BYZANTIUM, VENICE AND THE FOURTH CRUSADE
Translation: EUROPE, THE U.S. AND THE FOURTH CRUSADE
by Donald M. Nicol
(In order for the reader to correctly transpose the following paper into present-day geopolitics, here're some additional "translations" that should be kept in mind:
Venetians = Americans
The Doge of Venice = US President
The Greeks = the Europeans
The Franks = the Brits
Pope = Bilderberg
Church = Democracy
Constantinople = Brussels --not as much as the city proper than as the EU's symbol
Saracens = Arab/African countries)
The Venetians were reluctant crusaders. Crusades were bad for business. When reproached for trading with the Saracens, as they were by Byzantine emperors and popes on numerous occasions, the Venetians replied that they were different from other races. They had no farms and fields to call their own. Their livelihood and prosperity depended on the sea and the trade that went by the sea. From time to time they agreed to refrain from supplying the Muslims with arms and timber for shipbuilding. But they were never entirely in favour of holy wars committed to massacring their customers in the East.
When considering the part played by the Venetians in the Fourth Crusade it is instructive to recall their attitude to the earlier holy wars directed from the West. The Venetians had been slow to join the bandwagon of the First Crusade in 1096. Their commercial rivals from Genoa and Pisa were quicker off the mark. The news that others were making trading profits out of the crusader states that had been established in Palestine finally concentrated their minds.
With Antioch and Jerusalem both in Christian hands, the outcome of the crusade was unexpectedly hopeful. The Venetians saw the prospect of new markets opening up in the Levant. They could no longer stand on the sidelines. In 1099 they equipped the largest fleet that had ever sailed from Italy to the East. It a curious fact that the only major source for the first Venetian intervention in the crusade is the account of the translation of the relics of St. Nicholas of Myra from Asia Minor to Venice. The patriotic monk who composed it clearly through that the acquisition of another saint for his city was more important than the holy war The Venetian fleet, commanded by the Doge's son, reached Jaffa in June 1110; and there, in characteristic style, they stated their terms for lending their help to the Latin King of Jerusalem. They would serve him for two months. In return their merchants would be granted free trade in all his dominions and one-third of every town that they helped to capture from the Muslims. In the event their contract ran out after the conquest of Haifa and their fleet sailed off for home carrying the relics of St. Nicholas. They had established the principle that they were crusaders by contract.
Ten years later the Doge Ordelafo Falier led a second fleet to Palestine. There is no evidence that he had taken the Cross as a crusader or soldier of Christ. But he arrived in time to assist King Baldwin of Jerusalem in the siege of Sidon. Sidon fell to the Christians and the Venetians had their reward in the form of new trading concessions in the city of Acre, where the Genoese fondly believed that they had already cornered the market. In 1120, after the battle of the Field of Blood, Baldwin sent a desperate plea for help to Venice. The pope endorsed his appeal. The Venetians were cast in the role of crusaders. This time they were enthusiastic. The reason for their enthusiasm was that the Byzantine Emperor, John II Komnenos, had just refused to confirm the privileges of Venetian merchants in Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire. They were in a mood to retaliate with a show of force. It could be done under the cover of a crusade. In 1122 they assembled a fleet of one hundred ships, war and cargo ships carrying about fifteen thousand men. The Doge of Venice, Domenico Michiel, took personal command. He addressed a gathering of his people in St. Mark's and summoned them to go with him on a holy war. His flagship flew the banner of St. Peter which the pope had sent him. Never before had the Venetians shown such eagerness to be seen as defenders of the Holy Land.
