Ghost Empire

by Richard Fidler

  The Crusaders pleaded with Dandolo to come up with a solution and the sly old Doge made his move: he proposed a moratorium on all Crusader debt . . . for the moment. They could pay him later. In the meantime, perhaps the Crusaders could do the Republic of Venice a small service.

  Further down the Adriatic coast was a city called Zara, which had been captured by the King of Hungary.* If the Crusaders were prepared to help him recover Zara for Venice . . . well, he said, that might be to the benefit of both parties. Zara, he knew, was a wealthy city. The Crusaders would be entitled to half the booty. Maybe that would pay their debt to him.

  The Crusader leadership agreed to the new plan, but dissent broke out in the lower ranks. A diversion to attack a Christian city, some said, was outrageous, a violation of their sacred oath to make war on the Saracens. Some of the men packed up and left Venice in disgust, vowing to make their own way to the Holy Land.

  In this moment of doubt and confusion, Dandolo made a dramatic gesture. He announced that despite his age and his blindness, he would personally lead the Venetian fleet. Dandolo climbed into the pulpit of St Mark’s to address his people: ‘I am an old and feeble man who should have need of rest,’ he sighed. ‘But I see that no one could command and lead you like myself. If you consent, I will take the sign of the cross to guard you and direct you . . . If you consent, then I shall go to live – or die – with you and the pilgrims.’

  With that, the old man carefully stepped down from the pulpit and knelt before the altar. A cap with a cross was placed on his aged head. The old man had delivered a massive jolt of energy to his people: thousands of Venetian men, inspired by his valour, offered to join the Crusade. Venice’s commitment had ratcheted up dramatically. The entire fleet and half the city’s manpower was now dedicated to the Crusade. It was to be the biggest and most expensive enterprise in all of Venetian history.

  One of the Crusaders, Robert de Clari, later wrote that ‘the whole army seemed intoxicated that summer night’ as the Crusaders celebrated their alliance by parading through the streets of Venice with flickering candles fastened to the end of their lances.

  Zara

  THE VENETIAN FLEET sailed out from the lagoon in October 1202, festooned with shields and banners, led by Doge Dandolo’s special vermilion galley. Dandolo was spotted standing on the deck, next to a billowing marquee of red silk, seeing things other men could not.

  The fleet travelled down the Illyrian coast and pulled ashore outside the walls of Zara. They set up camp, assembled their catapults and prepared to attack. But before they could get underway, a message arrived from Rome. Pope Innocent had gotten wind of their plans to attack a Christian city, and expressly forbade the attack. All who disregarded this message, he warned, would be excommunicated. The Crusaders were dismayed, but a furious Dandolo insisted they keep their bargain to attack Zara.

  ‘I will not in any degree give over being avenged on Zara!’ he said. ‘No! Not even for a pope!’

  Now the Crusaders were in a terrible moral bind, forced to choose between dishonour and excommunication. In the end they reasoned they had better keep their contract with the Venetians, if only as a means to fulfil their greater obligation to go on to Jerusalem. The leadership agreed to keep the existence of the pope’s letter a secret, lest it cause more dissent in the ranks.

  Dandolo expected to conclude an agreement with the Zarans without the need for a battle. They had arrived with overwhelming numbers and the Zarans could not hope to withstand the 11,000-strong army at the gate. The Zarans came forward with an offer: they would agree to restore the city to Venetian control and surrender their possessions so long as the Crusaders agreed to spare their lives. Dandolo was ready to accept their terms when one of the dissident Crusader knights, Simon of Montfort, approached the Zarans and told them the Venetians were bluffing – there would be no attack, he said, because the Franks would never help the Venetians fight for Zara. The Zarans, thinking they had nothing to gain by surrendering, withdrew from negotiations. The Crusaders mounted an attack and quickly overcame the city.

