A History of the Crusades-Vol 3 (15 page)

1199: Innocent III and the Crusade

The moment was well chosen for the Papacy.
As at the time of the First Crusade, there was no Emperor in the West in a
position to interfere. Henry VI’s death in September 1197 had relieved the Church
from a very real threat. As son of Frederick Barbarossa and husband of the
heiress of Sicily, whose inheritance was firmly in his hands by 1194, Henry was
more formidable than any potentate since Charlemagne. He had a high sense of
this office and almost succeeded in establishing it on an hereditary basis. His
bestowal of crowns in the East and his demand of allegiance from the captive
Coeur de Lion showed that he saw himself as ‘king of kings’. He made no secret
of his hatred of Byzantium, the ancient Empire whose traditions outrivalled his
own, nor of his aim to carry on the Norman policy of building a Mediterranean
dominion, which in itself involved the destruction of Byzantium. A Crusade was
an inevitable part of this policy. Throughout 1197 he laid his careful plans.
The German expedition that landed that year at Acre was to be the forerunner of
a greater army that he himself would command. Pope Celestine III, a timorous,
vacillating man, was embarrassed but made no attempt to dissuade him, though he
advised him not to launch an immediate attack against Constantinople, with
whose Emperor he was negotiating for Church union. Had Henry not died suddenly
at Messina, at the age of thirty-two, just as he was preparing a great armada
to conquer the East, he might well have succeeded in making himself master of
all Christendom.

Pope Celestine died a few months after the
Emperor. Innocent III therefore found himself on his accession without a lay
rival. The widowed Empress Constance put her Sicilian Kingdom and her little
son Frederick into his care. In Germany, where the Sicilian-born prince was
unknown, his uncle, Henry’s brother, Philip of Swabia, took over the family
lands and claimed the Empire, and found that the enemies of the Hohenstaufen
had only been temporarily cowed. The House of Welf put up a rival candidate,
Otto of Brunswick. Richard of England was killed in March 1199, and his brother
John and his nephew Arthur were disputing the inheritance, with King Philip of
France actively taking part in the quarrel. With the Kings of France and
England so occupied, with Germany distracted by civil war and Papal authority
restored in southern Italy, Innocent could proceed in confidence to preach his
Crusade. As a preliminary step he opened negotiations with the Byzantine
Emperor Alexius III over the union of the Churches.

In France the Pope’s chief agent as
preacher was the itinerant Fulk of Neuilly, who had long sought to inspire a
crusade. He was famed for his fearlessness before princes, as when he ordered King
Richard to abandon his pride and avarice and lust. At the Pope’s request he
toured the country, persuading the countryfolk to follow their lords to the
Holy War. In Germany the sermons of Abbot Martin of Pairis were almost equally
inspiring, though there the nobles were too deeply involved in the civil war to
pay him much attention. But neither Fulk nor Martin aroused the same enthusiasm
as the preachers of the First Crusade. The recruitment was more orderly and in
the main restricted to the dependants of barons who had taken the Cross and
many of these barons were moved less by piety than by a wish to acquire new
lands far away from the disciplinary activity of King Philip Augustus. Tibald
of Champagne was generally accepted as leader of the movement. With him were
Baldwin IX of Hainault, Count of Flanders, and his brother Henry, Louis, Count
of Blois, Geoffrey III of Le Perche and Simon IV of Montfort and their
brothers, Enguerrand of Boves, Reynald of Dampierre and Geoffrey of
Villehardouin, and many lesser lords from northern France and the Low
Countries. The Bishop of Autun announced his adhesion with a company of knights
from Auvergne. In the Rhineland the Bishop of Halberstadt and the Count of
Katznellenbogen took the Cross with many of their neighbours.’ Their example
was followed soon afterwards by various magnates of northern Italy, led by
Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat, whose participation aroused in Pope Innocent
his first misgivings about the whole venture; for the princes of Montferrat were
the faithful friends and allies of the Hohenstaufen.

