Robert de Clari’s account, however, is far more convincing. It reveals a reaction quite consistent with the nature of a proud people when faced with the demands of insolent foreigners.

“He is not our emperor!” they cried from the walls. “We have never heard of him!”

Alexius’s credentials were again recited to the crowd, and yet again they shouted back, “We have never heard of him!”

Whatever the Doge’s feelings may have been at this response, there is no doubt that the knights now realised—many of them for the first time—that they were faced with a siege. It would be a siege, moreover, of the largest city in Europe; a city that had never been taken by an enemy; and whose defences had always been regarded as impregnable. It says something for their resolution and courage that they appear to have accepted this challenge without hesitation. If there had been any left who disliked the idea of making war upon fellow-Christians, now would have been the time for them to declare themselves. It seems, however, as if there were no dissentients to the proposed assault on ‘the God-guarded City’.

“Next morning, after attending mass, the barons gathered on horseback for a council in the open fields…” After a lengthy ‘parliament’, the command of the various divisions of the army was settled. Baldwin, Count of Flanders, was to lead the advance guard—largely because he had among his followers a great number of trained soldiers, archers and crossbowmen. The second division was led by his brother; the third by the Count of Saint Paul; the fourth by Count Louis de Blois; the fifth (which included the chronicler Villehardouin) by Matthew de Montmorency; the sixth was composed of knights and soldiers from Burgundy; and the rearguard was led by the Marquis of Montferrat.

Except for this rearguard, which was a mixture of Italians and Germans, almost the entire composition of the invading army was Norman-French or French tributaries. The French were more responsible than any others for the events that were to follow. Almost certainly they were the dupes of the Venetians, but it was they who provided the arms and the men without which the attack on Constantinople would have been impossible.

 

 

 

4

MACHINATIONS IN VENICE

 

The Crusaders who were now preparing to invest Constantinople had taken a long time to reach this corner of the earth, so remote from their original intention. If Innocent III was its moving spirit, the Fourth Crusade had been launched in France several years before and was a lay enterprise from its very beginning. In 1199 a group of French knights had discussed the possibility of a new Crusade at the castle of Count Tibald of Champagne. Inspired by an itinerant preacher, Fulk of Neuilly, they had decided to ‘take the Cross’, and had immediately sent a message to the Pope announcing their intention.

Innocent III had proclaimed his desire for a new Crusade to free the Holy Land immediately upon ascending the pontifical throne. It was with pleasure, then, that he heard this news from Champagne. Although, throughout the course of his long and successful pontificate, Innocent III made every effort to revive the ancient spirit of the Crusades (made it indeed his supreme goal), he failed utterly in this ambition. His great desire was to re-establish the papal control of the Crusades, and from the very inception of the Fourth it was clear that the French had taken matters into their own hands. Having chosen their own leader they then decided their route and their objective without even consulting the Pope.[1]

Negotiations and preparations for the Crusade went on throughout the year 1200, but in 1201 the chosen leader, Tibald of Champagne, unexpectedly died. This led to a further delay, which was only resolved when Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat, was selected to take his place. This news cannot have been pleasing to the Pope, for the Lombard House of Montferrat was a close ally of the Hohenstaufen (those enemies of Papal power and, incidentally, of Byzantium). All the same, the choice cannot have been unforeseen by the Pope, for the Montferrats had notable connections with the Crusades and with the East.

In the summer of 1201 Boniface left his territories in northern Italy and visited France to confer with the French leaders, and to receive his formal appointment at their hands. Well aware that it was his Hohenstaufen connections which made him acceptable in French eyes, he wasted no time in demonstrating that these were still potent. After leaving France, he went north to Germany and spent several months with Philip of Swabia, who was anticipating that he would soon become Emperor of the West.

The dislike felt by Philip of Swabia for Byzantium and especially for its present ruler was no secret. It was inherited from his ancestors, and particularly from his brother, Henry VI, who, had been on the very point of launching an attack on Constantinople when he had died at Messina in 1197. Furthermore, Philip had strong personal reasons for wishing to see the present Emperor of Byzantium, Alexius III, removed from the throne. Philip was married to Irene Angelina, the daughter of the dethroned and blinded Isaac, and his marriage (unusual in those days for rulers) was a genuine love-match. The fate of his father-in-law, then, was very much a matter of personal concern to Philip. It was during those winter months which Boniface of Montferrat passed in close consultation with Philip of Swabia that something akin to a plot against the Byzantine Empire was hatched. From now on, one may begin to trace a sinister and deliberate misdirection of the Fourth Crusade.

But even if Boniface and Philip had agreed together that a subsidiary aim of the Crusade should be to dethrone Alexius III and restore the dynasty of Isaac Angelus, it would still have been extremely difficult—indeed almost impossible—to achieve, without some extraordinary justification. It was at this moment that the instrument for their design was most opportunely delivered to their hands.