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  The attackers debated their next move. The Venetians chose to launch an assault from scaling ladders on the ships; the French preferred to fight on land. They repaired a bridge over the Golden Horn (again with a curious lack of opposition from Alexius III), and set up a fortified camp on the northern edge of the city. Given the size of Constantinople a blockade was unrealistic, and when Alexius III finally began to order sallies and raids the crusaders started to run low on food. By mid-July they had only three weeks’ supplies left and their momentum looked fatally stalled. In desperation, on July 17, they launched a twin-pronged assault. The Venetians sent a hail of arrows and stones toward the walls while a small group pounded at the fortifications with a battering ram. In one memorable incident the aged Doge Dandolo showed unparalleled courage and leadership qualities.41 Angered by the failure of his people to engage closely with the Greeks, he commanded the crew of his galley to pull ahead of the others. With the banner of Saint Mark fluttering close by, the blind old man stood proudly at the prow of his ship. When the boat grounded he ordered himself carried ashore and, as he had hoped, once his men saw that their commander’s banner had landed, they hastened forward, fearful of being shamed by his example. The intensity of this thrust terrified the defenders and a crucial first bridgehead was gained. Alexius III dispatched a contingent of the feared Varangian guard to stem the Venetians’ advance, and while these Russian and Scandinavian mercenaries managed to halt the attack, the Italians responded by starting a fire. Fanned by a strong westerly wind the flames soon consumed about 120 acres of the eastern side of the city—another serious blow to the inhabitants.

  The trauma of seeing dense clouds of black smoke billowing over Constantinople belatedly prompted Alexius III to act, and he led out the bulk of his army to confront the crusaders in front of the great Theodosian walls on the northeastern edge of the city. The westerners were terrified by the immensity of the Byzantine forces. While precise figures for the Greek army are unknown—it must have been many thousands—the crusaders (excluding the Venetians) by now numbered around five hundred knights, five hundred other mounted men, and around two thousand foot soldiers. Back at their camp the cooks and stable lads donned pots and horse blankets for protection, so great was their fear of being overwhelmed. As the Byzantines drew up, the crusaders advanced toward them in tight formation. Some of their leaders wanted to stop or retreat to camp, but others counseled them to hold their nerve and, in the face of seemingly hopeless odds, the westerners continued to move resolutely forward. A small waterway, the River Lycus, barred their way, yet Alexius III, far from choosing this moment to unleash a tidal wave of his own troops, decided to withdraw behind the city walls. The reasoning behind such a baffling move is almost impossible to fathom. Certainly the Greeks feared the impact of a crusader cavalry charge, but the Byzantines’ numerical advantage surely meant they could sustain a degree of loss. The crusaders were adamant that it was their martial vigor that had won the day and one of their leaders, Hugh of Saint-Pol, proudly reported: “When they saw that we were brave and steadfast and that we moved forward . . . in formation and that we could not be overrun or broken they rightly became terrified and confused. Retreating before us they dared not fight by day.”42 Villehardouin experienced an overwhelming sense of relief: “Know that God has never delivered any people from such great danger as He did the army that day. Know moreover that there was no man present so brave that he did not feel very glad about this.”43 The long-held stereotype of the effeminate and unwarlike Greek had been confirmed.

  The blow to Byzantine morale was catastrophic. There was fury inside Constantinople and the eyewitness Niketas Choniates wrote that Alexius III “returned in utter disgrace, having only made the enemy more haughty and insolent.” Given their fast-expiring supplies of food, the emperor need only have contained the crusaders for a matter of days before they would have been obliged to leave or to sue for peace. Choniates was scathing about Alexius III’s behavior: “it was as though he had laboured hard to make a miserable corpse of the city, to bring her to utter ruin in defiance of her destiny, and he hastened her along her destruction.”44

  On the night of July 17 the emperor gathered as much money as he could find and fled Constantinople. The following morning senior Byzantine officials went to his predecessor, the sightless Isaac Angelos, and, in contravention of the customary practice of refusing to crown a blind man, offered him the imperial robes and insignia. They hoped the returnee ruler would influence his son, Prince Alexius, to call off his allies and they sent messengers to the crusaders’ camp seeking peace. As news of events overnight broke, a huge cheer erupted from the westerners; from the verge of defeat, God had granted them victory—and with relatively few casualties. Then, in due fulfillment of the agreement between Prince Alexius and the Crusaders, the youth was enthroned as co-emperor with his father.

