CHAPTER 6
Astorm was brewing across Europe in 1201 that would soon wash up on the shores of Venice. It did not look like a storm. It looked like a small wooden boat holding six Frenchmen. But it was a storm, nonetheless. And it would rage over Venice, shaking it, stripping it, and when it had finally passed, transforming it into something altogether new.
The boat that sliced its way through a mist-wrapped February morning carried important men, who themselves represented even more important men. They brought with them news from France of a vast movement of the spirit of God. Almost three years earlier the young and energetic pope Innocent III (1198–1216) had announced a great Crusade to restore Jerusalem to Christian rule. The powerful Muslim ruler, Saladin, had crushed the Christian armies in the Holy Land more than a decade earlier, conquering Jerusalem. He had even captured the relic of the True Cross, believed by Christians to be the wood on which Christ himself was crucified. Europe’s first response was the Third Crusade (1189–92), led by powerful monarchs with deep pockets and large armies. Under the command of King Richard the Lionheart of England, the Third Crusade managed to save the crusader kingdom, but not Jerusalem itself.
The Muslim conquest of Jerusalem and the capture of the True Cross were not minor events for medieval Europeans. They were clear evidence of God’s displeasure with Christian society and a call—indeed a demand—for action. From the lowly serf in his fields to the exalted king on his throne, the feeling was the same: Something was wrong with the soul of Europe.
Like the rest of the Catholic world, the people of Venice were troubled by these events. Yet unlike most Europeans, Venetians had firsthand experience with them. Thousands of them lived and worked in cities of the crusader kingdom (which encompassed much of what is today Syria, Lebanon, and Israel), and as a state, Venice had already thrice crusaded. Although eight decades had passed since their last Crusade, Venetians remained staunchly proud of those campaigns. They continued to idealize their crusading doges, who had won victories for Christendom and the Republic of St. Mark.
The blind doge of Venice, Enrico Dandolo, knew all about that last Crusade; he had been there when it was called. In his early teens in 1120, Dandolo had likely stood with his father, Vitale, in the church of San Marco listening to Doge Domenico Michiel rally the Venetians to take the cross of Christ. He may well have been the only Venetian alive in 1201 who could remember the Crusade of 1122. Even by modern standards, Dandolo was a very old man; when the boat carrying six Frenchmen arrived on his doorstep he was almost ninety-four. Despite his age and his blindness, Dandolo remained strong, active, and quick-minded.
The doge could not see the six Frenchmen, but he had a good idea why they had come. In France the new Crusade, which the pope had been promoting for more than two years, was finally taking shape. At a tournament in Ecry three powerful French barons, Count Thibaut of Champagne, Count Baldwin of Flanders, and Count Louis of Blois, had taken the vow of the Crusade, receiving on their garments the cloth cross that marked them as warriors of God. The passion and chivalric drama of the moment led thousands of other knights to do the same. The fires of pious enthusiasm were fanned further by Fulk of Neuilly, a flamboyant preacher who persuaded even the paupers to take the oath of the Crusade, although none of them could afford the journey. Rumors in Venice whispered of a magnificent army, numbering hundreds of thousands of warriors, that was forming across Europe. The Holy Spirit seemed again to be on the move through the Christian people.
Although all six of these visiting Frenchmen were of high station and chivalric warriors of exceptional caliber, none of them was a leader of the forming Crusade. But they were just as good. The three leading Crusade barons—Thibaut, Baldwin, and Louis—had hand selected these six to travel to Italy to make preparations for the Crusade. And to these trusted envoys they had given blank checks—literally. The six men carried large parchments with the seals of the barons firmly attached packed securely in their bags. Each parchment was clean, ready to be filled in by whatever agreement the envoys thought best for the future of the Crusade. They had come to Venice looking for something that Venetians had in abundance: boats.
This was the Fourth Crusade (as historians now call it). In early 1200, while warriors across Europe continued to take the crusader’s vow, the leading nobles had convened a strategy session at the beautiful abbey of Soissons in northern France, hoping to solve the problem of transporting so large an army thousands of miles to the Holy Land. Earlier Crusades had made the obvious choice of simply walking. But it was, after all, a long walk and there were many kingdoms along the route that were less than welcoming to crusaders marching across their territories.
A little over a decade earlier the Third Crusade had tried a different method, sailing directly from Europe to the Holy Land. This had the benefit of being more direct and less troublesome than the traditional land route across Hungary, the Byzantine Empire, and the Turkish lands of Anatolia. But the Third Crusade was led by kings with treasure chests—especially Richard the Lionheart, who brought the vast revenues of the Saladin Tithe imposed on the people of England. The kings of England and France had the means to assemble a large fleet to carry thousands of soldiers, herds of animals, and tons of provisions across the sea.
The leaders of the Fourth Crusade, who included no kings, lacked those options. Like Richard, whom they revered, they wanted their Crusade to sail to the East, but they had neither a fleet nor the money to pay for one. They resolved not to let these problems stand in their way. At Soissons they decided that the entire Crusade would rendezvous in summer 1202 at a European port, where money would then be collected from each crusader for his individual passage and supplies. The decision of which port was left to the six envoys, who were given their blank parchments and many blessings as they headed south, across the Alps.
Why did the six choose Venice? One of them, Geoffrey de Villehardouin, later described it as a simple decision. They believed that Venice was best able to satisfy their need for a very large fleet. But there must have been more to it than that. Venice’s main competitors, Genoa and Pisa, were at war with each other, so they were clearly unable to help a Crusade. The envoys may also have known that Pope Innocent had planned for Venice to take part in this Crusade from the beginning.
Three years earlier, the pope had sent a papal legate, Cardinal Soffredo, to Venice to request help for the Holy Land. Innocent may have hoped that the Venetians would respond as they had done in 1121, when Doge Michiel took the papal banner and led his people on Crusade. If so, he was disappointed. Doge Dandolo was not opposed to a Crusade. Indeed, he probably favored the idea. But Venice was a maritime power, so its previous Crusades had been against coastal cities. The target of this new Crusade was Jerusalem, miles away from the sea. Venetians could join the effort, but a land-based army was essential to see it through. Innocent knew this, too, which is why he sent another legate to France to put a stop to that kingdom’s war with England. By imposing a truce, the pope hoped to raise troops for his new Crusade in France and ships in Venice.
Dandolo was skeptical about the pope’s ability to end the war, but hopeful nonetheless. He ordered his two best envoys, Andrea Donà and Benedetto Grillioni, to accompany the cardinal back to Rome. where they assured the pontiff of Venice’s continued devotion to the Holy Land and determination to restore Jerusalem and the True Cross to Christendom. However, they pointed out, unlike the rest of Europe, the Venetians shouldered the burden of crusading every day. Innocent’s predecessor, Pope Gregory VIII, had decreed that no Christian merchant was to have dealings with Muslims, which led Venice to postpone indefinitely its plans to establish a commercial presence in Egypt. The Genoese and Pisans, although Christians, ignored the Church’s restriction and continued to do a brisk business in Muslim Africa. But most Venetians steered their ships to Christian territories like Greece, the crusader states, and Constantinople. The decree cost the Venetians money, which could be used, Donà and Grillioni argued, to outfit ships and prepare fleets for a Crusade. They reminded Innocent that, unlike the rest of Europe, Venetians did not engage in agriculture. Their livelihood was overseas commerce. How would other Europeans react if Innocent forbade them to grow certain crops for the good of all Christendom?
