CHAPTER SIX
‘It seemed as if the sea were all a-tremble and all on
fire with the ships’
ON THEIR ARRIVAL in Venice, the crusaders were warmly welcomed by their hosts. The Venetians had thought carefully about where to accommodate the Frenchmen and had prepared land on the island of St Nicholas, known today as the Lido. This long (8 miles), flat sandbar lies to the east of the city, around 7½ miles away from St Mark’s Square, but only around 1,300 feet from the nearest point of the main Rialto Island. The Lido protects the central islands from the open sea and today is famous as a beach resort. Back in the thirteenth century it was almost entirely undeveloped except for the eleventh-century monastery of St Nicholas. The decision to house the crusaders on the Lido represented a careful mix of diplomatic pragmatism and simple practicality. The unique topography of Venice precluded the majority of the Frenchmen from setting up camp in, or just outside, the city itself, and the Lido was the closest open space that could take such a large force. Equally, if the crusaders proved to be ill disciplined—as so many had been in the past—then they were away from the heart of Venice and reliant on Venetian shipping to get off the island in large numbers. In other words, they might find it difficult to threaten their hosts directly, even if they wished to.
As the summer wore on and more of the crusaders gathered in the city, disturbing rumours began to reach the camp: some of those who had promised to meet in Venice were said to be choosing other routes to reach the Holy Land. Villehardouin, as one of those responsible for negotiating the original deal with the Venetians, was highly alarmed at this development because it meant the crusaders might fail to fulfil their side of the contract. They had sworn to pay the Venetians 85,000 marks in the expectation that 33,500 men and 4,500 horses would come to Venice and make up this sum at a particular rate per man and per horse. The total figure was fixed and, even if fewer crusaders appeared, the full amount was still owed. With fewer men, therefore, the cost to each individual would rise dramatically—probably beyond the means of many—which, in turn, meant that the leadership would need to find substantial extra funds to make up the shortfall.
The marshal was especially scathing of those who, as he saw it, let down their comrades by not coming to Venice and his narrative pointedly named the individuals whom he felt especially culpable. As one of the men who had negotiated the Treaty of Venice in 1201, this was also a way of distracting attention from his own overestimation of the numbers of crusaders who would gather at Venice and of trying to convince posterity that he was not at fault for this error. Privately, however, in the late summer of 1202 the marshal must have felt a real apprehension that he and his fellow-envoys had made a terrible mistake and that the crusaders would not be able to meet their agreement with the Venetians.
Those who resolved to travel to the Holy Land by some other route often had entirely sound reasons for doing so. One group of Flemings, led by John of Nesles, the governor of Bruges, was to sail from Flanders, down the English Channel and around the Iberian peninsula—a quite logical decision given that several earlier expeditions from the Low Countries to the Holy Land had followed the same route. John’s ships carried soldiers, clothing, food and other supplies for Count Baldwin and the main Flemish contingent and promised to join him ‘at whatever place they might hear that he had gone’.1 Rather disingenuously Villehardouin claimed that this group broke their oath and abandoned their colleagues because ‘they were afraid to undertake the many perils that the army in Venice had undertaken’.2 In fact, when John of Nesles’s men later heard of the diversion, they chose not to fight at Constantinople and elected to sail directly to the Levant.
Crusaders from Burgundy and the Île-de-France also avoided Venice and chose instead to sail from Marseille or from Genoa. Here, more starkly, another fundamental flaw in Villehardouin’s reasoning is revealed:
aside from overestimating the total number of crusaders, he had failed to allow for the fact that those who did take part were under no compulsion to sail from Venice. Blinded, perhaps, by the prospect of the wonderful Venetian navy, and believing (not unwisely) that in pure military terms this was the best way for the crusaders to reach Egypt, he had assumed that all the holy warriors would wish to join the same fleet. Crucially, the only signatories to the treaty with Venice were the representatives of Champagne, Flanders, Blois and Saint-Pol. Beyond these contingents there was no obligation for any of the crusaders to travel with the Venetians. Likewise, there was no papal directive ordering such a course of action and none of the expedition’s nobles had sufficient authority to compel everyone to gather at the head of the Adriatic.3 The main leaders, Boniface, Baldwin and Louis, could encourage their own men to do this if they thought it sensible—but they could not realistically force people of independent standing such as the Burgundians, Bishop Walter of Autun and Count Guigue of Forez to meet on the Adriatic. It was much easier for these crusaders to sail down the River Rhone and take ship from Marseille than to travel across to northern Italy; it was also possible that the people of Marseille offered a cheaper crossing than the Venetians.4 Most previous crusading expeditions had travelled in a fragmented and ad hoc manner, each major contingent taking its own route to the Levant and making its own arrangements. Sometimes these groups gathered for convenience or, once in Asia Minor, joined together for safety, but to ask such a polyglot force as the Fourth Crusade to meet in Europe was unprecedented. As the summer of 1202 wore on, the plan for the expedition to travel in one enormous fleet looked increasingly implausible.
The crusaders’ plight was becoming apparent to all. Baldwin of Flanders had arrived in Venice, but Louis of Blois and many more nobles had yet to appear. It was confirmed that others were taking ship from alternative ports and, as this news began to drift into the camp, the prospect of a shortfall of men and money became ever more real. Those at Venice took council and decided that Louis, at least, had to be won over. A delegation led by Villehardouin and Count Hugh of Saint-Pol rode from Venice to Pavia (about 150 miles as the crow flies) to meet the Blesevin. For one of the primary signatories of the original contract to attempt to evade the agreement was a calamity: it was profoundly disloyal to his comrades and deeply discouraging to all. Geoffrey and Hugh chided Louis and his colleagues for their lack of courage, reminded them of the plight of the Holy Land and argued that the best way to help the faithful was by joining the main army at Venice. This direct appeal worked and Louis and his men agreed to march to the head of the Adriatic. For others, however, this form of personal intervention was not a feasible approach and Villehardouin lamented that many, such as Villain of Neuilly, whom he described as ‘one of the finest knights in the world’—a reputation probably gained on the tournament circuit—chose to march south from Piacenza and take ship in Apulia, thereby avoiding Venice.5
By the mid-summer of 1202 those Frenchmen who had crossed the Alps and reached Montferrat and Lombardy would have learned of the potential troubles brewing for their colleagues to the east. Some may have calculated that there was no possibility that the crusaders at Venice could fulfil their contract with the doge, and travelling there to become ensnared in such an impossibly awkward situation must have seemed undesirable. Given the lack of any formal requirement to go to Venice, there was no reason why they could not march down to southern Italy and sail on to the Eastern Mediterranean free of the contractual restrictions and financial disputes that would inevitably attend their colleagues at the head of the Adriatic. These men remained holy warriors, dedicated to fulfilling their vows and fighting in the Holy Land—simply because they failed to sail from Venice did not, as Villehardouin would prefer us to believe, render them traitors to their cause.
