre of the hugely lucrative spice trade, handling the spices that had been shipped from south-east Asia to the Red Sea ports and thence to the Nile before forward transit to Europe, as well as a source of wheat, sugar and alum (used in dyeing and leather making) and a market for timber and metals, Alexandria had accommodated western traders since the eleventh century. However, compared with Genoa and Pisa, Venice maintained only a modest presence there, trade with Egypt constituting perhaps 10 per cent of the city’s eastern business. Dandolo had seen the opportunities at first hand during a visit to Egypt in 1174. In 1198, perhaps in response to Cardinal Soffredo’s mission, the pope granted a licence to Venice to continue trading with Egypt in non-military materials (i.e. not metal and timber) despite the general, and largely ignored, ban decreed by the Third Lateran Council.⁴¹ A successful crusade presented Venice with the chance to expand its share of the richest market in the Levant. The stipulation in the 1201 treaty for equal shares in any conquests recognized Venice’s enormous risk as well as its huge material and human contribution, with the war galleys and numbers of crew amounting to only little less than the estimated crusader army. It also echoed the so-called Pactum Warmundi of 1124, under which the Venetians had agreed to assist the Franks under Patriarch Gormund of Jerusalem capture Tyre in return for a third of the city.⁴² In a new Frankish Alexandria, Venice would control most of the trade. Thus the crusade presented Venice with a unique commerical opportunity, a chance to assert civic patriotism and the undying glory of winning back Jerusalem, which the city’s Genoese and Pisan rivals had failed to achieve ten years before. It is profitless to disentangle these motives; each complemented the other in reinforcing what was an unprecedented act of corporate faith in both the crusade ideal and its practical achievement. The grand public ceremony in St Mark’s to accept the treaty – attended, Villehardouin insisted over-excitedly, by 10,000 people – formed an appropriately lavish act of civic dedication.

THE MUSTER

After leaving Venice, four of the French ambassadors unsuccessfully tried to interest Genoa and Pisa in a share of the crusade’s business, presumably hoping the Venice treaty would act as an incentive. Villehardouin and one of Count Baldwin’s envoys pressed on towards France.⁴³ Crossing the Mont Cenis pass, they encountered a group of Champagne crusaders travelling south, bound for Apulia, where their leader, Walter of Brienne, held claims. His small company found service with the pope fighting Markward of Anweiler. None of them reached Venice. This chance meeting underlined one of the most obvious faults in the Venice treaty. Those who