The pope was not pleased by this line of reasoning, but he wanted Venetian help and probably saw some justice in their complaint. He responded by granting a dispensation to trade nonstrategic goods with Muslims in Muslim ports. He made clear, though, that he expected that this measure would support Venice’s ability to come to the aid of Jerusalem. Dandolo was pleased by the decision, but took no immediate action regarding the Crusade. If a Crusade army were to materialize, he would deal with the question then. In 1198 that seemed unlikely.
What a difference two years had made. The pope’s legate had managed to forge a peace in Europe, and despite the unfortunate death of Richard the Lionheart, the Crusade was at last forming. Dandolo knew why these six Frenchmen had come to Venice. In a way, he had been expecting them all along.
The doge ordered comfortable lodgings near San Marco for the envoys, and after they had an opportunity to rest and refresh themselves, he paid them a visit. In his memoirs, Villehardouin relates how impressed he was with the old, blind doge, who seemed so intelligent and wise. But Villehardouin had come to make a deal—not friends. He handed to Dandolo’s assistant letters of credence from the northern barons stating that the six envoys had full power to make commitments and contracts in their names and were to be treated as if they were the barons themselves.
Dandolo coyly asked the French travelers just what they wanted from the Venetians. The envoys responded with a question of their own: Did the doge have the authority to conclude an agreement on behalf of the Venetian state and people? No, Dandolo responded. Doges had not had that sort of power for some time. Indeed, they were forbidden by law even to negotiate with foreigners without the approval of the councils. The envoys asked Dandolo to convene the councils the next day.
Yet that was no simple request. By this time the Venetian ducal court had become a busy place with a long list of cases before it, many of them time-sensitive. If the envoys were unwilling to state their business to the doge, he informed them, it would be at least four days before he could get them before the Small Council and the ducal court. With that, Dandolo bade them good day.
After four days the French envoys were ushered into the ducal chamber in the old fortified Ducal Palace, which Villehardouin described as “very rich and beautiful.” There in the chamber they found the seated Dandolo surrounded by the six members of his Small Council. The envoys were cordially welcomed and then, once again, asked to state their business. This time they did not hesitate:
Lord, we have come to you on behalf of the great barons of France, who have taken the sign of the cross to avenge the shame done to Jesus Christ and to conquer Jerusalem, if God permits. And because they know that no one has as great a power as you and your people, they beg you for the love of God to have pity on the land beyond the sea and on the shame done to Jesus Christ, and to consider how they can obtain vessels and a fleet.
While heartfelt, the opening statement did not tell the Venetians anything that they did not already know. Dandolo asked them to be more specific. Just what was it that they were asking for in the way of sea vessels?
A good question—and one that the French envoys do not appear to have fully considered. Of course, much of the answer was simply outside their area of expertise. These were warriors, specialists at mustering troops, laying siege to fortifications, and prosecuting field battles. They knew all about the care and feeding of an army, but very little about boats and sea travel, let alone maritime warfare. It was probably at this point that the envoys told the doge and his council the size of the projected Crusade: 20,000 foot soldiers, 9,000 squires, and 4,500 knights and their horses, all of which would require transport out of the Adriatic and across the Mediterranean. They asked the Venetian leaders what they thought would be necessary to carry so great a force and whether such a thing would be within their financial means.
Medieval Venetians were used to making contracts for sea voyages. At that very moment in the Rialto markets, notaries were busy drawing up just such agreements. But what these envoys were asking for was in a class by itself. To transport that many men and horses, not to mention the tons of provisions necessary, would require the largest fleet constructed in Europe since the days of the Roman Empire. It was a project of staggering size. Dandolo and his council were clearly taken aback. They had expected a Crusade, yes, but not one this big.
The doge told the envoys that they were asking a very great thing. This was no back-of-the-parchment calculation; it would require much consideration. Could the Venetians produce so large a fleet? And if they could, how much of it would need to be drafted from Venetian merchants and how much constructed? What kinds of provisions would be necessary and where could the Venetians, whose agricultural production consisted largely of gardening, obtain them? And even if all of this were possible, how much would it cost? These were serious questions and it was crucial that Dandolo and his councillors get them right. If they overextended the commune’s resources or failed to ask for sufficient payment, the results could be catastrophic. On the other hand, if properly managed, the merchants of Venice could make a tidy sum while still discharging their duty to fight for the liberation of Jerusalem.
The doge told the envoys that he and his council would need time to gather the information necessary to work up a viable plan—if it could be done at all. He told them that he hoped to have something for them in eight days, although he warned that it could take longer. A bit disappointed by the delay, the Frenchmen left the Ducal Palace for what was undoubtedly a pleasant week of Venetian sightseeing. Eight days later they were again summoned to the ducal court, where Dandolo and his council awaited them.
Only at this second meeting did the envoys inform the doge and his men that the destination of the Crusade was to be Egypt, rather than the Holy Land. The Crusade leaders had chosen this strategy, first proposed by King Richard during the Third Crusade, as the best means of shattering Muslim power in the region and thereby assuring the long-term safety of Jerusalem. But it remained unpopular among rank-and-file crusaders, who took the cross to fight for the land of Christ, not the pyramids. The leaders of the Fourth Crusade planned to get around this problem by simply not telling the rank and file where they were going. The destination would remain a secret until the ships landed on the Nile delta, leaving the common crusaders no choice but to accept their new theater of war.
Changing the destination, though, would certainly have upset some of the Venetian leaders’ calculations. So it is not surprising that they had much to discuss. In the end, however, the Venetians presented their proposal. Dandolo made clear to the envoys that this was not a firm offer of service. Even if the knights found it acceptable it would still require the approval of the Great Council and the arengo. The French understood and Dandolo laid out the terms.
Venice would provide transportation for one year and a large amount of provisions for the army. The cost would be four silver marks for each knight, four silver marks for each horse, and two silver marks for everyone else. The envoys persuaded the Venetians to reduce the passage cost for the horses (or perhaps the knights) to two marks. In addition, the Venetians agreed to join the Crusade themselves, supplying fifty fully armed war galleys at no charge provided that all spoils were split between the French and the Venetians.
Although the price of the fleet was negotiated on a per capita basis, it was important to the Venetians that the final contract deliver payment in lump sums. They were producing a fleet of a set size, which would need to be paid for one way or the other. They did not want to be in the business of collecting passage from each and every crusader. Instead, the French envoys agreed on behalf of their lords to pay a set amount of money, which they would themselves collect from the crusading army. This may seem a minor point, but it was not. Indeed, it lay at the heart of the problems that would later arise and ultimately lead this project to have such transformative effects on Venice.
After talking it over, the French envoys accepted the proposal the next day. Dandolo promised to move it through the Venetian government as quickly as possible, and three days later he convened the Great Council, which consisted then of forty representatives of the people. With “wit and wisdom” he persuaded the members to accept the plan. According to Villehardouin, Dandolo then called together progressively larger groups of citizens—first a hundred, then two hundred, then a thousand—getting their approval before moving on. Villehardouin may simply be expounding on something that he had heard, but it is also possible that Dandolo was returning to the old way of doges calling together ad hoc bodies in order to approve various initiatives. Politically, it made good sense, since each approval made it less likely that the next, larger committee would turn down the proposal.
After more than two weeks in Venice, the mission of the French envoys was no longer a secret to anyone. The whole city knew that there was a plan for Venice to crusade again. Now the people needed to approve it. Thousands poured into the Piazza San Marco and as many as were able crammed into the ornate church. There they heard a Mass of the Holy Spirit, traditionally sung before any great undertaking. After Mass the doge introduced the envoys and then asked them to address the crowd—presumably through an interpreter.
