God's War: A New History of the Crusades

could afford the journey east for themselves or who had no contacts with the three great French counts were under no obligation to abide by the treaty. Villehardouin’s account of the crusade is peppered by asides lamenting or criticizing the contingents that avoided Venice and made their way east independently. These included not just those outside the Champagne–Flanders–Blois orbit, such as the bishop of Autun, the count of Forez and crusaders from the Ile de France, but also many who had received financial help from Theobald of Champagne, including Renaud of Dampierre, the count’s own substitute. The same was true of some Flemish lords, such as Gilles de Trasignies, who enjoyed Count Baldwin’s largesse. The Flemish fleet also fell outside the Venice treaty; probably it was never intended to rendezvous at Venice. The binding nature of the oaths sworn at Venice that Villehardouin insisted upon appeared less obvious to others. The surprise is less that so few mustered at Venice but that so many with no direct association with the crusade leaders took advantage of the transport on offer, including the Basel crusaders with Martin of Pairis, lords from the middle Rhine under the count of Katzenellenbogen and the companions of the bishop of Halberstadt in Saxony.⁴⁴

The cohesive nature of the enterprise was further threatened by the death on 24 May 1201 of Theobald of Champagne shortly after Villehardouin’s return from Venice. A seemingly charismatic enthusiast, despite his inexperience, his fellow crusading counts may have recognized him as their leader, possibly because of his youthful political neutrality in the contest between his uncles Philip II and Richard I. He left the 50,000 livres for the crusade, half for his own followers and half to help cover the crusade’s general expenses, which presumably included the Venetian transport fee. If his money had gained Theobald authority over the expedition, his legacy acted as a bait to tempt another to take his place. The manoeuvres during the early summer of 1201 to find a replacement for Theobald with the now explicit brief to command the expedition (‘la seigneurie de l’ost’)⁴⁵ remain obscure despite or perhaps because one of main players was Villehardouin himself. According to his testimony, he was part of a delegation of Champenois notables who offered Theobald’s money and the leadership first to Duke Eudes of Burgundy and then to another of Theobald’s cousins, the count of Bar-le-Duc. Both refused. Finally, at another gathering of the crusade leaders in June or July at Soissons, whose bishop, Nivelo, had already become established as the most influential bishop attached to the enterprise, Villehardouin proposed an unexpected candidate, Boniface marquis of Montferrat in northern Italy. The assembled lords agreed he should be approached.

The choice of Boniface was both something of a coup and something of a mystery. The Montferrat family was immensely grand, related to the Capetians and the Hohenstaufen and with a pluperfect crusading pedigree. Boniface’s father had fought on the Second Crusade and at Hattin; his eldest brother, William, had been the first husband of Sybil of Jerusalem in 1176 and father of Baldwin V. Another brother, Renier, had tried his luck in Byzantium politics, marrying Manuel I’s muscular daughter Maria in 1179 and losing his life in the coup against his brother-in-law Alexius II by Andronicus I in 1182. A third brother, Conrad, married Theodora Angelus, sister of the Byzantine emperor, Isaac II, before avoiding the fate of his brother by sailing to Tyre in the summer of 1187 just in time to save the port from Saladin and begin his quest for the crown of Jerusalem. Boniface himself had been Isaac’s first choice for the hand of Theodora but, showing more scruples about bigamy than Conrad was later to display, declined as he was already married. This rather mixed record catalogues an important context for the events of the Fourth Crusade. Western aristocrats had been seeking their fortunes in Byzantium since the eleventh century, often with Greek encouragement. From mercenary chiefs to adopted members of the imperial family, the status of westerners rose, as more of Byzantine military and naval service were subcontracted to non-Greeks in the twelfth century. So, too, did local xenophobia and hostility. The family history also highlighted the differences between Boniface’s background and those of most of the French nobles who now sought his leadership.

Yet if Boniface possessed unusually apposite credentials for a crusade commander – immense wealth, exemplary connections, chivalric repute – his selection was unexpected. A whiff of conspiracy hangs over the whole episode. Villehardouin may have played a more significant role than he was prepared to recall. The first peculiarity lay in who was not chosen as the new leader. By virtue of wealth, commitment, size of following, traditional crusading ties and familiarity with the plans already in place, the most obvious replacement for Theobald was Count Baldwin of Flanders. His leadership may have caused problems for the Champenois, witnessed by their search elsewhere, or for Louis of Blois, Theobald’s cousin. More clearly, Baldwin’s elevation, giving him added authority, status and access to funds, would scarcely have been welcomed by Philip II, against whom he had allied only a few years earlier. The approaches to the duke of Burgundy and the count of Bar-le-Duc may have represented a case of ‘anyone but Baldwin’.

