THE FIFTH CRUSADE.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1198. Election of Innocent III.]
At its outset, if not in its results, the fifth crusade exhibits
something like a return to the spirit of the age which gave so vast a
force to the preaching of the hermit Peter and the eloquence of Urban II.
In the chair of St. Peter there was now seated a man of far greater power
than the pope who stirred the Western world to a fever of enthusiasm
at the council of Clermont. At the age of thirty-seven—an age without
example, perhaps, in the annals of the papacy—Lothair, of the house of
Conti, cardinal of St. Mark, had been chosen pope by the unanimous voice
of all the cardinals who were present, at a time when every other power
seemed to be tottering, if not in the very throes of dissolution. The
Byzantine empire was in its decrepitude; the Latin kingdom of Palestine
was reduced to a mere strip of coast; an infant was king of Naples; the
French king Philip Augustus was paying in whatever measure the penalties
of an evil life; the man who was hoping to wear the English crown was the
vindictive and despicable John, whose treachery had slain his father.
Everywhere was disunion, faction, and deadly hatred: and in the midst of
this chaos appeared the one man whose serene tranquillity, based on the
consciousness of a superhuman commission and on the sanction of a divine
law, was undisturbed by the storms raging around him. The influence,
righteously acquired by Leo and Gregory the Great, and vastly extended
(not altogether by the most righteous means) by Gregory VII. (p. 20)
was wielded with even greater effect by the youthful pontiff whose eye
surveyed with calm yet exhaustive scrutiny the troubled scene of European
politics.
[Sidenote: Effect of the crusades in extending the jurisdiction of the
pope.]
To this exalted position the undefined claims of previous popes would
probably never have raised Innocent III., had it not been for the
crusades. In these enterprises the popes had a pretext ready to hand for
interfering with the affairs of every nation and country, for suspending
or annulling civil jurisdiction, for levying taxes under the name of
alms, for releasing barons from the allegiance due to their sovereigns,
inferior tenants from their chiefs, debtors from their creditors. The
crusade became a task which the popes might impose for their souls’
health on refractory emperors and kings. All whose hearts were filled
with the love of Christ must long to take part in the holy work of
rescuing his sepulchre from the hands of the unbelievers. If any were
careless or indifferent to a duty thus constraining, it must be because
their lives were not as pure, their faith not so sound as it should
be, and by such men the divine power for rebuke and even chastisement
committed to the vicars of Christ and of the prince of the apostles must
make itself felt. If kings and great feudal chiefs would prove themselves
to be good Christians, they must put on the cross: and the assumption of
the badge imposed an obligation from which, if the popes were bent on
keeping them to it, it would be almost, if not altogether, hopeless for
them to escape. If they resisted, their sentence was excommunication; and
excommunication, not removed, meant death here and hereafter.
[Sidenote: Weakening of the Imperial power.]
The effect of this policy (for such, however sincere some of the popes
may have been, it assuredly must be called) showed itself especially in
the weakening of the imperial power, without which such a supremacy as
that of Innocent III. over the sovereigns of his age would have been an
impossibility. The emperor Conrad had been driven to take the cross by
the awful pictures which Bernard drew of the judgment day (p. 90): he
came back shorn practically of all his power. Barbarossa had obeyed the
papal bidding, only to die in a distant land; and the struggle was to be
renewed in a later crusade with a sovereign who was only in his cradle
when the cardinal Lothair began his career as pope.
[Sidenote: Growing mistrust of the court of Rome by the peoples of
Europe.]
But if the crusades and the undefined powers which they brought to the
popes carried to its utmost height the fabric of their supremacy, they
began at the same time to undermine it. At no time had the Roman court
possessed a high reputation for pecuniary probity; more commonly it had
been known as the seed-bed in which venality, jobbery, and corruption
flourished with rank luxuriance. All at once, owing to the new impulse
given to the energies of Christendom, the popes became the possessors or
administrators of revenues more vast than any of which in earlier ages
they could have ventured to dream. Then as in these enterprises failure
followed on failure, and the results attained seemed wholly inadequate to
the outlay, the suspicion was awakened that the funds obtained for the
crusades were sometimes diverted to other purposes. The suspicion might
be unjust, and the popes might appoint barons and bishops not belonging
to their court to be trustees of revenues which were not even to be
kept in Italy. Still in spite of these precautions the old sayings were
repeated, and they came not unfrequently with chilling force just when
the crusading enthusiasm had been fanned into the fiercest flame.
[Sidenote: Efforts of Innocent to remove this mistrust.]
