CAPTURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE.
By April 8th all preparations were completed. It was determined to
boldly cross the Golden Horn from Galata and assail the water front of
the city. At a hundred points at once they flung the bridges from the
yard-arms to the top of the wall, while at the same time they battered
the base with rams. The air about them was a firmament of flame from the
heavy discharges of Greek fire, through which hurtled stones, javelins,
and arrows in such storm that flesh could not stand against it. At night
the Latins retired, confessing the failure of the first attempt. The
churches of the city resounded with grateful prayers, and the streets
were riotous with joy.
On the 12th the assault was renewed. The ships now fought in pairs, so
that a heavier force of men might land upon the walls from each
drawbridge. Two transports, the _Pilgrim_ and the _Paradise_, having on
board the bishops of Troyes and Soissons, carried one of the towers and
planted there the banners of these ecclesiastics. Soon four towers more
succumbed; the gates beneath them were forced open, and the knights, who
had waited by their horses on the transports, dashed into the city. The
Venetians say that their blind old hero was among the first to pass the
gates, and that there was fulfilled the prophecy of an ancient sibyl: “A
gathering together of the powerful shall be made amid the waves of the
Adriatic under a blind leader; they shall beset the goat [the symbol of
Greek power in Daniel’s vision], ... they shall profane Byzantium, ...
they shall blacken her buildings; ... her spoils shall be dispersed.”
The Latins charged straight for Mourtzouphlos’s headquarters; his
body-guard fought well, but were no match for the heavy-armored knights,
and soon fled. Such was the consternation of the Greeks that even the
size of the Latins was fabulously exaggerated, Nicetas crediting one
gigantic soldier with eighteen yards to his stature, and a proportionate
strength.
At night the crusaders, having set fire to the houses on every side of
them, occupied the deserted camps of the emperor, which he had set up in
the district burned by the previous conflagration. The next day they
encountered no opposition, as Mourtzouphlos had fled away through the
Golden Gate on the Marmora side of the city. With the exception of the
imperial treasury and arsenal, all was given up to be plundered by
sailors and soldiers. Before the assault the barons had divided among
themselves the palaces. Villehardouin boastfully narrates: “Never since
the world was created was there so much booty gained in one city; each
man took the house which pleased him, and there was enough for all.
Those who were poor found themselves suddenly rich. There was captured
an immense supply of gold and silver, of plate and precious stones, of
satins and silks, of furs, and of every kind of wealth found upon
earth.”
The Greek eye-witnesses give the same picture, but in other colors. They
tell how neither matron nor nun, age nor condition, home nor church, was
safe from brigandage; nor yet the tombs of the dead, since the coffins
of the ancient emperors were opened, that the gems might be taken from
their wrappings and golden rings from their finger-bones. The body of
Justinian was thus rudely exposed after its sleep of centuries. The
sacred chalices of the communion-table were distributed to the crowd for
drinking-cups. The vessels of the altar were thrown into heaps, together
with the table plate of the rich, to be parcelled out among the victors.
Holy vestments were used as saddle-cloths. Mules were driven into St.
Sophia and there on the mosaic floors were loaded with the furniture
which piety had adored and art had cherished for ages. The altars were
broken into pieces, that the bits of precious metal in them might be
extracted, and the veil of the sanctuary was torn into shreds for the
sake of its golden fringe. A slattern courtesan was enthroned in the
chair of the patriarch and entertained the rabble with obscene dances
and songs, while men who had left their homes for the service of Christ
played at dice upon the tables which represented His apostles.
Nicetas, the historian, describes his own escape. A Venetian, whom he
had served a good turn, defended his house as long as he could. When
this was no longer possible he led away the unfortunate family and a few
friends, roughly treating them as if they were his prisoners. The young
ladies of Nicetas’s household blackened their faces to mar their
fairness. The beauty of one shone through this disguise; she was seized
by some passing soldiers and liberated only at the tearful solicitation
of her father. Looking back upon the city, of which he had been a chief
ornament and whose epitaph he was to write, Nicetas exclaimed, “Queen of
cities, who art become the sport of strangers, the companions of the
wild beasts that inhabit the forests, we shall never revisit thy august
domes, and can only fly with terror around thee, like sparrows around
the spot where their nest has been destroyed.” On the road he came up
with the Patriarch of Constantinople, without bag or money, stick or
shoes, and with but “one coat, like a true apostle.”
