by Robert Payne
The recently elected pope, Innocent III, had called, albeit somewhat halfheartedly, for the recovery of the Holy Land. A parish priest known as Master Fulk of Neuilly, in the archbishopric of Paris, had been addressing his flock and everyone else who would listen as he called upon men to renounce vice in the name of the Holy Spirit. Finally in 1198, the Papal Legate, Cardinal Peter Capuano, authorized him on behalf of the pope to preach the Crusade. Master Fulk no longer attacked corruption in high places; his audiences were now told of the benefits that accrued to the faithful when they left everything they possessed and journeyed to the Holy Land. He died at Neuilly in May 1202, worn out by his travels, but he was long remembered.
Master Fulk’s passion for the Crusade sprang out of his knowledge of vice and corruption in Paris and the provinces. He saw the Crusade as an instrument for cleansing people of their sins and setting them on the road to Paradise. Thibault, Count of Champagne, had entirely different interests. The Crusade, for him, was part of his heritage, a devotional adventure and an aristocratic privilege. There were not many people who could claim such a close association with Jerusalem. We have no evidence that he ever met Master Fulk or listened to his sermons, and it is unlikely that the young nobleman would have anything in common with the unruly parish priest. As conceived at the castle of Ecry, the new Crusade was to be led by the count of Champagne and his noble friends.
There existed at one time a complete honor roll of the men who played prominent parts in the Crusade. Both Geoffrey of Villehardouin and Robert of Clari, the two principal chroniclers of the Crusade, recite the names in very nearly the same order according to the provinces they come from. About a hundred names are mentioned. The most important addition to the list of Crusaders was made on February 23, 1200, when Count Baldwin of Flanders and Hainault formally took the Cross at Bruges. He had married Mary, the sister of Thibault. His family had a long connection with the Crusades. His mother’s brother, Philip, Count of Alsace, had died at Acre in 1191. Other relatives, near and distant, had also taken the Cross. Thibault, Louis, and Baldwin, all closely related by marriage, assumed the responsibility for leading the Crusade.
It appears that they were in no hurry. Every two months or so, they held meetings with bishops and the baronage to discuss the practical problems of launching the Crusade: the day when they would assemble the army, the route they would take, the raising of funds, questions of shipping and administration, and the strategies to be employed. They sought out the nobles who had taken part in previous Crusades. There were meetings at Soissons and Compiègne, but there was little action until the end of the year when the three leaders decided to send six envoys to Venice to disc uss the cost of transporting the troops by sea. Each of the three leaders chose two envoys. Villehardouin was one of the men chosen by Thibault; in his chronicle he makes it quite clear that among the envoys he was first among equals. He did most of the talking and was therefore largely responsible for what happened later. The envoys were given letters of credenc e signed and sealed by the leaders. According to the letters the doge of Venice was asked to treat the envoys as plenipotentiaries empowered to make arrangements which would be binding on Thibault and his two cousins.
The doge at this time was Enrico Dandolo, descended from one of the most illustrious Venetian families. He had lost the full use of his eyes in an accident in Constantinople and thereafter came to hate the city.
The six envoys were politely welcomed in the Doge’s Palace. After briefly explaining their purpose, they were told to wait for four days until the doge could assemble “the Council of Six,” who would listen to their request at greater length. This delay enabled Dandolo to make enquiries about the envoys through his extensive intelligence service, and to study their behavior in Venice.
On the fourth day the envoys were received by the council. “They had come,” they said, “on behalf of the high barons of France who had taken the sign of the Cross to avenge the shame of Jesus Christ and to reconquer Jerusalem, if God wills it.” The reference to the battle cry of the First Crusade was clear and precise. They asked the doge to act with diligence and to come up with a figure within their means; they were told to come back in eight days.