This suspicion threatened to be fatal to the new enterprise which
Innocent sought to promote for the salvation of the Holy Land,—nay,
for that of all Christians whether of the East or the West. Not even
Urban II. had been more fervent in his exhortations, more lavish in his
promises of eternal happiness, more stern in his threatenings of endless
perdition. Still from these loftier regions he had to descend to defences
against charges of personal corruption, and to appoint for the management
of the crusading revenues committees to which it was supposed that
suspicion could not possibly attach itself. More than this, the pope and
his cardinals must show themselves ready to bear to the full the burdens
which they sought to lay upon others. A tenth of all their revenues
would be devoted to the rescue of the Holy Land from the power of the
infidel. The clergy in all other countries were to contribute at least a
fortieth part, and the laity should be everywhere urged to contribute to
the utmost of their power. The funds so raised were to be put into a safe
place, the amount only being notified at Rome: and hard-hearted indeed
must he be who would hold aloof from such a work of love and mercy.
[Sidenote: Fulk of Neuilly.]
But the indifference with which his words were everywhere received
furnishes a fresh proof that the work of a genuine crusade can be set in
motion only by the combination of authority with the enthusiasm of the
demagogue. So it had been in the days of the hermit Peter (p. 26), and of
the saint who had tried to cover the hermit with contempt. So, happily
for Innocent, it was now, when Fulk, a parish priest of Neuilly near
Paris, was smitten with the crusading fever. Even as a priest he had for
a time led a life of miserable slackness, if not of gross vice; but his
heart was touched with the penitence which was kindled in Mary Magdalene
or Mary of Egypt. He had striven to atone for his sins by the severest
asceticism, and to remedy his deplorable ignorance by attending the
lectures of Peter the Chanter, in whom Innocent hoped to find the most
eloquent preacher of his crusade. This hope was not to be realized. Peter
was seized by a fatal illness, but his last words bequeathed to Fulk the
mission which he had himself received from the pope.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1189.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1198. The mission of Fulk sanctioned by the pope.]
Even before the death of Peter, Fulk had preached in the streets and
lanes of the great city, and his words had melted the most obdurate and
evil-lived sinners to tears. Still the spell of his oratory seemed to be
losing its power, and he had gone back to his parish work at Neuilly when
the last charge of Peter the Chanter animated him with an irresistible
impulse. He came forward now not merely as the preacher of a crusade, but
as the stern reprover of vice and of spiritual wickedness in high places.
Like Urban and Eugenius, Innocent saw his opportunity. He wrote to Fulk,
expressing his hearty approbation of his work, and bidding him, in
concert with some of the Black and White monks, and with the sanction of
the legate Peter of Capua, go up and down the land calling on all men to
repent and to give proof of penitence by hastening to the land of promise.
[Sidenote: Effects of his eloquence.]
Soon the tidings spread from city to city that a preacher had appeared
whose powers were not inferior to those of St. Bernard. His miracles
were not indeed so numerous, nor, for the most part, of the sort which
ascribed to Bernard the excommunication of troublesome flies, who under
this potent sentence fell dead from the ceiling, and were swept up
from the floor by shovelfuls. His humour was not less ready than his
eloquence. His hearers strove for pieces of his clothing to be kept as
sacred relics. One noisy bystander had caused him special annoyance. He
turned to his audience, and told them that he had not blessed his own
garments, but that he would bless those of this man. In a moment the
man’s clothes were in tatters, and the fragments carried off in triumph
as relics endowed with miraculous power.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1202. Death of Fulk.]
Yet, taken at its best, the effect of Fulk’s preaching was not equal
to that of Bernard or of Peter the Hermit. His words might enjoin high
austerities: his appearance might not belie his words, but it did not
convey indisputable evidence of their truth. He looked and lived much
like other men; and, what was worse, he had to do battle with the fatal
suspicion which Innocent had striven with the utmost earnestness to shake
off. He became the receiver of vast sums of money; and murmurs would
make themselves heard which asserted that all these moneys were not used
as they ought to be. His influence was on the whole waning: but he was
not to see the beginning of the enterprise which he had so strenuously
promoted. Fulk died of a fever at Neuilly, while the crusaders were still
at Venice, and his mantle seemed to fall on the Cistercian abbot Martin.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1200. The chiefs of the fifth crusade.]
Other preachers also girded up their loins for the great work, and
their words told especially on some of the younger men among the French
princes. Foremost among these was Theobald, count of Champagne, who had
seen only twenty summers, and whose goal was well nigh reached already.
With him Louis, count of Blois and Chartres, cast in his lot, followed by
Simon of Montfort, the infamous leader of the yet future Holy War against
the Albigensians, Walter of Brienne, and with many others, last but not
least Geoffrey of Villehardouin, marshal of Champagne, the historian of
the crusade. Some months later the badge was assumed by Baldwin, count of
Flanders, by Hugh of St. Pol, by the count of Perche, and many more.