In spite of this unhappy state of affairs, the arrival of Count Louis and his knights brought delight to those already in Venice. The newcomers were met with feasting and celebrations as they took up their quarters on the shell-strewn shores of the Lido. At first, all was well, and the Venetians provided a market to provision the men and horses. The crusade leaders went across to the city, where they were shown the Arsenal and the numerous private shipyards on the islands. The Frenchmen saw how the doge’s men had accomplished their side of the contract and they marvelled at the superb fleet constructed on their behalf. The Gesta Innocenti records that ‘the Venetians prepared a magnificent fleet, the like of which had not been seen since long ago’.6 Villehardouin wrote: ‘The fleet that they had got ready was so fine and well equipped that no man in the whole of Christendom has ever seen one to surpass it.’7 Even allowing for the medieval propensity for exaggeration, this was undoubtedly one of the biggest, and certainly the most splendid, fleets yet assembled in the Christian West. The Devastatio Constantinopolitana stated that there were 40 ships, 62 galleys and 100 transports. Robert of Clari wrote that the doge himself had 50 galleys of his own.8 The contemporary letter of Count Hugh of Saint-Pol recorded that 200 vessels reached Constantinople in the summer of 1203, and the Byzantine writer Niketas Choniates counted more than 70 transports, 110 horse transports and 60 galleys at the same stage of the expedition.9 Drawing on a diverse range of sources, it seems likely that a fleet of some 200 ships had been mustered. It is true that earlier crusader fleets had approached a similar size, most notably the northern European force of around 160 vessels that captured Lisbon in 1147, although the form of these vessels was far smaller than those used in the Fourth Crusade. We know of no horse transports at Lisbon, for example, and there is no possibility that this group of maritime crusaders had the financial resources or expertise to construct anything like the extraordinary fleet gathered at Venice in 1202.
As the summer drifted along, further crusaders arrived. On 22 July, the papal legate, Cardinal Peter Capuano, reached Venice. He spent time on the Lido preaching to the troops and is said to have done much to bolster morale. In late July, Gunther of Pairis and the Upper Rhineland crusaders completed their journey. On 15 August, Boniface of Montferrat appeared and, as nominal head of the crusade, his presence must have given good heart to the men already there. It was also the first occasion that all three elements of the crusade leadership—the marquis, the northern French and the Venetians—were present together and it would have afforded an important opportunity to discuss strategy and planning. Around the same time, the German contingent led by Bishop Conrad of Halberstadt (in northern Germany) and Count Berthold of Katzenellenbogen (from the central Rhineland) marched down to the shores of the Adriatic. This offered further cheer to those on the Lido.10
Notwithstanding these moments of optimism, the harsh reality of the situation began to set in. Much of the intense labour and massive resources expended on the Venetian armada was in vain: by the autumn it was abundantly clear that far too few crusaders had assembled. The envoys’ estimate had been wildly inaccurate and only around 12,000 of the promised 33,500 had gathered. Villehardouin wrote: ‘[The fleet] comprised so great a number of warships, galleys, and transports that it could easily have accommodated three times as many men as were in the whole army.’11
Lines of ships lay drawn up in dockyards, while others sat bobbing and bumping at anchor, ready to sail. Yet the shortfall of holy warriors condemned dozens of these vessels to ghostly inactivity. For both the crusaders and the Venetians this was a catastrophic state of affairs: the crusaders faced the humiliation of failing to keep to the contract and the need to find huge amounts of cash; the Venetians contemplated financial ruin and the waste of at least a whole year’s labour. Dandolo had to act: he summoned the leaders of the crusade and bluntly demanded the money due to him. Robert of Clari suggests that this was coupled with a threat. The doge exclaimed:
Lords, you have used us ill, for as soon as your messengers made the bargain with me I commanded through all my land that no trader should go trading, but that all should help prepare this navy. So they have waited ever since and have not made any money for a year and a half past. Instead, they have lost a great deal, and therefore, we wish, my men and I, that you should pay us the money you owe us. And if you do not do so, then know that you shall not depart from this island before we are paid, nor shall you find anyone to bring you anything to eat or to drink.12
The Devastatio Constantinopolitana, an anonymous eye-witness account of the expedition written by a Rhineland crusader, paints a grim picture of conditions on the barren Lido: trapped, for day after day on the dull, flat sandbar; bored, hungry and condemned to wait on the decisions of their commanders. The author emphasised the suffering of the poor and their sense of being exploited by the crusade leadership—regardless of whether they were French or Venetian.13 He wrote of hugely inflated food prices, and grumbled that ‘as often as it pleased the Venetians, they decreed that no one release any of the pilgrims ... consequently the pilgrims, almost like captives, were dominated by them in all respects’. These feelings of tedium and powerlessness, as well as the difficulties of survival, are representative of the lot of the average crusader and reveal how arduous such expeditions were. The Devastatio also mentions that many crusaders deserted and either travelled home or went south to Apulia. Of those who remained, ‘an unusual mortality rate arose. The result was that the dead could barely be buried by the living.’14 Although this latter claim might be tenuous, the outbreak of some form of disease on the Lido during the hot summer months seems more than likely. For these disaffected individuals, a resentment of the Venetians’ apparently hostile behaviour nurtured ill-feeling that would boil over into open conflict after the siege of Zara a few weeks later. Other writers record that some crusaders managed to make the short journey over to Venice and acquire food; and Robert of Clari maintained that the doge continued to provide food and drink because he was such a worthy man.15 The variety of viewpoints reflects the different experiences of the eye-witnesses and makes plain that members of the nobility were better able to secure supplies than the impoverished foot-soldiers.