The doge had twelve days in all to study the envoys and their request. They wanted transport for forty-five hundred horses, nine thousand squires, forty-five hundred knights and twenty thousand foot soldiers, together with fodder and provisions for nine months. He named his price: four marks for a horse and two marks for a man. The total sum, therefore, was eighty-five thousand marks. In addition, the doge promised to provide fifty armed galleys, on condition that Venice would share equally with the Crusaders whatever territory or treasure they succeeded in capturing. The envoys spent the night discussing the proposal, and in the morning they agreed to the harsh terms.
After a high mass at St. Mark’s, attended by thousands of Venetians, the doge invited Villehardouin to speak. He said they had been commanded, as envoys of the baron, to fall on their knees in supplication to the people of Venice. Whereupon the six envoys knelt before the high altar, tears streaming down their faces, their hands lifted in the traditional attitude of suppliants. This was playacting of a not very subtle kind, rehearsed and choreographed, in a brilliant setting, in the light of candles and the gleaming mosaics on the walls. The doge advanced toward them, lifting them up one by one, like a king bestowing mercy, and according to Villehardouin he was weeping with tears of joy. Soon all the people in the church were weeping excitedly, waving their arms, and shouting, “We consent! We consent!” “There was such a great tumult and uproar that it was as though the earth was being torn asunder,” Villehardouin wrote many years later.
We have no reason to believe that he exaggerated the importance of the occasion. He, together with the blind doge, was responsible for the solemn covenant that was signed on the following day. On that day, too, it was announced to the grand council that the Crusade would sail for Cairo, because Cairo offered the best opportunity for destroying Turks, but the general public was not to be informed that the Crusade was bound for Egypt: the public would be told only that the Crusaders would be going overseas. The Venetians had very good reasons for not publicizing the fact that the fleet was bound for Cairo.
They drove a hard bargain: the entire sum of eighty-five thousand marks was to be paid in installments, the last payment of fifty thousand marks to be paid at the end of April, 1202, a year after the covenant was signed. The first payment of fifteen thousand marks was due on August 1, 1201, the second of ten thousand marks on November 1, and the third of ten thousand on February 20, 1202, the Day of the Purification of the Virgin. It was agreed that the Crusaders should set sail on the Day of St. Peter and St. Paul, June 29, 1202, more than a year away, unless the date would be changed by common consent.
There was more weeping when the doge presented the covenant to the councillors. The doge wept; the envoys wept; someone brought holy relics into the council chamber and everyone swore, in the presence of the relics, to observe the terms of the covenant. Messengers were sent to Rome with a copy of the covenant for the pope’s approval.
When Villehardouin returned to France to give the good news to Thibault, Count of Champagne, he was horrified to discover that the count could not possibly lead the Crusade. He was dying. Still, Thibault was so overjoyed that arrangements had been made for the Crusade that he rose from his deathbed and mounted a horse. It was the last time he ever rode on horseback. He died a few days later, leaving in his will a sum of money to be spent as the leaders of the Crusade saw fit and another sum to be divided among friends who had promised to join the Crusade. Villehardouin observed bitterly that a surprisingly large number accepted the money but did not join the Crusade.
With the death of Thibault, Villehardouin sought another great lord to replace him. He went with a small delegation to Odo, Duke of Burgundy, urging him to accept command of the Crusade. The duke refused. Geoffrey of Joinville was sent as an envoy to Thibault, Count
of Bar-le-Duc, who also refused. A parliament was held at Soissons to discuss whom they should approach. Villehardouin, who had taken upon himself so many burdens on behalf of the Crusade, suggested that Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat, would be an excellent candidate. He had met the marquis somewhere in Italy while he was journeying from Venice to Troyes and he seems to have known already that the marquis would enjoy leading the Crusade. “If you should ask him to come here,” he declared before the parliament, “and if he should take the sign of the cross and assume the place of the Count of Champagne, and if you should offer him command of the army, he would take it soon enough.”
