CHAPTER EIGHT

‘That city which reigns supreme over all others’

The Crusade Arrives at Constantinople, June 1203

THE ARMY SET sail for Constantinople on the eve of Pentecost, 24 May 1203. With the full fleet assembled, the crusading force must have looked impressive. Villehardouin testified that ‘so fine a sight has never been seen before’. Again, as at the moment of departure from Venice, the marshal expressed pride in the Christian army and, with a touch of hindsight, wrote: ‘It seemed, indeed, that here was a fleet that might well conquer lands, for as far as the eye could reach there was nothing to be seen but sails outspread on all that vast array of ships, so that every man’s heart was filled with joy at the sight.’¹ The galleys, transports and warships were now accompanied by many merchant vessels, which took advantage of the protection offered by the main body of ships to supply the crusaders with food and other goods. They may also have hoped to profit from the new regime in Constantinople, although the Venetians were in the prime position to secure any large-scale trading privileges.

The voyage from Corfu was fairly uneventful. The fleet sailed past the islands of Cephalonia and Zakynthos before beginning to round the Peloponnese peninsula, passing by the port of Methoni near the south-westerly tip (today Methoni boasts the splendid remains of a huge fortified town constructed largely by the Venetians later in the thirteenth century), and thence to the eastern Peloponnese at Cape Malea. As the expedition sailed onwards it encountered two ships full of crusaders returning home from Syria. These men had embarked at Marseille, presumably in the summer of 1202 when the main army was still at Venice, and had spent the autumn and winter season campaigning in the Levant. Baldwin of Flanders sent a boat over to learn of their experiences. Villehardouin characterised the men on board the ships as feeling ashamed that they were not part of the main expedition, but this is manifestly unfair. They had, after all, fought in the Holy Land and accomplished their crusade vows without compromising them in the way the main army had already done. One man, however, saw a chance for further glory and he jumped down into the count of Flanders’s boat. He called back: ‘I’m going with these people, for it certainly seems to me they’ll win some land for themselves.’² Not the most piously motivated thought for a crusader, but a reflection of some of the hopes and aspirations engendered by the new campaign to Constantinople. Villehardouin reported that the man was given a hearty welcome by the troops and commented in a self-satisfied way that ‘no matter how a man may have gone astray he can still come round to the right way in the end’.³

From Cape Malea the ships turned northwards, past the Athenian peninsula to the large island of Euboea. The leaders conferred and decided to divide the fleet. Boniface and Baldwin were to sail southwards to the island of Andros, while the remainder of the ships headed north-east across the Aegean towards the coastline of Asia Minor, where they passed the ancient city of Troy before entering the Dardanelles (known then as the Hellespont). The reason for this move probably lay in the search for supplies. Andros was a wealthy island and, as the crusaders overran it, the inhabitants appealed to Prince Alexius for mercy and offered him money and goods if he would spare them. The only moment to mar the crusaders’ diversion was the death of Guy of Coucy, a powerful northern French nobleman, who was buried at sea.⁴

The majority of the fleet passed into the Dardanelles, where they stopped at the ancient city of Abydos on the coast of Asia Minor. They were now striking deep into the heart of the Byzantine Empire. About 150 miles away, down at the end of the Sea of Marmara and into the Bosphorus, lay Constantinople itself, determined to fight and repulse the intruders.

The citizens of Abydos prudently surrendered to the crusader army. Mindful, as they neared Constantinople, that they needed to make as positive an impression as possible, the leaders set up a secure guard on the city and prevented any ill-disciplined looting by the army. This did not mean that the crusaders took nothing: the winter corn crop was due to be harvested and the westerners commandeered everything that was available because their own supplies were beginning to run low. Good weather allowed Baldwin and Boniface to join their colleagues at Abydos within a week. Reunited, the fleet prepared for the final approach to Constantinople.

Passage of the Bosphorus was far from easy, largely because of the prevailing north-easterly winds and adverse currents that headed down from the Black Sea, running at up to six or seven knots.⁵ The skill of the Venetian sailors saw them safely through, however, and as they sailed up towards Constantinople, ‘the full array of warships, galleys and transports seemed as if it were in flower. It was indeed, a marvellous experience to see so lovely a sight,’ as Villehardouin expressed it.⁶ For the Byzantines, of course, the crusaders’ ships, for all their colour, embodied a terrible threat. On 23 June, the eve of St John the Baptist’s Day, the fleet arrived at the abbey of St Stephen, about five miles south-west of its target. Soon the crusaders had their first real sight of the city they had come to attack, and as their ships cast anchor they began to absorb what lay before them.

