Regime Change in Constantinople

We saw yesterday that very early in 1204 Isaac and Alexios were holed up in the Palace of Blachernae against the upset citizenry, who held an election to choose another leader (who did not want anything to do with it, and fled to Hagia Sophia for sanctuary). The two sent a trusted advisor, Alexios Doukas Mourtzouphlos, to seek help from the Crusaders, whom the citizenry were also attacking.

Doukas, who had until recently been imprisoned because he had tried to overthrow Isaac's brother (who had usurped the throne from Isaac in 1195 and blinded and imprisoned Isaac), took on the assignment, but considered a way to satisfy everyone involved—and by everyone, he included himself.

Doukas went to the main palace and approached the Varangian Guards—essentially Vikings who were personal bodyguards for Byzantine Emperors—with bribes. Niketas Choniates wrote that he had help from a eunuch who had access to the treasure, but this was unnecessary, since Doukas after his release from prison was made protovestiarios—"first of the wardrobe"—a position as head of imperial finances.

Doukas made himself Emperor Alexios V. On the night of 27 January, the Varangian Guards arrested Issac and Alexios. Alexios was strangled in prison about a week later, and Isaac, old and feeble already, died around the same time. The previously elected Nicholas Kanabo was brought from Hagia Sophia and offered a position in the new emperor's court, but refused. He fled again to the Hagia Sophia but was dragged from it and killed on its steps. (Having been elected by a majority, he was a "loose thread" that a new emperor could not allow to have a rebellion form around.)

Alexios V met with Doge Enrico Dandolo (the meeting was illustrated by Gustave Doré; see above) to negotiate a resolution to the conflict between the Empire and the Fourth Crusade, but there was no easy solution. The Empire did not have the money even to help itself, never mind pay enormous sums that had been promised by the younger Alexios. The Crusaders insisted that Alexios IV, with whom they had the agreement, be restored to the throne. This demand is probably why Alexios IV was killed, to eliminate any reason for the Crusaders to attempt a coup.

Alexios V confiscated money from the aristocracy (endearing himself to the lower classes but alienating his friends and relatives) in order to begin fortifying the city against the inevitable clash with the Crusading army. The death of Alexios IV was a further sign that Constantinople was not about to deal with the Crusaders in good faith. In March of 1204, all members of the Crusade who had taken up residence in the city were rounded up and expelled. That was the final straw.

The Crusaders drew up battle plans, and then made ready to put them into action. See you next time.

Attacking Zara

As we saw in yesterday's post, Venice was able to coerce the members of the Fourth Crusade to winter over in Zara (a Dalmatian city now called Zadar and part of Croatia), on the east coast of the Adriatic. Probably unknown to the Crusaders at the time, Venice had an ulterior motive: to lead the Crusaders as an army against Zara. The reason for this requires us to dig into the past.

Zara had asked Venice for help in 998CE; they were being menaced by Narentine pirates, a south Slavic tribe. Venice took advantage of the request by sending a fleet that defeated the pirates and then landed on some of the islands in the Adriatic and took them over. Dalmatia offered little resistance.

The Zaran anti-Venice resistance led to them becoming part of the Byzantine Empire. Meanwhile, the trading power of Venice grew until they became a powerful force in the Adriatic and continued to attack Zara several times during the 1100s. Now, in November 1202, Doge Enrico Dandolo had a large army that owed him a lot of money and accepted his leadership. It was time to strike and subjugate Zara once and for all time.

As Geoffrey de Villehardouin wrote in his account of the Crusade:

On the eve of the feast of Saint Martin, they arrived before Zara in Sclavonia and saw the city fortified with lofty walls and tall towers; you would have sought a finer, stronger, more impressive city in vain. And when the pilgrims saw it they were greatly astounded and said to one another, "How could such a city be taken by force, unless God Himself brought it about?"