Dandolo’s request for payment can hardly have been a surprise. The crusade leaders’ first response was to ask everyone to contribute the cost of their passage. However—and as an illustration of the difficulties in raising money for such expeditions—many were unable to do so. Perhaps they had hoped that a wealthy lord would take them under his patronage (as quite often happened on crusade), or else they believed that the general fund, including the sums raised by the papal taxes, would contribute towards their expenses.
For some men, the initial attraction of the crusade had paled and the enthusiasm to recover the Holy Land was becoming an increasingly distant and ephemeral dream when set against the day-to-day needs of survival. Cardinal Peter Capuano tried, unsuccessfully, to intervene with the Venetians and to persuade them to be patient with the crusaders. He also attempted to streamline the expedition. Prudently, he granted letters releasing the sick, the destitute, women and ‘all feeble persons’ from their vows, which allowed them to return home without the penalty of excommunication. 16 From those who remained, the nobles collected all that they could but, even so, more than half the overall fee was still missing. Further discussion was clearly needed.
The French acknowledged that the Venetians had fulfilled their side of the bargain in good faith, and that the problem lay with the crusaders. Once again Villehardouin blamed the breach of the contract on those who had failed to come to Venice: ‘This is the fault of those who have gone to the other ports.’17 He made no mention of the gross overestimation of the crusaders’ numbers and the fact that there was a free choice as to which port the crusaders could embark from. Again, Villehardouin was refusing to acknowledge his own responsibility in the original estimate of the numbers and was trying to deflect blame for this increasingly grotesque mistake.
With insufficient money to pay the Venetians, the nobles faced the grim prospect of the expedition collapsing before it had even begun. They fretted over the injury to their honour and lamented the continuing danger to the Holy Land. Some men were ready to abandon the arrangement with Venice entirely and argued that they, as individuals, had paid the agreed sum for their passage and, if the Venetians were unwilling to take them to the Levant, then they would sail from elsewhere or, as Villehardouin suspected, simply return home. The more determined majority resolved to persist: ‘We’d much rather give up all we have and go as poor men with the army than see it broken up and our enterprise a failure. For God will doubtless repay us in His own good time.’18 The ominous tone underlying this last remark again betrays the knowledge of the outcome of the crusade in Villehardouin’s account. As he saw it, the sack of Constantinople was God’s way of recognising the willingness of his men to sacrifice all their worldly goods in His cause and to hold firm to their crusade vows.
The leadership dug deep into their personal resources to try to bridge the gap between the sum raised and that owed to the doge. Gold and silver vessels, jugs, plates and cutlery were all handed over and transported to Dandolo’s palace to help pay the debt. In spite of some nobles borrowing money, the crusaders were still, according to Villehardouin, 34,000 (or 36,000 by Robert of Clari’s reckoning) marks short of the 85,000 required—and there appeared no way out of this impasse.19
The crusaders had not, however, counted on Doge Dandolo’s ingenuity. He had, as Robert of Clari reported, already spent much of the anticipated payment in the construction and equipping of the fleet and he had also required the Venetians to cease trading for more than a year —with obvious financial consequences. As the man who had led his people in the original negotiations, Dandolo had a duty to ensure that Venice did not lose out. He was clearly under enormous pressure to keep the city’s finances in proper order and to realise the huge investment made in the crusader fleet. Furthermore, the doge was a proud man and by leaving a legacy of bankruptcy to his mother city his reputation would be fatally compromised. He was also a canny politician with an appreciation of the wider diplomatic picture. Dandolo argued that if, as they were legally entitled, the Venetians kept what had been paid, but did not take the crusade to the Holy Land because of the overall shortfall, they would provoke widespread ill-feeling across the Christian West. More pertinently, he would enrage the crusading army on his doorstep. As these were equally unacceptable options, the crusade had to go on and he had to find a way for the crusaders to relieve the debt in full. The doge made an offer: a pragmatic proposal and one that was certainly of advantage to Venice, yet it was an idea that would strike at the very core of the crusaders’ motivation and provoke deep unease amongst many of those committed to the cause of Christ. Dandolo suggested that the crisis could be alleviated by the Venetians and the crusaders attacking the city of Zara on the Dalmatian coast, around 165 miles south-east of Venice.
Control of Zara had long been an aim of the Venetians and here was an excellent opportunity for them to assert their authority. The doge decided that payment of the debt should be suspended and subsequently, God permitting, the crusaders would be able to win the money they owed by right of conquest.20 In any case, it was now September, almost too late to journey to Egypt in safety. A diversion to Zara would at least start the campaign and move the men away from the environs of Venice itself.
Although Dandolo’s proposal seemed, in some respects, simple enough, there was a sinister catch: Zara was a Christian city and at the same time it was under the jurisdiction of King Emico of Hungary (1196—1204). Even worse, Emico was marked with the cross and nominally committed to the same cause as themselves. Dandolo was, therefore, asking the crusaders to direct their energies against a Christian city and, crucially, against a man whose lands—as a crusader—were under papal protection. Was this Venetian empire-building or just an ingenious way to keep the crusade going? The answer is probably both, yet as the campaign unfolded, it was a combination that increasing numbers of crusaders found themselves unable to stomach.
The crusade leaders discussed the offer and, according to Robert of Clari, chose not to reveal the plan to go to Zara to the rank and file of the army for fear of an adverse reaction. They simply announced that payment of the debt to the Venetians was to be deferred, to be paid ‘out of the first gains you shall make for yourselves’, and that the expedition was finally to set out.21 The masses were delighted and they celebrated by lighting great torches and carrying them around the camp on the tips of their lances, parading their happiness to all.