Constantinople was indisputably the greatest metropolis in the Christian world. Its huge population - estimated at 375—400,000—dwarfed every city in the West. In comparison, Paris and Venice probably had about 60,000 inhabitants each. Girded by its formidable walls, Constantinople excited awe, admiration and not a little trepidation amongst the crusaders.⁷ What had they taken on? Villehardouin provides a vivid insight into their feelings:

I can assure you that all those who had never seen Constantinople before gazed very intently upon the city, having never imagined there could be so fine a place in all the world. They noted the high walls and lofty towers encircling it, and its rich palaces and tall churches, of which there were so many that no one would have believed it to be true if he had not seen it with his own eyes, and viewed the length and breadth of that city which reigns supreme over all others. There was indeed no man so brave and daring that his flesh did not shudder at the sight. Nor was this to be wondered at, for never had so grand an enterprise been carried out by any people since the creation of the world.⁸

Robert of Clari echoed the sense of awe: ‘the fleet regarded the great size of the city, which was so long and so wide, and they marvelled at it exceedingly’.⁹

Constantinople lay at the heart of an empire that encompassed parts of the modern countries of Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Albania, Serbia and Bulgaria, up to the northern frontier along the River Danube. It also included the western half of Asia Minor and much of its northern and southern coastlines, as well as the Greek islands, Crete and Cyprus. It was a huge, heterogeneous and culturally complex entity. The inhabitants of Constantinople took great pride in their city - they called it ‘New Rome’, or ‘the Queen of Cities’ - descriptions based on its powerful history and sustained by its continued splendour. The Emperor Justinian wrote of ‘the imperial city guarded by God’.¹⁰ Rome, of course, could boast an imperial past and many great buildings, but the ravages of barbarian invasions and the instability of the early medieval papacy had done little to preserve its heritage. Of all cities known to Christians at this time, only Baghdad was greater in size, although by reason of faith and physical distance only the most intrepid merchants and travellers had seen it. The inhabitants of Constantinople had adopted the Virgin Mary as their special protector and the discovery of relics associated with her in the eleventh century further enhanced this sense of their city having been divinely blessed.¹¹

Constantinople was founded in the fourth century when the Emperor Constantine established his control over both the eastern and western parts of the Roman Empire. To commemorate this victory (in the year 324) he ordered the Greek settlement of Byzantium to be renamed Constantinople in his honour and took measures to make the city the heart of his empire. Four years later, on foot and with spear in hand, he paced out the limits of his capital, although later emperors enlarged this first city. It was no coincidence that the new Rome was built on seven hills, the same number as its illustrious predecessor. Constantine had chosen the site carefully, poised between Asia and the West, at the gateway to the Black Sea and provided, for the most part, with strong natural defences. The Bosphorus and the Hellespont offered entrances to the Sea of Marmara, described by one historian as ‘a natural moat’.¹² The city has a triangular shape, with the Sea of Marmara to the south and the inlet of the Golden Horn to the north, creating two of the sides. The Golden Horn is just over six miles long and forms a perfect harbour. The weakest side of the triangle is the landward: few natural obstacles stand between this and the great plains rolling north-west towards the Danube—the frontier with the barbarian world - and the need for a massive system of fortifications here was to concern many future emperors.

On 11 May 330 Constantinople was formally rededicated and became the effective capital of the Roman Empire. Eighteen years previously Constantine had been the first emperor to convert to Christianity and to publicly endorse the faith. Constantinople emerged, therefore, from a synthesis of Roman imperialism, the Hellenic tradition and the emerging power of Christianity.¹³ The impact of these three forces can be seen in the physical, intellectual and spiritual development of the Byzantine Empire as its fortunes ebbed and flowed over the next few centuries. The reign of Justinian (527—65) was a particular high point as he did much to recover parts of the empire lost to the Goths in previous decades, while in Constantinople itself he initiated a remarkable building programme, centred upon the church of Hagia Sophia.

Over the centuries Byzantium had to face threats from all points of the compass. The period 600—800 was particularly difficult, with the emergence of Islam as a dynamic and aggressive new force to the east and the rise of a powerful empire to the west under Charlemagne (d. 814). In the late ninth and early tenth centuries the Christianisation and takeover of the kingdom of Bulgaria represented an advance for the Byzantines, but their crushing defeat at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 saw the loss of most of their lands in Asia Minor and the humiliating capture of their emperor. The advent of the crusades led to greater engagement with western Europe. At some levels this was positive: with the help of the First Crusade, Alexius I Comnenus recovered the western regions of Asia Minor, although the Greeks’ efforts to impose their overlordship on the principality of Antioch proved a struggle. Furthermore, the Normans of Sicily emerged as a violent and expansionist power in the central Mediterranean and the ambitions of both the papacy and the German Empire also needed to be kept in check. Under Manuel Comnenus (1143-80) the empire had established a position of genuine strength, although after his death the subsequent decades of political turmoil in Byzantium did much to create the conditions in which the Fourth Crusade found itself outside this magnificent city. A serious degeneration of political order had taken place in Constantinople prior to the crusade. The period from 1101 to 1180 witnessed very few problems, yet between 1180 and 1204 there were 58 rebellions and conspiracies. This demonstrates the build-up of tensions under Manuel and how the different elements within the imperial family were dissatisfied with their position. There is a further conjunction between this situation and the growing number of provincial uprisings, such as the establishment of the Bulgarian Empire and the losses of Cyprus and Thessalonica.¹⁴

Many of the buildings of late antiquity survived to dominate the skyline and topography of medieval Constantinople. Together they told the story of its history and formed the essence of its identity and appearance at the time of the Fourth Crusade. The crusaders saw before them a true marvel - a mixture of formidable defences, splendid churches and sumptuous palaces, as well as the essential everyday workings of any city, although in almost all cases on a scale unknown to most of them. The city itself, broken up by small hills, encloses an area of approximately 11½ square miles, although even in medieval times suburbs extended outside the walls to the north and on to the other side of the Golden Horn at Galata.