[Sidenote: Mission from the French barons to Venice.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1201.]
[Sidenote: Compact for the conveyance of the crusaders to Palestine.]
The followers of these chiefs amounted already to a formidable army. But
the leaders had no adequate navy at their command, and the history of
all the preceding expeditions had convinced men at last of the desperate
risks to be encountered in the land journey across Europe and the Lesser
Asia. One state alone there was which was fully equal to all demands
that might be made upon it for ships; and of the crusades this state
at least had no just reason to complain. These armed pilgrimages had
vastly increased its commerce and its profits, and had produced in Europe
a general desire for eastern products which insured the continuance of
this wide-spread trade. To Venice accordingly the eyes of the crusading
chiefs were turned, and the envoys of the counts of Blois, Flanders, and
Champagne appeared there in the first week of Lent before the doge, or
duke, Henry Dandolo, venerable in his age of more than ninety years, and
the victim of that Byzantine cruelty which had almost, if not wholly,
deprived him of his sight. ‘Sire,’ said Villehardouin, the ambassador
from the count of Champagne, ‘we are come in the name of the great barons
of France, who are pledged to avenge by the conquest of Jerusalem the
insults offered to our Lord Jesus Christ. From no other state can they
obtain the help which they desire, and they implore you for the sake of
the Holy Cross and the Holy Sepulchre to furnish them with ships and all
other things necessary for conveying their men across the sea.’ ‘On what
terms?’ asked the doge. ‘On any that you may name,’ was the reply, ‘so
long as we may be able to bear them.’ The doge promised an answer at the
end of eight days; and when these were passed, the envoys were told that
for four marks of silver for each horse and two for each man the republic
would furnish ships, provisioned for nine months, for the conveyance of
4,500 knights with their horses, 9,000 squires, and 20,000 infantry.
The total cost would be 85,000 marks of silver; but the republic would
further join the expedition with 50 galleys of its own. The terms were
not unreasonable, and the envoys departed, some homewards, some to
seek further aid from Genoa and Pisa. Here they fared but ill; and
Villehardouin reached Troyes only to find Theobald the count of Champagne
prostrate with hopeless sickness. In his joy at seeing him, the young man
mounted his horse: but it was for the last time. In a few days he died,
and the count of Perche soon followed him to the grave.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1202. Failure of the crusaders to make up the sum agreed
on with the Venetians.]
The count of Champagne was to have been the chief of the enterprise.
The offer of the command was now refused by the duke of Burgundy as by
many others: it was accepted at last by Boniface, marquis of Montferrat.
But it was not until the following year that the crusading forces were
fairly in motion; and their lack of cohesion was at once seen in all
its mischievous effects. Venice may have driven—there is no just ground
for thinking that she had driven—a hard bargain; but as it was certain
that from her terms she would make no abatement, it was clear that
the interests of the crusaders should lead them to adhere to or give
up the compact in a body. To divide their forces was merely to lay a
heavier burden on those who should still seek the aid of Venice. But of
two courses the crusaders were well nigh sure to choose the worse, and
while some sailed across the bay of Biscay and through the straits of
Gibraltar, others embarked at Marseilles. Others again found their way to
ports in Southern Italy, leaving Villehardouin to deplore at Venice the
wretched mischief wrought by these desertions. It seemed at first that
they had dealt a death-blow to the enterprise. The Venetian fleet was
ready, in perfect order and magnificently equipped: but the price, the
85,000 silver marks, must be paid in advance, and the counts of Flanders
and St. Pol and the marquis of Montferrat could only make up 51,000 after
selling all their plate and putting the utmost strain upon their credit.
[Sidenote: Proposal to commute the payment by an expedition against Zara.]
Of this dilemma the doge proposed a solution which at first excited the
astonishment, the dismay, and even the disgust of the crusaders. The
war which pope Innocent had striven to kindle was strictly a holy war,
directed only against the infidel for the rescue of lands, which formed
the inalienable heritage of Christendom. But the Venetian doge now
announced that the 34,000 marks might be discharged by conquering for
the republic the town of Zara, which had been, so he averred, unjustly
seized by the king of Hungary. The summer wore on. The feast of the
Nativity of the Virgin had come round, when Dandolo, ascending the pulpit
in the church of St. Mark, declared his readiness to live or die with
the pilgrims of the cross, and then, going to the high altar, fixed the
blood-red badge on his high cotton cap. The sight called forth the tears
and wakened the enthusiasm of all who were present. The less pleasant
features of the compact lost their repulsive aspect; and the interests of
Venice were further consulted by the agreement that she should have one
half of all conquests that might be made.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1195. Mission to Rome to seek aid for the dethroned
Byzantine emperor, Isaac Angelus.]