The great cavern of the church was silent and still as the knights awkwardly made their way to the front. Villehardouin later remembered how curiously the Venetians stared at them, for northern lords dressed in knightly finery rarely visited this merchant port. The marshal of Champagne began with a bit of flattery, telling the congregation that the most powerful lords in France had sent them to Venice because they knew that no city had greater power on the sea. He then described the Crusade taking shape across Europe, the thousands of warriors who were even now taking the vow of the cross and leaving behind loved ones for the sake of the faith. With heartfelt emotion, Villehardouin begged the Venetian people to join their French brothers, to have mercy on the holy city, and to avenge the shame done to Jesus Christ by the desecration of the holy places.
With his words still echoing from the golden domes, Villehardouin stepped down from the ambo and stood before the people. Silently he motioned to his five colleagues, who joined him at the front. Moved by the plight of Jerusalem, the abuse of the True Cross, and the wounds of Christ crucified again in the persecution of his people, all six of the envoys wept bitterly. Then they did something even more unexpected: They knelt before the people of Venice. Through tears of anguish Villehardouin at last spoke. He swore that they would remain there, forever on their knees, begging for the help of Venice until it was granted.
They did not have long to wait. A flood of tearful emotion had already swept through the church. No sooner had Villehardouin implored their aid than the people raised their hands by the thousands chanting, “We grant it! We grant it!” The French envoys stood up joyfully, and the vast crowd sang and cried and reveled in the moment. With this assent of the people, the Republic of Venice had again taken up the crusader’s cross.
The next day the joyful French envoys were ushered into the doge’s court, where the Great and Small Councils were gathered. Notaries had been busy drawing up multiple copies of the contract. This was the business side of the Crusade, where the logistical details were set down on parchment so that the grand spiritual enterprise could take place. But it was not without religious feeling that the Venetian leaders made their commitments. Holy relics were brought to the chamber, and each of the Venetian councillors swore on the precious body parts to uphold the terms of the contract. Then the blind doge was led to the relics. Tearfully, he knelt down and promised to fulfill every part of the agreement. It was a promise that he would meticulously keep.
Preparing for the Fourth Crusade was the biggest project thus far in Venice’s history. The Venetians had promised to produce a fleet of some 450 major transport vessels, 50 fully manned war galleys, and many tons of provisions—all within just eighteen months. Most of the transport vessels that would carry the crusaders, provisions, and military gear were large, sail-powered roundships—the same sort that were routinely used by Venetian merchants. Dandolo and his council suspended all overseas trade, ordering Venetians to bring their merchant ships home for the June 1202 Crusade departure. This, in itself, represented an enormous expense. Turning off the flow of overseas trade cost Venice and its people dearly.
Much of the fleet also had to be constructed at state expense. Certainly the horse transports had to be built from scratch. These vessels represented a significant improvement in medieval military technology. They were equipped with a ramp that allowed the horses to be walked onto the ship, rather than hoisted, which often harmed the animals. On board, the horses were placed in their own stalls and secured with harnesses, which protected them from falling when the deck pitched.
And then there were the war galleys. These long, sleek vessels were manned by trained Venetian marines who could move the vessels nimbly with their hundred oars, ramming and boarding at will. The galleys were crucial for the defense of the fleet en route and the destruction of Egyptian naval forces when they arrived. In later centuries these vessels would have been produced in the famous Arsenale. But in 1201 they had to be built in dozens, perhaps hundreds, of shipyards dotting the city. Venetian agents were sent across the rivers and roads of the Po Valley to make advance contracts on wheat and other foodstuffs for the Crusade. The acquisition and transportation of this food—not just for 33,500 men but 4,500 horses as well—was a daunting task.
So, too, was the problem of manpower. In 1200 Venice’s population stood around a hundred thousand, making it the second-largest city in Europe (after Rome). Manning the proposed fleet would require more than thirty thousand sailors and marines. The entire city probably held just enough able-bodied adult males to do it, but that would have left Venice without men, and likewise protection. Instead, the Venetians planned to send half of their men, and held a lottery to decide which half. Wax balls—half of which had a scrap of parchment in them—were placed in large containers. Priests from every parish were charged with summoning the adult males, blessing the wax balls, and then administering the lottery. Those who drew the parchments joined the Crusade. As for the other fifteen thousand men, the Venetians would need to recruit them from dependencies on the mainland and Dalmatian coast.
Before leaving Venice, Villehardouin and his colleagues borrowed two thousand silver marks as a down payment on the building of the fleet. That was the last the Venetians saw of French money for some time. The crusaders had agreed to pay for the fleet in regular installments, yet none of those payments ever materialized. Indeed, nothing at all arrived from the Crusade—except crusaders, who started showing up in June. This put the Venetians in a difficult position. If the money had been paid as promised, it would have been used to offset the costs of the fleet. As it stood, by June 1202 Venice had been forced to absorb all those costs. A great many Venetians were owed a great deal of money and risked financial ruin if they did not receive it. The stakes for them—and their doge—could not have been higher.
Although Venice had plenty of accommodations for pilgrims and travelers, it had nowhere near enough rooms for 33,500 men, let alone 4,500 horses. Instead, the crusaders were dropped off on the barren Lido, within sight of the main city and the massive fleet that now stood ready to transport them to the East. With heady anticipation, new groups of crusaders arrived on the island daily. They pitched their tents, prepared their weapons, and looked forward to proving their worth in defense of Christendom. The mood among the Venetians was just as jubilant. The arrival of the greater lords, such as Baldwin of Flanders, Hugh of St. Pol, and Boniface of Montferrat, was especially celebrated, for they brought with them powerful armies, beautiful banners, and impressive war chests.
Yet on June 29 that mood began to sour. According to the contract, on this day the money was to be paid and the fleet to set sail. Neither happened. Out on the Lido, among the fine tents, prancing horses, and campfires, only eleven thousand crusaders had arrived—and some of those were poor people with no means of support. Since individual passage was to be collected from the crusaders, this meant that the leaders could only lay their hands on one-third of the fleet’s price. Like any debtor, the crusaders asked for patience: just a few weeks more, to give stragglers time to arrive.
As merchants, Venetians lived by the letter of their contracts. Murmurs and grumbling began to be heard in the market stalls of Rialto and the fishing docks across the city. They complained, of course, about the French, who should have treated their allies better by paying what they owed on time. But undoubtedly they also complained about their leaders—Doge Dandolo and his council—who had championed this suddenly questionable venture.
Matters did not improve with the passing weeks. More crusaders arrived, but only a thousand or two—nowhere near the twenty thousand for whom they still waited. Some hopes were raised when Cardinal Peter Capuano, the papal legate to the Crusade, arrived on July 22. But he brought no money. He absolved the poor and the sick of their Crusade vows, sending them back home. Beyond that, all he could do was wait for more arrivals, like everyone else.
Where were the missing crusaders? Everywhere except Venice. Although the Crusade leaders had agreed that Venice was the rendezvous point, this in no way bound individual fighters. A medieval Crusade was not like a modern army in which one joins and then takes one’s place in a chain of command. A Crusade was made up of thousands of different people, each of whom had taken a personal vow to God. How a crusader fulfilled that vow was up to him. He was under no obligation to take passage at Venice simply because the counts of Flanders, Champagne, and Blois had put seals to parchment. If it was more convenient or economical, a crusader could buy passage at Marseille, or Bari, or Brindisi, or any other port with vessels heading east.