One of the most impressive and intimidating features of Constantinople were the land walls. As the city expanded back in the fifth century, the Emperor Theodosius II (408-50) took measures to accommodate the extra citizens and to provide adequate defence against the ravaging Huns.¹⁵ These fortifications, more than 3½ miles long, formed a mighty impediment to any potential aggressor. Even today they are, for the most part, complete. Some sections are restored and others still ruined, yet as the walls rise and fall along the contours of the land, the sheer length of this barrier seems endless, at times stretching from horizon to horizon in front and behind.

The walls consist of a multi-faceted series of obstacles (see plate section). The inner wall has 96 towers, 58 feet high and 175 feet apart, which punctuate a wall 30 feet high and 15 feet thick at its base. Then between the inner and outer walls runs a terrace 55 feet wide to allow movement of the troops manning the outer wall. This is 27 feet high from the outside and up to 6½ feet thick. Its towers are 32 feet high and they alternate between the bigger towers of the inner wall to provide the best protection. Next, to maximise the distance between the attackers and the defenders, there is another terrace, 60 feet wide; and then a moat of similar width, now much filled in, but which was 22 feet deep, although it is not certain whether this was ever full of water.

Ten gates pierced Theodosius’s walls. Important visitors who arrived by land entered through the Golden Gate at the southernmost end of the walls, in the south-west of the city. This was the way in which returning emperors processed into their capital: across the deep moat and thence through the powerful defensive complex. Two great marble towers flanked the Golden Gate. Originally this had been a triumphal arch constructed by Theodosius I in 391 and then incorporated into the main walls in the next century. Its name derived from the fact that the three gates across the entrance were inlaid with gold.¹⁶ Two huge copper elephants also stood guard over the gate at the time of the crusades.¹⁷ The entry towers still remain, absorbed into a later defensive complex, although their decoration is inevitably long gone. All around, decorating the gateway and towers, were statues of classical scenes, such as the labours of Hercules.

From the Golden Gate to the imperial centre of Constantinople was a distance of about three miles, a journey along avenues decorated with statues and punctuated by a series of fora (public squares) dating from the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries. In the Forum of the Bull stood a huge bronze equestrian statue, while the oval Forum of Constantine contained many wonders, such as a great bronze statue of the goddess Hera, whose head was so large it is said that four yokes of oxen were needed to transport it. At the forum’s centre was the column of Constantine. The original had fallen in a storm in 1106, but Manuel Comnenus had it rebuilt. Bereft of its statue today, six of the seven porphyry drums still stand—defiant but rather badly battered - on top of a rough stone casement.¹⁸Alongside these fairly conventional monuments were some that were more idiosyncratic. For example, the Forum of Constantine also boasted a massive wind-vane, the Aneznodoulion or Wind-Servant: a towering, four-sided bronze mechanical device decorated with birds, shepherds and fish. At its apex it terminated in a point like a pyramid, above which was suspended a female figure who turned in the wind.¹⁹

Around 500 yards past the Forum of Constantine was the mighty complex of buildings that lay at the very heart of Constantinople: namely the Hippodrome, the Imperial Palace and the awesome church of the Hagia Sophia. Here the sacred and the secular met and overlapped in dazzling displays of imperial power and piety, grounded in the city’s classical past, yet utterly essential to the maintenance of the medieval emperors’ authority. The fundamentals of government - finance and justice - lay here: treasuries, barracks, prisons; religion and spectacle thrived too in the mighty spaces inside the Hagia Sophia and the Hippodrome.

