Ghost Empire

by Richard Fidler

  The disgraced Emperor Alexius III, now held in contempt by his officers, frantically prepared to flee the city, taking with him ten thousand pounds of gold, a sack of jewels and his favourite daughter. In his rush to escape, he abandoned his wife and the rest of his family. As he lowered himself into his boat and sailed out into the Sea of Marmara, an orange glow lit up the night sky. The outer neighbourhoods of Constantinople were burning and the empire had no emperor.

  The court officials at Blachernae sent at once for Isaac Angelus, the former emperor. Isaac was hauled out of his dungeon and brought back to his former palace. Isaac, who had once so boldly cut down Andronicus’s henchman, was a pitiful sight, blinded and enfeebled by months of imprisonment. The broken, bewildered man was dressed up in imperial robes, hailed by the court as the rightful emperor and restored to his throne. It must have seemed like a strange dream.

  A message was sent to the Crusader camp advising Alexius that his father had regained his throne. This put the Crusaders in yet another awkward spot. Their stated, ‘honourable’ objective had been met: to restore a legitimate emperor to the throne, and they had to acknowledge his legitimacy. But their real objective had been to get access to the imperial treasury. Only Alexius, not the reinstated Isaac, had agreed to help them do that.

  A delegation of Crusaders, including Villehardouin, was sent to negotiate with the blind Isaac Angelus. A contingent of Vikings from the Varangian guard, equipped with battleaxes, lined both sides of the street, as the envoys made their way to the Blachernae Palace. They met with Isaac in his chambers.

  ‘Sire,’ Villehardouin began, ‘you can see the service we have rendered to your son. We have kept our covenant with him. But we cannot release him until you confirm that agreement he freely entered into with us.’

  Isaac asked, ‘And what is this agreement?’

  ‘To begin with, the Church of your empire shall be put in obedience to Rome. Secondly, 200,000 silver marks shall be delivered to us, along with a year’s supply of food for our men. Thirdly, the empire shall contribute ten thousand men to aid our mission in the Holy Land.’

  Isaac heard him out and said, ‘This covenant is very onerous and I don’t see how we can possibly make it happen. Nevertheless, my son and I are greatly in your debt and I will sign any document you put before me.’

  Alexius entered the conquered city and was received with great joy by his trembling, traumatised father. He was made co-emperor and crowned as Alexius IV. From the Crusaders’ point of view, everything had worked out fine. They could now look forward to clearing their debts to Venice and to receiving the sizeable bounty promised to them. Surely they would soon be on their way to Egypt to fight the Saracens.

  THE NEW EMPEROR intended to make good on his promise of 200,000 silver marks, but his predecessor had escaped with most of the treasury’s wealth. Alexius was forced to raise taxes to squeeze more wealth from the city, but it wasn’t enough. He resorted to melting down the frames of valuable icons to extract their gold and silver. Even so he could only raise 100,000 marks. Half of that went to the Venetians, as they were entitled to fifty per cent of any of the spoils of conquest, so the Crusaders were still well short of paying their debt to the implacable Dandolo, who was again threatening to leave with his ships and strand them in Constantinople, unless he got what was owed to him.

  As Alexius IV tried to extract even more gold out of the city, resentment festered among his people. The destruction of holy icons for payment created widespread outrage. Skirmishes broke out between Crusaders and disgruntled Roman soldiers. The city was coming to hate these crude, greedy westerners. And still the Venetians demanded their money. Alexius was being squeezed on both sides.

  Dandolo requested a meeting, and so Alexius rode his horse down from Blachernae to the shore of the Golden Horn, where he met the Doge, who had been ferried across on a galley. Speaking more in sorrow than anger, Dandolo said, ‘Alexius, what do you think you’re doing? Don’t forget that we lifted you out of your pitiable state. We made you emperor and had you crowned! Why don’t you keep your promises and pay your debts to us?’

  ‘No,’ Alexius replied firmly. ‘I have no intention of doing any more than I have done already.’

  ‘You stupid boy,’ said the Doge, turning back to his galley, ‘we dragged you out of the shit. We’ll put you back in the shit soon enough.’