As Villehardouin relates the decision to go to Zara, there was some initial dissent from those amongst the leadership who wanted the army to disband anyway, but this was soon overcome and the agreement to besiege the city was quickly concluded.22 In fact, as the plan to invest Zara leaked out, it would begin to open up a serious rift amongst the crusaders and to provoke open disobedience to the papacy.
The city of Zara was a wealthy, independent mercantile power compelled to live under the economic shadow of the Venetians. The contemporary author of the Deeds of the Bisbop of Halberstadt described it thus: ‘Zara is surely an exceedingly rich city ... it is situated on the sea. It is properly fortified with a first-class wall and extremely high towers.’23
On many occasions during the twelfth century it had tried to break free from the supervision of its powerful northern neighbour. At the times when they operated under Venetian overlordship, Zaran merchants were given the same privileges in Venice as the native merchants themselves. Patrolling galleys ensured that the Zarans directed their goods through Venice, rather than trading freely to other ports, so that all the taxes flowed into the doge’s treasury. Zara was also important in providing much of the wood so essential in the construction of the Venetian fleet; the forests of Dalmatia supplied excellent oak—in contrast to the paucity of such material in the Veneto by this time. In 1181, however, the Zarans had thrown off Venetian authority and six years later they forged a deal with King Bela III of Hungary (1173-96) to move under his protection. Three Venetian attacks on the city failed, but in 1202 the opportunity for the doge to crush his rebellious neighbour and to quell a possible source of disorder during his absence on the crusade was extremely tempting.
Around the same time as he advanced this proposal, the doge bound himself ever closer to the crusading cause—ironically, of course, just as he was about to attack a Christian city. He called together the most important citizens of Venice, along with the leading crusaders, to the church of St Mark’s. There, before mass began, he climbed the steps of the lectern and, with the great central dome arching above him, addressed the congregation. Up to this point Dandolo had simply been a commercial contractor, arranging for the transportation of the crusade and acting solely in a business capacity. But in terms of status and spiritual standing he desired to move forward. Dandolo’s father, grandfather and uncle had taken part in the crusade of 1122-4 and now he, like the French nobles with crusading traditions, wished to join the line of holy warriors. He acknowledged his physical infirmities, barriers to almost everyone else of his age and condition —‘I am an old man, weak and in need of rest, and my health is failing’—but he pleaded to be allowed to take the cross and ‘protect and guide’ the Venetians.24 The congregation cried out their approval: ‘We beg you in God’s name to take the cross: There was also a practical political angle here: Enrico ensured that the citizens approved the choice of his son, Renier, to act as his regent, effectively confirming the Dandolo dynasty in power for a second generation. After securing a continuity of government—and, of course, the position of his own family—the old man was led down from the lectern towards the high altar under the easternmost dome of the church. There he knelt sobbing, before handing over his cotton cap to the churchmen standing there. Perhaps in recognition of his status, they departed from convention and sewed a cross onto his headgear rather than his shoulder. Dandolo wanted everyone to see him as a crusader and this in turn inspired many of his citizens to come forward to take the cross. This spiritual commitment drew the Italians and the Frenchmen into a closer bond than before and helped to intensify a shared aim that would sustain the crusade over the next few years. Villehardouin noted that: ‘Our [men] watched the doge’s taking of the cross with joy and deep emotion, greatly moved by the courage and wisdom shown by this good old man.’25 For those crusaders who had doubted the Venetian’s true intentions this was a persuasive public sign of a religious dimension to his endeavours. Some of the crusaders, meanwhile, had yet to come to terms with the prospect of a campaign at Zara and, the longer they considered it, the more unpopular an idea it became.
The notion of a crusade attacking Christian lands was not new. In 1107—8, Bohemond of Antioch had led an expedition against the Greeks with the endorsement of Pope Paschal II.26 More recently (1191) Richard the Lionheart had seized Cyprus from Isaac Ducas Comnenus, a renegade member of the Byzantine family, and this had provoked little disquiet in the West. The basic differences between these cases and the Venetian plan was that Zara was a Catholic city. Besieging a city subject to the overlordship of a crusader (in this case, King Emico of Hungary) would mean conflicting with the papal promise to protect the property of all who took the cross. It would, therefore, open up the prospect of excommunication for the attackers. It seems that news of the target began to reach the ordinary troops and there were increasing murmurs of dissent. At this point, however, the level of ill-feeling simmered just below the surface and did not prevent the final preparations for setting sail. The crusaders’ horses were led into their stalls below decks and the doors caulked over. Villehardouin mentions that more than 300 siege machines were loaded aboard, including equipment and material for constructing towers and ladders—more evidence of how thoroughly the Venetians had prepared the fleet for the invasion of Egypt and an assault on Alexandria.
Finally, in early October 1202, the Venetians’ great fleet took to the seas—at last, the crusade was truly on the move. After the long, morale-sapping months on the Lido, real activity gave renewed energy and vigour to the holy warriors. The eye-witness accounts make plain what a magnificent and stirring sight this made—a kaleidoscope of patterns and movement. Dandolo’s own vermilion galley led the way, with the doge himself sheltering under a samite canopy. Before him stood four trumpeters, while above him flew the banner of St Mark depicting a winged lion; on other ships, drummers set up a relentless, driving beat. Each of the crusading nobles had his own vessel: Baldwin, Louis, Hugh, Geoffrey, Martin of Pairis, Conrad of Halberstadt were all accompanied by their own men. Everyone bore the crusaders’ cross—traditionally red for the French and green for the Flemings. The knights hung their shields, brightly decorated with their own family colours, from the front of their ship and hoisted their banners aloft to top the masts. A dazzling array of flags and pennons fluttered and shimmered in the autumn breeze. Robert of Clari reported that a hundred pairs of trumpets, of silver and of brass, all sounded at the departure, and he marvelled at the pounding of so many drums and tabors and other instruments. The tumultuous noise generated huge excitement in the crusaders and the explosive array of colour and military strength thrilled everyone and inspired powerful feelings of confidence and anticipation. Yet this conspicuous display of worldly honour and pride did not exclude the spiritual element of the crusade. The pilgrims (as Robert described them) had their priests and clerics mount the towers at the front of each ship and chant the hymn Veni creator spiritus, a song traditionally associated with crusading that begins with the lines: ‘Come Holy Ghost, our souls inspire and lighten with celestial fire.’27 Everyone wept with emotion as they realised that the great adventure was under way; they slid slowly out from the island city that had been home for the past few months and headed into the Adriatic—the holy war had begun.