The Great Palace, often known to westerners as the Bucoleon on account of its sculpture of a lion in a death struggle with a bull, was an enormous complex of buildings on the south-eastern corner of the city, bounded by the Hippodrome, the square of the Hagia Sophia and, on the other two sides, the Sea of Marmara. Based upon Constantine’s original palace, this had been developed and expanded many times over the centuries.²⁰ William, archbishop of Tyre and chancellor of the kingdom of Jerusalem, described a visit to Emperor Manuel Comnenus by King Amalric in 1171. As a special honour the Franks were allowed to dock at the sea gate, from where they followed ‘a marvellous pavement of magnificent marble’. The palace possessed countless corridors and hallways and the emperor greeted Amalric in an audience chamber screened by curtains of precious fabrics with, at its centre, two golden thrones, one lower than the other to demonstrate to the king his lesser rank.²¹ Robert of Clari struggled to convey the true scale of the palace where, he claimed, ‘there were 500 halls, all connected with one another and all made with gold mosaic’. According to Robert, there were more than 30 chapels alone in the Great Palace, including the most dramatic of all, the church of the Blessed Virgin of the Pharos (lighthouse), which ‘was so rich and noble that there was not a hinge nor a band nor any other part such as is usually made of iron that was not all of silver, and there was no column that was not of jasper or porphyry or some other rich precious stone. And the pavement of this chapel was of a white marble so smooth and clear that it seemed to be of crystal, and this chapel was so rich and so noble that no one could ever tell you of its beauty or nobility.’ The list of relics it held was remarkable, including two large pieces of the True Cross, some of the nails driven through Christ’s hands and feet, a phial of His blood, the Crown of Thorns, a part of the robe of the Virgin Mary and the head of John the Baptist.²²

The Great Palace also contained a massive gilded hall, constructed by Manuel Comnenus and decorated with mosaics depicting his victories. He, or Isaac Angelos, also built the marvellous Mouchroutas (from the Arabic word for cone), described here by the contemporary Byzantine author Nicholas Mesarites:

The steps leading up to it are made of baked brick, lime and marble; the staircase, which is serrated on either side and turns in a circle, is coloured blue, deep red, green and purple by means of a medley of cut, painted tiles of a cruciform shape. This building is the work of ... a Persian hand. The canopy of the roof, consisting of hemispheres joined to the heaven-like ceiling, offers a variegated spectacle; closely packed angles project inward and outward; the beauty of the carving is extraordinary, and wonderful is the appearance of the cavities which, overlaid with gold, produce the effect of a rainbow more colourful than the one hidden in the clouds. There is insatiable enjoyment here—not hidden, but on the surface.²³

Sadly, the Great Palace has been almost completely destroyed over the centuries. One small section of the outer wall survives overlooking the Sea of Marmara. At ground level, however, one remarkable archaeological discovery (from the 1950s) has yielded a stunning impression of the opulence of the palace. The huge area of sixth-century mosaics showing hunting scenes is open to the public and this, taken in conjunction with literary texts, gives some sense of the magnificent marble pavements that decorated the medieval palaCe.²⁴

From one of the buildings in the Great Palace a passage ran directly into the imperial box at the great sporting arena of the Hippodrome. Constructed by Emperor Septimus Severus in the early third century, enlarged by Constantine and still in use in the twelfth century, the stadium, at over 350 yards in length, may have held as many as 100,000 people. Races must have created an incredible scene of noise, dust and drama as the horses sped around the oval track. Benjamin of Tudela described entertainments involving jugglers, or contests with wild animals fighting each other; we also know of gymnastic displays, tightrope walkers and, of course, horse races, still held between teams of Reds, Blues, Greens and Whites, as in classical times.²⁵ Today the Hippodrome has largely disappeared, although a park partially tracing the shape of the track and the remains of three columns, formerly in the centre of the arena, give some impression of the scale of the place.

Outside the Hippodrome was the Forum of the Augusteion, dominated by a huge column, topped by a statue of Justinian, and vividly described by Robert of Clari:

There was a great column which was fully three times the reach of a man’s arm in thickness ... It was made of marble and of copper over marble and was bound about with strong bands of iron. And on top of the column lay a flat slab of stone which was [14½ feet x 14½ feet] and on this stone there was an emperor made of copper on a great copper horse, and he was holding his hand towards heathen lands, and there were letters written on the statue which said that he swore that the Saracens should never have a truce from him. And in the other he held a golden globe with a cross on it ... On the croup of the horse and on the head and round about there were fully ten nests of herons, who nested there every year.²⁶

Across the square from the Hippodrome stands the Hagia Sophia (meaning Holy Wisdom), which, together with the abbey of Cluny (with its immense church, 531 feet long), was one of the great buildings of medieval Christendom. While many riches of the Byzantine Empire have been destroyed over time, the basic format and stupendous scale of the Hagia Sophia are still apparent today - a breathtaking testimony to the grandeur of the imperial age.²⁷

In 532 a fire destroyed an existing structure on the site and Emperor Justinian took the opportunity to construct a new building on a previously unimagined scale. Massive in concept, with its huge supporting piers, high vaults and cavernous dome, the church was first dedicated in 537. From the top of the dome, based on a square 100 feet high and carried on arches 176 feet wide (designed to compare with the vault of heaven), the 230-foot-long nave gives off to a series of semidomes that, from the outside, cascade down to give an impression of enormous solidity, completely belying the soaring space inside the church. The contemporary historian Procopius gives this description:

The Emperor, disregarding all considerations of expense, hastened to begin construction and raised craftsmen from the whole world ... So the church has been made a spectacle of great beauty, stupendous to those who see it and altogether incredible to those who hear of it ...