The ships landed; siege engines intended to be used against Saracens were unloaded, and Zara was attacked and taken. This was an appalling act: an attack by a Christian Crusading army on a Christian city. It was universally condemned. Pope Innocent III excommunicated all involved and wrote:

Behold your gold has turned into base metal and your silver has almost completely rusted since, departing from the purity of your plan and turning aside from the path onto the impassable road, you have, so to speak, withdrawn your hand from the plough [...] for when [...] you should have hastened to the land flowing with milk and honey, you turned away, going astray in the direction of the desert.

In 1203, however, Innocent undid the excommunication of the non-Venetians in the Crusading army, urging them to complete their mission. Unfortunately, the siege of Zara was simply a foreshadowing of a larger transgression. We will start leading up to that tomorrow.

Controlling the Crusaders

I wrote about Enrico Dandolo, the Doge of Venice, 10 years ago here, but let's look at the man who "imprisoned" the Fourth Crusade. Born c.1107, he was 85 when he was elected Doge. His family was very powerful in Venetian society, and the men seemed to live to ripe old ages. This world to Enrico's disadvantage, because his father (Vitale) controlled all the family business until his death in 1174, the sons didn't have much of a public record until then.

One of his first public roles was when Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenos, intending to reclaim Italy as a possession, befriended the Pisa's and Genoese living on Constantinople. Pisa and Genoa were currently enemies of Venice, and the Venetians in Constantinople attacked the Genoese. Manuel responded by having thousands of Venetians in the Empire imprisoned and their goods confiscated. Enrico was part of the retaliatory expedition that failed due to plague. (The enmity between Venice and Constantine would come into play during the Fourth Crusade.)

As Doge, he was involved in the negotiations to have ships ready to ferry the Fourth Crusade from Europe to the Holy Land, as I mentioned yesterday. When only part of the army showed up without all the men and financial resources that hd been arranged, Venice was in a bind: how to recoup the expense of the ship-building they had incurred. based on the promise of payment? The solution was also the solution to another issue: where to house an influx of thousands of people and their equipment.

The temporary housing was resolved by ferrying them all to the island of Lido, a long thin barrier island in the Venetian Lagoon. (The Venice Film Festival takes place there annually in late summer.) Once there, the Crusaders were stuck with no way to leave. Dandolo demanded 85,000 marks in payment. The Crusaders pooled what they had, and came up with 51,000 marks.

Dandolo made an additional offer. Venice would lend the remaining 34,000 marks to the Crusade, so long as it could be paid back by the spoils of the venture. At this point it was late summer, and Enrico had two further suggestions/offers. One was to spend the winter at Zara, cross the Adriatic, and resume the Crusade to the Holy land in the spring weather. This was agreed to, since they relied on the ships and good will of Venice to get to their destination anyway.

The second offer was that Enrico Dandolo, Doge of Venice, aged as he was, would take up the Cross and join them, bring the support of the people of Venice. The offer was made and accepted in a grand ceremony, and in the early days of October 1202, the Crusade departed Venice for the city of Zara to spend the harsher winter months.

The problem on the horizon? Zara was not controlled by Venice. It was a Croatia-Hungary city. Dandolo wanted it subjugated so Venice would have total control over the northern Adriatic, and now he had an army of thousands whom he could coerce to do his bidding. This will turn into the second (but not the last) disaster of the Fourth Crusade. See you tomorrow.

Geoffrey de Villehardouin

The influence of Byzantine art and culture on Italy (especially in the 13th century) was discussed yesterday, and I referred obliquely to a reason for it. The reason for it was the Fourth Crusade. Before we dig further into why the Fourth Crusade produced those influences, however, I want to mention a chief historical source of what happened on that crusade.

His name was Geoffrey de Villehardouin (his seal is to the left), and he lived from about 1150 until c.1213, not too many years after the Fourth Crusade ended. He was a literate French knight, who was made Marshal of Champagne in 1185. In 1199 the Crusade had been called by Pope Innocent III. On 28 November, Count Thibaud III of Champagne called a tournament for his nobles. Also present was Fulk of Neuilly, a preacher who fervently supported the Fourth Crusade.