1201:
Boniface appointed Leader of the Crusade

The expedition could not be organized
quickly. The first problem was to find ships to carry it to the East; for with
the decline of Byzantium the land-route across the Balkans and Anatolia was no
longer practicable. But none of the Crusaders had a fleet at his disposal,
except the Count of Flanders; and the Flemish fleet sailed on its own to
Palestine, under the command of John of Nesle. Next, there was the question of
general strategy. Richard Coeur-de-Lion had given his opinion when he left
Palestine that Egypt was the vulnerable point in the Saracen Empire. It was
eventually decided that Egypt should be the Crusaders’ objective. The year
1200
was spent in varied negotiations, over
which Innocent tried to keep some control. In March
1201
Tibald of Champagne died suddenly; and the
Crusade elected as leader in his place Boniface of Montferrat. It was a natural
choice. The House of Montferrat had notable connections with the East. Boniface’s
father William had died as a Palestinian baron. Of his brothers William had
married Sibylla of Jerusalem and been the father of the child-King Baldwin V;
Rainier had married the daughter of the Emperor Manuel and had been murdered at
Constantinople; and Conrad had been the saviour of Tyre, the ruler of the Holy
Land and the father of its present heiress. But his appointment to command the
Crusaders moved it from Pope Innocent’s influence. Boniface came to France in
August
1201
and met his chief colleagues at
Soissons, where they ratified his leadership. From there he went on to Germany
to spend the winter months with his old friend Philip of Swabia.

Philip of Swabia was himself interested in
Eastern affairs, but in Byzantium rather than in Syria. He fully shared the
dislike that his dynasty felt towards the Byzantine Emperors. He expected soon
to become Western Emperor, and he wished to carry out his brother Henry’s full
programme. He had moreover a personal connection with Byzantium. When Henry VI
conquered Sicily, amongst his prisoners had been the young widow of the
dispossessed Sicilian crown-prince Roger, Irene Angelina, the daughter of the
Emperor Isaac Angelus; and he gave her as bride to Philip. It was a love-match;
and through his love for her Philip became involved in the dynastic quarrels of
the Angeli.

A few months after Philip’s marriage, his
father-in-law Isaac lost his throne. Power had not improved Isaac’s capacity.
His officials were corrupt and uncontrolled, and he himself far more
extravagant than his impoverished Empire could afford. He had lost half the
Balkan peninsula to a vigorous and menacing Vlacho-Bulgarian kingdom. The
Turks, till the death of Kilij Arslan II in 1192, were steadily encroaching in
Anatolia, cutting Byzantium off from the south coast and from Syria. More and
more trade concessions were sold for ready cash to the Italians. The lavish and
tactless splendour of the Emperor’s wedding to Princess Margaret of Hungary
enraged his over-taxed subjects. His own family began to desert him; and in
1195 his brother Alexius engineered a successful palace plot. Isaac was blinded
and thrown into prison, together with his son, the younger Alexius. The new
Emperor, Alexius III, was little abler than his brother. He showed some
diplomatic activity, wooing the friendship of the Papacy with the offer of
talks on ecclesiastical union — a friendship that may have preserved him from
an attack by Henry VI — and his intrigues helped to keep the Seldjuk princes
disunited. But home affairs were left to his wife Euphrosyne, who was as
extravagant and as corruptly served as her dispossessed brother-in-law.

At the end of 1201, the young Alexius,
Isaac’s son, escaped from his prison in Constantinople and made his way to his
sister’s court in Germany. Philip received him well and introduced him to
Boniface of Montferrat. The three of them took counsel together. Alexius wished
to obtain his father’s throne. Philip was ready to help him, in order to make
the Eastern Empire client to the Western. Boniface had a Crusading army at his
disposal. Would it not be of advantage to the Crusade if it paused on its way
to enthrone a friendly ruler at Constantinople?

1202:
Negotiations with the Venetians

The Crusaders had meanwhile been seeking
transport for their sea-voyage. Early in
1201,
while the Count of Champagne was still
alive, they opened negotiations with Venice and sent Geoffrey of Villehardouin
there to arrange terms. A treaty was signed between Geoffrey and the Venetians
in April. In return for 85,000 silver marks of Cologne, Venice agreed to supply
the Crusade by 28 June 1202 with transport and victuals for a year for 4500
knights and their horses, 9000 esquires and
20,000
foot-soldiers. In addition, the Republic
would provide fifty galleys to accompany the Crusade, on condition that
one-half of its conquests should be given to Venice. As soon as the agreement
was made, the Crusaders were summoned to assemble at Venice, ready to sail
against Egypt.

