CONSTANTINOPLE SECURED TO ISAAC AND YOUNG ALEXIUS—USURPATION OF
MOURTZOUPHLOS.
Four days were spent in bringing over from the Asiatic side the
provisions. Dandolo proposed to transport all the soldiers with his
fleet and assault the water wall of the city, where, presuming upon the
defence of their ships, the Greeks had left the fortifications weakest.
But the crusaders, accustomed only to land operations, were averse to
this plan and marched around the end of the Golden Horn. The fleet met
them opposite the palace of Blachern, which occupied the corner of the
northwestern wall and thus faced both land and sea. Though the walls
extended for seven miles, this spot was regarded as the strongest of
all. A wide moat was backed by three enormous lines of masonry, to
capture one of which was only to lodge beneath the terrible menace of
the others. Immense towers were so close together that to pass between
them would be to challenge burial beneath the missiles which could
readily be dropped from almost above their heads. Here twice within the
preceding half-century the Greeks had discomfited the Arab hosts. At
this point the Turks, under Mohammed II., were, two hundred and fifty
years later, to make their victorious assault. The Greeks within the
city were assisted by armies without, which, under Theodore Lascaris,
the hero of the day on the part of the besieged, assailed the camps of
the crusaders.
July 17th witnessed the grand assault. Boniface and Baldwin were in
command. The battering-rams delivered their blows until one tower fell.
Platform-ladders were quickly reared; fifteen Flemings secured a footing
on the outer wall, but were slain or captured by men of their own blood,
the hired Waring guard. The Venetians’ attack was more successful; their
ships were covered with rawhides to protect them from the Greek fire,
which flashed like liquid lightning from the walls above and spread in
sheets of flame over the water. Bridges had been arranged from the
crosstrees, which, as the vessels were anchored close to the shore,
reached to the top of the walls. Every huissier carried a mangonel,
which returned the stones hurled by the besieged.
The battle being contested thus far with equal skill, Dandolo gave
orders to land; he himself set the example. Old and blind, he was
carried in the arms of his attendants, and, with the banner of St. Mark
floating above him, placed upon the shore. His heroism inspired his men.
While the fight raged above their heads, on the bridges that ran from
the rigging to the walls, the host below erected their scaling-ladders
and emerged upon the parapets. Soon the gonfalon of St. Mark floated
from a captured tower. Twenty-five more of these strongholds were
quickly taken. The Venetians poured down through the streets of the
city. Setting fire to the buildings, their progress was led by a
vanguard of flame.
In this terrible emergency the emperor was caught by a momentary impulse
of valor, and, putting himself at the head of sixty battalions, sallied
from the city to strike the crusaders. The multitude of his men, their
splendid accoutrements, and their unanticipated appearance led the
crusaders to leave their assault upon the ramparts and range for defence
behind their palisades. A more serious consequence of this valiant
counter-attack was that it forced Dandolo to leave what he had already
conquered and hasten to the assistance of his allies. But the Greeks had
exhausted their fury in its first outburst, and made no further onset,
contenting themselves with showering arrows from safe distance. Theodore
Lascaris, the son-in-law of the emperor, in vain asked the imperial
permission to assail the crusaders’ intrenchments. Alexius III. was
content with the martial glory of having paraded before his foe; his
troops, carrying the eagles of ancient Rome, as if the more to emphasize
their shame, retreated without having struck a blow with the naked
sword.
The next morning (July 18, 1203) the city was filled with a deeper sense
of disgrace as the people learned that the emperor himself had stolen
away during the night, taking with him a bag of gold and jewels, leaving
his empire to him who could hold it, and his wife amid the spoil.
Alexius III. was a despicable character, as cowardly as he was cruel,
crafty, but without will power to sustain his own designs when they
exacted much energy. His natural weaknesses had been increased by the
habits of a voluptuary and drunkard until he had become but a crowned
imbecile.