  On 24 November 1202, Zara surrendered and the city was looted. But the money they were able to plunder from the city wasn’t nearly enough to pay the remainder of their debt. Now they were facing failure and excommunication. Angry muttering was heard within the camp. A brawl broke out between Venetians and disgruntled Crusader soldiers. A small delegation of Crusader knights hurried off to Rome to beg the pope’s forgiveness, explaining the whole thing was a regrettable necessity. But Dandolo and the Venetians were unperturbed and refused to apologise; their excommunication remained in place. And they were still a long way from Jerusalem.

  BY NOW, POPE INNOCENT WAS, perhaps, beginning to comprehend how little control he had over the forces he had unleashed upon the world. He accepted the repentance of the Frankish Crusaders and absolved them of their sins; the cause of the Crusade was still dear to his heart and he very much wanted them to proceed as they had promised. But there was another problem: the unrepentant Venetians were still officially in a state of excommunication, and under canon law it was now forbidden for the Crusaders to associate with such people.

  Innocent asked his bishops to come up with a solution, and a loophole was found: canon law, they said, did allow for members of the flock to associate with the excommunicated, but only if the persons in question were members of the same family. Such a thing was only practical. And could it not be said that members of the same fleet, embarking on a holy mission together, were a kind of family?

  Still, the Venetians would not sail until they had been paid, and the Crusaders had no way of raising the money. Hatred and resentment festered between the two parties and early one evening a riot broke out that raged for hours before the Crusader leaders could separate the combatants and shut it down. A gloomy sense of purposelessness and of moral degeneration descended on the Crusader camp. More defections were to come over the winter of 1202–3.

  The Pretender

  THEN A YOUNG PRINCE of Constantinople named Alexius Angelus came into the picture. Alexius was the son of Emperor Isaac II, who had overthrown Andronicus and handed him over to the mob.

  Sadly, Isaac, too, had proved a disaster as emperor and had been cruelly overthrown by his older brother, who was also, confusingly, named Alexius. The usurper ordered his brother to be blinded and imprisoned. The younger Alexius (Isaac’s son) had to run for his life.

  Alexius Angelus found refuge with his brother-in-law, Philip of Swabia, in Germany where he brooded on the injustice that had been perpetrated by his wicked uncle. Honour demanded that Alexius the Younger seek to take back the throne of Constantinople, no matter the cost.

  When Philip of Swabia realised there was a great army sitting tight in Zara with no place to go, he sent a message to the despondent Crusaders, offering them a lifeline that would solve all their problems, ensure the success of the Crusade and make them all very rich. If they agreed to bring Alexius to Constantinople and install him on the throne as the rightful emperor of the Romans, then Alexius would reward them handsomely – very handsomely indeed. Alexius promised to hand over all the gold the Crusaders needed to pay off their debt to the Venetians. He also promised to give them another 200,000 silver marks to sweeten the deal, and to cap it off with a donation of ten thousand imperial soldiers to join the fight for the Holy Land. And just to cover off any qualms the Church might have, Alexius promised to place the whole eastern Orthodox church under the authority of the pope, ending the great schism between eastern and western Christianity.

  The greedy, desperate Crusader leadership didn’t need much convincing. Constantinople was the richest city in the world, known to contain unfathomable amounts of treasure. True, the Theodosian Walls were formidable, but everyone knew that young Alexius was the rightful emperor. The people of Constantinople would surely open the gates and flock to his banner. The letter had assured them of that. The Crusaders would be greeted as liberators.

  SO NOW THERE WOULD have t
o be a second diversion. The journey to the Holy Land would have to be put on hold just a little longer. Doge Dandolo gave the new scheme his strong support, even though he must have known that Alexius could never deliver on his promises. The Crusader leaders searched their consciences, but it wasn’t hard for them to construct the necessary moral scaffolding they required to sail to Constantinople. The concept of legitimacy was at the very centre of the Crusaders’ feudal mindset, and the overthrow of a rightful lord by a usurper was seen as a particularly heinous crime that demanded swift retribution. But to make that work, they had to ignore or not speak of an inconvenient fact: Isaac Angelus, the blinded former emperor, was himself a usurper who had seized the throne by the sword and, as such, was no better than his brother. But all that was set aside, and the leadership agreed that attacking Constantinople would not be a sin, but a righteous deed, a just war to avenge the overthrow of the rightful emperor of the Romans.