  Villehardouin led an embassy into the city for talks to confirm that Isaac would uphold his son’s promises. The envoys passed in front of the gathered Byzantine courtiers, attired in their customary splendor. Isaac was appalled when he learned the details of Alexius’s pact with the crusaders, but given the latter’s obvious ascendancy he could not resist. Villehardouin reported his reaction: “In truth, this agreement is a most burdensome one, and I do not see quite how it can be fulfilled. However, you have done both my son and myself such a service that if you had been granted the whole empire you would have well deserved it.”45 While Villehardouin may have massaged the moral worth of Isaac’s words, as well as hinting at some of what was to come, this assessment of the onerous nature of the deal was true enough.

  The crusaders withdrew over the Golden Horn and camped in the Galata district of the city. They were well provided with food and most took the opportunity to visit the churches of Constantinople and to see the many magnificent collections of relics. This was also an ideal time for the crusaders to appreciate the Greeks’ true wealth and to learn exactly where their treasures were stored.

  The westerners sent home a series of triumphant letters that carefully portrayed the merits of their actions and pointed out the advantages of their decision to go to Constantinople.46 Innocent remained highly antagonistic toward the doge, although several crusade leaders made a point of stressing his virtues and described a man “who is prudent, discreet and skilled in hard decision-making.”47 They also reminded Innocent of the immense advance in spiritual authority that had accrued to the papacy: “We carried on the business of Jesus Christ with His help, to the point that the Eastern Church (whose head is Constantinople), along with the emperor and his entire empire, reunited with its head, the Roman pontiff . . . acknowledges itself to be the daughter of the Roman Church.”48

  A TROUBLED PEACE AND THE DESCENT INTO WAR

  In his coronation speech, Alexius IV clearly envisaged problems in fulfilling this promise: “we will prudently and with all our might, influence the Eastern Church towards the same end;” in other words, he was unable to guarantee the Orthodox clerics would follow his lead—a sign of his own weakness as much as anything else.49 Alexius IV also began to hand over the vast sums of money he owed the crusaders, although he was soon compelled to melt down precious icons and relics to pay his allies, a move that provoked deep hostility from his own people. Choniates wrote of the subversion of the Byzantine state and “of revered vessels seized from churches with utter indifference and given over to the enemy troops as common silver and gold.”50

  By the late summer of 1203 it was too late to invade Egypt, although that certainly remained the crusaders’ intention. Instead they decided to help Alexius IV and set out on a tour of the region designed to consolidate his authority and to raise money. As the young emperor acknowledged, “You should know then that the Greeks hate me on account of you. If you leave I will lose this land and they will put me to death.”51 Alexius also promised to supply the westerners with all necessary supplies and to help the Venetians prepare their fleet ready to embark in the spring of 1204.52


  While Alexius IV and the leading French crusaders were away, tensions between the Greeks and the remaining westerners took a serious turn for the worse. A group of crusaders attacked a small mosque—probably built for Muslim traders during Isaac’s alliance with Saladin—near the shoreline of the Golden Horn. The occupants begged the locals for help and, only too pleased to turn against the hated invaders, many citizens rushed to join the fray. In response, as they had done during the first siege of Constantinople back in June, the crusaders started a fire, although this time the consequences were incomparably worse. The blaze lasted for three days and ripped through areas of wooden housing, turning more than four hundred acres of the city into a smoldering, charred wasteland. Understandably the Greeks were outraged at this vandalism of their precious city, and any westerners living in Constantinople—including several thousand traders based there—had to flee and take shelter in the crusaders’ camp at Galata.53

  Isaac remained obliged to keep melting down precious objects to pay the westerners. In a play on his family name of Angelos, Choniates condemned him as “the incendiary angel of evil,” but by mid-November he stopped handing over any money and tensions grew. The return of Alexius IV and the northern French nobles brought even further trouble. The lack of cash infuriated the crusader leadership, but Alexius knew they could not set sail for Egypt at that time of year and that they relied on him for food. Violence and skirmishing grew ever more frequent and eventually both sides called for a formal summit.

