Placing Blame

Yesterday we looked at Geoffrey de Villehardouin's account of the Fourth Crusade and how he managed to obscure any culpability of his in the major decision-making that took the Crusade in so many wrong directions ethically. Just as he was about to get to the attack of the Crusaders and Venetians on Constantinople, he slows down the pace and reminds the reader of:

...those who sailed from other ports than Venice, and of the ships of Flanders that had sojoumed during the winter at Marseilles, and had all gone over in the summer to the land of Syria; and these were far more in number than the host before Constantinople.

Notice how he lets you know the the group in Constantinople was significantly smaller (so marvel at all they were able to accomplish), and the others group was so much larger (meaning if they had joined up in Venice then the Crusade never would have had the financial difficulties that led to these disasters).

One could argue that the larger group was the Crusade, rather than the smaller group through Venice, since the larger group managed to get to the Holy Land. Geoffrey assures you that their choice was sinful:

...for in that case would Christendom have been for ever exalted. But because of their sins, God would not so have it, for some died of the sickness of the land, and some turned back to their own homes. Nor did they perform any great deeds, or achieve aught of good, in the land overseas.

Geoffrey neglects to mention how many of his own company died from illness or warfare.

And well does this book bear witness, that of those who avoided the host of Venice, there was not one but suffered harm or shame. He therefore must be accounted wise who holds to the better course.

As it turns out, Geoffrey's is not the only account of the Crusade. A knight from Picardy named Robert de Clari was on the Crusade, and his account is understandably different, since he was never part of any high-level meetings and negotiations. He shows no knowledge of (or chooses not to cast blame on) other Crusaders who did not go to Venice. His account is that, upon reaching Venice, they simply did not have enough to pay the Venetians, and the Venetians—who he thought already decided to accompany the Crusade—then decide to ask for the spoils of the adventure to repay the price of the ships.

Robert de Clari also claims that he saw, after the Sack of Constantinople, a cloth that, from his description, sounds like the Shroud of Turin. I want to mention that tomorrow.

Geoffrey's Account

Remember Geoffrey de Villehardouin? He was one of the leaders of the Fourth Crusade who negotiated with Venice to get the Crusaders across the Mediterranean, which turned out to be a bad deal. You could say that it wasn't Geoffrey's fault that a large number of Crusaders took port from Marseilles instead, but let's talk about the other decisions made by Geoffrey and the leaders. Agreeing to attack Zara (for which they were temporarily excommunicated), agreeing to ally themselves with Prince Alexios, agreeing to attack Constantinople—none of these were wise or appropriate for a group who had taken a vow to free the Holy land.

Geoffrey, a literate man who was involved in all the high-level discussions, wrote an account, De la Conquête de Constantinople ("On the Conquest of Constantinople"), in which he shows absolutely no shame for a Crusade attacking a Christian city. He never criticizes the actions of the Crusade leaders. In fact, he stresses that the young Emperor Alexios IV offered them more and wanted them to stay:

Now the term of your departure is nigh, and your fellowship with the Venetians is timed only to last till the feast of St. Michael. And within so short a term I cannot fulfil our covenant. Be it known to you therefore, that, if you abandon me, the Greeks hate me because of you: I shall losemy land, and they will kill me. But now do this thing that I ask of you: remain here till March, and I will entertain your ships for one year from the feast of St. Michael, and bear the cost of the Venetians, and will give you such things as you may stand in need of till Easter. And within that term I shall have placed my land in such case that I cannot lose it again; and your covenant will be fulfilled, for I shall have paid such moneys as are due to you, obtaining them from all mi lands; and I shall be ready also with ships either to go with you myself, or to send others, as I have covenanted; and you will have the summer from end to end in which to carry on the war against the Saracens.

Geoffrey lays the groundwork for the Crusade's delay, and makes Alexios' later ability to pay them a much greater betrayal of their trust in him. When the Crusaders realize that they cannot trust Alexios to make good on his promise, Geoffrey is part of the small embassy that goes to him and demands what is possible, but Geoffrey wants sympathy for his embassy, stressing that they were in danger by speaking to the emperor:

When they got outside the gate, there was not one of them but felt glad at heart; nor is that to be marvelled at, for they had escaped from very great peril, and it held to very little that they were not all killed or taken.

He then breaks off from the narrative about Constantinople to blame others. I'll tell you about that 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 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.