And that is just what the missing twenty thousand did. The debacle unfolding in Venice became a self-fulfilling prophecy. As more crusaders learned of the problems in Venice, they avoided the city, thus worsening the situation. By the end of July 1202 things had grown so bad that no crusader just starting off on his journey wanted to become mired in it. And on the Lido, only about 12,000 of the projected 33,500 crusaders were ready to sail.
In late July or early August the extension expired and payment was due. Dandolo asked the Crusade barons to render 85,000 silver marks so that the Crusade could get under way. Immediately passage was collected from each crusader. When that was not enough, the barons ordered every crusader to pay all that he had to make up the difference. The leading nobles handed over their rich plate and most of their war chests as an example to the rank and file. But not every crusader agreed with their leaders. From their perspective, they had paid all that was required and should not be forced to pay more simply because their leaders had misjudged the size of the army. Let them pay for their own mistakes. In the final tally the crusaders were able to gather up 51,000 marks. They still owed 34,000 more and had no way of raising it.
The Fourth Crusade was the ultimate test for the new governmental reforms instituted in the republic during the 1170s. A century earlier the people of Venice, fired by feelings of anger, betrayal, and disgust, may well have demanded that the crusaders be ejected from the city and all monies paid kept as penalty for breaking their contract with Venice. Yet thanks to the reforms, the doge and his council were now positioned as a buffer between popular outrage and prudent action. In a meeting with his council, Dandolo flatly rejected the idea of removing the crusaders from the lagoon. He pointed out that Venice’s reputation throughout Christendom would suffer. He also doubted that the rest of Europe would agree that they were justified in keeping the 51,000 marks paid. Then there was the practical problem of the ejection itself. Venice had survived and flourished for centuries because no army could overcome its watery fortifications. Now a large, well-armed, and angry army was camped right on the Lido. Just how would the sailors of Venice remove the knights of France if they refused to go?
Dandolo suggested a different solution. The Venetian state could loan the crusaders the 34,000 marks still owed provided they promise to pay it back from their share of the Crusade’s booty. Alexandria and Damietta were rich cities that might easily provide the spoils necessary to pay off the Crusade’s debts. Since it had grown too late to sail to Egypt that year, Dandolo further proposed that as a stipulation of the loan the crusaders agree to winter at Zara. Zaran pirates had been a danger to Venetian shipping for some time, so the idea of restoring control over the city was meant to convince those members of the council who balked at risking 34,000 silver marks on a Crusade with a poor credit history. Though wary, the council approved the plan.
A few days later the doge went out to the meeting tent of the barons on the Lido. The atmosphere was tense. Like the Great Council, the Crusade leaders were not enthusiastic about Dandolo’s plan. They were willing to mortgage their remaining debt against the collateral of future booty, but why should they also have to help Venice in its squabble with Zara, a fight that had nothing to do with the Crusade? Zara was a Catholic city. Dandolo, the skilled negotiator, knew that without Zara the Great Council would not accept the compromise. He needed the crusaders to meet him halfway. He reminded them that the problem was of their own making. The Venetians had been ready to transport them to Egypt on June 29. He gave them a lesson on Mediterranean weather, explaining that winter storms made a crossing next to impossible after September. The crusaders needed a place to stay. Unlike the sandy Lido, Zara was a rich city with every sort of amenity. It was, furthermore, a rebel—something loathsome to the feudal knights. Thus, by helping their allies to perform a righteous task, the crusaders could solve two pressing problems: the moribund Crusade and the need for a place to winter. Faced with this hard calculus, the barons agreed to Dandolo’s proposal.
It was not easy, but the doge had managed to forge a delicate compromise that saved the Crusade. However, the doge had omitted one critical detail during his negotiations with the Great Council and the crusader barons. Zara, the linchpin of the whole agreement, was under papal protection. The city was a possession of King Emeric of Hungary, who had taken the crusader’s cross several years earlier. Emeric had no interest in crusading; he had taken the vow only to secure his throne. But when the king heard that a large army would be accompanying the Venetians in the vicinity of Zara, he lost no time reminding Pope Innocent of his rights as a crusader. By canon law, all properties of those signed with the cross were under the protection of Rome. The pope had already sent word to Dandolo that he was forbidden to use the Crusade to settle his dispute with Zara.
The doge recognized the severity of this problem, but he believed it was manageable. He argued—at least to himself—that Emeric was a false crusader who used the cross to unjustly hold what was not rightfully his. Since Emeric had no plans to join the Fourth Crusade, Dandolo reasoned that his lands were no longer under papal protection. It was a likely story, even if completely false. Nevertheless, the projected conquest of Zara was the only thing holding the Crusade together. It had to be acceptable to the pope.
Only one other person in Venice knew that the pope had forbidden the conquest of Zara: the papal legate, Cardinal Peter Capuano. This compromise plan put him in a difficult bind. If he condemned it, making public the pope’s protection of Zara, then Peter would be responsible for the dissolution of the Crusade. Innocent would not like that. On the other hand, if he allowed it he would contravene the pope’s commandments and canon law. Innocent would not like that either. So the cardinal devised a third way. He would say nothing while the fleet was readied for departure and the crusaders were loaded aboard. He would say nothing as the Crusade made its way down the Adriatic Sea. But when the Crusade fleet cast anchor before Zara, then he would speak up, and with his full authority as the representative of the pope. With the army already in the boats, no longer holed up on an island and at the mercy of Venice for provisions, things would look very different indeed. The Crusade would be saved and the Venetians would be deprived of an unjust victory.
It was an awkward plan. Leading churchmen on the Crusade naturally went to the papal legate when they heard that the army would be attacking a Catholic city. Did the pope really approve of this? No, Peter replied, he did not. He advised his fellow clergy to remain silent about the matter until the fleet had sailed, when they should do all in their power to stop the attack on Zara.
It did not take long for Dandolo to hear of the cardinal’s plan. In a testy exchange, the doge told Peter that if he was going to forbid the conquest of Zara he should do so immediately, while they were still in Venice. Peter politely declined. The two men understood each other perfectly. Both had the same secret, and both planned to use it for their own very different ends. But Dandolo would not suffer this puffed-up legate to double-cross the Republic of St. Mark. He informed the cardinal that he would not be allowed to board fleet vessels unless he renounced his authority as papal legate. He was welcome to join the Crusade as one of its preachers. Outraged, Peter Capuano refused to do any such thing. Slinging threats and warnings, he stormed out of the room, packed his belongings, and left for Rome. The pope would hear of Venice’s perversion of the Crusade.
With that problem seemingly resolved, Dandolo and the Venetians concentrated on the departure of the Crusade armada. Much remained to be done, and after months of delays, the lagoon was a hive of activity. Mariners rowed or sailed boats back and forth to the major vessels, loading aboard siege engines, weapons, horses, and what was left of the Crusade’s provisions. On September 8, the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin, Venetian crusaders and their French allies were invited to a special Mass in the church of San Marco. Before the bells and incense commenced, however, there was a surprise. The ancient Enrico Dandolo, in full ceremonial garb, mounted the stone steps of the pulpit. Addressing his countrymen, he said:
Sirs, you are joined with the most valiant men in the world in the greatest enterprise that anyone has ever undertaken. I am old and weak and in need of rest, and my health is failing. But I see that no one knows how to govern and direct you as I do, who am your lord. If you agree that I should take the sign of the cross to protect and lead you, and that my son should remain and guard the country, I will go to live or die with you and the Crusaders.