As the fleet edged out to sea, the ships began to unfurl their sails like a mass of pupating caterpillars, shedding their cocoons and extending their wings. Robert described the spectacle as ‘the finest thing to see that has ever been since the beginning of the world’.28He wrote that ‘it seemed as if the sea were all a-tremble and all on fire with the ships’. Again, the sense of shared power, of an almost uncontrollable force, seeps out from his writing and conveys the thrill felt by the Christian army.
All did not go smoothly for everyone, however. The Viola, one of the largest transport ships, sank. Several French nobles were unable to embark because of ill-health, and one group, led by Stephen of Perche, chose instead to travel to Apulia from where they sailed to the Levant in the spring of 1203. More significantly, Boniface of Montferrat claimed that he needed to attend to urgent matters in his homelands and would rejoin the army as soon as he could. This neatly removed him from participation in the attack on Zara and ensured that the marquis stayed in good standing with the pope.
Sailing east from Venice, the crusade passed by the cities of Trieste and Muglia and secured their submission.29 In essence, the fleet toured the coast of the north-eastern Adriatic and used the muscle of the crusade to assert Venetian authority over the region. It compelled Istria, Dalmatia and Slavonia to pay tribute and stopped at Pula, where the crusaders landed briefly to gather food and water before carrying on towards Zara, where they arrived on St Martin’s Day, 11 November 1202.
By this time, the Zarans had learned of the Venetians’ intentions. Spies were ubiquitous in the medieval world and, once the plan became known amongst the crusaders, it was inevitable that the Zarans would discover it soon enough. They prepared to defend themselves.
In Rome, meanwhile, Pope Innocent was well aware of this disturbing development from his representative with the crusade, Cardinal Peter Capuano, who had travelled from Venice to the papal court in the late autumn. Peter had tried to convince the doge to take the crusaders to Alexandria as originally intended, but he could not persuade Dandolo to excuse payment of the crusaders’ debts. The cardinal had some sympathy with the crusaders and appreciated the dreadful dilemma in which they found themselves. For him at least, the greatest priority was to see the crusade carry on. Bishop Conrad of Halberstadt sought Peter’s thoughts on the matter; his reply was unequivocal: ‘The lord pope would prefer to overlook whatever was unbefitting of them rather than have this pilgrimage campaign disintegrate.’30 Peter had, in essence, endorsed the move on Zara.
The pope, however, had a different view and one may imagine a particularly frosty reception for the legate as he broke the news of the diversion to Zara and its purpose. Innocent was deeply troubled by this turn of events. He wrote a letter—now lost—in which he utterly forbade the attack on the city under pain of excommunication. In later correspondence he made reference to having taken ‘care to prohibit you [the crusaders] strictly from attempting to invade or violate the lands of Christians unless either they wickedly impede your journey or another just or necessary cause should, perhaps, arise that would allow you to act otherwise in accordance with the guidance offered by our legate, [this] should have deterred you from such a very wicked plan’.31 The Gesta Innocenti repeats a similar message. The pope had not envisaged that his legate would sanction such an act. By the threat of excommunication he was deploying the strongest possible weapon in a pope’s spiritual armoury. Excommunication meant complete exclusion from the Christian community and an excommunicate was, therefore, denied access to the sacraments and services of the Church, thereby exposing him or her to certain damnation—a matter of the gravest possible concern to all medieval people. For Innocent to consider such a move clearly indicated the depth of his horror at the situation. Abbot Peter of Lucedio conveyed the pope’s letter to Zara, where it arrived just as the crusaders encamped outside the city walls.
As the fleet had reached Zara, its citizens had closed their gates and armed themselves as fully as possible, but they were intensely aware that they had virtually no chance of holding out against the crusaders. On 12 November they sent an embassy of leading men to the doge’s pavilion and offered to surrender the city and all their possessions if their lives were spared. Dandolo, prudently, said that he could not agree to such terms without first discussing the matter with the crusading nobles—an indication of the doge’s unwillingness to be seen by his colleagues as acting independently. Even though the siege of Zara was most obviously a Venetian project, Dandolo was very careful to carry the crusaders with him. Now, however, a damaging rift began to open within the French army.
A group of nobles, headed by Simon of Montfort, were hostile to the campaign and attempted to subvert the entire siege. With many of the senior crusaders closeted with Dandolo, Simon’s faction acted boldly. They approached the Zaran envoys and claimed to speak for the French crusaders as a whole. They asked why the Zarans wanted to surrender as they only had to fight the Venetians, and not the Frenchmen who, they promised, would not join in the attack. ‘You have nothing to fear from them [the French],’ said the negotiators, according to Villehardouin. The Zarans asked for the offer to be repeated publicly and Robert of Boves was chosen to go up to the walls, where he spoke again. On this basis, believing all the crusaders to be at odds with the Venetians, the Zarans chose to break off discussions with their oppressors. Simultaneously, however, the doge had spoken to the majority of the crusading nobles, who had urged him to accept the Zarans’ offer. Fortified by this mandate, Dandolo and his advisers returned to his pavilion to inform the envoys of this decision, only to find them departed. The Zarans had no way of knowing that they had dealt with only a splinter of the French nobility and that Robert of Boves was not a spokesman for all his countrymen.
Dandolo was furious at this breach of the crusaders’ unity; he had, after all, been at pains to preserve a consensual approach to decision-making. Yet the situation was about to worsen: the intervention of Guy, the Cistercian abbot of Vaux-Cernay (a monastery about 22 miles south-west of Paris), did much to inflame the matter even further. Guy was a close supporter of Simon of Montfort and he had managed to obtain the letter sent by the pope explicitly forbidding the attack on Zara and threatening excommunication on those who disobeyed.
