Fourth Crusade: Conquest of Constantinople

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Once again the Crusade was plunged into a terrible crisis. Significant numbers of the army could not stomach the idea of turning their weapons against another group of Christians; as one argued, ‘They had not left their homes to do any such thing and for their part they wished to go to the Holy Land.’ The majority of the leaders took a longer view. To them the ultimate goal of the Crusade remained Jerusalem, and with this in mind, they accepted the proposal in January 1203. With the support of Prince Alexius they would be in a far stronger position to accomplish their aim. The supreme irony is, therefore, that it was through the direct invitation of a Greek prince that the Fourth Crusade turned toward Constantinople. Contrary to many speculations, there had never been any premeditated plan to do this.

Conspiracy theories have abounded. For example, some historians have claimed Doge Dandolo was blinded on an earlier visit to Constantinople and now sought revenge. In reality, contemporaries attest that he could see long after this date. The Venetians have been accused of steering the Crusade toward the wealth of Byzantium, yet the spoils in Egypt were far, far greater. The reality remains: Prince Alexius was responsible for bringing the Crusade to Constantinople.

In June 1203, the fleet sailed through the Dardanelles and down the Bosporus. As they caught their first glimpse of Constantinople, many of the knights were awestruck. Never had they seen such a splendid sight. Geoffrey of Villehardouin, marshal of the county of Champagne, wrote:

I can assure you that all those who had never seen Constantinople before gazed very intently upon the city, having never imagined there could be so fine a place in the entire world. They noted the high walls and lofty towers encircling it, and its rich palaces and tall churches, of which there were so many that no one would have believed it to be true if he had not seen it with his own eyes, and viewed the length and breadth of that city which reigns supreme over all others. There was indeed no man so brave and daring that his flesh did not shudder at the sight. Nor was this to be wondered at, for never had so grand an enterprise been carried out by any people since the creation of the world.

Roman emperors seeking a safe haven from the barbarians ravaging their homelands had founded Constantinople in the fourth century. Over the centuries the ‘new Rome’ came to dominate lands across Asia Minor as well as modern Greece, Albania, and Bulgaria. ‘The queen of cities,’ as her proud inhabitants called her, lay on a triangle of land bounded on one side by the inlet of the Golden Horn, on another by the Bosporus, and on the landward side by the mighty Theodosian walls, still standing today and running uninterrupted for three and one-half miles. The city was filled with superb churches and palaces boasting splendid relics and treasures on a scale far beyond the Crusaders’ experience. The greatest church of all, Hagia Sophia, remains one of the world’s most impressive buildings, topped by its central dome, 180 feet high.

At the time of the Fourth Crusade, however, the Byzantine Empire was in a seriously weakened condition. For much of the twelfth century there had been genuine order, but the death of Manuel Comnenus in 1180 had provoked a period of instability that continued to plague the empire. In the seventy-nine years before Manuel’s death there had been only three rebellions; in the twenty years after there were fifty-eight. The precarious condition of the Byzantine Empire could only benefit the Crusaders.

Emperor Alexius III proved an astute, capable political operator. Hearing of the imminent arrival of his young challenger, he spread propaganda dismissing Alexius Angelos’ claim and drawing attention to the prince’s ‘barbarian’ allies. He argued that the Crusaders had ‘come to destroy their ancient liberty and they were hastening to return the place and its people to the papacy and to subjugate the empire.’ (The idea of stirring up local opposition against an outside force is familiar to us today from the Iraq conflict.) Alexius III’s rhetoric proved highly effective, and when the Crusade leaders paraded their ally in front of the walls of Constantinople, the populace reacted to his presence with either utter indifference or hostility. This was a calamity for the Crusaders; now they would have to fight.

On July 5, 1203, across the Golden Horn from Constantinople, they mounted the largest amphibious assault yet attempted in medieval warfare. The Greeks did not oppose their landing, and the Crusaders quickly drew themselves up into the ordered battle line that they would adopt repeatedly over the next few years. They formed up into seven divisions, according to their origins: two from Flanders; one each from Blois, Amiens, Burgundy, and Champagne; and a rear guard of a combined Lombard and German force. The Venetians remained in charge of the fleet.