With heartfelt emotion, the doge was re-creating a scene that every Venetian knew well. In 1121 it was Doge Domenico Michiel who had stood at that same podium, exhorting the Venetians to fight the war of Christ, and donning the cross as their leader. And once again the great church rang with the cries of Venetians approving their doge’s request. As cheers mixed with song, Dandolo slowly descended from the pulpit and knelt before the high altar. There the priest received the doge’s vow and sewed the crusader’s cross, not on his shoulder as was customary, but on his cloth crown (an early version of the corno) for all to see.
The ceremony-filled departure of the Crusade occurred during the first week of October 1202. The last to take ship was Enrico Dandolo, who boarded the doge’s vermilion galley, adorned in his colorful robes of state. Four silver trumpets used on solemn occasions blared before him and drums rattled to attract attention to the show. The various colored banners were raised and the sides of the ships and the castles were girded with the shields of the Crusade barons, each painted brilliantly to distinguish its owner. The clergy mounted the castles or poops of the ships to chant the Veni creator spiritus. As Dandolo’s galley began to move forward, followed by the rest of the fleet, a hundred trumpets of silver and brass signaled their departure and countless drums and tabors beat excitedly. Soon they passed the familiar Lido on the right and moved out of the lagoon and into the Adriatic. Enrico Dandolo could not see the beauty of Venice as he departed, but he could hear the Venetians cheering as they took one last look at their leader.
Venice must have seemed a quiet, empty place after the Crusade departed with half of its men and most of its vessels. While the remaining Venetians cleaned up and tried to restore some normality, they worried about the fate of their crusaders, not to mention the 34,000 silver marks owed to them. At least they could rest easier about the safety of the Adriatic when Zara was returned to Venetian control.
But things did not go quite as planned at Zara. When Cardinal Peter left Venice in a huff, he made certain to tell his friends and supporters among the crusaders about his treatment and his conviction that the Venetians were hijacking the Crusade. The most powerful of his partisans was Count Simon of Montfort, a young, pious, and exceptionally scrupulous warrior who commanded a sizable army of his own. Simon sent his friend, Abbot Guy of the monastery of Vaux-de-Cernay, with the cardinal on his trip back to Rome. There the cardinal and the abbot told the pope everything. Innocent was beside himself with rage. He immediately penned a terse letter threatening excommunication for any crusader who lifted a sword against the Zarans. The letter was entrusted to the abbot, who traveled at top speed to get it to the Crusade before it was too late.
The Crusade army encamped outside the walls of Zara on November 11. The sheer size of the force made a deep impression on the people in the city. There was no doubt that Zara would fall. The Zarans, therefore, sent a delegation to Doge Dandolo seeking terms of surrender. They received a harsh response. Dandolo would spare their lives only provided they evacuate the city at once. With little choice, the delegation agreed. Pleased, the doge told the Zarans to wait in his tent while he went to confer with his French allies.
Dandolo left the Zarans alone only a short time, but it was enough to prove decisive. Abbot Guy and his letter had arrived. With a few well-armed friends, Simon of Montfort quickly brought the monk with him to the doge’s tent. There he told the Zaran delegation the welcome news that the pope had come to their rescue. There would be no attack. With profuse thanks, the Zarans returned home to tell their people that all was well.
It is not difficult to imagine the next scene in this comic tragedy. Dandolo, now accompanied by the leading Crusade barons, returned to his tent to accept the surrender of Zara. All that he found there were Count Simon, Abbot Guy, and a few other knights wearing disturbingly smug smiles. Where were the Zarans? Gone. But why? Because we told them that the Crusade would not attack a Christian city under papal protection. Confusion, shouts, anger. And then the abbot burst into the midst of the fray. Holding the pope’s letter aloft, he shouted, “I forbid you, on behalf of the Pope of Rome, to attack this city, for those within are Christians and you are Crusaders!”
This was precisely what the doge of Venice had sought to avoid. He may have kept Cardinal Peter from making this proclamation, but he had failed to keep the pope from doing so by means of a scribbled letter and a curiously quick abbot. Pressed by circumstances, Dandolo had played fast and loose with the Holy See and thereby injured the traditionally warm relations between Rome and Venice. The wound would not heal easily, or soon.
Faced with the collapse of the compromise, Dandolo had no choice but to appeal to the chivalric honor of the French barons. The doge wheeled on Baldwin of Flanders, Hugh of St. Pol, Geoffrey de Villehardouin, and the other Crusade leaders, saying, “Lords, I had this city at my mercy, and your people have deprived me of it. You have promised to assist me to conquer it, and I summon you to do so.” The French leaders were torn between piety and honor. What tipped the balance was the character of Simon of Montfort, who was not well liked by his French colleagues. He seemed always to have a complaint, and they believed that he either wanted to command the Crusade or see it collapse. They would allow neither, and so they agreed to attack the city of Zara. Disgusted, Simon and his men camped apart from the Crusade, refusing to have anything to do with this sinful business. After five days of assault on Zara’s walls, adorned by its citizens with banners of the cross, the city fell on November 24. And the crusaders, both French and Venetian, moved in.
The siege of Zara added the specter of excommunication to the miseries of this increasingly troubled Crusade. Simon and his friends made sure that every soldier knew about the state of his soul. Perhaps he did hope to wrest control over the Crusade from the other barons, who seemed to be leading the men straight into hell. As the story spread among the French, it was invariably the Venetians who played the villain. It was they who had kept the crusaders in Venice until it was too late to sail to the Holy Land. It was they who had overcharged the knights, draining every penny from them and still demanding more. And it was they who had demanded that the Crusade attack a Catholic city, even after the pope had strictly forbidden it. In Venice the soldiers could not act on their frustrations. But in Zara they could. French crusaders began organizing themselves into bands and attacking the Venetians. The barons mounted their horses and rode swiftly through Zara’s streets, quelling the fighting in one area only to have it erupt elsewhere. By morning, when the killing finally stopped, about a hundred lay dead and many more were wounded.
In an attempt to restore calm, the bishops on the Crusade issued a general absolution, lifting the excommunication that weighed so heavily on the soldiers’ minds. Anyone with an elementary knowledge of canon law knew that such absolutions were invalid—only the pope could lift his own excommunication. Fortunately, few of the crusaders had an elementary knowledge of canon law, so peace prevailed for the remainder of the winter.
The conquest of Zara was good for Venice because it eliminated an enemy from its backyard, but it was not what spawned a maritime empire. The next act in that drama took place sometime around Christmas. Once again, it arrived on a boat. Into Zara’s harbor sailed a smallish vessel bearing envoys from Philip of Swabia—a powerful lord who claimed to be the king of Germany, but who was still waging a war against another lord with much the same claim. The German envoys brought with them a tale of treachery and intrigue.
It was a good story, one that had begun almost a decade earlier in Constantinople. One day in April 1195 Emperor Isaac II Angelus went hunting with his brother, Alexius. What the emperor did not know was that he was the prey. As soon as Isaac was away from his bodyguard, Alexius and his accomplices seized the emperor and gouged out his eyes. In Byzantium this was considered a humane way of conducting a coup since blind men were not allowed to rule. Isaac was placed in comfortable confinement in Constantinople and his rebellious brother was crowned Alexius III. None of this was unusual in Constantinople, although the treachery outraged the feudal knights when they heard of it.