A few Crusaders were suspicious of the
treaty. The Bishop of Autun took his company direct from Marseilles to Syria.
Others, under Reynald of Dampierre, were impatient of the delay at Venice and
made their own arrangements to sail to Acre. There was also some
dissatisfaction among the humbler Crusaders at the decision to attack Egypt.
They had enlisted to rescue the Holy Land and could not understand the point of
going elsewhere. Their discontent was encouraged quietly by the Venetians, who
had no intention of giving help to an attack on Egypt. Al-Adil was well aware
of the advantages that trade with Europe brought to his dominions, and his
conquest of Egypt had been followed by the offer of valuable trading
concessions to the Italian cities. At the very moment when the Venetian
government was bargaining with the Crusaders about the transport of their
forces, its ambassadors were in Cairo planning a trade agreement with the
Sultan’s viceroy, who signed a treaty with them in the spring of
1202,
after special envoys sent by al-Adil to
Venice had been assured by the Doge that he would countenance no expedition
against Egypt.

It is uncertain whether the Crusaders
understood the subtleties of Venetian diplomacy. But, if any of them suspected
that they were being duped, there was nothing to be done. Their treaty with
Venice placed them entirely in her power: for they could not raise the 85,000
marks that they had promised. By June 1202 the army was assembled; but as the
money was not forthcoming the Republic would not provide the ships. Encamped on
the little island of San Niccolo di Lido, harassed by Venetian merchants with
whom they had run up debts, threatened that their supplies would be entirely
cut off unless they produced the money, the Crusaders were ready by September
to accept any terms that Venice might offer. Boniface, who joined them that
summer, after an unsatisfactory visit to the Pope at Rome, was already prepared
to work with the Venetians. For some decades past there had been a desultory
war between the Republic and the King of Hungary for the control of Dalmatia,
and the key-city of Zara had recently passed into Hungarian possession. The
Crusaders were now informed that the expedition could start out and the
settlement of the debt be postponed if they would join in a preliminary
campaign to recapture Zara. The Pope, hearing of the offer, sent at once to
forbid its acceptance. But, whatever they might feel about its morality, they
could not but comply with it.

1202:
The Sack of Zara

The arrangement had been made behind the
scenes between Boniface of Montferrat, who had few Christian scruples, and the
Doge of Venice, Enrico Dandolo. Dandolo was a very old man, but age had not
quenched his energy or his ambition. Some thirty years before he had been on an
embassy to Constantinople, where he had been involved in a brawl and had
partially lost his sight. His consequent bitterness against the Byzantines was
increased when, soon after his elevation to the Dogeship in 1193, he had some
difficulty in securing from the Emperor Alexius III a renewal of the favourable
trading terms given to Venice by the Emperor Isaac. He was therefore ready to
discuss with Boniface schemes for an expedition against Constantinople. But for
the moment the semblance of the Crusade must be maintained. As soon as the
attack on Zara was approved there was a solemn ceremony at St Mark’s where the
Doge, and his leading counsellors, ostentatiously took the Cross.

The fleet sailed from Venice on 8 November
1202,
and arrived off Zara two days
later. After a fierce assault, the city capitulated on the 15th and was
thoroughly pillaged. Three days later the Venetians and Crusaders came to blows
while dividing the spoil, but peace was patched up. The Doge and Boniface then
decided that it was too late in the year to venture to the East. The expedition
settled down for the winter at Zara, while its leaders planned their future
operations.

When the news of the sack of Zara reached
Rome, Pope Innocent was aghast. It was intolerable that in defiance of his
orders a Crusade should have been used to attack the territory of a faithful
son of the Church. He excommunicated the whole expedition. Then, realizing that
the Crusaders themselves had been the victims of blackmail, he forgave them but
maintained the excommunication of the Venetians. Dandolo was unperturbed.
Through Boniface he was already in touch with Philip of Swabia, a
fellow-excommunicate. Early in
1203
a
messenger came from Germany to Zara from Philip to Boniface with a definite
offer from his brother-in-law Alexius. If the Crusade would proceed to
Constantinople and place Alexius upon the Imperial throne there, then Alexius
would guarantee to pay the Crusaders the money that they still owed the
Venetians; he would provide them with the necessary money and supplies for the
conquest of Egypt, and would add a contingent of 10,000 men from the Byzantine
army; he would pay for the maintenance of five hundred knights to remain in the
Holy Land, and he would ensure the submission of the Church of Constantinople
to Rome. Boniface referred the matter to Dandolo, who was delighted. It meant
that Venice would receive her money and at the same time would humble the
Greeks and would be able to enlarge and strengthen her trading-privileges
throughout the Byzantine Empire. The attack against Egypt could easily be
thwarted later on.