  Alexius returned to the palace and called for his counsellors’ advice. One of them, a particularly hirsute aristocrat known as Murtzuphlus (‘Bushy Brow’) for the single thick eyebrow that ran across his forehead, told Alexius the westerners had gone too far. The whole city now hated the foreigners who were bleeding them dry. He told the emperor to give them no more gold. But Alexius was out of time as well as money – the next night ‘Bushy Brow’ entered Alexius’s room and strangled him with a noose.

  Murtzuphlus claimed the throne for himself. He was crowned as Alexius V, the third ‘Alexius’ to sit on the throne in as many months. The new emperor made it clear there would be no more gold for the hateful foreigners, and he was cutting off their food supply. Maybe now they would give up and be on their way.

  THE MURDER OF YOUNG ALEXIUS shocked and outraged the Crusaders. Feeling provoked beyond endurance by the faithless Romans, the Crusaders began to plot a second attack on the walls of Constantinople. This time, there were no moral qualms; the Latin priests declared that the murder of the ‘legitimate’ ruler Alexius meant the Romans had forfeited all rights to their lands. The already fragile ties of religious sympathy between eastern and western churches were now severed. The schismatics inside the city walls must now be made obedient to the pope by force. One priest went so far as to denounce the Romans as ‘the enemies of God’.

  For all the sputtering Crusader outrage, the decision to attack was a matter of practicality as much as anything. They could neither leave safely nor stay: there was no food to forage and none coming from the city. The Crusaders were trapped, and the only way out was through Constantinople.

  Reports of the Crusader activity reached Murtzuphlus within the palace, and he set to work to prepare his city for the next Crusader onslaught.

  THE INVADERS CHOSE to leave the land walls alone this time and focus their efforts on the same weakened point on the north-west corner of the sea walls. The Venetians converted their ships into floating castles, fixing siege engines to the decks, and gangways to the high masts to carry their men onto the Roman ramparts.

  On the morning of 9 April 1204, the Venetian galleys charged once again at the walls along the Golden Horn.

  Unlike Alexius, Murtzuphlus was prepared to fight. He had personally directed the repairs of the sea walls, bolstering them with wooden towers. Platforms for catapults were hastily constructed. The Crusader ships pressed up against the sea wall, but every soldier that managed to clamber on to the ramparts was shot down by arrows and missiles. By mid-afternoon the invaders called the retreat and limped back across the water. The Romans mocked the Crusaders by baring their arses to the retreating ships. Murtzuphlus exulted in his victory.

  BACK AT CAMP, several Crusader knights declared they had had their fill, arguing their defeat was a judgement from God for attacking a Christian city. They wanted to give up and leave for the Holy Land, which was – had they forgotten? – the reason they left France in the first place. But Dandolo was adamant and insisted they try again. The Venetians wearily repaired their ships. This time, however, they stabilised their siege towers by lashing the galleys together in pairs. Three days later they set out for the sea walls once last time.

  The battle raged all morning. The Roman defences on the walls were holding the Crusaders at bay. The defenders were happy to fire missiles from a distance, but seemed unwilling to risk their lives in direct combat. Then a group of Crusaders, creeping along the narrow beach between the sea wall and the water, came upon a freshly bricked-up postern gate. The Crusaders began to frantically pull away at the brickwork, while the defenders directly above them rai
ned down arrow bolts and boiling pitch upon them.

  Then a fighting Crusader priest called Aleume de Clari managed to smash apart a small opening in the brickwork, leading into what appeared to be an underground armory beneath the wall. Peering through the gap into the darkness, Aleume could see the shocked faces of dozens of Roman soldiers. Without another thought, Aleume dived in through the stonework. His brother Robert grabbed at his ankles, trying to drag him back, but Aleume wriggled free and landed inside the armory. The enemy soldiers began to move towards him warily. Then Aleume produced a large knife and ran at them, and the Romans took off.

  Soon the rest of the knights were inside the armory. They rushed up the stairs to confront the soldiers on the wall. At the sight of the armoured knights, the guards ran from their posts, abandoning the tower to the Crusaders.