Realizing the condition of affairs, the troops, led by Constantine, the
minister of finance, raised the cry for the deposed Isaac. The courtiers
ran to his prison in the vaults of the Blachern, broke off his chains,
and led the old and blinded man out, as he, having become hopeless of
relief, believed, to execution, but, to his grateful surprise, to be
seated again upon his throne. The wife of Isaac was sought out in an
obscure quarter of the city, where she was living, grateful for even
life; while the wife of the fugitive Alexius III. was thrust into a
dungeon.
The recall of their former emperor could scarcely have been prompted by
affection or even respect for him personally. Isaac was without
character. Buffoons despised him for allowing himself to be the chief
court fool. His ambition was divided between his sensuality and his
extravagance; he had twenty thousand eunuchs, and spent four million
pounds sterling on the housekeeping of his palace. His piety seems to
have been limited to a belief in the prediction of a flattering
patriarch, who had once assured him of an indefinite conquest of the
world, for which, however, he made no preparation other than invoking an
alliance with Saladin, whose sword he would buy to hew down his
Christian opponents.
The news of the change of emperors was not assuring to the leaders of
the Latins. Notwithstanding the pretence of having come to right the
wrongs of Isaac, their plans necessitated either their own occupancy of
the empire or the placing of young Alexius as the creature of their will
upon the throne. Alexius, not Isaac, had made the bargain to pay the
Westerners for their expedition two hundred thousand marks of silver, to
furnish the army and fleet with provision for a year, and to bring the
Greek Church into subjection to Rome. Would Isaac assume the same
obligations?
The Latins sent a deputation to the palace; they passed between the
lines of the same hired soldiers that yesterday guarded Alexius III.,
equally loyal to whatever hand fed them. There, upon a throne of
superlative splendor, the Latin deputies saw the resurrected relic of a
former monarch, blind and emaciated. To have rendered the picture
sensationally complete, old and blind Dandolo should have stood before
Isaac.
Villehardouin, who was one of the deputies, demanded of Isaac the
confirmation of the contract made by young Alexius. On learning its
nature, Isaac expressed his amazement and the impossibility of meeting
it. The deputies assured the old man that his son should never be
permitted to enter the city unless his father assumed his pledges. The
emperor replied, “Surely the bargain is a hard one, and I cannot see how
to carry it out; but you have done so much for him and me that you
deserve our whole empire.” With hand trembling with age and fright he
set to the compact the golden seal.
The deputies returned to the camp. Young Alexius entered the city,
riding, with a retinue of knights, between Dandolo and Baldwin of
Flanders, and followed by the Latin clergy; they were met at the gates
by the various ranks of Greek ecclesiastics, arrayed in splendid
vestments. The churches throughout the city resounded with thanksgiving
and the streets with festivity, while within the palace Isaac, having
endured a dungeon for eight years, embraced his son whom he could not
see.
August 1st Alexius was crowned coemperor in St. Sophia; he immediately
cancelled a portion of his indebtedness to his allies, and wrote to the
Pope, avowing his purpose to recognize Rome as the ecclesiastical head
of the Greek empire. The Pope, knowing the vicissitude of affairs and
distrusting the volatile disposition of the youth, replied, urging him
to speedily practicalize his good intention. At the same time the Holy
Father addressed the crusaders, declaring that, “unless the emperor made
haste to do what he had promised, it would appear that neither his
protestations nor their intentions were sincere.”
The payment Alexius was able to make to those who had sold themselves to
his service was not sufficient to satisfy their ambitious greed; it
barely sufficed to pay back to each soldier the money he had been
compelled to cash down to the Venetians for his passage, and which had
left the Latin army bankrupt in a foreign land. But the Greek treasury
was empty and could not meet the expenses of the new government, nor
even provide for the personal protection of the emperors against their
domestic foes.