Thibaud urged all present to "take up the Cross" and join Innocent's Crusade. They did, and chose Thibaud to lead their contingent. Thibaud died in 1201, a few years before the Crusade started; before he died, however, he had appointed Geoffrey and some others to go to Venice and make arrangements for ships to ferry the armies of Western Europe to the Holy Land.

In Venice, Geoffrey and the other envoys made arrangements for hundreds of ships, and predicted when (a few years hence) the armies would arrive over the Alps and reach Venice. He had to deal with the Doge of Venice, Enrico Dandolo, who at the time was well into his 80s but still a shrewd leader. Dandolo was eager for the revenue that would come from the armies of France, etc., bringing their money to pay for their passage.

What Geoffrey could not have known, however, is that all the different groups of armed men and supporters would not follow the same plan. Instead of meeting up in Venice, some chose a different approach. Several of the collected groups that chose to join this Crusade went to Marseilles and commissioned ships there. When The French group of which Geoffrey was a part arrived in Venice, there were too few Crusaders to be able to pay for the three years of ship-building costs incurred by the Venetians.

For Venice and the Crusaders, this seemed like a disaster. For Dandolo, however, it was an opportunity, and he knew just how to exploit it. Step one was to effectively incarcerate the entire army of thousands, and he had a way to do that.

Tomorrow we'll see how the well-intentioned Fourth Crusade went "off the rails."

The (Disastrous) 4th Crusade, Part 4

[see Part 1 here and Part 2 here, the intermezzo, and Part 3 here]

With former Emperor Isaac II Angelos dead at the end of January 1204, his deposed son Emperor Alexios IV Angelos turned to the Crusaders, asking for help. But they had been through this before, and Alexios had not honored on all his promises.

Imperial chamberlain Alexios Doukas proclaimed himself Emperor Alexios V—the citizens accepted him—and strangled Alexios IV. He then tried to get the Crusaders to leave his empire. In March of 1204, the Venetians and Crusaders decided there was no way to achieve a happy outcome without simply attacking Constantinople and taking what they wanted. Siege and military actions lasted from the end of March until 12 April, when several dozen Crusaders managed to breach the walls and allow some of their comrades in. A fire they started burned down a large section of the city. That night, Alexios V fled.

Three days of pillaging commenced, destroying or damaging or stealing countless works of art. Thousands of citizens were killed. The great Library of Constantinople was destroyed. The Hagia Sophia was desecrated. A contemporary Byzantine chronicler says:

Nor can the violation of the Great Church be listened to with equanimity. For the sacred altar, formed of all kinds of precious materials and admired by the whole world, was broken into bits and distributed among the soldiers, as was all the other sacred wealth of so great and infinite splendor.
When the sacred vases and utensils of unsurpassable art and grace and rare material, and the fine silver, wrought with gold, which encircled the screen of the tribunal and the ambo, of admirable workmanship, and the door and many other ornaments, were to be borne away as booty, mules and saddled horses were led to the very sanctuary of the temple. Some of these which were unable to keep their footing on the splendid and slippery pavement, were stabbed when they fell, so that the sacred pavement was polluted with blood and filth. [link]

Many of the priceless works of art wound up in Venice. For Venice and for Doge Enrico Dandolo, this was sweet revenge for an incident between Constantinople and Venice 30 years earlier, when Venetians in the city had all their property confiscated.

The Byzantine Empire was divided between Venice and the Crusading force, who elected Baldwin of Flanders to be their emperor. The upper classes and royalty of Constantinople fled the city; some of hem set up their own small kingdoms, in Epirus and Nicaea and Trebizond.

The thought that the Empire and therefore the Eastern Orthodox Church was now in the hands of the West so pleased Pope Innocent III that he lifted the excommunication placed on the Crusaders for having attacked and killed Christians. It would be 800 years before a Pope (John Paul II) would apologize for the tragedy, and for a Patriarch of Constantinople (Bartholomew I) to accept the apology.