A new actor now appeared upon the scene. For some years past the palace
of the Byzantine Cæsars had been defiled by a series of bloody murders
or of mutilations still more cruel. Emperor after emperor had been put
to death or blinded and thrust into a dungeon. The latter penalty was
the doom of Isaac Angelus when his throne was usurped by his brother
Alexios, a tyrant not wise in his generation. Isaac, laxly guarded, was
able to communicate with his partisans; his son Alexios, having contrived
to make his escape in a Pisan vessel to Ancona, appeared to plead his
cause before Innocent at Rome. He received no genial welcome. The pope
had perhaps a better hope of bringing about the submission of the Eastern
to the Western church through the possessor of a throne than through
claimants or pretenders. He was better received at the court of his
brother-in-law, the Swabian chief Philip; and his messengers now appeared
in Venice to implore the help of the commercial republic and the high
chivalry of Western Christendom.
[Sidenote: Determination of the Venetians to insist on the expedition to
Zara.]
Not impossibly the vision which this crusade was destined for time to
realize may have floated before the mind of Dandolo, as he listened to
their earnest pleadings; but for the present he confined himself to
words of encouragement and sympathy. The task immediately before them
was the conquest of Zara; and Venice stuck to her bond with inflexible
pertinacity. In vain the abbot Martin, who with his followers had
crossed the Tyrolese Alps, protested against the invasion of territories
belonging to the Hungarian king who had himself assumed the cross.
They were told that the scheme might be given up on the payment of the
34,000 silver marks. In vain Innocent sent his cardinal legate Peter of
Capua with orders to interdict the Venetians from assailing Zara even
with their own forces, and to lead the army of the pilgrims himself to
Palestine. The legate was told that he might embark in their fleet if he
pleased, but that he must not dare to exercise his legatine authority
when he had done so. The indignant cardinal hastened to Rome. Some few
drew back from the enterprise: and the marquis of Montferrat pleaded
pressing engagements which withheld him at present from taking the
command.
[Sidenote: Siege and conquest of Zara.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1202. Nov. 15.]
But with the main body of the crusaders the Venetian fleet set sail, in
a magnificent order and with a display of power which seemed capable of
sweeping everything before it. The people of Zara, dismayed at the sight
of the armament, offered at once to surrender on the best terms which
they could get. The doge promised to consider the matter with the barons:
but while they were thus in council, Simon of Montfort, the destined hero
of a bloody crusade against heretical Christians, upbraided the Zarans
with their cowardice, and assured them that the conquest of Zara was no
part of the crusading plan. When the summons for the envoys came from the
doge’s tent, they were nowhere to be found. They had hastened back into
the city, and the walls had been manned for a siege. In the camp Guido,
the abbot of Vaux Cernay, warned the army that they were pilgrims of the
cross, under oath not to make war against Christians in communion with
the Holy See. In high wrath Dandolo insisted that the barons should keep
to their engagements. Few dared, perhaps few wished, to gainsay him.
For five days Zara was besieged; on the sixth it fell. The doge took
possession, but he divided the spoil with his allies.
[Sidenote: Proposal to divert the crusade to the restoration of Alexios
at Constantinople.]
[Sidenote: December.]
The reduction of Zara raised hopes which were to be speedily
disappointed. The crusaders wished to sail at once for the Holy Land.
The doge was determined to guard his conquest against attacks from the
Hungarian king. Winter was coming on; the countries of Western Asia
were suffering grievously from famine, and a voyage then undertaken
would bring with it the miseries of starvation. The only course was to
make Zara their winter quarters. The proposal called forth vehement
opposition, which was not suppressed without bloodshed. The arrival
of the marquis of Montferrat to take the chief command gave promise of
more harmonious action; but the crusade was to be a second time diverted
from its original purpose. Envoys came from the Byzantine Alexios and
the Swabian Philip urging that the purposes of the expedition would be
better achieved by placing Alexios on the throne of Constantinople than
by attempts, which would certainly be in vain, to wrest Palestine from
the Saracens. They insisted that the crusader’s vow was really a vow to
promote in every way the cause of God, of right, and of justice; and
in no way would this cause be more surely furthered than by restoring
the disinherited prince to the throne of which he had been robbed by an
usurper. They pleaded that in this instance interest and duty went hand
in hand. It would be the first business of Alexios after his restoration
to bring the Eastern church into submission to the Roman church and see;
his next task would be to aid the crusaders to the best of his power in
the work which they had most at heart. He would not only feed the whole
army and give them 400,000 silver marks: but he would also join them in
person, or send 10,000 men at his own charge.