This was, of course, political and emotional dynamite. The abbot read to the assembled nobles from Pope Innocent’s letter; he said: ‘My lords, in the name of the pope of Rome, I forbid you to attack this city; for the people in it are Christians, and you wear the sign of the cross.’32 There was no ambiguity in this message—the army was wrong to besiege a crusader’s city. For the doge, however, this order took second place to the solemn contractual agreement made between his people and the Frenchmen. When the papal letter was proclaimed, Dandolo reacted angrily: quite apart from the financial question, the Zarans had, in the past, done great harm to his people and deserved to be besieged. Robert of Clari quoted him as saying: ‘Lords, know you well that I will not in any degree give over ... not even for the apostolic [the pope].’33 He appealed to the crusade leaders to support him: ‘You have given your promise to assist me in conquering it [Zara], and now I summon you to keep your word.’34 The French were faced with a dreadful quandary: disobey the pope and face excommunication, or refuse Dandolo’s request and risk the immediate collapse of the crusade.
A furious argument broke out between the doge and Simon of Montfort. Peter of Vaux-Cernay, the nephew of Abbot Guy, wrote that the Venetians threatened his uncle and that Count Simon had to leap up to intervene and prevent the doge’s men from murdering Guy.35 Simon had already shown his displeasure by distancing his force from the siege and now he said: ‘I have not come here to destroy Christians: He spoke of doing no wrong to the Zarans and promised that they ‘would suffer no harm from his men’. His mind was made up and he withdrew from the camp.
The crusade was fragmenting ever more seriously. The first fracture had occurred when various contingents chose to embark from ports other than Venice; this episode at Zara represented a second and deeper crack in the cause of the holy war. Earlier crusading campaigns, such as the First Crusade or the siege of Lisbon in 1147 (during the Second Crusade), had succeeded, in large part, because of a unity of minds and military strength; in 1202 these precious and vital attributes were already slipping away fast. The departure of Simon affected both the spiritual and practical aspects of the crusade: their unease over the legitimacy of an attack on a Christian city and the loss of a powerful contingent of knights. The remaining crusaders were even more open to offers of military support from outside parties who might also seek to influence the direction of the expedition.
The actions of Robert of Boves and Simon of Montfort did not only enrage and alienate the Venetians; they also embarrassed their fellow-Frenchmen, who, having given the doge their word that they would besiege the city, felt that their honour would be compromised if they now failed to join the assault. In a remarkable piece of manipulation the leaders of the crusade deliberately chose to conceal the papal letter from the bulk of the army (only the nobles were aware of its contents) and so began the attack on the city. Clearly expediency had triumphed over strict ecclesiastical theory.
The siege of Zara began on 13 November 1202. The defenders hung crosses from the walls in the vain hope of pricking the collective conscience of the remaining crusaders, but to no avail. The holy warriors closed their grip on the city. The navy had already disgorged many of the men and the engines of war so carefully assembled in Venice. The crusaders deployed their formidable array of siege weapons, including petraries and mangonels that set up a steady bombardment of stones and other missiles at, and over, Zara’s walls and towers. Unfortunately there is much inconsistency amongst medieval writers concerning the nomenclature and description of these machines. In Roman times a mangana was a torsion-driven device that used a single beam whose lower end was embedded into a great horizontal winding of sinew. The arm was pulled back against the tension of the sinew and released to thud against a cross-frame and hurl a stone from a cup at the top end of the beam. Yet it is generally believed that, by the late twelfth century, lever-arm artillery was the main form of siege machine. These devices originated in China and came to Europe via the Arab world in the ninth century. They took the form of a beam pivoted between two uprights. A team of men pulled on one end of it and the other flew up, releasing a missile from a cup or a sling. They could probably throw a 33-pound stone about 400 feet—a capability that would have had little effect against strong castle walls, though it might damage the more vulnerable walkways and overhanging wooden structures known as machicolations. They could also harass soldiers and cause serious casualties, which meant that defending troops employed them as well. The petrary was probably a bigger version of these machines and was designed for use against city walls, while the mangonel was more appropriate as an anti-personnel device.36
On their arrival at Zara the crusading fleet had smashed through a chain that stretched across the harbour entrance (and acted as a gate to the port). This allowed them to draw up their ships close to the walls and set scaling ladders from them to mount the defences. The Devastatio Constantinopolitana records: ‘They besieged Zara from every side, both on land and water. They erected more than 150 machines, mangonels, as well as ladders, wooden towers and numerous instruments of war.’37
For five days the crusaders tried to batter or climb their way into the city, but to little avail. They decided, therefore, to employ probably the most effective of all medieval siege weapons: the mine. The creation of a mine was a dangerous and complex affair that usually involved the construction of a series of underground galleries running towards the walls of the besieged city or stronghold. The type of ground determined how easy or difficult it was to dig such a structure. Marshy land or extensive water defences afforded some protection against the mine. In firmer conditions the passage was dug out and supported with wooden posts. When the mine was judged to be under the walls, the end of the shaft was filled with brushwood and other inflammable material and ignited. This explosion and the burning of the supports was intended to bring down both the tunnel and the wall above it, leaving a gaping chasm for the attackers to pour through. Muslims and Christians alike had used these techniques to deadly effect throughout the medieval age: at the siege of Lisbon in 1147 the crusaders constructed a huge series of mines. The eye-witness Conquest of Lisbon states:
The [crusaders] began to dig a mine beneath the wall of the stronghold —a mine which, marvellous to relate, had five entrances and extended inside to a depth of forty cubits from the front; and they completed it within a month ... When the wall had been undermined and inflammable material had been placed in the mine and lighted, the same night at cockcrow about thirty cubits of the wall crumbled to the ground. Then the Muslims who were guarding the wall were heard to cry out in their anguish that they might now make an end of their long labours and that this very day would be their last.38
Three years earlier, Zengi, the Muslim ruler of Aleppo, had mined his way into the Christian city of Edessa in northern Syria. In 1202 the Zarans recognised the lethal nature of a mining campaign and immediately offered to surrender on the original terms they had proposed.