It boasts of an ineffable beauty, for it subtly combines mass with the harmony of its proportions ... it abounds exceedingly in gleaming sunlight. You might say that the [interior] space is not illuminated by the sun from the outside but that the radiance is generated within, so great an abundance of light bathes this shrine all around ...

Rising above this circle is an enormous spherical dome that makes the building exceptionally beautiful. It seems not to be founded on solid masonry, but to be suspended from heaven by that golden chain and so cover the space. All of these elements, marvellously fitted together in mid-air, suspended from one another and reposing only on the parts adjacent to them, produce a unified and most remarkable harmony in the work, yet do not allow the spectators to rest their gaze upon any one of them for a length of time, but each detail readily draws and attracts the eye to itself.²⁸

The huge dome was decorated with mosaics of Christ Pantocrator (Christ the All-Ruler) and, in the apse, mosaics of the Virgin Mary. Christ’s earthly ministries were represented on the side galleries, but not all the imagery was biblical. Few of these beautiful creations survive, but in the end bay of the south gallery remains a superb mosaic of Emperor John Comnenus and his wife, the red-haired Empress Irene, along with their son, Alexius. The sheer size and dazzling mosaics made the Hagia Sophia a source of wonder to all who saw it. Robert of Clari, probably used to the rectangular plan of most northern European churches (although some, such as Nivelles, were rounded), was captivated by its shape. He wrote that the church was ‘entirely round and within the church there were domes, round all about, which were borne by great and very rich columns ... of jasper or porphyry or some other precious stone’.²⁹

Today’s visitor to the Hagia Sophia can experience some of the same assault on the senses that the crusaders felt. While much of the gold and silver ornamentation has been lost, the remarkable marble walls survive. At least 10 different sorts of marble were used in the church, all carefully arranged to maximum visual effect. In some cases, huge sheets have been split open and placed back-to-back like gigantic butterfly wings to best display their beautiful patterns. The architects of the Hagia Sophia searched far and wide to assemble the astonishing array of colours and patterns that adorn the building. For example: the white marble came from Laconia (in the Peloponnese), the pale green from the island of Euboea, the pink and white from Phyrigia (in western Asia Minor), the imperial purple porphyry from Egypt, the green porphyry from Laconia, the yellow from Numidia (Algeria), the green from Thessaly and the white on black from the Pyrenees.

A partial collapse in 558 and reconstruction over the next five years led to the building taking the basic form in which we see it today. Later structural supports proved essential and, when the Ottomans ruled Constantinople (after 1453) and the building gained its third religious custodians (following Orthodox Christians and Catholics), the addition of four prominent minarets signalled its conversion to a mosque. Under Atatürk, however, the building was secularised in 1934 and survives as a museum.

Its treasury housed untold riches: relics of Christ’s Passion - pieces of the Holy Lance which pierced His side, a section of the True Cross upon which He was crucified, the Crown of Thorns, a Nail of the Crucifixion, the Shroud, the Stone from the Tomb, and so on.

The Hagia Sophia, however, was far from being the only magnificent church in Constantinople. In fact, there were hundreds of ecclesiastical institutions in the city; churches and monasteries abounded within its walls. Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, a thirteenth-century Cistercian writer from Champagne, wrote of ‘around 500 abbeys or conventual churches’.³⁰ Many contained wonderful relics and western pilgrims eagerly sought the chance to venerate such objects. Odo of Deuil, a French monk who visited Constantinople during the Second Crusade in 1147, wrote of ‘the many churches unequal to [Hagia] Sophia in size but equal in beauty, which are to be marvelled at for their beauty and their many saintly relics. Those who had the opportunity entered these places, some to see the sights and others to worship faithfully.’³¹

Two are worth particular mention. First, the church of the Holy Apostles, said by Robert of Clari to be even richer and nobler than the Hagia Sophia.³² This building was constructed by Justinian and contained the tombs of many emperors, as well as relics of St Andrew, St Luke and St Timothy. It was also, as we saw earlier, the model for St Mark’s in Venice.

Another church of note, and one that (unlike the church of the Holy Apostles) survives today, is the monastery of Christ Pantocrator, now known as Zeyrek Camii. This lay at the centre of a complex founded by Emperor John Comnenus around 1118—36.³³ It was, like many other Byzantine institutions, a multi-purpose site containing a monastic community, a large body of clergy to minister to the laity and a hospital for 50 people, staffed by 76 medical and 27 service personnel.³⁴ By comparison with western practices, the twelfth-century Hospital of St John in Jerusalem could house more than 1,000 patients, but had only four doctors.³⁵ Today the monastery of the Pantocrator is a working mosque, though somewhat ravaged by time. However, the colossal rust-brown marble doorways still stand proud and, high up in what was formerly the main church (now the prayer hall), small crosses are still visible on vaults just below the roofline. The complex became the family mausoleum for the Comneni dynasty, but the tombs of John and Manuel Comnenus are long gone, although they were still extant around 1750 and on display in the Topkapi palace.³⁶