  The crusader delegation brought along the sealed documents that testified to the agreement between Alexius and themselves. They reminded him of his moral and financial duties but now added a threat: if he failed to comply, “you should know that from this time forward they [the crusaders] will not regard you as their lord or friend. Instead they will recover what is owed to them by whatever means necessary . . . they have never acted deceitfully and it would be against the custom of their country to do so.”54 This warning, combined with the slight on the Greek character, provoked outrage and the envoys barely escaped the palace alive. Alexius IV, of course, could neither deny the oath, nor, in a hall of his own people, favor the westerners.

  Dandolo made one last attempt to recover the situation. He approached Alexius in person and urged him to remember what the crusaders had done for him, but the young man was so paralyzed by his own political weaknesses that he dismissed the doge with insults. Dandolo exploded with rage: “Wretched boy! We dragged you out of the filth and into the filth we will cast you again. And I defy you, and I give you warning that I will do you all the harm in my power from this moment forwards.”55 “And so the war began,” as Villehardouin succinctly observed.56

  On the night of January 1, 1204, the Byzantines made their most confrontational move yet. They filled seventeen vessels with combustible materials and, with the wind behind them, dispatched this deadly, floating pyre toward the Venetian ships. If the Greek boats became enmeshed with those of the Italians, then the crusaders would be at the mercy of the Byzantine Empire. A watchman sounded the alarm and the doge ordered galleys to row out to the burning boats, throw grappling irons onto them, and pull them out into the channel. Against a backdrop of jeering locals the Venetians accomplished this task quite brilliantly and saved their ships.

  Such an aggressive action only increased the likelihood of full-scale confrontation. A Byzantine noble known as Murtzuphlus (a nickname meaning “mono-eyebrow”) emerged to focus the opposition to the westerners. Anger toward Alexius IV and his increasingly feeble father, Isaac, reached a peak. “Like a boiling kettle to blow off a steam of abuse,” a mob barged into the Hagia Sophia and demanded that the senate and leading churchmen elect a new ruler.57 Candidate after candidate declined such a dangerous role until a young noble named Nicholas Kannavos was seized and, against his will, anointed emperor on January 27. Later that day a desperate Alexius IV turned to the crusaders for help but his invitation for them to enter the city proved the final act of provocation to his enemies. That night, Murtzuphlus arrested him and cast him into prison. Within hours the usurper was crowned emperor (with the formal title of Alexius V). Now there were four holders of the imperial title in Constantinople—a ridiculous situation for one of the greatest institutions in Christendom, and a sign of just how moribund the Byzantine Empire had become.

  Within days Murtzuphlus killed Kannavos and Isaac: he also started to re-fortify the defenses of Constantinople and his energetic style inspired the imperial forces. Three Venetians were captured and Murtzuphlus commanded them to be suspended from hooks in front of the city walls before he personally set them alight in a gruesome demonstration of his personal hatred of westerners. Predictably, he withdrew food markets from the crusaders, which forced them to forage over considerable distances. Murtzuphlus planned to ambush one such raiding party but, disastrously for him, he lost not only the battle but also the great talisman of the Byzantine army, an icon of the Virgin, described as “a fellow general” by Choniates. To the crusader Robert of Clari this was inevitable because, as a usurper, the Greek “had no right to carry it and so was defeated.”58 Murtzuphlus foolishly tried to deny the loss to his people, and when the crusaders learned of this deception they cheerfully paraded the icon in front of the walls to humiliate their rival.