  As news of the plan to sail to Constantinople spread through the camp there were more defections. Simon of Monfort spoke for many when he chided the leadership, saying, ‘I have not come here to destroy Christians.’ Other doubters were bribed into sullen silence. The pope sent another angry letter completely forbidding the Crusaders to attack Constantinople, but it arrived too late. The armada had already sailed.

  IN CORFU, THE FLEET picked up Alexius Angelus, who was warmly embraced by Dandolo and Boniface of Montferrat. The Crusaders spent three weeks on the island preparing their attack. Then, at this critical moment, the whole thing nearly fell apart. Discontent broke out within the ranks, with at least half the army seized by terrible doubt. Had they not vowed to God and to the pope to make war on the Saracens? Was it not sinful to attack a Christian city? The leadership begged the renegades to stay the course, telling them they would imperil the whole Crusade if they were to leave now. The doubters were slowly, reluctantly, brought back into the fold by a combination of pleading, promises, and a public vow from Alexius to fulfil the terms of the agreement.

  With their final preparations complete, the armada set out from Corfu, the warm summer air filling their sails. The heavy, high-masted war galleons led the way, followed by the transport ships with the soldiers and horses, then the slave galleys and merchant ships, carrying provisions for what they thought would be a short campaign. The fleet sailed south, looped around the Peloponnese coast and entered the strait of the Dardanelles.

  Venetian galley

  public domain

  So Great an Enterprise

  THE FLEET entered the Sea of Marmara in June 1203, and the Crusaders caught their first glimpse of Constantinople. It appeared through the summer haze like a dream. There was nothing they’d seen in their lives to compare it to. The city’s population was, at half a million, more than twenty times the size of Paris. As the armada cruised past the sea walls, the sailors pointed up to the majestic colonnades of the Great Palace. As they approached Acropolis Point, the massive domed form of the Hagia Sophia swept into view.

  The grandeur of Constantinople left them stupefied. Villehardouin recorded the awe among his fellow Crusaders:

  When they saw those high ramparts and the strong towers with which the city was completely encircled, and the splendid palaces and soaring churches . . . they never thought that there could be so rich and powerful a place on earth . . . There was not a man so bold that his flesh did not tremble at the sight . . . for never since the creation of the world was there so great an enterprise.

  But Constantinople was more fragile than it appeared, weakened by two decades of feuds, purges and uprisings. Beset by unstable leadership, the Roman armies had suffered some painful defeats in recent years. The city was demoralised, yet complacent behind its high walls.

  The invaders set up camp near Chalcedon, on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. Soon an envoy arrived with a message from the emperor. The envoy informed them that His Imperial Majesty had happened to notice the presence of thousands of men and ships in his domain, and was very keen to know their plans. If they were prepared to pass through imperial territory peacefully, as earlier Crusaders had done, the emperor was willing to give food and support.

  A knight named Conon of Béthune spoke on behalf of the Crusaders. He said he didn’t see how they could possibly make any such arrangements when the sitting ruler, as everyone knew, was a usurper and a tyrant. Conon was blunt: go tell your ruler that if the tyrant is prepared to surrender the throne to the rightful emperor, Alexius Angelus, and throw himself at his nephew’s mercy, perhaps there will be no need for violence. And if the tyrant wasn’t prepared to do this, then he shouldn’t bother them with any more such messages.

  THE CRUSADERS WERE READY to let everyone in the city know their true emperor was waiting outside the walls. Once the people saw Alexius, they reasoned, the populace would rise up and overthrow the usurper. A bloodless victory would be won, and they could take their gold and leave for the Holy Land at last.

  The following day ten galleys rowed across the Bosphorus to parade Alexius in front of the sea walls. Alexius preened on deck in full view of the fascinated onlookers who had come to watch but they were silent and did not cheer.

  Confused, the Crusaders shouted out, ‘Do you not recognise your true lord and master?’