The other important building in Constantinople - and one familiar to earlier western visitors - was the second major imperial palace of Blachernae, a well-fortified site up at the northern end of the land walls. This had been developed by Emperor Alexius I (1081—1118), and was often utilised in conjunction with the Great Palace (the Bucoleon) as a centre of imperial authority and as a place to entertain visitors. Its position meant that emperors such as Manuel Comnenus, a man devoted to the hunt, made frequent use of it because he could ride straight out into the countryside. The Blachernae was important because it was next to the principal sanctuary of the Virgin Mary, the guardian of Constantinople, and it was a safer location during times of civil unrest because it was comparatively remote from the restive city mob.³⁷

Odo of Deuil saw the palace in 1147: ‘Its exterior is of almost matchless beauty, but its interior surpasses anything that I can say about it. Throughout it is decorated elaborately with gold and a great variety of colours, and the floor is marble, paved with cunning workmanship ...’³⁸ Alexius I had built a sumptuous throne-room at the palace and this was probably the area used to receive envoys. William of Tyre visited it just over 20 years later and saw valuable draperies, numerous servants, vestments and royal robes adorned with a profusion of precious stones and pearls, as well as ‘the vast amount of massive gold and silver furniture in the palace, of untold value’.³⁹

The city that the crusaders gazed upon in June 1203 was not simply made up of fine buildings and manifestations of imperial power. Trade (and hence taxes) was one source of wealth for the Byzantines and along the side of the city facing onto the Golden Horn were based many communities of merchants. Constantinople was a focal point for trade from the Byzantine Empire itself, but also from the Black Sea, the Mediterranean and western Europe. The Italian cities of Venice, Amalfi, Pisa and Genoa all had their little communities, staffed by their own people and served by warehouses and landing stages that brought their goods in and out of Constantinople. On the other side of the Golden Horn, reached by ferry-boat, the suburb of Galata housed elements of society that the other citizens preferred to keep at a distance. In 1171 Benjamin of Tudela reported a Jewish community of about 2,500, many of whom were skilled in working silk. They had also become very wealthy, although he wrote that the Greeks oppressed and reviled his people.⁴⁰ Alongside the Jews were the tanners, pushed away from the main city because of their malodorous trade, and also, out of fear of contagion, a colony of lepers.

Given the enormous size of Constantinople there were large districts of crowded, impoverished communities, relying on charity or finding work in the great institutions of the city. Odo of Deuil wrote that it ‘is squalid and fetid and in many places harmed by permanent darkness, for the wealthy overshadow the streets with buildings and leave these dark, dirty places to the poor and to travellers’.⁴¹ A near-contemporary of the Fourth Crusade, John Tzetses, described life in his own apartment, trapped between the children and pigs of the priest who lived upstairs and the hay stored by a farmer on the ground floor.⁴² These people often lived in crowded wooden tenements; only the wealthy could occupy the many fine buildings and smaller private palaces. Practicality dictated that schools, public baths and orphanages also existed. Because Constantinople lacked sufficient natural springs, the supply of water was another crucial matter which earlier rulers had attended to with the construction of huge aqueducts and cisterns.

The Byzantines continued to employ these utilities left over from the late Roman age, most visibly the great aqueduct of Valens (364-78), half a mile of which still stands in the centre-north of the city. Several immense underground reservoirs survive today and the most accessible, known as the Basilica Cistern, dates from the reign of Justinian. It is located just outside the Hagia Sophia and demonstrates the phenomenal scale of just one civil engineering project. This huge cavern is 224 feet wide, 450 feet long and has 336 columns. It was capable of holding 2,800,000 cubic feet of water, brought from the Black Sea more than 12½ miles away.

The bulk of Constantinople’s population constituted what Niketas Choniates termed ‘the mob’, a seething mass of the underclass, entertained and placated by the Hippodrome games, but otherwise largely restless and self-serving in their support of the changing regimes of the 1180s.⁴³ The sheer size of the populace made it essential for the emperor to take note of their moods and wishes. Such was their number that Ralph of Coggeshall, a monk writing in Essex in the early thirteenth century, claimed: ‘People who know the ins and outs of this city say with confidence that it has more inhabitants than those who live in the area from the city of York all the way to the RiverThames [about 195 miles].’⁴⁴

As they stared across the Sea of Marmara, the crusaders must have fully realised the scale of the commitment that they had made to Prince Alexius. The vast and powerful Queen of Cities lay before them, solidly supported by centuries of imperial rule and secure in the knowledge of never having fallen to a conqueror. Some of the crusader army had been inside the city before and were aware of the spiritual and secular treasures within its walls, the opulence of its churches and palaces and the wealth of its rulers. Others would be told of this and might have had the great sights identified to them on the skyline. All must have fervently hoped that Prince Alexius would indeed be welcomed back to the city and that they could fulfil their side of the bargain with minimal force. In spite of the scale of the task they might face, there were some encouraging signs. Most pertinently, the violence, disorder and usurpations over the previous 20 years demonstrated a volatility that might work to the crusaders’ advantage.