On 24 November the city opened its gates and, as with almost all medieval sieges, the victors divided the spoils. The crusaders had promised to spare the lives of those within, but this did not prevent the city being ransacked. One church held the body of St Chrysogonus; ironically, 24 November was his feast-day, but unfortunately for the Zarans he afforded them no divine protection.39 Gunther of Pairis claimed that Zara fell without slaughter or bloodshed. Pope Innocent, on the other hand, accused the crusaders of taking lives in the course of the siege, rather than in the later occupation of the city.40
Once Zara fell, the expedition was obliged to pause. Dandolo pointed out the practicalities of the sailing season—winter was upon the crusading host and it was impossible to continue any further. In any case, Zara was a wealthy city that could provide the supplies the expedition needed. The doge’s men took the half of the city nearest the harbour and the French the other part, each group commandeering the finest houses for its leading men.
As 1202 drew to a close Dandolo could reflect with some satisfaction on having quelled his rebellious neighbour. His crusading associates must have had more mixed feelings; their great enterprise had made a number of faltering steps: the loss of Thibaut of Champagne; the near-disaster of the shortfall of men at Venice; and then the limited progress of the campaign, still high up in the Adriatic. On the other hand, Thibaut’s replacement was a highly prestigious man, the expedition was still moving, it was superbly equipped and had already revealed lethal military effectiveness. Overarching all of this, however, the crusaders’ immediate anxiety was the reaction of Pope Innocent when he heard of the fall of Zara.
The leaders’ concern was soon apparent because they sent a mission to the pope in the hope of securing absolution from their excommunication. In part, this seems questionable because they had already taken Zara and were not likely to surrender it, whatever Innocent decreed. Yet an embassy to Rome was also a way to mollify the mass of crusaders who would almost certainly react with anger and violence when the news of the excommunication was publicly announced. The sack of Zara did not mean that the senior nobility had entirely abandoned the spiritual dimension of their work. The very fact that these men were on crusade in the first instance was a clear demonstration of their religious sincerity, yet trying to reconcile that piety with the demands of leading a crusade so deeply in debt was a challenge that seemed almost beyond the experience and the abilities of any of them.
An embassy of four men—Bishop Nivelo of Soissons; John of Noyen, a cleric who was Count Baldwin’s chancellor; Robert of Boves; and John of Friaise—set out for Rome in December 1202 to seek absolution for the crusaders’ actions. The Venetians did not send a representative, feeling that they had done nothing wrong and had no case to answer: an apparently confrontational approach, although one that Dandolo explained in a later letter to the pope. So far as he was concerned, the Zarans had deserved to be attacked because they had broken their feudal oaths to the Venetians. More contentiously, Dandolo asserted that he could not believe that the pope would offer protection to a man such as Emico who bore the cross for false reasons. He wrote that the king assumed the cross ‘only in order to wear it, not even to complete the journey for which pilgrims normally assume the cross but to acquire the possessions of another and to criminally hold them’.41 The doge knew that Emico had taken the cross in 1200 mainly to use as a shield in a civil war with his brother Andrew, and that he had little intention of ever journeying to the Holy Land. Hindsight would bear this view out but, in the short term, it was not an argument well received in Rome.
Gunther of Pairis records that Abbot Martin joined the mission as an unofficial delegate to represent the German crusaders. Gunther has left an account of his abbot’s thoughts about this episode. In part, this may be an attempt to distance Martin from the events at Zara, but it also demonstrates the abbot’s profound spiritual unease at the direction of the crusade: ‘When Martin saw not only the entire business of the Cross tied up in delays but also our entire army being forced to shed Christian blood, he did not know where to turn or what to do. He was totally terror-stricken, and from many choices, all of which displeased him, he opted for the one which, in that particular situation, seemed best.’42 A sense of being boxed into a corner, of being powerless to follow his own wishes, ensnared the abbot. Just 19 months earlier he had been sobbing with religious zeal, exhorting the people of Basel to help save the Holy Land. For a man who had inspired hundreds of individuals to take the cross to be so drained of motivation shows how the cruel realities of the Fourth Crusade contrasted with the high hopes with which the expedition had started. So distraught was Martin that he had tried to remove himself from the crusade: he went to Cardinal Peter Capuano and asked to be dispensed from his vow in order to return to the cloister. The cardinal rebuked him for his weakness and utterly forbade Martin to go home before completing his pilgrimage.
Some crusaders had already left Venice and gone to Rome to obtain a similar dispensation where, unwillingly, Innocent had granted such permission on the condition that their vow was deferred for a few years. Most of these individuals were poorer men whose absence would have only a limited effect on the expedition, although, as Gunther of Pairis observed, ‘their defection ... dampened the deep fervour’ of others planning to join the crusade and affected the morale of those who remained.43 The idea of allowing so important a figure as Abbot Martin to leave could not be countenanced and, by way of tying him to the crusade even more closely, Capuano confirmed him in the role of spiritual guardian of the Germans on the expedition and charged the abbot to remain alongside the soldiers at all times to try to restrain them from shedding Christian blood. Martin was saddened that his request was turned down, yet as Gunther relates, he steeled himself to carry on, to fulfil his vow and to bear his new responsibilities:
How Martin groaned, when leave was denied him.
Who could imagine it, who would believe it if I tried to relate it?
He stands wavering; a man of devout mind, he stands with
breaking heart.
Pained in his breast, he has no wish for such things, and,
like one constrained,
He fears for himself and his comrades. He fears even more
For himself and his people lest he be party to wicked slaughter.
Yet he submits and suffers to yield to his vows;
He pledges to go on; barely the better course, but his heart is
not in it.44
Back in Zara, trouble soon erupted amongst the crusading forces as they settled down for winter. In the event of a successful siege, conflict between the victorious contingents was a frequent occurrence. Sometimes this reflected long-standing tensions between groups from different areas, rather like modern-day football fans reliving old grudges and running riot through the streets of a foreign city. The problem in Zara had a different cause: only three days after the conquest a furious affray broke out between the Venetians and what Robert of Clari described as ‘the lesser people’ from France. This was not the product of some old enmity, but more likely a squabble over the division of booty: a legacy of the controversy over the payment for the sea passage and the relative poverty of the Frenchmen.