[Sidenote: Resolution to accept the terms proposed by Alexios.]
[Sidenote: Negotiations with the pope for the removal of the interdict.]
The announcement of this proposal drew from the abbot of Vaux Cernay
the passionate rejoinder that they were in arms only against Saracens,
and that to Syria only would they go. But though he was firmly seconded
by his partisans, there was practically no reply to the retort that in
Syria they could do nothing, and that Jerusalem could be won only through
Constantinople or Egypt. Words and tempers ran high: but the treaty
with Alexios was accepted by the marquis of Montferrat and the count of
Flanders, and the destination of the army was fixed. The numbers of that
army were slowly diminished through the weeks of winter. The terrors
of the papal interdict hung like a cloud over the host, and the barons
resolved to send envoys who should assure Innocent that the diversion
to Zara, which they and he alike lamented, was to be laid wholly to the
charge of those faithless knights who by departing from other ports
left their comrades without the means of paying the money due to the
Venetians. Of the new compact made with Alexios they prudently said
nothing: and Innocent, while he agreed to suspend the interdict till
the arrival of his legate Peter of Capua, insisted that the barons must
still make atonement for their offence. Against the Venetians he took a
higher tone. The envoys must carry with them a letter excommunicating
these marauders. The marquis Boniface received the brief, but, instead of
publishing it, he wrote to Innocent, sending the submission of the barons
and saying that the Venetians were about to entreat his forgiveness
for the conquest of Zara. No such entreaties came: and Innocent issued
fresh orders that his brief should be placed in the hands of the doge.
If this was done, it produced no result: and Innocent was startled, if
not dismayed, when he learnt that the spoilers of Zara were making ready
to sin on a larger scale. He denounced the whole scheme with seemingly
vehement indignation. The emperor of Constantinople may have been guilty
of blinding his brother and usurping his throne; but his empire, he
insisted, was under the special protection of the Holy See. It was no
part of their business or their vow to avenge the wrongs of the prince
Alexios; it was their first and paramount duty to avenge the wrongs
done to their Redeemer, the sign of whose cross they bore upon their
shoulders. Nay, more, the Byzantine emperor had, at the special request
of the pope, promised to furnish provisions for the crusaders: and the
promise of the Eastern Cæsar might be trusted. If it should fail, then
they might forcibly take what they wanted, at the same time paying or
promising to pay the value in money.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1203. Easter.]
[Sidenote: Vain attempts of Innocent to oppose the expedition.]
Dandolo was in no mood to have his course checked by either papal
pleadings or papal threats. The day of embarkation had arrived, and
Simon of Montfort, impenetrable in his gloomy bigotry, hastened away to
join the king of Hungary, the faithful servant of the pope. The other
chiefs went on board the Venetian fleet, with perhaps a shrewd suspicion
that their success would be followed by a marked change in the tone
and language of the pope. But whatever might be his desire to keep on
good terms with the reigning monarch, his longing to see the Byzantine
church brought back to Roman subjection was altogether more intense. This
submission would be the immediate result of the enthronement of Alexios,
and the crusaders would depart for the Holy Land, (the vision of a Latin
empire at Byzantium had not yet dawned upon their minds,) rich not only
in the blessing of the pope, but in a wealth of sacred relics which, now
stored up in the churches of the capital, ought to pass into the hands of
the faithful children of the Roman obedience.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1203. Arrival of the fleet at Constantinople.]
About the time of the summer solstice, the Venetian fleet anchored in the
Propontis nine miles to the west of the Imperial city. A few days later
the army was at Scutari, where they received a message from the reigning
emperor Alexios promising them aid in their passage through Asia Minor,
on the condition that during their stay on the shores of the Bosporos
they should do his subjects no harm. The reply was a summons to the
usurper to descend from his throne, with a promise that on this condition
they would obtain for him the pardon of his nephew, the rightful
sovereign.
[Sidenote: Flight of the usurper Alexios.]
This young prince was paraded by the Venetian fleet in front of the
walls; but the proclamation which called upon the people to acknowledge
him as their sovereign was received with contemptuous silence or with
showers of arrows, and no alternative remained but that of open war. The
struggle presents few features of real interest: as a series of military
operations it has little value or none. The imperial fleet consisted, it
is said, of only twenty ships, and these useless, the anchors, cables,
and sails having been sold by the admiral, a brother of the empress.
The army exhibited all the pageantry of war, and lacked almost every
soldierly quality. The port of Constantinople and the town of Galata
were soon in the possession of the invaders, and the siege of the city
was begun, so far as the efforts of a force which could assail but an
insignificant extent of wall deserves the name. The first flag planted
on one of the towers was placed there by the men of Dandolo’s ship; and
Dandolo himself, setting fire to the surrounding houses, kept off the
imperial troops while his crew fortified themselves in their position.