What was needed, in Villehardouin’s eyes, was a man of commanding presence, experienced in arms, belonging to a high order of nobility, perhaps having a connection with the royal House of Jerusalem. The marquis seemed to fulfill all these requirements. His eldest brother, William Long-Sword, had married Sibylla, the daughter of King Amaury of Jerusalem, and fathered King Baldwin V. Another brother, Renier, had married Maria, the daughter of the Emperor Manuel Comnenus, who had given him the deeds to the Little Kingdom of Thessalonica. Renier had died of poisoning in Constantinople. A third brother, Conrad, had preceded Henry, Count of Champagne, as the husband of Queen Isabelle of Jerusalem. All Boniface’s brothers were now dead, and he was the inheritor of the marquisate. He had close ties with both Constantinople and the Holy Land.
But where his brothers were strong, Boniface was weak: he was one who would inevitably choose his own advantage above the public good. He was about fifty, given to easy living, gracious toward women and to poets, whom he cultivated at his court, and without any more military experience than could be obtained by skirmishes in Sicily or by stamping out the communes of Lombardy. Villehardouin was attracted to the splendor of his name and person; he could scarcely have chosen a man less capable of leading the Crusade.
In August 1201, Boniface attended the parliament at Soissons to be invested with the command of the Crusade. Some of the ceremonies took place in the orchard belonging to the abbey of Our Lady of Soissons. Boniface promised faithfully to accept the heavy burden now laid on him, and the bishop of Soissons, who had also taken the Cross, then attached the little square of cloth, with the cross sewn on it, to his shoulder. Boniface turned to the assembled counts and barons and asked them where they intended that he should lead the Crusade. They answered that it would be directed against Alexandria or Cairo because these places were “in the very midst of things and where most could be done.” Boniface agreed. He appears not to have heard of the solemn covenant made with the doge for conveying the Crusaders to the East, for he immediately spoke about sending envoys to Genoa, Pisa, and Venice to see where suitable ships could be found. Half the fifty thousand livres left by the count of Champagne toward payment for the Crusade was now given to Boniface to do with as he saw fit.
By this time the Crusade had acquired its own momentum, its own purpose, and its own ambiguities. Its leader was ignorant and almost insanely proud, without faith, without scruples, without remorse. He would lead the Crusaders where he wanted to lead them.
Like many totally unscrupulous people, Boniface could be played upon by those who were equally unscrupulous; the doge of Venice learned, without too much sorrow, that all the wealth of the Crusaders did not amount to the sum needed for renting and provisioning the ships. By the terms of the shipping agreement the Crusaders were lacking thirty-four thousand silver marks. Instead of paying this sum, the Crusaders were required to help capture the city of Zara, which had rebelled against Venice and now belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary. Zara was a large and important seaport, two hundred miles southeast of Venice on the Adriatic coast, which had previously served as a supply base for the Venetian fleet. Since Zara was rich, the contents of its treasury would serve to balance the Crusaders’ budget, and there would be a good deal left over for the Venetians.
The pope heard of the secret agreement and protested vigorously. It was an unconscionable offense against morality for a Christian city to be attacked by a Crusader fleet. His protests went unheard. The doge, and the Venetians with him, had often angered the pope without suffering any dire consequences. In a state of great excitement, before a high mass in the Church of St. Mark, the doge himself ostentatiously took the Cross, and proclaimed himself the leader of the expedition. At that moment power-real power—had slipped from the Crusaders. The blind doge commanded. The Crusade, which had begun with the young and idealistic count of Champagne, was now falling into the hands of the doge, a man of extraordinary willpower and immense ability, who surpassed the marquis of Montferrat in the arts of war and conspiracy. He was the war leader, but he had not the least intention of attacking Cairo or of aiding the shattered Kingdom of Jerusalem or of rescuing the Holy Sepulchre. His single aim was to establish an empire under the Republic of Venice, which would permit the Venetians to become “Lords and Masters of a Quarter and a Half-quarter of the Roman Empire.” In all this he succeeded brilliantly, and in doing it, he destroyed the Crusade.
The doge had a flair for the drama of conquest. For the Crusaders he became a legend, a mysterious and powerful force capable of commanding the destiny of kingdoms and empires.
