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Authors: Jonathan Phillips

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Boniface of Montferrat tried to use his close personal relationship with Alexius to persuade him to restore the proper flow of cash. He visited the emperor to point out the moral debt he owed the crusaders for restoring him to the throne and urged him to keep his promises. Given the pressures Alexius faced in Constantinople, he had little choice but to continue his policy of appeasement, staving off Boniface with requests for patience and giving assurances that he would indeed honour his commitments.
17
Yet soon the delivery of funds dried to a trickle and then stopped altogether. By this time of year, late November, the emperor knew that the crusader fleet could not set sail onto the winter seas and he may have believed that this enforced immobility, along with their vulnerability over food, would have been enough to dissuade the westerners from war. In addition, he hoped that by ending payment to them he would earn himself a breathing space in Constantinople.
On 1 December the antipathy between the westerners and the Byzantines spilled over into open violence. The mob set upon any outsiders and brutally murdered them and burned their corpses. The Greeks tried to attack the crusaders’ ships, but were quickly beaten off and lost many of their own vessels.
The smouldering tensions between the two sides now seemed poised to burst into outright war. The crusader leadership had to decide upon its next move and resolved to establish with absolute clarity the emperor’s intentions towards his allies. They chose to send Alexius a formal delegation to remind him once again of his contractual obligations to them and to demand that he fulfil them. If he refused, then the crusaders would tell him that they would ‘do everything in their power to recover the money due’.
18
Inevitably, given their diplomatic experience and oratorical skills, Conon of Béthune and Geoffrey of Villehardouin were chosen as two of the six envoys. The Frenchman Milo of Provins and three senior Venetians formed the remainder of the party. They girded their swords and rode along the Golden Horn, across the Blachernae bridge, to the nearby palace.
19
They dismounted at the gate, as envoys were required to do, and went into one of the great halls. There, enthroned at the head of the room sat the two emperors, bedecked in their magnificent robes. Also present was Margaret, Isaac’s wife and Alexius’s stepmother, who again attracted Villehardouin’s approving eye as a ‘good and beautiful lady’.
20
To emphasise the importance of the occasion the hall was filled with senior Byzantine nobles. Both sides knew that this was not one of the crusaders’ social calls, but a decisive face-to-face meeting that would either result in conflict or would succeed in calming a dangerously volatile situation.
Conon presented the westerners’ familiar case: the crusaders had done a great service to the two emperors, and in return Alexius and Isaac had promised to fulfil their covenant, but had failed to do so. The crusaders displayed the sealed documents that embodied the original agreement. Then came an ultimatum: if the Byzantines fulfilled their obligations, the crusaders would be content; if they did not, ‘they will no longer regard you [Alexius] as their lord and friend, but will use every means in their power to obtain their due. They ask us to tell you that they will not do anything to injure either yourself or any other person without fair warning of their intention to commence hostilities.’
21
Conon’s closing comments carried an undercurrent of venom towards his hosts, for after his assurances of due warnings before a war, he said: ‘For they [the crusaders] have never acted treacherously - that is not the custom of their country.’
22
This barbed aspersion against the Greek character reflected the westerners’ long-held prejudices and signified their growing mistrust of Alexius. It was also, of course, calculated to give extreme offence.
Uproar greeted the end of Conon’s speech. His words outraged the gathered Byzantine nobles. All their resentment against the western barbarians swelled up; Villehardouin reported that they declared that no one had ever had the temerity to come into the imperial palace and dictate terms to the emperor in such a way. The hall was filled with shouts and cries; men gestured violently towards the small group of westerners. Even if Alexius had wanted to offer a more conciliatory response to the envoys, the mood inside the hall meant that this would have been suicidal. Provoked and cornered, the young emperor scowled fiercely at the envoys.