They sailed from Venice in August 1122. They seemed to be in no hurry to get to Jerusalem. Uppermost in the Doge's mind was vengeance on the Greeks. Corfu was his first port of call. He and his men laid siege to Corfu throughout the winter. They withdrew, with great reluctance, only in the spring of 1123, when an urgent message reached them from Jerusalem to say that King Baldwin had been taken prisoner. It was then that the Venetian crusade began. The Doge led his fleet to Acre and sank or seized most of the Egyptian navy off Ascalon. It was a memorable victory. In 1124 he extracted his reward from the crusaders on the spot. Venetian merchants were to be granted a commercial quarter in every town in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and to be exempted from all taxes. Once again it was clear that the Venetians were contract crusaders. They would not serve the cause for love. The promise of a martyr's crown was less attractive than the guarantee of material rewards in the way of free trade. They had agreed to help in the conquest of Tyre and Ascalon. But having driven the Muslims out of Tyre, they felt that they had fulfilled their obligations as crusaders and announced that they were leaving. They had other and more important business to do on the way home.
Corfu had resisted them. They would take their revenge on the Byzantine emperor elsewhere. On their leisurely cruise back to Venice they plundered Rhodes, attacked the islands of Chios, Samos, Lesbos and Andros, and destroyed the town of Methoni or Modon in the Peloponnese. They still flew the flag of St. Peter; but their only act of piety was to relieve the church in Chios of the relics of St. Isidore to add to their collection in Venice. In June 1125 Domenico Michiel brought his fleet in triumph up the Adriatic to a hero's welcome. He had done glorious deeds, bringing comfort to the Christians in the Holy Land and, above all, punishing the Greeks for their emperor's effrontery. The later Venetian accounts of his expedition confirm the impression that its prime purpose had been the punishment of the Greeks. The inscription on the tomb of Domenico Michiel describes him not as a pious crusader but as 'the terror of the Greeks and the glory of the Venetians' (Terror Graecorum... et Laus Venetorum). It was the last time in the twelfth century that the Venetians pretended to be crusaders. They took no part in the Second and Third Crusades, except as paid carriers and suppliers of transport ships. They had got all they wanted out of the Holy Land. They had secured their commercial interests in Acre and Tyre and throughout the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. They were far more concerned about the renewal of their much more lucrative trade privileges in Constantinople. It is said that their relationship with the Byzantine emperor had become so bitter that it was decreed that all Venetians must shave their chins and stop wearing beards like the Greeks.
Domenico Michiel's expedition in 1122 might have set the pattern for the participation of Venice in the Fourth Crusade eighty years later. It pointed the moral that crusades patronised by the Doge of Venice were likely to be used for ulterior purposes concealed under a cloak of piety, to have objectives that suited the interest of Venice, and to be undertaken at a predetermined price and for a limited period of time. The Fourth Crusade met every one of these requirements for the Venetians. The ulterior purposes for which a crusade could be exploited were many. In 1122 Domenico Michiel had used his fleet to besiege Corfu for six months before going any nearer to the Holy Land. In 1202 the Doge Enrico Dandolo employed the crusaders whom he was ferrying to the East to attack and conquer the city of Zara on the Dalmatian coast. It was Dandolo who had supplied the ships. The knights and barons of the Fourth Crusade were therefore at his mercy. The attack on Zara was the first of his ulterior purposes. An element of religious fervour must also be introduced. Enrico Dandolo rose to the occasion. His cloak of piety as a crusader was almost impenetrable. Domenico Michiel had taken the Cross and exhorted the congregation in St. Mark's to join him. Dandolo staged a much more dramatic exhibition before an assembly of Venetians in the same church, but not before he had obtained a promise from the leaders of the crusade that they would put their army at his disposal for the conquest of Zara. Once assured of this, he mounted the pulpit in St. Mark's and announced that he himself would now take the Cross and go on the crusade, leaving Venice in the care of his son. Old, tired and frail though he was, he believed that no one could command and lead the crusade as well as he. It was the truth; for Dandolo knew the waters, the ports and the riches of the Adriatic and Aegean Seas better than any of the
crusaders. He had sailed those seas before. He could lead them wherever he wished. Dandolo was overcome by his own eloquence and piety. He came down from the pulpit and knelt at the high altar of St. Mark's weeping with emotion while the Cross of a pilgrim soldier of Christ was sewn not on his shoulder but on his hat so that all the world could see it. It was a moment of high drama - a moment too when some must have felt that the moral and effective leadership of the crusade had passed into Venetian hands. There were those who felt this so strongly that they refused to go to Zara and opted out. The predetermined price payable to the Venetians for their services had already been set. It was more than the crusaders could afford. The fact that they could not pay it has been seen as the first cause of the tragedy or the triumph that was to end in the Latin conquest of Constantinople. The limited contract between Venetians and crusaders had also been determined. The Venetians agreed to serve the cause for a period of twelve months. It proved to be such a lucrative cause that the contract was extended. The Doge Dandolo never returned to his native Venice.