  Meanwhile, out on the harbour, a sudden gust of wind propelled two of the biggest Venetian ships right up to the edge of the sea wall. The first Venetian soldier to clamber from the mast onto a guard tower was cut to pieces by the defenders. Then a knight managed to crawl onto a rampart. The defenders hacked at him with axes and swords but, protected by his armour, the knight suffered no serious damage. He then astounded his attackers by rising to his feet and drawing his blade. Again, the defenders fled in panic. A gangway was lowered onto the wall. A party of Crusaders ran across and took the guard tower. The gate below the tower was opened and the 20,000-strong Crusader army began to stream into the city.

  At the first sight of Crusaders in the streets, Murtzuphlus bolted from his fortified tent near the walls and raced across the city to the safety of the Great Palace. As more soldiers ran into the city streets, shocked and panicked residents gathered what they could and ran, pouring out of the gates into the countryside. As night fell, Murtzuphlus lost all hope. He commandeered a fishing boat and sailed into exile. Murtzuphlus would eventually be captured, returned to the city and thrown off the top of the Column of Theodosius to a messy death.

  The Crusader knights, now in control of the Blachernae quarter, burnt down a row of houses to clear an avenue for defence. The conflagration ran out of control and soon the whole quarter was on fire, with Villehardouin estimating that on that night, ‘more houses had been burned in the city than there are houses in any three of the greatest cities in the kingdom of France’.

  The remaining residents of Constantinople woke to news that another emperor had abandoned them. Another exodus of citizens streamed through the streets towards the ancient city gates, as the Crusaders donned their armour and readied themselves to engage in hard street-by-street fighting. But as the westerners ventured tentatively along the Mese, they discovered there was no one to oppose them. A group of priests came forward to formally surrender the city, accompanied by some members of the Varangian guard who asked to change their allegiance. The cry went up among the invaders: the city is ours!

  TWO YEARS OF BOILING frustration, greed and rage then exploded onto the terrified people of Constantinople. Under medieval custom, the invaders were entitled to three days of looting. The Crusaders rushed through the streets and into houses, seizing everything that looked valuable, and destroying whatever they couldn’t carry. The Venetians, who had a better understanding of the true value of the works of art around them, carefully crated up what they found and sent it home.

  A band of soldiers broke into the Hagia Sophia and began to strip the altar of its gold and precious stones. The men, giddy with the joy of conquest, got drunk on communion wine and cheered as a camp prostitute stood on the seat of the Patriarch and began to dance and sing bawdy French songs.

  Some of the larger ornaments proved too unwieldy to be carried out, so mules and packhorses were brought into the church. One poor animal lost its footing on the slippery floor and fell, and had to have its throat cut; the floor of the church was splashed with blood and animal shit, the stench mingling with the scent of scattered sandalwood and rose oil.

  Elsewhere in the city, unarmed men were put to the sword, women were snatched from their family homes and dragged away, nuns were raped in their convents. Icons and precious books were destroyed. Bronze statues from the ancient world were torn down and thrown into the melting pot to make copper money to pay the soldiers. Emperors’ tombs were stripped of their precious metals.

  As the Crusaders revelled in their revenge and their new-found wealth, terrified families cowered inside their houses, awaiting the inevitable pounding on the door.

  The Venetian in the Suit of Armour

  FROM THE WINDOW of a mansion near the Hagia Sophia, Nicetas Choniates observed the rampage on the streets below. Nicetas was a high government official who had served in the court of several emperors. His greatest fears that day were for his children and his pregnant wife.

  To Nicetas, the Crusaders, in their long tunics embroidered with the sign of the cross, were frauds. Whatever these men said they were, they were not Christians. The worst of them, in his eyes, were the knights, the hypocrites who had raised the cross to their shoulders, who had sworn to pass through the Christian lands without bloodletting, who had vowed not to be diverted from their holy mission. These were the men who had led this savage mob to his city.

  One of them would soon be at his door. Nicetas gathered together his wife and children, along with several servants and neighbours. The group slipped out and fled to the house of a friend, a Venetian wine merchant. The Venetian friend agreed to shelter them. But they were not safe. Nicetas cast his eyes about the room and saw a suit of armour. The Venetian friend agreed to put it on. Soon there were fists hammering at the door. The armoured Venetian confronted the Crusaders on his doorstep. Speaking in their language, he told them he’d already claimed the house for himself and sent the disappointed soldiers on their way.

