City of Fortune: How Venice Won and Lost a Naval Empire (16 page)

In an attempt to impose discipline, the army was made to swear on sacred relics that they would hand in all booty worth five sous or more, ‘that they would use no violence against women or tear off their clothes, for whoever did so would be put to death … nor lay hands on any monks, cleric or priest, except in self-defence,
and that they would not sack church or convent’. Pious words. The army had been outside the walls for eleven months. They were hungry and angry; they had been detained here against their will; they had seen the immense wealth of the city for themselves; they knew the customary rewards for taking a city by storm.

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By early April everything was ready. On the evening of Thursday the 8th, ten days before Easter, the men were confessed, and boarded their ships; the horses were loaded onto the horse transports; the fleet lined up. The galleys were interspersed among the transports. The great ships with their high poops and forecastles towered over them all. As dawn approached they cast off to make the short crossing of the Horn, a distance of a few hundred yards. It was an extraordinary sight – the fleet strung out along a mile front with the outlandish flying bridges protruding from their masts, ‘like the tilting beam of a scale’s balance’, the great ships each with the flags of its lord fluttering in the wind as proudly as when they left the lagoon nine months earlier. Handsome rewards were offered for scaling the walls. From the decks the men could look up at the overhanging wooden superstructures,

each containing a multitude of men … [and] either a petrary [a stone-throwing siege engine] or a mangonel was set up between each pair of towers … and atop the highest storey platforms were extended against us, containing on each side ramparts and bulwarks, with the tops of the platforms at a height slightly less than a bow could shoot an arrow from the ground.

On the rising ground behind they could see Murtzuphlus directing operations from in front of his tent, ‘and he had his silver trumpets sounded and his snare drums beaten and they made a mighty racket’. As they neared the shore, the ships slowed and winched themselves in; men started to disembark, splashing through the shallows and trying to advance ladders and battering rams under their sheltering roofs soaked in vinegar.

They were met by volleys of arrows and ‘enormous stone blocks … dropped on the siege engines of the French … and they began to crush them, shattering them to pieces and destroying all their devices so effectively that no one dared stay in or under the siege equipment’. The Venetians swung their flying bridges up towards the castellated battlements but were finding it difficult to reach the tall superstructures – or to steady their ships in a stiff contrary wind that forced the ships back from the shore – and the defence had been carefully organised and well stocked with weapons. The attack started to falter; the men ashore could not be supported by the buffeted ships pushed back by the wind; eventually the signal was given to withdraw. From the ramparts there were loud hootings and jeerings; trumpets and drums thundered; in a final gesture of triumphal mockery some of the defenders climbed up onto the highest platforms ‘and dropped their breeches and showed their backsides’. The army retired in despair, convinced that God did not want the city to fall.

That evening there took place in a church an agonised conference between the crusader lords and the Venetians about how to proceed. The problem was the opposing wind, but it was also morale. A proposal to attack the sea walls outside the Horn was opposed by Dandolo, who was well aware of the strong current along that shore. ‘And know’, declared Villehardouin, ‘that there were those who wanted the current or the wind to take the ships down the straits – they did not care where so long as they left the land and went on their way – and this was no wonder for they were in grave peril.’ The chronicler continuously brought a charge of cowardice against those with a distaste for the manner in which the crusade had been hijacked.

To raise morale, the ever obliging clergy resolved on a campaign of theological vilification of their fellow Christians within the city. On Palm Sunday, 11 April, all the men were called to service, where they heard the leading preachers in the camp deliver a unified message to each national group, ‘and they told them that because [the Greeks] had killed their rightful lord, they
were worse than the Jews … and that they should not be afraid of attacking them for they were the enemies of the Lord God’. It was a message that drew on all the prejudicial motifs of the age. The men were bidden to confess their sins. In a short-term gesture of virtuous piety all the prostitutes were expelled from the camp. The crusaders repaired and re-armed the ships and prepared to launch a new assault the following day: Monday 12 April.