The Latins and the Greeks were now face to face. The splendid ranks
of the Byzantine army stood, as it might seem, ready for battle, when
Alexios gave the signal for retreat and sealed his own downfall. That
night he fled from the city. The blind Isaac Angelus, drawn from his
dungeon, was again clad in the imperial robes, and his son Alexios was
admitted to share his imperial dignity.
[Sidenote: The crusaders are compelled to spend the winter at
Constantinople.]
The task of the crusaders in Europe seemed to be now done. Their
heralds announced to the Egyptian sultan that they would soon take
summary vengeance unless he surrendered the Holy Land. The Pisans who
had aided the usurping Alexios made up their quarrel with Venice. The
French barons asked the forgiveness of the pope for the attack made
upon Constantinople, and Innocent replied that it must depend on the
fulfilment of the promises made by Alexios. This prince, having paid part
of the money which he had sworn to give them, bade them remember how
dear must be to himself the cost of alliance with them, and how greatly
he must need their help to stem the tide of unpopularity. In short, he
let them know that in or near Constantinople they must find their winter
quarters. It was absurd to think of encountering the risk of a voyage
during the winter: and even if they went, they could do nothing against
the Turks until spring. He would then see that nothing should be left
undone towards furthering the success of the crusade.
[Sidenote: Efforts of Mourzoufle to detach Alexios from the crusaders.]
The northern pilgrims received these proposals with murmurs of anger. But
the decision lay really with Dandolo, and Dandolo declared that at this
season of the year the ships of the republic should not be exposed to
useless dangers. The army remained where it was: but new troubles came
thick and fast. Religious antagonism ran out into brawls and fights.
An accidental conflagration preyed for eight days on the streets and
houses of the city. The rage excited by these losses was increased by
the exactions to which the young Alexios was driven in order to meet his
engagements with the crusaders, and was lashed into madness when his
officers stripped the churches of their gold and silver ornaments. The
indignation of the people found utterance in the vehement eloquence of
Alexios Ducas, called Mourzoufle from his dark and shaggy eyebrows; and
his protests so far swayed the youthful emperor as to make him remiss in
carrying out his compact with his allies. These told him plainly that to
that compact he must strictly adhere, or, failing in this, must prepare
himself for war.
[Sidenote: Deposition and death of Alexios.]
During the night following the day in which he received this warning
Alexios sent a squadron of fire-ships against the Venetian fleet. The
danger was great; but the Venetian sailors were as prompt as they were
brave. The deadly ships were turned aside into open water, and a Pisan
merchant ship was the only vessel set on fire and destroyed. It was
the last exploit of Alexios. Another revolution hurled him from the
throne, which after one or two more emperors had been set up and put
down passed to Mourzoufle. The new Cæsar showed some aptitude for war,
but he preferred to try the effect of negotiations with Dandolo. The old
doge retorted that with an usurper he could have no dealings, and that,
if he sought peace, he should replace his master Alexios on the throne.
Mourzoufle resolved that this demand should not be made a second time:
and that night Alexios was slain in prison.
[Sidenote: Resolution to set up a Latin dynasty in Constantinople.]
For the fate of their former ally the crusaders professed to feel a
profound sympathy; and their grief prompted the resolution of cutting
the evil at its root by placing a Latin emperor on the seat of the
Eastern Cæsars. The compact was accordingly drawn up. The booty to be
obtained within the city was to be shared equally between the French and
the Venetians; and a committee of twelve, half French, half Venetian,
should elect the new sovereign, who was to have one-fourth part of the
city with the palaces of Blachernai and Boukoleon, the rest of the city
being shared by the two allied powers. Venice, freed from all feudal
obligations to the Greek empire, should be equally free from all feudal
dependence on the Latin sovereign, while the Latin patriarch should be
chosen from the nation to which the emperor might not belong.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1204. April. Siege and conquest of Constantinople.]
[Sidenote: Horrible excesses of the crusaders.]
The second siege of Constantinople is as devoid of interest as the
first. The success of the Greeks on the first day was followed by a
series of disasters which on the fourth day enabled the Latins to force
their way through the gates. Mourzoufle shut himself up in his palace.