These decades had, in part, sapped some of the military strength of Constantinople; the walls were not kept in perfect repair and the once formidable Byzantine navy had practically disappeared. In addition, Alexius III had declined to make adequate preparations for the crusaders’ attack. Niketas Choniates provides a splendidly caustic description of the emperor’s efforts to organise the defence of Constantinople. Apparently Alexius III had been aware of the crusaders’ movements for a long time; however:

his excessive slothfulness was equal to his stupidity in neglecting what was necessary for the common welfare. When it was proposed that he make provisions for an abundance of weapons, undertake the preparation of suitable war engines, and, above all, to begin the construction of warships, it was as though his advisers were talking to a corpse. He indulged in after-dinner repartee and in wilful neglect of the reports on the Latins [the crusaders]; he busied himself with building lavish bathhouses, levelling hills to plant vineyards ... wasting his time in these and other activities. Those who wanted to cut timber for ships were threatened with the gravest danger by the eunuchs who guarded the thickly wooded imperial mountains, that were reserved for the imperial hunts, as if they were sacred groves ...⁴⁵

Only when the emperor learned that his nephew and the crusaders had reached Durazzo on the Adriatic (May 1203) was he roused into action, although the measures he introduced hardly constituted a comprehensive and rigorous level of preparation: Accordingly he began to repair the rotting and worm-eaten small skiffs, barely twenty in number, and making the rounds of the city’s walls, he ordered the dwellings outside to be pulled down.’⁴⁶

Perhaps Niketas is being a touch too harsh here, given that there was no certainty of an attack on Byzantium until the agreement between Prince Alexius and the crusaders was completed at Zara in late April. Certainly the emperor was aware of his challenger’s attempts to raise support in the West, but given the prince’s failures at Rome and Hagenau there was little indication that he would be any better received by Dandolo, Boniface and Baldwin. Given the usual tensions between crusading armies and the Greeks it might, however, have been prudent to make some preparations, but Alexius III had evidently chosen not to. In any case, Niketas’s real complaint here is of a more long-term nature and concerns the lamentable decline of the Byzantine navy. The emperor may also have placed some reliance upon a letter from the pope in late 1202. This had reassured the Greek ruler that Innocent had rejected any suggestion of turning the crusade towards Constantinople to help Prince Alexius.⁴⁷

Back in the reign of Manuel Comnenus the Greeks had been able to send out mighty fleets to participate in, for example, invasions of Egypt with the rulers of Jerusalem. William of Tyre recorded that in 1169 Manuel dispatched 150 ‘ships of war equipped with beaks and double tiers of oars ... there were, in addition, sixty larger boats, well-armoured, which were built to carry horses ... also ten or twenty vessels of a huge size ... carrying arms and ... engines and machines of war’.⁴⁸ Yet, such was the decline of the navy after Manuel’s death, the Greeks came to rely on hiring pirates to fight for them and by 1203, as Niketas revealed, only 20 half-rotten ships could be raised to resist the crusade. Prince Alexius would have known this and the Venetian merchants in Constantinople would have informed Dandolo of the situation over previous years. There is little doubt that the knowledge of Byzantine naval weakness must have contributed significantly to the crusaders’ assessment of whether they could offer military support to Prince Alexius if it was needed. The thought of having to face a fleet of the size that Manuel had sent to Egypt might well have deterred them from any such commitment. Fortunately for the crusaders, the prospect of a massive naval battle against more or less equal forces, or even the idea of being harassed by a remotely seaworthy squadron of ships, was something they would not have to contend with. In Dandolo and his Venetians, the westerners had the most astute and experienced fleet in the Mediterranean. If used properly, control of the seas could give the crusaders a vital initiative for the forthcoming assault.⁴⁹

The Byzantine land forces were not so feeble, however. While they had declined in strength since Manuel’s death in 1180, they still constituted a formidable enemy.⁵⁰ Emperor Alexius’s army consisted of a mixture of native Byzantine troops, mercenaries (hired from Bulgaria, Asia Minor, western Europe and the Slavic lands) and, most dangerous of all, the legendary Varangian guard, an elite body of men sworn to remain loyal to the emperor. Over the centuries the Greeks had acquired a reputation for being unwarlike and effeminate. Benjamin of Tudela assessed their military capabilities thus: ‘They hire from amongst all nations warriors called barbarians to fight with ... the Turks, for the natives [the Greeks] are not warlike, but are as women who have no strength to fight.’⁵¹If the employment of outsiders to form the central element in their army did nothing to dispel such an impression, the Greeks had at least been wise in the choice of warriors. The Varangians were heavily armed soldiers famous for using mighty single-edged battle-axes, which they carried on their shoulders. The size of this force numbered just over 5,000 men and it represented the core of the imperial army. It was formed mainly from Scandinavians lured to Constantinople by high levels of pay. Many of the English warriors defeated at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 or displaced in the subsequent Norman Conquest also travelled east to join the guard. Other recruits came from forces such as that which accompanied King Sigurd of Norway on his expedition to the Holy Land in 1110, and who stopped off en route home to join the guard or to temporarily serve the emperor.⁵²