To Villehardouin and his colleagues the message was plain. No amount of diplomacy was going to change the mood in the palace. In spite of their nominal security as envoys, such was the sense of rage within the room that the crusaders feared for their lives. To an experienced man such as Villehardouin who, as we have seen, was accustomed to acting in such a capacity, this was a new and obviously terrifying ordeal. The westerners must have felt extraordinarily isolated and threatened. Hastily they turned to leave and hurried back along the corridors to the courtyard outside and their waiting horses. ‘There was not a man amongst them who was not extremely glad to find himself outside.’
23
Hugely relieved to have survived, they rode at high speed back over the Golden Horn. As they entered the crusader camp the tension on their faces must have made plain to all the reception they had received. The nobles were summoned and informed of the events in the palace. ‘Thus the war began’ was Villehardouin’s succinct and emotionless comment.
24
Robert of Clari records one further interesting episode from this period, although it proved to have little effect on the overall outcome of events. He reports that on hearing of Alexius’s reaction to the crusader envoys, Doge Dandolo decided to make a last-ditch personal appeal to the emperor. He sent a messenger asking that they meet at the harbour. The Venetians sent four heavily armed galleys to convey their leader to the rendezvous. Alexius rode down to the shore and the two men exchanged words. Dandolo must have had a reasonably cordial relationship with Alexius to believe that such an approach might be worthwhile. Perhaps the doge hoped that, away from the pressured environment of the Byzantine court, the young emperor might recognise his responsibilities to the crusaders more clearly.
‘Alexius, what do you mean by this?’ he asked. ‘Take thought how we rescued you from great wretchedness and how we have made you a lord and have had you crowned emperor. Will you not keep your covenant with us?’
25
The emperor’s response was uncompromising: ‘I will not do any more than I have done.’ Dandolo was furious that the man upon whom the crusaders had expended so much time and energy now appeared to be abandoning them. The old man lost his temper: ‘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.’
26
From early December onwards there was desultory fighting between the two forces. Neither side launched a major offensive: on the one hand, the crusaders were unwilling to provoke the outright enmity of the Greeks and, on the other, Alexius was reluctant to mount an open assault on the powerful western armies. The imperial entourage seems to have become ever more remote. Isaac urged his son to ignore the talk of the vulgar masses, while courtiers refused to fight against the crusaders—‘being quicker to avoid battle with [them] than an army of deer with a roaring lion’, in Niketas’s contemptuous words.
27
The most serious threat to the western forces came on 1 January 1204. In the months since the crusader army had set up camp at Galata, normal trading and fishing had taken place, with Greek, Venetian and other vessels mingling in the waters of the Golden Horn. The Byzantines could see that the crusaders’ most precious lifeline was their fleet. Without it the westerners would be trapped and would have to surrender - or march away, across the hostile territories of Bulgaria, or be ferried over the Bosphorus to face the winter in the inhospitable mountains of Asia Minor. If the crusader fleet were destroyed the hated westerners would be at their mercy. The Greeks took 17 vessels and filled them with logs, wood shavings, pitch, discarded hemp and wooden barrels. Fire-boats had been used in naval warfare in the eastern Mediterranean for centuries; the famous Battle of Salamis in 480 BC had featured burning ships, and the details of this legendary fight were doubtless remembered and repeated by many in the medieval world. One evening, at midnight, when the wind blew from the south-west, the Greeks unfurled the sails of the ships, ignited the boats and set them loose towards the crusader fleet. They had prepared the vessels well; the cargo rapidly ignited and the flames soared up to the sky as these ghostly, crewless incendiaries glided inexorably towards the Venetians’ ships.
The tension between the two sides meant that the crusaders had posted sentries and guards and, as the enemy ships came across the Golden Horn, bugles sounded the alert and everyone rushed to arm themselves. The Venetians ran to their ships and did whatever they could to row, tow or sail them to safety. Villehardouin himself witnessed the attack and vouched that ‘no men ever defended themselves more valiantly on the sea than the Venetians ever did that night’.