The (Disastrous) 4th Crusade, Intermezzo

[see Part 1 here and Part 2 here]

[Meanwhile, In Constantinople...]

Alexios IV

Emperor Alexios III Angelos (c.1153-1211) overthrew his brother, Emperor Isaac II Angelos (1156-1204) in 1195; not your usual way to achieve the throne, but since Isaac had taxed his people heavily in order to start a war with Bulgaria that turned out to be a waste of resources, the army was glad to call Alexios "Emperor." Isaac was blinded and imprisoned in Constantinople. His son, Alexios IV Angelos, was also imprisoned.

In 1201, Alexios IV was smuggled out and taken to Germany, where his brother-in-law, Philip of Swabia, was king (Philip had married Irene Angelina, daughter of Isaac II). While in Germany, he met Boniface of Montferrat.

Boniface had been elected leader of the 4th Crusade. Of course, the financial troubles of the Crusade meant that they were indebted to Venice, whose Doge Enrico Dandolo had been made leader. In the winter of 1202-3, while the Crusading army was staying in Zara, Boniface went to visit Philip of Swabia, who was his cousin.

Alexios poured out his story of betrayal and exile, and made Boniface an offer: bring the Crusade through Constantinople, use its might to depose the usurper, and Alexios would promise him 10,000 soldiers, 500 knights to hold the Holy Land once the Crusade was successful, and enough money to pay off the debt to Venice and get out from under their control. Boniface might have been more wary of deals that seemed too good to be true, but Alexios threw in something that a Western Christian could not resist: he would make the Eastern Orthodox Church answerable to the Pope in Rome.

Boniface was thrilled, and took the offer, along with Alexios, back to Zara to present him to the army.  The army went for it, as did Dandolo. Remember that Venice was due 50% of any "spoils of war"; a potential war with Constantinople could produce a lot of spoils. Come Easter, the army set off, not for the Holy Land, but for Constantinople.

[to be continued]

The (Disastrous) 4th Crusade, Part 2

[see Part 1 here]

From Venice to Zara, and later to Constantinople

Those members of the 4th Crusade who went to Venice were lodged on the island called St. Nicholas. When it was discovered that they did not have enough money to fulfill their part of the contract with Venice, they were stuck on St. Nicholas until some agreement was reached. According to the chronicle of Geoffrey de Villehardouin, Doge Enrico Dandolo said to his people:

"The King of Hungary has taken from us Zara in Sclavonia [...]; and never shall we recover it with all the power that we possess, save with the help of these people. Let us therefore ask them to help us to reconquer it, and we will remit the payment of the debt of 34,000 marks of silver, until such time as it shall please God to allow us to gain the moneys by conquest, we and they together." [source]

There was a great deal of disagreement over this among the Crusaders—Simon de Montfort was one voice in opposition—although it was finally ratified. There were two major objections against it: 1) it was a distraction from the crucial major goal, and 2) Zara was a Christian city; to attack it when your purpose was to fight heretics was outrageous!

The Doge then increased the stakes. At a Mass at St. Mark with Venetians and Crusaders present, Enrico Dandolo (who was at least in his 80s, and blind) swore to join them and take up the Cross if they consented to let him be their leader. The Crusaders accepted gladly, and more Venetians joined the Crusade.

The Crusading force sailed to Zara, and set up a siege. Certain leaders of Zara came to the Doge and said they would hand over the city if their lives were spared. Dandolo said he would discuss these terms with the rest of the Crusade; while he did, Villehardouin tells us that the Crusading faction that was opposed to fighting Christians told the Zarans that the Crusade would never attack a Christian city, and they could resist in safety. Also, the Abbot of Vaux (a Crusader) forbade the army from attacking Zara.