Two other contingents who helped to defend Constantinople in 1203 were made up of Pisans and Genoese. These representatives of the merchant communities transferred their bitter commercial rivalry with the Venetians to the arena of the crusades and the Bosphorus. The crusade leaders later claimed that they faced a Byzantine force of 60,000 knights, plus infantrymen.⁵³ Modern historians estimate a figure of in excess of 30,000 for the imperial army; plus, of course, the citizenry of Constantinople who could support and fight alongside this force, if so motivated.⁵⁴ If either of these figures is at all accurate, then the Greeks had an overwhelming numerical advantage, as well as the benefit of the substantial defences of Constantinople itself.

The doge and the nobles had now to decide on their next move. Dandolo, practical as ever, counselled caution. Based on his previous visits to Constantinople (1171 and 1183) and the detailed knowledge derived from the Venetian presence in the city over many decades, he emphasised the need for the crusaders to gather adequate supplies and proceed with due care. He argued: ‘You are now engaged on the greatest and most dangerous enterprise that any people up to this day have ever undertaken; it is therefore important for us to act wisely and prudently.’⁵⁵ Dandolo claimed that the crusaders’ lack of food and money could cause them to range too widely over the surrounding lands. They would scatter too much and lose some men: something that the army could ill afford, given the scale of the task they faced.

Nearby lay the Isles of the Monks (today called the Princes’ Isles, located around 5½ miles south of the main city), known by the doge to produce corn and meat. He advised that the fleet should moor there, gather supplies and then make ready to assault the city. Dandolo put forward a thirteenth-century version of one of the most famous military aphorisms of all time: ‘for the man who has something to eat fights with a better chance of winning than the one with nothing in his stomach’.⁵⁶

On 24 June, St John the Baptist’s Day, the men readied their ships. During the long voyage much of their equipment had been stowed away, or covered up, to protect it from the elements. Now, as they drew closer to Constantinople, banners and pennants were hoisted onto the ships’ castles and the knights’ shields were hung from the bulwarks. The fleet transformed itself into the same colourful spectacle that had left Venice almost nine months earlier. This time war was imminent: not against the infidel, but against the schismatic Greeks and their usurping emperor. The ships made their initial pass of the walls of Constantinople. First to appear were the transport ships, then the warships. As their vessels moved closer to the city, the scale of its defences and the density and majesty of its skyline, packed with palaces, churches and monuments, must have chilled the crusaders’ hearts. They glided past the sea walls, the great bulk of the Hippodrome, the glory of the Bucoleon palace. Then came the Hagia Sophia, squatting indestructibly on the hilltop nearest the easternmost point of the city. Some men were so excited at the chance to engage the enemy that they loosed off arrows and missiles at the Byzantine ships lying before the walls, although they inflicted little damage.

For their part, the Greeks packed the walls of the city, curious to see their enemy; they too must have been filled with trepidation. The last major crusading army to pass through the Byzantine Empire, that of Frederick Barbarossa in 1189-90, had brushed aside their challenge and marched through their lands. Warlike westerners had been viewed as a danger to Constantinople since the time of the First Crusade and many Greeks had long felt that the crusades were just a pretext for an attack on their City.⁵⁷ Thus far, this had never actually happened, but with the presence of a claimant to the imperial title in the westerners’ midst, the danger in 1203 was perhaps greater than ever before. In military terms there was a difference, too. The force coming by sea presented a new challenge compared to the earlier, landbound armies. The combination of the presence of Prince Alexius and the crusader fleet created a unique threat.

A brisk following wind took the fleet past their planned stop on the Isles of the Monks and the sailors steered as best they could towards the mainland of Asia Minor, where they made harbour at the imperial palace of Chalcedon, opposite the main city, which lay almost two miles away across the Bosphorus. The nobles, naturally, took their quarters in the palace, ‘one of the most beautiful and enchanting that ever an eye could see’, according to Villehardouin.⁵⁸ They also pitched their tents, and the knights and foot-soldiers set up camp while the horses were brought ashore and carefully reacquainted with terra firma after the weeks at sea. The crusaders were fortunate because the corn harvest had just been reaped and lay piled up, ready for them to gather as much as they wanted. This, surely, was an indication of Alexius III’s lack of serious preparations : to leave an enemy readily available food supplies within easy reach of a city they were about to besiege was woefully inept.

Two days later the crusaders transferred their entire force a further three miles up the eastern side of the Bosphorus to another imperial palace at Scutari. They continued to collect all the foodstuffs possible in preparation for the siege. Alexius III, meanwhile, had begun to react to the danger by moving his army out of Constantinople and establishing a position on the European shore, opposite the crusaders, in order to resist a landing. In late June 1203 the two armies faced each other across the Bosphorus, poised for war.