28
Some of their sailing boats could not be readied quickly enough to be moved and so a more direct strategy was needed. The most manoeuvrable of their vessels were the oar-powered galleys and longboats. Quickly crewed, they were rowed out towards the enemy and grappling irons were slung over the lethal vessels, which were then heaved into the Bosphorus, where the current carried them away to burn and disintegrate harmlessly at sea. The Greeks did not just abandon their fire-ships and commit them to the vagaries of battle, however. Thousands gathered on the shore of the Golden Horn to howl and yell their hostility against the westerners, while others boarded any available boats to shadow and bombard those trying to tow the burning vessels away.
29
Many crusaders were wounded in this struggle and the men laboured on through the night to repel this threat to their precious navy.
In the main camp the call to arms went out. Some feared the seaborne attack was a prelude to a land assault and the crusaders rushed to don their armour and saddle their horses. The noise from the Golden Horn and the dark of night gave them little opportunity to form up in their usual good order and a rather ramiform crusader force poured out onto the plain in front of the camp to meet any impending Greek advance. By first light, however, only one Pisan merchant ship had been lost - an incredible achievement on the part of the Venetian mariners and yet another demonstration of their superb skill as seafarers. They were well aware of just how crucial their endeavours were; Villehardouin noted: ‘we had all been in deadly peril that night, for if our fleet had been burned we should have lost everything, and could not have got away either by
sea
or by land’.
30
It is unclear who amongst the Greeks was responsible for the fire-fleet. In spite of his cold response to the recent diplomatic missions, it was perhaps unlikely that Alexius would have initiated such an overtly hostile move. More likely, the attack was the work of a party bent upon the destruction of the crusaders—in which case it showed how the young emperor’s authority had weakened. Such political nuances were irrelevant to the crusaders, however; so far as they were concerned, the blame lay firmly with Alexius himself. As Villehardouin sarcastically observed: ‘Such was the return Alexius had wanted to make for the services we had rendered him.’
31
Thus the westerners’ estimation of the emperor was damaged still further, and such was the antipathy towards the Greeks as a whole that any previous warmth between the two parties was almost entirely a thing of the past.
CHAPTER TWELVE
 
‘Our excessive disagreement allowed for no humane
feeling between us’
The Murder of Alexius IV and the Descent into War, early 1204
 
I
N EARLY 1204 Murtzuphlus took the fight directly to the crusaders. The
Devastatio Constantinopolitana
recorded that on 7 January a body of Greek horsemen came out of the city to confront the western forces. They were met by the marquis of Montferrat who routed his opponents, killing or capturing a number of wealthy Byzantine nobles at the cost of two knights and a squire. Niketas Choniates described the same incident, but from his perspective it was important to show Murtzuphlus as the lone Byzantine noble prepared to ignore Alexius’s ban on such actions. Unsurprisingly, his bravery won favour with the general populace, although at one point in the struggle Murtzuphlus’s horse slipped and collapsed to its knees. The Greek may well have been trapped under his mount and, had the crusaders managed to capture or kill him, then the Byzantine contingent would have been routed entirely. Fortunately for Murtzuphlus, a group of young archers appreciated the danger and quickly rallied to defend their leader, which allowed him to escape.
1
As the horsemen fought up near the Blachernae palace, the Venetians launched their ships and menacingly prowled up and down the Golden Horn and along the sea walls that faced the Sea of Marmara. They harassed the shoreline and snatched any booty they could lay their hands on. Once again the crusaders’ land and sea forces worked in close co-ordination and their combined strength was more than the Greeks could cope with.
By way of reprisal for this incident, once the Byzantine land forces were beaten back, the crusaders mounted a large raid up to two days’ journey from their camp. Ravaging expeditions, known as
chevauchées,
were very common in western Europe and involved inflicting maximum damage on enemy lands and seizing all possible booty, whether it was prisoners, herds of cattle or sheep, or valuables. There was no attempt to engage in full-scale fighting—the process was simply designed to break the economy and the morale of an opponent and to demonstrate to the hapless victims that their lord was incapable of offering proper protection. The
Devastatio
suggests that this episode was the final straw for those who detested Alexius’s former allies: it was this incident that created a powerful desire to break the man who had brought the barbarians to the walls of Constantinople.
2
BOOK: The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople
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