The cost of the sea passage would have made a substantial impact on the resources of most of the rank-and-file crusaders. Furthermore, as we saw earlier, the nobles had tried to extract from them even more cash to cover the financial shortfall caused by the lack of men arriving at Venice. For the ordinary soldiers, the sack of a city was a rare opportunity to acquire money and to cover the large sums already spent. The fact that Zara was a Christian city was a matter of real concern to some of these men, but, by late November, it had been captured, whether morally right or wrong. If another party (in this case, the Venetians) tried to appropriate desperately needed booty—and if that group was already perceived as being wealthy and greedy anyway—then men would fight to hold on to their winnings.
In the early evening of 27 November an argument broke out between groups of Frenchmen and Venetians. Conflict soon ripped through the city. What began as a localised brawl became all-out war with men rushing to arms, the streets ringing with the clash of swords, the whirring of crossbow bolts and the cries of the angry, the wounded and the dying. Faced with this breakdown of proper order, the crusade leaders had to intervene. Baldwin and Louis donned their full armour and charged into the affray to try to break it up, but so ferocious was the disturbance that, like a wild forest fire, as soon as it was quelled in one area, it sprang alight in another. All through the night the riot carried on until the combatants wore themselves out and finally calm prevailed. It was fortunate that the city itself was not burned to the ground, because the likelihood of fire during a riot was always high. Both the Venetians and the French suffered losses; a Flemish noble, Gilles of Landast, was struck in the eye and later died of his wound, and many lesser men were lost. The Devastatio Constantinopolitana gives a figure of almost 100 dead.45 In the days afterwards, both the doge and the French nobles laboured steadily to bring peace to the two groups and to heal whatever the source of the conflict was. Villehardouin felt that the whole episode had been so serious that the army had a ‘narrow escape from being completely wiped out’.46 Yet Baldwin, Louis and the doge evidently soothed the situation to good effect because Robert of Clari was able to write that ‘they made so good a peace that never afterwards was there ill-will between them’.47
Before the crusaders’ envoys could reach Rome, a letter from the papacy arrived at Zara. Innocent had heard of the capture of the city and was plainly both furious and saddened at this turn of events. His message made the depth of his feelings abundantly plain, and to anyone reading the letter his sense of anger and distaste rings out loud and clear. He believed that the sense of moral right that a successful crusade army should naturally possess had been compromised and corrupted: ‘Behold, your gold has turned into base metal and your silver has almost completely rusted since, departing from the purity of your plan and turning aside from the path onto the impassable road, you have, so to speak, withdrawn your hand from the plough ... for when ... you should have hastened to the land flowing with milk and honey, you turned away, going astray in the direction of the desert.’48
Innocent blamed the Devil—envious of the sacrifice the crusaders were making—for causing them to make war on their fellow-Christians, ‘so that you might pay him [the Devil] the first fruits of your pilgrimage and pour out for demons your own and your brothers’ blood’. Aside from Satan, others were at fault, too: Innocent did not hide his view as to who the real culprits were and noted that the crusaders had fallen in ‘with thieves’—by which he undoubtedly meant the Venetians. Although they stripped you of the mantle of virtues laid upon you ... so far they have not wished to depart or to leave you half alive: Innocent criticised the taking of supplies from Trieste and Muglia, before turning to the sack of Zara. More seriously, he accused the crusaders of showing no mercy to a people whose city walls were decorated with the cross: ‘but you attacked the city and the citizens to the not insubstantial injury of the Crucified One, and what is more, by violent skill, you compelled them to surrender’.49
The pope also railed against the fact that King Emico of Hungary and his brother, Duke Andrew, were signed with the cross. Innocent reminded the crusading army of his earlier prohibitions against turning against Christian territories.50 Clearly he had disapproved of Peter Capuano’s advice to the crusaders that the greater good of sustaining the crusade took precedence over the necessary evil of attacking Zara. It is noticeable that Peter did not rejoin the crusade until 1204, a delay that may be explained by Innocent’s anger.
The pope could not let this flagrant disregard for his authority pass and he concluded his missive with a punishment. He reminded his audience that, had they listened to his earlier letters, they would remember that those who contravened his orders were to be excommunicated and —crucially for a crusader—denied the benefit of the indulgence (the remission of all sins), one of the principal reasons for taking the cross in the first instance. Such a sentence would have enormously perturbed many of the crusaders. Innocent also mentioned that the Venetians had knocked down walls and buildings and robbed churches in Zara and he ordered, in the strongest possible terms, that this should stop. The letter closed with another reminder that the granting of the remission of sins was withdrawn from the excommunicate army.
Here, for the first time during the crusade, the limitations of papal authority are clearly revealed. Innocent had the power to call a crusade and to direct its preaching and aspects of its fundraising. In spite of having legates to represent him, however, he could not exert direct control over them especially if, as in Peter Capuano’s case, they exercised their own judgement. While he could threaten excommunication and expressly forbid certain actions, Innocent’s power, to a large extent, relied on the consent of the other parties involved. At Zara the crusade leaders faced the terrible dilemma of attacking a Christian city or seeing their great enterprise fold. In the circumstances they chose to suppress Innocent’s letter in order to pursue their own ends and to prevent widespread disquiet amongst the crusader host. In acting thus, they ignored papal authority and Innocent could do little to undo what had already happened.
The Venetians, of course, had a different agenda from the papacy. Their basic religiosity should not be underestimated, but it was a faith coupled with an intensely practical edge. As we have seen, they had (in common with the Pisans and the Genoese) engaged in commercial relations with the Muslims. With the failure of the crusaders to deliver the promised men and payment, the doge felt that his city’s survival was threatened; in such a case the interests of Venice were placed first and those of the papacy had either to fall in line with those needs or be turned aside.
After the capture of Zara, Innocent must have been painfully aware of his restricted ability to direct the crusade. The disobedience to papal commands, the Venetians’ insouciance and the sacking of a crusader city were not forgotten as he tried to steer the expedition in a way pleasing to God. Innocent was not, of course, powerless—the mission seeking papal absolution for the conquest of Zara was proof of that—but recent events had given him much to be concerned about.