God's War: A New History of the Crusades

The Fourth Crusade found itself before the walls of Constantinople after a series of contingent decisions each of which created new unforeseen problems. Neither some fanciful conspiracy nor a general mind-set allegedly susceptible to anti-Greek propaganda adequately explains the course of events. Instead, conflicting ties of solidarity, honour, obligation and advantage exerted the strongest pressures, not least because the expedition was run on remarkably consensual lines. Although a small, possibly unrepresentative group determined the eventual destination of the crusade, their decisions were always subject to debate, scrutiny and dissent among the wider body of crucesignati. Proponents of the diversions were openly unapologetic. Villehardouin saw them as a matter of honour; Hugh of St Pol, in the context of the union of the churches, called the attack on Constantinople in 1203 ‘the business of Jesus Christ’, a clear association with holy war.⁴⁴ The diversion to Byzantium was no accident, but rather the result of conscious choices painfully, openly and controversially reached. The motives behind them were immediate, contradictory, self-deluding and muddled rather than treacherous or malign.

CONSTANTINOPLE

The Fourth Crusade went to Constantinople to install Alexius Angelus as emperor before continuing their voyage east. In the eleven months after they reached the Bosporus, the crusaders were involved in two sieges, a number of major battles and three changes to the regime, the last producing a new Veneto-Latin order in Byzantium that changed the Greek empire for good. The protracted failure of Alexius Angelus’s scheme drew the crusaders so firmly into Byzantine domestic politics that they were unable to extricate themselves without risking their own destruction. In the end their very success in surmounting successive crises destroyed their capacity to pursue their original intention. What had been meant to secure the crusade ended it.

After a leisurely cruise around the coast of Greece, during which the fleet fanned out in raids and to collect supplies, the crusaders arrived at Chalcedon, on the Asiatic shore opposite Constantinople, on 24 June 1203. Two days later they transferred their camp to Scutari, further north on the east bank of the Bosporus. Two central facts became clear within a few days. Alexius III refused to surrender and his subjects entirely failed to share the crusaders’ enthusiasm for his nephew. When Alexius was paraded on a galley in front of the sea walls of Constantinople, none of the watching inhabitants seemed to know who he was, still less voice any support.⁴⁵ His entourage of Venetians and western crusaders cannot have enhanced his attraction for the locals. Realization of this sullen indifference, especially so publicly demonstrated, must have been a nasty moment for the crusade leaders. They were too far committed – and too bereft of funds – to withdraw. Their only option was war.

On 5–6 July, a forced landing secured a bridgehead on the European shore at Galata while the Venetian galleys breached the chain across the Golden Horn, Constantinople’s natural deep-water harbour on its northern flank. The fleet transferred to the shelter of the Golden Horn, with the troops establishing a camp outside the Blachernae Gate at the north-west angle of the city walls and close to the imperial palace. On 17 July a concerted amphibious attack was launched, the Venetians managing to establish control of a long section of the walls to the east of the Blachernae Palace, which they sought to defend by starting a fire that soon ran out of control, destroying large areas, perhaps 120 acres, of the central part of the city. As the main army struggled to penetrate the land walls, they also had to contend with an attempted encirclement by Alexius III, who, faced with a robust advance by his outnumbered opponents, lamely retreated without engaging the crusaders. Much of the heaviest resistance, at Blachernae as on 5 July at Galata, was mounted by Italians and the Varangian guard mainly recruited from northern and western Europe. It said much for the plight of Byzantium that its fate was being decided by two western armies.