Poor Isaac had a son, the envoys continued. His name, like that of his uncle, was Alexius. In 1200, when he was about fifteen years old, young Alexius had managed a daring escape from Constantinople aboard a Pisan vessel bound for the West. Disguised as a common sailor, he landed at Ancona and then made his way to Germany and the court of Philip of Swabia, where Philip’s wife, Irene, was the young man’s sister. Irene begged her husband to help Alexius, yet Philip was too busy with his own wars. Instead, he sent these envoys to the Crusade to enlist their aid for the young man.
With their story complete, the Germans urged the Crusade barons to take up the poor prince’s cause. He was, they claimed, a victim of unrivaled treachery. The people of Constantinople groaned under the weight of the tyrant Alexius III and longed to accept the young man as their rightful ruler. Indeed, the envoys insisted that the Byzantines would overthrow the evil uncle as soon as the young Alexius arrived. It was only right that crusaders should defend the defenseless and liberate the oppressed. And it was merely a small side trip on their way to the East. Furthermore, if the crusaders should agree to do this for the prince, he would richly reward them. As the rightful emperor, he would provide supplies for them on their journey to Constantinople. Then, when he had punished his evil uncle and assumed the throne, he would pay the crusaders two hundred thousand silver marks—more than enough to pay their debt to the Venetians and still make it worth their while. And that was not all. He also promised to raise a Byzantine army of ten thousand soldiers and join the Crusade himself for one year. For the rest of his life he would maintain a garrison of five hundred knights in the Holy Land. And there was even something in the deal for the pope: The new emperor would make the Orthodox Church obedient to Rome, thus ending the schism between the Latin and Greek churches that had been in effect for more than a century.
It was quite a proposal and it seemed to come at the perfect time. Not only was the Crusade penniless, but in May 1203 it would run out of provisions. Taking up Alexius’s cause seemed a way to fill empty stomachs and pockets, and thus preserve the enterprise. The doge of Venice certainly wanted the Crusade to succeed, but he recognized the dangers for his city and people. Venetians did the bulk of their overseas trade in the Byzantine Empire. The Venetian Quarter of Constantinople was a vibrant and profitable city within a city. Why would they wish to upset all of that? Doge Dandolo knew all about Alexius III’s blinding of his brother, yet that was just the way business was done in Byzantium. Overall Venice’s relationship with the current emperor was good. Dandolo himself had negotiated a trade agreement with Alexius III in 1198—an agreement that would be worth nothing if Venice sailed into Byzantine waters with an armada and a rival. Of course, they might succeed in overthrowing the emperor, but it was a tremendous gamble for Venice. Sailing to Egypt carried no such risks and offered plenty of opportunity for rich plunder.
But the decision was not in the doge’s hands. Although he did not know it, a number of the Crusade leaders had already committed themselves and the Crusade to the young man’s cause. The titular leader of the Crusade, Boniface of Montferrat, was a vassal of Philip of Swabia. He had actually met the Byzantine prince two years earlier when the Crusade was still forming and had promised then to find a way to use the army to help him. Boniface had gone to Rome to persuade Innocent III to allow the Crusade to take up the cause, but the pope categorically refused. Doge Dandolo also did not know that the leading Crusade barons, in particular Boniface, Baldwin of Flanders, Hugh of St. Pol, and Louis of Blois, had already negotiated a deal with Philip of Swabia months earlier, when they were all still waiting in Venice. In it, they had agreed to help Alexius in Constantinople if he would help them in the East. The doge was, therefore, under heavy pressure to accept the prince’s proposal. In the end, he did.
The new plan was then revealed to the rank-and-file crusaders. The Venetians, most of whom knew the way to Constantinople well, had no objections to the change. Indeed, they may even have believed (wrongly, of course) that the pope had ordered the diversion. As for the French, they opposed it. But their leaders signed the contract anyway, and so the Crusade was bound for Constantinople.
In the meantime, Zara persisted in causing problems. In the spring of 1203 a coalition of Zaran and Hungarian fighters began guerrilla raids against the crusaders camped in the city. For the moment they were only a nuisance, but after the Crusade departed, the fighters would have a good chance of recapturing their city. Dandolo could not have Zaran pirates cruising the Adriatic at will while most of the republic’s navy was gone. On April 7 the entire Crusade evacuated Zara and camped nearby. The Venetians then spent the next several weeks demolishing the city. When they had finished, only fields of rubble and churches remained to testify that a city had once been there.
As the two hundred or so vessels of the Crusade fleet unfurled their sails and made their way to Constantinople, the pope and his legate watched with frustration and anger. Innocent had no doubt that Dandolo and the Venetians had hijacked the Crusade, using it to settle scores first with Zara and now with Constantinople. Although the French crusaders had sent envoys to the pope to beg forgiveness for their sins, the Venetians had sent no one to beg for anything. Dandolo knew that the pope would insist that Venice return Zara to the king of Hungary, so he decided to wait until after its destruction to seek forgiveness. By then, however, it was too late. When the papal legate absolved the French crusaders, he also issued a formal bull of excommunication against the Venetians. Doge Dandolo told the Crusade barons that if the excommunication was made public, the Venetians would abandon the Crusade. Boniface of Montferrat obligingly suppressed the bull and that, for the moment, was the end of it. All the Venetian crusaders were excommunicates, yet only Dandolo knew of it. He would spend much of the remainder of the Crusade seeking absolution for himself and his countrymen.
On June 23, 1203, the Venetian fleet bearing the Crusade and the young Alexius came within sight of Constantinople. For the doge and the Venetians it was a familiar sight. Not so for the French, very few of whom had ever been to the imperial capital—indeed few knew that so large a city existed anywhere in the world. They had never beheld so many and such magnificent palaces, and the many domes of Orthodox churches were also a strange and marvelous sight. Constantinople was simply outside the ken of the northerners. The ten largest cities in western Europe would have fit comfortably within its walls. As the crusaders sailed north through the Bosporus directly past the city, crowds of Greeks perched on the seawalls to get a look at the massive armada. Because of the high hills in the city, many others could see the ships from rooftops or even on grassy knolls in the old acropolis (modern Seraglio Point). In a city saturated with spectacle, where the unusual was commonplace, the large and colorful crusader fleet remained a sight to behold.
The crusaders camped on the Asian side of the Bosporus, where they waited for the people to overthrow their tyrant. Nothing happened. After waiting several weeks, on July 3 all fifty of the Venetian war galleys rowed out across the Bosporus, taking up a position very close to the capital’s seawalls. Doge Dandolo, Boniface of Montferrat, and the young Alexius were aboard one of the galleys, probably the sumptuous vessel of the doge. As expected, the galleys drew a large crowd of onlookers. The crusaders displayed the prince while shouting, “Behold your natural lord!” They cried out the crimes of Alexius III and stressed that they had not come to harm the people, but rather to defend and assist them. They urged the Greeks to take action against the usurper. Instead, the inhabitants took action against the crusaders, showering them with rocks, stones, and insults. Two days later, the Fourth Crusade prepared to attack Constantinople.
Militarily speaking, the Crusade was too small to conquer something as large as Constantinople, but it was large enough to cause damage. The main Venetian assault came on July 17, when the fleet, including transport vessels equipped with castles and flying bridges, moved against the seawalls of the inner harbor. As the transports came within range the Byzantine artillery mounted on the towers began to shower down stones, although miraculously none damaged the vessels. Crossbowmen and archers from both sides fired away, filling the air with bolts and arrows. The ferocity of the defenders’ missile fire kept the captains of the transports from pressing too closely to the shore. A few vessels were able to graze the walls with their bridges, but quickly retreated to avoid the deadly shower of stones. After additional failures, the Venetian assault stalled.