  The onlookers began to laugh and heckle the westerners in the boats below. Someone threw a cabbage. The realisation must have come as a terrible shock to the Crusaders: no one knew or cared who Alexius was. There would be no popular uprising. They had come on a fool’s errand to the most heavily fortified city in the world, and they had come too far to go back. The Franks and the Venetians desperately needed the money that Alexius had rashly promised them. The Crusader leaders and the Venetians agreed they would somehow have to break in through the walls and install their man on the throne by force.

  The western knights, soldiers and sailors prepared for battle. Priests and bishops heard their confessions and encouraged them to make last wills. Ship after ship was boarded by knights armed with lances their horses draped in chainmail and coloured silk, alongside the battalions of archers and crossbowmen. The war drums and trumpet blasts from the camp were heard across the Bosphorus. Inside the city, people climbed onto their rooftops to get a glimpse of the strange warriors on the far side of the strait.

  The Winged Lion on the Shore

  THE ENTRANCE to the city’s deep-water harbour, the Golden Horn, was protected by a massive chain that trailed across the water from the sea walls of Constantinople to the Tower of Galata on the other side. A party of Crusaders landed at Galata and secured the tower. Meanwhile the Venetian captains rammed their galleys up onto the chain, then rocked them over into the water on the other side, just as Harald Hardrada had done nearly two centuries earlier. The emperor’s navy had suffered from years of neglect and could only put up a pitiful resistance. The Venetian ships now enjoyed the freedom of the Golden Horn.

  The invaders devised an amphibious plan of attack. The Venetians agreed they would attack the sea walls from their ships while the Crusaders, more comfortable on solid ground, proposed to confront the city at the formidable land walls. Both forces would attack at different angles of the north-western corner of the city, where the land walls meet the northern sea wall as it curves around the Blachernae Palace.

  To overcome the high sea walls, the Venetians constructed siege towers by fastening timber gangways onto the spars of their galleys. Bringing their vessels close to the edge of the shore, they began launching missiles from their ship-mounted catapults, and volleys of arrows from their crossbows. High up on the ramparts of the city, the defence was led by the Varangian guard, armed with double-headed axes, supported by regular archers and crossbowmen.

  The Venetian galleys, coming under heavy fire, kept their distance from the shore. As the attack began to falter, the old man Dandolo rallied his men. Dressed in battle armour, standing on the prow of his vermilion ship, the Doge croaked out to his oarsmen that if they valued their lives, they must
propel the ship forward towards the walls.

  Dandolo’s ship picked up speed and ran aground on the narrow strip of beach between the wall and the sea. Someone leapt down and planted the banner of St Mark in the muddy ground. The sight of the Doge standing on the shore alongside the winged lion of St Mark thrilled the Venetians. Beaching their own galleys, they climbed up onto their gangways and pushed their way onto the tower defences, winning control over a section of the walls. After a few hours Dandolo was able to send word to his allies that they now held twenty-five towers.

  Winged lion of St Mark, Venice.

  Creative Commons/Nino Barbieri

  MEANWHILE, around the corner, the Crusader army had assembled in front of the Blachernae Gate. The emperor chose this moment to ride out and make a show of force. The Crusaders tensed themselves for battle as the bronze doors of the Blachernae Gate creaked opened and the imperial army tramped out, led by the emperor himself. The Roman soldiers poured out onto the plain in such numbers that it seemed to the Crusaders ‘as if the whole world were there assembled’. Geoffrey de Villehardouin estimated the emperor had forty-divisions against their six.

  Both armies edged towards each other. The Crusaders offered prayers, drew their swords and prepared to die. Then on the plain outside Blachernae the imperial army came to a halt. Tense minutes went by as each army eyeballed the other, neither side moving.

  And then, inexplicably, the emperor lost his nerve. He gave the order to turn around and march back inside the city. The Crusaders could hardly believe their luck.

  AT DUSK, the Venetians prised open a section of the sea walls and their soldiers poured through the gap. They ran into the Blachernae quarter of the city and set fire to several wooden houses. Soon the whole street was ablaze. It was the first time any invader had penetrated the walls in nearly eight centuries.