But attack they did. Dandolo was enraged that he had a deal with Zara that was foiled by others.  The siege brought up mangonels and other weapons. They pelted the walls and towers with stones for five days, and had sappers start on one wall and a tower.* This was enough to motivate Zara to surrender.

By this time winter was approaching, and the Doge decided they should stay in Zara until spring. There were troubles in Zara, between the different nationalities, but that is not part of our narrative. What must be mentioned is that Pope Innocent III excommunicated the Crusaders for attacking a Christian city.

The worst is yet to come. To understand it, however, we must turn aside to a case of royal family strife in Constantinople. [to be continued]

*Sappers would dig under a structure to cause it to collapse; sometimes they employed explosives.

The (Disastrous) 4th Crusade, Part 1

The Kingdom of Jerusalem, established after the First Crusade by Europeans, had been re-conquered by Saladin in 1187. Much of that was reclaimed by the Third Crusade (1189-1192), but Jerusalem itself eluded recapture. This was a problem for Europeans.

The Doge of Venice makes an offer to the 4th Crusade

In 1198, Pope Innocent III began his papacy with the preaching of a new crusade. At first, no one was rushing to join. England and France were busy fighting each other, Germany was opposed to recent papal overreach, and it was only a few years since the last Crusade—people were tired, and Crusades took energy and money. Innocent had an ally in the charismatic Fulk of Neuilly (about whom we know almost nothing outside of this sentence), who preached the Crusade and drew several to it, including Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester.

Moving thousands of men, servants, supplies, et cetera, takes a lot of ships, and a handful of men were sent to the Mediterranean coast to negotiate for ships to transport the Crusading army to the Holy Land. Geoffrey de Villehardouin, one of the six envoys, wrote a lengthy chronicle telling the story. In Venice, they put their need before Doge Enrico Dandolo and the Venetian council, and received this answer:

"We will build transports to carry 4500 horses, and 9000 squires, and ships for 4500 knights, and 20,000 sergeants of foot. And we will agree also to purvey food for these horses and people during nine months. This is what we undertake to do at the least, on condition that you pay us for each horse four marks, and for each man two marks.
"And the covenants we are now explaining to you, we undertake to keep, wheresoever we may be, for a year, reckoning from the day on which we sail from the port of Venice in the service of God and of Christendom. Now the sum total of the expenses above named amounts to 85,000 marks.
"And this will we do moreover. For the love of God, we will add to the fleet 50 armed galleys on condition that, so long as we act in company, of all conquests in land or money, whether at sea or on dry ground, we shall have the half, and you the other half. Now consult together to see if you, on your parts, can accept and fulfil these covenants." [source]

The envoys agreed to these terms, and returned to France to inform the leaders of the Crusade of their success. The army was gathered and a start date was set for the following year.

According to Geoffrey, a large number of Crusaders went, not to Venice, but to the port of Marseille, or Genoa, or other ports. (To be honest: Marseille makes sense if you're starting out in France; why have to cross the Alps and go to Venice?) Perhaps the envoys should have haggled for a lower price for transports; after all, Venice was going to get half of any spoils of war.

Whatever the case, when the Crusaders arrived in Venice, there were not as many as advertised, and they could only gather 35,000 marks, a far cry from the 85,000 of the contract. They had been assembled on the island of St. Nicholas to avoid the overcrowding and potential problems of having thousands of strangers on the streets of Venice, but this effectively made them captives of Venice. Venice did not want to cancel the contract: they would lose all the money they had invested, and Venice' reputation might suffer. They had to come up with a solution that allowed the Crusaders to continue on their journey and that was financially satisfactory for Venice.

...and that's exactly what they did. [to be continued]

Simon de Montfort

Plaque on the site of Montfort's death

Simon de Montfort has been mentioned before, opposing Henry III, but that was the 6th Earl of Leicester. The Simon de Montfort we want to talk about today was his father, the 5th Earl.