If the adherents of the fugitive Alexius III. were not to be feared,
there were new aspirants to the throne, which had come to be recognized
as the legitimate spoil of usurpers; besides, the emperor’s pledge to
recognize the Pope’s supremacy had kindled fury in the breasts of the
Greek devotees. The monk was accustomed in those days to finger his
dagger as well as his beads. The Waring guard could alone be trusted,
but their loyalty would lapse at the first passing of a pay-day. Some
men are stimulated by necessity—hardship evokes their genius; but the
Latins knew that Alexius was not of this sort. Scarcely out of boyhood,
he was already displaying the vices and weaknesses for which his race
was notorious. He needed a guardian—a Dandolo or Boniface, or both.
It was therefore evident that if the new régime were not to be an
immediate failure, carrying down with it the honor of the Latins, the
latter must continue at Constantinople in spite of the fact that the
agreement between the Venetians and the army expired at Michaelmas. They
were forced to accept Alexius’s proposition that they should remain with
him for another year. Thus circumstances conspired to favor Dandolo in
his compact with Malek-Ahdel and to check the impatience of the
crusaders for a march upon Syria or Egypt.
The reign of Alexius and Isaac was inaugurated by a terrible calamity.
According to long custom, the Arab and other Moslem traders had been
allowed to occupy a section of the city with their bazaars and mosque.
The crusading zeal, baffled of finding its natural vent in Palestine,
sought a slight compensation in looting this smaller nest of Infidels.
During the fighting that ensued fire was started in several places.
Under a strong north wind it swept in a wide swath across the city;
then, the breeze shifting, the conflagration raged in another direction.
For eight days there was a continual crash of falling houses, palaces,
and churches, thousands of the homeless population fleeing through smoke
and cinders from the pursuing flames. Many perished, and at the
cessation of the ravages multitudes were left in utter destitution. The
blackened ruins covered a section half a league in width and two leagues
in length, extending from the Golden Horn to the Marmora.
The fury of the elements was followed by as destructive a fury of human
passions. The Greek rose to exterminate the Latin resident population.
All were driven out. Fifteen thousand of these sojourners escaped across
the harbor to Galata, that their lives might be saved in the camp of the
crusaders.
This disaster rendered hopeless any further payment of the debt pledged
by Alexius. The crusaders took advantage of the situation to inaugurate
a plan to capture the city for themselves, to depose both emperors, and
seat upon the throne one of their own number. It was first necessary to
provoke a formal breach with Alexius and Isaac. A deputation was
therefore sent them to demand instant payment or war. The Greek populace
resented this insult to their rulers, whose office they worshipped even
if they had contempt for their pusillanimity. They retaliated upon the
Westerners by attempting to burn the Venetian fleet with fire-boats
floated among the ships, and trying to destroy the crusaders’ camp by a
sudden cavalry attack.
A more serious menace was in the popular meetings held daily in St.
Sophia to denounce the emperors and to demand their displacement to make
way for some stronger hand. The leader of this movement was Alexius
Ducas, called Mourtzouphlos because of his meeting eyebrows. The
populace, with whom this man was unsavory, offered the crown to Nicholas
Kanabos. Alexius was kept a virtual prisoner in the Blachern, defended
by his Warings. Mourtzouphlos came to the palace, and, persuading
Alexius that a mob was about to attack him, pretended to conduct him to
a place of safety. Getting him thus to his own tent, Mourtzouphlos put
the young man in irons, shod himself with the vermilion buskins, and
strode out, proclaiming that he was emperor.
With vast energy the usurper set about refortifying the city. He
impressed Dandolo and Boniface with the fact that they had now to deal
with a man not unlike themselves in ability and daring. What they were
to do must be done quickly. They made to Mourtzouphlos the proposition,
“Give us Alexius, and we will depart and allow you to remain emperor.”
With this prince in their hands they could still scheme. The reply came,
“Alexius is dead.” He had been found lifeless in his chamber (February
1, 1204). Isaac soon followed his son with as mysterious a taking off.
Dandolo then proposed a personal interview with the new monarch. The
meeting was held a half-mile beyond the palace. Treacherously a squad of
Latin horsemen raided the place of conference, capturing some of the
imperial body-guard, but Mourtzouphlos escaped.
Nothing now remained for the Latins but to risk all in an assault upon
the city.