It would be tedious to rehearse all the arguments and theories about the diversion of the Fourth Crusade. The
modern literature on the subject is more abundant than the original sources. Yet many problems remain unsolved. The sources are reticent where they might have been more explicit or lacking where they are most needed. There is, in particular, no contemporary Venetian account of the enterprise in which the Doge of Venice played so conspicuous a part. Posterity has therefore been left to infer or to guess at what his motives were. The main eye-witness accounts are those of Geoffrey de Villehardoin, Robert of Clari and Niketas Choniates. All three writers are biased. It could hardly be otherwise. Robert of Clari was a naïve reporter of facts as he saw them. Niketas had no intimate knowledge of the way in which the crusade was planned and directed; and, having suffered at the receiving end of it in Constantinople, he could hardly present an objective picture. Villehardouin was the only one who could have known all the facts, and yet there are crucial points in his narrative when he seems reluctant to tell all that he knows. Finally, there are the acts and letters of Pope Innocent III whose crusade it was. Innocent tried hard to keep control of the holy war that he had set in motion and he was a prolific correspondent. But it is evident that he was often poorly informed about the decisions taken by its leaders; and some of his letters to them were oddly mistimed or misdirected.
In assessing what went wrong and why the crusade went to Constantinople and not to its proper destination, the
modern historian has therefore to work with sources that are full in detail but deficient in analysis of how the details
came together. Some have concluded that the events of 1204 came about simply by a concatenation of circumstances, a series of mishaps and human errors whose inevitable outcome neither the pope nor any other power could prevent. Such is the manner in which Villehardouin presents the tale, a version which allows for no ulterior motives of greed or gain. Other historians, eager to apportion blame for what turned out to be a great crime, try to read between the lines of Villehardouin's text, the tragic and bitter account of Niketas Choniates, and the public pronouncements of the pope, to name a culprit. The suspicion remains, however, that the blame for the affair falls mainly on those who covered their tracks by committing nothing to paper at the time. Niketas had no doubt who was the villain of the piece. He was the Doge of Venice, Enrico Dandolo.
The two most recent accounts of the Fourth Crusade, by Donald Queller and the late John Godfrey, are as different as could be. Queller confines his study to the years between 1201 and 1204. He has little to say about Greco-Latin relations in the late twelfth century, which might help to explain the mutual suspicion between fellow Christians and the vengeful spirit of the Venetians. For Queller the capture of Constantinople in 1203 and 1204 was the result of a number of accidents and coincidences, which drew the Crusade "step by step to the shores of the Bosporus." He depicts its participants as frail human beings, each with his own mind and conscience, his own simple or complex motives, and collectively the victims of their own miscalculations. A faithful reading of the western sources naturally induces this sympathetic understanding, since this is how the crusaders saw themselves. We do not know how the Venetians saw themselves, for they were prudent enough not to record their own part in the adventure until long after it had happened. John Godfrey's account is less fatalistic and perhaps more prosaic; but he sets the Crusade in its historical context, sticks to the facts and makes no accusations.