The second oddity rested with Boniface himself. Even Villehardouin admitted that his nomination was controversial, with many opposing the marquis.⁴⁶ Until 1201 the crusade had been run by a close-knit group of young, related French counts. Boniface was a middle-aged Italian who may not even have spoken langue d’oil, the vernacular of his would-be companions. He had not taken the cross and was probably personally unknown to most of those who endorsed his candidacy. The only one who may have encountered the marquis was Villehardouin, who possibly met him in Italy on his return from Venice. Another who knew Boniface was Philip II. According to a life of Innocent III, the Gesta Innocenti, written only a few years later, it had been King Philip who had proposed Boniface in the first place. Certainly when Boniface came to France, before accepting the leadership, he visited Philip first. His formal acceptance of the cross and the ‘seigneurie de l’ost’ at Soissons was presided over by Bishop Nivelo, who enjoyed royal favour.⁴⁷ The evidence of Capetian political intrigue is circumstantial but neither incredible nor unlikely. It would not only have been out of character but politically foolish for Philip not to try to influence events of profound tenurial and diplomatic significance.

The sense of Boniface’s detachment from the other leaders persisted. After his appointment, he conducted his own independent diplomacy surrounding the crusade involving his cousin, Philip of Swabia, and the succession to the Greek throne. He was late arriving at Venice in 1202, leaving most of the arrangements for paying the Venetians to Baldwin of Flanders. He did not sail to Zara with the fleet in October 1202, arriving there only after the city’s fall in November. He delayed leaving Zara for Corfu in April 1203 to wait for his protege, young Alexius Angelus, whose bid for the Byzantine throne Boniface had championed. This is not to suggest that Boniface subverted the crusade for his own ends or never intended to campaign in the Levant. However, his perspectives and interests were not those of his French colleagues. As the crusaders were securing Constantinople after its fall on 12 April 1204, Greek citizens apparently came up to westerners crying, ‘Aiios phasileos marchio,’ or ‘Blessed king marquis’: ‘they did so because they thought the marquis, whom the Greeks had known well… was undoubtedly about to be king of the captured city’.⁴⁸ Boniface’s actual relationship with the French counts was made clear a few weeks later, when, despite being the nominal leader of the crusade, he failed to gain election as the new Latin emperor of Constantinople. That went to Baldwin of Flanders. Philip II would have been pleased. Count Baldwin would not be returning home.

In August 1201 Boniface was installed as leader of the crusade, seemingly with more powers than had been accorded Theobald. The other leaders probably swore oaths of fealty to Boniface to establish some hierarchical order in what at the best of times remained a quarrelsome and fissiparous command structure. Importantly, Boniface added his own sworn ratification to the Treaty of Venice.⁴⁹ He then left the other commanders to settle his affairs and visit Germany. There, at Philip of Swabia’s Christmas court at Hagenau, he met the exiled Byzantine pretender and Philip’s brother-in-law Alexius Angelus, whose appeals for help added a new dimension to the crusade’s strategic possibilities. Boniface’s tour may have encouraged further German recruitment, not least among supporters of Philip of Swabia, such as Bishop Conrad of Halberstadt.

These German contingents were among the last to reach Venice in the late summer of 1202.⁵⁰ Before them, from Easter 1202 onwards, thousands of crucesignati and hired troops, who may or may not have taken the cross, had converged on the Venetian lagoon. Their travel experiences evidently differed. Abbot Martin of Pairis with his Basel company received enthusiastic hospitality at Verona, where they stayed for some weeks in May or June, even though the city was already crammed with crusaders heading eastwards. Another visitor at Verona at the time was Alexius Angelus, trying to drum up support for his cause. Others encountered a different sort of Lombard welcome, with crusaders denied markets and hurried on, not being allowed to stay anywhere for more than one night, an indication that local resources and charity were equally finite.⁵¹ Lombardy was particularly affected, with the German and most of the French contingents passing through, even if some of them decided to sail from the ports of southern Italy rather than Venice. This soon became a serious problem. Baldwin of Flanders, one of the first important lords to reach Venice, was sufficiently worried about the commitment even of Louis of Blois to send Villehardouin and Hugh of St Pol to meet him at Pavia