They adjusted their equipment for this second attempt. It was clear that a single ship throwing its flying bridge forward to attack a tower had not worked: the defenders could bring all the weight of numbers to bear on the one spot. It was now decided to link the high-sided sailing ships, the only vessels with the height to reach the towers, in pairs, so that the flying bridges could grapple with a tower from both sides like twin claws. Accordingly they were chained together. Again, the armada sailed out across the Horn to the din of battle. Murtzuphlus was plainly visible in front of his tent directing operations. Trumpets and drums sounded; men shouted; catapults were cranked up – the waterfront was quickly engulfed in a storm of noise, ‘so loud’, according to Villehardouin, ‘that the earth seemed to shake’. Arrows thocked across the water; gouts of Greek fire spurted up from the siphons on the Venetian ships; enormous boulders, ‘so enormous that one man couldn’t lift them’, were hurled through the air from the sixty catapults ranged on the walls; from the hill above, Murtzuphlus shouted directions to the men, ‘Go here! Go there!’ as the angle of attack altered. The defensive arrangements of both sides worked well. The Greek fire fizzled out against the timber superstructures on the ramparts, which were protected by leather casings soaked in vinegar; the vine nets absorbed the force of the boulders which struck the ships. The contest was as inconclusive as the day before. And then, at some point, the wind shifted to the north, propelling the giant sailing ships closer to the shore. Two of these vessels which had been chained together, the
Paradise
and the
Pilgrim
, surged forward, their flying bridges converging on a tower from both sides. The
Pilgrim
struck first. A Venetian soldier clattered up the
walkway, sixty feet above the ground, and leapt onto the tower. It was a gesture of doomed bravery; the Varangian Guard advanced and cut him to pieces.

The flying bridge, responding to the surge of the sea, disengaged and closed on the tower for a second time. This time a French soldier, Andrew of Durboise, took his life in his hands and leapt the gap; scarcely grabbing the battlements, he managed to haul himself inside on his knees. While he was still on all fours, a group of men rushed forward with swords and axes and struck him. They thought that they had dealt him a death blow. Durboise, however, had better armour than the Venetian. Somehow he survived. To the astonishment of his assailants, he climbed to his feet and drew his sword. Appalled and terrified by this supernatural resurrection, they turned and fled to the storey below. When those on that level saw the flight, they in turn became infected with panic. The tower was evacuated. Durboise was followed onto the ramparts by others. They now had secure control of a tower and tied the flying bridge to it. The bridge however continued to dip and rear with the movement of the ship against the sea. It threatened to pull down the whole wooden superstructure. The bridge was untied, cutting off the small band of soldiers on their hard-won foothold. Further down the line, another ship struck a tower and managed to take it, but the crusaders on the two towers were effectively isolated, surrounded by a swarm of men on the towers either side. The contest had reached a critical point.

However, the sight of flags flying from these towers put new courage into the attackers now landing on the fore shore. Another French knight, Peter of Amiens, decided to tackle the wall itself. Spotting a small bricked-up doorway, he led a charge of men to try to batter it open. The posse included Robert of Clari and his brother, Aleaumes, a warrior monk. They crouched at the foot of the wall with their shields over their heads. A storm of missiles pelted down on them from above; crossbow bolts, pots of pitch, stones and Greek fire battered on the upturned shields whilst the 
men beneath desperately hacked away at the gate ‘with axes and good swords, pieces of wood, iron bars and pickaxes, until they made a sizeable hole’. Through the aperture they could glimpse a swarm of people waiting on the other side. There was a moment of pause. To crawl through the gap was to risk certain death. None of the crusaders dared advance.

Seeing this hesitation, Aleaumes the monk thrust his way forward and volunteered himself. Robert barred the way, certain his brother was offering to die. Aleaumes struggled past him, got down on his hands and knees and started to crawl through with Robert trying to grab his foot and haul him back. Somehow Aleaumes wriggled and kicked his way free to emerge on the far side – to a barrage of stones. He staggered to his feet, drew his sword – and advanced. And for a second time the sheer bravery of a single man, fuelled by religious zeal, turned the tide. The defenders turned and ran. Aleaumes called back to those outside, ‘My lords, enter boldly! I can see them withdrawing in dismay. They’re starting to run away!’ Seventy men scrambled inside. Panic rippled through the defence. The defenders started to retreat, vacating a large part of the wall and the ground behind. From above, Murtzuphlus saw this collapse with growing concern and tried to muster his troops with trumpets and drums.