The modern fashion among western historians is to play down the role of the Venetians in the Fourth Crusade. Cicero, when prosecuting offenders, was fond of asking the question cui bono - who stood to gain most from the offence committed? Even if the Fourth Crusade was a mischance rather than a misdemeanour, to whose advantage was it, in prospect and in retrospect? No one can doubt that the chief potential and actual beneficiary was the commercial Republic of Venice. The Venetians themselves were aware of this. They were not ashamed of what they had helped to achieve. After the event, however, they were a little anxious lest people should think that their leader's cloak of piety had slipped. The Doge Enrico Dandolo had, after all, been excommunicated by the pope for his attack on Zara. He was still under the ban of excommunication in 1204; though curiously it seems to have bothered the crusaders little and the Doge not at all. The pope performed some expert juggling with canon law to
permit the crusaders to travel in the company of such sinners for fear that the Crusade would break up. It made
little difference. The day before the final assault on Constantinople the Latin priests and bishops with the Crusade called all the host to mass. Venetians as well as crusaders took communion. The clergy assured them that what
they were about to do was God's work. To avenge the murder of the young Emperor Alexios Angelos, whom they had brought with them from the West, and to put the Byzantine church under obedience to Rome were causes well within the definition of a just war. The Greeks were wilfully in schism from Rome. Those who died in battle against them would earn the same indulgences as crusaders against the Muslims.
As I have said, there is no contemporary Venetian account of what took place between the years 1201 and 1204. Whether this is by accident or by design I do not know. The major Venetian sources for the period were both written about 1229, in the time of Enrico Dandolo's successor, Pietro Ziani. One is the Historia Ducum Veneticorum, or History of the Doges of Venice. Strangely enough, the section of this work most relevant to the Fourth Crusade is missing in the manuscript, the narrative of events from 1178 to 1203. Its contents can only be deduced from the few pages summarizing them in the so-called Chronicon Justiniani, which was composed in the fourteenth century. It is a matter-of-fact narration, informative on Byzantine dynastic politics and on the affair at Zara. But it reveals nothing about Venetian motives; and it does not even mention the pope. The other nearly contemporary Venetian source is the continuation or 'third edition' of the Chronicon Altinate. This is an even shorter and balder account of the affair which adds nothing to the known facts and to their interpretation.
The earliest full account of the Fourth Crusade written by a Venetian is that by Martin da Canale, a chronicler perhaps rather rashly ignored by most modern historians. Martin da Canal(e) composed his Estoires de Venise between 1267 and 1275. The Fourth Crusade occupies some twelve pages of his text. He wrote in French in the hope that by so doing he would broadcast the greatness of Venice to a wider audience. Alas, he was not a bestseller. Only one manuscript exists. Its latest editor proves beyond doubt that Da Canale was a Venetian, that he learnt his French in the service of the Lusignan Kings of Cyprus, and that he was a government official in Venice. In his Preface he claims to have based his information on earlier Venetian chronicles written in Latin. Being fluent in French, he might also have consulted Robert of Clari and Geoffrey of Villehardouin on the Fourth
Crusade. It seems that they were unknown to him. His approach to the matter is quite different from either. His
account is indeed a mixture of fact and fantasy, which is why it has been neglected by more sober modern historians. It is frequently and manifestly inaccurate. It is naïve and blatanly apologetic. It is unashamedly chauvinistic. Yet it crystallised Venetian opinion on what had happened in 1204; and later Venetian chroniclers consciously or unconsciously expressed the same general views. It is provable that the greatest of them, Andrea Dandolo in the fourteenth century, had the text of Martin da Canale before him when writing his own more celebrated Chronicle.
The fact that he finished his History in about 1275, some seventy years after the Fourth Crusade, need not be held
against him. Historians today writing about the Great War express opinions very different from those who led its armies and navies and fought in it. Da Canale was also living and writing after the great experiment of a Latin Empire of Constantinople was over. What he called the perfidious Greeks were back in control of their city. This
was for him a sad and shameful fact; so he devoted very few words to it. His account of how that Latin Empire came into being is much longer and far from sad and shameful. The conquest of Constantinople, not once but twice, was inspired by Venice; and it was justified as a glorious and a godly deed, promoted and blessed by the pope. It was the Venetians, alone and unaided, we are told, who stormed the city of Zara, despite offers of help from the Franks. It was the Venetians alone, led by their Doge, who first put the crusaders in possession of Constantinople in 1203. When it came to the second attack the Franks declared that they would capture the city without any help from the Venetians. The Doge knew that they could not do it on their own. "These Franks," he said, "have no experience of fighting by sea. They are better at charging round on horseback." So he summoned his own men, saying: "With the aid of Christ and St. Mark, who have guided your ancestors and still guide you as Venetians, you shall have this city by tomorrow and you will all be rich men." The message is that without the Venetians the venture would never have succeeded, which may well be true. But there was nothing shameful about it. They did it all for the love of God and the church and for the honour of Venice.