A third conflagration desolated the city. In the morning the conquerors
learnt that the usurper had fled with many of the inhabitants. The Latin
conquest was accomplished. The Byzantine clergy alone urged continued
resistance; but when they presented Theodore Lascaris to the people
as their emperor, their silence showed that the appeal was made in
vain. Then, seeing that nothing more could be done, the patriarch John
Kamateros fled from the sight of the awful scenes which disgraced the
triumph of the Latins. The three Western bishops had strictly charged
the crusaders to respect the churches and the persons of the clergy,
the monks, and the nuns. They were talking to the winds. In the frantic
excitement of victory all restraint was flung aside, and the warriors of
the cross abandoned themselves with ferocious greed to their insatiable
and filthy lewdness. With disgusting gestures and in shameless attire an
abandoned woman screamed out a drunken song from the patriarchal chair
in the church of Sancta Sophia, the magnificent work of Justinian.
Wretches blind with fury drained off draughts of wine from the vessels
of the altar: the table of oblation, famed for its exquisite and costly
workmanship, was shattered: the splendid pulpit with its silver ornaments
utterly defaced. Mules and horses were driven into the churches to bear
away the sacred treasures; if they fell, they were lashed and goaded till
their blood streamed upon the pavement. While the savages were employed
on these appropriate tasks, the more devout were busy in ransacking
the receptacles of holy relics, and laying up a goodly store of
wonder-working bones or teeth to be carried away to the churches of the
great cities on the Rhine, the Loire, or the Seine. ‘How,’ asks the pope,
‘shall the Greek Church return to ecclesiastical unity and to respect for
the Apostolic See, when they have seen in the Latins only examples of
wickedness and works of darkness, for which they might justly loathe them
worse than dogs?’ The question might well be asked: and we may be well
assured that Innocent would not be likely to over-colour the picture in
favour of the Greeks, and that his informers would not care to put before
him in their naked hideousness iniquities which it would be a sin to
describe.
[Sidenote: Election of Baldwin, count of Flanders, emperor of the East.]
The first task of the conquerors was to elect a chief and share the
spoil. The committee of twelve met in the chapel of the palace and
invoked the aid of the Holy Spirit. The six French electors were all
ecclesiastics,—the abbot of Loces, the bishops of Troyes, Soissons,
Halberstadt, and Bethlehem, and the archbishop-elect of Acre. Their first
choice fell on Dandolo. His wisdom, his energy, his undaunted courage,
seemed to point him out as the best man fitted to rule the empire in the
winning of which he had played the chief part. But the old man cared
little for the office, and to the Venetians the combination of the powers
of emperor and doge in the same person probably boded ill for the best
interests of the commercial republic. There remained only two who could
well be placed in competition for the prize. The marquis of Montferrat,
the lord of a petty principality at the foot of the Alps, could be no
object of Venetian jealousy, while his age and character well qualified
him for the office. But Baldwin of Flanders, at the age of thirty-two,
was in the first flush of vigorous manhood; he was come of the race of
Charles the Great, and the French king was his cousin. He was also the
feudal sovereign of a wealthy territory and the leader of a powerful army
raised among his own people. The electors came to an unanimous decision,
and this decision announced to the barons, who were waiting outside, that
the count of Flanders was the Eastern Cæsar. Boniface of Montferrat at
once did homage to him as his lord; and the old doge was the only man not
called upon to make this act of submission. Borne on the shields of his
comrades Baldwin was carried to the church of Sancta Sophia and there was
invested with the purple buskins. Three weeks later he was crowned by the
papal legate, the new patriarch not having been yet elected.
[Sidenote: Election of Thomas Morosini as patriarch of Constantinople.]
This election was to the Venetians a subject of greater anxiety than
the choice of a temporal sovereign. There was no room here for the fear
that Venice might become an insignificant dependency of a vast empire;
and they set to work with their usual promptitude and coolness. The
canonical regularity of the election was, as they supposed, ensured by
the appointment of Venetian priests to be canons of Sancta Sophia; and
these canons were placed under oath to elect none but a Venetian. Their
choice fell on Thomas Morosini, a member of one of their noblest houses
and a man highly esteemed by Innocent III.
[Sidenote: Embassies from Baldwin and the Venetians to the pope.]
The Roman pontiff played his part with consummate skill. While the
usurping Alexios was on the throne, he had striven to secure through
his help the submission of the Eastern church. No sooner had he fled,
than Innocent reminded his nephew Alexios of the promises of obedience
which he had personally made, and urged the crusaders to insist on
the immediate fulfilment of this promise. In no other way could they
justify themselves for diverting to other purposes the forces which had
been enrolled solely for the redemption of the Holy Land. He had now to
deal with a new order of things. The emperor Baldwin had prayed him to
ratify the compact made with the Venetians, to stir up afresh the zeal
of Western Europe for the maintenance of the Latin empire in the East,
to send forth new armies who in the countries now brought under Latin
sway would assuredly reap an abundant harvest, and to reinforce the
Latin clergy by a multitude of new recruits. The Venetians had besought
his forgiveness for attacking Zara, his sanction of the conquest of
Constantinople. They could not bring themselves to believe that the
people of Zara were really under his protection, and hence they had
determined to bear with the excommunication in patient silence until the
pontiff should learn the truth. For what they had done at Byzantium the
young Alexios was chargeable, not they. He had tried to send fire-ships
among their fleet, and it was indispensable for their own safety and that
of their allies to deprive him of the power of doing further mischief.