Whatever the new emperor may have been he was no coward. He spurred his horse and started down the slope, probably virtually unaccompanied. Peter of Amiens ordered his men to stand their ground: ‘Now, lords, here is the moment to prove yourselves. Here comes the emperor. See to it that no one dare to give way.’ Murtzuphlus’s advance slowed to a halt. Unsupported, he drew back and returned to the tent to rally his forces further back. The intruders demolished the next gate; men started to flood inside; horses were unloaded; mounted knights galloped through the open gates. The sea wall was lost.

Meanwhile Peter of Amiens advanced up the hill. Murtzuphlus abandoned his command post and rode off through the city streets to the Bucoleon Palace, two miles away. Choniates 
bewailed the behaviour of his fellow countrymen: ‘The cowardly thousands, who had the advantage of a high hill, were chased by one man from the fortifications they were meant to defend.’ ‘And so it was’, wrote Robert of Clari from the other side, ‘that my lord Peter had Murtzuphlus’s tents, chests and the treasures which he left there.’ And the slaughter began: ‘There were so many wounded and dead that there seemed no end to them – the number was beyond computation.’ All afternoon the crusaders plundered the surrounding area; further north refugees started to stream out of the land gates.

At the day’s end the crusaders drew to a halt ‘exhausted by fighting and killing’. They were wary of what lay ahead: in the dense tangle of city streets, the soldiers and citizens could put up a spirited defence, street by street, house by house, raining missiles and firepots down on them from the rooftops, ensnaring them in guerrilla warfare which might last a month. The crusaders ferried all their men across and camped outside the walls, with detachments controlling the red tent and surrounding the well-fortified imperial palace of Blachernae. No one knew what was happening in the city’s labyrinth or how the four hundred thousand population would react, but if they would neither surrender nor fight, it was decided to wait until the wind was right and burn them out. They now knew how vulnerable the city was to fire. That night a fire was started pre-emptively by twitchy soldiers near the Horn, tearing out another twenty-five acres of housing.

In the heart of Constantinople, there was chaos. People wandered aimlessly about in despair or took to removing or burying their possessions, or left the city, heading north across the wide plain. Murtzuphlus rode here and there, trying to persuade them to stand their ground, but it was hopeless. Shaken by the rippling succession of disasters – the repeated attacks, the devastating fires, the short-lived and violent ends of successive emperors – they could summon no loyalty to the present incumbent. Fearing that he would, as Choniates put it, be ‘fed into the jaws of the Latins as a banquet if he were captured’, he abandoned the palace and 
boarded a fishing boat and sailed away from the city – yet another emperor at loose in the Greek back country, having reigned for two months and sixteen days. Choniates was a stickler for the dates. Once more ‘the ship tossed by storms’ lacked a captain.

What was left of the ruling clique struggled to absorb each fresh blow. There was a scrabbled attempt to find yet another emperor; early on 13 April, the tattered remnant of the imperial administration and the clergy convened at Hagia Sophia to elect the successor. There were two candidates, evenly matched young men, ‘both modest and skilled in war’. The choice was made by drawing lots, but the winner, Constantine Lascaris, refused to put on the imperial insignia – he was not prepared to be identified as emperor if resistance proved futile. Outside the church, the Varangian Guard drew up in formation nearby at the Milion, the golden milestone, a ceremonial arch surmounted with the figure of Constantine the Great. This was the epicentre of Byzantium, the point from which all distances in the empire were measured. They stood there, axes in hand, awaiting orders from the new emperor, according to tradition.

It did not start well for Lascaris. He harangued the large number of people gathered at the ancient heart of the city, ‘cajoling them to resist … but none of the crowd were swayed by his words’. The Varangians asked for a pay rise to fight. This was granted. They marched off, but never fulfilled their orders, quickly realising the odds were against them, so that ‘when the heavily armed Latin troops appeared, they promptly scattered and sought safety in flight’. Lascaris had already realised all was hopeless. The briefest of all the brief reigns in Constantinople was over within hours. The ‘emperor’ entered the palace, just a few hours after Murtzuphlus had vacated it, and followed suit: he took a boat across the Bosphorus to Asia Minor, where Byzantium would live to fight again.