The pope's part in the Crusade is interpreted accordingly. Early on in the proceedings, we are told, a young Greek
boy was brought to the pope by his relatives. "This lad," they said, "is the Emperor of Constantinople, but the
arrogant Greeks will not have him as their lord. He has come to you as a son to his father to ask your help in recovering his empire." The pope welcomed the boy, for he was descended from the royal house of France. The boy was, of course, the young Alexios IV Angelos, who had escaped from prison in Constantinople after his father had been dethroned. He was well connected in the West, though by no stretch of the imagination was he decended from the royal house of France. No matter. The pope, we are told, at once ordered the Franks and Venetians, who had got as far as Zara, to alter the route of their crusade. They should sail not for Jerusalem but for Constantinople to right the wrong done to the young Emperor of the Greeks. He sent the lad with a papal legate to Zara, where he was warmly received by Enrico Dandolo, especially as the legate announced that, by going on their errand of mercy to Constantinople, the crusaders would earn the same indulgences as for going to Jerusalem. The Doge piously observed to the Franks that they could hardly refuse to obey the order of the pope, their spiritual father. They
agreed; and the Doge took the boy Emperor of Constantinople in his arms. When they reached the City and it became evident that the arrogant Greeks did not want their infant Emperor, the Doge convinced the Franks that they would have to fulfil the pope's command by force, for otherwise he would excommunicate them. He exhorted them to storm and capture the city once again, but not to plunder it. "We are crusaders," he said. "We must plunder no one. Let us recover our expenses, put the boy on his rightful throne and go on our way to make war on the infidel, as we vowed to do." The second assault on Constantinople, masterminded by the Venetians, succeeded in April 1204. And so, concludes Canale, "it was through the wisdom of this great man [Dandolo] that a city as grand as Constantinople was taken; and this he did in the service of the Holy Church."
Although Canale was not much read by his contemporaries, his version of how the Fourth Crusade got to Constantinople reflected the generally accepted opinion in Venice. It is, incidentally, much in line with the explanation given in the Chronicle of the Morea. Kenneth Setton calls it a falsification of the facts and a rewriting of history. So it is; but it was done with a specific purpose. It was meant to dispel any lingering doubts that the Doge of Venice had acted in any way contrary to the wishes of the pope and to prove that the profit and honour of the Republic of Venice were synonymous with the service of Holy Mother Church. In the eyes of Martin da Canale, Enrico Dandolo was the hero, not the villain of the piece. Strangely he has nothing to say about the personal injury which Dandolo is supposed to have suffered in Constantinople in the days of the Emperor Manuel I, an injury which left him at least partially blind. The story is most graphically reported in the Chronicle of Novgorod and it was believed and recorded by Andrea Dandolo in the fourteenth century. It added a motive of personal
revenge to the causes of the Venetian attack on the Greeks. Dandolo's dislike and distrust of the Greeks were, however, shared by many other Latins. The Venetians in particular had never forgiven the same Emperor Manuel for his treatment of them in 1171, when he arrested all their merchants in Constantinople and elsewhere for being disorderly. Enrico Dandolo is said to have complained that he could not rest until he had taken his vengeance on the Greeks for what their Emperor Manuel had done to his people. But revenge was too base a motive for Martin da Canale. He had to present Dandolo as a selfless champion of the Church and the Republic.