[Sidenote: Answers of Innocent III.]
The satisfaction which Innocent felt, and avowed that he felt, was
expressed in carefully guarded terms. He was rejoiced to be able to
revoke the excommunication of the Venetians, and so high was his
admiration of the valour and wisdom of Dandolo that he could not comply
with the prayer of the venerable doge to be relieved from further
obligation under his vow. The hero who could bear so lightly the burden
of ninety winters must not deprive the crusade of services which would
ensure success to the enterprise and a glorious reward for himself.
To the delicate praise which thus took the form of a command he added
the assurance that he had taken the Latin empire under his special
protection, and had prayed the sovereigns and prelates of the West to
exert themselves to the utmost in its behalf. He had felt himself bound
to pass a stern condemnation on the deeds of horrible violence and
lewdness committed by the crusaders in the sacking of a Christian city;
but he could not withhold the admission that the history of the conquest
was a memorable commentary on the parables of the talents and the
vineyard. The Greeks had done nothing with the good things committed to
their trust: far from aiding, they had seriously hindered, the warriors
of the cross and even done their best to destroy them. They had kept up
a causeless schism; they had turned a deaf ear to all entreaties which
called upon them to come back to the unity of the Church; and they had
now paid the penalty by seeing their inheritance in the hands of better
husbandmen who would bring forth fruit in due season. But if Innocent
was thus complaisant with the secular empire, he laid a heavy hand on
the spiritual power which the Venetians hoped to secure as their special
portion. The pope had a stern censure for the conduct both of the
Venetians and the French in daring to seize on the temporalities of the
Eastern church and to portion out along with other lands and property
all that might remain over and above the amount deemed sufficient for
the maintenance of the Latin clergy. Nor could he allow the validity of
Morosini’s election, whether by a self-constituted chapter or by priests
chosen by a purely secular authority. The election, in short, was null
and void; but so great was his regard for the Venetians, so high his
esteem for Morosini, that he would himself appoint to the Byzantine
patriarchate the man whom they had chosen, and invest him with singular
privileges. These privileges involved a reservation of certain appeals to
the pope; and the very plenitude of the powers thus bestowed served only
to show with the greater clearness the paramount sovereignty of the Roman
pontiff to whom he owed his dignity and his jurisdiction.
[Sidenote: Results of the crusades to the pope and to the Venetians.]
The great crusade promoted by Innocent had thus produced results very
different from those which he had looked for. It had not touched the
power of the Syrian sultans; it had not struck a blow on the soil of
Palestine. But on the whole he had no cause to complain. It had widely
extended the limits of his supremacy, and had subdued a spiritual
rebellion which had rent asunder the seamless robe of Christ. But if the
pope was a gainer, Venice had secured to herself advantages, more solid
perhaps, certainly more enduring. By the conquest of Zara she had laid
the foundations of her vast commercial empire; and her factories at Pera
needed only the defence of her fleets, while the Latins in Byzantium had
to guard themselves against attacks by land. She had her settlements in
the richest islands of the Egean, and in every harbour was seen the flag
of the maritime republic. This growth of her commerce was, moreover,
fostering in her a spirit of antagonism to ecclesiastical authority, of
which Innocent seems to have foreseen the issue, and which he sought with
all his power to crush. The abbot of St. Felix in Venice was consecrated,
by the command of Ziani, the successor of Henry Dandolo, to the
archbishopric of Zara, the sanction of the pope not being first asked.
The wrath of Innocent blazed forth at once. He reviewed in the harshest
terms the general policy of the Venetians in the conduct of the crusade.
It was true that they had taken Zara, and even that they had overthrown
the Byzantine empire: but what would not an army, which had won such
victories, have achieved in the Holy Land? Had the crusaders fulfilled
their vows, not only must Egypt have been subdued, and the cross replaced
on the dome of Omar, but Syria itself must have been swept clear of all
Saracen dominion. That this glorious result had not been brought about
already, was the fault of the Venetians and of them alone. He could not
therefore recognize their archbishop, and he insisted on their submission
under pain of the censures which were ready to fall upon them. There is
no evidence to show that the Venetians took the reproof to heart, or that
they vouchsafed any reply.