Simon was born in 1160, succeeding his father as Baron de Montfort in 1181. In 1199, while taking part in a tournament, he heard Fulk of Neuilly preaching the 4th Crusade and decided to "take up the Cross" along with his brother, Guy (who had been on the 3rd Crusade already), and Count Theobald de Champagne.

Certain actions of the 4th Crusade were not to his liking, however. For one thing, on behalf of Venice and at the direction of Doge Enrico Dandolo, the Crusade was diverted to attack the city of Zara—a Christian city—on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. Montfort was opposed to this, and the "mismanagement" of the Crusade; he chose to break away from the main Crusading body. In the words of a contemporary chronicler who was with the 4th Crusade:

Then there befell an adventure which weighed heavily upon the host; for one of the great barons of the host, by name Simon of Montfort, had made private covenant with the King of Hungary, who was at enmity with those of the host, and went to him, abandoning the host. With him went Guy of Montfort his brother, [...], and the abbot of Vaux, who was a monk of the order of the Cistercians, and many others. And not long after another great lord of the host, called Enguerrand of Boves, joined the King of Hungary, together with Hugh, Enguerrand's brother, and such of the other people of their country as they could lead away.
These left the host, as you have just heard; and this was a great misfortune to the host, and to such as left it a great disgrace. [Chronicle of the Fourth Crusade, Geoffrey de Villehardouin]

Geoffrey probably had personal reasons for declaring this a disgrace (some of the mismanagement of the Crusade can be laid squarely at his feet), but Montfort clearly could not countenance a Crusading army attacking Christians. Neither could Pope Innocent III, who excommunicated the attackers' actions.*

Montfort was a supporter of the new Dominican order, having known its founder Dominic Guzman, and a devout Christian. After returning to Europe, Montfort was instrumental in the Albigensian Crusade in 1209, a war against the Cathars. (The Cathars were considered heretics for some of their unorthodox ideas.) He was a good tactician and a ruthless leader, willing to carry out orders from the Church no matter how harsh, such as when in 1210 he had 140 Cathars burned alive at Château de Minerve, a Cathar stronghold.

For his efforts, King Philip Augustus granted him the lands of Raymond of Toulouse, who was in Aragon. The difficulty was that Toulouse did not want to be handed over to someone else, so Montfort needed to besiege Toulouse in order to take control. After nine months of siege, Montfort was killed by a rock to the head thrown by a type of catapult called a mangonel.

He died on 25 June 1218, 796 years ago today.

*We will look at the 4th Crusade a little more tomorrow.

Enrico Dandolo

This past Saturday, the 21st of June, was the anniversary of the death of Enrico Dandolo, the 42nd Doge of Venice. His tenure as Doge had great significance for Venice, and had disastrous consequences for Constantinople.

Born about 1107, he had a successful career as a diplomat who came to true prominence in 1171 when Constantinople imprisoned all Venetians and confiscated their property. The Doge at the time, Doge Vitale II Michiel, gathered a force to attack Constantinople, but the plan failed when plague in 1172 killed many in the expedition. Michiel was killed on his return to Venice by the angry citizenry, but the returning Enrico Dandolo was made ambassador to Constantinople. A treaty was finally brokered in 1186, but the enmity between Venice and Constantinople remained, as we shall see.

In 1192, Dandolo became the 42nd Doge. By this time, he was in his 80s* and blind—one contemporary chronicler (Geoffrey de Villehardouin) claimed it was due to a head wound—but his cleverness made him the popular choice, and his actions over the next decade justified it. He reformed Venetian currency, creating new coins of different denominations. One coin, the grosso, was consistently minted with 98.5% pure silver, making it a reliable standard for trade in the Mediterranean and increasing the economic prestige of Venice.

His biggest impact on history, however, came during the 4th Crusade. In the next few posts we will take a look at the 4th Crusade and why it went horribly wrong.

*This is an assumption; one scholar believes he has clear evidence for 1107 as the year of Dandolo's birth, but the level of activity he showed after becoming Doge prompts some to think he must have been a younger man.