The fact remains that Dandolo was probably the only man in the whole Crusade who had been to Constantinople before. He had been sent there as an ambassador at least twice. He knew his Greeks, and he was not fond of them, whether or not he had suffered injury at their hands. He also knew the leading men of the Venetian community living inside Constantinople. Their presence in the city must surely have been a factor in Dandolo's calculations, a factor rather neglected by historians of the Fourth Crusade. We do not know how many there were, but they could be numbered in thousands rather than hundreds. When Manuel I had arrested all Venetians in his empire in 1171, their commercial quarter in Constantinople had been closed. But by 1184, when Dandolo was sent to negotiate with the Emperor Andronikos Komnenos, several merchants of Venice had already moved back to their premises; and three years later the Emperor Isaac II reaffirmed all the rights and privileges of Venetian residents as they had existed in the past. In 1189 he allowed them to expand their quarter in Constantinople. In 1198 Alexios III clarified their legal status as resident aliens.22 By the time of the Fourth Crusade they formed a large and influential community. Yet they were uncomfortably aware that they resided in the imperial city under sufferance. They had never been allowed to appoint a spokesman or consul of their own. The sight of their Doge sailing in from Venice at the head of the biggest fleet they had ever seen must have cheered them up. Dandolo certainly knew many of them personally. He could rely on them for inside information as his agents or spies. The crusaders had no such contacts in Constantinople, except for poor little Agnes of France, the daughter of Louis VII, who perversely refused to talk to them when they found her. Marriage to the tyrant Andronikos Komnenos when she was twelve and he was sixty had probably unhinged her. The Venetians in Constantinople knew even better than Dandolo that the errand of mercy which brought the Crusade there was a sham. The Greeks would never rally round the young pretender Alexios IV who had arrived on the shoulders of the crusaders and had sworn to unite the Greek Church with Rome as a reward. Dandolo arranged for Alexios to be paraded before the sea-walls of the city so that his subjects could acknowledge him. They threw stones at him. It was no more than a charade, stage-managed by the Doge to prove the point that the crusaders would have to fight to achieve what they had come to do.
What then had they come to do? To my mind this became quite clear only in March 1204, just before their second assault on Constantinople. The Crusade had jumped through many hoops on its way there, either by accident or by design. But until March 1204 none of its participants had openly suggested that their object was anything more than the reinstatement of the young pretender on his throne, after which they would collect their promised rewards and go on their way. When this object was thwarted they felt betrayed, and not without reason. To avenge themselves on the treacherous Greeks, even to survive, they must storm the City a second time and collect their own rewards before continuing their journey. But when the decision was taken and when the moment seemed ripe for the attack, in March 1204, the scope of the enterprise was suddenly extended. Before that moment there had been no talk of staying in Constantinople for ever or of electing an emperor of their own. Still less had there been
talk of conquering all the Byzantine Empire. Now, in anticipation of their conquest of the City, they made plans
for both of these eventualities. A treaty of partition was drawn up, dividing the spoils and the honours between
crusaders and Venetians. It is an illuminating document in many ways. Again it is tempting to suggest that only the
Venetians can have known what they were agreeing. The partition treaty lists numerous Byzantine towns, ports,
islands and provinces which were nothing but names to the crusaders. The Venetians, however, were well acquainted with most of them; and they had to hand a ready-made gazeteer of the empire in the text of the charter granted to them by Alexios III only six years before.
When, why and how did this change of heart and plan come about? What persuaded the leaders of the Crusade that
it had become necessary not only to capture Constantinople but also to transform the whole Byzantine Empire into a Latin Empire of Romania? This was surely no mischance or accident of fortune. The sources are not clear on the
matter. Villehardouin emphasises the solemnity of the pact between Franks and Venetians by revealing that any who did not observe it would be excommunicated by the clergy. Martin da Canale is the first to provide a text, or one version of a text, of the Partition treaty. His explanation of the decision to elect a Latin Emperor and to proceed to the conquest of the Byzantine Empire runs like this: the pope had said in advance that, if and when the Empire of Constantinople was left without an heir to its throne, the crusaders should divide it among themselves. Now, when Canale says that the pope ordered them to do such and such, he generally means the Doge of Venice; for in his mind the Doge was the agent and the interpreter of the pope's will.
[Continued on next post!] |