Soon the Crusaders captured the suburb of Galata, and then the fleet broke through the huge chain slung across the entrance to the Golden Horn. The chain was designed to protect the slightly weaker walls along the inlet, and its destruction allowed the Crusaders precious access to this more vulnerable side of the city. Soon both elements of the Crusader army began to engage the Greek forces and to demonstrate their special military expertise. The Venetian ships used scaling ladders and crossbeams to try to breach the walls along the Golden Horn while their comrades deployed themselves on the open land outside the Blachernae Palace at the northwestern tip of the city.

By July 17, the Venetians managed to get a hold on the walls, but Emperor Alexius sent his crack troops, the formidable Varangian Guard, to resist them. These men were mercenaries, often of Scandinavian origin, whose chief weapon was a mighty ax. They halted the Venetians’ progress, but outside the walls to the north the Frankish knights faced a potentially disastrous confrontation. After a couple days of futile bombardment, the Byzantines decided to deploy their field army. The size of their force — up to seventeen divisions — dwarfed that of the Westerners. One Crusader wrote, ‘You might have thought the whole world was there assembled.’ Meanwhile, the Venetians started fires, and billowing clouds of smoke formed a menacing backdrop to the Constantinople skyline.

The Franks formed up in good order, with archers and crossbowmen in front of the knights. Even the camp followers joined in, donning horse quilts and copper cooking pots for protection. The Greeks advanced toward the Crusaders. The Western leaders had laid down the strictest instructions not to break ranks before a formal command. So many times in the past — desperate to perform an act of heroism — individuals or small groups of men had charged at an enemy only to fatally compromise the strength of their forces and to lose their own lives.

At one moment the Crusaders nearly lost formation, but they carried on until the enemy stood just across a small brook. The Westerners were terrified; one wrote that it felt as if a huge wave was about to come crashing down on them. They were poised to retreat when, unbelievably, Emperor Alexius gave the signal for his men to withdraw. The Crusaders were amazed. They could barely comprehend why such a vast force had not challenged them. It will never be known why the emperor made this decision; perhaps the reputation of the Crusader heavy cavalry — said to be able to charge through the walls of Babylon — deterred him. Their determined march toward the Byzantine forces may have made him fear the cost of breaking their lines. One of the Crusade leaders certainly believed this: ‘When they saw that we were brave and steadfast and that we moved forward one after the other in formation and that we could not be overrun or broken they rightly became terrified and confused. Retreating before us they dared not fight.’ Yet surely the Byzantines’ sheer numbers and the fact that they had mounted knights of their own would have given them a decisive advantage.

In any case, the emperor had lost the will to fight. On that same night, he stole out of Constantinople and fled into exile. The following day, the news began to spread and the Crusaders and their young ally made a triumphal entry into the city. On August 1, 1203, he was crowned Emperor Alexius IV. It seemed that the Crusaders’ gamble had paid off and they could look forward to a restful winter before proceeding on to the Holy Land with a bigger and properly resourced army. Plainly, this did not happen. What destroyed the dream of Orthodox-Catholic cooperation?

The seeds of discontent lay in the Byzantines’ resentment toward their new emperor’s ‘barbarian’ allies. The agreement between Alexius IV and the Crusaders meant that the citizens of Constantinople were required to produce the huge sums of money promised to the Westerners. The Crusaders began to push for settlement of the debt. The harder Alexius IV tried to pressure his subjects into paying, the more they resisted. The young man had little political experience and lacked a solid local power base. Soon he was hopelessly trapped. Amid increasing tensions, the virulently anti-Western noble Murtzuphlus murdered the emperor on February 8, 1204.

Attacks on the Crusader camp followed. An audacious attempt to destroy the Venetian fleet using fire ships almost succeeded. Only the sailors’ skill in using hooks and ropes to drag the burning vessels away from their own averted disaster. With their ally gone, the Westerners’ position became increasingly grim. They struggled for supplies and faced ever-increasing hostility from the Greeks.

As they considered their position, few options remained. They could return home as failures or they could carry on to the Holy Land, although their weakened condition made it unlikely that they could recover Jerusalem. A third alternative was to assault Constantinople itself. While an attack on a Christian city still seemed contrary to their vows, they could now construct a case in which the Greeks were murderers and oath-breakers. Furthermore, the Orthodox Church remained independent of Rome; the legacy of the 1054 schism could be brought to bear, and the Byzantines could be branded as heretics. Pope Innocent III would doubtless have objected to these arguments, but the churchmen in the Crusader army, dealing with their desperate position outside Constantinople, endorsed an attack as part of the Crusade.

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