For centuries the oil lamps under its fabulous dome had gleamed through the arches supporting it, acting as a pharos to ships outward or homeward bound.

The Doge and the leaders of the barons took over one of the Byzantine Emperor’s summer palaces in Chalcedon. The others had their tents and pavilions brought out from the ships and set up in the town or on its outskirts. As Villehardouin tells us: “The horses were now disembarked and all the knights and sergeants landed in full armour, leaving no one aboard the ships except the sailors. The land around was beautiful and fruitful; heaps of cut corn which had just been reaped were stacked in the fields so that anyone in need could take as much as he wanted…”

Two days later, having plundered Chalcedon, the fleet moved a mile to the north. It rounded Damalis (Leander’s Tower) and came to anchor in the well-protected harbour of Chrysopolis (modern Üsküdar). The Crusaders and the Venetians moved up and encamped around Chrysopolis, the leaders taking possession of another of the Emperor’s summer palaces. Meanwhile the troops ransacked the coastal plain.

Whatever reports may by now have reached the Emperor from spies or well-wishers in Corfu as to the aims and intentions of the Crusaders, he can have been in little doubt that they would cost his city and his country a considerable amount before they could be sent on their way. He may have believed, as had happened with other Crusading armies in the past, that they would peaceably withdraw if presented with a large enough bribe. Crusaders were always short of money—that indeed was the reason why many of them had left their homes in the first place. “There were some trifling temporal advantages,” wrote an ironic commentator, “attending the crusades: Pope Innocent declares that the goods of the Crusaders are under the protection of Saint Peter, and therefore freed from taxes and impositions; also that if the Crusaders be in debt, Christian creditors are to be compelled by the spiritual courts, and Jews by the temporal sword, to remit the payment of interest. If a crusade upon such terms were now to be proclaimed!”[1]

Those who ‘took the Cross’ were not always noble citizens impelled by a heaven-sent spirit of duty to fight against the enemies of Christ’s Church. As often as not, they were seedy nobility with insufficient land to produce a suitable standard of living; malefactors who had been ordered by their confessors to make the journey in expiation of their sins; debtors eager to escape the unpleasant fate (such as an oar-bench at the galleys) which was their lot in those days; and unemployed soldiers ever ready to turn a dishonest penny in the wake of a sanctified cause.

All this the Emperor knew, for whatever his weakness and his criminal neglect of his charge, he was still a native of Byzantium. He knew as well as any of his subjects that the Crusaders were not saints in arms. Accordingly, Alexius III ordered the army to march out of the city and take up their stations on the shore opposite the Crusaders’ encampment at Chrysopolis. His intention was to oppose any attempt at landing north of the Golden Horn near the suburb of Galata. He despatched his most important officer to the Asian coastline, to maintain a watch over the invaders. This was his brother-in-law, Michael Stryphnos, who held the curious title of Megas Dux (a Byzantine amalgam in that Megas is Greek for ‘Great’, and Dux Latin for ‘Leader’). He was also known as Strategos of the Carabisiani, or General of the Caraboi (a type of warship)—in modern terms, Admiral of the Fleet.

Unfortunately, under the disastrous rule of the Emperor Alexius III, the title had become almost meaningless. This was why Michael Stryphnos, instead of cutting the Venetian fleet to pieces where it lay at anchor off Scutari, was now in command of 500 Greek cavalry. Nicetas says of Stryphnos that “he had sold the anchors, sails, and everything else belonging to the Byzantine navy which could possibly be turned into money”. It seems more than likely, for it was only the known weakness of the Byzantine fleet that had made Doge Dandolo confident of his ability to land an army on these shores. The fleet which had dominated the Mediterranean for centuries and had turned back innumerable invaders from the city was nonexistent. The fleet from which Venice had learned the art of galley-fighting now rotted helpless behind the barrier of the Golden Horn. Meanwhile, its Admiral led a troop of horsemen as ineffectual scouts on the flanks of the Fourth Crusade.

Even as a cavalry leader Michael Stryphnos did not distinguish himself. When attacked by about eighty mounted knights (led by four French noblemen) he and his men turned and fled. It was the first encounter between the Crusaders and the Byzantine army and it marked the beginning of open conflict.

Whatever one may feel about the behaviour of the Greek cavalry, one thing must be borne in mind—war had not yet been declared. As far as Michael Stryphnos and his troops were concerned, no reason had been given as to why the Crusaders and their Venetian allies were in the Sea of Marmora, let alone why they were threatening the dominions of fellow-Christians.

In the twentieth century, wars begin whenever a suitable opportunity occurs for the aggressor, but this was the so-called ‘Age of Chivalry’—not the age of cynicism. Even a private conflict did not start without a formal exchange between the opponents, while wars between nations were usually the subject of complicated formalities, and an announcement of intention so clear as to preclude any possibility of surprise attack. (Even as late as the sixteenth century when the Spanish Armada met the English fleet in the Channel, Admiral Howard ‘proclaimed war’ by sending his admiral’s pinnace over to the Spanish Admiral, while the latter hoisted a consecrated banner to his main-top to indicate that he accepted Howard’s challenge.) The behaviour, then, of the Fourth Crusade in invading Christian territory without any announcement of its intentions, and without any pretext or reason, must be considered one of the most despicable acts in the history of ‘Christian’ nations. It was the breakdown of a theory, however fallacious this may have been, that peoples professing Christianity were united against an outside world which was hostile to its tenets.