  The deception worked well enough, until soldiers began to arrive in larger numbers. Nicetas feared if they stayed they would all be taken prisoner and the women would be stolen from them. The Venetian friend came up with another ruse. He called for some rope and bound the wrists of Nicetas, his family and his neighbours, and led them through the streets, posing as their captor. Nicetas placed the women in the centre of the party, their faces smeared with mud to make them less attractive to the invaders.

  The group shuffled fearfully westward through the teeming streets, towards the land walls and the Golden Gate, where they could escape the wreck of their beautiful city. As they passed by a church, Nicetas saw they were being eyed by a leering Crusader. Suddenly, the soldier lunged into the centre of the group, pulled out a young girl and dragged her off. In the confusion, the girl’s aged father slipped into a muddy hole in the road. Flailing about in the mire, the old man begged Nicetas to do something to save his daughter.

  Nicetas loosened his bonds and followed the soldier. As he did so, he grabbed at another group of Crusader knights standing near the church, and begged them for help. His pleas moved a few soldiers to pity and they agreed to accompany him. They followed the girl’s abductor to the door of a looted house.

  Icon of St Michael, looted by the Fourth Crusade, now in the Treasury of San Marco, Venice.

  Bridgeman Images

  Nicetas saw the soldier fling her inside, then turn and stand at his door, ready to fight his pursuers. Nicetas drew a deep breath and he beseeched the Crusaders at his side to honour their sacred oaths, ‘to refrain from intercourse with married women, with maidens who have never known any man, and with nuns who are consecrated to God’.

  The men stepped forward and demanded the girl be released. But her abductor was defiant. Enraged, the soldiers threatened to hang him from a stake, ‘as an unjust and shameless man’. At that, the abductor backed down, and flung the girl gracelessly back into the street. Nicetas returned her to her father, who wept with relief.

  Badly shaken, Nicetas’s group pressed on towards the open doors of the Golden Gate. They passed through the marble arch, and across the drawbridge to the open plains outside the city. Nicetas paused and turned
back, looking at the silent land walls, still intact, still impressive, yet stonily indifferent to the wrecked city behind them. To Nicetas it seemed the walls had committed a kind of betrayal. He fell to the ground in exhaustion and despair.

  Nicetas Choniates eventually joined the Roman court-in-exile in Nicaea. He never returned to Constantinople.

  The Ruby Apple

  AFTER THREE DAYS OF LOOTING, Boniface of Montferrat called on the leadership to assemble and divide the spoils. They piled the treasure into three different churches, then the Crusaders and the Venetians gathered to pay their debts and claim their share. Villehardouin gazed at the heap of treasure in amazement, ‘so great that none could tell you the end of it: gold and silver, and vessels and precious stones, and samite, and cloth of silk, and robes fair and grey, and ermine, and every choicest thing found upon the earth’.

  A quarter was to go to the new emperor of Constantinople, whoever that was going to be; the rest was to be split down the middle between the Crusaders and the Venetians. At last the knights could settle their account with Doge Dandolo. The debt that had weighed upon them so heavily now seemed a trifle compared to the treasure heap in front of them.

  The greatest treasure of all was the empire itself, which also was to be divided as part of the spoils of victory. But nothing in these westerners’ narrow, feudal backgrounds could comprehend the complexity of the empire they had just seized, and they completely failed to appreciate its value as a buffer state, a protective seal for their own lands against the Islamic tide. One historian observed that the Crusaders fell on the empire ‘as savages might fall on a watch – giving the case to one, the jewels to another, and a disjointed mechanism to a third’. The disjointed mechanism was to be handed to the new emperor.

  The various imperial territories were chopped up and doled out. Dandolo now boasted, with the zeal of an accountant, that he was the ruler of three-eighths of the Roman empire. The Orthodox church of Constantinople was brought officially under the rule of the church of Rome. Meanwhile, the city’s holy relics began to make their way into the churches, homes and public squares of western Europe. Seated atop their mountain of plunder in the ruined city, the Crusader knights forgot their papal vows, and their plans to take the Holy Land were quietly shelved. In the end, the Fourth Crusade was no crusade at all: they never saw Jerusalem.