About this time another mysterious and powerful force stepped on the stage briefly. The young Prince Alexius Angelus was the son of the Byzantine Emperor Isaac II. The brother of the emperor, also called Alexius, had been ransomed from Turkish captivity, and on his arrival in Constantinople he promptly seized the emperor, blinded him, and threw him into prison. One Alexius became emperor and the other, a fugitive, made his way to Italy and then to Germany, to the court of Philip of Swabia, who had married his sister. Then he settled in Verona, proclaiming himself the rightful emperor. He sent messages to the marquis of Montferrat and to other Crusading princes at Venice, urging them to help him regain his father’s throne, promising great rewards from the treasury of Byzantium.
Prince Alexius Angelus thus provided with superb timing the provocation the doge and the marquis had been looking for. The young prince soon offered a prospectus of the coming rewards. He would offer the Crusaders the money they needed to pay the Venetians, he would assume the entire cost of the conquest of Egypt, and he would provide an army of ten thousand Byzantine soldiers and pay for the maintenance of five hundred knights. Finally, he offered to ensure that the Orthodox Church would submit to Rome. This last offer, if it had been carried out, would have plunged Constantinople into civil war. These breathtaking offers came from a mind at least as conspiratorial as the minds of the doge and the marquis. They were calculated to please the pope and the entire Crusading host. The pope, who had met the young prince and found him to be a braggart and a nincompoop, was not averse to receiving the submission of the Orthodox Church. But he was averse to bloodshed, and wrote that it was intolerable that Christians should kill Christians except under exceptional circumstances. In the eyes of the doge and the marquis, now firmly committed to the destruction of Zara and the sack of Constantinople, the “exceptional circumstances” already existed.
The Christian army, now fretting under close guard on the island of Lido, knew nothing about this. They were being manipulated by the doge, the marquis and a Byzantine prince. Most of the knights and foot soldiers believed they would be sailing to Egypt or the Holy Land. Because there were signs that the Crusade was about to begin, the soldiers on the island of Lido tied torches to their lances and paraded around their camp.
But there were more delays. The doge was in a conquering mood, and he decided that the time had come to demand the submission of Trieste and Moglie. Accordingly, part of the Venetian fleet set sail for these cities; they were invested and, finally, they surrendered. Only when they returned could the combined fleet attack Zara. Robert of Clari, standing on the poop of one of the great galleys, was overwhelmed by the sight of the great fleet sailing down the Adriatic, led by the galley of the doge, painted in bright vermilion with a canopy of vermilion silk spread over his throne, t
he drummers beating on their drums and four trumpeters sounding the notes that could be employed only in the doge’s honor. The noise was deafening, for there were a hundred more trumpeters on the other vessels. When the trumpets died down, the priests and clerks sang Veni creator spiritus, weeping with joy at the prospect of sailing to the Holy Land. Even at this late stage there were very few who were in on the secret.
Long before the fleet dropped anchor in the harbor, the people of Zara had been warned of the coming invasion. They had taken precautions. The walled city had crosses set up along the whole length of the walls, to remind the invaders that the city belonged to Christians. In addition, they acquired from the pope a formal statement that anyone who made war on them would be excommunicated. With its strong walls and its navy, Zara could, in the ordinary course of events, keep invaders at bay, but the Crusader fleet led by the doge represented force on a massive, unprecedented scale. The Zarians saw they would have to capitulate. The doge had set up a pavilion outside the walls, and here came ambassadors from the city, offering to surrender on condition that their lives be spared. The doge was not content with their answer. The people must be punished for having deserted the Venetian cause; a suitable number of people must be massacred, a vast indemnity must be paid, Zara must never again be in a position where it could defy the power of Venice.
The chiefs of the Crusading army were of two minds: those who had no trouble with their conscience were all for attacking Zara; those with a more tender conscience asked themselves how they could avoid taking part in the conflict. What the Crusading soldiers thought of making war against a city whose battlements were crowned with crosses may only be guessed at, but they cannot have been pleased to discover that they had been lured into an adventure over which they had no control whatsoever.