Then Enrico Dandolo did an amazing thing. Standing on the prow of his galley, fully armored, and with the banner of St. Mark waving in the wind before him, the blind old doge had been listening intently to the sounds of battle and the description of events from his men. When the advance of the transport vessels halted, he ordered his own galley to advance and run aground beneath the walls. Not surprisingly, his men questioned the wisdom of this tactic. Dandolo erupted in fury, promising to do bodily harm to them if they did not put his vessel onshore. And so the rowers put their backs into it and the vermilion galley moved swiftly forward. All along the line Venetian sailors watched in surprise as the doge’s vessel came out from behind the transports and sped toward shore. Amid the torrents of missiles they could see the winged lion of St. Mark and behind it the figure of their doge, still standing bravely on the prow. As soon as the galley made a landing, several men grabbed the standard and planted it on the shore. This amazing display of courage gave heart to the Venetians. At once the roundships moved forward and the marines rushed to the flying bridges. Some managed to gain a foothold on the walls, while others came ashore and scrambled up ladders. The Byzantine defenders fled, allowing the Venetians to move quickly across the fortifications, ultimately capturing twenty-five towers.
The image of the old doge, face in the wind, crashing against the shore of Constantinople is deservedly one of the most enduring in the history of Venice or, for that matter, the Middle Ages. Perhaps that is why it is sometimes exaggerated. From the canvas of Tintoretto in the Chamber of the Great Council to the pages of Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Dandolo has been depicted as the first warrior onshore, leading his countrymen into battle against the Greeks. In modern histories one often reads about the old doge waving the banner of St. Mark, shouting to his forces, and jumping ashore with the army. In truth, though, Dandolo never physically moved during the entire episode. He did not grasp or wave the banner, nor did he shout orders to the other ships (which would have been impossible in any case). He did not even get out of his galley. Dandolo carried his armor and maintained his footing on a moving vessel, something quite normal for Venetians. Anyone who has watched elderly women crossing the Grand Canal on traghetti (gondola ferries) weighed down by their shopping bags can attest to this. But Dandolo did inspire his men with his courage, and that is what altered the course of the battle.
Taking a small section of the walls is not the same as taking a city, but the Venetians also managed to set fire to a wealthy nearby district. That was enough for the Byzantines, who cared little whether Isaac II’s brother or son ruled them. Sensing danger, Alexius III grabbed a thousand pounds of gold and as many precious stones and pearls as he could carry and fled Constantinople. The next morning Dandolo and the Crusade leaders were awoken by messengers from Isaac II, who had been restored to his throne (despite his blindness). In an instant the crusaders were transformed from villains into heroes. The doors of the city were opened to them and the young man who had promised them all so much was crowned Alexius IV.
One hundred thousand silver marks was immediately delivered to the crusaders, a welcome bounty indeed. As the treaty stated, the money was divided between the Venetians and the French. The latter used theirs to pay off their debt to the former, which finally closed the books on their troubled contract. Still, although the French remained poor, they knew that more money was on the way. Half of the promised fee was still to be paid.
But Alexius IV was out of money. He looked everywhere for more—confiscating the property of his enemies, plundering church treasuries, even opening the tombs of emperors to relieve them of their finery. But a hundred thousand silver marks is a great deal of money, and Alexius simply could not lay hands on it. He needed more time. He offered to extend the lease on the Venetian fleet for an additional year at his own expense if the army would spend the winter in Constantinople. By March 1204, he assured them, he would be able to pay his remaining debt and join the Crusade on its journey to Egypt.
It did not turn out that way. The new emperor’s increasingly draconian attempts to raise funds to pay the Venetians and French made him and them deeply unpopular among the citizens of Constantinople. Things became so bad that bands of Greeks started setting fires in the Venetian Quarter of the city as well as in other European quarters along Constantinople’s harbor area. On August 19 a group of armed Pisans and Venetians retaliated, setting fires to Byzantine homes in the city center. A fierce wind blew up, spreading the fire across Constantinople’s midsection. It soon became one of the most destructive urban fires in history. More than a hundred thousand Byzantine citizens lost their homes in the blaze. Byzantine hatred for western Europeans, which smoldered even in the best of times, now became a white-hot flame. All the European residents of Constantinople—including thousands of Venetians—fled their homes and moved in with the crusaders on the north side of the harbor. The battle lines were drawn.
The open hatred for the Latins made it no longer politically possible for Alexius IV to pay the crusaders anything. He tried to stall them, but in the end made it clear that they should be content with what they had received. This was a clear breach of his vow and contract—something that the feudal French and the commercial Venetians abhorred in equal measure. They threatened to “pay themselves” by confiscating goods and wealth from the suburbs of Constantinople if the emperor did not pay them what they were owed. He refused.
Thus the winter of 1203–4 was spent with the Venetians and the French joining together on various raids. The emperor remained safe behind his walls, doing nothing. He feared bringing out his numerically superior armies for the simple reason that they were cowardly, crooked, and poorly trained. As usual in the viper’s nest of Byzantine politics, the government responded to the difficult situation with a palace coup. Alexius Mourtzouphlus, an imperial minister, first imprisoned and then strangled young Alexius IV. Blind old Isaac II conveniently died at about the same time. The traitor was then crowned Alexius V. With their imperial claimant dead, the Fourth Crusade declared war on Constantinople and its treacherous inhabitants.
There is a reason that the Fourth Crusade became for Venetians one of the proudest moments in their history. It was a monumental effort in which the largest, wealthiest, and best-fortified city in the Western world fell to an army of determined Venetians and their boats. The French helped, too, of course, but the attack, which came in April 1204, was solely a naval affair. Large merchant ships were lashed together two by two so that they could bring giant flying bridges to bear on Constantinople’s northern seawalls. The hard-fought battle lasted several days, but in the end the Venetians and their allies successfully breached the walls and took the vast city behind them. The victory was, however, not simply due to the ingenuity of the Venetian sailors but to the extraordinarily poor quality of Constantinople’s defenders. When faced with the slightest danger, the Byzantine soldiers fled like cattle.
For the next three days the westerners gorged themselves on the riches of Constantinople. Nicetas Choniates, a Byzantine senator who witnessed the sack of his beloved city, gave a graphic account of the violence with which the crusaders and other Europeans stripped clean the palaces, churches, and public places. Innumerable art treasures of antiquity were destroyed, melted down for coin, or broken apart for their precious gems. Of course, the Venetians took part in the looting as well. But, unlike the French and other Europeans, they had an appreciation for what they seized. Enrico Dandolo saved hundreds of items from destruction by having them crated up and sent back to Venice. There does not seem to have been any guiding principle behind what he chose to take—except, perhaps, that they were all rare and beautiful.
A visitor today to San Marco will see much of what Dandolo sent home. Indeed, it is impossible not to see it. The church of San Marco had sparse ornamentation in 1200. Today it is encrusted with marble slabs, arches, columns, and sculptures placed in an almost haphazard fashion wherever they might fit. Most of these came from Constantinople. Take, for example, the dark tetrarchs, mounted on a corner of the church very near the Ducal Palace. Each of these two porphyry sculptures depicts an Augustus and a Caesar (the emperor and the vice-emperor of the Roman Empire) embracing each other in a gesture of solidarity. Originally mounted on columns, they towered over a forum in Constantinople known as the Philadelphion, or place of brotherly love. There they represented the imperial structure of the late Roman Empire. In Venice, they represented nothing, but they were attractive and so they were cut to order and mounted on the bare corner. Today they share the area with tourists, who often rest there a moment before moving on to the next attraction. Few notice that the foot of one of the tetrarchs is white. It is a substitute, produced by the Venetians because the real one was lost during transit. The missing foot was discovered in excavations in Istanbul in the twentieth century and is now on display there in the Archaeological Museum.