The plunder of the city was evenly divided between the crusaders and the
Venetians. The hard cash discovered in treasure vaults or concealed in
wells amounted in value to over eight millions of dollars. The value of
movable wealth of various kinds has been estimated at one hundred
millions.
The greed thus fed, but not satiated, seemed to turn the brains of the
conquerors and to transform them into veritable barbarians, as the
Greeks denominated them. Works of art were ruthlessly destroyed, bronze
statues were melted for the sake of their metal, and rarest marbles
broken in the abandon of resuscitated savagery. Thus perished the
colossal figure of Juno from Samos, so large that it required four oxen
to carry away its head; the statue of Paris presenting the apple of
discord to Venus; the famous obelisk surmounted by a female figure that
turned with the wind, and covered with exquisite bas-reliefs; the
equestrian statue of Pegasus; the “Hercules” of Lysippus, whose thumb
was the size of a living man’s waist; the bronze ass which Augustus
Cæsar had ordered to commemorate the victory of Antium; the ancient
group of the wolf suckling Romulus and Remus; and the statue of Helen of
Troy. Out of the ruin of such inestimable treasures of art the four
horses which now adorn the porticos of St. Mark’s in Venice were saved
from the general wreck, to stand as a monument among the Venetians not
of the glory, but of the vandalism of their ancestors.
But more than the spoils of art and treasure, the sacred relics stored
in Constantinople excited the saintly cupidity of the conquerors. In
their greed for these objects men utterly forgot the divine law, and
silenced the last remonstrance of human conscience. Martin Litz, Abbot
of Basel, worming his way through the pillage piles in a church, came
upon an old Greek monk at prayer. “Your relics or your life!” was the
alternative offered him. Martin thus procured the key to an iron safe
and rifled it of bones and jewels, without thought that the eighth
commandment held good as between a Romanist and heretics. Gunther, a
German monk, telling the story of what he witnessed at this time,
rejoices that thus was secured a piece of the True Cross, the skeleton
of John the Baptist, and an arm of St. James. As the transportation of
these articles to the West was accomplished without their having been
again stolen by some shrewder saint or sunk to the bottom of the sea,
Gunther believed that they had been watched over by angels especially
sent from heaven to convoy the treasure. It would seem that some ghostly
intervention must have restrained John the Baptist and St. James from
visiting their wrath upon these unconscionable robbers of their bones.
The abbey of Cluny received thus the head of St. Clement; the cathedral
of Amiens the head of John the Baptist; and the various churches of
Europe such articles as Jacob’s pillow at Bethel, the rod of Moses, the
wood of the True Cross, the drops of blood shed in Gethsemane, the
sponge and reed of Calvary, the first tooth and locks of the infant
Jesus, a piece of the bread of the Last Supper, a tear of our Lord, a
thorn from His crown, the finger which Thomas thrust into His side, the
shirt and girdle of the Virgin Mary. But these did not satisfy the
relic-hunters. Churches in Europe competed with one another for the
objects of adoration, which brought revenue to their coffers; prices
went up, but Byzantine craft was able to make the supply equal the
demand. A few years later (1215) the Lateran Council had, in the name of
common sense, to caution the faithful against becoming the prey of their
own credulity.
Even the enormous aggrandizement of the Latins, and the advantages to be
derived, in the estimate of Western piety, from the union of the Greek
and Roman churches, could not subdue the general sense of shame at the
atrocities which had been perpetrated. Pope Innocent III. wrote: “Since,
in your obedience to the Crucified One, you took upon yourself the vow
to deliver the Holy Land from the power of the pagans, and since you
were forbidden, under pain of excommunication, to attack any Christian
land or to damage it, unless its inhabitants opposed your passage or
refused you what was necessary, and since you had neither right nor
pretence of right over Greece, you have slighted your vow; you have
preferred earthly to heavenly riches; but that which weighs more heavily
upon you than all this is that you have spared nothing that is sacred,
neither age nor sex. You have given yourselves up to debauchery in the
face of all the world, you have glutted your guilty passions, and you
have pillaged in such fashion that the Greek Church, although borne down
by persecution, refuses obedience to the apostolical see, because it
sees in the Latins only treason and the works of darkness, and loathes
them like dogs.”