  Last-ditch attempts at diplomacy failed and, as Choniates pithily noted, “Their inordinate hatred for us and our excessive disagreement with them allowed for no humane feeling between us.”59 Murtzuphlus still feared that the crusaders might join with Alexius IV, and so on February 8 he strangled the young man; a grim end to the life of an individual whose efforts to assume his personal inheritance had provoked consequences of such terrible magnitude. To the crusaders, the murder of Alexius IV provided a powerful justification for the removal of his killer. Now, camped outside an implacably hostile city hundreds of miles from home, denied food, and in no condition to continue to the Holy Land, their options were extremely limited. If they gave up it would be a cause of intolerable shame and criticism, and their justification for going to Constantinople in the first instance had become redundant. In these circumstances, they decided to assault the city and to remove the treacherous Murtzuphlus.60

  THE SACK OF CONSTANTINOPLE, 1204

  Both sides prepared for war. The Venetian ships were equipped with, as Robert of Clari wrote, “marvellous engines.” They lashed together yardarms to form bridges about 110 feet long, suspended high on the mastheads and covered with hides to protect the attackers from missiles. These huge tubes would be brought up to the city walls to disgorge the crusader knights onto the battlements. Similar devices had been deployed the previous summer and, in an effort to counter them, Murtzuphlus ordered huge wooden towers to be constructed on top of the walls along the Golden Horn. These unwieldy creations, projecting perilously outward from the fortifications, and in some cases six or seven stories high, were covered in vinegar-soaked hides to protect them from missiles and flames. The end result must have looked like some freakish shantytown, but they were to play a crucial role in resistance to the attack.61

  As the crusaders organized their resources they also planned the division of their conquest. The senior leadership drew up what is known as the “March Pact” in which they agreed that all booty was to be centrally pooled with the first call being to pay off remaining debts to the Venetians. The identities of the Latin emperor and the patriarch were to be decided by a committee of six Frenchmen and six Venetians, a reflection of the parity of effort that the two groups had put into the enterprise. A further committee would allocate the lands of the Byzantine Empire to the conquerors while, naturally, the Venetians were guaranteed a position of economic dominance. The need to bring stability to the new empire was recognized in a decision to put off sailing to the Holy Land until 1205; finally, oaths were taken to try to prevent assaults on women and churchmen in the aftermath of the capture.62

  On April 8, 1204, the crusaders loaded their ships, then sought absolut
ion for their sins from the priesthood and prayed for divine aid. The next day the fleet—almost a mile long according to Villehardouin—began the short journey over the Golden Horn. Arranged in their familiar divisions, they moved across the inlet. In some areas a narrow strip of land lay between the fortifications and the water and it was here the French set to work. Scaling ladders were put to the walls and siege engines began to bombard the city; in turn, the defenders fired back their own missiles and poured boiling oil down onto the besiegers. Murtzuphlus proved an able commander and his sharp direction brought proper spirit to the Greeks’ resistance. The weather conditions helped him too—a contrary wind prevented the Venetian ships from drawing as near to the walls as they had hoped. Being unable to engage closely, the crusaders withdrew, to a huge cheer from the Greeks. Morale in the crusader camp was, unsurprisingly, fragile. The leadership acted quickly to prevent a complete collapse of hope and tried to encourage the troops; the clergy argued that the day’s events were simply a divine test of the crusaders’ resolve. They preached powerful sermons that claimed the Greeks were “worse than the Jews” and that their disobedience to the papacy merited punishment. In consequence, the crusaders were justified in their actions and deserved divine blessing and remission of their sins.63

  Four days later a second assault began. Again there was a period of fierce bombardment from both sides: “cries from the battle were so great that it seemed that the whole world was quaking,” wrote Villehardouin.64 At first it looked as though the Byzantines were holding firm but a fortuitous change in the breeze finally brought the crusaders’ ships up to the walls. Robert of Clari described what happened next: “by a miracle of God, the ship of the bishop of Soissons struck against one of the towers, as the sea, which is never still there, carried it forward.”65 Some of the Venetian vessels were lashed together in pairs and, appropriately enough, the Paradise and the Lady Pilgrim were the ships whose ladders locked one of the towers in a lethal embrace. Fortified by a potent combination of prayers and the offer of 100 silver marks to the first man onto the walls, crusaders gathered at the exits of their fortified bridges, swaying high above the deck and conscious that a mistimed jump would cause them to plummet to their death. Once over the dizzying chasm there remained the small matter of the defenders. A Venetian leaped across only to be killed, but two French knights succeeded in creating the space for others to join them and soon the first crusader banner fluttered above the battlements of Constantinople. To make real progress, however, required an entrance at ground level.