By far the most famous objects that Dandolo saved were the four bronze horses of San Marco. Few statues have as rich a history as these fascinating steeds. These remarkable statues are life-size depictions of a team that once pulled a quadriga (two-wheeled chariot) and a bronze charioteer. The horses are a Roman copy of a Greek masterwork, and were probably cast around the time of Christ or a century or two after. In the fourth or fifth century they were moved to Constantinople, where they pulled their triumphant charioteer for centuries above the starting gates of the lavish Hippodrome. What happened to the driver is unknown, but the four horses were unbridled, boxed up, and sent to Venice. We can imagine the surprise with which the Venetians unpacked this strange gift. Why send bronze horses to a city without real ones? For a few years the Venetians argued over where to place them, but finally decided on the facade of San Marco. Why put them in Venice’s most prominent location? There is no connection between St. Mark and horses, no connection between the Piazza and horses. Despite modern attempts to divine some meaning in the horses’ placement, we are left with the same answer. Like every other item from Constantinople that was used to ornament the church of San Marco—both inside and out—the horses were placed on the facade because they looked good there. For the pragmatic, no-nonsense merchants of Venice that was reason enough.
The fall of Constantinople may have been a boon to the church of San Marco, but it was a real danger to the people of Venice. The lion’s share of Venice’s overseas business went through Byzantine ports—especially Constantinople. The fall of the city and its empire meant uncertainty, disorder, and danger—all of which were bad for business. The doge understood this perfectly. His main objective was to restore stability to the region as soon as possible.
The first order of business was to select a new emperor. Six Venetians and six non-Venetians were chosen to make that decision. There were two main contenders for the position: Boniface of Montferrat, the titular leader of the Crusade, and Baldwin of Flanders, a powerful count with strong support among the French barons. With the six non-Venetian electors split between these two leaders it would have been a simple thing for the Venetians to hand the imperial throne to their doge. Yet Dandolo did not want the job. He was ninety-seven years old and eager to return home. More importantly, he feared that if a Venetian was elected emperor, the French would abandon Constantinople, leaving it defenseless. The Venetian electors were, however, in a position to break the tie between the other two imperial hopefuls. They chose Baldwin. It was largely a vote against Boniface, who was a friend of Genoa and whose family was closely entwined with the previous Byzantine dynasty. Baldwin brought none of that baggage and he was more likely to keep the French knights in the East. Since the Venetians did not receive the throne, the crusaders ceded the patriarchate of Constantinople to them.
On May 16, in a rich ceremony in Hagia Sophia, Catholic clergy presided over the coronation of Baldwin I, emperor of Constantinople. The event was splendid. The leading barons and Venetian nobles rode in procession to the palace to collect the emperor-elect and then proceeded to Hagia Sophia. There Baldwin was bedecked in the marvelously rich garments of a Roman emperor. Precious stones were so copious on his attire that it is a wonder he could carry them all. Even his shoes were studded with jewels. His mantle bore the imperial eagles in rubies, so brilliant that it seemed to one observer that it was on fire. Baldwin proceeded through the church to the high altar, accompanied by Louis of Blois, bearing the imperial standard; Hugh of St. Pol, carrying the imperial sword; and Boniface of Montferrat, holding the imperial crown that had just eluded him. Baldwin knelt before the altar and the crown was taken up by the crusader bishops and blessed. Then all of them, each holding the crown by one hand, placed it on Baldwin’s head and proclaimed him emperor. Around the new Augustus’s neck they hung a ruby the size of an apple that had formerly belonged to Manuel I Comnenus.
At once a committee was assembled to divide up the Byzantine Empire among the victors. There were a few areas that were off-limits to the committee. Crete was one. A strategic and commercially important island, Crete had previously been given to Boniface by Alexius IV as a bonus for putting him on the throne. Now that Byzantium lay in ruins, Boniface was more interested in claiming Thessalonica, the second city of the empire. He offered to sell his rights over Crete to the Genoese. But Dandolo was quicker. He purchased Crete from Boniface for one thousand silver marks.
And that was not all Venice had coming. According to an agreement among the crusaders before the conquest, the city and empire were to be divided, with one-quarter going to the emperor and the other three-quarters split between the Venetians and the French. In other words, Venice stood to receive three-eighths of the Byzantine Empire. The partition committee awarded Venice a large section of Constantinople near the harbor, the Sea of Marmara shoreline from Heraclea to the end of Gallipoli, and the city of Adrianople. Venice was also given rights to the islands of Salamis, Aegina, Andros, and both ends of Negroponte as well as the Gulf of Corinth and the Morea (Peloponnese). Finally, Venetians received all the lands of western Greece along the Adriatic Sea. Like the purchase of Crete, these awards consisted only of the right to conquer the regions. Nevertheless, Dandolo immediately assumed a new title, which Venetian doges would proudly don for decades: “lord of three-eighths of the Roman Empire.” It was to be a short-lived empire, one that modern historians call the Latin Empire of Constantinople, limping along for more than five decades until it finally collapsed in 1261.
Shortly after Baldwin’s coronation the aged Enrico Dandolo died. He was buried with great pomp in the gallery of Hagia Sophia—a church that dwarfed Venice’s magnificent San Marco. Doge Dandolo was the only person ever to be buried there in Christianity’s largest church.
Thus was Venice transformed into a maritime empire—although not all at once, and certainly not without some trepidation. As businessmen, the Venetians had a natural aversion to empires. They were expensive, troublesome ventures that kept one from focusing on the bottom line. Venice had long ago extended its control over cities along the Adriatic Sea, yet for Venetians that was their sea, their home. While Venetian quarters could be found in cities throughout the eastern Mediterranean and Venetian convoys sailed in exotic waters, Venice had never extended political or military power outside the confines of the Adriatic.
At first the government in Venice refused to accept the lands that Dandolo had won for them. Instead, the new doge, Pietro Ziani (1205–29), issued a general license for Venetians to conquer what they wished in those territories at their own expense. Once conquered, the lands would remain part of the Latin-ruled empire with no legal attachment to the Republic of Venice. Yet this strategy of pretending that nothing had changed did not work for long. The Genoese, still fuming that Dandolo had purchased Crete out from under them, launched an invasion of the island in 1206. They also unleashed pirates, such as the infamous Leone Vetrano, who captured Corfu and set up operations against Venetian shipping along the Greek coast.
And so Venice declared war on Genoa. The first two fleets were commanded by Ranieri Dandolo, the only son of Enrico, who had served as vice-doge during his father’s absence. He successfully ejected the pirates, capturing Corfu, Coron (Koroni), and Modon and invading Crete. During the warfare he was struck by an arrow and died in a Genoese prison a few days later. The war over Crete would drag on for another five years. Finally, in 1211, the Venetians defeated Genoa and established sole control over Crete. This island would remain a cornerstone of the Venetian empire for more than four centuries.
The Fourth Crusade had transformed Venice. What was conceived as a grand war in defense of the faith had become a doorway to empire. While it was happening, though, it seemed like nothing more than a source of trouble. Not only did the crusaders leave Venice holding the bill, but the Crusade itself veered wildly off course, finally destroying Venice’s greatest trading partner. With stability in the Aegean shattered, the Venetians were forced to man their war galleys, expand into the chaotic ruins, and build a new overseas empire.