17. Constantinople at the Time of the Fourth Crusade

Although the assaults of 17 July failed to give the crusaders the city, its political impact achieved their aims. His city in flames, his enemies intact, his reputation disintegrating, the ill-prepared, discomposed and out- manoeuvred Alexius III, never a strong military figure, prudently chose to flee the city. By abandoning his post – ‘driven away by no one’ was Nicetas Choniates’s contemptuous if unfair comment⁴⁶ – Alexius did more to wrong-foot the crusaders than he managed by his military ploys. Once his departure was known, in an attempt not to have to submit to foreign conquerors, remaining elements in the imperial bureaucracy, many of whom, like Nicetas Choniates, had served Alexius III’s predecessor, released the blinded Isaac II and reappointed him emperor. This preserved the fiction of Byzantine imperial integrity. It also presented the crusaders with a problem, as Isaac was not party to their agreement with his son Alexius and his presence on the throne ensured the continuance of pro-Hellenic factions proximate to power. Only after a rather tense conference with representatives of the Venetians and crusaders did Isaac accede to the Zara/Corfu compact to reunite the Greek church with Rome and pay for the crusaders’ expenses and projected campaign in the east.⁴⁷ The guarantee for the westerners’ price for peace was the association in the imperial dignity of young Alexius. On 1 August, the pretender was crowned co-emperor as Alexius IV. Appropriately Alexius IV’s first act, presented by Robert of Clari effectively as the condition for his elevation, was to hand over 50,000 marks to the Venetians, with another 34,000 as the balance of the crusaders’ debt. A further 16,000 went to pay off the debts incurred by crusaders to meet the transport charges in 1202, mainly with Venetian bankers. Thus all, or almost all, of 100,000 marks went to Venice and her citizens.⁴⁸ Nothing could have more starkly exposed the centrality of the 1201 treaty and the continued Venetian role in the whole enterprise.

Unlike his father, whose support was feeble enough, Alexius IV had no political base within the Greek establishment. Recognizing his survival depended on the crusaders’ continued presence, Alexius IV, a frequent visitor to his patrons in the western army’s camp and knowing how they operated, privately offered to hire them to stay as his protectors in Constantinople until March 1204, when it was thought the expedition to Egypt could begin. In return he would subsidize the crusaders for a full year from the expiry of the Venice treaty, Michaelmas 1203 to Michaelmas 1204, thus underwriting a summer campaign season in the east.⁴⁹ The leaders’ reaction revealed with startling clarity how the crusade was organized. After being told of Alexius’s scheme, the wider council of barons insisted they could not give their approval without the general consent of the army, ‘le comun de l’ost’. A parlement was summoned, attended by the barons, company commanders (‘li chevetaigne’) and ‘most of the knights’ (‘des chevaliers la graindre parties’).⁵⁰ Those who at Corfu had only consented to stay with the expedition on condition they would be assisted to travel to Outremer in the autumn passage objected to yet another delay: ‘Give us the ships as you swore to do’.⁵¹ After the now familiar wrangling over what would best serve the interests of the Holy Land, to reassure the impatient and doubtful yet another deal was struck with the Venetians. After Alexius IV had ‘paid them enough to make it worth their while’, they promised to keep their fleet on station and at the crusaders’ disposal until Michaelmas 1204. To signal their serious intent, the leadership announced they had sent envoys to Egypt to challenge al- Adil.⁵² With transport apparently secured and underwritten by Alexius IV, the crusaders agreed to the emperor’s proposition. The immediate benefit to Alexius was realized when he hired Boniface of Montferrat, Hugh of St Pol and Henry of Flanders, among others, to escort him on a tour of Thrace to begin to establish his authority in provincial Byzantium and prevent a counter-coup by Alexius III. Allegedly huge amounts of gold were showered on the crusade leaders who accompanied Alexius IV, and even then some felt underpaid.⁵³

The new agreement with the western invaders hardly endeared them to the locals. Relations were further damaged when a raid by pious louts from the crusader camp at Galata on a mosque situated outside the walls on the opposite shore of the Golden Horn provoked a general affray when Greek residents came to assist their Muslim neighbours.⁵⁴ To protect themselves, the westerners set fire to the mosque and surrounding properties, deliberately intending to create as much destruction as possible. With a northerly wind fanning the flames, the fire burned for three days, cutting a devastating swathe through the centre of the city from the Golden Horn to the Sea of Marmora, consuming 440 densely built-up and populated acres. Unsurprisingly, Constantinopolitans turned against members of the western communities living within the walls, thousands of whom fled across the Golden Horn for the protection of the crusader camp, a mixed blessing for the invaders, at once providing more manpower and skilled labour while further testing the supply of provisions.

The deteriorating relations between the westerners and the Greeks was compounded by growing disenchantment with the new regime from both sides. The Greeks complained no action had been taken to restrict